Jesus does teach it and no, it does not square with saved by faith alone because that isn't what saved people prior to the risen Christ giving the gospel of Grace to the Apostle Paul.
Jesus and the twelve and their converts (e.g. Luke, James, Jude, etc) taught a gospel that required faith mixed with obedience to the law. Paul taught a gospel that required belief only. They are NOT the same.
Sin harms those around us and it harms ourselves and it offends God. It is the opposite of love. And its a very big deal. People will go to Hell as a result of sins committed by believers! How many millions reject Christ because of the false doctrine taught by Augustine alone?!
The Kingdom gospel had two operating motives. God implored people to love Him and to love their neighbor because in so doing they would obey the whole law. This is the love motive. However, the threat of being cut off was present if disobedience persisted a so there was certainly an element of fear of wrath.
In the Grace gospel, "Faith works by love." That's Paul's teaching about avoidance of sin in a single sentence. Love is acting in another's best interest and what Paul's gospel does is to remove the fear motive leaving only the love motive.
This is backward. If there is even a hint of law in the non-Pauline books of the New Testament then those books do not "cohere with Paul" for want of a better phrase.
You can mix grace into a covenant of law and it remains a covenant of law. It does not work the other way because the law is the knowledge of good and evil; it is the result of the fall and concerns the flesh. A point that Paul goes to great lengths to make.
Galatians 3:1 O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? 2 This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? 3 Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?
It permits the plain reading of any scripture you care to point out on this topic and others related to it.
It isn't merely "apparent". It requires theological interpretation to explain the incoherence away from within any and every other theological paradigm.
The plausibility is not merely "initial". If the desire is to find a systematic theology that permits the plain reading of scripture, it is the most plausible of all theological systems that I have yet to be exposed to and, more than that, the only arguments that undermine it's plausibility hinge on a desire to preserve pet doctrines, like the idea the Mary remained a virgin or that God is utterly immutable or that God exists outside of time. In short, it is extra-biblical theological contructs and the desire to preserve a belief in them that gives any motivation to anyone to question its plausibility.
This is a stunning admission for practically anyone to make, much less a Catholic. I'd suspect that there are Catholics who would be appalled at your willingness to concede even this much. That's likely because they sort of intuitively understand that you've set yourself a bar here that Catholic dogma cannot clear. Indeed, it is my conviction that no other system can clear that bar but Catholicism hasn't a prayer of clearing it by any rational means whatsoever.
This is true of any doctrinal system. There is no such thing as contradictory truths. Any "defeater" (not a real word) that stands against any system would defeat that system, by definition.
This is certainly a false premise, as established above.
The modifier "any hint" is where the lie is put to this standard because who gets to define what qualifies as "any hint".
No, the "defeater" would be if you could establish that the non-Pauline books of the New Testament affirmatively and definitively teach that we are saved by faith alone, which they very obviously do not.
Again, false premise. Grace can and was and will be again added to a covenant of law. Indeed, it must be!
2 Timothy 2:15 Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
That would be a "defeater" of this "initial plausibility" by your own standard and mine!
Matthew 5:17 “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. 18 For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. 19 Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.
Oops! Another "defeater" that meets your own standard!
Well, it isn't a defeater just because you want it to be. You've set the bar so unreasonably low that practically any passage you pulled out of the bible at random would do the trick.
Repeat yourself much? Sheesh!
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