Thursday, November 15, 2007

Salvation?

John Wesley has got to be my favorite author so far in Foundations.

So our class was discussing the topic of Justification and Sanctification and Faith. (Oh Boy!) This has got to be my favorite discussion so far too! It's going to be hard to distill our entire ream of thought but I shall try:

3 Analogies

1)
Good Tree=Good Fruit,
Good Faith=Good Works

The whole relationship is organic. By not doing some good works your faith doesn't automatically shrivel up and die, it moves in degrees towards being alive or dead. Also, when too many fruits are being supported and there are not enough resources to go around, all the fruits suffer. Same with good works. When one is spread too thin, all good acts suffer. This is, of course, a very incomplete and inept summary of this (awesome) analogy.

2) A Muscle is either: Healthy and Fit, weak and flabby, atrophied, or dead.

Same with Faith. It works (so we think) like a muscle. More it is used, the stronger it gets. When it doesn't get used, it starts getting weaker then shrinks then dies. (eventually...I think)

3) Vine:

Sometimes the vine needs to be pruned in order to be able to focus it's resources in order to produce better fruit. Same with us. In order to produce a few excellent good works, sometimes it requires just focusing on those few.

Those were the main analogies we had. We only had two hours but we covered alot! However we didn't go too much into what we meant by good works. Or maybe we did....Anyway, these questions about Faith, Justification, and Sanctification are some of the Cornerstones of Christianity. I hope I never stop learning about them.

No comments: