Thursday Theology #626
June 10, 2010
Topic: Faith Alone--Still a Minority Opinion?
Colleagues,
FYI, here's a slice of recent correspondence.
One of my good friends in the American Society of Missiology is Dana L.
Robert, Professor of World Mission. Boston University. School of Theology,
since 1984. She is one of the superstars in the field. Her publications list
is loooong. At discussions arising at the annual meeting of the ASM (coming
up again next weekend) she and I are often on the same page. A lifelong
Methodist, she frequently draws on Lutheran Reformation theology when at the
mike. So last time I asked her: How come? "Well," she said, "my doctorate
is from Yale. George Lindbeck and Jaroslav Pelikan, Paul Holmer were my
teachers. What else would you expect?"
Last week Thursday (June 3) Dana gave the opening address at the 100th
anniversary celebration in Edinburgh, Scotland, commemorating the pioneering
1910 World Missionary Conference held in that city. [You can find it on the
web. Just Google her name.]
But that is not where I wanted to go with this one. Maybe next time, or
after our own ASM meeting next weekend. Dana and I occasionally post each
other via email. Not long ago I sent her this:
Dear Dana,
In yesterday's weekly print edition (May 17, 2010) of the Christian Science
Monitor, we have this quotation from "Stephen Prothero, [who] is a
professor of religion at Boston University, specializing in American religion."
"In Christianity the problem is sin, the solution (or goal) is salvation,
the technique for achieving salvation is some combination of faith and good
works."
If that quote is accurate, Prothero's "specialization in American religion"
needs remedial help, possibly from a BU course in Reformation Theology
101. Or just a brief Kaffeeklatsch with you.
Even if one doesn't read Latin, Luther's "sola fide" for salvation is
easily translatable into the English of "American religion." And it is not a
faith-and combination.
Despite the shrinking numbers, there are still millions of USA Lutherans
who decry the "combination" model that your colleague proposes. Often so
daring as to cite St. Paul (Galatians) as their ally, they even go so far as
to designate the combo model an "other " gospel. Taking their more immediate
cues from the Augsburg Confession's 1520 protest contra the
semi-pelagianism of late medieval church life, some of them still are "protestant" when
faith-and-works-salvation pops up again in more modern versions.
Sounds like Prothero needs some help. Isn't this a case, Dana, of Esther
4:14B?
Seems so to me. And you are THERE! And so is he!
Peace and Joy!
Ed Schroeder
Dear Ed,
He's at the Boston University's Religion department, not over where I am in
BU's School of Theology. But he was my student. I tried.
Dana
So I wrote to Prothero myself.
Dear Stephen,
I don't know you, but I do know Dana Robert. She told me that she was once
your teacher.
Your recent prose in the Christian Science Monitor caught my attention, and
I sent Dana this note:
[And then I copied to him my letter to Dana printed above.]
And he responded.
In a message dated 5/18/10 11:58:27 AM, prothero@bu.edu writes:
If you read my Christianity chapter in my book I don't think you'll be
upset. That said, I stand by what I said, though I would never stand
by your reading of it. Note first of all that I am trying to sum up
the purpose/goal/technique of Christianity in one sentence. So there
has to be some generalization going on. Second, I am describing
CHRISTIANITY, not Protestantism or even Lutheranism. In the Christian
tradition, Christians fight as you well know about what combination of
faith and works is required for salvation. Some Protestants of course
go the faith only route, though as Nancy Ammerman of BU has discovered
MANY Protestants today are "Golden Rule" Christians who believe you are
saved basically by works. Catholics of course have typically said you
need both. But the broader point is that Christians debate what
combination is necessary.
Finally, I would add that I don't believe
even "sola fides" Protestants really think the mix is 100-0. Most will
go for at least 99% to 1%, which is still a combination. The faith of
the axe murderer is suspect only because the "works" work against him.
This won't satisfy you, of course, but it may explain what I was doing
in that particular sentence.
Steve
So I responded:
In a message dated 5/18/10 11:58:27 AM, prothero@bu.edu writes:
Second, I am describing
CHRISTIANITY, not Protestantism or even Lutheranism.
Steve,
Ay, there's the rub.
Just as there are many DIFFERENT world religions, as your CSM page so
rightly claims--and they are NOT going up the same mountain--so also there are
many different Christianities (plural)--also not going up the same mountain.
Sola fide Augsburg confessionalism and semi-pelagianism (or full-force
pelagianism) are not scaling the same mountain. These are two different
mountains each claiming to be authentic Christ-grounded responses to what happened
on Mt. Tabor and Mt. Calvary. Any "combination of faith and works for
salvation" is de facto semi-pelagianism. In its pure form a millennium and a half
ago in the time of Augustine it was officially declared to be heresy. That
negative verdict (even if mistaken) says: You and we are not climbing the
same mountain.
Ditto for different mountains in the several different versions of ISLAM.
That's true, I'd say, even if they were not at times eliminating their
opponents for being too "other-ish" about what the mountain really is.
And might this also be true about Buddhism vis-a-vis what's going on in
Bangkok these days?
Long time ago our pastoral conference here in St. Louis listened to a
Reformed Jewish rabbi take us through a new translation of the Hebrew scriptures
done by Jewish scholars. Somewhere along the line someone asked him:
"Would an orthodox Jewish rabbi agree with this exegesis you've just given us of
this passage?" Answer: "No. That's a different religion."
Even if these 3 world religions do have more commonalities among their
various denominations, amongst Christians it's patently a corpus mixtum.
My suggestion for a definition of the abstraction "Christianity" is to say:
Except for Jesus being central in some way, thereafter things get fuzzy.
First of all, in what way is Jesus central? New Moses? Guru? Suffering
Servant?
Already in the NT documents there is conflict about the meaning of
following Christ. The common denominator among these conflicting groups was their
claim to be doing just that: following Christ. But from that agreed-upon
traffic circle the roads went off in different directions. In the 2000 years
of church history since then, that traffic pattern hasn't changed.
Then as now, all Christians are not going up the same "Christian" mountain.
From Mt. Calvary they go off in different directions to climb
denominationally specific mountains. Some of these individual denominational mountains
are more patently Calvary-congruent (theologia crucis) than others
(theologia gloriae). But that debate continues. It was always so.
Perhaps it's your chosen term "COMBINATION of faith and works" that caught
my attention. Fundamental in the Augsburg Confession (1530) and
Melanchthon's defense thereof [Apologia (1531)] is his exegetical sortie through the
NT for the [in Latin] "particulae exclusivae," those "little words"
(particles) in the NT Greek text that "exclude" all attempts to add something to
faith alone. I.e., any attempt to propose "combinations" of faith and something
else as the basis for salvation. In his rhetoric "combination" is a dirty
word. He claims to have NT support in these exclusive particles in the
Greek language. And he was a super-pro in Greek. So he might be right.
Does CSM ever publish op ed pieces? You're in Boston. That's their home
base too, right? Why don't you check.
Peace and Joy!
Ed Schroeder
So far, no rejoinder.
Another item about faith alone.
In the kerfuffle about faith in St. Paul's theology--is it the faith OF
Jesus, or faith IN Jesus, that rescues sinners--one of the major players on
the "OF" side is Douglas A. Campbell (Duke University professor) with his
1000-page "The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification
in Paul" (2009).
In an interview that I found on the web, there was this:
How does your understanding of the nature of the Christ-event differ from
standard Evangelical-Reformed and Barthian approaches?
I would want to suggest fairly firmly that it doesn't, although a lot
depends on what you mean by the word "standard" here. I view my understanding as
a thoroughly Evangelical (particularly in the broader, German sense),
Reformed, and Barthian construal of the Christ event that draws directly on
theological work that stands squarely in these interpretative
traditions-especially Irenaeus, the late Augustine, the Cappadocians, Athanasius, Calvin, parts
of Luther, McLeod Campbell, Barth, and the Torrances. (Some of my
colleagues at Duke insist that Aquinas and/or Wesley, rightly understood, belong here
as well!) Indeed, I see myself very much as attempting to clarify and
affirm this set of traditions as clearly as I can. But I hope that my
understanding is also thoroughly catholic as well, not to mention Catholic in the best
sense.
I view Ernst Käsemann as wonderfully insightful, but also deeply
ambivalent. Although associated with apocalyptic, and clear-sightedly opposed to any
foundationalist salvation-history, much of his reconstrual is still quite
Lutheran, and that makes him something of a mixed bag for me.
So maybe it's NOT "just exegesis," but confessional commitments, that are
the deep center of this debate.
Notice this: "PARTS of Luther," but no such "parts" on the list of recent
Reformed theologians. And that Käsemann reference! "Still quite Lutheran,
and (therefore) a mixed bag for me."
Sounds like another verification of Bertram's axiom: "Biblical hermeneutics
is at no point separate from Biblical soteriology." [RSV: "How you read
the Bible is at no point separate from how you think people get saved."]
Faith alone is about how people get saved. It's also the Lutheran lens for how
to read the Bible.
