John Calvin added the word "alone" to James 2:24

Most people are aware that Luther added the word "alone" to Romans 3:28 in his German translation, but few people are aware of an equally pernicious attempt to mess with God's Word done by John Calvin when he inserted the word "alone" into James 2:24. In reality, the word "alone" does not appear in the Greek of James 2:24. If one is going to be faithful to Scripture, a Catholic can no longer say that James opposes "justification by faith alone," because James never speaks of "faith alone" in the first place. But there's good news about this, because once we see why Protestants have continued to follow Calvin by adding the word "alone" to James 2:24, we will be able to refute Luther's heresy all the more easily.

Luther demonized the book of James because Luther rightly saw that James' Epistle was incompatible with Luther's interpretation of Paul's Epistles to the Romans and Galatians. He rightly figured that something had to give, and it made more sense to dispense with James' one Epistle than with all of Paul's writings. John Calvin would likely have rejected James as well, but he realized that something more important was at stake: the integrity of the canon of Scripture. Calvin rightly recognized that if Protestants threw out James, then it would be a free-for-all with the canon, which would demolish Sola Scriptura. So Calvin came up with an last ditch effort by adding the word "alone" to James 2:24 and thus (temporarily) saving both key doctrines of Scripture Alone and Justification by Faith Alone.

How the "warning passages" of Scripture end up leading to Calvinism's own apostasy.

One of the most humorous (and maddening) doctrines to discuss with a Calvinist is how Calvinism deals with the subject of apostasy (i.e. falling away from the Christian faith). Since Calvinism teaches that the 'true believer' can never lose his salvation, this naturally leads one to ask how Calvinism deals with the "warning passages" in Scripture. The "warning passages" are all those passages which warn about the danger against turning to sin, particularly grave sins which can cause one to be damned. An excellent example of this is Galatians 5:19-21, where Paul (for the second time) warns the Galatian Christians that if they commit grave sins they will be in jeopardy of not entering the kingdom of Heaven. 

Calvinists approach the "warning passages" with a sort of double standard. On the one hand they say that anyone who commits those sins was probably "never saved in the first place," while on the other hand they admit a 'true Christian' could fall into those sins but that God has pre-forgiven all their sins since the moment of their conversion and justification. (I discuss this inherent-contradiction in my Lordship Salvation post.) But there is yet another damning contradiction to go along with this, and this stems from the fact Protestants in general (and Calvinists in particular) reject the Catholic distinction between mortal and venial sin. 

The problem the Calvinist is in is simply this: if there is no distinction between mortal and venial sin, then all sin is equally grave and thus equally damning. And if even Christians sin in "small" things many times each day (Prov 24:16), this leads to the terrifying realization that they're committing damnable sins throughout each day. This error and failure to follow the Church caused Luther to be deeply distressed, and logically so, which in turn was passed onto Calvin and eventually most all Protestants. This forced Luther and Calvin into having to invent the doctrine of the "Imputation of Christ's Righteousness," where Christ's Righteousness would "cover" the believer and effectively hide their daily repeated (mortal) sins from God's sight. Protestants call this God "not imputing" sin, meaning God knows you commit all these grave sins each day, but since you're "covered" by Jesus' righteousness then God will graciously not count you guilty for them. But this only compounds the problem at hand rather than alleviate it. 

Since the Calvinist Christian is committing the very damnable sins warned against in places like Galatians 5:19-21, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, Ephesians 5:3-5, and 1 Thessalonians 4:3-6, the Calvinist really cannot explain how these are "warnings" at all if they're virtually inescapable even by Christians. This all but makes these "warnings" complete jokes and naturally should lead one to reject the Calvinist view in virtue of the fact Calvinism reduces to absurdity on this point. The only way to explain these texts is to recognize the mortal and venial sin distinction, which is why these texts are clearly singling out certain grave sins and not speaking of every sin being damnable. But that would require Protestants to reject Sola Fide, which isn't going to be easy for them to do.

Does the Biblical term "justify" really mean "to declare righteous" (as Protestants teach)?

This post ties into my last post discussing the Biblical teaching on "righteousness." When it comes to justification, Protestant apologists insist that the Biblical term "justify" means "to declare righteous" (in a courtroom setting). More bluntly, Protestants understand the declaration to mean something of the form of "declared by God the judge to have kept the law perfectly." But I think the Protestant argument contains some serious errors and is not built on actual Biblical evidence but rather some unbiblical and faulty assumptions. In this post, I'll show why the Protestant understanding cannot be true and thus should be abandoned.

To begin, the Greek word "justify" appears in about 36 verses in the New Testament. Of all these occurrences, the only time it is used in an explicitly forensic (legal, courtroom) context is in four verses: Mt 12:37; Rom 3:4; 8:33; 1 Cor 4:4. So how do Protestants come to the conclusion that it must mean "declare legally righteous by a judge"? Certainly not from the New Testament evidence, especially since 'forensic terms' don't really appear in places like Romans 3-4 and Galatians 2-3. Turning to the 40 verses of the Old Testament that use the term "justify," there were more occurrences in a legal context than in the New Testament, but still not enough to form any concrete conclusion: Ex 23:7; Deut 25:1; 2 Sam 15:4; 1 Kings 8:32 (same as 2 Chron 6:23); Ps 19:9; 51:4 (quoted in Rom 4:3); Ps 143:2; Prov 17:15. So for a Protestant to say that "justify," especially as Paul uses it in Romans 3-4 and Galatians 2-3, means "declared to be a perfect law keeper by a judge" is by no means an established fact at all.

How does the Bible define "righteousness"?

The Protestant view of justification largely hinges on their definition of "righteousness." In the Protestant view, to be justified one must be righteous, and to be righteous one must have kept all of God's commandments perfectly. It's akin to needing to score a 100% on the SAT, with anything less than 100% being a complete fail in God's sight. In this post I will go through the Bible and show why the term "righteousness" does not mean "perfect law keeper" or anything similar, which in turn will totally undermine the Protestant understanding of salvation and the Gospel. 

The Greek words for "righteous" ("just") and "righteousness" are used a few hundred times in the Bible, so if the Protestant thesis is true, there should be some clear evidence for it. Most of the occurrences uses the terms "righteous" and "righteousness" in passing, so not much can be gleaned from the bulk of the texts. That said, I did not find a single instance where "righteous" or "righteousness" was tied to perfectly keeping the law or commandments. This means that the Protestant definition does not come from the Bible, and rather from traditions of men. Instead, the notion of being righteous, according to Scripture, simply refers to doing good actions (e.g. Mt 6:1; Acts 10:35; Eph 6:1; 1 Th 2:10; 1 Jn 3:7,12) or having an upright quality about your character (e.g. Mt 1:19; Lk 1:6; 1 Tim 1:9; 1 Pt 3:14). Nothing is ever implied about perfect or flawless obedience. 

What does it mean to say Jesus "died for" us? - More problems with Penal Substitution

Calvinists insist that Penal Substitution is proven by the fact the Bible often says that Jesus "died for" us (e.g. 1 Cor 15:3), thinking that this means that Jesus 'took our place' in God's divine 'electric chair'. While that claim is understandable, that is not automatically what we should assume, since to do something "for" another commonly just means "on their behalf," not necessarily in their place. For example, to "pray for" your enemy (Mt 5:44) does not mean you prayed what they were supposed to pray in their place. Rather, it just means you prayed on their behalf (cf Acts 12:5). 

When I looked up the term "for" in Greek, of the 170 times it was used it most often meant something along the lines of "on behalf of," and rarely did it mean "in substitution of" another person.