If you grew up in a Protestant context, then, like me, you probably assume that the faith is largely about a story. Like me, you probably were taught that the Good News of the Gospel is the story of what Christ did -- how he came into the world, died for our sins, rose from the dead, and went back up to the Father -- and how believing that story changes our lives.
We learned that the story in the Bible is perfect, inspired, without error, and the means by which our salvation takes place. We learned that if we believed that the story was true, then we'd be saved. We learned that we should also believe, not just in the story, but in the person of Jesus. In other words, believing that Jesus is who He said he was counts as belief that is salvific.
What follows is part One of a two part series. If you like (or at least intrigued by) what you see here, come back for part two!
Much energy then (naturally enough) becomes spent on demonstrating clearly that Jesus is who He said he was. Doing this is called Apologetics. It comes from the Greek word apologia, which means, "to defend". I used to be very into this kind of thing. I believed, as I had been taught, that by defending the historical veracity of the claims of Jesus about his own mission, identity, and action, I would be helping (in some sense, anyway) people come to salvation.
From what I can tell, the Protestant Bodies don't really disagree on this point. They disagree on how it is that salvation takes place, what exactly takes place in the believer after belief, and what the timeline is for this change. They also seem to disagree on the possibility of this change undoing itself -- can one loose one's salvation?
I think it is relatively fair to say that at least part of what it means to be Protestant is to be of the opinion that belief = salvation. In John 6, Jesus says, "The work of God is this this, to believe on the one He has sent" and in Romans, "believe on the name of Jesus and you shall be saved" form the central spirit of what it means to be Protestant.
I'm not really here to stake a stand on any of the above disagreements, or on the nature of Scripture as perfect, inspired, and without error. Rather, I'd like to offer a different approach that provides more room, I think, for reconciliation. Due to the nature of blogging convenience and length of posts and such I'll have to post my different approach on a different blog. So here I'll conclude by suggesting at least a few possible ways in which the way we've been taught necessarily creates division and lack of reconciliation.
If the trans-formative effect of salvation predicated upon correctly believing in either the story or the person of Jesus, then the difference between a correct story (or view of the person of Jesus) and in incorrect story (or view of the person of Jesus) is the difference between a correct belief and an incorrect belief. Seen this way, literally everything is at stake. Making sure that one is correct is vital, and making sure that others are correct is a form loving ones' neighbor as oneself.
As philosophy and literary theory and sociology and cultural studies and history all make clear in various ways however, truth is a tricky concept. How can we really pin the entirety of how we worship, what we say about the God we worship, how we live together in worship, on something that is true? Do we not run the risk of isolating ourselves from each other and reducing ourselves to obscurity? I fear that by our own actions, Christians who set up this one to one relationship between correct belief and salvation also adopt a climate in which reconciliation becomes synonymous with compromise, and compromise synonymous with the wrong story.
If you feel that I've unfairly caricatured the Protestant ethos here, let me know! (But be modest about it... no one likes to read something that is overly caustic.) If you want to hear what I think might be an approach that offers more room for real reconciliation (as opposed to giving up on the faith) then tune in for my next blog entry!
I like what you're saying so far. The only caution I'd throw out your way is that "salvation by faith" (as you're describing it) is not the official teaching of most classical Protestant denominations. "Salvation by grace [alone] through faith" is more the official word from Luther & friends. At the populist level and among many non-historically-aware teachers today this does get oversimplified to 'salvation by faith' but I don't think that's what Protestantism as a whole is necessarily all about.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, offering a corrective to populist theology is very important work, so I look forward to your follow-up!
Thank you for the response! I agree with your helpful corrective. Salvation, for the reformers, was by grace through faith. When I try to put legs on that though, and make it walk around, two difficulties arise.
Delete1.) It is entirely beyond my powers of description to articulate the 'grace' part of that in a way that honestly represents ALL the different Protestant Bodies.
2.) If such a representation were possible, grace appears to be the thing that gets us from a state of unbelief to a state where belief is possible. But if this is the case, then it doesn't significantly alter the footing on which I based my initial conclusion -- correct belief still equals salvation even if we are all dependent upon God to get us to the point where we can believe. If anything, it only makes the problem more pronounced! If I can't get to belief on my own, then the belief I have is given from God, and therefore correct. Real Reconciliation isn't a meaningful possibility.