I've been enjoying your blog since I found it, I wanted to say how much I appreciate what you write before I disagree with you. You said, ' As true as that may be, the marrow of debate, however, arises when one postures that such revelation is sufficient for salvation, that is, for justifying faith.' But what I read is not that faith saves or justifies. It is by Grace you have been saved, through faith, and that not your own.(Eph 2 obviously) So it is grace that is justifying with faith only being a vehicle by which sovereign, illimitable grace sometimes acts. The crucial point is that our hope is not in faith of whatever sort, it is in a God who justifies men who we think He will not save and honestly think He should not save. We cannot confine Him to any means of salvation. He acts through any means He chooses, through no means when He chooses, and in spite of all means when He chooses. While it would be wrong for me to teach that for example baptism is salvific, if the Lord chooses He could use baptism as a sole and effective means of salvation in a particular case, even a ridiculous missionary hurling water at an ignorant crowd of natives.(I choose a deliberately offensive example.) The crucial distinction of justification by grace through faith vs justification by faith(a perfect formulation when used as antithetical to works but not perfect in all instances), takes us from an uncertain confidence in our own faith, made into an effective cause of salvation,-making the faithful their own saviors, to a hope in a Christ who cannot be bought or controlled into justifying us but may be trusted to justify us with no reason at all outside His own goodness and love.
I concur with your comment, Jon. Which is just to say that we are likely not as dissimilar in our thinking as you might perceive. I am an ardent proponent of the Reformational tenet of sola fide, and would affirm the true of that at any cost. I understand the point you are making, though, when you say that it is grace that saves and that faith is merely the channel of that salvation. When I wrote about "justifying faith," I was merely trying to contrast the faith to which one can arrive through general revelation versus the faith that actually saves, e.g. the faith that clings to the gracious salvation wrought in the passion and death of the Christ of God. I hope that offers a little point of clarification. And I hope you keep reading!
I will. I enjoy your columns and your encouragement. Kind of my experience is that 'the Grace Guy' is usually alone. Everyone else is talking about morality as if it is the Gospel and you are trying to find a way to say, 'but what about being set free from all of the things which you could not be free from under the Law', without starting a war and feeling unwelcome and like an outsider AGAIN. I guess I has been almost 8 years since we got our church going, a very small community of those broken by the Church but still clinging to the Gospel and set out to heal one another. That's why I moved the ComfortwithTruth website to substack, so many independent thinkers and outcasts of various kinds come here, a perfect place to preach the Gospel.
I've been enjoying your blog since I found it, I wanted to say how much I appreciate what you write before I disagree with you. You said, ' As true as that may be, the marrow of debate, however, arises when one postures that such revelation is sufficient for salvation, that is, for justifying faith.' But what I read is not that faith saves or justifies. It is by Grace you have been saved, through faith, and that not your own.(Eph 2 obviously) So it is grace that is justifying with faith only being a vehicle by which sovereign, illimitable grace sometimes acts. The crucial point is that our hope is not in faith of whatever sort, it is in a God who justifies men who we think He will not save and honestly think He should not save. We cannot confine Him to any means of salvation. He acts through any means He chooses, through no means when He chooses, and in spite of all means when He chooses. While it would be wrong for me to teach that for example baptism is salvific, if the Lord chooses He could use baptism as a sole and effective means of salvation in a particular case, even a ridiculous missionary hurling water at an ignorant crowd of natives.(I choose a deliberately offensive example.) The crucial distinction of justification by grace through faith vs justification by faith(a perfect formulation when used as antithetical to works but not perfect in all instances), takes us from an uncertain confidence in our own faith, made into an effective cause of salvation,-making the faithful their own saviors, to a hope in a Christ who cannot be bought or controlled into justifying us but may be trusted to justify us with no reason at all outside His own goodness and love.
I concur with your comment, Jon. Which is just to say that we are likely not as dissimilar in our thinking as you might perceive. I am an ardent proponent of the Reformational tenet of sola fide, and would affirm the true of that at any cost. I understand the point you are making, though, when you say that it is grace that saves and that faith is merely the channel of that salvation. When I wrote about "justifying faith," I was merely trying to contrast the faith to which one can arrive through general revelation versus the faith that actually saves, e.g. the faith that clings to the gracious salvation wrought in the passion and death of the Christ of God. I hope that offers a little point of clarification. And I hope you keep reading!
I will. I enjoy your columns and your encouragement. Kind of my experience is that 'the Grace Guy' is usually alone. Everyone else is talking about morality as if it is the Gospel and you are trying to find a way to say, 'but what about being set free from all of the things which you could not be free from under the Law', without starting a war and feeling unwelcome and like an outsider AGAIN. I guess I has been almost 8 years since we got our church going, a very small community of those broken by the Church but still clinging to the Gospel and set out to heal one another. That's why I moved the ComfortwithTruth website to substack, so many independent thinkers and outcasts of various kinds come here, a perfect place to preach the Gospel.