Full Text for Confessions 2- Volume 48 - Faith and Good Works (Video)

ROUGHLY EDITED COPY LUTHERAN CONFESSIONS LC2 48 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. P.O. Box 1924 Lombard, IL 60148 800 825 5234 www.captionfirst.com *** 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. *** >> STUDENT: Professor, we say based on the Bible that we are saved by grace through faith because of Christ alone apart from works. Are good works necessary for salvation? How have Lutherans and other Christian traditions understood the relationship of faith and works? >> DR. RAST: Well that really cuts to the heart of what the Lutheran Reformation was all about. What motivated Luther in the first place to speak out as strongly as he did was his concern over the place that medieval Roman Catholicism had given works in the salvation of the sinner. And, again, it was a matter of assuring the simple people that, in fact, their salvation was complete in Christ. As so as you added anything to that work of Christ, then questions were bound to arise and people began to wonder whether they had, in fact, done enough. Now, because of this, Lutherans were sometimes accused of ignoring good works or becoming in some cases what were called antinomians, that is being against the law of God. On the other hand, if one takes a look at Luther's works, for any stretch of time, looks and considers them with any kind of seriousness, you'll find that Luther consistently was speaking about the necessity of the Christian doing good works. That became the word then. What do you mean by "Necessity"? What do you mean by necessary? And in the wake of Luther's death, we see yet another controversy emerge within the Lutheran tradition in regard to this theological question. Are good works necessary for salvation Now, in our last session, we were considering the text from Ephesians chapter 2 which says you're saved by grace, not of works. Lest any man boast. But it continues on to say that we are God's workmanship prepared to do the works he has prepared for us to do beforehand. So in a sense what is the relationship between faith and works? Do we ignore works completely? How do we approach the issue? And that's really what broke out among the Lutherans in the wake of Luther's death. And the controversy at times became rather bitter and the strife was rather intense. Very simply well, let's read from the fourth Article of the Formula of Concord on good works. Here's the solid declaration. It says, very plainly, "A dispute over good works arose among the theologians of the Augsburg Confession." That's understating it in the extreme. Dispute doesn't get to the point. There was an out right fight over this particular point. But they do begin to get at the heart of the matter as they say. One party used the following language: "Good works are necessary for salvation. It is impossible to be saved without good works. And no one is saved apart from good works." And they explain that they used these expressions because good works are demanded from those who believe in Christ as fruits of faith and because of faith without love, faith is dead. Though they went on to say very carefully, this love is not the cause of salvation. The other group said pretty plainly that good works are necessary but not for salvation. And here's where the dispute emerged. Can we say that good works are necessary but not for salvation? And this is where the distinction had to be made so carefully. And this is the place where the controversy occurred. On the one hand you had a man named Gaorg Major (ph) he lived from 1502 to 1574. And he was concerned that if grace was proclaimed as clearly as Lutherans had proclaimed it, there might be a tendency to ignore the necessity of the Christian life. To ignore the life of good works to which God calls every believer. And so he began to speak in the first sense we heard namely that good works were necessary for salvation, in this sense to help preserve one's faith. So, in other words, it was one thing to have faith, believe in Christ and, therefore, be saved. But to maintain that faith, said Major, one must do good works so that that faith would be sustained and not be lost in a life of profligate living or something of the sort. It is impossible, therefore, said Major for a person to be saved apart from good works. Good works are necessary for salvation. Some of Major's colleagues became very concerned about the emphasis that he placed upon good works. Fearing that it was intruding on the doctrine of justification, that it was adding something to the all sufficient work of Christ. They began to challenge Major on these particular points. And some, particularly a man by the name of Nicolaus von Amsdorf, went so far as to fall into the other extreme. Amsdorf said that good works are detrimental or harmful to salvation. Well, which one was right? In one sense they both were right, though they weren't careful in the language that they used or in the way that they used it. And because of that, in one sense, both were wrong. First, what about Major? Well one of the points that the confessors were so concerned about as they drafted the Formula of Concord, was that there be no confusion in regard to the relationship of justification and good works. They are adamant on the point that good works play no role whatsoever in salvation of the individual human being. It is Christ's work alone that is the ground, the basis for human salvation. And so they would speak very explicitly on this point stating that good works must be completely excluded from any question of salvation. That's the epitome of article 4 paragraph 7. And here they retreated to what we were talking about a little bit earlier, namely, the so called exclusive articles or exclusive terms that Paul uses in Romans chapter 3. Without works, apart from works, Christ alone, and so forth. So the complete exclusion of any human works as additionally necessary to the all sufficient work of Jesus Christ paying for our sins. They criticized also Major for not understanding how language works. They said he for all intents and purposes put the end of the sentence at the end of the sentence, that which should have been at the beginning of the sentence. Namely, good works necessary for salvation, they said actually reversed the way things functioned. That is to say, good works are not necessary for salvation. Rather, salvation is necessary for good works. In this respect they were willing to agree that in a sense good works necessarily follow from salvation. They were willing to use the word "necessary." Why? Well, again, going back to an example we used somewhat earlier. The tree and its fruits. Does a bad tree bring forth good fruits? No. Does a good tree bring forth good fruits? Yes. Does it necessarily bring forth those good fruits? Yes, they said, as well. Here however, they wanted to be very careful as they spoke about this, saying it was not from any sense of compulsion that these fruits were brought forth but rather they emerged naturally because of who the person was. Because of who you are, you do certain things, a good tree produces good fruits and does so necessarily. But the fruits don't create the tree. The tree creates the fruits. This was the idea they were working with. To underscore their position, they would look to texts well for example, Matthew chapter 25 where the Lord himself talks about the good works of individual believers as they live their life as the people of God. There were many, many, as Jesus would tell the story, there will be many, many who come to him saying, "Lord, Lord, we did all of these works in your name." And he will say to them, "Depart from me. I do not know you." On the other hand, there will be those who do good works in his name who won't know it. "Lord, when did we see you to give you a cup of cold water?" "And I say to you," he responds, "whenever you gave a cup of cold water to one of these, the least of mine, you did it for me." They're surprised by the fact that they've served Christ. Because it precedes not from compulsion, not as a requirement, not as a demand, but rather as something flowing naturally from who they are. The redeemed child of God.. As long as this distinction is made, said the formulators, then we're willing to speak of good works necessarily following faith. So they say, again, from the epitome, paragraph 10, "Of course the words 'necessity' and 'necessary' are not to be understood as a compulsion when they are applied to the reborn, but only as the required obedience which they perform out of a spontaneous spirit. Not because of the compulsion or coercion of the law. Because they are," citing Romans 6:14 here, "no longer under the law but under grace." In making this careful distinction, the Lutheran formulators were affirming once more the care with which we must undertake theological definition. It was a mistake for Major and others to put such a strong emphasis on the necessity of good works for salvation. It was equally an error to say on the other extreme that good works are a detriment to salvation. Now, what did Amsdorf mean by this? Why make that kind of outrageous statement? Well, simply put, what Amsdorf was driving at is that putting such an emphasis on works for the retention of faith detracted from the work of Christ on our behalf. He feared that people might begin to put their trust in their works and lose their trust in Christ. That is, to fall back into the old Roman Catholic error once more. Now, the best way to handle that is probably not to go to the other extreme and to state that good works are a detriment or are harmful to salvation. But in the respect that he was trying to make the point and within the context of the controversy, what he was driving at was perhaps on the right track. He just chose the wrong words. Hence, the careful work of the formulators here. Hence, the careful work in looking at the text of the scripture themselves and the relationship always of faith and good works within this context. And, again, language is a very carefully ordered thing in this particular argument and it is absolutely necessary that we keep it straight. So what do we say then? Well, very simply, good works necessarily follow from faith. They will do this as the natural fruit of the redeemed person. We don't look to the fruits. We don't look to the works. We don't emphasize the works in any way, shape, or form as being tied to our salvation or to our justification. Rather, we embrace the will of God outlining the responsibilities that he has for us and look to fulfill it as his Holy Spirit enables us., that's one other point the formulators make that we only do these things again because of the life of Christ that is within us. Going back again once more to John 15, verse 5, "I am the vine. You are the branches." With Christ in us working through us, we are able to reach out to those who are in need, to serve our neighbor as God would have us serve them. The balancing act is a very careful one. Neither allowing good works to intrude into salvation nor at the same time ignoring the good works to which God calls us. The controversy was profound. The divisions were sharp. But in brilliantly bringing together these two particular points, the formulators were able to keep the distinction clear. Now, what's at stake? Well, once again, they're stepping us through a theological argument. Perhaps you noticed that by this time in this course. We started with original sin. We moved on to freedom of the will. We talked about the righteousness of faith. Now we've talked about the relationship of faith and good works. Next will come a discussion of a distinction between law and Gospel. This will be key then for reading the scriptures properly. The Lutheran formulators in this respect have been moving us along theologically and giving us an approach for reading the scriptures. That will become explicit in the next article where the distinction between law and Gospel is carefully treated. And then the article following that where we hear about the third use of the law, both very, very significant articles. But they've been moving us along in this fashion for a purpose. And that is, again, so that we don't intrude any human efforts, any human works into the realm of justification. While at the same time they're going to affirm the legitimacy of talking about the sanctified life of a Christian. This is biblical. This is good theology. I think we have some more to learn from them.