saved by faith sounds better than by faith and works

what do you faith and works christians think? 

if you look at st paul in the bible he says abraham was justified by faith. st james says abraham was justified by faith and works, and added that we are not saved by faith alone. if you look at jesus, he sounds like a faith and works kinda guy. but if we are to reconcile all these tensions in the bible into a coherent whole, i think i would go with faith alone, properly understood. after all, as st paul later said, "it is by faith that we are saved, not of works, lest any man should boast". i take that, along with jesus' words that say to trust in him, and near death experiences which describe an unconditional love of God, and my own psychology that cannot see relying on myself to be saved even if its ultimately through grace and must rely completely on Jesus for salvation. 

after all, as martin luther said, we are saved by faith alone, but faith is never alone. there must be good works in a true chritian, but that doesn't mean they save you. we are rewarded by the good we do though. and even the catholic faith doesn't mandate a calculus for how much works one must have, as does not protestantism. 

how would you say the orthodox idea of theosis fits into the framework i argued above? 

saved by grace, through faith. sounds better than saved by grace, through faith and cooperation in works. i do like the catholic idea of not calling a pile of crap anything other than a pile of crap though. 

We never really had the faith versus works debate that happened in the west because we see both united in faithfulness.

How can you say you have faith if you aren't doing the works of faith? Or as Saint James the just put it, "I will shew thee my faith by my works."

We Orthodox understand the process through what we call synergism. We are saved by the divine grace of God, but we have to work with it. We have to cooperate. Faith and works is united in faithfulness, cooperation with divine grace. The work we do is purification of the heart. That is, to abide in The Truth. The True Vine.

I guess one thing all Christians must agree on is that you cannot be saved by only WORKS, right? In other words, you could match any CHristian good deed for good deed, say you're born some place in Micronesia that's never heard of Jesus, in the end you don't have the right faith, so you're punished. 

Sure, an atheist could give his life to save the world, but will burn for an eternity in hell fire for not having faith in Jesus. God works in mysterious ways.

I never get a straight answer from CHristians on that question. It's always "Well, I don't get to decide." That's not what I'm asking. And clearly the most important aspect IS faith, not works, because works alone disqualifies the worker from heaven, but faith alone at least you're eligible. It's a very strange system when you talk about how it's the standard for justice and morality in the same breath. 

Pelagianism is a heresy.

Sorry, you lost me and I would bet everyone else. 

Pelagianism is a belief in Christianity, also calledPelagian heresy, that original sin did not taint human nature and mortal will is still capable of choosing good or evil without special divine aid or assistance.

Please expand on how this is related to faith vs. faith and works and why. You and PGA should have a contest to see who could base an argument on the appeal to the most obscure authority. 

How much worse off you are without Christ.

Shouldn't be hard to connect those dots.

If works don't save you independent of the grace of God that is.

I can tell you so far, before and after, first hand experience, my life has been demonstrably better without belief in any gods. Now, can you explain what your prior inane post had to do with the topic of faith versus faith plus works? Because I bet not. 

See post #4

I saw it, it's your usual "we orthodox are so awesome" garbage without your usual ultimate taco whatever. I'm asking if you think it's just that faith is more important than works in my post. If I matched every good deed ever done by any Christian, that I'd go to hell because god didn't leave any evidence convincing me he existed, but I did good without the promise of any reward at all. 

Considering that most everything could be construed as evidence, another question for you to ask is, what relationship do I have with God?

No relationship. What I'm asking is why is the faith part more important than the works part? It clearly IS, and is accepted as such, because I've yet to meet a Christian who says being a Christian is immaterial to getting into heaven, but I know there exists a segment that says WORKS are immaterial. Notice the topic isn't "FAITH VS FAITH+WORKS VS WORKS." The last one isn't an option. You're dodging the question. I'll make it explicit:

If someone with no faith matches a heaven-bound Christian good work for good work, but goes to his grave not believing in anything to do with Jesus or any other spiritual stuff that might be CONSTRUED as Jesus ("Oh, that buddhist was fine, he just thought Jesus was Buddha, so he's in!" is a Rod Spode argument), does he according to Christian doctrine burn in hell, get into heaven, or go to a 'third place'?

As I explained in the post I referred you to, there never was a faith vs works debate in Orthodoxy because to us they are united in faithfulness.

They don't exist independently of eachother.

Works can't save you, faith should produce works. If you are not in the book of the saved you go to hell. If you are not in the book of works you don't get into Heaven. 

OK what relationship do you have with god?

What did god say in the GoE?