Faith as a noun

Well, first of all, with regards to divorce, I myself do not believe that because, as you say, "you broke the lamp," therefore you ought to live in darkness. That was the position of the Mennonite church I grew up in but not all Mennonite churches hold that position either. There isn't a central authority in the way that there is for the Catholic church, so you have disagreements about everything within different Mennonite churches except for two things: they all agree on pacifism, and they all agree that Jesus is Lord.

I wish I could remember the name of the theologian who, in his later years, when asked what he had learned from all his years of studying the Bible, responded, "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."

That is all I know.

And I understand the difficulty people have with self-described Christian fundamentalists because you would probably describe yourself as a fundamentalist in that you are living the Bible as best as you understand it, and I too - yet I don't know that we would agree on anything beyond "Jesus loves me, this I know."

The Bible isn't nearly as straightforward as many people like to think it is. For every verse on how we are saved by grace and not by works, there is another verse that tells us faith without works is dead.

To be "dead" in the Bible meant to be spiritually dead, as when one of the disciples wanted to bury his father and Jesus responded, "Let the dead bury the dead."

Or in James, when he writes that "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."

It isn't that Mennonites don't believe in grace. They do - they do not believe that works will get them into Heaven. Grace gets them into Heaven. But they also have to uphold their part of the contract by following that grace with action. You have said something along those lines when you say that those who claimed to be Christians but who somehow fall away were never "really" Christians and therefore that doesn't contradict the once saved, always saved thing.

To me, that's sort of playing with semantics, like my friend who felt that if her first marriage hadn't worked out it was because God had not truly joined them.

To me, ultimately, you are still recognizing that a formula said, and not lived through, has no meaning.

What I think is that you can't take anything out of the Bible out of context as different passages illuminate and expand on each other. Such as Paul saying that our works will not save us, to emphasize out utter dependency on Christ and James expanding on that by saying that pure religion reaches out to others and is lived by example, not through empty words. As James writes a few verses later:

What does it profit, my brethern, though a man say he hath faith and have not works? can faith save him?

He goes on to say that faith without works is dead and further that "yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works and I will shew thee my faith by my works."

Belief - faith - is meaningless as James says, "Thou believest there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe and tremble."

He goes on to make the point that Abraham followed through on his faith, and it was the following through part which made his faith real. He didn't just say he had faith. It didn't become faith until he had followed through.

Which is the problem with just saying some formulaic A,B,C thing. That's like Abraham saying to God, when God wanted him to sacrifice Isaac, "Sure thing, dude." And then rolling over and going back to sleep because he thought God couldn't mean what he said, to do something so horrible.

Abraham moved - he acted - he did a work - when he took his son Isaac to the mountain prepared to do the work of sacrificing him. That was when it became faith. That is why in one part of the NT we read that Abraham was justified by faith and in another (like James) we read Abraham was justified by works.

They are not contradicting each other; the term "faith"as used by Paul is being misunderstood as a passive word, not an action word. James defines faith.

I came across an interesting website, again regarding divorce. I don't agree with everything. My view on divorce is much broader than what he describes, broader than yours too. I don't believe that the only out for a marriage is physical infidelity. Infidelity comes in many forms as Jesus said when he said that whoever looked at a woman with lust in his heart was an adulterer. For myself, I am totally persuaded in my own mind, as everyone must be, that it is the spirit of the thing that is addressed, and not a specific act.

I believe that yes, we should forgive until it hurts, and God knows, I have done it my entire marriage. I think that is the best thing. But I also believe that God totally would get it if I left my marriage and that I would not be condemned. I don't think that God would think less of me somehow or that I would lose some reward in Heaven. I think that the Jesus whose feet the woman washed with her tears totally gets me. "Much shall be forgiven her for she loved much." Knowing that, I think, may ultimately be the reason I stay.

I haven't finished reading the entire web page but here's the link. I think you would find it interesting, even if you don't agree with it.

Layla