Even faith, Paul says, is not from us. For if the Lord had not come, if he had not called us, how should we have been able to believe? “For how,” Paul said, “shall they believe if they have not heard?” (Rom. 10:14). So even the act of faith is not self-initiated. It is, he says, “the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8c). John Chrysostom, late 4thc. A.D.
My last post was written in celebration of the 16thcentury Protestant Reformation, where people of my theological ilk hold that the Biblical gospel was recovered to the church. This idea requires qualification, though: We do not hold that the Gospel was all together lost throughout the ancient church and the so-called Dark Ages. Rather we hold that the Roman Church had so progressively apostasized (that is, they had progressively run from God’s Word to the point of no return), that there was a theological revival needed in order for the Gospel to not be lost. In came Luther and Calvin, following closely behind their forerunners Wycliffe, Tyndale, and Savonarola. All Protestantism traces its lineage to and through this movement from the 16thcentury.
Into Church History
In the spring I graduated from RPTS in Pittsburgh with a masters degree in church history and theology. I grew up assuming (based on not thinking about it much) that church history jumped from Jesus’ day to Billy Graham’s day and so on down to my day. Then as I came to Biblical Theological convictions, I learned of church history back to the reformers of the16thcentury. But when I got to RPTS I learned of church history that fills the gap between the reformers and the apostles. Truly, there is no gap. Jesus was always building His church, as he said he would (Matt. 16:18). The Reformation was not a putting forth of new ideas, but a recovery of Biblical ideas that people had held throughout history, ideas which had been buried under centuries of increasing man-made tradition. Therefore, Calvin, in his Institutes, wrote that if Protestants and Romanists had a fair and objective comparison of each of their doctrinal convictions with the church fathers, the victory would side decidedly with the Protestants.*
The Gospel For All Peoples
The doctrine of justification by faith alone is the issue for the church at all times.** It separates the true church from the false church, and the church from other religions. Our pluralistic society assumes that since no one can know what is the right religion, therefore they’re all equally legitimate. This notion sounds tolerant and good, but in the end it insults each of the religions, all of which claim exclusivity. The church’s doctrine of justification by faith alone holds that one is reconciled to God and brought into His new creation through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, received by faith. That is, we are saved not by our own good works, but by Christ’s good works (cf. Matt. 3:15, Jn. 4:34; Eph. 2:8-9; Tit. 3:4-6). We can contribute nothing, save the need to be saved. Even our faith in Christ is worked in us by God’s effective grace (see Ac. 18:27, Phil. 1:29), as the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to the truth of God’s Word, and what it says about God, ourselves, and the world (Jn. 6:63, 1 Pet. 1:23).
All of this is to say that every other religion or worldview in the world holds a performance-driven redemptive narrative, where we have to change our own behavior in order to be saved and/or save the world. This is true of every single religion, as well as secularism and anti-religious social concern (however sincere and well-intentioned as may appear). Biblical Christianity answers this and says that we can’t do what we must nor can we rightly define for ourselves what we must do. So Jesus did it for us. And if we put our trust in Him, He’ll bring us to God, and do it in us today. Thus the prophet Jeremiah says that Jesus will be called “The Lord is our righteousness” (Jer. 23:6). Eternal life is life in Jesus Christ the righteous.
As I learned the Biblical Redemptive narrative of salvation in Jesus, I came alive. And this Protestant-Reformed theology, as I’ve been describing it, has been labeled as Christ-centered theology, because it anchors Biblical doctrine in His Person and work. But did the ancient church hold this, or was it invented in the 16th century by men named Luther, Calvin, Bucer, and Zwingli?
The Gospel in the Ancient Church
The quest for the gospel in the church led me into further reading, and it’ll probably never stop. Recent reads include Nate Busenitz’ Long Before Luther and Steven Lawson’s Pillars of Grace. These books are studies in the distinctives of Protestant theology as they were in fact taught and upheld between the time of the Protestant Reformation and the New Testament days. While the early church fathers wrote much that can, quoting various independent texts, be used as proof texts by a Romanist, the fathers also wrote a lot that can be used the same way by Protestants. This calls into question the fathers’ consistency and leads one back to the absolute authority and clarity of the Bible alone (which is what the Protestant Reformation was all about, and which is what the ancient church fathers held).*** It also begs the question, "Have we understood the fathers rightly?" I've come to believe, with Calvin,^^ that the fathers were more Protestant than Romanist, though there are caveats. But the point is that the teaching of the Scriptures is where the conversation is to begin and end.
Therefore the quote above from John Chrysostom, the greatest preacher of the ancient church, helps illustrate that he knew the doctrine of justification by faith alone, apart from any works. That is, he seems to have known that baptism doesn’t save and that the Lord’s Supper (or the Eucharist) was only grace-giving in the sense that it encourages us and reminds us of our salvation. This, by the way, was Augustine’s view.^* Many other examples could be given, but I’ll just commend you to Busenitz’s Long Before Luther, pages 165-90, or just listen to his talk from the 2018 Shepherd’s Conference.
A Divided Church?
Conservative Internet superpersonality Matt Walsh has recently tweeted that Protestants shouldn’t celebrate the Reformation on October 31 because, by it, the church is more divided than ever. This would be a legitimate critique but for the Protestant conviction that prior to the Reformation (and even more so after) the unreformed Roman church forsook the risen Christ and His finished work. Thus the Reformation was about gaining back the truth of the Risen Christ and what it means for our salvation today. In short, we’d rather have a divided church than a Christ-less church. According to the apostle Paul, a church that adds any kind of works to Christ and how His work effects us is not only confused, but bewitched (Gal. 3:1), having forgotten the gospel it once knew. This isn’t to say that good works don’t follow saving faith in Jesus’ merits. But the good works don’t contribute to one’s merit. And the ancient church, including men like Origen, Irenaeus, Ambrosiaster, Tertullian, etc. etc. etc. knew it. They knew it because it was indeed what Jude called “the faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). The reformers were laboring to recover it. Now I am too, even if it means division among those who profess Christ.
And even if the ancient church was confused on justification, the important point is that Jesus himself made it clear: “Whoever believes in me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (Jn. 5:24).
This is indeed the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Therefore, let the true saints listen to God’s voice. All others can be content with a man-centered wish-dream. But let them do so with the warning of the Lord, that if you deny Him, He’ll deny you before His Father (Matt. 10:33). And let us all prayerfully consider the warning, and simultaneously follow and bow the knee before Jesus together. He'll receive us, for "He lives to make intercession for us."
Soli Deo Gloria!
*Calvin, Institutes, Prefatory Address, 4; in Beveredge's translation, xxv.
*Ibid, 3.11.1, 3.15.7.
**see Roger Beckwith. The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church and It’s Background in Early Judaism, 386-90.
^^Calvin, Institutes, xxvi-xxvii.
^*Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Robertson's translation, 87, 93.
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