Good works can indeed lead to salvation (perhaps)

As I understand it, Protestantism's sola fide view holds that salvation cannot gained by doing good deeds ("works"), but only through faith in Jesus Christ, arrived at by the grace of God.

In the sola fide view, in fact, one's good deeds seem pretty much irrelevant to salvation, except as a happy accident of faith: Those who (by grace) truly have faith in Jesus will show it by their deeds.

This seems like an incomplete explanation, though.  I would imagine that over time:

• even if we don't have faith, the feedback we get from doing "good" deeds can lead to a change in our perception, even to the change of mind and heart the Greeks called metanoia, commonly translated as "repentance";
• such a change in perception can lead to an increased sense of trust that things are improving and, over the long term, will continue to do so;
• this increased trust can lead to more good deeds;
• "grace" may well have something to do with one or more of the above.

This surely falls in the category of "naive conjecture" (to use the Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne's phrase). But it does seem consistent with what we see in everyday life.

Comments

Salvation has nothing to do with good deeds. But you *should* do good deeds, or you would be a hypocrite.