Sola Fide (Faith Alone): The Past, Present, and Future Hope of the Gospel (Part I/II)
by Kevin L. Hester
Outside of sola scriptura, the reformation principle of sola fide stands as the most central and divisive doctrinal distinction between Protestants and Roman Catholics today. In addition, the development of the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone impacted soteriology and pushed Christian doctrine forward in ways not seen in the Church since the great ecumenical councils.[1]
Luther’s ressourcement of Paul’s writings centered attention on two themes: (1) how Christ alone, having paid the penalty for our sin, satisfies the justice of God, and (2) how Christ’s righteousness rather than the works of fallen (or redeemed) humankind merit salvation for all who are united to Him in faith. Scripture alone taught that Christ alone worked salvation for humanity by grace alone appropriated to the believer by faith alone. Thus, the development of the Protestant concept of faith alone defined faith in the context of the gospel.
“Faith” in the Reformers
The medieval church following Hebrews 11:1 understood faith to be the maintenance of belief as expressed in the Apostle’s Creed.[2] The Protestant reformers, however argued that faith, understood in an intellectual fashion, was not sufficient for salvation. They taught that faith is more than belief, though it includes it. Faith is believing and trusting. The Reformers’ understanding shifts from an emphasis upon faith as a human virtue to its presence in the believer as a gift of God’s grace. Luther further developed the emphasis found in Thomas Aquinas on faith as an act of the will.[3] However,, Luther, expanded this aspect of faith to include personal trust (fiducia) in God’s provision for the sinner on the cross. Faith was the beginning of a relationship with Christ.[4]
Luther further defined faith as the instrument that binds the believer to Christ. Faith is the God-ordained means of our union with Christ. By faith, and not because of faith, we are justified. Through faith God “pledges his troth” to us. Luther often uses the image of the “wedding band” to describe justifying faith as our means of union with Christ and draws from Paul’s famous analogy in Ephesians 5.[5] In this union rests all hope for salvation.
By Grace Alone Through Faith Alone
As the means of the believer’s union with Christ, faith alone served as the guarantor of God’s grace in salvation. The principle of sola fide defines the greatness of God’s grace. This is based in an accurate picture of God’s absolute holiness and justice and an accurate picture of human sins against an infinite God.
Luther would express his new understanding of justification as a theology of the cross, which he contrasted with the nominalist theology of glory. In order to really see how radical his shift is, we must first gain a better idea of the understanding of justification that was current at the time.
Human merits and demerits on the divine scale of God’s nature
Since at least the time of Augustine, the Church had understood that salvation was entirely due to the grace of God. This grace was manifested in the faith of the believer that came about as a result of regeneration. Regeneration was the work of the Spirit as communicated by the grace of baptism. Baptism, in this sacramental understanding, cleansed the believer from the guilt of original sin and enacted grace in the life of the believer that would lead to a life of charity toward God and others. As believers sinned, they had recourse to the sacraments of reconciliation (penance) and the Mass.
These sacraments would continue to communicate grace to the believer in the forgiveness of sins and sanctifying of good works. Salvation would be accomplished for each individual as he or she stood before Christ at the judgment. Inasmuch as the believer has participated with the graces thus communicated and manifested a life of charity to God and others, their efforts would be sanctified and recognized by God as merits. Thus, if the merits were sufficient to justify God’s acceptance, they would enter into the beatific vision.[6]
Though some of Luther’s early writings seem to echo a similar position on justification, his developing doctrine of justification by faith alone[7] “shattered the entire theology of merits and indeed the sacramental-penitential basis of the church itself.” [8] Only Christ’s work on the cross could assuage the guilt of humanity, and God is reconciling the world to Himself through Christ and His work. Human merits can accomplish nothing; indeed, they are necessary. Salvation comes only by the grace of God and only through his true merits appropriated by faith.
Declaration/Imputation vs. Impartation/Divinization
This realization also led to a shift in the way salvation was understood in the Church. Earlier believers had understood salvation to be a process either of divinization (as in the East) or as the impartation of holiness and the healing of our sinful nature (as in the West). However, Luther’s teaching on salvation by grace alone through faith alone placed the emphasis upon faith and God’s immediate reconciliation with the sinner by virtue of his or her union with Christ.
For Augustine, the believer was justified through a process by which righteousness was given to him or her by God. For Luther, justification occurs when the absolute righteousness of God is imputed or credited to the sinner by virtue of his or her union with Christ. In Luther we see a shift in the understanding of justification from ontological and progressive as in Augustine to a forensic understanding of imputation. The righteousness that produces justification is “alien” to the believer because it is Christ’s, but becomes the believer’s righteousness by virtue of the union brought about by faith. Luther makes application of both Christ’s passive and active obedience (righteousness) to the believer as appropriated through faith.[9]
Part two of this essay will post on Wednesday.
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About the Author: Kevin Hester is the Dean of the School of Theology at Welch College and member of the Free Will Baptist Commission for Theological Integrity.
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[1] The principle of sola fide led to great advances in the understanding of the process of salvation as justification and sanctification and expanded the Church’s understanding of the role and activity of the Holy Spirit in the application of salvation.
[2] Using Hebrews 11:1, Thomas Aquinas asserts that faith as a theological virtue is a “habit of the mind by which eternal life begins in us, a habit which makes the intellect assent to things that are not apparent” (Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, q. 14 (“On Faith”).
[3] Thomas says, “But in faith the assent and the cogitation are, as it were, on equal footing. For the assent is caused not by the cogitation but, as was said above, by the will.” Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, q. 14 (“On faith”), III.
[4] Timothy George explains, “Luther insisted that we appropriate God’s grace, and hence are declared righteous, by faith alone. Faith is here understood as fiducia, personal trust, reliance, a grasping or taking hold of Christ. . . . Only after overcoming the view of faith as a virtue formed by love could Luther embrace the full meaning of fiducia as relationship with God. . . . .Luther was careful to guard against the temptation to consider faith itself a meritorious work. Properly speaking, faith itself does not justify; it is, so to speak, the receptive organ of justification. It does not cause grace to be, but merely becomes conscious of something already in existence. To have faith is to accept the acceptance which is ours in Jesus Christ. But this is not a self-generated human activity; it is a gift of the Holy Spirit” (George, Theology of the Reformers (Nashville: Broadman, 1988), 70-71. John Calvin also emphasized faith as an act of the will in the context of a relationship with Christ. Though he recognized the mind’s involvement he says, faith is “more of the heart than of the brain, more of the disposition than of the understanding” (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.2.8).
[5] In The Liberty of a Christian, Luther writes, “Faith unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom. As Paul teaches us, Christ and the soul become one flesh by this mystery (Ephesians 5:31-2). And if they are one flesh and the marriage is real . . . then it follows that everything that they have is held in common, whether good or evil. So the believer can boast of and glory in whatever Christ possesses, as though it were his own. Let us see how this works and how it benefits us. Christ is full of grace, life and salvation. The human soul is full of sin, death and damnation. Now let faith come between them. Sin, death and damnation will then be Christ’s; and grace, life and salvation will be the believer’s” (quoted in Alister E. McGrath, Reformation Thought: An Introduction [Oxford: Blackwell, 1993], 99).
[6] Augustine exemplifies this understanding when reflecting on Jesus’ words in the parable of the sheep and goats in Matthew 25. He says, “You shall therefore go into the kingdom, not because you have not sinned, but because you have redeemed your sins by alms. . . . For if turning away from all these your deeds, and turning to Me, you had redeemed all those crimes and sins by alms, those alms would now deliver you, and absolve you from the guilt of so great offenses; for, ‘Blessed are the merciful, for to them shall be shown mercy’” (Augustine, Fathers of the Church, Sermons on the New Testament [Augustine], Sermon 10, paragraph 10, trans. R.G. MacMullen, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 6, ed. Philip Schaff [Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature, 1888], revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight; http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/160310.htm; accessed October 2, 2017; Internet.
[7] Luther’s awakening seems to have come sometime during 1515 and 1516 as he lectured on St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans. He was continuously troubled by his conscience and terribly frightened by the portent of the justice and judgment of God mentioned in its early chapters. And then came the dawn. He says, “I was in desperation to know what Paul meant in this passage. At last, as I meditated day and night on the words ‘the righteousness of God is revealed in it, as it is written, the just shall live by faith,’ I began to understand that ‘righteousness of God’ as that by which the righteous person lived by the gift of God (faith); and this sentence, ‘the righteousness of God is revealed,’ to refer to a passive righteousness, by which the merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, ‘the righteous person lives by faith.’ This immediately made me feel as though I had been born again, and as though I had entered through open gates into paradise itself. From that moment, I saw the whole face of Scripture in a new light” (quoted in McGrath, Reformation Thought, 95).
[8] George, 72.
[9] This focus was further developed by Luther’s successor Philip Melanchthon. Melanchthon takes the believer into the heavenly court where God’s judgment is based upon the believer’s union with Christ through faith. In theology and terms he borrowed from Luther, he expresses that justification is primarily a declaration by God the judge that we are righteous because of the alien righteousness we obtain by virtue of this union with Christ. This understanding of justification (and the consummate development of the idea of sanctification) will be “taken up by virtually all the major reformers subsequently, (and) . . . represent a standard difference between Protestant and Roman Catholic from then on” (see McGrath, Reformation Thought, 108).
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