Titus 3:5

from comment 147 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/12/rome-geneva-and-the-incarnations-native-soil/

If Abram left Ur “by faith,” and faith is sufficient for justification, and justification is only a once-in-a-lifetime event, then he could not be justified again in Gen 15:6. But he was justified in the act of faith described in Gen 15:6. So there’s a problem in your theology.

The Judaizers believed grace was necessary in Galations. But Paul said if they add one merit or work to faith they fall from grace and are severed from Christ. Paul says ” to the one who does not work God justifies the ungodly. The adding in of the necessity of doing sacraments, cooperation, one’s own grace enabled works isn’t going to go well. Titus 3:5 says not even Holy deeds can be a part of our being justified before God.

You are presupposing here an unqualified conception of ‘work.’ And that presupposition is doing all the underlying work in your argument. But as St. Augustine explains (see “St. Augustine on Law and Grace“), the work in view is work done on our own, by our own natural power, and not done by the grace that comes to us from and through Christ. If you don’t recognize the distinction between natural righteousness, and supernatural righteousness, then you won’t recognize that St. Paul is speaking of natural righteousness in Titus 3:5. Of course we are not brought to a state of grace by works of supernatural righteousness either, because that would be a contradiction; a person not in a state of grace cannot do works of supernatural righteousness. But the point in Titus 3:5 is that we are brought to a state of grace not by works, but by baptism. (For evidence that the laver of regeneration is understood by all the Fathers to be baptism, see here.) If your response is that all the Church Fathers are wrong, and you are right, then I would note that such a reply presupposes ecclesial deism (and all its consequences), and then hold up the alternative paradigm in “The Tradition and the Lexicon” post.