ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CUENet AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION DOGMATICS 2 LESSON 91 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 10 E. 22nd Street Suite 304 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> Do other churches agree with us on justification? What about my friends who think that they are saved by inviting Jesus into their hearts? >> DR. DAVID MAXWELL: Nick, I think here we have to make a distinction between what an official position of the church body is and what their members may actually believe. And these are not always the same thing. And I think it's possible for us to criticize an official position of church much as like Lutherans criticize say the Roman Catholic doctrine of justification or -- I don't know if I want to call it the Roman Catholic doctrine of justification or the way they think you're saved. I think we can criticize those things without really saying or making the claim that members of that church are going to hell or something like that. I mean, even if we're saying that they are wrong on the doctrine of justification, that does not necessarily mean that the people in the church are actually trusting in something other than Christ for their salvation. So I guess what I'm saying is that there are actually relatively few other church bodies who I think agree with the Lutheran Church on the doctrine of justification. And yet, we make the claim that justification is the article by which the church stands or falls. The point here is not that Christians are going to be able to articulate and reflect on the doctrine of justification in ways that Lutherans would agree with. The thing that's going to save them is that they are justified. That is to say that Christ has forgiven their sins and that their faith is directed towards that. And regardless of what their church may or may not teach or -- in their theological reflection on salvation, I think Christians get that. And I want to give you a historical example. You know, we've talked a lot about St. Augustine. And, in fact, have criticized his doctrine of justification as being transformative rather than forensic. That is to say that his -- he believes that God saves you by transforming your heart rather than by speaking outside of you. And we've said that's wrong because that's going to lead you to do introspection. That's going to lead you to trust in the works that God brings about in your life rather than the work that Christ has accomplished for you on the cross. And I think that's a legitimate criticism. But that is a little bit different than saying that's actually what Augustine believed or that's actually the way Augustine ended up implementing this doctrine. And my example here is that according to Augustine's biographer at the end of his life -- and he knew he was dieing. He had a -- his friends write out the Penitential psalms and post them on the wall so that he could pray them while he was dieing. Now, I think that this scene is Augustine at his most Lutheran. Because while we may say that if he's consistent in his theology, he's going to trust in God's transformative power in his heart and he's going to trust in his works, that's not what he did at the end of his life. He's praying the Penitential psalms when he views himself before the judgement seat of Christ. He is depending on God's forgiveness, not on the transformation that God has accomplished in his heart. So this is why I say that we need to make a distinction. And Frances ***Peeper will use the term ***felistus, inconsistency, to describe this. And that is to say what a church body officially teaches may not actually be what is going on in the people. And I use Augustine as an example of this. That if we were to insist that he is totally consistent on his theology, then he's going to trust in the works that God has worked through him. But that's not really what he does. And so that's how I would handle people in other situations, other denominations. They may think they invited Jesus into their hearts. Okay? And maybe you're not going to be able to convince them otherwise. But just because they think that doesn't mean that Christ hasn't actually converted them by the power of his word without their cooperation. They just don't know how to interpret their experience in line with that scriptural view of conversion. They have an experience that they interpret in a different way. But that doesn't change what's actually happened to them. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***