Rather than your excerpt not "boding well" for citing ancient church fathers - and ALL Christians can claim their legacy - in their teaching of faith alone and the sufficiency of God's sacred word, it only deepens the proof that these first Christians had the gospel right from the start. The statement from Clement regarding God's justification by faith apart from our works - which is totally Biblical - doesn't contradict his additional ones regarding the place of works in a believer's life. Nothing the Reformers taught nullifies the very real place of works in a believer's life. What IS the truth from Scripture is that works demonstrate a genuine saving faith and SHOULD BE evident if one claims to be a Christian, but NO works we do can ever merit our salvation nor enable us to keep it, either.
I don't think you do yourselves any service by implying these men were in the habit of saying one thing and then saying something else that canceled out what they previously stated. Isn't it obvious they were talking about two different things? It is to me. Context is key as is laying aside preconceived biases.
What you are doing is the same thing Roman Catholics have been doing ever since the Reformation - trying to claim "unanimous consent of the fathers" while at the same time relying upon the concept of doctrinal development to rationalize why they teach dogmas unheard of by these same early church fathers. So, in reality, it is RCs who have to decide which choice they will make:
1) Claim the early church fathers as support for the RC position of faith AND works for salvation.
2) Disavow the early church fathers' teachings on salvation by faith apart from works.
Sorry for the delay; busy weekend...
Well... don’t you see that your own point cuts both ways? If you claim that (for example) the claims of Pope St. Clement which declare salvation by faith (which is absolutely true) don’t contradict his statements that salvation is not earned by works (which is also absolutely true), then isn’t it also just as possible that the Council of Trent (which condemned Luther’s proposition that one can be saved by faith “alone”, completely apart from all good works whatsoever) is in harmony with the Sacred Scriptures, with the rest of Church teaching (which condemns the idea of “earning salvation” unequivocally—look up “Pelagianism”, as I mentioned earlier), and with all right teaching of the rest of the Church Fathers?
You claim (and rightly so) that no works, in and of themselves, can possibly earn our salvation. Good enough, so far. But I’m still puzzled as to what your “beef” is with Catholic teaching; don’t you realize that the Church teaches the very same thing? No faithful and well-informed Catholic is under the mistaken impression that he/she can “earn” justification or sanctification or salvation by “works” in and of themselves; the idea is not only heretical (cf. Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism), but it’s just silly... since every last scrap of our ability to DO good works (e.g. our strength, our bodies, our life, our good will to choose good works, and even our very existence) is completely dependent on free gifts from God.
Again: if you say that works are needed in order to demonstrate a “saving faith” (i.e. if no good works are done, then the person will not be saved, since you’d regard their faith as false), then how is that different from Catholic teaching, which says that faith and works must be found together in the soul that is to be justified? Logically, if faith and works both need to be present for justification to be true (as is plainly the teaching of St. James, Pope St. Clement, and all of Christendom since the beginning), then any supposed distinction from Catholic teaching becomes a distinction without a difference, yes?