Church history is not infallible but it is often a helpful safe guard. The better we understand church history the more protected we are against new heresies. After all there is nothing new under the sun right? Most of the modern day cults are simply old heresies redressed in more modernized clothing. One could look at many examples today to further strengthen this point but for time sake we must press on.
We need to focus our attention now on our second major category? (#2) Let’s examine the ancient writings of the Church Fathers, the Reformers, and the Puritans. Again, we only have time to observe a few select quotations. These quotes will hopefully give us a general idea of what these men taught concerning the various issues at hand...
Augustine of Hippo wrote, “Can we possibly, without utter absurdity, maintain that there first existed in anyone the good virtue of a good will, to entitle him to the removal of his heart of stone? How can we say this, when all the time this heart of stone itself signifies precisely a will of the hardest kind, a will that is absolutely inflexible against God? For if a good will comes first, there is obviously no longer a heart of stone.”
In his “Against Two Letters of the Pelagians” he added, “For we are now speaking of the desire for goodness. If they want to say that this begins from ourselves and is then perfected by God, let them see how they can answer the apostle when he says, “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God” (2 Cor. 3:5)’
Martin Luther, writing on Romans 3:27-28, understood this, “What the apostle means by ‘works of the law’ are works in which the persons who do them trust as if they are justified by doing them, and thus are righteous on account of their works.”
Commenting further on the “works of the law” Luther writes, “For Paul, ‘works of the law’ means the works of the entire law. Therefore one should not make a distinction between the Decalog and the entire law. Now if the work of the Decalog does not justify, much less will circumcision, which is a work of the ceremonial law.” Luther believed justification by faith alone was the doctrine “on which the church stands or falls.” Luther believed that the Roman Catholicism of his day was similar to the false religion of Paul’s day (which was Judaism). Works salvation has been a common thread that has connected most of the false religions in the world (past and present).
John Calvin called sola fide, “the main hinge on which religion turns.” Commenting on the Law, John Calvin remarked, “Because observance of the law is found in none of us, we are excluded from the promises of life, and fall back into the mere curse…Since the teaching of the law is far above human capacity, a man may view the proffered promises yet he cannot derive any benefit from them.” In his Romans commentary he said, “It is a memorable truth of first importance that no one can obtain righteousness by the keeping of the law.”
Theodore Beza (expounding on Romans 4) comments, “Abraham was not justified, and made the father of the faithful, by any of his own works, either preceding or following his faith in Christ, as promised to him; but merely by faith in Christ, or the merit of Christ by faith imputed to him for righteousness.”
Philip Melancthon said, “The only thing you bring to your salvation is the sin that makes it necessary.”
William Pemble (a Puritan) wrote, “We deny that faith justifies us as a work which we perform in obedience to this law; it justifies us only as the condition required of us, and as an instrument of embracing Christ’s righteousness.”
One could summarize these two major views this way:
The Protestant view
faith = justification + works
The Roman view
faith + works = justification
No comments:
Post a Comment