The claim: “Arminians and Catholics traditionally see faith and works as both essential for eternal salvation.”
I am an Arminian and do not know of any reputable scholar, pastor, or teacher who believes that.
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Free Will Treatise:
CHAPTER X Faith
Saving faith is an assent of the mind to the fundamental truths of revelation,108 an acceptance of the Gospel, through the influence of the Holy Spirit,109 and a firm confidence and trust in Christ.110 The fruit of faith is obedience to the Gospel.111 The power to believe is the gift of God,112 but believing is an act of the creature, which is required as a condition of pardon, and without which the sinner cannot obtain salvation.113 All men are required to believe in Christ, and those who yield obedience to this requirement become the children of God by faith.114
CHAPTER XII Justification and Sanctification
1. Justification. Personal justification implies that the person justified has been guilty before God; and, in consideration of the atonement of Christ, accepted by faith, the sinner is pardoned and absolved from the guilt of sin, and restored to the divine favor.124 Christ’s atonement is the foundation of the sinner’s redemption, yet, without repentance and faith, it can never give him justification and peace with God.125
2. Sanctification is the continuing of God’s grace by which the Christian may constantly grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.126
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Arminian Confession of 1621
CHAPTER 8:
ON THE WORK OF REDEMPTION, AND THE PERSON AND OFFICES OF CHRIST.
1. Wherefore it seemed good to the most merciful God, in the end of the age or in the fullness of time, to begin and properly execute that most excellent work which He had foreknown or proposed [purposed] in Himself before the foundation of the world, and [which] in passing ages He had indicated under various figures, shadows, and types (almost as in a rude sketch), that it might be seen at a distance and obscurely known by mortals, namely, the work of Redemption or a New creation, by which He would deliver man, made liable to eternal death and condemnation and lying under the miserable bondage of sin, from that guilt by His mercy and grace alone, restore him to the hope of an eternal and immortal life, and supply sufficient, indeed super-abundant, powers for shaking off the dominion of sin and obeying the will of
God with a whole heart.
Chapter 10.2 But we call living and true faith that which necessarily has joined to itself good works and a sincere correction of the whole life, structured upon the commandments of Jesus Christ. For because the promise of eternal life is everywhere joined by our Savior to true faith, indeed faith itself is said to be imputed for righteousness to the one who believes, yet nevertheless James affirms that we are justified by works also and not by faith alone [cf. also Eph. 2:10]. [Note: is this not required? Who ever heard of someone who claims to have faith and wishes to join a church family, but they live full-time in the same sins they committed before their “faith?” Does not James state the same? Truly, faith is revealed by a holy life, not sinlessly but blamelessly. So, Abraham, Rahab, King Manasseh, King David, Peter, and the rest of the Apostles lived a life showing their faith to be true and living.]
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Church of the Nazarene (ARTICLES OF FAITH):
IX. Justification, Regeneration, and Adoption 9.
We believe that justification is the gracious and judicial act of God by which He grants full pardon of all guilt and complete release from the penalty of sins committed, and acceptance as righteous, to all who believe on Jesus Christ and receive Him as Lord and Savior.
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The Wesleyan Church (The Articles of Religion):
12. Justification, Regeneration, and Adoption
230. We believe that when one repents of personal sin and believes on the Lord Jesus Christ, that at the same moment that person is justified, regenerated, adopted into the family of God, and assured of personal salvation through the witness of the Holy Spirit.
We believe that justification is the judicial act of God whereby a person is accounted righteous, granted full pardon of all sin, delivered from guilt, completely released from the penalty of sins committed, by the merit of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, by faith alone, not on the basis of works.
We believe that regeneration, or the new birth, is that work of the Holy Spirit whereby, when one truly repents and believes, one’s moral nature is given a distinctively spiritual life with the capacity for love and obedience. This new life is received by faith in Jesus Christ, it enables the pardoned sinner to serve God with the will and affections of the heart, and by it the regenerate are delivered from the power of sin which reigns over all the unregenerate.
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JOHN WESLEY’S SERMON #1 ~ “Salvation by Faith”
JOHN WESLEY’S SERMON #5 ~ “Justification by Faith”
“I believe justification by faith alone, as much as I believe there is a God…I have never varied from it, no, not a hair’s breadth from 1738 to this day.”
-John Wesley, Journal, 1766
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Salvation Army: “We believe that we are justified by grace through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and that he that believeth hath the witness in himself.”
Handbook of Doctrine:
P167: The outcome is justification. We are justified by grace through faith alone. Such faith is not just an assent to the truth of Scripture, but involves a trusting acceptance of God’s grace in Christ and confidence in a pardoning God. By faith we know that God in Christ loves us and has given himself for us, and that we are reconciled to God by the blood of Christ (Romans 3:24; Titus 3:5-7). This is the joyful experience of those who are saved (Chapter 8)