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'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.