NOTE:
Protestants teach that a person is saved by grace, through faith alone (sola fide).
Before I write anything else I need to give you the working definition of the doctrine of sola fide for this post:
Sometimes I forget actual people read this. I pretend others read it just as a child I pretended all the dolls I lined up on my bed were listening to me teach them.
I tend to write in a tone as if my only audience is me. And my tone can be unemotional because I already know my heart and it's seems wordy to write out how sincere my heart is--since I can feel it myself. If I write with a calculated emotional tone, I am sorry. Believe me, I have enormous love for anyone who might take the time to read my blog. Wow. Thank you.
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Before I write anything else I need to give you the working definition of the doctrine of sola fide for this post:
Sola Fide: A person is justified by God's grace, through faith alone and that means that the person has entered a covenant with God, through the atoning blood of His Son Christ Jesus, which gives the believer eternal security that he or she will live with God in heaven.
Some, if not most, American Evangelicals teach that you can't be a true Christian without embracing the doctrine of sola fide. But I have heard the following type of statements often over the last decade:
A Seventh-day Adventist:
"The remnant (true believers in these last days) are those who keep the Ten Commandments. The fourth commandment requires that we keep Sabbath holy. If you aren't keeping the correct Sabbath holy, you cannot be obeying God."
A Southern Baptist Sunday School Teacher:
"Every born-again believer must know the date he was saved. If he doesn't, I have to guess whether he was saved or not."
Assemblies of God Choir Director:
"Ya haven't spoken in tongues? (hummm) Well, you can join our choir on the contingency that ya let us know when you become a full member of God's family by being baptized with the Holy Spirit. Until then, well, we'll be prayin' for ya."
"Ya haven't spoken in tongues? (hummm) Well, you can join our choir on the contingency that ya let us know when you become a full member of God's family by being baptized with the Holy Spirit. Until then, well, we'll be prayin' for ya."
A Member of the Reformed Church:
"I am sorry, I am just very concerned for your soul because you haven't accepted the Bible truth of Limited Atonement and Predestination."
"I am sorry, I am just very concerned for your soul because you haven't accepted the Bible truth of Limited Atonement and Predestination."
A Pentecostal:
"According to Romans 8:16, my spirit is not bearing witness to me that your spirit is a child of God. You just keep studying scripture, honey."
An Evangelical Minister to His Congregation:
"A true Christian is required to believe in the inerrancy of scripture and sola scriptura."
A Non-Denominational Friend:
"All who claim to be Bible-believing Christians must believe in once-saved-always-saved. If you don't, you're a heretic."
Adventist Online:
"No true Christian can accept the doctrine of an everlasting hell."
Calvinist Online:
"No true Christian rejects the doctrine of an everlasting hell."
A Southern Baptist scholar, Ph.D in Theology:
"A Christian must accept sola fide, period, or he isn't saved."
"A Christian must accept sola fide, period, or he isn't saved."
These were Protestants who insisted that nothing, nothing can be added to our faith to secure our justification and salvation. Faith plus anything equal a works-righteousness that will place a person in hell.
Yet, each Evangelical denomination, in reality, adds correct theology to faith in Christ. One added correct theology on Sabbath-keeping and obeying the Ten Commandments. Another a born-again date, or talking in tongues, predestination, everlasting hell. Each Protestant denomination holds fast to certain theology required to be a true, Bible-believing Christian. And even the idea of the requirement of being a Bible-believer is adding something to faith alone.
These responses have always proven to me that sola fide may be believed on a theoretical, ideological level, but not on a practical, functional one. A living faith is never truly alone, St. James said so. And Protestants' demand that all Christians believe in the doctrine of Righteousness by Faith Alone is adding to faith alone just as the above list of additions Christians insist be believed in order to be true Christians.
Think about this:
If one believes that faith alone is all that is needed for justification, then insisting that the doctrine of sola fide (faith alone) be believed is adding to the simple conviction of faith alone. Not only must you believe in Christ but you then are obligated to believe in the doctrine of sola fide.
For Evangelicals to require that Christians must believe in the doctrine of sola fide in order to be saved is self-refuting theology, an internal contradiction. And so it must be because it is not Biblical.
If one believes that faith alone is all that is needed for justification, then insisting that the doctrine of sola fide (faith alone) be believed is adding to the simple conviction of faith alone. Not only must you believe in Christ but you then are obligated to believe in the doctrine of sola fide.
For Evangelicals to require that Christians must believe in the doctrine of sola fide in order to be saved is self-refuting theology, an internal contradiction. And so it must be because it is not Biblical.
The inerrant, infallible written Word of God does talk one time about faith alone. Here it is in James 2: 24.
You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.
