“What God’s Word really means when it says that man is justified and saved by faith alone is nothing else than this: Man is not saved by his own acts, but solely by the doing and dying of his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of the whole world. Over against this teaching modern theologians assert that in the salvation of man two kinds of activity must be noted: in the first place, there is something that God must do. His part is the most difficult, for He must accomplish the task of redeeming men. But in the second place something is required that man must do. For it will not do to admit persons to heaven, after they have been redeemed, without further parley (talk). Man must do something really great – he has to believe. This teaching overthrows the Gospel completely.” – C.F.W. Walther
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Wait a sec… So, according to C.F.W. Walther, I can be redeemed even if I don’t believe?
(…I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life…)
No. Walther is saying that belief is not a work of our own that leads or contributes to our salvation. In other words, belief is the byproduct of faith, which is a gift from God. It’s not something we can do on our own. Consider John 1:12-13 — “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” Notice that belief is not born from human decision, we are born again by God’s will alone, not our own. Belief is certainly required, we must have faith in Christ in order to be saved. But Walther’s point is that the Gospel gives the very thing it demands: saving faith. If I contribute to justification, then it is not the Gospel that I believe. The Law says, this is required, but gives us no means to fulfill it with. The Gospel says, this is required, and I freely give it to you. John Bunyan in the Pilgrim’s Progress:
“‘Run, John, run’ the Law demands, but gives us neither feet nor hands. Far better news the Gospel brings, that bids us fly and gives us wings.
The emphasis in Walther’s statement is placed on Christ’s work versus man’s work in salvation. Walther writes, “Man must do something really great – he has to believe. This teaching overthrows the Gospel completely.” What he means is that if we emphasize our work as being important in the process, we overthrow the Gospel. The Gospel is entirely focused upon Christ and His atoning work on our behalf at the cross, not on what we do. In the same way we don’t congratulate a baby for being born, we applaud the mother who gave birth, and appreciate the new child. So also in our spiritual rebirth, we don’t focus on our believing as an act of our own, we thank God for saving us and creating living faith in our stone cold, dead hearts.
It gets a little semantic, I know. The important part is the emphasis, not so much the terminology. Walther is talking about what most people mean when they say “I have to believe in order to be saved.” They think of this as their own contribution, rather than realizing that faith in and of itself is a gift from God (even if you don’t agree with my views on justification, both Arminians and Calvinists would acknowledge this).
Arminians caveat justification with a weak view of original sin and the concept of “prevenient grace,” belief that God has enabled us to accept Him by means of common grace. Calvinists eliminate free will entirely by declaring that our eternal destiny is already predestined, whether heaven or hell. I agree with Luther’s position which is, for the most part, halfway between these – although it is admittedly paradoxical and irrational. It seems to be the most biblical.
See my post on the paradox of salvation for some more on this: http://prayeramedic.com/2009/09/revisiting-the-paradox-of-salvation-part-1/
Ok… I hear the point you are making, but when I read the above quote in it’s entirety, I don’t hear Walther saying, “Be careful of how much emphasis you put on your own belief, lest you fall into the trap of thinking you have something to boast about…”, but instead, it essentially comes across as saying, “to even mention that we have any personal involvement in our own belief is to preach a false gospel…”
You seem to share a similar perspective when you say, ” They (most people) think of this as their own contribution, rather than realizing that faith in and of itself is a gift from God”…
But for myself, I don’t find myself falling into those semantic worm-holes when I read the things Jesus says in the gospels. When I read something like “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son, or “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him”, I do not know how to read those kinds of statements without there being some kind of involvement on the person being called to “believe”. It’s like being forced to emply that word as something other than a verb, which would seem to make all those verses utterly nonsensical…
To me, the position Walther is making seems to stem from an assumption. The assumption of “anyone who thinks they have any personal involvement in their belief in Christ is trying to add to the atoning work of Christ…” But I simply don’t fit into that kind of equation, and neither do I feel paradoxical or irrational about it. To me, it’s really very rational, because I experience the raw reality of it all the time, even in the every-day things…
Whenever I come to a place of having to admit that I have wronged someone else, like my wife or my kids, those are essentially moments of repentance, where I have to come clean, and admit the truth. I have to “believe the truth” about what I’ve done. But then right after I confess my sin, I don’t spin around and pat myself on the back saying, “I was a jerk, yeah, but I admitted it afterward, so overall I’m pretty awesome!” My family probably wouldn’t accept that kind of “repentace” as genuine, and rightly so. A true act of repentance is nothing more recognizing that you have done damage to a relationship, and wanting that relationship back! Of course, the Holy Spirit is there throughout the whole thing, nudging you, convicting you, but it’s not like being “possessed” by the Holy Spirit or something, where He just dives in and flips the “repentance switch”! Both personalities are at work there, where His perfect person is busily engaging my own. In the end, He gets all the credit. But if choose to ignore Him, then I am only robbing myself of His grace. Is it really all that different when it comes to our first encounter to Him?
The verse where the guy says, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” seems to really reflect the totality of the whole deal. It’s like that one line simultaneously underlines both the man’s own desire to believe, and the Spirit’s role of empowering him to do it!
Yes, faith in God is itself a gift, but isn’t it a gift only because the purpose of the gift is a real, interactive relationship with God in the end? It just seems like the only reason the whole thing would have to seem “paradoxical”, is if we are unable to conceive of human initiative ever being outside of the realm of “works”. But for me, I have no problem saying “You have to believe”, because to me that has nothing to do with “trying to be good enough”, or “contributing to one’s own Salvation”, or relying on “works”. (After all, to truly believe in the Gospel means believing that we can’t be good enough!)
Am I making any sense at all? I’m not even sure, this comment turned out to be WAY too long. Sorry about that…
As regards Walther, I should’ve probably quoted more of him or nothing at all. I am reading his entire book and his position is very clear in context, although it is a complicated argument (20+ theses that he relays via several lectures). Sorry about that, after re-reading the quote I can totally see your point.
In regards to your view on justification, I think we’ve agreed to disagree on this before, but I don’t think your view is heretical by any means. So long as you acknowledge that Christ saves us and that we do not contribute to our salvation with works of our own, we’re fine. The semantic jungle after that is important, but it’s not as important as your heart: you must know in your heart you are trusting in what Christ did for you on the cross for salvation, not a decision you made. It seems you are OK in that department, so I’m not worried.
It all comes back to original sin. The question becomes, “The Bible says we are dead in our sins, but how dead are we?” I would argue we are completely dead. Your argument would be that we have a spark of divine grace from God that enables us to turn towards God (Arminians call this common or “prevenient” grace). To put this visually, your view of justification is that we are drowning and God throws us a life raft. We simply must grab on, but He pulls us in and saves us. The emphasis is still on God’s work, because without the offer of the raft we would drown, and without Him pulling us in we would still drown.
While the premise of justification in that illustration is mostly OK, the view of original sin is too weak. I believe scripture teaches that we are lifeless corpses in the bottom of the ocean. God must dive in, rescue us, carry us to shore and breathe life into us. We are unable to contribute anything to the process. Our free will concerning our eternity is only restored after we have been justified, and even then we are only free to reject it. Our initial belief comes from God, but it is we who do the believing as we live out our sanctification, cooperating with the Holy Spirit in becoming more like Jesus. Ephesians 1:4-6 says, “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.” He predestines us to salvation, we do not have the ability to accept it. However, 2 Peter 3:9 teaches, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” Because of this and many other verses (such as John 3:16), I don’t believe that God predestines anyone to hell. This is the unique position held by Martin Luther known as single predestination, and it makes no logical sense – yet seems to be the most scriptural conclusion.
Arminians wiggle out of predestination by confusing it with foreknowledge, and Calvinists take it to the extreme with double predestination – some are predestined to heaven and some to hell. Luther taught that we have free will to reject Christ, but no ability to accept Him, for “the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God” (Romans 8:7-8), and “no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3).
So is this all a “semantic worm-hole?” Yes and no. It really shows two very different views on original sin, which affects how we apply the doctrine of justification.
Also reference my past post on being “morally stillborn”, we had a similar discussion there you may wish to reference: http://prayeramedic.com/2009/02/morally-stillborn/
“We are unable to contribute anything to the process. Our free will concerning our eternity is only restored after we have been justified, and even then we are only free to reject it…”
So can you explain to me the difference between someone saying, “I am choosing to follow Christ”, and someone saying, “I have not chosen to reject Christ”? (seems like two sides of the same coin to me…) You can’t accurately call something a “choice” if there is only one possible option. How can we have the ability to “choose” to reject something, without also having the ability to choose not to reject something? And how would we then describe such a “non-choice”, if we can’t call it “acceptance”?
And where does this idea come from that believing (i.e. trusting) in Jesus is itself a moral work? Yes, we are born dead in our sins. I do not believe there is even a “spark” of goodness that we are born with. I don’t believe in “preveniant grace”. This is why we have absolutely no chance whatsoever at keeping the Law. We can’t do it. But for someone to say, “It is impossible for fallen human beings to repent, and put faith in Christ”, is to essentially equate faith in Christ with trying to follow the Law! That’s like saying that the New Covenant is really just a repackaged version of the Old Covenant!
It’s like saying that the “righteousness that is by the Law” and the “righteousness that is by Faith” are really interchangeable… Throughout the New Testament, faith and works are constantly being held up as two very distinct ways that one might try and reconnect with God. The bible always shows us the futility of works, in total contrast to being saved by grace through faith. And yet to me, it sounds like the perspective held by someone like Walther essentially eliminates that distinction altogether…
So what I’m wondering about at this stage is this; What exactly is Walther envisioning when he describes these “modern theologians” who maintain that man “must do something really great – he has to believe”…? How does this actually break down, in everyday terms? What does he mean by “further parley”? What exactly does he see these “false teachers” doing that is adding to the work of Christ on the cross? If he believes that saving faith automatically accompanies a divine rebirth, then why is there this rebuttal against teachers who would say that the redeemed must also believe!? Isn’t belief what would set someone apart as one of the “redeemed” in the first place? Could we ever call someone “redeemed” who didn’t already believe…?
As for the whole “single predestination” thing, yeah, that sounds downright illogical, and self-contradictory… That would not be reflective of a truly loving God, even if we try and fanagle some way to avoid saying “God doesn’t predestine some people to hell”… But I really don’t think this is one of those things where we can just throw up our hands in the air and say, “hey, it’s just a paradox, and we’ll never understand it…” Even if we only look at it on the side of the “Saved”, to say that God randomly selected us to be in His Kingdom, completely apart from anything we think, desire, etc., would not be a description of a “loving” God. It takes everything the Bible says about the absolute, unchanging nature of God (who desires that none should perish), and exchanges it for a God who is arbitrary and paranoid about his children taking too much credit for themselves…
Throughout the Gospels, we see Jesus confronting people with this basic message; “You cannot keep the Law, but you can follow ME!
Why would Jesus say things like, “Put your trust in the light while you have it, so that you may become sons of light,” if really Jesus didn’t believe it was possible?
Nowhere do I see Jesus rebuking someone for believing, and then crediting themself for their own Salvation… But we see lots of rebukes towards those who thought they were perfectly fine apart from Christ (i.e. the Pharisees) In fact, we even see Jesus actually commending people for their faith, which would be really confusing, if Jesus was really super concerned about attributing any personal involvement to Faith in Him!
If any response on our part to Jesus’ words is tantamount to trying to “save ourselves”, then Jesus would’ve been saying all those things, knowing full well that nobody could do anything anyway. All that really counted was what the Holy Spirit would do later, as He went around picking some, and “not-picking” (we won’t say rejecting…) the rest… In such a scenario, every word Jesus says in the gospels really becomes nothing more than a conversation that God is having with Himself. Every time that Jesus gets frustrated by people’s refusal to believe, He is really just pretending for the sake of the “show”… When Jesus said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing“, what He really must have meant was “I was not willing…”
But God doesn’t say, “Choose to love me because you have some tiny spark of goodness in you which enables you to make a good choice…”, but instead He is saying, “Love me, because I loved you first, choose me, because I chose you first…”
See the difference?
The problem with talking about your faith is that you’re not talking about Christ.
Faith doesn’t save. Christ saves. That’s Walther’s point, and it is the teaching of Scripture. I’ll write more later, since I’m sure what I’ve written will be misunderstood. But we don’t have faith in faith. And that’s often where talking about our faith ends up going, and that’s what Walther’s warning against.
Like I said, I think we have differing definitions of original sin (how dead is dead?) and how that affects free will. We also don’t agree on what defines a work, in my mind making a decision is a work of my own. I don’t believe we have the ability to make a decision to accept Christ because of our fallen nature. Single predestination doesn’t negate free will, double predestination does (Calvinism). I think any more explanation will be fruitless, we’ve discussed a lot here, plus my post on American Jesus (http://prayeramedic.com/2008/12/american-jesus-a-manifesto) and on being morally stillborn (and our subsequent conversation, http://prayeramedic.com/2009/02/morally-stillborn) have established that point. We simply won’t agree. You hold the Arminian position, which is one of the most popular evangelical positions, and it is not a damning doctrine so long as it does not stray into Pelagianism. I am in between Arminianism and Calvinism. And that’s ok – we’ll have to agree to disagree
We both affirm that Christ alone saves us, not any work of our own (despite our differing definitions of “work”). We both affirm the content of the Apostle’s creed (whether or not you are creedal), which has long been the standard creed of the Christian Church:
I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
the Maker of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:
Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead, and buried;
He descended into hell. The third day He arose again from the dead;
He ascended into heaven,
and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit;
the holy catholic (universal) church;
the communion of saints;
the forgiveness of sins;
the resurrection of the body;
and the life everlasting.
Okay…. Now I must confess I am really confused…
I am confused because on the one hand, you are able to say to me, “Don’t sweat it, we can agree to disagree, this is a ‘non-essential’, let’s move on…”, but yet at the same time, the point of the original quote seems to be just the opposite, more or less saying that to miss the boat on this one is to “overthrow the gospel completely”…
And that was basically my whole reason for diving into this in the first place, because as I read that quote, my initial reaction was, “Um… under such a description, then I guess I would have to be guilty of overthrowing the gospel too…”
So how is it then, that someone like me could see “belief” as something that must involve the individual who believes (even though belief/faith is itself a gift from God, and therefore is not something we can take any pride in…) and yet avoid being condemned by the perspective which states that any such talk is tantamount to preaching a different gospel? Why would be given a pass (so long as I don’t stray in Pelagianism) while at the same time I keep reading statements (in this thread and in the other posts you’ve refered back to) which essentially equate any mention of personal involvement on the part of the believer with Pelagianism? If you are able to look at my own case, and recognize that it hasn’t forced me to drink the kool-Aid of a works-based gospel, then why aren’t others given the same kind of leeway?
In other words, if someone like me, can (in your judgement) not be apostate, (even while I claim to believe in the personal involvement of the believer), then wouldn’t that apply to many others out there too? And if so, then where exactly is the line that seperates those who “overthrow the gospel”, and those who don’t?
For me, part of my whole frustration here is that we seem to be ignoring the reality that if we had five people who declared “I have chosen to follow Christ”, we could sit down and talk more with them, and it’s possible that they could each mean five very different things by that one statement. And I guess that’s the difficulty I’ve sort of had with this from the beginning, that it’s somewhat unwise to paint other people with such broad strokes, effectively cramming masses of very diverse people into our own set of narrowly-defined theological camps…
Maybe we could talk about this on the phone sometime, as at this point I really do not understand how this whole dichotomy could work, and my fingers are getting tired…
Hey Daniel, yeah let’s discuss it on the phone sometime. My fingers grow weary as well. I don’t believe humans can make any effort towards salvation. I believe that salvation was made possible 100% by the work of Jesus Christ (Christ alone). I also believe that we are saved by God’s mercy and forgiveness and not by works of righteousness to atone for our past or even by a personal action of deciding to follow Jesus. Rather, the work is entirely God’s (grace alone). Finally, I believe that trust in Jesus is necessary for salvation. However, I understand that such trust is the work of God the Holy Spirit working through the Scriptures and the Sacraments/grace-gifts to create such faith. I do understand that simple trust in the promises of God in Jesus Christ are sufficient to secure an individual’s salvation, but this simple trust is merely an outflow of saving faith, which is created by the Holy Spirit (faith alone).
I am also confused, because now I’m not sure we’re on the same page. I thought it was a mere semantic quibble, perhaps we do believe very different things.