The Gift of Salvation
On November 13, 1997, ecumenical Christian humanists
(1)
published their second manifesto, entitled
THE GIFT OF SALVATION. This new document is largely the formal response to
the negative reactions (Protestants, Independent, and some Catholics) generated by their
first ecumenical declaration of March 29, 1994, entitled EVANGELICALS AND CATHOLICS
TOGETHER (ECT). (2)
Both the documents and signers represent an effort to
establish common ground and ecumenical solidarity primarily amongst the Anglo-Catholic
denominations (3).
However, the content and wording are heavily weighted in the direction of making
Catholicism acceptable to those outside the Catholic fold, rather that the other way
around.
While some may disagree, reference to the term
"Evangelical" in this context primarily means "non-sacramental," and
should not be equated with the large numbers of Christians who historically have not
shared this group's humanist philosophy (4).
We have inserted our comments between the various
paragraphs of the document shown in the maroon text below.
THE GIFT OF SALVATION
"For God so loved the world that
he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal
life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the
world might be saved through him." (John 3:16,17)
We give thanks to God that in recent
years many Evangelicals and Catholics, ourselves among them, have been able to express a
common faith in Christ and so to acknowledge one another as brothers and sisters in
Christ. We confess together one God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; we confess
Jesus Christ the Incarnate Son of God; we affirm the binding authority of Holy Scripture;
God's inspired Word; and we acknowledge the Apostles' and Nicene creeds as faithful
witnesses to that Word.
In our opinion, the
"common faith" spoken of by this group in
not biblical
Christianity. Rather it is a religious system, spanning numerous denominations,
based on the presupposition that mankind possesses indeterministic freedom -- free
will. Its popularity, in part, is due to the vast influence and acceptance of 18th
century Enlightenment thinking upon contemporary society
(5).
The effectiveness of our witness for
Christ depends upon the work of the Holy Spirit, who calls and empowers us to confess
together the meaning of the salvation promised and accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Through prayer and study of Holy Scripture, and aided by the Church's reflection on the
sacred text from earliest times, we have found that, notwithstanding some persistent and
serious differences, we can together bear witness to the gift of salvation in Jesus
Christ. To this saving gift we now testify, speaking not for, but from and to, our several
communities.
This paragraph seeks to bridge the gap
between those whose basis of authority is Scripture alone versus those who trust in
ecclesiastic (Roman Catholic) tradition. The phrase
"aided by the Church's reflection"
is an attempt to soften Romanism's exclusivistic
claim to authority through a misrepresentation (subterfuge) of Catholic dogma. Those
acquainted with church history in general, and Jesuit casuistry in particular, will
immediately identify the ploy of magnifying apparent similarity and softening down
manifest points of difference. For the Bible-believing Christian,
"prayer and study of Holy Scripture"
within the
context of the sovereign illumination of God the Holy Spirit (not church tradition)
is the only guide for discerning truth and error (John 16:13). For centuries, the
Roman Catholic hierarchy has attempted to usurp the Guide.
God created us to manifest his glory
and to give us eternal life in fellowship with himself, but our disobedience intervened
and brought us under condemnation. As members of the fallen human race, we come into the
world estranged from God and in a state of rebellion. This original sin is compounded by
our personal acts of sinfulness. The catastrophic consequences of sin are such that we are
powerless to restore the ruptured bonds of union with God. Only in the light of what God
has done to restore our fellowship with him do we see the full enormity of our loss. The
gravity of our plight and the greatness of God's love are brought home to us by the life,
suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. "God so loved the world that he
gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal
life." (John 3:16)
Given the record, readers should not be misled into thinking these authors' use of the
word "powerless" to mean that man lacks free will, i.e.,
indeterministic freedom.
For them,
Christ's "life, suffering, death, and resurrection"
was adequate to "restore the ruptured bonds of union with
God" thus making it possible for mankind to exercise their free will and
thus save themselves. To underscore the point, they again quote John 3:16 and
judiously avoid biblical verses like "No one can come to me unless the Father who
sent me draws him..." (John 6:44a) or "It does not, therefore, depend
on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy." (Romans 9:16).
God the Creator is also God the
Redeemer, offering salvation to the world. "God desires all to be saved and come to a
knowledge of the truth." (I Timothy 2:4) The restoration of communion with God is
absolutely dependent upon Jesus Christ, true God and true man, for he is "the one
mediator between God and men" (I Timothy 2:5), and "there is no other name under
heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). Jesus said, "No
one comes to the Father but by me" (John 14:6). He is the holy and righteous one who
was put to death for our sins, "the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might
bring us to God" (I Peter 3:18).
For these evangelicals and Catholics, God
is not allowed to show favor toward certain men in particular. They are like the
workers spoken about in Matthew 20:11. Under their politically-correct doctrine, God
can only universally
"offer"
all mankind an opportunity to save themselves.
Their answer to His statement "Don't I have the right to do what I want
with my own..." is, "No"! This erroneous anti-grace doctrine
coupled with indeterministic free will has been answered for centuries. Yet, it
still is an effective snare.
The New Testament speaks of salvation
in various ways. Salvation is ultimate or eschatological rescue from sin and its
consequences, the final state of safety and glory to which we are brought in both body and
soul. "Since, therefore, we are now justified by his blood, much more shall we be
saved by him from the wrath of God." "Salvation is nearer to us now than when we
first believed" (Romans 5:9, 13:11). Salvation is also a present reality. We are told
that "he saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of
his own mercy" (Titus 3:5). The present reality of salvation is an anticipation and
foretaste of salvation in its promised fullness.
Always it is clear that the work of
redemption has been accomplished by Christ's atoning sacrifice on the cross. "Christ
redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us." (Galatians 3:13).
Scripture describes the consequences of Christ's redemptive work in several ways, among
which are: justification, reconciliation, restoration of friendship with God, and rebirth
from above by which we are adopted as children of God and made heirs of the Kingdom.
"When the time had fully come, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under law,
that we might receive the adoption of sons." (Galatians 4:4-5)
Justification is central to the
scriptural account of salvation, and its meaning has been much debated between Protestants
and Catholics. We agree that justification is not earned by any good works or merits of
our own; it is entirely God's gift, conferred through the Father's sheer graciousness, out
of the love that he bears us in his Son, who suffered on our behalf and rose from the dead
for our justification. Jesus was "put to death for our trespasses and raised for our
justification" (Romans 4:25). In justification, God, on the basis of Christ's
righteousness alone, declares us to be no longer his rebellious enemies but his forgiven
friends, and by virtue of his declaration it is so.
The New Testament makes it clear that
the gift of justification is received through faith, "By grace you have been saved
through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God" (Ephesians
2:8). By faith, which is also the gift of God, we repent of our sins and freely adhere to
the gospel, the good news of God's saving work for us in Christ. By our response of faith
to Christ, we enter into the blessings promised by the gospel. Faith is not merely
intellectual assent but an act of the whole person, involving the mind, the will, and the
affections, issuing in a changed life. We understand that what we here affirm is in
agreement with what the Reformation traditions have meant by justification by faith alone
(sola fide).
The new birth does not issue forth a
"changed life."
God's way of redemption for the Christian is
an "exchanged life." The erroneous concept put forth above is the
result of a deficient understanding of how God has dealt with the First Man - Adam and how
He has recreated members of His body in the Last Adam - The Lord Jesus Christ. We
direct you to
OUR HISTORY IN THE FIRST ADAM and
OUR HISTORY IN THE LAST ADAM
for a detailed
explanation of biblical redemption.
In justification we receive the gift
of the Holy Spirit, through whom the love of God is poured forth into our hearts (Romans
5:5). The grace of Christ and the gift of the Spirit received through faith (Galatians
3:14) are experienced and expressed in diverse ways by different Christians and in
different Christian traditions, but God's gift is never dependent upon our human
experience or our ways of expressing that experience.
The authors' use of
"different"
above is fully inclusive. For them,
the Body of Christ equates to nearly all of organized Christendom. While there is room for
diversity within the Body of Christ, the statement above totally fails to acknowledge the
existence of false doctrine or false teachers. For them, the Holy Spirit's statement
via Paul in 2 Corinthians 11:13-15 is offensive and an embarrassment. They ask,
"Who could he have been talking about?" "To the law and to the
testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in
them" (Isaiah 8:20). We do well to remember that it is the Holy
Spirit that finds expression in Christ's Body.
While faith is inherently personal, it
is not a purely private possession but involves participation in the body of Christ. By
baptism we are visibly incorporated into the community of faith and committed to a life of
discipleship. "We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as
Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness
of life" (Romans 6:4).
Here is the serious error of equating
water baptism with the Spirit's baptism. Romans 6:4 speaks of spiritual baptism
which takes place when we are born from above, born-again and has nothing to do with
water. Failure to make this distinction opens wide the door to various forms of
erroneous doctrine of baptismal regeneration. For more detail, see the article
Baptism?
By their faith and baptism, Christians
are bound to live according to the law of love in obedience to Jesus Christ the Lord.
Scripture calls this the life of holiness, or sanctification. "Since we have these
promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and
spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God." (II Corinthians 7:1)
Sanctification is not fully accomplished at the beginning of our life in Christ, but is
progressively furthered as we struggle, with God's grace and help, against adversity and
temptation. In this struggle we are assured that Christ's grace will be sufficient for us,
enabling us to persevere to the end. When we fail, we can still turn to God in humble
repentance and confidently ask for, and receive, his forgiveness.
Failing to grasp the essence of the
Gospel of Grace, they correctly identify their
sanctification as "struggle".
Their
adherence to Law confines their experience to the realm of Romans 2:17-24 and Romans
7:8-15. Their
"life of
holiness"
is spiritual
adultery -- Romans 7:4.
We may therefore have assured hope for
the eternal life promised to us in Christ. As we have shared in his sufferings, we will
share in his final glory. "We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is."
(I John 3:2) While we dare not presume upon the grace of God, the promise of God in Christ
is utterly reliable, and faith in that promise overcomes anxiety about our eternal future.
We are bound by faith itself to have firm hope, to encourage one another in that hope, and
in such hope we rejoice. For believers "through faith are shielded by God's power
until the coming of the salvation to be revealed in the last time." (I Peter 1:5)
Thus it is that as justified sinners
we have been saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved. All this is the gift of God.
Faith issues in a confident hope for a new heaven and a new earth in which God's creating
and redeeming purposes are gloriously fulfilled. "Therefore God has highly exalted
him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue
confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Philippians
2:9-11).
For the Christian humanist, his assurance
is contingent upon his faith -- which soon becomes no assurance. As Lewis Sperry
Chafer mused, "It is thus demonstrated that the erroneous exaltation of
human ability [free will] in the beginning becomes man's effectual undoing in the end.
Over against this, the man who is totally incompetent [lost and unable to save himself],
falling into the hands of God, who acts in sovereign grace, is saved and safe
forever. It is thus demonstrated that the erroneous exaltation of
human ability [free will] in the beginning becomes man's effectual undoing in the end.
Over against this, the man who is totally incompetent [lost and unable to save himself],
falling into the hands of God, who acts in sovereign grace, is saved and safe
forever."
As believers we are sent into the
world and commissioned to be bearers of the good news, to serve one another in love, to do
good to all, and to evangelize everyone everywhere. It is our responsibility and firm
resolve to bring to the whole world the tidings of God's love and of the salvation
accomplished in our crucified, risen, and returning Lord. Many are in grave peril of being
eternally lost because they do not know the way to salvation.
In obedience to the Great Commission
of our Lord, we commit ourselves to evangelizing everyone. We must share the fullness of
God's saving truth with all, including members of our several communities. Evangelicals
must speak the gospel to Catholics and Catholics to Evangelicals, always speaking the
truth in love, so that "working hard to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond
of peace...the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in
the knowledge of the Son of God" (Ephesians 4:3, 12-13).
Truly, those represented here share a
faith in common -- Christian humanism. However, the Arminian evangelicals, with
their indeterministic free will, are viewed by their liturgical and sacramentalist
"brothers" as spiritual paupers -- possessing the basics but missing all the
blessed add-ons offered by the Roman system. For an example, use your browser's find
function to search for Richard John Neuhaus and J.I. Packer's comments regarding Bill
Bright in
While
We’re At It.
Moreover, we defend religious freedom
for all. Such freedom is grounded in the dignity of the human person created in the image
of God, and must be protected also in civil law
.
These
Anglo-Catholic
denominations all share in a deficient view of the Fall and an
indeterministic philosophy. Beginning with Roman Catholicism, this
doctrinal heresy has been passed down through ecclesiastical history.
As a loose-knit 'family,' the youngest heirs have come full circle.
Efforts now focus on tightening the circle.
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