reformed blogging.

Jonathan Edwards’ sermon on prayer titled, “Hypocrites Deficient in the Duty of Prayer” has done much to wake me up to my own spiritual dullness. This is sermon is something like a twelve-page version of Edwards’ “Religious Affections.” Through such Biblical preaching the word of God digs deep to the roots of the heart and seems to tear out any false hopes that might rest in us. How can anyone say that prayer is necessary for salvation while holding to Sola Fide? Protestants believe in necessary works, Roman Catholics in meritorious works. Read below to see what Edwards means:

Many men cling to a false hope, and embrace it so closely, that they never let it go till the flames of hell cause their arms to unclench and let go their hold.

If you have not the spirit to love God above your dearest earthly friends, and your most pleasant earthly enjoyments; the scriptures are very plain, and full in it, that you are not true Christians.

True love to God seeks to please God in everything, and universally conforms to His will.

Prayer is as natural an expression of faith as breathing is of life; and to say a man lives a life of faith, and yet lives a prayerless life, is every whit as inconsistent and incredible, as to say, that a man lives without breathing. A prayerless life is so far from being an holy life, that it is a profane life. He that lives so, lives like an heathen, who calleth not on God’s name; he that lives a prayerless life, lives without God in the world.

He that prays only when he prays with others, would not pray at all, were it not that the eyes of others are upon him. He that will not pray where none but God seeth him, manifestly doth not pray at all out of respect to God, or regard to his all-seeing eye, and therefore doth in effect cast off all prayer. And he that casts off prayer, in effect casts off all the worship of God, of which prayer is the principal duty.

This is how prayer (or any good work for that matter) is necessary to salvation, but is not the grounds of salvation:

Many, when they think they are converted, seem to imagine that their work is done, and that there is nothing else needful in order to their going to heaven. Indeed perseverance in holiness of life is not necessary to salvation, as the righteousness by which a right to salvation is obtained. Nor is actual perseverance necessary in order to our becoming interested in that righteousness by which we are justified. For as soon as ever a soul hath believed in Christ, or hath put forth one act of faith in him, it becomes interested in his righteousness, and in all the promises purchased by it.

If persons who have formerly attended this duty, leave it off, the language of it is, that now they stand in no further need of God’s help, that they have no further occasion to go to God with requests and supplications: When indeed it is in God we live, and move, and have our being.

Seeing therefore you stand in such continual need of the help of God, how reasonable is it that you should continually seek it of Him, and perseveringly acknowledge your dependence upon Him, by resorting to Him, to spread your needs before Him, and to offer up your requests to Him in prayer.

It is a fearful idolatry and the immediate judgment that is being visited upon us is that our culture has become shallow, cheap, and vulgar. And far from challenging this emptiness and futility, evangelical churches have too often been its exemplars… pitching their “product” to “consumers” and emptying themselves of every vestige of spiritual gravitas as if striving for a serious faith were a failing of great magnitude and one to be avoided at all costs. - David F. Wells, Above All Earthly Power, 47.

Evangelical:

Derived from euangelion (evangel, gospel, good news), the term came into use at the Reformation to identify Protestants, especially as they held to the belief in justification by grace through faith and the supreme authority of scripture (often considered the material and formal principles of Reformation teaching).

Since Reformation Day is coming up, I thought it might be appropriate to go over this article by Michael Horton about the gap between Evangelicals and Roman Catholics titled, “What Still Keeps Us Apart.”

To begin, Horton makes an important point that many Protestants have had, and still do have a slight misunderstanding of the Reformation as a Reformation of practice only, rather than doctrine:

Victorian Protestants (and this would include American Protestants from approximately 1800 to 1950) were fond of caricaturing Romanism as a political and social menace and inculcated irrational suspicion of Roman Catholics as subverters of liberty and practitioners of a secret society in which cultlike rituals were conducted. As a result, when describing the differences between Protestantism and Rome, the accent often fell upon such subjects as Mary, the intercession of the saints, the veneration of statues, superstition, calling the priest “father,” going to confession. In other words, it fell on practice rather than on doctrine.

The Reformation was a reformation of doctrine! The Reformers did not see themselves as making any new doctrine, nor forming a new, separate Church, but merely staying in line with the true Catholic Church (Catholic in its true sense, not in the Romanist sense):

As already mentioned, Luther and Calvin certainly did not argue that they had seen something in Scripture that somehow missed the attention of every other thinker for one and a half millennia; they called upon the Fathers, and especially Augustine, for support. Thus, they demonstrated that their message was not something new but a recovery of something old—something that had been lost by a corrupt curia. It was not a brand-new insight but the recovery of a message that had been taught by the Catholic Church during its best days.

Horton, rightly indicates the major doctrine of the Reformation to be Sola Fide, Justification by faith alone. The Roman Catholic Church never denied the necessity of grace, but holds to a view of justification that “may indeed be ascribed to ‘grace alone,’ and yet the way one received this ‘grace’ was, in effect, by meriting it.” The Reformation began with Luther’s discovery that it was not that we are “made righteous” in justification, but that we are “declared righteous“. This, then, is the main distinction of the Reformation doctrine of justification from the Roman doctrine:

Is such a distinction just playing with words? Surely not. The difference between “to declare righteous” and “to make righteous” is the difference between a definitive, once-and-for-all verdict and a gradual progression. If we are justified by a declaration, through faith alone, then the very moment we believe that Christ is our salvation we are declared righteous in Christ. If we are justified by a process of sanctification, which is never complete in this life, there is not a sufficient basis for God to ever accept us. After all, God does not grade on the curve; He requires absolute, perfect obedience, and anything short of it is sin. A holy God will not—cannot—violate one aspect of His own character (justice and holiness) for the sake of another (love and mercy).

According to Horton, there are two reasons why Evangelicals and Roman Catholics cannot be “Catholic.”

1. The doctrine of justification, together with its implications for theology, church life, piety, and worship.

Rome believes: “they who by sin had been cut off from God may be disposed through his quickening and helping grace to convert themselves to their own justification by freely assenting to and cooperating with that grace.”

This then is the Roman Catholic view of justification, and this is where we find our greatest gap:

…men and women are accepted before God on the basis of their cooperation with God’s grace over the course of their lives, rather than on the basis of Christ’s finished work alone, received through faith alone, to the glory of God alone. There are indeed two fundamentally different answers to that recurring biblical question, “How can I be saved?” and, therefore, two fundamentally different gospels.

2. The doctrine of the church as expounded by the Roman church, which requires sound, orthodox Roman Catholics to regard the gospel, as understood by evangelicals, as heresy.

When the Council of Trent repeatedly declared that those who believed that their only hope for salvation was faith in Christ now fell under the church’s ban, Rome became a schismatic body.

…the Council of Trent regards the doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone as “damnable” and condemns to everlasting judgment anyone who embraces it; and the Council of Trent is as binding as Holy Scripture for Roman Catholics.

As long as Rome is officially committed to its notion of an infallible tradition and unerring councils, there can be absolutely no hope for a visible restored union, for there can be no hope of its repentance for having rejected the gospel in such clear and dogmatic terms.

In regards to this second reason, Horton asks the real questions:

The main concern is not, Does the church of Rome still condemn the Protestants? (After all, that was answered negatively at Vatican II.) The real issue is, Does the church of Rome still condemn the gospel? In other words, are those anathemas still binding on the faithful who are in communion with the Roman See?

In conclusion, Horton, turns to Evangelicals and points out the inconsistency of criticizing Roman Catholics “while they themselves are ignorant of, or even reject, the very Evangel they claim to protect.” He makes mention of the sad fact of how many “Evangelical” churches have ended up adopting a sort of Pelagian message:

When evangelicals deny human depravity and inability, affirm that human beings cooperate in their own conversion by the use of their free will, and view salvation as a project of moral improvement (especially when that affirms a notion of entire sanctification), they are further afield from the gospel than Rome has ever been.

Horton calls for a second Reformation. I think many will agree that this is exactly what the Church needs today:

These things must be said because I am convinced that we need a second Reformation, but it will not be a reformation in which insults and caricatures will be hurled from Protestants who wonder why Catholics still have not gotten the message; it will be just as heated a debate within Protestantism because of unprecedented unfaithfulness to the Word of God. Who can deny that Protestants have led the way in the twentieth century away from a high view of Scripture and God’s grace in Christ? Which branch of the church has done more to lower the doctrine of Christ to a mere moral example? Which church has gone so far as to deny original sin and affirm the goodness of human nature? Which tradition has done so much to deny not only the sufficiency, but even the reliability of the Word of God? In short, which branch of Christendom has so carelessly capitulated to the spirit of the age?

Soli Deo Gloria!

In recent conversation with a Roman Catholic, I have repeatedly heard the accusation that Reformation theology, is not, in fact, biblical, that the doctrines of the reformation are false and misconstrued ideas that came from a guilt-ridden monk who, dissatisfied with the way of the Roman Catholic Church, thought to invent his own way to Christ. My Roman Catholic friend seemed to favor the argument that the phrase “justification by faith alone” is found only once in the Bible and this in a passage showing the necessity of works for justification (James 2). Having spent some time reading up more thoroughly on justification by faith alone, I am assured of its biblical foundation.

The doctrines of the Reformation are Biblical and the gospel of the Reformation is the only true gospel. Such theology was not found upon man made tradition, or received by human or papal authority, but the Reformation doctrines are from the very Word of God. Hear from Calvin how the doctrines of the Reformation were brought forth:

But as for us, we study with no less obedience than care to obtain a sound understanding of this passage, as we do in the whole of Scripture. And we do not with perverted ardor and without discrimination rashly seize upon what first springs to our minds. Rather, after diligently meditating upon it, we embrace the meaning which the Spirit of God offers. Relying upon it, we look down from a height at whatever of earthly wisdom is set against it. Indeed, we hold our minds captive, that they dare not raise even one little word of protest; and humble them, that they dare not rebel against it. - p. 1392, Institutes of the Christian Religion

The Roman Church is, at the roots, the same as it was five centuries ago and Reformation is far from over. Reformada sed semper reformanda.
Soli Deo Gloria!

It may not be IX Marks, but Calvin seems to say the same thing:

Wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to Christ’s institution, there, it is not to be doubted, a church of God exists. - p.1023, Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin