Paul and Olena Miles with Grace Abroad Ministries
Last month, I posted the text and a translation of James 2:14–26. Since then, I have modified the translation and written some commentary that emphasises the article. You can read it below or download the pdf here:
pmiles James 2 translation and commentary
People make James 2:14–26 harder than it should be. I think that the main problem is that man naturally wants to earn his own righteousness, so there is a tendency for men to misread biblical texts to make their salvation dependent on themselves.
There are some particularities to the English language that have become difficult in James, so I am offering a retranslation with a few oddities that I think are justified. This translation is part of a soteriology class that I am taking and I will include a commentary in a paper for that class (in other words, I want my professor to poke holes in the commentary it before I share it publicly).[Read More]
We have developed a quadrant model for describing soteriological compromises. The biblical message of salvation is summarized as Faith Alone in Christ Alone (FACA). Two ways to reject this are by rejecting the sufficiency of FACA or the necessity of FACA. Each of these two sides has differing extremes: On the side that rejects sufficiency, a near alternative is Works-Assisted Condition while a distant alternative is Works-Assisted Merit; on the side that rejects necessity, a near alternative is Christian Pluralism while a distant alternative is Christian Universalism.[Read More]
Kenneth Wilson has written a book entitled Heresy of the Grace Evangelical Society: Become a Christian Without Faith in Jesus as God and Savior. There are legitimate criticisms to be made of GES, but you will not find many of them in Wilson’s book. Indeed, he actually had the opposite effect from what Wilson wanted. The day it was released, Grant Hawley of Free Grace Alliance disavowed Wilson’s work, which is no surprise since Wilson called Hawley’s views heretical. Several of Wilson’s fans have come out to say that this book caused them to question his other works, which is quite reasonable. Kenneth Wilson is most well known for his studies on church history. I appreciated an article that he wrote last year for SBL and even quoted it positively in our recent volume on current issues in soteriology,1 but having seen how poorly he represents his contemporaries, we are left wondering how well he deals with theologians of old. In the same volume, I criticized Christian Pluralism, which is the position that Wilson takes, so in retrospect, I would have loved to interacted with his book there, but perhaps that is a discussion for another day.[Read More]
There is room within orthodoxy Christianity to disagree over points in hamartiology, but an orthodox Christian should recognize immediately the false view that we spiritually earn a death sentence when we first sin. The biblical doctrine of spiritual death will be considered here from two angles: first the Godward side and then the manward side.
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Roman Catholicism is a false religion. The gospel according to Roman Catholicism is not salvific. This is a point where most Christian Pluralists will disagree with Faith Alone in Christ Alone.
When we say “Faith Alone in Christ Alone,” we refer to the school of thought that a man is saved when he believes in Christ Alone for salvation, rather than believing in his own work, or, by extension, in some combination of Christ’s work and his own works. When we say, “Christian Pluralism,” we refer to the school of thought that a man does not need to believe in Christ for salvation, but can rely on his own works instead, so long as he has some belief about Jesus. There are various camps within both of these schools of thought, but that’s the issue in a nutshell (read a more thorough and boring article here or download a full book here).[Read More]
