“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
Ephesians 2:8-9
“The White Witch? Who is she?”
C. S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe
“Why, it is she that has got all Narnia under her thumb. It’s she that makes it always winter. Always winter and never Christmas; think of that!”
Articles in this Series
See the first article for the list.
After Darkness, Light
I must immediately confess that I have gone back to a previous passage. I originally intended to proceed through the text without skipping to and fro. I must also confess that the topic discussed in this article has very little to do with the Narnia quote. In other words, because it is Reformation Day, I have essentially highjacked this Narnia series to discuss Reformation doctrine, which hopefully will not cause too much distress. The only semblance I can draw between the Reformation and the quote above is that just as Christmas followed winter in Narnia, light followed darkness in the Reformation. Post tenebras lux is the Latin phrase for this; after darkness came light. The obvious dissimilarity is that Lewis intended for Christmas in Narnia to symbolise the consequences of Christ’s earthly ministry. So, the connection of this article to the Narnia quote may be extremely tenuous, but as the New Zealand saying goes, “she’ll be right”.1 My goal in this article is twofold: to briefly discuss Reformation doctrine and secondly, what the Reformation can teach about our times.
Justification by faith alone (sola fide) is called the material cause of the Reformation. This language, which borrows Aristotelian categories, refers to how sola fide was the stuff at the heart of the Reformation. Just as marble is the material cause of a Renaissance statue because it is the stuff out of which that statue is made, sola fide was the stuff that constituted the Reformation. Without it, you had no Reformation. Martin Luther called sola fide the “chief article”.3 John Calvin declared that it was the “principal ground on which religion must be supported”.4 Moving to contemporary times, R. C. Sproul proclaimed that “[w]ithout the doctrine of justification by faith alone, the gospel is not merely compromised, it is lost altogether”.5 J. I. Packer wonderfully articulates that “to declare and defend God’s justification publicly as the only way of life for any man was at once an act of confessing their [the Reformers’] faith, of glorifying their God by proclaiming his wonderful work, and of urging others to approach him in penitent and hopeful trust just as they did themselves”.6 Scripture alone (sola scriptura) was the formal principle of the Reformation, giving shape and form to the Reformers’ arguments.
My focus here will be primarily on sola fide. This focus is not because the other Reformation doctrines of grace alone (sola gratia), Scripture alone (sola Scriptura), Christ alone (solus Christus), and glory to God alone (soli Deo gloria) are unimportant. It is because space limits me. Justification is the legal declaration of God regarding sinners, wrought by His sovereign and free grace, grounded in the person and work of Christ Jesus, wherein sinners’ sins are forgiven, and they are covered in Christ’s righteousness (Rom. 3:24-25, etc.). This act of justification is received instrumentally, through faith alone (Eph. 2:8-9, etc.), with the natural consequence being good works (Eph. 2:10).7 That is perhaps a particularly verbose way of saying that we are justified because of what Christ did. Our sins are paid for; we are redeemed (Rom. 3:24). We are covered in Christ’s righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21). The natural result of this justification is works, for “faith apart from works is dead” (Jm. 2:26).
One could delve more into the theological complexities of this doctrine. However, I want to discuss why it matters. The Reformation could easily be characterised as trite squabbling over minutiae. To an outsider, it may seem but another episode in the centuries-long series of schisms in Christendom. I recall a Catholic saying something like: “Well, you have works as the result of justification, and I have works leading to justification. Why does it matter?” Are sola fide and other Reformation doctrines just the nitpicking of a long-dead Augustinian monk and the irrelevantly erudite subjects of Latinate theological treatises? Are debates over Reformation doctrines like medieval theologians arguing about how many angels could fit on the head of a pin? One gets the idea. In short, why does all of this matter?
My answer to this (and there are many answers that may be given) is that theology leads to doxology, and poor theology leads to dead doxology. One cannot sing or worship if one has nothing to sing about or direct one’s worship to. Theology does not belong to the realm of arid scholasticism and scattered ivory towers in a barren wilderness but of joyful worship that proclaims the free Christocentric grace of God in this ebbing, pulsating, and undulating chorus of all-pervasive joy that renders unto the Triune God the praise due to His name. And it is the firm conviction of Protestant theology that there is no greater praise, nothing causing a worthier doxology, than the Gospel reality that we are saved through faith alone, by grace alone, in Christ alone, all to the glory of God alone, all attested by Scripture alone.
Again, the Reformation truth is that we are saved freely, like how the prophet called God’s people to “Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price” (Isa. 55:1). We buy without price because we have been bought with a price (1 Cor. 6:20). Salvation is free because Christ satisfied the cost. We are helpless sinners, having been saved by God Almighty for reasons incomprehensible. That is why we sing. If a small speck of salvation depended on our own work, then just as yeast leavens the whole lump, our deeds, which are but a “polluted garment” (Isa. 64:6), will obliterate any chance of our salvation. And let us not imagine that any other views result in better songs. The only consistent song atheists may sing is a nihilistic tune lyrically inspired by the Nietzschean madman. Islam renders submission, not celebration. Buddhism elicits interminably monotonous mantras, not the verdant propositions of Christianity. And so on.
A final note is that the Reformation establishes a precedent that we must follow in our own time. Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and many others stood firm upon the sacred foundation of Scripture alone. They demonstrated a confident trust in the Word of God and the God of the Word. To riff off Luther, there they stood, and they could do no other.8 We need men and women like this more than ever in our own time. Allow me to list a few examples. Babies are massacred, and the Biblical teaching on the image of God must be proclaimed. Pluralism and relativism reign with an intolerant iron fist. Critical Race Theory and similar ideologies displace Gospel categories like original sin and replace them with the category of oppressor.9 The LGBTQ+ movement rages against the Biblical doctrine of Creation, promoting self-identity over God-given identity. False teachers within Christendom proclaim the prosperity “gospel” and are tone-deaf to the hard nature of the Christian walk. Governments, as demonstrated by the recent COVID-19 lockdowns, are allowed to overreach and prohibit God’s church from meeting. Our cultural landscape is bleak. We must pray for mercy. Darkness reigns. The Light is greater.
Footnotes
- See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She’ll_be_right.
- See https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/why-do-we-call-them-the-formal-and-material-principles-of-the-reformation/.
- See Martin Luther’s Smalcald Articles.
- See John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion.
- See https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/making-molehills-out-mountains.
- See J. I. Packer’s Sola Fide: The Reformed Doctrine of Justification.
- I add “etc.” after the verse references because it would be difficult to include every reference in Scripture to this doctrine.
- See Martin Luther’s famous speech at the Diet of Worms.
- See Ethan Aloiai’s article here: https://sojournal.co.nz/critical-theory-and-social-justice-an-overview/ for a basic overview of CRT. Also see Voddie Baucham’s Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe and Owen Strachan’s Christianity and Wokeness: How the Social Justice Movement Is Hijacking the Gospel – and the Way to Stop It.