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To Mystic Institute.org. As was said, the topic of this lecture is, are we saved by grace,

faith, or works? Now, this is often taken to be a kind of central Catholic, Protestant,

disputed question. I think actually it's not a very helpful way to put the question.

I will try to explain that almost everyone in the Western tradition agrees

that grace, faith, and works all play some kind of role in salvation.

The question is, what kind of role do they play?

How do they interrelate?

It is, however, the way of talking about faith versus works is fairly central to some of the most important letters of Paul, but it will be Romans and Galatians, and thus that way of putting the question, faith or works, is one I think we're in some ways stuck with.

Now, I'm going to start, like a typical professor,

and start with the meaning of the words. If you don't get the definition of certain terms straight,

you're going to have problems. Both faith and works can be understood either in a broad sense

or in a narrow sense.

And if one side of a discussion is meaning something fairly broad by faith and the other something narrow,

then you're going to end up ships passing in the night.

You might have what seems to be a disagreement when, in fact, you're just talking about different things.

Let me say at the beginning, I've already said to a degree,

let the cat out of the bag.

As I understand the Catholic position,

...