But — and this is a huge qualifier — if that message of justification by God's undeserved love is preached apart from an unmasking of the actual power relations which have aggravated these feelings to the level of a social neurosis; if people are released from the rat race of upward mobility only privatistically, with no critique of the economic and social ideology that stimulates such desperate cravings; if people are liberated from a bad sense of themselves without any sense of mission to change the conditions that waste human beings in such a way,
then justification by faith becomes a mystification of the actual power relations, and the Christian gospel is indeed the opiate of the masses.
Ralph C. Wood regards John Updike as a writer to be «reckoned with theologically» though he finds in the novelist's recent memoirs — and in his work as a whole — more «justification by sin»
then justification by faith.
Not exact matches
Pelikan summarized the Protestant way of putting the argument: «If the Holy Trinity was just as holy as the Trinitarian dogma taught, and if original sin was as virulent as the Augustinian tradition said it was, and if Christ was as necessary as the Christological dogma implied,
then the only way to treat
justification in a manner faithful to the Catholic tradition was to teach
justification by faith.»
But if believing results in
justification (as Rom 4:4 - 5 and Rom 10:10 a clearly show),
then how could calling on the Lord and confessing with your mouth also result in
justification since such a person is already justified
by faith alone?
If it is entirely God,
then clearly God has decided who will and will not have
faith and (according to
justification by faith) who will and will not be saved.
Justification in the sight of man
by way of sanctification or becoming ever more like Christ is a process which has the potential of saving others.; this
by exemplifying through
faith in action that
faith alone in the blood of Christ alone saves you, this on the hope of attracting believers from
faith to
faith in action and unbelievers first to
faith and salvation and
then to
faith in action, paying it forward, growing His Kingdom.