[...] “Believe is No Good without Practice” [...]

Belief will produce action automatically. We act according to the meassure of our faith and trust on the Lord. Correct doctrine is essential for spiritual growth but the question is do we trust Bible fully the way it is or do we need to match our doctrine with a pre established dotrine?

Most of the times we compare things with pre existing doctrine and try to interpret Bible through the glasses of those doctrines. Probably that is the reason we have so many different views and most of the time these views contradict each other. Bible doesn’t contradict itself but the derived doctrines do.

Every single doctrine we come accross we need to check them out in light of the Word of God to figure out if they are really true to the Word of God.

Word of God is the ultimate template not a pre existing doctrine. How ever profound the pre existing doctrine may be or How ever popular it may be we still need to come to the Word of God to verify it.

Interesting translation note Dr Paul.

The words agape, pistis, gnosis, and even propheteia have a broad range of potential meaning, as do all of their English equivalents, approximates, and counterparts. It’s the nature of language. I’d like to see Venn diagram that! I can picture a blog thread on the conceptual relationships among those three that would stretch all the way back to Wittgenstein’s ink well.

As it happens, we can be content to just call it agape. Since St. Paul was so considerate as to spend the remainder of chapter 13 to expounding agape–you could practically put an X in there as a placeholder.

I am tantalyzed by the sentence fragment with which your comment ends. I assume you may have been ready to ask what is this hypthetical state in which one has all pistis but zero agape? Is that condition a practical possibility, or would one need to torture the definitions of pistis and or agape to accommodate it in fact?

Charity is not love. Love is not charity. The king james Bible reverted back to the Wickliffe reading in I cORINTHIANS 13. Tyhdale used the word love in his Bible, but the King james translators rejected his translation of the word agape. In the context of I Corinthians it is impossible for the word love to be used. the greek can have shades oif meaning.
Icorinthians challenges us to consider Paul’s state if he were to have all faiith, but have not charity. If

Dwight #65
You are correct that my argument addresses a separate question, but it is a question that is begged by this discussion.

I’ll let my point stand: The holy spirit that works conversion…is he not the same spirit who leads us into all truth and teaches us all things?

A sharp mind that can make subtle distinctions may be an advantage in teaching about God, but it is no advantage toward knowing, worshipping, and serving God.

My favorite Pharisee, St. Paul, taught me that our earthly endowments are worthless towards knowing Christ. He also said this:

Though I…understand all mysteries, and all knowledge…and have not charity, I am nothing. Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, but have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

It is not a question between orthodoxy and orthopraxy. It is between love and pride.

Was Jesus too subtle about this?

that’s a fine argument Joe B, but it’s an argument to another question. You bring up Zacchaeus, the woman at the well and the blind man by the road. You’re answering a different question, I believe. “Does a person need to fully understand right doctrine in order to be converted?” No. But that’s not the question. Jesus tells us to come as we are. The question here is this: “Once a person IS converted, then what do they follow? The doctrines laid out in scripture, properly interpreted, or their own flights of fancy and fuzzy feelings? If the latter, who knows what their walk will look like.

“Think of the incarnation, hypostatic union, the Trinity, the eternality of God. These are create a context in which right worship, the most important “application” of all, can take place.”

I selected this phrase because it so elegantly captures the thesis.

Zacchaeus in his tree, the woman at her well, the blind man by the road…did they give any thought whatever to hypostatic union? Was a fully elaborated doctrine of the trinity what made Thomas fall at his nail-pierced feet?

Do you actually believe that someone with an IQ of 85 who cannot even read words like “hypostasis” are less able to worship Jesus? Less able to know him?

We jabber on in our echo chamber about “understanding God”, ignoring that “God has chosen the foolish of this world to confound the wisdom of the wise.”

Can’t we even hear what we’re saying?

[...] Read it here:  http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2009/03/belief-is-no-good-without-practice-and-other-stupid-st…. [...]

In James, there is an exquisite tension I see in the passages regarding faith (belief in God) and “works”, or the everyday things we do.
The tension is in a question: Isn’t belief enough? You mean I’ve gotta do stuff to prove I’m saved, I mean, what about the sinner’s prayer, and public confession, and baptism, and . . . Hey! Wait a minute! All those things are all “works” based on my (enlightened) faith!
Whew! I guess I’m OK. I mean, I don’t see demons kneeling at the altar and putting on baptismal robes, but I’m sure they know God is real – after all, many of them were up there in Heaven before the great battle in which they were thrown out.
I do not advocate that subtle dysphoria produced by the error of always having to do “works” to prove my faith. I do advocate doing things for God to be like Him, and to give evidence of His eternal love for others.
Paul said all is rubbish in comparison to KNOWING Christ, and when you have a true friend who loves you, you feel that kind of perspective and loyalty.
James was perhaps presenting us with a straw man, playfully asking us to knock it down. I conclude that real faith must by definition produce works, and continue to do so. We are not demons, who although believe, are in no position to show proof of redemption; we are people, saved people, who delight in doing things for God.

[...] point out that right doctrine and theology pleases and glorfies God, as C. Michael Patton argues here. That goes along with loving God with all of your mind. But it isn’t the main point–the [...]