wholes in Christian thought

My increasing belief is that the best intellectual approach for Christianity is a collection of wholes. Controversy and infighting partially result from a failure to appreciate these wholes. To elaborate:

• Faith. Wherever people profess beliefs, other people who think similarly but differently might choose to respond indirectly (i.e. creatively/laterally) with the "pragmatic parry". The pragmatic parry consists of refusing to raise or attack a point of contention, and instead insisting that endless debate over ideas and "semantics" is pointless on principle because actions and attitudes are what affect reality (it's possible to view the history of philosophy as a series of cycles of returning its subject matter to relevance). Among Christians, the pragmatic parry expresses a reaction to established theology, especially the excessively academic kind that seems to spin round and round on conceptual definitions and ignores issues in the surrounding society. The Christian's pragmatic parry to all doctrines is "Faith is what you do and are; the Pharisees of the Gospels were laser-focused on mapping out the parameters of the Law and its various prohibitions but our Lord's focus was on the inner condition of hearts, exemplified by overflowing love to all people". And this assertion is clearly biblical! The danger is treating this as a justification for overlooking the whole of faith. For faith is right belief translated into right actions. Consider the epistle of James, and the Lord's teaching that a man's actions (and speech) flow out of his heart - in modern language, follow the evidence. Only right belief will consistently produce right actions, and of course right actions are fruitless if we haven't been born again as new creations who are sons of God, known personally by Him. Whole Christian faith assumes a whole "model" of human actions: people ascertain or know what reality is, then they respond to this understanding. This is neither "do whatever you want if your spirit is pure" nor "results are infinitely more valuable than intentions". As others have said, since human relationships experience love as both affection/intimacy and generous gestures, to understand saving faith as a relationship is to also require both.
  
• Interpretation. It's hard to overstate the importance of sacred texts such as the Bible. Thus, the questions that naturally arise from reading it are also of great importance. How trustworthy is it, and in what sense is it of divine authorship? What is the intent and style of the human writers? What is it communicating, and where can this content be reapplied to contemporary concerns? Moreover, who answers these interpretative questions and on what (whose) authority? Christian history bursts (not always proudly) with distinct answers to the aforementioned questions. Aside from the well-known guideline of interpreting the Bible as a contextual whole rather than ripping out isolated verses, viewing interpretation as a whole involves the now-somewhat-trite observation that any occurrence of Bible reading or study, like all communication, involves multiple "participants" such as the writer, the writer's (historical, social) context, the actual text, the translator, the reader, the reader's context, past interpretations and commentaries, numerous biases, etc., etc. It's far, far overreaching to claim that each occurrence of Bible reading "creates" a new Bible, yet it's also plainly ridiculous to claim that the writers of a centuries-old text aren't separated from the present readers of the text by gaps in thought. For one thing, language itself is continually changing - this fact doesn't at all invalidate Bible translations but it does warn Christians of the need to bridge that gap through good (intense) scholarship. A whole view of interpretation negates the false dilemma that either the writer or text is all-powerful - "the Bible speaks for itself for God did not stutter" - or the reader is all-powerful - "the Bible contains nothing more than what the reader or Spirit-mediated revelation brings to it". Communication is admittedly imperfect but it still works well enough. The Lord commented that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Can't the Church comprehend and communicate the meaning of this sentence to an audience that doesn't know about camels or needles?
  
• Grace. Unbalanced notions about grace in Christianity bedevil too many, and judging by the letters in the Bible this temptation has been present since early on ("Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?" wrote Paul to Rome). Just as faith is more than right personal beliefs/doctrines, grace is more than the assurance that sins don't and won't separate the devoted from God. Grace is freely offered, but Christians exhibit coarse misunderstanding when they take this to mean that it's free. Perhaps it's more accurate to state that grace doesn't cost anything "up-front". As anyone will repeat, nobody earns grace, by first definitions. However, grace is applied through faith, the whole faith previously explained. The Lord never promised that grace alone would save everyone (look up the metaphor of the wide and narrow gates and compare the quantity of people for each). He forgave sins everywhere He went, but in addition He instructed the forgiven to stop sinning and in His discourses He set up changed-heart rules stricter than the Law! The whole perspective on grace is not merely "God excuses every sin" and not merely "Christians must never sin again after conversion, once they know better". The deeper someone's awareness of sin, the clearer someone's perception of grace, which is God's merciful response. Such a person will find it almost literally unthinkable to repeat a confessed and forgiven sin (although he or she may in fact stumble later due to not dwelling and relying fully enough on God). After being reminded that sin is reprehensible yet rooted deep within, the very preciousness of grace will deter the sinner from treating it cheaply. People cannot presume that they in their sin can please God apart from His loving grace; why would they presume to "stretch" this grace any further and thereby displease their merciful savior?