Original Article Posted at: https://findingthebalance.net
Written by: Chase Orosco

I originally intended this to be a short Facebook post, but how foolish it was for me to assume that something like this could be expressed in few words. For that reason, I’ve chosen to use my blog site to write about it. I’m not going to talk too much about Chan’s recent comments on the nature of communion and the Eucharist as I am about what his comments demonstrate is so important for us today.

What I will say, to the critics of those who have rightly criticized Chan, saying that Chan was simply saying we needed to just stop the division, and that Jesus didn’t start 30,000 denominations, and we need to just come together at the Lord’s Supper, and that’s more important than even preaching God’s word in a pulpit, to those saying this, I would simply defer you to a number of Roman Catholics on the internet right now who are saying amens to Chan’s comments and praying that he “come home to Rome”. The fact that there are Roman Catholics saying this should be compelling reason that, whether he intended it or not, Chan’s comments are swimming in the Tiber River.

Protestants, Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy

I want to talk about what seems to be a thing these days about Protestants finding an appeal towards Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. I have had friends in the past, and most recent past begin to drift closer and closer to these two institutions, people I once thought were solid in the faith. Surely, a reformed Protestant would be most immune to the lures of EO and the RCC. I was wrong, and being wrong, I’ve had to sit back and honestly reflect myself on whether I could be drawn to that.

If you haven’t listened to one of the most recent Dividing Lines (January 6th) I would highly recommend it. It’s lengthy, and I know I’ve said this before, but if there is one Dividing Line that, right now, you need to listen to, it’s now this one. I get it, you’re busy, you got family and kids and stuff. But I pray you make time to listen to this one. I haven’t gotten through the Leighton Flowers stuff as I write this, and I’m sure that’s important, but for the first hour, Dr. White discusses this issue of the current attraction towards EO and the RCC and I think his analysis is spot-on, right on the money. Almost everything he said was what I have been trying to say for some time now.

I don’t attend a reformed church, so I have the “non-denominational” believers mostly in my circle. It is because they are my primary personal encounters that I am very concermed about this. These people have children about to enter the high school and college years, and so I want to address them primarily in this article. For those people, I know that a lot of you guys will see this and think it’s just a waste of time, that all of this talk gets in the way of the Christian life. Why do we need to study church history? The only church history we need is what’s in the Bible, right? Where’s the value in learning about what is “basically just Roman Catholicism for over a thousand years”? is the general idea.

Well first, it actually isn’t that simple. Secondly, something Dr. White pointed out that I have been thinking greatly on is that the Jehovah’s Witnesses are losing people today and that is because of the internet. That is, there was a time when they could control their people, because they could restrict what information they got. Now that’s not the case. Your kids can access the internet easily these days and when they do, they will almost certainly discover that the world is much bigger than they thought it was. Christendom’s history involves a greater span than just America and Palestine/Israel. Dispensationalism is not the only eschatology out there. The subject of the nature of baptism is not so simple as we were told by our leaders.

The Youth Going to Rome and the East

Parents, your children are smart. They are not stupid, they are connecting dots that you may not even see. I’ve had kids ask me some questions that frankly blindsided me, and made me have to sit down and think through certain issues. One of these days, some (perhaps many) of those kids that you try to keep from knowing about the history of their faith in the world from the first century on to today, they’re not going to settle for the “no creed but Christ” idea. I’m already seeing it happening.

The reason I think that so many young people are attracted to EO and the RCC is having grown out of simplistic, independent Baptist circles (or circles like it) that taught shallow-level concepts drudge through the youth services and they come out doing one of two things: Either throwing the whole thing out, or realizing there are places they can go to get way more interesting “Christianity” than what they were raised in, such as Eastern Orthodoxy. It’s far more magisterial, it’s got rich history and philosophy. Because young people are starving for real, substantial things, such as a real, meaningful Eucharist (Lord’s Supper) not simply a memorial service. It is far more than that.

When they realize that there were people in the ancient past that spoke far more real about the Eucharist than their own elders ever said, there is a great chance they are enamored by it, and all they need is one guy from the EO or from Rome to give them a few quotes from Ignatius or Tertullian on the “real presence” of Christ in the Eucharist, out of its context and meaning, and *finger snap* that kid’s hooked. It’s only a matter of time from there.

Something that could have been avoided if we, A: taught them church history, and B: gave them the biblical foundations to see the problem with the citation, and also with recognizing that even if Ignatius or Tertullian were speaking about “transubstantiation” it would have been in error because neither man was infallible.

The superficial Christianity that tries to separate itself from the history of Christianity is not going to work anymore. Young people are rebelling against their traditions. Let me put it in simple terms: One of these days, your kids are going to learn about smoking. It’s going to happen. What would you rather have? Would you rather have introduced them to it yourself, and have given them the proper foundations to resist it, along with all the other problems of the world? Or would you rather have not, and inculcate them in the walls of your world in the hopes that if they ever do step outside those walls, won’t be attracted to that stuff?

I don’t know about you, but the ladder option rarely turns out well. Suddenly they learn there’s more stuff out there, stuff they didn’t know much about, and they begin to wonder why you not only didn’t make them aware of this, but that you didn’t give them sufficient reasons for why this is bad.

What Lies Outside the Walls

In a novel I am writing, one of my main characters, whose name is Bella, comes to learn that there is a whole world outside of the congested urban city she is raised in. But she’s an orphan with no money to go anywhere. She is found by another of my main characters, a half-elvish character named Annastaria, who saves Bella from her own low-life family (what family she has left). As a consequence, Bella comes with Anna on her own quest across the land, and now Bella embarks on her own journey to see just how big the world is.

This will be illustrated at an important point in the book, and I made that point very specifically for this purpose. She knows the world is far bigger than she ever dreamed it was. But with that also comes great danger. Bella has to learn that with that great wonder comes a world full of dragons, strange and dark creatures, as well as evil men and women who would seek to do her harm.

Hence I am aware of how dangerous it can be to open yourself up to that, which leads me to my final point. When I began to study church history, I had several people (some of which may read this) come to me and were concerned about me. They were concerned that I was going to be distracted by this stuff and end up going down a road that would take me off the road to Christ. They were right to be concerned, and I greatly appreciate that concern.

But it’s one thing to ask someone to be careful and be grounded first, it’s another to try and tell someone that because the “risk” of going off the road is there, don’t ever take the risk. That I cannot do. Why? Because I’m one of those young people who suddenly learned the world of Christendom was much, much, much bigger than I was ever told it was. Indeed, I have opened a Pandora’s Box that won’t close anymore. I’ve opened that door and gone to where there is no return.

Folks, you don’t simply open that door, walk past the walls and just go back to the simple life behind the walls. For someone like Bella (and even like Anna) there is no going back. Now you know there’s a whole world out there. Young people, who may be your kids, will do the same thing as Bella has embarked on. This is just the beginning of her journey. What would you rather them have if and when they do? The awareness of the world and to thus prepare for it when they open that door to go out? Or to blunder into that world with a poor foundation, subject to all the heresy that’s out there? Neither outcome is wonderful, I understand that. But if there was ever a good time for “the lesser of two evils is the best option” this is it, the way I see it.

Why did I not go off into Eastern Orthodoxy? Or swim through the Tiber River into Rome? Ultimately, the only conclusion I can give is by the grace of God. All I knew was that I was committed to Sola Scriptura, because that was the only safe place to be. It was my conviction of Sola Scriptura that carried me and continues to carry me through all the zanniness and weirdness and all the heresy in the world.

I know that we would rather the massive complexity of the history of the world simply not be an issue. Maybe in the next life it won’t be anymore, but where we are now, it is an issue, and my friends, though I don’t have kids of my own, I care about the youth. I know from personal experience, being one of these young people, what can happen when I have to find out for myself that the world is bigger than I was ever told it was. I know teaching church history is a huge risk, as Dr. White said in his latest Dividing Line, but I would rather they know about it from me than from learning about it themselves, without the guidance, without the foundation to confront it.

Author: Chase Orosco

My name is Chase, I live in Texas. I am a Christian, saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. My life and all that I do is to reflect Christ and His glorious gospel. I am an author of the short story “The Champion King of the Remnant” meant to illustrate the divine power of Christ to save all those who have been given to Him by the Father (John 6:39). I have more stories in the works! All of them meant with the sole purpose of glorifying God in this world. I am of a Reformed background, one of those dreadful, mean Calvinists. My desire is to share the gospel message in my writing, to point people to Christ, and be willing to go against a culture that grows increasingly hostile to the Lordship of Christ. I could go on, but I will close simply by saying that I love the Bible, I enjoy theology, philosophy (as long as it doesn’t stray from a meaningful theological foundation), fantasy/fiction, reading, novel-writing, storytelling; I love good music, art, hiking and beholding God’s glorious creation everywhere I go. View all posts by Chase Orosco

Original Article Posted at: https://findingthebalance.net
Written by: Chase Orosco

In every major religion that, in some form or fashion, arises out of the middle east, which is to say Islam, Judaism and Christianity (along with all of Christianity’s subsets and cults), throughout all their differences has been one thing in common that each have said is necessary to live out their religions, and that is faith. Faith is the buzz word, it is the ingredient that seems to be the bloodstream or the life of each religion.

Truly the word goes with almost all forms of life, religion, or spirituality. It’s a catchy word that has a mystical and romantic essence to it. To simply say “Christianity” or “The Christian religion” as well as “The Islamic religion” sounds almost too academic, or too static in some sense. To instead say, “The Christian faith” or “The Islamic faith” personalizes them. It makes them sound more than a simple exercise in formal living. The use of the word faith almost takes the object being discussed into a realm of transcendence, beyond the physical into the metaphysical.

There is a reason for this, however, which we will discuss soon. But for now, I wish simply to say that what I will be discussing in this article is the very nature of what faith is and ought to be. What is it truly? Does it have any relationship to reason? Does it go deeper than the simple experiential aspect we are prone to think it is as by today’s culture? I will begin by seeing how the secular world defines religious faith, and contrast that to what the Bible teaches that faith really is.

Faith in the Secular World

If you go on YouTube and listen to all the celebrity scientists such as Neil DeGrasse Tyson, or Richard Dawkins, two men well known for their animosity towards religious faith, you will see how they define what faith means. It is described as a “blind faith”. The secular world sees the word faith as a trust in non-reason, in irrationality.

In their view, faith means that where all reason goes out the window, my feelings and wishful thinking take over to formulate what they describe as faith. On the other hand, they say, they have science, which is truth, which is reason–solid grounding. They don’t need to have “faith” (in their definition) to believe in what they believe, they only need to “know” the truth of scientific discovery.

The Birth of Blind Faith

This narrative is borne out of the Enlightenment era, wherein the rising secularists and philosophers against religion began to push forward the rhetoric of separating faith and science, as it once was in a perfect unity. Notice how I said that it was “rhetoric” that was at the forefront of this. That’s because all it really was, was rhetoric, it was never really attempting to meaningfully engage what the biblical idea of faith was.

Fredrick Nietzsche, for example, along with other well-known atheists like Karl Marx, never attempted to contemplate with any meaningful inquiry (to my knowledge, anyway) the validity of the Christian faith that built the societies they lived in. Instead, they simply assumed it was false, unreliable, and needed to be abandoned. It was superstition by virtue of its own existence, nothing more. Hence it required no real, meaningful contemplation upon. It was simply dismissed as archaic and no longer useful as an answer to society’s problems. The western world was entering a new era, and needed new answers as a result. Science had proven that the god of lightning was simply a phenomenon of weather patterns, and so on. The great question of the philosophers of their day was, “If God does not exist, why are people hopelessly religious?”

The question was not an honest inquiry for truth. It was an assertion–God does not exist, yet people cannot help but need Him to exist. Why is that? That was the essence of the question. Neither Nietzsche nor Marx really attempted to discover the truth of this. Instead, the two used rhetoric, which is the art of using articulation and thoughtful speech to gain an audience, rather than actually debating ideas.

The centuries would prove the use of rhetoric a useful tactic; pragmatic and economic, in some degree, as we see that the rhetoric of Nietzsche’s atheistic existentialism and Marx’s classless society of communism make devastating inroads into western civilization. There was also Immanuel Kant in the nineteenth century Enlightenment, whose work also contributed heavily to the separating of reason and faith that would eventually be the catalyst for what we have in society today, which is a rhetoric that faith and reason are on complete opposite ends of the spectrum.

It is the works of men like these, particularly during the Enlightenment era, that gave rise to secularism’s definition of faith. It was not a matter of, “Are faith and reason compatible? Is there a fundamental and meaningful relationship between the two?” Rather, it was, “Due to the scientific discoveries of our current age, religion is no longer necessary to answer the questions man needs.”

From Faith to Reason

The great sadness in all of this is how the church responded. Rather than meaningfully confronting this rhetoric with the truth of Scripture, the church attempted to adopt the trending philosophies of “rationalism” of the day to try and make a synthesis with Scripture. The result was to allow an epistemology that is fundamentally at odds with the Christian worldview into the church and begin to infect it from within. The key error in this (which the church still utilizes to this day) is to attempt to sell Christianity to the culture, rather than expose them to the God of the Scriptures.

The emphasis was on trying to preserve the church, rather than God’s word, a fundamental error that has led to the Roman Church, and the LDS Church, which are focused primarily on the foundation and structure of their institutions over God’s revealed word. It’s a common confusion of God and His church, one that is easy to fall into, but is nevertheless costly. If we don’t distinguish between God in the revealed Scriptures and the church He has made in Christ on the authority of Scripture, the result is the tendency to defend the church at the cost of God’s revealed truth. This confusion has and continues to lead to a de-emphasis on Scripture, and eventually an abandonment of it as theopneustos (God-breathed) and to instead defend an institution that is nothing more than an empty shell without God’s word to give it life.

In response to the works of Kant and Nietzsche, Hume and others, Soren Kierkegaard developed his philosophy of Christian existentialism, wherein instead of attempting to combat the rationalistic arguments of the Enlightenment thinkers, Kierkegaard capitulated and codified the idea that faith was a blind leap into the dark of irrationality, separated from reason. Few true endeavors were made by Christian thinkers to combat the presuppositions of the titans of the Enlightenment.

Yes, even our soteriology was compromised–the great slogan of the Reformation, that salvation was a work of God the Holy Spirit by a supernatural rebirth of the soul was replaced with believing that the human mind had the ability, in and of itself, to rationally connect the dots and come to a saving knowledge of Christ. Salvation, then, was wrought by “reason” and not God’s sovereign grace. Once this fundamental truth was compromised, it was only a matter of time before the corrosive effects of secular, post-Enlightenment thought would break away at the foundations of the church from within.

Faith in Scripture

Having understood, in a brief sense, what the secular world, out of the Enlightenment, saw faith as, we will begin to contrast that with what the Bible says faith is. As stated before, today’s secular people see faith as a kind of blind, senseless, irrational leap into the dark. And the church’s capitulation to this rhetoric, rather than to confront it head on, only allowed it to persist, and to eventually make inroads into the church itself that has led to all the problems we have today.

Remember as before, the Enlightenment thinkers never really attempted to interact with the Bible’s concept of faith. It was simply dismissed. This is important because if we are going to honestly speak truth, we have to honestly investigate propositions and worldviews. A worldview rises or falls on its presuppositions. Hence to discover this, one must investigate the worldview in question. Simply to dismiss it is to at the same time dismiss one’s own credibility on the subject. You don’t go for a medical checkup with someone who hasn’t honestly understood the medical field and who is not a licensed doctor for the checkup. Why, in the same way, would we rely upon people who are openly, willingly ignorant of biblical theology, for understanding what the terms related to biblical words are?

It is therefore necessary that if we are going to have a proper understanding of what the Bible describes as faith, we must go to the Bible’s understanding. It is a bad form of argumentation to impose upon the Bible a foreign concept of faith and use that as its definition. In the Greek, the word for faith is pronounced “pistis” which means to trust, to believe, to be convinced of something or someone. That is the simple meaning of faith.

Based upon this, can we already declare that the secular idea of “faith” is the same as the Bible’s? No. For the secularist, faith is a blind, irrational and unsupported belief in something that’s not real. Biblical faith is to trust in something. Whether that something is worth trusting in is not even relevant to the subject. But for the secularist, this narrative has to fit, otherwise their argument collapses. We can talk about whether what we have faith in is a reasonable thing to have faith in, but it is simply false to demand that faith means not only trust in something, but trust in something inherently foolish.

Real faith, then, is to trust, to be convinced in the mind of something, or of the words of someone. What then does the Christian–the true Christian, have faith in? Romans 3 and 4 give an in-depth discussion on the nature of faith, and how we are justified by faith, or through faith, apart from the law (Romans 3:28, 4:1-5). Clearly there is something about the nature of “faith” that makes it powerful to save. Exploring Scripture helps us to see what that is.

Faith to Salvation

There are many places to start, but I think one of the best is to begin with what I believe is the citadel passage on the nature of faith as the instrument of salvation, and that is in Romans 4. Of course, in reality, it begins back in Romans 3; in Romans 3:1-20, Paul is laying down humanity’s greatest problem, that we are desperately wicked before a holy God, completely and utterly exposed to His righteous wrath against sin. Our very existence is an abomination in His sight.

It is only after this, beginning in verse 21-26, that Paul finally shows us the Light and that is Christ. Our hope comes apart from the Law, meaning that our hope does not come from obeying God’s commandments, but from beholding the One who has obeyed the commandments. Hence, as verse 21 says, this salvation is “apart from” the Law, but the Law “witnesses” it. This righteousness is the account of Christ, and it is acquired not by the exertion of the human will, which Paul just condemned as utterly unreliable.

It is acquired “through faith”. When rendered from the Greek, it literally reads: righteousness now God dia–through or by; because of–faith-in Jesus Christ. The word for righteousness in verse 22 in the Greek means primarily that this “righteousness” (dikaiosyne) is authored, or brought about by God. It’s not a righteousness that God presents and says that this is the kind of righteousness we need to build to get into heaven. It is a righteousness that He Himself has revealed and brought about in Christ that is acquired by faith.

In Romans 4, Paul explains this doctrine more clearly, using Abraham as his example. The point once again is to show that Abraham was ultimately made righteous before God by a righteousness that God was the author of, not Abraham. Abraham simply believed God’s promise in Genesis 15, and it was counted as righteousness to him (Romans 4:3). It was when Abraham believed God, which is to say when he was convinced by God, that he was declared righteous, or justified before God. It wasn’t his willingness to work for God that did. That very idea Paul rebukes in the following verses.

Faith then is the instrument of salvation, it is through faith that God saves by the righteousness of Jesus Christ. But we are not done yet by any stretch. Faith indeed is the instrument whereby we are saved, but so many Christians don’t go any farther than this. In point of fact, the Bible has much more to say about faith. We must go deeper.

Faith to Repentance

From that point, we move on to our next. We could easily combine this section with Faith to Action, but I want to take time here to focus exclusively on repentance. What is repentance? Repentance is often gravely misunderstood by the cults, and by Christians themselves, and no less by unbelievers. Repentance is often viewed as a form of working, of building oneself up. I know that I personally struggled with this confusion for a while, and primarily because as someone who held so strongly by conviction (to this day) in the doctrine of sola fide (faith alone), why was repentance so important, then? Not that it wasn’t, but if my repentance doesn’t earn me anything, why is it nevertheless necessary?

The problem of course was with what I was assuming, and that was that repentance was a form of making oneself worthy before God. It was because I confused repentance with this that I struggled with understanding how it fit into the whole issue.

The word “repentance” in the Greek (metanoias) means to have a change in mind; to turn from one state of mind to another. In this case, to turn from the love and desire of sin to the love and desire of God. You may ask again, how is this not working our way to heaven? It seems that way if you understand, again, repentance to be earning you something. But it’s not.

Remember that in justification, I’m made righteous by a righteousness outside of me, authored and perfected by God. My turning away from sin, therefore, does not merit me anything. It’s not something I do to be righteous, because I already am by legal declaration. It’s something I do firstly out of love for what God has done for me, and because it cleanses me. It doesn’t make me more valuable, more noble, it cleans me from sinful thoughts and desires. There are many places that we can go to demonstrate this, but my favorite is in Isaiah 44:21-22:

“Remember these things, O Jacob, and Israel, for you are my servant; I formed you; you are my servant; O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me. I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like mist;return to me, for I have redeemed you.” -Isaiah 44:21-22 (ESV).

Notice here the order: First God declares that He Himself has removed, or sent away into the sea of forgetfulness the sins of Israel, His people. Who did this? Do the people blot out their own sins and then come to God? No, God Himself does it. I don’t declare myself righteous, I don’t undo my sins–God does. And what comes after this? After this, God now commands Israel to now return to Him. In other words, repent! Thus, our repentance is not something we do to attain forgiveness, it’s something we do because God has already forgiven us.

In John 8:34, Jesus declares that anyone who commits sin is a slave to sin, so this is everyone, since everyone is born in sin (Psalm 51:5). John 14:6, Jesus says that no one comes to the Father except through him. In John 6:44, Jesus declares that no one can come to him unless the Father first draws him. This means that the precondition for anyone to come to God is squarely in God’s initiative. John 8:36 says that if you have been set free by the Son, you are free indeed.

Put all of this together, and what we have is that a person is born in bondage to sin, in a state of hatred towards God (Romans 3:9-19), and thus by our position, have no capacity, no power to come to God. We are dependent upon God to act first (Ephesians 2:1-10). This is why no one can come, because they don’t want to. God gives it to them to come (Ezekiel 36:26-28), the Father draws. A person comes because they are drawn, and they come to the Son. The coming is synonymous with repentance.

So what do we have? We have God having set free the sinner, and as a result, the sinner comes to God. Do you see then how a contorted view of man’s free will disrupts the ability to see the harmony of Scripture? Man is not autonomous. Man is subject to his creaturely will, and that creaturely will is corrupted with sin that makes man unable to come to God, like a river that has been congested with so much filth and garbage; it cannot flow and give life to the environment. But once the obstructions are removed, it will go, as it was meant to. When God removes the obstructions of sins, the sinner will come to God.

Hence, repentance is the result of what God has done, not the attaining of what God offers. This leads us then to ask, if we persist in sinful habits, what does this prove? It does not prove we are losing faith, but instead that this sin has not really been dealt with. These are the indicators we are given, when we see the crystallized essence of the gospel, we begin to see that remaining sin is sin not yet released from. Then let us pray to God in great fervor, pray with the Psalmist in Psalm 19:4-6, call upon Yahweh to act, as the Psalmist also does in Psalm 107–cry out to God to save you from this sin, and He is faithful to do it!

Faith to Action

As I said above, repentance and this section may almost be one, but I wanted to dedicate some time on repentance in particular. Now I want to move on to faith that leads to action. What does saving faith cause one to do? As we have seen, it causes one to repent. It also causes one to grow in the light of that repentance. John the Baptist says in Matthew 3:8 to “bear fruit in keeping with repentance”. Meaning that we must repent not merely for the sake of ceasing to do bad things, but repent in order that we, in being cleansed, will in turn grow in faith towards God, and that growth leads to action for Him.

The important thing once again to notice is that faith and repentance is not earning us anything; it is a response on our behalf to what has been done to us. Remember in Ezekiel 36 the ordo salutis (order of salvation): God’s action comes first, and we merely respond. This is absolutely key to understanding the gospel. The gospel is not, nor has it ever been what you can do for God. It is what God has done for you, and you holding onto that with all your heart. It is in the light of this, and understanding this order, that we are disposed to action.

James 2 is often used so poorly as a proof-text for works-based salvation, and that is a terrible tragedy, because we miss what James was talking about. The proof text is often verse 24, where James says that we are not justified by faith alone, but by our works. The problem first is that this interpretation puts James in clear contradiction with Paul who specifically says in Romans 3:28 that we are justified by faith apart from works of the law. So either the Bible contradicts and hence is not God’s word, or there is a proper harmony that makes both speak true to each other.

The reality is that if you read James 2 in its context, James is telling us that faith alone saves, but a mere profession of faith that is not backed up by works is a worthless, false faith. It is not saying that the works are giving life to the faith, anymore than fruit gives life to the tree.

Notice James’ example for a working faith. It is Abraham, just like Paul when Paul is explaining justification by faith alone. So once again, it seems as though the two are using the same character, speaking about the same subject, but yet come to two different conclusions. Not so fast.

Notice that while they use the same patriarch, they use two different events in his life. For Paul, he is going to where Abraham was justified before God, when Abraham believed God (Genesis 15). James uses the event in Abraham’s life when he offered up Isaac on the altar (Genesis 22). This was after Abraham was counted as righteous. What’s the point? The point is that in the former, Abraham was saved, in the ladder, Abraham demonstrated that he was a saved man, under God’s grace by his willingness to sacrifice his beloved son that was promised. Why? Because that’s what faith does! It causes action!

In Hebrews 11, the author is preaching, going through the entire history of the biblical patriarchs and shows that they all were not motivated by any need to make themselves right before God, but that they believed God’s promise to deliver them Himself. It was God they were trusting in, not their performances, not their abilities to do things. They were weak men, who did extraordinary things because they were relying on God and His promises. They were moved to action by faith.

Faith as a Gift

Our next section covers what is often controversial, but absolutely necessary to the subject of faith. We are attempting to present the utmost biblical nature of faith here, and that means we must talk about some things we may otherwise find uncomfortable. Faith, as we have seen, is more than just blind, irrational and empty hope in foolishness. It is an instrumental cause of justification before God.

Now we must recognize faith as going even farther. As we will discuss, faith is a matter of persuasion, but it goes even deeper than this. Remember in Romans 3:20-26, Paul is explaining how we are saved, and he makes these claims in the backdrop of what he said previously, that mankind in his corrupt, fallen state, is utterly hopeless in himself to do anything pleasing to God that would save his soul. No one seeks for God (Romans 3:11). That is, no one in their unsaved state seeks for God.

Later, in Romans 8:5-8, Paul makes the strong statement that those in the flesh cannot please God. They have no capacity to do so. In Ephesians 2:1-3, the same apostle describes our state outside salvation as being “dead in trespasses and sins”, meaning that our state was so desperate, that like zombies that feel no pain when being struck, so to we feel no pain for having violated God’s law. There was no care in us at all–no life anywhere to be found. In verse 4, Paul provides the great words “but God” which indicates that the decisive factor of how such desperately wicked people could believe was because of an act of God.

That’s where in Ephesians 2:8-9, Paul tells us that faith is a gift. If indeed the human mind and spirit is so depraved, dead in sins and trespasses, then how can it even ascend to saving faith? It cannot. Therefore the faith that saves is a faith granted by what? It is by grace (Ephesians 2:8-9). Grace is an activity performed by God unto a sinner that blesses them. It’s done all in grace, meaning it has absolutely nothing to do with the sinner.

In John 6:39-44, Jesus specifically says that it cannot be that anyone comes to him unless it is granted to him by the Father. In other words, anyone you see coming to Jesus comes because God has given them the gift that grants them to do it, and what is this gift? It is the gift of faith, and that faith is far more than an intellectual exercise. It is a faith that causes one to change, to move, to repent and grow more in their trust in God.

The thing that separates the believer and the unbeliever is an act of grace on the part of God to grant that believer faith. And it is because it is a gift from God that it cannot fail.

Blind Faith in Nature

There is an irony in this discussion. Remember how our secular friends identify faith as a blind, irrational leap into the dark. But once again, how does the Greek define faith? It defines it as to be convinced, or to believe someone. Who in our society is immune to this? No one is. We all, even the most anti-religious, take someone on their word for what they say. Hence, they too have great faith in the people like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye, or Christopher Hitchens.

But who are these men trusting in? Whose word are they taking on face value? We all adhere in some sense to an appeal to authority. For example, biology, and the nature of the universe. We take that verbatim as being reliable on its face. That is to say, we may be having faith in the laws of nature. But the real problem here for our secular friends is that while both of us may have faith in the laws of nature to be as they are, as a Christian, who believes the essential predication for faith in the laws and uniformity of nature is a God who is Himself eternal, self-existence, absolute and unchanging, I have a strong ground for believing in the laws of nature.

For the secularist, what does he ground his faith in the laws of nature in? The answer must be nothing. He has no reason to believe the laws of nature are of absolute uniformity, and hence, what assurance has he that he will be a coherent chunk of functioning matter today, and tomorrow explode? He has none. He must take the claims of his mere human observance at its word (despite it not being the absolute arbiter one needs to confidently rest that faith in it). We may put this in another way, that the secular atheist, when truly examining his worldview, has to conclude that the definition of “blind faith” that he wishes to ascribe to the Christian is actually true for himself.

Conclusion

As we have explored, the nature of faith in the Bible is far more in depth than our secular friends try to make it appear as. Sadly, it is also far more in depth than many evangelicals see it as. Faith is the instrument that saves us, it is to be convinced in the mind of God’s truth and His promises. Faith is a gift that God grants to His elect that they may be able to hold onto His promises. Faith grants the power to repent. Faith causes one to act.

Earlier in the article we looked at the rising tension between faith and reason in the Enlightenment era, and how eventually these two were on a collision course. But it is not the case that the two are at odds. Faith renews the mind (Romans 12:2), and purifies us more and more. It disposes us more and more to the God of the universe, and in understanding Him more, brings us into greater harmony with His creation. That is to say that true faith does not cancel out reason, but it promotes true, rational, and meaningful inquiry into reality. This is why Christianity can be so exclusive and hold to absolute truths over and against subjective experiences.

Ask an LDS how they know the Book of Mormon is true and they must fundamentally rely on a feeling they get. But God’s world and hence His truth does not operate on this kind of thinking. My thoughts and feelings don’t give rise to reality; God does, and hence the discovery of truth in the world is to, in faith towards God, be subject more and more to a renewing of my mind that allows me to grasp hold of truth more and more.

This is why Christianity is behind the greatest scientific findings in all of history, and it is only when the Creator is taken out of the picture does chaos ensue and mankind deteriorates, and drifts farther into the outer darkness.

Author: Chase Orosco

My name is Chase, I live in Texas. I am a Christian, saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. My life and all that I do is to reflect Christ and His glorious gospel. I am an author of the short story “The Champion King of the Remnant” meant to illustrate the divine power of Christ to save all those who have been given to Him by the Father (John 6:39). I have more stories in the works! All of them meant with the sole purpose of glorifying God in this world. I am of a Reformed background, one of those dreadful, mean Calvinists. My desire is to share the gospel message in my writing, to point people to Christ, and be willing to go against a culture that grows increasingly hostile to the Lordship of Christ. I could go on, but I will close simply by saying that I love the Bible, I enjoy theology, philosophy (as long as it doesn’t stray from a meaningful theological foundation), fantasy/fiction, reading, novel-writing, storytelling; I love good music, art, hiking and beholding God’s glorious creation everywhere I go. View all posts by Chase Orosco

Original Article Posted at: https://findingthebalance.net
Written by: Chase Orosco

I am a regular listener to Dr. James White’s The Dividing Line that he normally broadcasts on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons weekly. Lately, Dr. White has been dealing with the issue of what we call Textual Criticism. Textual criticism is a crucial area of study for Christian scholars (and should be done only by Christian scholars, frankly) to help unveil better clarity on the original nature of the original books of Scripture.

I personally find the subject very fascinating as a kind of outsider to it. I am not a scholar, nor trained in the Greek or Hebrew. I am simply one who loves history, and hence the history of the manuscripts of sacred Scripture. But more than this, the study of textual criticism is not simply geeking out on the history of biblical manuscripts. It’s an extremely important area that Christians should be aware of. Although I am not in any way a trained scholar on this subject, I can at least grasp the basic, fundamental issues as a layperson and use these important facts in apologetic contexts, in a time when it’s more needed than ever. Already in several evangelistic situations I have had to get into the subject (though mostly in brief) of the transmission of Scripture to demonstrate that Jesus’s words, “Heaven and earth may pass away, but my words will by no means pass away” in Matthew 24:35 are true.

We have a great and luscious wealth of manuscript evidence for the reliability of our sacred texts today, more than we have of anything in antiquity. One of the things I love to talk about most is how remarkably well-kept Scripture is today, and how Jesus’s words of Matthew 24:35 have, in fact, been kept true.

But there is a sect of Christians which we might call the TR-Only Advocates, or the Traditional Text Advocates who seem to be making the case against textual criticism and its wonderful discoveries. “TR” stands for Textus Receptus (Latin for “Received Text”). The TR is a text created by the sixteenth century Roman Catholic scholar Desiderius Erasmus and has become a basis, if not the basis, of translations of the Bible in the Reformation (including the King James Bible). It is often considered a very “Protestant Bible” (despite having its origin in a Roman Catholic). It served as the base Greek translation for the vast majority of Protestant translations in the sixteenth century and on until the nineteenth century.

It would make sense, therefore, to see the Textus Receptus as very crucial and important to post-Protestant/Reformation translations of Scripture, such as the Geneva Bible, the Bishop’s Bible, the Tyndale Bible, and of course, the King James Bible; translations made by men of the Reformation. It is upon this basis that many of the TR advocates argue against the overall textual critical method of translation.

This of course is not all those who see the Alexandrian findings as unprofitable. There are others who are not necessarily TR-only, but still insist that the word of God has been purely kept in the Byzantine, or majority text family. And that of course, makes sense. The majority contains much that the Alexandrian (the minority) do not contain. That issue can be discussed later, what I wish to point out here, because I know that some will seek to misrepresent me, is that not all who reject the Alexandrian findings are TR-only. Not all are King James Only. For that purpose, I will distinguish in this article between them. When I use the term “TR-only” if you are not TR-only, instead of quoting me and accusing me of lumping everyone into one group, recognize that I said this of TR-onlyists, not you.

Presuppositional Apologetics

What I would like to do here is to demonstrate a very serious error in a category confusion that the TR-only movement engages in, and Dr. White has pointed out numerous times on his program, and that is the misuse of Reformed Presuppositional Apologetics to defend the TR. Presuppositionalism generally relies on what is known as the Transcendental Argument for the existence of God (TAG), which in essence argues that it is impossible to reason in any human capacity without starting with the presupposition of the triune God’s existence.

Presuppositional apologetics is almost entirely a reformed apologetic, and arguably the only consistent form of apologetics. It’s power lies in its ability to push any meaningful discussion back to foundations and epistemology. What is the necessary epistemological starting position to understand reality? On its face it sounds circular, and it actually is, but it is circular in what I would say is a positive sense of circular argumentation. It is circular in the sense that it does not need, nor does it ever look outside its own foundations for validation, due to its very nature. That is extremely important to grasp. It, in and of itself, contains all necessary principles to understand the subject in debate, including the subject of its self-existence. It is, as it were, self-sustaining.

Who else fits this description but God Himself? When an atheist asks us the question “Prove to me that God exists. Where is the evidence?” he’s already asking the wrong question. The argument implies God’s existence depends on the universe to exist, and hence, any way the Christian attempts to answer the question is to commit intellectual suicide. God does not require a universe to validate His existence, the universe requires Him. And it is starting with God’s own preexistence, His absolute, self-sustaining and life-governing ontological nature as the I AM that is necessary for anything to exist in the first place. So the bottom line is that the atheist’s question proves God’s existence because in the question assumes purpose, existence, person hood, meaning, reason and logic, none of which he or she has outside of the triune God.

The essence of presuppositionalism is that God is the standard because there is nothing over and above Him. The prophet Isaiah rhetorically asks, “Who has measured the Spirit of the LORD, or what man shows Him His counsel?” (Isaiah 40:13 ESV). In other words, who does God consult? What authority exists over Him that He should submit to in order to do as He wishes? The obvious answer is no one. He Himself is the counsel and standard. He doesn’t depend on anything to exist. In this way we demonstrate that God is the necessary, self-sufficient presupposition for all predication on anything regarding existence.

TR-Onlyism as Presuppositionalism?

It is upon this basis, and the basis of God’s sovereignty over time and space (the reformed doctrine of predestination) that the TR-only movement attempts to stand to demonstrate the validity of their position. As I said, presuppositional apologetics is essentially a reformed apologetic, and most of the TR people are reformed, being heavily influenced by the Reformers themselves, which is natural if they advocate the Textus Receptus (again, despite it being of a Roman Catholic priest). Reformed apologetics also has at its core the presupposition that the Spirit is who convicts men of sin, carries His saints, and it is the word of God, the inerrant sufficiency of God-breathed Scripture that brings God’s elect unto salvation. Therefore, the Scriptures are a divine revelation.

All of this I agree with, but the issue lies in utilizing this presupposition in defense of the TR, or even the majority text. The TR-only advocates believe that the Textus Receptus is the standard for all translations of the Bible in the same way that God Himself is the standard for all existence. A conflation seems to be involved here in arguing that since God is ontologically over and above His creation, His breathed-out word is as well, and hence is not tainted with the mist of time and the errors of man.

There really is a kind of new revelation concept coming from this movement, whether they will admit that or not. The idea is that at least 1500 years after the apostles and their writings and the Septuagint translation, etc., God gave us something new in the Textus Receptus that makes it over and above these older, therefore incredibly valuable manuscript findings. The TR seals the deal, as it were, and shuts the inquiry up forever. It’s almost as if canon has closed… again. For real this time.

The argument is, let’s toss aside these new findings and just stick with the TR as our standard text. The reasons for doing so may vary, but the premise is the same: the Textus Receptus is our ultimate text and why? Because the Reformers used it. It is a Protestant principle. Because the confessions and creeds of the Reformation utilize translations based on the TR, that makes it the inspired text, and to be reformed, and hence, to hold to reformed apologetics, you have to hold this position.

The problem is that saying that God is the presupposition for any predication of knowledge and truth is very different than saying that one particular received text, which was made through textual criticism that these people mostly reject, are the same concept. The former is a valid form of circular argumentation, and why? Because as we have shown, He is Himself the standard, He is self-sustaining, self-attested and by Him and through Him all things exist. That cannot be said of the ladder. The ladder came into existence at one point, and its existence depends upon prior manuscripts to exist. It does not derive its existence from itself.

I anticipate an objection at this point, and that is, “Doesn’t that then mean that divine revelation depends on Paul to exist?” After all, if I am going to say that the Textus Receptus exists based upon prior, external forces, doesn’t that mean God’s breathed-out Scripture does as well? Doesn’t that subject God to His creation? Well, the problem here again is an issue with categories, and arguing from a presupposition that the Textus Receptus is itself divine revelation. It is not, and this claim demonstrates a very subtle, yet serious confusion between divine revelation and a translation of divine revelation.

What Paul wrote is theopneustos (God-breathed). What scribes and translators centuries down the road copied of what Paul wrote through the ages is not theopneustos, and that I think is the real problem. This is a real confusion between divine revelation and transmission of that revelation into different languages and into mass quantity.

Ecclesiastical Authority Over Scripture

My concern here is the abuse of presuppositionalism, and perhaps a misunderstanding of what it actually is. Not long ago, in a post in the Reformed Presuppositional Apologetics group, someone had asked the group what our response would be to the accusation of corruption making the Bible unreliable. I read through some of the responses and though there were some truths, a good majority of the arguments demonstrated that within the reformed community are people who want to assert presuppositional apologetics who are having trouble understanding what it is.

The majority of answers were to respond by asking the accusers “What’s your standard?” There is an important time and place for that question, but the fact is that the question was directed to you, not them. Can you answer the question? Among many Christians claiming to hold presuppositional apologetics, there seems to be the idea that this justifies irrational responses, dismissing of objections and just throwing out, “What’s your standard?” everywhere, and that evidence serves virtually no purpose in any apologetic context. Listening to some of the TR-onlyists Dr. White was in dialogue with, some of them made the claim that because God is sovereign over time, He therefore can preserve the TR, and use heretics like Erasmus to do it. The problem is that not only is that really a simplistic answer, but I can use that just as well to defend textual criticism. If God can preserve His word in the TR, despite sinful men and through sinful men, why can He not preserve His word in the history of textual criticism, despite and through sinful men?

The fact of the matter is that presuppositional apologetics is not the outright refusal to engage objections through evidence. No one suggests of course that evidence is how we know God exists. Evidence is what supports God’s existence, and Christians should therefore not be afraid of it. This again is how we find the balance so that we don’t go overboard on either side of the boat.

It is upon this misunderstanding of what presuppositional apolgetics is that I think people tend to flock towards using ecclesiastical means to further defend this perspective. People seem to have confused presuppositionalism with sola ecclesia, the idea that the church being the institution of God, is a divine revelation in and of itself. In some sense, perhaps that is true, but things get dangerous when we treat the church as a heavenly institution, and being led by the Spirit hence makes infallible claims of authority over, in this case, translations of sacred Scripture.

I don’t think such persons do this intentionally, and I want to emphasize that. I’m not going to stoop to the childish ad hominem tactics of accusing the other side of being a quasi-Romanist bunch. But what I am saying is that despite our wanting to say one thing, we might actually be pushing something else when we confuse different things together, such as the difference between God’s self-attesting, necessity of being for any and all existence, and transmissions by other humans of God’s revelation to mankind. That becomes very dangerous. This is the kind of thinking that has begun to elevate the confessions and creeds of the Reformation to the standard of Scripture.

The Danger of Tradition

Many reformed Christians seem to have a greater instinct to fall back on the confessions rather than Scripture. I myself have read the creeds and confessions as a reformed Christian. I think they are great, wonderful tools of clarity. But I would not consider myself strictly confessional. Although I think they’re great, I’m not all that fascinated with them. Reading the works of the great Reformers is also a wonderful, important element of learning. I love reading Calvin’s Institutes regularly. But my friends, we must be careful not to treat these men as modern-day apostles. I think we are more prone to this than we like to admit.

I had a friend who just recently converted from a reformed baptist to Roman Catholic and it shocked me. He is a smart young man, who I thought was solid in the reformed faith. I found myself one day contemplating how such a smart young man, a great thinker and defender of the faith of the apostles could end up crossing the Tiber River (converting to Roman Catholicism). I think the answer lies in becoming too immersed in the writings of the church fathers over and above the Scriptures that establish them.

Don’t misunderstand me, I am not saying that church history is not important. It’s my love of church history that makes me write this article, and to defend textual criticism over this kind of textual ecclesiasticism. What I am saying is that I think many if not most of the converts to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy happen because men put far too much faith in the church than they do the Scriptures. They confuse the words of church fathers with sacred Scripture itself.

We cannot afford to do that, and we also cannot afford to think that because we are reformed, because we carry the gospel in its most crystallized essence from the Apostles, we are immune to falling for traditions over and above Scripture. It troubles me when I hear reformed Christians speak of Calvinism as being “the gospel”. It’s not an utterly untrue statement, but it can be taken as one. I’m uncomfortable with it, and avoid it myself.

I think of John the Baptist when he rebuked the Pharisees and Sadducees. He told them to repent, for the kingdom of God was at hand, and before they even opened their mouth in response, what did he tell them? Do not presume that because you are sons of Abraham that you are safe. The promise doesn’t come by privilege (Matthew 3:7-10). In the same way, we cannot presume to think that because we stand on reformed confessions, creeds, and synods that we are safe. That is the heart and sole of sola ecclesia, not Sola Scriptura. The two are not the same thing by any stretch of the imagination, and to confuse them is costly.

Conclusion

As I said in my opening, I am not a professional in this area. In fact, I have run this article by a friend of mine who is much more knowledgeable of this subject than I am so that I don’t get anything wrong. But while I can certainly, as an untrained layperson in this subject, get certain facts wrong, this doesn’t mean that I cannot grasp the basic issue of this subject.

Listening to the TR-only arguments against Dr. White as he goes through them on The Dividing Line are stunning. Much of my criticisms in this article are based on those responses that I could not believe I was hearing. The issue here is not complicated at all. Most of Dr. White’s criticisms go completely ignored, such as, if the TR is the basis of all proper translations (which again, exists based upon prior manuscripts that exist in the history of textual criticism), what in the world were the church fathers using in the forth and fifth century in Nicaea and Chalcedon?

But the response, so far as I can tell, has been nothing, because as Dr. White has said, tradition is being defended, not truth. Tradition is presumptuous, tradition is a pseudo-truth. It pretends to be a standard when it’s really just an empty shell that profits no one. The essence of the Reformation was to challenge the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church. But my friends, brothers and sisters, we cannot afford to presume on the Reformation itself. Like all good literature, Reformation writings and teachings point you to Christ, they don’t claim to be the door or gate themselves.

This of course doesn’t go for all the TR advocates. I wanted to be very careful to differentiate between TR-onlyists, and TR-preference. If you prefer the Textus Receptus, that’s fine. If you think it’s more reliable, that is fine too. But this becomes dangerous when it becomes a fundamental, it becomes a kind of dogma, because it has no basis in foundational truth, and when you are standing upon something that is not self-attested, founded and rooted in truth, the only thing left is traditionalism, and the only thing that can defend that is ecclesiasticism, which is what the Reformation was fighting.

Author: Chase Orosco

My name is Chase, I live in Texas. I am a Christian, saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. My life and all that I do is to reflect Christ and His glorious gospel. I am an author of the short story “The Champion King of the Remnant” meant to illustrate the divine power of Christ to save all those who have been given to Him by the Father (John 6:39). I have more stories in the works! All of them meant with the sole purpose of glorifying God in this world. I am of a Reformed background, one of those dreadful, mean Calvinists. My desire is to share the gospel message in my writing, to point people to Christ, and be willing to go against a culture that grows increasingly hostile to the Lordship of Christ. I could go on, but I will close simply by saying that I love the Bible, I enjoy theology, philosophy (as long as it doesn’t stray from a meaningful theological foundation), fantasy/fiction, reading, novel-writing, storytelling; I love good music, art, hiking and beholding God’s glorious creation everywhere I go. View all posts by Chase Orosco