Quote:
Originally Posted by augustianian
continued,
Well, there's you reading it...the messengers...the city of Jericho...and all of Israel. Seems like there are plenty of witnesses around to see that God had converted her. How would they know that? By what she did. How would God know that? By her faith apart from her works.
Now I would like to make an alternative point. Let's, for argument's sake, allow your argument to stand. Since James' speaks about Abraham's faith being "complete" or "fulfilled" in verse 22, could Abraham finally say that he was justified and saved at that point? If not then what meaning are we to give to the words "complete" and "fulfilled" if Abraham is to continue to "complete" and "fulfill" his faith? Is he to continuously offer up his son in order to continuously "complete" his faith? Or is this event a onetime occurrence that was needed to "complete" his faith and he needed no more works or deeds because his faith was already "complete"? If the previous questions seem ridiculous to you then you should probably revisit the interpretation you give to verse 22. The only interpretation that works, without reducing James' argument to silliness, is that James' is not making an argument about justication before God but rather before men....hence the words "YOU SEE..."
You see?
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Many people would hate to see that fear and uncertainty leave their Christian lives. They thrive on compelling others to continuously strive for uncertain outcomes and hold these poor souls forever in a condition of debt.
The pastor won't have a horse farm to retire to unless he manipulates other souls into striving to pay a debt that was in fact paid for each of us long ago.
Thus, each of us are required to "offer up" our sons and daughters each and every day to sustain the money flow. It's barbarous. It's the linchpin in a stratified class system that seeks to maintain the flow of wealth from families and into one man's coffers.
This same system existed in another form in the Middle Ages. Vast hoards of gold and silver were siphoned from Northern Europe and into Italy and Rome. It was while one of those Northern Europeans, an Augustinian monk from Germany, was crawling on his hands and knees up the "
Scala Santa" in Rome that he heard a voice speaking to him: "The just shall live by faith!"
The culmination of that "revelation" was that the flow of gold and silver ceased and the Renaissance and the Reformation spread throughout the world.
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