Not By Faith Alone

ONE OF THE main heretical teachings of Protestantism is sola fide (by faith alone). It says that our salvation rests on faith alone--we are saved by faith alone--and good works have nothing to do with. As a corollary, it insists that good works are mere "fruits" of our being saved, and cannot help us inherit Heaven because believing on Christ sacrifice in the cross is enough to bring us to Heaven.

Since Protestantism does not believe in sanctifying grace (the grace that makes us holy), Protestants believe salvation as purely justification of personal sins. They have no notion with regards to the loss of the sanctifying grace as a consequence of the rebellion of our primordial parents Adam and Eve when they disobeyed one law of God not to eat the fruit of the tree of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. Thus their understanding of "justification" is the wiping of all personal sins in the sacrifice of the Cross, and any sins thereafter are automatically wiped as an effect of that "justification" without need of any need of sacramental act in seeking forgiveness through confession and the sacrament of reconciliation. This understandinf of "justification" make them tend to believe that any sins they commit after their Protestant baptism has no eternal consequence for them simply because they have already been "justified."

Inheriting Heaven Arises from Doing Works of Mercy

One evidence that stands against the Sola Fide Heresy comes from the Gospel of Saint Matthew. Jesus taught his disciples: "Then the king will say to those on his right... Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me" (25: 31-46).

The Lord makes it clear that we will inherit the kingdom of Heaven because he was hungry and we gave him food, thirsty and gave him drink, a stranger and we welcomed him, naked and we clothed him, ill and we cared for him, in prison and we visited him. It is a clear action and consequence statement. The action (you did it to me) resulted into a positive consequence (inheriting the kingdom of Heaven).

Even Saint Paul counselled the Christians in Philippi: "Work for you salvation in fear and trembling" (Philippians 2.12: The Jerusalem Bible).

Protestants will have difficulty accepting this teaching--that explains why they rarely, if at all, quote these New Testament passages when teaching about salvation. The teaching simply opposed the Protestant teaching of "by faith alone."

But Catholics have no problem in understanding this teaching of the Lord. Our teaching on the sanctifying grace put us consistently with this teaching of Christ as recounted by the Apostle Saint Matthew, the first bishop of Jerusalem. We know that our salvation, or sanctification, has not been a result of the wiping of our sins through baptism, but founded on the restoration of the sanctifying grace into our soul by the sacrifice on the Cross. We were made holy (sanctified, or justified); but that does not free us from the responsibility and consequences of our personal sins later on. We believe that we can loss our salvation because of our unrepented personal sins as well as "inherit the kingdom of God" by the good works we continue to do.

Thus we seek forgiveness for our personal sins after Baptism in order to reconcile ourselves with God on the acts of evil that we committed and wipe these transgression through confession and absolution by the priestly order to whom the apostles transmitted their authority to forgive and not forgive sins, an authority that the Lord himself has given to the Twelve.

While we are restored in good graces with God, that does not end it all. We still have to live that sanctification until the day we die. Along the way we can loss Heaven through our personal sins unforgiven.

[This section quotes from the New American Bible.]

Always a Parable to Non-Believers

DUE TO MY active involvements in the discussion of the Catholic faith even with non-believers, I repeatedly encounter in the past a puzzling condition, a kind of hardcore obstinacy that almost always prevents non-Catholics from opening up intellectually at least to understand the very reason why Catholics behave the way we do and believe the way we do.

 

In the issue of venerating the images of dearly loved Saints, it seems to be so hard to extract them from equating images (representation of real people) with idol (representation of a god) worship to translate much like "worshipping" the photo of your late dear mother that you keep in your wallet to remind you of her. The deception in their mind had been so thorough that even clear logic cannot help in helping them at least to intellectually consider the reason for such a family-oriented practice.

 

In the issue of the teaching authority of the Catholic Church as historically the very Church that the Lord Jesus Christ left to the administration of the Apostle Peter before his ascension to Heaven, their adamant refusal to recognize the historical proof of the Apostolic Church borders on the irrational as all of these can be found, by reflective reading, in the Christian Bible (which they too use with their specific modifications of the original) and the historical evidence can be gathered from credible sources to make at least an intelligent evaluation of the facts of such direct lineage to the Apostles of Christ.

 

What Jesus however taught privately to his disciples, as recounted in the Gospel of Saint Mark (4:11-12), clears up this very dynamic difference in the presence of divine revelation between those within the Church and those outside: The mystery of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But for those outside everything comes in parables, according to what is written in Scripture: These people may look, yet not see; hear, yet not understand; surely they will not change nor receive forgiveness. Saint Mark then proceeded to confirm: Jesus... would not teach them without parables; but privately to his disciples he explained everything (v. 34).

 

The mystery of the kingdom of God has been given to you... The full revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ resides among the Twelve Apostles, the first elders in the ancient Church; not even solely to the writings in the compiled books, which we now call the Bible, that came to the Church hundreds of years later. It resides in the hearts of the Apostles, and they transmitted it through the centuries to a long line of faithful disciples. And where the ancient revelation remained incomplete the Holy Spirit supplied later on as He guided the Church through various stages of growth. This verse alone testifies to the fact that Jesus himself chose whom to reveal his purest teachings--the Twelve. And all those faithful disciples who received the teachings of the Twelve received what the Lord taught them. That's how the teaching authority of the Twelve got handed down from generations to generations of Christians, which later became popularly known as Katolikos (Universal).

 

For those outside, everything comes in parables... This explains what I noticed as a severe case of hardcore obstinacy in those non-Catholics I encountered in the past and keeps on encountering once in a while. Despite any learned discussion on the faith of the Catholics, everything always comes to them in parables. What is easily understandable even to the least taught Catholic will prove to be unpenetrable a parable to the outsiders.

 

These conditions of parables indicate the absence of grace in their mind. Since the grace of God continue to be available and offered to everyone, this lack of grace might a result of a spiritual blockage that the person himself is not aware of or put there himself for whatever reason.

 

It is unfortunate that certain truth of faith cannot enter into the heart and mind of people who continue to refuse to open up their heart and mind to the Gospel that Christ handed down to his disciples, and then to their students and successors. It is like the unfertile soils in the same Gospel of Mark--some of the seed fell along a path and the birds came and ate it up (Mark 4:4)

The True Christians

POPE BENEDICT XVI lately reaffirmed his teaching in 2000, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in the document Dominus Iesus (Lord Jesus) that outside the apostolic lineage, there can be no true "sacramental priesthood."

Non-Catholic denominations may howl on this pronouncement as "offensive." But the truth has to be spoken regardless if that hurts. Is not that the reason why a physician had to tell his cancer patient that she only have a few months to live? That truth will shock. That truth will hurt. Still the truth must be spoken in order to wake people who had been sleeping in a lie.

To extend this truth into a more painful area many non-Catholics often shelve into the backside of their minds, can someone call himself a Christian if he learned his faith not from the authorized preachers of the Twelve Apostles? Can someone be even called a Christian if she even accept the notion that the Church that Jesus founded on Peter disappeared from the face of this earth?

Here is what we know for sure:

The authenticity of a Christian teaching rests upon the authority given to that preacher by the Apostles. After the controversy that erupted in Antioch during the apostolic era, the first Council of Jerusalem was called in order to settle the issue on demanding from non-Jewish converts what the law of Moses prescribed. In the letter signed by the apostles and elders of the ancient Christian Church, the apostles sent message to the affected churches at Antioch, Syria and Cilicia: We hear that some of our members have disturbed you with their demands and have unsettled your minds. They acted without authority from us, and so we have decided unanimously to elect delegates and to send them to you with Barnabas and Paul, men we highly respect who have dedicated their lives to the name of our Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 15:24-26 TJB1966).

It is clear that the apostles recognize only those preachers they have authorized to preach. If they are not authorized by the apostles, then they are false prophets. It follows then that any preachers of today not connected in any valid way to the lineage of Christian apostles since the time of the Twelve, they are false prophets. They acted without authority from us...

The Apostles laid their hands on those they elected to represent them. It is not for gesture's sake; but that involved the conferment of the Holy Spirit to those elected--something that only the Apostles, and those they delegated the power to do so, can do. In the institution of the seven deacons, Saint Mark recalled in the book of Acts: The whole assembly approved of this proposal and elected Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, together with Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolaus of Antioch, a convert to Judaism. They presented these to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them (Acts 6: 5-6 TJB1966).

Without this election and laying of apostolic hands, there can be no authority to represent the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ to anyone.

It is here where the Protestant problem lies that, for many years had been neglected to think about by the Protestants themselves. Without that Holy Order coming from the Apostles, there can be no legitimate and authentic Christianity coming out from any unauthorized preachers of "Christian teachings."

That is also the very root of the Protestant tradition that pushed them to seek rationalization of their legitimacy to the written Scriptures. They have to claim that only the Scriptures are acceptable, and not the Apostolic authority to teach because they knew they have lost that ascendancy from the apostles of Christ. Without the Scriptures to hold on to, what else can they hold on to?

The Bible-only solution is what fuels a lot of heresies against the authentic Christian teachings later on (which is beyond the intention of this article to discuss). Suffice it to say then that this solution has always been a desperate solution to an otherwise unachored faith. Because without the Apostles of Christ to guarantee the authenticity of the Christian teachings, there can only be erroneous teachings to come through from any preacher's mouth.

One irrevocable mark of a true Christian then is apostolicity. He must be sacramentally baptized through the authorized representatives of the Twelve Apostles all through the centuries.