The Great Salvation

Salvation is a complex and many-sided thing. Christ’s own teachings clearly demonstrate this fact. Nor are the Pauline doctrines less comprehensive. Salvation has a past, a present and a future. It involves a justification which God effects outside of us (for us), a sanctification which Christ effects in us, and a glorification which involves a redeemed environment. When Paul says that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes, he implies the whole salvation is the portion of the believer. All things are ours by faith.

“Faith” Becomes Popular

“Faith” is the in thing today. Philosophers and scientists who once contemptuously rejected this distinctively human function, now speak respectfully of faith. It has in fact become the secret weapon of politicians and the magical charm of the psychologist. A stream of books try to teach us how to have faith in ourselves. Basically President Eisenhouwer summed it all up with the profound advice that we must have “faith in faith” (which may be some kind of idolatry).

Emphasis on Experience

For many years the distinction between historical faith and true saving faith has been recognized. As the bane of a dead orthodoxy marred the faith of seventeenth century Protestantism, many serious ministers began to warn against a mere intellectual faith. Pleas for a vital or experiential faith were heard in both Lutheran and Reformed churches. With the advent of Pietism the issue took on new vigor and a basically new form. Once the object had been to create a vital approach to doctrine. Now Pietism declared all doctrine to be suspect. “No creed but Christ; no doctrine but a life” became the slogan.

“No Creed but Christ”

In its more radical forms Pietism rejected all historic creeds. Sometimes it replaced them with simpler creedal statements or new doctrines . . . More often it tried to present the person of Jesus without any doctrine. While an earlier revivalism had led to a widening gap between a large visible church and a narrow group of true believers, the modern non-doctrinal evangelism seems to have a very different result. Once it was necessary to accept doctrinally and morally a body of truth and hopefully experience and live all this in a vital experimental way. Now one has only to “accept Jesus” or “want to be saved.”

“No Propositional Truth”

Now comes the “existential gospel.” Kuitert in his The Reality of the Faith sees a direct historical and logical connection between Pietism and Existentialism. Only existentialism has gone several steps further. Pietism had irrational elements. Existentialism is irrationalism! Kuitert rightly describes this as the “faith in a Christ of the vanishing point.” The radical existential theologian goes far beyond the Pietist. For the latter, creeds might be true but of little use. For the committed existentialist there is no propositional truth. The purpose of the Gospel and the faith which it creates have little relationship with the historical concept of “true saving faith.” A Christian becomes then that person who experiences true existence or becomes an authentic person through some kind of confrontation with the “Person” of Jesus Christ.

Toward a Meaningless Faith

For most “Christian” existentialists the Gospel need not be factually true. Its truth lies in its effect. Myth serves this end as well as objective truth! Since believing is always and only a momentary experience, “salvation” is at best a series of existential moments. Thus both salvation and faith have lost their Scriptural meaning.

I Must Know My Sin

In all this confusion, the Heidelberg Catechism still serves as a most helpful guide. By placing saving faith in the context of sin and redemption, the Catechism describes the essence of salvation. As we have seen in a previous article and again in existentialism, failure to diagnose the illness inevitably leads to the prescription of a wrong cure. This is not only theoretically true. It is of utmost experiential importance to know “how great my sins and miseries are.” Since sin and the just judgment of a righteous God are not merely a guilt feeling, but objectively real, we need a Savior to deal with the sin problem. Too much modern evangelism has ignored the basic need. Not having begun at the beginning it cannot proceed toward the right ending.

Salvation by True Faith

The Heidelberger, moreover, does not speculate about salvation outside the areas of true faith. Karl Barth seems to have touched off a mass movement toward some kind of universalism. Although he abounds in ambiguous explanations of his position, he always comes back to a humanity forgiven prior to and apart from faith. He does speak about “saved by faith” or “justified by faith” but explains it subjectively as a knowing or experiencing of what is already there for all men. The Catechism takes all of this into t he area of objectivity. “Only those are saved who are ingrafted into Christ by a true faith.” Here no comfort at all is offered to unbelief!

No Universalism

The leaven of a speculative universalism is everywhere. The Roman Catholics talk of the “church incognito” while Protestant missionaries carry on dialogue with other religions. Compromise and cooperation are extended to unbelieving Jews and Rabbis are included in ministerial associations. In a long conversation in Nigeria with the late Dr. Kato, I was given an insight into what he called the “incipient universalism” in African missions. Rightly he insisted on the duty to preach to the pagans as to those who are lost and need to accept Christ to be saved.

Salvation Only by Faith

A modified universalism is being supported by a great variety of speculations. Calvin warned against trying to arrive at salvation from the nature of God rather than from His expressed will. Formerly liberalism argued from a universal fatherhood or an absolute love. To this has been added the “triumph of grace.” Or if there still remain questions one can always appeal for almost any position to the “freedom of God.” One can at least “hope that hell will be empty.” Or try to picture all men redeemed by the very fact of the incarnation.

The list could be longer. But one thing characterizes all of these speculations. They lay the foundation for an unwarranted comfort to the unbeliever. The utmost earnestness of the Gospel is being lost. We can offer to sinful humanity only one way. Saving faith—what is it?