Since when does loving your enemies mean bombing shit out of them, or is that just what Bush’s voices tell him?

Is Salvation by Faith a Free Gift or Must it be Earned?

Abstract

Even if the choice of faith or unbelief is entirely up to human beings, they are deciding one way or the other, and only one of the choices has the required reward. That means the reward is not freely given but depends on the choice—one choice is right and the other wrong—just as a pass mark in an exam depends on making the right choice of answer. A special form of behaviour is necessary for salvation. People still have to earn salvation by behaving in the way God approves of.

A Free Gift?

Christians say that faith is God’s free gift that requires no special behaviour or effort to earn. Christians do not have to try to be good.

By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.
Ephesians 2:8

Good deeds are not needed for salvation but only faith. That is unfair on those who are faithless but good, but, even so, do all those who have faith automatically get this free gift? The answer has to be, “No!” if God is omnipotent, because otherwise He is constrained. So, even faith does not ensure salvation. In the end, it is God’s whim! Such a capricious doctrine cannot be just.

Moreover, even if the choice of faith or unbelief is entirely up to human beings, they are deciding one way or the other, and only one of the choices has the required reward. That means the reward is not freely given but depends on the choice—one choice is right and the other wrong—just as a pass mark in an exam depends on making the right choice of answer. A special form of behaviour is necessary for salvation. People still have to earn salvation by behaving in the way God approves of.

The reward is still based on God’s approved choice, and so the reward is not freely given. All that has happened is that instead of God making the criterion of salvation something altruistic that might help life in this world, such as doing good deeds, he has made it selfish.

Last uploaded: 09 November, 2009.

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Before you go, think about this…

In a 1991 case in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, a teenager, Nicole Althaus, encouraged by a teacher and a social worker, accused her father of having sexualIy abused her, resulting in his arrest. Nicole also reported that she had given birth to three children, who her relatives had killed, that she had been raped in a crowded restaurant, and that her grandmother flew about on a broom. Nicole recanted all this the following year, and all charges against her father were dropped. Nicole and her parents brought a civil suit against the therapist and psychiatric clinic to whom Nicole had been referred shortly after she began making her accusations. The jury found that the doctor and the clinic had been negligent and awarded almost a quarter of a million dollars to Nicole and her parents. There are increasing numbers of cases of this sort. But what if Nicole had not recanted. Remember Salem.