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Faith Our working theme of Romans: “The righteousness of God” CHARTING THE COURSE FOR THIS STUDY: Ø Justification: faith + works OR faith alone Ø Faith JUSTIFICATION: FAITH + WORKS OR
FAITH ALONE “While Rome maintains that the instrumental cause of justification is baptism, the Reformers insisted the instrumental cause is faith. An instrumental cause is the “means by which” something takes place. For example, when a sculptor creates a statue, the instrumental cause of the sculpture is the sculptor’s chisel. The chisel is the means by which the sculptor fashions his art out of the stone... Justification by faith alone” is merely shorthand for “justification by the righteousness of Christ alone.”” (R.C. Sproul, Grace Unknown: The Heart of Reformed Theology, 66f.). Question: What is the Protestant view of faith and works? Answer: Reformed Protestantism believes a person is justified by faith apart from their personal works. “For the quarrel between Rome and the Reformation did not have to do with whether we are justified by an active or inactive faith, or by a living or a dead faith. But the question was, just as it was for Paul, whether faith with its works, or whether faith apart from its works, justifies us before God and in our consciences” (Herman Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, Vol. IV [4th ed.; Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1930], pp. 182-186, 198-207). Question: What are some of the works Rome requires for justification? Answer: The sacraments of baptism and penance. “Though it is never denied, the central and indispensable role of the Roman Church and its sacraments -- particularly the sacraments of baptism and penance -- is not explained forthrightly in connection with the discussions of justification. It is easy enough to see why Catholic apologists address such issues in discussions designed to appeal to Protestants…Defenders of Rome are somewhat coy about acknowledging the fact (in their discussions of justification) that without auricular confession and the reception of priestly absolution in connection with acts of satisfaction (vital elements of the Roman "sacrament" of penance or reconciliation), one cannot participate in the grace of justification.” (Roger Wagner, New Confusions for Old: Rome and Justification) Question: Where does Roman Catholicism officially teach this? Answer: The Council of Trent: Ø “All true justice starts, and if it has started, is augmented, and if it has been lost, is restituted, by the sacraments.” Ø “Those who through sin have forfeited the received grace of justification, can again be justified when, moved by God, they exert themselves to obtain through the sacrament of penance the recovery, by the merits of Christ, of the grace lost…” (Trent, Session 6, “Decree on Justification,” chapter 14.) Question: In the Roman Catholic system, is it possible to have faith but not justification? Answer: Yes. If a person commits a mortal sin it is possible for them to have faith and to be outside a state of grace (such a person must participate in the sacrament of penance). “Trent indicates that the grace of justification can be lost in two ways. The first is by infidelity, in which case faith is lost and justification with it. The second and more significant way is by mortal sin, in which case one may have faith but lose justification. If it is possible to have true faith but not have justification, then it is clear, by resistless logic, that justification is not by faith alone. Again it is arguable whether such faith would be considered true faith by the Reformers. Yet it is considered true faith by Rome, and this faith does not include justification” (R.C. Sproul, Faith alone: The Evangelical Doctrine of Justification, p.123). Question: In Reformed Protestantism, is it possible to have faith but not justification? Answer: No, but Reformed Protestants are careful to distinguish between saving faith and the hypocrite who has an empty faith. Faith: God’s gift and supernatural empowerment to embrace Jesus Christ (cf. Eph.2:8-10). God is the source of faith and not man. God’s grace is the basis of faith and not anything God foresees in man. Reformed Protestants speak of three aspects of saving faith: knowledge (notitia), ascent (assensus) and trust (fiducia). knowledge (notitia) (cf. Rom.10:17)— “Noticia [sic.] refers to the content of saving faith. Faith has an object. It is not empty or a faith in nothing. Christianity rejects the maxim, “It doesn’t matter what you believe if only you are sincere.” Though sincerity is a virtue, it is possible to be sincerely wrong and to put your faith in something or someone that cannot save. People can sincerely worship or have faith in idols. Such faith is repugnant to God and cannot save. Certain information must be known, understood, and believed in order to have saving faith. For example, we must believe in God and in the person and work of Jesus to be saved. This is the data (notae) of faith. Without belief in the essentials of Christianity, saving faith is absent” (R.C. Sproul, Grace Unknown: The Heart of Reformed Theology, 71). One important element missing from the above Sproul quote is that the knowledge of saving faith is of the Holy Spirit (i.e. Spiritual) (1 Corinthians 2:4-16). Seeing that knowledge is an
element of faith, why don’t Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons have faith? Can there be saving faith
without knowledge? (i.e. is it “blind leap”) Is it a complement when someone says, “I wish I had your faith”? assent (assensus) (cf. 1 Cor.2:12-16) – “The conviction which enters into faith is not only an assent to the truth respecting Christ but also a recognition of the exact correspondence that there is between the truth of Christ and our deeds as lost sinners…Christ is exactly suited to all that I am in my sin and misery and to all that I should aspire to be by God’s grace. Christ fits in perfectly to the totality of our situation in its sin, guilt, misery, and ill-desert” (John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, 111). What kind of “faith” does James condemn? (cf. James 2:19) trust (fiducia) (cf. Romans 12:1-2) — This is an act and submission of the will. It is a trust/surrender/self-commitment to Jesus Christ alone for salvation. “It is here that the most characteristic act of faith appears; it is engagement of person to person, the engagement of the sinner as lost to the person of the Saviour able and willing to save” (John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, 111). “The Reformers laid special emphasis upon this element of faith. They were opposing the Romish view that faith is assent. It is quite consistent with Romish religion to say that faith is assent. It is the genius of the Romish conception of salvation to intrude mediators between the soul and the Saviour – the Church, the virgin, the sacraments. One the contrary, it is the glory of the gospel of God’s grace that there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. And it was the glory of our Protestant Reformation to discover again the purity of the evangel. The Reformers recognized that the essence of saving faith is to bring the sinner lost and dead in trespasses and sins into direct personal contact with the Saviour himself, contact which is nothing less than that of self-commitment to him in all the glory of his person and perfection of his work as he is freely and fully offered in the gospel” (John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, 112). Based upon the Reformed
Protestant definition of faith, why don’t we believe in superstition or lucky
charms? “Warfield says, “The Saving Power of Faith resides not in itself, but on the Almighty Saviour. It is not faith that saves, but faith in Jesus Christ. It is not strictly speaking even faith in Christ that saves, but Christ that saves through faith.” Faith, then, as trust in Christ means that we look away from self, and find our whole interest in the object, namely, Christ and his saving work in our behalf” (quoted in Morton Smith, Systematic Theology, Volume One: Prolegomena, Theology, Anthropology, Christology, 452). NOTE: Our emotions/feelings are an act of our will and arise from our intellect, “Man is an intellectual-volitional being. He has a mind and a will. And from the interaction of these two arise the emotions. But although we may distinguish in the soul of man the faculty of intellect and the faculty of will, these two do not exist or ever act apart from each other” (Herman Hoeksema, Reformed Dogmatics, 489). Does saving faith lead to a
love for doctrine or a despising of doctrine? Can a person claim to love
God and not love His commands? Faith is a conscious acknowledgment of our own unrighteousness and ungodliness and on that basis a looking to Christ as our righteousness, a clasping of him as the ring clasps the jewel (so Luther), a receiving of him as an empty vessel receives treasure (so Calvin), and a reverent, resolute reliance on the biblical promise of life through him for all who believe. Faith is our act, but not our work; it is an instrument of reception without being a means of merit; it is the work in us of the Holy Spirit, who both evokes it and through it ingrafts us into Christ in such a sense that we know at once the personal relationship of sinner to Saviour and disciple to Master and with that the dynamic relationship of resurrection life, communicated through the Spirit's indwelling. So faith takes, and rejoices, and hopes, and loves, and triumphs (quoted by J.I. Packer, “Sola Fide: The Reformed Doctrine of Justification”). How do
we increase faith and strengthen it? |
