Dr. Luther’s Trick and Treat

 Or

Sola Fide as Catholic Truth

 

We are in Allhallowtide, the period long ago set aside by the Church for the remembrance of those who have passed on before us.   It begins on the 31 October, All Hallows’ Eve, so called because on sacred calendars days are counted from evening to evening, not from midnight to midnight as in secular calendars, and 1 November is All Saints Day.   All Hallows’ Eve is also the anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation for it is on that day in 1517 that Dr. Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg.   This was a great trick on the corrupt Roman Patriarch and those who accepted his usurped supreme jurisdiction over the Church because the Ninety-Five Theses were a devastating critique of corrupt practices, like the sale of indulgences, that the Roman Patriarch – at the time it was Leo X – was using to raise funds.   Soon thereafter, Dr. Luther would provide a wonderful treat for Christian souls by hosing down the doctrine of justification, as taught by St. Paul in the New Testament, and washing away all the mud that had accumulated to obscure it so that it could be viewed in all its peace-and-assurance bringing clarity.

 

Dr.  Luther is often quoted as having said that justification is the article on which the Church stands or falls.   If you go looking through the corpus of Dr. Luther’s works for the exact phrase you will not find it, although you will find the idea stated in different words in multiple places, and the earliest attribution of the saying to him is close enough to his own time that there is no good reason to question its authenticity.   Justification, in the quotation, means the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

 

The Roman Church took a rather different view of the doctrine.   In the Council of Trent, which met from 1545 to 1563 to address the Reformation, the Roman Church pronounced an anathema upon justification by faith alone in the fourteenth canon of the Council’s sixth session in 1547, although the doctrine condemned in the canon is worded in such a way as to be unrecognizable as that which Dr. Luther and the other Reformers taught.       Here are the words of the canon:

 

If any one saith, that man is truly absolved from his sins and justified, because that he assuredly believed himself absolved and justified; or, that no one is truly justified but he who believes himself justified; and that, by this faith alone, absolution and justification are effected; let him be anathema.

 

In the doctrine condemned by this canon, the only content identified for this faith is that one is absolved and justified.   If this were the only content of one’s faith, the Roman Church would indeed be right in condemning the idea that such faith by itself absolved and justified one, for that idea would amount to the claim that one can make something be true by believing it.   You find that sort of idea in a lot of fuzzy, pop, New Age, thinking today, but you will look in vain to find it in the writings of Dr. Luther or Zwingle or Calvin or Archbishop Cranmer.  

 

The Reformation article is quite otherwise than the caricature that is condemned in the Roman canon.   In the Reformation article, the Gospel is the content of saving faith.   The Gospel is the Good News about everything God has done for us in Jesus Christ.  We needed a Saviour because of our sins and God gave us a Saviour, the Saviour He had promised from the Fall.   This Saviour is God’s Only-Begotten Son, that is to say, the Son Who is eternally begotten of God the Father, shares the Father’s nature, and so, like the Father and the Holy Ghost, is the One True God.   God gave Him to us in the Incarnation, in which the Son of God came down to Earth from Heaven, and took on our nature through a miracle wrought by the Holy Ghost in which He was conceived and born to the Virgin Mary and so became fully Man while remaining fully God.   Through this miracle, His human nature was not tainted with sin like ours and so He lived out the righteousness God requires of us all but which we are unable to produce because of our sin.   Then, rejected by the leadership of the people into which He had been born, He was condemned in a mock trial, and crucified at the order of a Roman governor who knew Him to be innocent but wished to appease the mob.   He submitted to this meekly in order that He Who had committed no sin, much less a crime, might die the death of a criminal.   Dying that death, He did what only One Who was both God and sinless Man could do, which was take the burden of all the guilt of the sins of the entire world upon Himself and pay for them once and for all.   Having so expiated the sins of the world and remaining sinless in Himself Death had no claim on Him. He entered Death’s Kingdom as Conqueror and rose triumphantly from the Grave before Ascending back to the right hand of the Father.   By doing all of this Jesus effected the salvation of the world on our behalf and the benefits of that salvation are promised in the Gospel to whosoever believes in Him.

 

Note how I worded that last sentence.  If you compare that with what the Roman canon condemns another way in which the canon misrepresents the Reformation doctrine should become clear.   Faith’s role is not to effect our absolution and justification.   That is what Jesus did in the events of the Gospel.   Our faith’s role is to receive absolution, justification, and indeed, all of the salvation that has been given to us freely in our Saviour Jesus.

 

This is where the stress needs to be when talking about faith in respect to salvation – that its role is that of the hand that receives the free gift which God has given us in Jesus Christ.   Unless we are clear that the role of faith in God’s plan of salvation is instrumental, and instrumental on our part – how we receive the gift God has given – as opposed to instrumental on God’s part – how He brings, confers, and bestows the gift of Jesus Christ and His salvation upon us – justification by faith alone does not make sense.  Sola fide is in the ablative case.   It does not mean just “faith alone” but “by faith alone” and what this expression means is that it is by faith alone that we receive the gift of salvation.   It does not mean that faith, by itself, so pleases God that on the intrinsic merits of faith He accepts us despite our plentiful bad works and deficiency in good ones.   It does not mean that the only thing Christianity asks of people is faith or, to put it another way, that Christianity consists only of believing.   It means that the task of faith in the order of salvation – the receiving, on our part, of the free gift of salvation in Jesus Christ – belongs to faith alone, and that nothing else can either substitute for faith or add to faith in the reception of salvation.

 

That this is what Dr. Luther’s article of justification by faith alone means cannot be emphasized enough.   For while the Church of Rome, in whose eyes Dr. Luther had been poking his fingers, was the only ancient Church to pronounce a formal condemnation of the article, none of the other ancient Churches, except our English Church which joined the Reformation, embraced it.   They regarded it as a novelty because the Fathers, doctors, and theologians of the ancient Churches had not been in the habit of using the word “alone” in conjunction with “faith”.   Neither did St. Paul in the Bible.   What was meant by Sola Fide, however, that faith is the only hand we have with which to receive the gift of salvation, was clearly taught in other words by St. Paul.   We shall have more to say about that shortly.   First I wish to observe that just as the Roman Church’s formal condemnation of Sola Fide at the Council of Trent did not condemn Sola Fide as Dr. Luther taught it, that faith is the sole means by which we appropriate to ourselves the gift of salvation, but a weird caricature of it in which belief creates its own reality, so none of the reasons that the other ancient Churches gave for not affirming it speak to what the article actually says.

 

Consider the objection based upon the role of baptism.   At the end of St. Peter’s sermon on the first Whitsunday (the Christian Pentecost) in the second chapter of Acts, the crowd, under heavy conviction of sin, asked the Apostles “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” and received the answer from St. Peter “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.”   Other passages can be pointed to that stress the role of baptism (1 Peter 3:21, Rom. 6:3-6, Mk. 16:16).   These verses, however, do not say that the role of baptism is the same as that of faith, that of a hand receiving a gift.   Nor is that the Catholic – held by all Christians, everywhere, at all times – understanding of the role of baptism.   Baptism is linked by the Scriptures to three distinct aspects of salvation – regeneration or the new birth, our sins being washed away, and our being joined in union with Jesus Christ.   Baptism is not how we receive these salvific blessings, however, but the ordinary means by which God bestows them upon us.    

 

I will try to make the distinction clearer.   God has given us salvation in our Saviour Jesus Christ.    This took place in the events of the Gospel, from the Incarnation to the Ascension, two millennia ago.   For that salvation to be ours, however, two things must happen.  1.  God must bring the salvation He has given us in Jesus to us.  2.   We must appropriate it to ourselves.    Both of these things involve the use of means or instruments.   God uses means to bring the salvation He has given us to us.   We use means to receive it to ourselves.   The means God uses to bring Jesus Christ and His salvation to us are the Church and her ministries of Word and Sacrament.   The means we use to appropriate Jesus Christ and His salvation to us is faith.

 

Baptism is the Sacrament that God ordinarily uses as His means, along with the Ministry of the Word, in bringing the salvation of Jesus Christ to us for the first time.   This is why it is connected specifically to regeneration, cleansing from sin, and union with Christ.  These are the aspects of salvation that are most prominent as the beginning of the Christian life.    Faith is the means by which we appropriate this salvation to ourselves and make it truly ours.   Baptism is the means God ordinarily uses to confer, faith is the means we always use to receive.  

 

A few words are in order here about what is meant by “ordinarily” and “always”.   It should not be surprising that we speak of the means God uses as ordinary but the means we use as absolute.   This merely means that God does not limit Himself to His appointed means, the way He limits us to ours.   What this means in practice with regards to baptism is that someone who hears the Gospel and believes in Jesus Christ will not be damned for lack of baptism.   This is why Jesus in Mark 16:16 promises salvation to those who believe and are baptized, but pronounces damnation only on those who do not believe.   It also means, however, that those who think this an excuse for neglecting baptism, ought to consider the account of Naaman in 2 Kings 5, and particularly verses 10-13.  

 

It is also important to note that while God always brings salvation, and more specifically regeneration, cleansing from sin, and union with Christ, to us in baptism, they are not ours unless we receive them by faith in Jesus Christ.   In the early Church controversies arose about the efficacy of baptism administered by those who had failed to be faithful witnesses in periods of persecution.   The orthodox Fathers, in answering the Novatians and later the Donatists, maintained soundly that the efficacy of the sacrament does not depend on the worthiness of the minister who administers it.  By the time of the Reformation, many in the Roman Church had twisted these arguments into arguments for the mechanical efficacy of the sacrament, that the salvation conferred through it is ours regardless of faith on our part.  The Reformers, rightly, upheld the original intent of the arguments of St. Augustine et al., that the efficacy of the Sacraments as channels of Grace was not overthrown by the sin of the minister, but, also rightly, rejected the mechanical view, and emphasized that Grace conferred is not received, except by faith.   The only benefit that one receives mechanically upon baptism is external, formal, membership in the Church.   To truly be united to her and her Saviour internally and spiritually requires that the Grace conferred in the Sacrament be received by faith in Jesus Christ.

 

Everything just said about baptism also applies to the other Gospel Sacrament, the Lord’s Supper.   Baptism is the Sacrament through which God bestows on us the initial Grace of regeneration, washing of sin, and union with Jesus Christ, the Lord’s Supper is the Sacrament through which God confers the Grace that sustains the new life in Jesus Christ, by feeding the believer with the spiritual food of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ as broken and shed for us on the Cross in His One True Sacrifice.   As with baptism, so with the Lord’s Supper, God uses the Sacrament as a channel to bestow Grace apart from the worthiness of the minister, but we only receive it by faith in Jesus Christ.

 

The orthodox understanding of the Sacraments as the ordinary means of Grace along with the ministry of the Word, therefore, does not conflict with Sola Fide.    The Sacraments and faith are both instrumental means by which the gift of salvation given to us in Jesus Christ becomes ours, but the Sacraments, or more properly the Church in both of her ministries, is the means God has appointed for Himself to bestow the gift upon us, and faith is the means, the only means, God has appointed for us to receive it.

 

Another objection to Sola Fide is on the grounds of the necessity of repentance.   While some answer this objection by pointing out that in the New Testament, at least, the word translated by repent literally means to change your mind, something that must necessarily occur whenever someone believes for the first time, this does not, I think, do justice to the Scriptural teaching on repentance.   Repentance is not just any change of mind but the kind illustrated by the Prodigal Son’s coming to himself and returning to his father.    The right answer to the objection is to say that while the necessity of repentance is certainly taught and emphasized in the Bible this does not mean that repentance does the same thing as faith, that it shares faith’s place in the Order of Salvation.  Note that in the preaching of John the Baptist, as well as St. Peter’s response to the crowd under conviction in Acts 2, repentance is linked with baptism, whereas in the passages that talk about the beginning of Jesus’ preaching ministry repentance is linked with faith.   Just as repentance does not perform the same function as baptism, neither does it perform the same role as faith.   It is linked to both because it performs the essential auxiliary function of breaking down the pride and self-righteousness which otherwise keep sinful human beings from recognizing their need for the salvation given in Christ, conferred in baptism, and received by faith.    Repentance, therefore, is not another hand with which to receive Grace alongside faith.   It can be likened to the act of emptying the hand that it might receive the gift.

 

This brings us back to the most common objection to Sola Fide, the claim that it was novel, invented in the sixteenth century by Dr. Luther.   This is, on the surface, the most plausible of these objections.   Those who make it appeal to both Scripture and tradition.   The appeal to Scripture consists of the argument that the expression “faith alone” appears only once in the Holy Scriptures and that one occurrence is St. James’ denial in the twenty-fourth verse of the second chapter of his Epistle.   The appeal to tradition is basically that the Church Fathers and those who succeeded them down to the sixteenth century did not speak of “faith alone”.   The first point I wish to make in response to this objection is that the important matter is not whether the Scriptures and Church tradition used the expression “faith alone” but whether or not the idea behind those words is contained in the Scriptures and tradition.    Once again, the idea behind Sola Fide, is that salvation is a gift that we have been given in our Saviour Jesus Christ, and that it is only by believing in Him that we receive this gift.    It does not deny to anything else its place in the Order of Salvation, it merely insists that the place assigned to faith is not shared by anything else, and especially not by human works.    When it is clearly understood that this is what the expression means, this seemingly plausible objection becomes nonsense, for this is clearly taught in the Scriptures, and is implicit in the doctrine that salvation is a gift that God has freely given us in Jesus Christ that is very much a part of the tradition of the Church.   Nobody thinks Sola Gratia was a novelty invented in the sixteenth century.

 

That salvation is a gift means that it cannot be by works and works are what Sola Fide explicitly excludes.   This is common sense.   Something that you get by working for it is not a gift.   It is a wage, a payment, a reward.   You are owed it not given it.   Not only is it common sense, it is Scripture.   St. Paul spelled it out for us explicitly in the fourth chapter of his epistle to the Romans:

 

Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. (Rom. 4:4-5)

 

These words make nonsense out of the claim that the only time the Scriptures mention “faith alone” is the denial in James 2;24.   Indeed, since the “alone” in “faith alone” means “and not by works”, Sola Fide is affirmed throughout the New Testament.   Here are a few examples:

 

Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. (Gal. 2:16)

 

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.  (Eph. 2:8-9)

 

Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.  (2 Tim. 1:9)

 

Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; (Tit. 3:5)

 

Consider that last example.   Some try to explain St. Paul away by claiming that when he denied that we are saved by works he was talking only about ceremonial works and not moral works.    In 2 Timothy 1:9, however, it is clearly “works of righteousness” that St. Paul says we are not saved by.   His entire reasoning in Romans 4 that it cannot be by works because otherwise it would be of debt rather than Grace would collapse if it were only ceremonial and rather than moral works that were in view.

 

Once again we need to remember that Sola Fide means that faith does not share its place in the Order of Salvation, the place of the hand that receives the gift, with anything else.   It does not deny to anything else its proper place.   This is true of works as well.   St. Paul identifies for us what the proper place of works is in regards to salvation in the verse that follows immediately after those in the above verses from Ephesians:

 

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

 

The place of works in the Order of Salvation, is not prior to salvation as a cause, but after salvation as an effect.  I recently watched a video in which a clergyman claimed that Sola Fide was the weakest of the Reformation doctrines.   I won’t embarrass him by naming him since he is usually much sounder than this but he spent some time criticizing the idea that works are the evidence of faith, which he seemed to think to be the only role available for works in the Protestant scheme.   Evidence for whom, he asked?   For us?  For God?   Neither is very satisfactory.   Evidence of faith, however, is not the role assigned to works, but fruit of salvation.   As has been pointed out many times in the past it is a matter of getting things in their proper order, identifying the cause and effect.   We do not do good works in order to be saved.   We are saved in order that we might do good works. (1)

 

Aristotle in the third chapter of the second book of his Physics identified four different types of “causes”.   He explained the difference between them with the illustration of a statue.   Its material cause is that from which it is made, bronze, stone, whatever.   Its efficient cause is the sculptor who makes the statue from the material.   Its formal cause is the idea of the statue in the sculptor’s head to which he makes the material conform.   Its final cause is the purpose for which the sculptor makes the statue.   John Calvin in section 17 of Chapter XIV of the third book of his Institutes of Christian Religion borrows these terms and applies them to salvation saying that the efficient cause is “the mercy and free love of the heavenly Father towards us”, that the material cause is “Christ, with the obedience by which he purchased righteousness for us”, and the formal cause as “faith”.   Calvin erred slightly on this last point because he identified the formal cause with the instrumental cause.   Aristotle did not identify the instrumental cause in his Physics but if he had it would have been the hammer and chisel employed by the sculptor in his illustration.   As we have seen, since salvation is a gift, there are two kinds of instrumental causes, the instrument God uses to put the gift of salvation into our hands, the Church and her ministries, and the hand which receives it and is therefore instrumental on the part of the receiver, which is our faith.    What actually corresponds to Aristotle’s formal cause with regards to salvation is God’s eternal design.   It is rather amusing that John Calvin of all people got that wrong.  

Where do works fit into this?

 

Works share the same final cause as salvation.   Of the final cause of salvation, John Calvin says “The Apostle, moreover, declares that the final cause is the demonstration of the divine righteousness and the praise of his goodness.”  A simpler way of putting that would be “the glory of God”.   Numerous verses could be cited in support of the glory of God being the final cause, the end or telos, of salvation, but since this is not really a controversial point, I will reference only 1 Tim. 1:15-17.   Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:16) and St. Peter in his first epistle (chapter 2, verse 12) instruct their hearers/readers to do good works that thereby men would glorify God.   This tells us that the good works of the believer have the same telos as our salvation.   Works are not any kind of cause of our salvation, but our salvation is the material cause of our good works, the final cause of both being the glory of God.

 

St. James does not contradict this.   Earlier in the epistle, long before the controversial passage, he asserts that salvation is a gift:

 

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. (Jas. 1:17-18)

 

It is significant that he does not say this of the salvation and justification of which he writes in the controversial passage in his second chapter.   Nor does the word Grace appear in that passage, unlike the other key terms shared by the passage and the fourth chapter of Romans.   This, and the argument of St. Paul in Romans 4:4-5, indicates that whatever the salvation and justification St. James was talking about is it is not salvation/justification by Grace, justification/salvation as a gift of God.   St. James points further to that conclusion in the very verse that has caused so much difficulty:

 

Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.

 

The word “only” there is an adverb in Greek, modifying “justified”, not an adjective modifying “faith.”   St. James is saying there are two justifications, one by faith, one by works, not that faith and works are two causes of the same justification.   St. Paul himself seals that interpretation as the correct one when he writes:

 

For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God. (Rom. 4:2)

 

That is St. Paul interpreting St. James.   Whatever St. James was talking about when he said Abraham was justified by works it was not justification before God which is a gift by Grace and therefore cannot be of works.

 

The only novelty in Dr. Luther’s article of justification by faith alone, was the wording.   That salvation is a gift that God gives us in Jesus Christ and not something we earn by our works is the plain teaching of the New Testament and it is the teaching of Catholic – belonging to the entire Church everywhere, at all times – tradition as well.   Sola Fide, that we receive this gift to ourselves only by the hand of faith in Jesus Christ, while not usually expressed in Dr. Luther’s wording prior the sixteenth century, is implicit in this Catholic doctrine of Sola Fide.   It is also required by the Catholic concept of good works as the fruit of a faith that works by love.   If the works of love are necessary, it is not the necessity of an imposed condition – do these or salvation is invalidated – because that kind of necessity would eliminate the distinction between the works of love and the works of the law.  Works of love are works of love, because the one who does them does them not in order to obtain God’s favour or out of the fear that he will lose God’s favour if he does not, but because he loves God.   Love cannot be produced by the compulsion of the Law.   That is the entire point of the Law.   Jesus summed up the Law in the commandments to love God and love our neighbour.   That should be regarded as the most sobering and terrifying words that Jesus ever spoke.  They were not words of comfort.   If love of God and love of our neighbour is what the Law demands, and these loves come with qualifications –we are to love God with all that we are, and to love our neighbour as ourselves – then we are in constant violation of the two greatest commandments.   Not one of us has lived up to either of these for a second of our lives.   The works of love that are the fruit of salvation are the fruit of a love that God works in our hearts by His Grace, through the means of the Gospel, which assures us that God in His love has met the demands of the Law for us, both its demands for perfect righteousness and its demands for just punishment of our sin, in Jesus Christ, freeing us to love God, not because the Law demands it, but because he first loved us (1 Jn. 4:19).   Ironically, that which the Roman Council of Trent feared most in Dr. Luther’s doctrine, which, as is obvious from their straw man caricature, was its assuring nature, is precisely what makes Sola Fide so essential to this Catholic truth of faith working by love.   It is only when one is assured through faith that he is secure in the freely given Grace of God in Jesus Christ that one is free to love God because God is so worthy of our love rather than to try and love God under the compulsion of the threats of the Law. 

 

All of this was clearly lost on the Church of Rome at the Council of Tent.    A recent Roman Patriarch, the late Benedict XVI, wrote:

 

For this reason Luther's phrase: "faith alone" is true, if it is not opposed to faith in charity, in love. Faith is looking at Christ, entrusting oneself to Christ, being united to Christ, conformed to Christ, to his life. And the form, the life of Christ, is love; hence to believe is to conform to Christ and to enter into his love. So it is that in the Letter to the Galatians in which he primarily developed his teaching on justification St Paul speaks of faith that works through love (cf. Gal 5: 14).

 

This displayed far more understanding than his predecessors in the sixteenth century.   Such a pity that he was forced from St. Peter’s throne and replaced with the Clown Pretender that currently occupies it.

 

Happy All Hallowtide

(1) It is sometimes said in response to this that salvation is a process not just an event.   More elaborately put, there are three tenses to salvation.  There is salvation past, our being brought into God’s family, united with Jesus Christ, cleansed of past sins, justified, regenerated.   There is salvation present, in which we are progressively conformed into the image of Christ by the sanctifying work of God and in which we are cleansed and forgiven of our ongoing sins.   There is salvation future, in which we are perfected, and brought into the presence of God.   Sometimes this is put more simply as salvation from the guilt of sin (past), power of sin (present), and presence of sin (future).   Or they are just called justification, sanctification, and glorification.   The more simpler the version the more precision is sacrificed.  Justification and sanctification, at least, have past, present, and future aspects to each of them, just as they have both positional and practical aspects, corresponding to the two aspects of our union with Christ (positional = us in Christ, practical = Christ in us).   All of this is valid, but what we have stressed in the main body of this essay, is true of all of it.   Salvation in all of its tenses and aspects, is the gift of God.   All of it was accomplished for us by Jesus Christ in the events of the Gospel.   It is all given to us on the basis of Grace.   The means God has appointed to bring all of it to us is His Church and her ministries of Word and Sacrament.   Faith is always the hand by which we receive it.   None of this changes from salvation past, to salvation present, to salvation future, although the specific Sacramental ministry God uses to bring it to us changes from the not-to-be-repeated baptism of salvation past to the perpetual Lord’s Supper of salvation present.   Those things that have auxiliary roles, like repentance, may vary over the course of the progress of salvation present (the specifics of what repentance calls for depend on the situation).   The basics – salvation is a gift, it was accomplished by Jesus Christ in the events of the Gospel, it is brought to us through the ministry of the Church, we receive it by faith – never change, nor does the fact that our good works are always the fruit of salvation – in all of its aspects and tenses – and never the cause of it in any of its aspects or tenses.   

The Most Powerful and Meaningful Event in all of History

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the best attested event of history.   There are numerous examples of individuals who set out to debunk Christianity but ended up as believers when confronted by the overwhelming evidence for the Resurrection.  Arguably St. Paul was the first of these, although the manner in which he set about the debunking as well as that in which he was confronted by the evidence are not exactly typical of all the others who come to mind.   It is attested by the Empty Tomb, the numerous eyewitnesses, and the transformed lives of those who like Saul of Tarsus encountered the Risen Christ and were never the same again.   Jesus, from the beginning of His earthly ministry when He cryptically alluded to it by saying that He would rebuild the Temple in three days in response to those who confronted Him after the first cleansing of the Temple in the second chapter of St. John's Gospel to His referring the Pharisees to the "sign of Jonah" much later in His ministry, pointed to the Resurrection as the only sign that those who demanded one of Him - Who had been performing miracles all around them - would receive.   He knew how well attested it would be and based the credibility of all of His claims upon it.

It is an event that the New Testament attributes to each of the Persons of the Holy Trinity.   When He said that He would rebuild the Temple in three days, of course, Jesus claimed it as His Own work, as He did on a later occasion where He said He had the power both to lay down His life and take it up again (Jn. 10:18).    In the sermons recorded in the Book of Acts the Resurrection is usually attributed to God the Father.   In the epistles the Holy Spirit is often said to be the Agent in the Resurrection.    All of these are true and this demonstrates the involvement of all Three Persons in this event.  This was also true of the original Creation of the world.   This is unlikely to be a coincidence.   In numerous passages Jesus is called the first fruits of the General Resurrection.   Since the latter event is connected with the aspect of Redemption in which the whole world is recreated anew the active involvement of the Three Persons in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is parallel to their active involvement in Creation.

This is far from being the only meaning ascribed to the Resurrection in the New Testament.   In addition to being the most attested event in history, it is the most meaning-packed event in the Bible.

In St. Paul's epistle to the Romans, for example, the first reference to the Resurrection is in his summary of the Gospel in his summation.    In this the Resurrection declares Jesus to be "the Son of God with power" (v. 1:4).   This does not mean that the Resurrection made Jesus the Son of God as some versions of the Adoptionist heresy taught.   Jesus has always been the Son of God, eternally the Son of the Father, as is quite clear in the language used about the Father and Son throughout St. John's Gospel.   What St. Paul was saying corresponds to what Jesus was saying in pointing to the Resurrection as the sign confirming His authority and claims.   It declares Him to be the Son of God with power - it is the visible, incontrovertible, evidence.

A few chapters later in the same epistle, in another brief summary of the Gospel, St. Paul tells us of something else the Resurrection declares - our justification.    This comes at the end of the fourth chapter, a chapter begins with St. Paul borrowing the same terminology and same Old Testament examples that St. James the Just employed in the second chapter of his epistle, generally accepted as the first of the New Testament writings, to make the point that faith cannot produce practical righteousness on its own without works.   Asserting that he was in no way contradicting St. James (Rom. 4:2), St. Paul explains that the justification that he has been discussing, that which is by grace - God's favour freely given rather than earned (vv. 4-5) - on the basis of the redemption and propitiation of Christ on the Cross (3:24-25), and which establishes us in a right standing before God, is not like Jacobean practical righteousness - it is something God has accomplished and given to us, that we are to believe and trust in.   The chapter concludes with this summary of the Gospel: 

Now it was not written for his [Abraham's] sake alone, that it [righteousness] was imputed to him; But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. (4:23-25)

Here, as later in the tenth chapter of the epistle, St. Paul gives the Resurrection the full force of the entire Gospel message.    Faith is believing on Him that raised up Jesus, as in the tenth chapter it is believing in your heart that God raised Him from the dead.    In the final verse in the passage we see why the Resurrection can encapsulate the entire Gospel in this way.   Jesus was delivered for our offences, that is to say, it was because of our sins that He went to the Cross and died.   For, in this verse, means "because of" and that is true of the second "for" as well.   Jesus was raised for - because of - our Resurrection.   Had the work not been finished as Jesus declared it to be at His death - had our sin not been paid for in its entirety - the Resurrection could not have occurred.  The Resurrection, therefore, is the proof and declaration of our justification having been completely accomplished by Jesus at the Cross, just as it is the proof and declaration that He is the Eternal Son of God.

Shortly after this, St. Paul provides yet another meaning for the Resurrection.    In explaining why being at peace with God because of His freely given grace does not mean that we are permitted to sin, he discusses the meaning of baptism, the rite in which one formally joins the Christian faith community, the Church.   Being baptized into Jesus Christ means being baptized into His Death (6:3).   This  means that Christ's Death is our own death and as it was to take away our sin that He died we are to reckon ourselves to be dead to sin on account of it.   However, St. Paul immediately adds, if we are joined to Jesus in His Death, we are also joined to Him in His Resurrection.   While one implication of this, which St. Paul expounds upon at length in the fifteenth chapter of I Corinthians, is that we shall all be raised bodily like Christ, in the sixth chapter of Romans another implication of our union with Christ in Resurrection is explored, namely that it is  Christ's Resurrection life that we are to live out by faith as our New Life in Christ.

This is merely a sample of what the New Testament says about the Resurrection and is not intended to be exhaustive, not even of the epistle to the Romans.

What other event in all of Scripture is so packed with powerful significance?

Happy Easter!

He is Risen Indeed!

Christianity - Faith, Tradition, and Religion

 

This week began with the first Sunday in Advent for the part of the world that uses the Gregorian as its civil calendar.   This is the first day in the new ecclesiastical or liturgical year.   The Old Testament reading assigned to Morning Prayer for that day in the revised Table of Lessons (1922) in the Book of Common Prayer is Isaiah 1:1-20.   The older Table of Lessons in the Restoration Book of Common Prayer, which used civil calendar dates rather than liturgical calendar dates, assigned the same reading to Evening Prayer for the eighteenth of November.   Both lectionaries, however, follow the ancient tradition of reading Isaiah in the weeks leading up to Christmas.   The tradition seems appropriate.  The prophecy of the event commemorated on Christmas, the Virgin Birth, and of its theological significance, the Incarnation of God is found in Isaiah (7:14).   This is the book from which Jesus read when He announced in the synagogue of Nazareth at the beginning of His ministry that He was the fulfilment of Messianic prophecy (Luke 4:16-30).   It is full of Messianic prophecy, so much so that it is often called the Fifth Gospel, and is the prophetic book most often quoted in the New Testament.

 

There is an important lesson in this first reading from the Book of Isaiah with regards to a subject that always comes up this time of year.   It begins with a general introduction to the prophecies that follow - that it is the record of the vision given to Isaiah, son of Amoz, concerning the Kingdom of Judah and its capital of Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Johtham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, that is to say, as the Babylonian Captivity that would sweep away the Southern Kingdom was rapidly approaching.   Towards the end of the reading is a plea for repentance (vv. 16-17) followed by this well-known offer of cleansing and forgiveness:

 

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. (v. 18)

 

Leading up to this is the LORD’s complaint against Judah – they are His children who have rebelled against Him (v. 2), who do not know Him (v. 3), a sinful and corrupt nation of evildoers (v. 4), who have brought upon themselves sickness and desolation (vv. 5-8), comparable to Sodom and Gomorrah (vv 9-10).  Between these complaints and the plea for repentance is the following:

 

To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams , and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.   When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts?   Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.   Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.  And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood. (vv.11-15).

 

The religious observances here decried are those instituted by God Himself for Israel in the Mosaic Covenant, commonly called the Law.   Although the idolatry that would shortly bring down the Northern Kingdom – the prophesy of the Virgin Birth was given to Ahaz in the context of telling him that the confederacy between the Syrians and the Northern Kingdom against Judah would fail because these were both about to be conquered by Assyria– would also play a role in Judah’s fall to Babylon, that is not what is in view here.   The point here is that the external, ceremonial, and ritual elements of the very religion that God Himself instituted for Israel are repugnant to God in the absence of righteousness.

 

Lest this be misunderstood, let me make it clear that under the Old Covenant as much as under the New, righteousness in the eyes of God was not something obtained by keeping the Moral law perfectly without ever sinning, which only Jesus Christ ever did (and in His case it was not that He was righteous because He kept the Law but rather He kept the Law because He was righteous) but by humbling oneself before God, acknowledging one’s sin and wrong-doing, and trusting God to fulfil His Promises.   It was Moses, not St. Paul, who first declared that when Abraham believed God, God “counted it to him for righteousness” (Gen. 15:6) and it was Habakkuk who first declared “the just shall live by faith” (Hab. 2:4).   That God Himself cleans those who humble themselves, confess their sins, and trust Him is not only the teaching of the passage in question – consider the eighteenth verse quoted above again (1) – but of the penitential fifty-first Psalm, written by David after Nathan had rebuked him over his sin with Bathsheba.   The themes of this Psalm are closely parallel to those of this passage at the beginning of Isaiah. The Psalmist pleads with God for mercy, (v. 1) and for God to cleanse Him from his sin and iniquity (vv. 2, 7, 9, 10, 14), while confessing his sin (vv. 3-5).   God does not want ritual sacrifice from one with an uncleansed heart (v. 16), the sacrifice God does accept is humility – “a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart”- (v. 17), only after which will God be pleased with ceremonial sacrifice (v. 19).

 

Now, in the light of this passage from Isaiah, let us consider another passage from the Gospel according to St. Matthew.   The first nine verses of the fifteenth chapter of this Gospel tell of an interaction between the Lord Jesus Christ and the scribes and the Pharisees.   The latter ask the Lord why His disciples “transgress the tradition of the elders” because “they wash not their hands when they eat bread” (this is in reference to a ritual washing, not handwashing for the sake of hygiene).   The Lord turns the question on them by asking “Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?”   He goes on to explain that the commandment He refers to is “Honour thy father and mother” – He also makes reference to a similar commandment “He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death”.   The way the Pharisees transgressed this by their tradition, He went on to explain, was by declaring the money that should have gone to supporting their parents – that the support of elderly parents is in view here is implicit – to be a gift:

 

But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightiest be profited by me; And honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free.   Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. (vv. 5-6).  

 

This same account can also be found in the seventh chapter of the Gospel according to St. Mark.   This Gospel provides more details that make this interaction a bit clearer.   It specifies that the commandment was evaded by designating the money for parental support as “Corban, that is to say, a gift” which lets us know that a gift to the Temple was in mind here.   Corban is the Latinized spelling (2) of a Hebrew word that was originally used for sacrifices and offerings in the books of Leviticus and Numbers in the Old Testament Law, but which by the time of the New Testament was more often used in the sense of “vow”.   This is how it is used in the passage in question – a vow designating a portion of one’s income as a gift to the Temple treasury.

 

As with our passage from Isaiah, what is rebuked here is the misuse of the Ceremonial Law to excuse disobedience to the Moral Law.   The commandment to “honour thy father and thy mother” is one of the famous Ten given by God to Moses at Mt. Sinai in the twentieth chapter of Exodus and repeated in Moses’ exhortation to the people on the border of the Promised Land in the fifth chapter of Deuteronomy.   The Corban tradition was an interpretive spin on the Ceremonial Law as it pertained to gifts and offerings to the Tabernacle/Temple that seems to have twisted the latter almost beyond recognition.   Nevertheless, the theme of the first chapter of Isaiah, that divinely established external ceremony and ritual are without value when used as substitutes for righteousness clearly comes across here as well, as it does in most if not all of Jesus’ interactions with the Pharisees.   

 

The Lord speaking through Isaiah rebukes the Kingdom of Judah for practicing the Ceremonial Law that He Himself had given them while living in rebellion against His Moral Law.   In the Gospels of SS Matthew and Mark He rebukes the Pharisees for using part of their traditional interpretation of the Ceremonial Law to annul a Commandment of the Moral Law.   To take the Lord’s words from the Gospel accounts, as many do around this time of year and again in spring as Easter approaches, as an indictment of the Church for establishing festivals like Christmas and Easter in honour of Christ rather than keeping the feasts given by God to the nation Israel in the Old Testament, is to pervert His meaning entirely

 

I encounter people who pervert His meaning in just this way every time Christmas and Easter approach.   The reference to “tradition” in Christ’s words is taken as condemnatory of tradition in general.   It is no such thing, however.   Tradition is derived from traditus – the passive, perfect participle of the Latin verb trado.   Trado means “I hand across, I give over”, traditus therefore means “having been handed across, having been given over”, and its derivative “tradition” simply means that which has been handed down to us by those who have preceded us, often with the implication that it is held by us in trust to be handed down to those who come after.   While bad things can be passed down as well as good, tradition itself is a good thing.   St. Paul tells the Thessalonian Church: “Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle” (II Thess. 2:15).   While he does not use the word “tradition” in I Corinthians 15, when he says “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3-4) he clearly speaks of the Gospel itself in terms that denote a tradition – something that he had received himself, and had passed on to them.   Those who set Scripture and tradition in opposition to each other, fail to observe that the Scriptures, the Bible in its entirety, are themselves a tradition.   We have the Bible today because the believers who went before us passed it down to us faithfully through multiple generations.

 

The sort of people who dismiss Christmas and Easter as “man-made traditions” also have a tendency to get hung up on another word – “religion”.    Some of these claim that Christianity is something other than a religion.   Others say that Christianity is a religion and that this is what is wrong with it because Jesus Christ did not intend to found a religion.   Either way, the meaning of the word “religion” has to be tortured to arrive at these ludicrous positions.

 

Christianity is first and foremost a faith.   While other religions are also called faiths, this word is most appropriate for Christianity because Christianity places the sort of emphasis on belief that other religions place on doing.   Central to Christianity is its message about Who Jesus Christ is and what He has done.   As Christianity’s kerygma – the Christian message proclaimed to the world – it is called the Gospel, literally meaning “Good News”, a message to be believed.   As a personal/communal confession of faith it is called the Creed, from the Latin word credo – “I believe” (in the early centuries of Christianity when Greek was still the predominant language spoken by Christians these were called “symbols” or “rules of faith”).   The shortest version of the Creed, the Apostles’, consists of twelve articles.   By contrast, the closest thing to a Creed in Judaism, the religion nearest of kin to Christianity, is the Shema Yisrael, a single article: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD”.   Similarly, the closest equivalent to the Creed in Islam is the Shahada, the first of the five pillars and the only one that pertains to belief rather than practice, which is a lot like the Shema Yisrael:  “There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet”.

 

The emphasis on faith/believing over doing in Christianity comes straight out of the New Testament.   It is particularly prominent in the Fourth Gospel and in the Pauline corpus.   This elevating of believing over doing, does not render doing unimportant.   Every time St. Paul talks about how faith rather than works is the means of receiving the freely given grace (favour) of God in Jesus Christ, he also talks about the importance of good works.   The second chapter of Ephesians is a good example of this because here the verse proclaiming the believer to be God’s “workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works”, (v. 10) immediately follows the proclamation of salvation as a free gift by grace through faith (vv. 8-9).   Similar passages can be found in Romans and Galatians where the discussion of salvation by grace through faith is much more extended.   The most well-known passage in the New Testament stressing the importance of works is that which occurs in the second chapter of the epistle of St. James (vv. 14 to the end).   At the end of the first chapter of this same epistle the word religion appears.   This is the only time this word is used in the New Testament except in reference to Judaism as St. Paul uses it in the first chapter of Galatians.   The Jacobean passage does not disparage religion, the way the people I have been talking about do, but it does re-iterate the point of the passages from Isaiah and the Gospels discussed above that moral doing takes precedence over ceremonial doing.    Here is the passage:

 

If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain.   Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. (vv. 26-27).

 

So in the Christianity that the New Testament teaches, believing comes before doing, and moral doing comes before ceremonial doing.   Does that mean that New Testament Christianity is something other than a religion?

 

Not at all.  A comparison of everything established by Jesus Christ for the New Covenant with everything established by God for Israel in the Old Covenant easily demonstrates that the Christianity of the New Testament is a religion, even if that term is used sparingly in the New Testament.

 

Under the Old Covenant, there was an external sign marking one as belonging to God’s people.   Note that in the Old Testament, the concept of “God’s people” was that of a literal, ethnic, nation into which God had entered into Covenant agreement, He to be their God, they to be His people.   The external sign of membership in this nation was circumcision.   This was established in the seventeenth chapter of Genesis.  The previous chapter had seen Abram, who had been promised in his old age that his seed would be as numerous as the stars (15:4-5), sire Ishmael with his wife’s handmaid Hagar.   In the seventeenth chapter, The LORD appears to Abram, tells him that “thou shalt be a father of many nations” (v. 4), changes his name to Abraham because “a father of many nations have I made thee” (v. 5) and then promises that He will give Abraham’s seed the land of Canaan (v. 8) and that as “a token of the covenant betwixt me and you”, (v.  11) Abraham was to circumcise his own foreskin, and that the male children born into Abraham’s house were to be circumcised, (vv. 10, 12-13) and that “the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken his covenant” (v. 14).   Immediately after this God promised the birth of Isaac as the heir of the promise and covenant by Abraham’s wife, whose name was then changed from Sarai to Sarah (vv. 15-21).   Note how the external sign, that would mark the one nation that was to be formed as the people of the Old Covenant, was given in the context of the promise that Abraham would become the father of many nations.

 

The New Covenant also has an external sign that marks one as belonging to God’s people under that Covenant.      Under the New Covenant, the concept of “God’s people” is radically different from that in the Old.   It is that of a strictly spiritual people (I Pet. 2:5-10) that would be assembled – the name given to it in Greek is ἐκκλησία the word for assembly – from people called out of every kindred, tribe, and nation, (Rev. 5: 9-10) united as heirs of the promise to Abraham, (Gal. 3:26-29) by faith like Abraham’s, (Gal. 3:6-9) in Abraham’s Seed (singular) Who is Jesus Christ (Gal. 3:16).   As different as this is from the Old Covenant concept, it was, as we saw above, foreseen in the very passages that promised Abraham that he would be a father of many nations, even as a specific Covenant nation was being formed.   The external sign marking one as belonging to this spiritual people of God – the Church – is baptism.   This was a ritual washing that symbolized cleansing from sin.   John the Baptist, the prophesied “voice of one crying in the wilderness” (Is. 40:3), administered baptism to those who came to hear him preach in the wilderness near the river Jordan, confessing and repenting of their sins.   Jesus Himself came and was baptized, and while John the Baptist objected to this on the grounds that it ought to be Jesus baptizing John - Jesus as the “Lamb of God Who taketh away the sin of the world” (Jn. 1:29) had no need of the repentance and cleansing signified by baptism Himself -Jesus said that it was necessary to “fulfill all righteousness”.   As He was baptized, the Holy Spirit descended upon Him like a dove, and the Father spoke from heaven (Matt. 5:16-17, Mk. 1:10-11, Lk. 3:21-22, Jn. 1:32-33)   After He had risen from the dead and prior to His Ascension He commanded His disciples to “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matt. 28:19).

 

That baptism is to the New Covenant what circumcision was to the Old was made plain by St. Paul in his epistle to the Colossians.   In his epistle to the Romans St. Paul had distinguished between external circumcision and Jewishness, and internal circumcision and Jewishness (Rom. 2:28-29), which is another way of making the point discussed above from Isaiah and the Gospels – and which is found in many other places in the Bible – that external religion is an empty shell in the absence of the righteousness of faith.    In the second chapter of his epistle to the Colossians he again mentions a non-literal circumcision by saying that in Christ “ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ:” (v. 11) immediately after which – it is still the same sentence – he says “Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead.” (v. 12).   This interpretation of the significance of baptism – the believer’s union with Jesus Christ, and specifically with His death, burial, and Resurrection – is distinctly Pauline, having been discussed at greater length in the sixth chapter of Romans.   There is no contradiction between this and the interpretation elsewhere in the New Testament that it signifies cleansing from sin – it is through the Gospel events of His death, burial, and Resurrection that Jesus Christ cleanses us from sin.   The important point for our discussion here is that since St. Paul in Colossians then goes on to link the union with Christ in His Resurrection in baptism with having been “quickened” from the state of being “dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh” (v. 13) this entire passage is an equation of baptism with "the circumcision of Christ".

 

Now it ought to go without saying that if baptism is to the New Covenant what circumcision was to the Old then what St. Paul asserted regarding circumcision is also true of baptism - the outward ritual alone does not unite one to Christ spiritually in the absence of inner faith.   The flip-side to this - that faith effects union with Christ even in the absence of external baptism is the obvious implication of Mark 16:16.    Nevertheless, this comparison demonstrates that like the Jewish religion of the Old Testament, New Testament Christianity has an outward ritual that marks one as belonging to the Christian covenant people of God.   This is hardly consistent with the claim that New Testament Christianity is not a religion.

 

The details of the religion given to Israel at Mt. Sinai are outlined in the book of Exodus, and then provided at greater length in the book of Leviticus.   The sacrificial system of Israel in particular is dealt with at great length in Leviticus which is named after the tribe whose priestly duty it was to offer the sacrifices.    This system was the central element of the ceremonial and worship aspect of the Law.    By contrast with circumcision, which took place only once in a Jewish male's life - it could not be repeated even if someone actually wanted a second one - the sacrifices and offerings were an everyday occurrence.   It was a complex system.   There were daily sacrifices that the priests had to make every morning and afternoon.   There were sacrifices that had to be made on set days every year – the most important being those of the Day of Atonement.   Then there were the sacrificial offerings that Israelites were told to bring under specific circumstances.   Some offerings signified thankfulness and praise, others were brought on occasions of sin, guilt or ritual uncleanness.   Provision was made for less expensive offerings for Israelites of lesser means.   While most of the sacrifices involved the offering of animals - bulls, rams, goats, lambs, doves, pigeons, depending upon the economic status of the offeror, these usually had to be male and always had to be without blemish - there were also grain offerings and drink offerings.   The former could be of unbaked flour, olive oil, and frankincense, or of the flour and oil baked into unleavened cakes of bread, or in some cases unground grain.   The drink offerings or libations were part of the shorter account of the Law in Exodus and are mentioned in Leviticus in connection with the sacrifices on set days but the fuller explanation is given in the book of Numbers.   These involved specified amounts of wine that were offered in connection with the other offerings by being poured on the altar.

 

In the New Testament Jesus Christ is presented as the fulfilment of this entire system.   In the epistle to the Hebrews, St. Paul (3) explains at great length how the offering of the blood of animals signified the death of Jesus Christ on the Cross Who through the offering of His body and blood accomplished what animal sacrifice could only point towards - the removal of the guilt of sin that comes between man and God.    He also makes it plain that the death of Jesus Christ terminated the sacrificial system - "there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins" (10:26).    In each of the Synoptic Gospels, however, we find Jesus, at the Last Supper - a Passover Seder - immediately prior to His arrest, trial, and Crucifixion, establishing a second ritual for His disciples under the New Covenant.   He took the unleavened bread of the Passover, gave thanks, and broke it, then distributed it to the Apostles telling them to eat it, saying "This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me" (Lk. 22:19).   He then took the cup of Passover wine - there were four of these by Jewish tradition and the wording in St. Luke's Gospel  suggests that this was the third cup (4) - and told the Apostles to drink of it, saying that "This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you" (Lk. 22:20).   This was the institution of the Sacrament that is variously called the Lord's Supper, Holy Communion, and the Eucharist (this is the Greek word for "thanksgiving").

 

In the Sacrament the body and blood of the Final Sacrifice is given to the faithful as a meal to sustain their spiritual life in the only manner in which such a Sacrifice, the voluntary Sacrifice of Himself by the Man Who is God, could be so offered without being utterly repugnant, that is, through the means of representative elements taken from the non-bloody sacrifices – bread and wine.    That the Sacrament is intended to take the place in the Christian religion that the Levitical sacrifices occupied in the Old Testament religion of the Jews is therefore so blatantly obvious on the face of it that a passage like Colossians 2:11-13 is hardly needed to establish the point.   In the book of Acts we find that the first Church in Jerusalem celebrated this Sacrament, to which the “breaking bread” mentioned at the end of the second chapter refers, on a daily basis.

 

That Jesus Christ in establishing the New Covenant instituted a new external mark of membership in Baptism in the place of Circumcision, and the Sacrament of Holy Communion which looks back to His Crucifixion in the place of the Old Covenant sacrifices that looked forward to it, makes it quite evident that those who sneer at the word “religion”, say that Jesus Christ did not found a religion, and that New Testament Christianity as opposed to the Christianity of the Church of the last two millennia was not a religion, simply do not know what they are talking about.   

 

In my next essay I intend, Lord willing, to show just how nonsensical are the arguments these people make against Christmas specifically.    I will conclude this essay by explaining why the fact that the New Testament does not prescribe a sacred calendar of holy days and feast days to correspond to that established for the Israelites in the Old Covenant does not translate into a prohibition forbidding the Christian Church from doing so.

 

As we saw above, one of the biggest differences between the Old Testament religion and New Testament Christianity, was that the Old Testament religion was given to a specific people in the literal sense of a nation, whose cultural and ethnic identity was largely shaped by that religion, but Christianity was given to all peoples, establishing the Church which was a people only in a spiritual sense, and which was to include members from every tribe and nation.   The Old Testament contained elements that were universal.   It repeatedly declares the God of Israel to be the One, True and Living God, Who is the Creator of the entire world and Ruler of the entire world.   The part of the Mosaic Covenant that is called the Moral Law consists of prohibitions against acts that are mala in se (bad in themselves) either because they harm other people (murder, theft and adultery, for example) or because they fail to give God the honour due Him as the One, True and Living God, Creator and Ruler of the entire world (idolatry, for example, places the creations of man’s own hands, which have mouths, eyes, ears, noses, hands and feet but cannot speak, see, smell, handle or walk, in God’s place).   This is universal in the sense that the acts prohibited, being wrong in themselves, are wrong for everybody.   These elements are reintroduced, often in amplified form, under the New Covenant.    The part of the Old Covenant that is called the Ceremonial Law, however, the calendar of feasts and holy days, the dietary restrictions, and the entire Tabernacle/Temple system of sacrifice and worship was particular.  Its purpose was to shape Israel’s national identity so as to keep the nation holy – separate and distinct – from the other nations that surrounded them.   This purpose was subservient to that of the universal elements of the Old Covenant.   Israel was to be holy, in the sense of being separate and distinct from the nations around it, to help keep it from falling into the idolatry and immoral ways of those nations.    Note how this point underlies the rebukes from Isaiah and the Lord Jesus discussed at the beginning of this essay.   The Old Testament itself testified to the fact that it was not itself the ultimate answer to the problems of sin and idolatry.    It promised that one day God would establish a New Covenant in which all the nations of the world would unite with Israel in the worship of the One True and Living God.

 

Jesus Christ fulfilled that promise by establishing the New Covenant when He offered Himself up as the Final True Atoning Sacrifice on the Cross and rose from the grave as Triumphant Victor over all the spiritual foes of mankind – sin and the devil, death and hell.   When the Apostolic Church met in Jerusalem to decide the controversy over whether Gentile converts to Christianity had to become Jews (be circumcised and told to keep the Mosaic Law) in order to become Christians, they ruled in the negative.   They told the Gentile converts to abstain from idolatry and fornication, instructions taken from the aforementioned universal elements of the Old Covenant.   They also told them to abstain from meat that had been strangled or contained blood, instructions that look back to the Covenant which God made with all mankind through Noah in Genesis that predated the Mosaic Covenant and are thus universal in a slightly different sense.    

 

The ruling of the Apostolic Council did not make the controversy go away – St. Paul dealt with it again and again in his epistles, defending the Apostolic position and providing a theological foundation for it in terms of Christian unity (Eph. 2:11-22), liberty, (Gal. 4:1-5:3) and both (Col. 2:16-17).   That Christian liberty meant that Christians were not obligated to keep the Ceremonial Law is what is emphasized in the Pauline epistles.   That it also meant that they were free to do so – at least until they were prevented from doing so by unbelieving Jewish leaders – is evident by St. Paul’s own example in the book of Acts.   In his missionary journeys, he would go to the synagogues to proclaim the Gospel first.   When driven out of the synagogues he would preach to the Gentiles in the market, the Areopagus in Athens, or whatever place was available to him.   In Jerusalem, he like the other Apostles continued to go to the Temple until a mob was stirred up against him by unbelieving Jews from Asia Minor (Acts 20:27-30) leading to his arrest.

 

Christian liberty also means that the Christian Church, in which Jewish and Gentile Christian believers are united, is free as a collective body to make new, distinctly Christian, holy days and festivals.   Those against whom I have been arguing in this essay might dispute this on the grounds of what is called the “regulative principle of worship”, i.e., the idea that Christians are only to observe and practice what is explicitly enjoined upon them in Scripture.   Ironically, the chief theological work of the man who came up with this principle is entitled The Institutes of the Christian Religion.  (5)  It is a principle that would condemn Jesus Christ and His Apostles.   If you think otherwise, show me from the Old Testament where Israelites were commanded to meet and worship in synagogues. (6)

 

In the twentieth chapter of the book of Acts, St. Luke says that the disciples “came together to break bread” on the “first day of the week”, i.e., Sunday.    There is no prescriptive commandment to do this in the New Testament, only this descriptive account of the custom.   The reason for it is not explained, although it can be reasonably deduced.   St. Luke’s extended account of the Sunday service at Troas, in which St. Paul delivers an extremely long sermon, putting Eutychus to sleep and causing him to fall out of a window, would suggest that apart from the inclusion of the Eucharist, the service was modelled after a synagogue service.   Indeed, the portion of traditional Christian liturgical services that includes Scriptural readings, the singing of Psalms, and preaching/teaching is an adaptation of the synagogue model.   The Jewish synagogues met to worship on the Sabbath, which is the seventh day of the week, or Saturday (more precisely, Friday evening to Saturday evening).   There are both practical and theological reasons for the Church meeting on the following day instead.   The theological reason is that this is the day Jesus Christ rose from the dead – hence its having been dubbed “The Lord’s Day” (Rev. 1:10).   The practical reason is that St. Paul’s practice mentioned above, of going to the synagogues in the cities he visited to preach the Gospel until he was kicked out of them, necessitated a different day for the distinctly Christian assembly – the Church – to meet.   That the Church early adopted the practice of meeting on Sunday is also implied by St. Paul’s instruction to the Corinthian Church to take up a collection on that day (I Cor. 16:2).   Clearly the Church in the days of the book of Acts, when led by the Apostles themselves, like the majority of Christians over the two thousand years that followed, held to the “normative principle” – that Christians are free to observe and practice in their worship, whatever is not prohibited them in Scriptures, which principle is manifestly more consistent with the concept of Christian liberty than the “regulative principle”.

 

 (1)  Note also the prophet’s personal experience of this in the sixth chapter, verses 5-7.

(2)   “Corban”, the spelling in the English Bible, is the Latinized transliteration.   The Greek New Testament contains Κορβᾶν, which is, of course, the same Hebrew word spelled out in Greek letters.

(3)   The Pauline authorship of Hebrews is evident in the style of the epistle – note both the structure of the argument and the closing exhortation/salutation – and in the few details about the author given – he was in Italy and had been in bonds (13:24, 10:34, and was a companion of Timothy 13:23).   Hebrews is also the only epistle in the canonical New Testament to which St. Peter could have been alluding when he referred to a Scriptural letter written by St. Paul to the same people to whom he was writing (II Pet. 3:15-16)

(4)   It is interesting that the only one of the Evangelists to allude to such details from the Jewish tradition was the only Gentile of the four.

(5)   This has nothing to do with what I have been arguing in this essay, but in my opinion John Calvin’s most valuable writings are his Commentaries not his Institutes.

(6)   You will find no such commandment.   Synagogues – this is a Greek word that is similar in its basic, non-religious, meaning to that of the Greek word for Church – were likely established before the last book of the Old Testament was written.   Historians generally believe that they originated out of the necessity generated by the destruction of the First Temple at the time of the Babylonian Captivity and the reforms instituted in and following the return in the Ezra-Nehemiah period, but this is not recorded, let alone commanded by God, in the canonical Old Testament.   This is but one of many examples of practices in the tradition of Second Temple Judaism that had no Scriptural ordinance behind them that Jesus and His Apostles nevertheless kept – see the clause to which the fourth note above is a comment for another such example.