Faith and SavingFaith

Gordon H. Clark

The Trinity Foundation Jefferson,Maryland

Cover: Elijah Taken Up in a Chariot ofFire, Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, 1745,National Gallery of Art, Samuel H. Kress Collection. First edition © 1983 The TrinityFoundation Second edition © 1990 TheTrinity Foundation Post Office Box 700Jefferson, Maryland 21755 Printed in the United States of America.ISBN 0-940931-958־

CONTENTSForeword v Preface ix

1. Introduction 1 2. Generic Faith: Brand Blanshard 3 3. Generic and Secular Faith: H.H.

Price 7 4. Roman Catholic Views 17 5. The Biblical Data 28 6. John Calvin 35 7. Thomas Manton 46 8. John Owen 52 9. Charles Hodge 59

10. B.B. Warfield 79 11. Minor Men 83 12. John Theodore Mueller 89 13. The End of History 91 14. The Necessity of Faith 92

15. The Language 95 16. Person or Proposition? 106 17. The Object 107 18. A Conclusion 110

Scripture Index 119 Index 123 Appendices The Crisis of Our Time 133 Intellectual Ammunition 141 Books by Gordon H. Clark Readings in Ethics (1931) Selections from Hellenistic PhUosophy (1940) A History of PhUosophy (coauthor, 1941) A Christian Philosophy of Education (1946, 1988) A Christian View of Men and Things (1952)

What Presbyterians Believe (1956)1 Thales to Dewey

(1957, 1989) Dewey (1960) ReUgion, Reason and Revelation (1961,1986)

William James (1963) Karl Barth’s Theological Method (1963) The PhUosophy of Science and Belief in God (1964,1987) What Do Presbyterians Believe? (1965,1985)

Peter Speaks Today (1967)2

The PhUosophy of Gordon H. Clark (1968)

Biblical Predestination (1969)3 Historiography: Secular

and Religious (1971) II Peter (1972)2 The Johannine Logos (1972, 1989) Three Types of Religious PhUosophy (1973, 1989) First Corinthians (1975) Colossians (1979,1989) Predestination in the Old Testament (1979)3 I and 11Peter (1980) Language and Theology (1980) First John (1980) God’s Hammer: The Bible and Its Critics (1982, 1987)Behaviorism and Christianity (1982) Faith and Saving Faith (1983, 1990) In Defense of Theology (1984)

The Pastoral Epistles (1984) The Biblical Doctrine of Man (1984) The Trinity (1985) Logic (1985, 1988) Ephesians (1985) Clark Speaks From the Grave (1986) Logical Criticisms of Textual Criticism (1986) First and Second Thessalonians (1986) Predestination (1987) The Atonement (1987) The Incarnation (1988)

FOREWORD Long before the neo-orthodox

theologians thought of saying that faith isan encounter with a divine person ratherthan assent to a proposition, preacherswho ought to have known better taughtthat faith is trust in a person, not belief ina creed. Years later, this writer, when ateen-ager, was told that some people

would miss heaven by twelve inches—the distance between the head and theheart—because they believed the Gospelwith their heads but not with their hearts.Today it is easier for a camel to passthrough the eye of a needle than it is tofind a minister—a conservative minister—who does not believe and teach thatone must have a “personal” relationshipwith Christ in order to be saved. Butwhat that “personal” relation- shipconsists of is either not made explicit or,when made explicit, contradicts what theBible teaches about saving faith. Theresult is that both Christians and non-Christians are either needlessly confusedor totally misled. Perhaps the world isnot responding to our message because

the message is garbled. Neither we, northey, know exactly what they must do tohave eternal life.

Statements such as these about thehead and the heart and trusting a person,not believing a creed, are not only false,they have created the conditions for theemergence of all sorts of religioussubjectivism, from modernism to thecharismatic movement and beyond. Noone will miss heaven by twelve inches,for there is no distance between the headand the heart: “As a man thinks in hisheart, so is he.” The head/heart contrastis a figment of modern secularpsychology, not a doctrine of divinerevelation. St. Sigmund, not St. John,controls the pulpit in all too many

churches. Further, “trust in a person” is a

meaningless phrase unless it meansassenting to certain propositions about aperson, propositions such as “I believein God the Father Almighty. . . and inJesus Christ his only Son, our Lord, whowas conceived by the Holy Ghost, bornof the Virgin Mary, suffered underPontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, andburied; the third day he rose again fromthe dead; he ascended into heaven, andsits on the right hand of God the FatherAlmighty; from thence he shall come tojudge the living and the dead.” Trust inChrist, unless it means belief of thesepropositions, is totally without value.“Christ” means these propositions—and

a lot more, to be sure, but at least these.No one who trusts in the Christs ofBarth, Brunner, Renan or Tillich will besaved.

As for having a “personal”relationship with Christ, if the phrasemeans something more than assenting totrue propositions about Jesus, what isthat something more? Feeling warminside? Coffee has the same effect.Surely “personal” relationship does notmean what we mean when we say thatwe know someone personally: Perhapswe have shaken his hand, visited hishome or he ours, or eaten with him. Johnhad a “personal” relationship withChrist in that sense, as did all thedisciples, including Judas. But millions

of Christians have not, and Jesus calledthem blessed: They have not seen andyet have believed. The differencebetween Judas and the other disciples isnot that they had a “personal”relationship with Jesus and he did not,but that they believed, that is, assented tocertain propositions about Jesus, whileJudas did not believe those propositions. Belief ofthe truth, nothing more and nothing less,is what separates the saved from thedamned. Those who maintain that thereis something more than belief, are, quiteliterally, beyond belief.

In the pages that follow, Dr. Clarkdefends the view that faith is assent to aproposition, and that saving faith is

assent to propositions found in the Bible.Saving faith is neither an indescribableencounter with a divine person, nor heartknowledge as opposed to headknowledge. According to the author ofHebrews, those who come to God mustbelieve at least two propositions: Thathe is, and that he is a rewarder of themthat diligently seek him. Mindlessencounters and meaninglessrelationships are not saving faith. Truthis propositional, and one is saved andsanctified only through believing truestatements. Faith comes by hearing, andhearing by the Word of God.

The anti-intellectual cast ofvirtually all modern thought, from theuniversity chair to the barroom stool,

controls the pulpits as well. It is thispious anti-intellectualism thatemphasizes encounter rather thaninformation, emotion instead ofunderstanding, “personal” relationshiprather than knowl- edge. But Christians,Paul wrote, have the mind of Christ. Ourrelationship to him is intellectual. Andsince Christ is his mind and we are ours,no relationship could be more intimatethan that. That is precisely why theScriptures use the analogy of marriage toillustrate the intellectual relationshipbetween Christians and Christ.

This recognition of the primacy ofthe intellect, the primacy of truth, istotally missing from contemporarytheology. One of this century’s greatest

theologians and writers,! GreshamMachen, wrote a book entitled What IsFaith? fifty years ago. His words are asappropriate today as they were then:

This anti-intellectual tendency in themodern world is no trifling thing; it has its rootsdeep in the entire philosophical development ofmodem times. Modem philosophy . . . has had asits dominant note, certainly as its present dayresult, a depreciation of the reason and askeptical answer to Pilate’s question, “What istruth?” This attack upon the intellect has beenconducted by men of marked intellectual powers;but an attack it has been all the same. And at lastthe logical results of it, even in the sphere ofpractice, are beginning to appear. A markedcharacteristic of the present day is a lamentableintellectual decline, which has appeared in allfields of human endeavor excpet those that dealwith purely material things. The intellect hasbeen browbeaten so long in theory that onecannot be surprised if it is now ceasing to

function in practice . . . As over against this anti-intellectual

tendency in the modem world, it will be one chiefpurpose of the present little book to defend theprimacy of the intellect, and in particular to try tobreak down the false and disastrous oppositionwhich has been set up between knowledge andfaith.

That, too, is a chief purpose of thislittle book. The following pages arguethat it is rational to believe what Godsays; it is irrational to disbelieve God.No argument is more urgently neededthan that. John W. Robbins President January 31, 1983 Jefferson, Maryland

PREFACEThe motivation for this study of the

nature of faith is the edification ofChristians: “Let all things be done foredifica- tion” (I Corinthians 14:26).More specifically this book is addressedto conservative-minded, orthodox,evangelical, Bible-believingProtestants.

Naturally the author would behappy to have some secular- ists read ittoo. Most of them are so uninformed asto the theology of the ProtestantReformation that their remarks onreligion just about qualify as bigotry.The presidential cam- paign of 1980, onone side, virtually tried to reduce Bible-believing Christians to the status of

second class citizens, or worse. But the people to whom this

material is addressed merit somecastigation too. Many of them think thatsecularists have nothing worthwhile tooffer. One should by all means preachthe gospel to them with the hope that intheir darkness they may see a great light:but the idea that anti-christian philo-sophers can actually help Christians tounderstand the Bible is anathema.

However, contemporaryevangelicalism has deteriorated sogreatly from the theologicalachievements of the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries that one mightsuppose it has reverted to the Romishviews of an “implicit”faith of unknown

content. Therefore whatever small literary

skill this author may have developedduring his teaching career has here beendefaced both by some extremelyelementary Scriptural exege- sis andalso by constant reminders thatChristians should pay a certain amountof attention to secular scholars. Thesecular material itself not only impingeson New Testament teaching, but is reallyvery interesting, at least to a theologian;and to every patient reader it will proveedifying.

1. IntroductionThe thief on the cross said, “Lord,

remember me;” and Jesus replied,“Today thou shalt be with me inparadise.” After a life of crime one ofthe three worst criminals in the nation—Barabbas had been released—this thiefreceived assurance of heaven.

He could hardly have known muchabout Jesus. He cer- tainly had no notionof saving faith, let alone of the Trinity,the Atonement, or the second advent.Yet, on the authority of Jesus, we knowthat he was saved. Is it necessary then tohave saving faith, or faith of any kind?Must we know what saving faith is?Does one have to read the Bible andlisten to evangelis- tic sermons? What is

the relation between faith andknowledge? Surely entrance into heavendoes not require a degree from atheological seminary. The thief wassaved in ignorance.

However, let us not exaggerate.Very probably, indeed certainly, the thiefknew more than most people think hedid. For one thing, he knew the chargeon which Christ had been condemned.Even if he had been so illiterate that hecould not have read the inscription onChrist’s cross, he could not help hearingthe screams of the crowd as theyridiculed Christ’s claim to be King,Savior, and God. He also knew thecharge on which he himself had beencondemned. He had lived a life of

serious crime, and now heacknowledged that his condemna- tionand execution were just. In reply to theother thief’s participation in ridiculingJesus, he said, “Do you not even fear God, since you are under the samesentence of condemnation? And weindeed justly, for we are receiving whatwe deserve for our deeds.” Not only didhe fear God and admit his guilt, but headded, “This man has done nothingwrong.” How did he know that Jesus haddone nothing wrong? Being such anenterprising criminal and cognizant ofthe daily news from the cities andvillages, he must have heard rumorsabout this itinerant preacher. As Christpreached to the multitudes, the thief

might have been picking their pocketsand also picking up some few ideas ofwhat Christ was saying. We musttherefore not under- estimate the extentof the thiefs knowledge; but we can bepretty sure that he had no theologicaltheory about the nature of saving faith.

Even knowing so little the thiefcompares favorably with someAmericans today. They do not know theyare guilty, nor do they fear God. Somedo not even believe there is a God. Thenthere is one thing the thief knew whichhardly any Ameri- can knows. He knewhe would die within a few hours. Ourcontemporaries, comfortably ensconcedbefore their TV’s, do not have suchsombre expectations. When we stop to

think, we see that the thief knew morethan we first suspected. But all in all; hestill did not know very much.

If now he got to heaven withoutmuch knowledge, why should we botherto examine the psychology of savingfaith or trouble ouselves withtheological investigations? If knowledgeis indeed required, a very little willsuffice. If we do not know what it meansto believe, still we believe and aresaved.

However, that one piece ofknowledge which the thief had andwhich we do not have prevents us fromtaking him as a norm for our action. Heknew he would be dead before night-fall. We do not. He had no opportunity of

living a Christian life. We do. Tosuppose that ignorance is sufficient for aChristian life is to be ignorant of what aChristian life requires. Remember that Christ said, “Makedisciples of all the nations . . . teachingthem to observe all that I commandedyou.” The thief on the cross, and anyoneelse who is on his death-bed, is excusedfrom obeying this commandment. But therest of us are not. We are obliged toteach, and before we can teach, we mustlearn—learn all, or all we can, of whatChrist himself taught and what he taughtthrough his disciples. Remember alsothat Scripture has been breathed out byGod and that it is all profitable forteaching. But we cannot teach the

Christian message without first learningit. This small book endeavors to explainwhat the New Testament teaches aboutfaith.

2. Generic Faith: Brand BlanshardThis small book, as was just said,

aims to expound what the NewTestament, and the Bible as a whole,says about saving faith. But saving faithis a species of faith in general. Faith isnot limited to Christian faith. Jewishfaith, Islamic faith, and even secularfaiths are faith. Not only Christiantheologians, but secular philosophersalso have been interested in and havewritten about faith. Some smallacquaintance with their views willprove profitable, even if only by shar^pcontrast, in under- standing Christianfaith. The devout Christian readerexpects, and will not be disappointed, tofind a great deal of Biblical material in

this study. In fact, the Bible is the mainsource and only authority. Neverthelessa few pages on one or two secular viewsmake a good preliminary section.

First, let us consider BrandBlanshard’s The Nature of Thought,'(Vol. I. pp. 112ff.)!because in it we alsofind the views of two other secularthinkers. His first remarks are rather 1. George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1939. discouraging: “What is ordinarily meantwhen we say we believe something?One may reply that it is an acceptance orconviction or adoption or affirmation ormental assertion of some proposition;but these are all synonyms, notdefinitions. The fact is that belief,central as it is in the life of thought, and

perhaps because it is so essential, isindefinable and probablyindescribable.”

A most patient and persistentattempt to explain belief, according toBlanshard, was that of the Wurzburgschool. One of them reduced belief to anindescribable Bewusstseinslage(contents of consciousness orawareness), neither determinate ideasnor volitions. Another used the phrase “acontent image- lessly present asknowledge.” A third spoke of anintellectual attitude which “may be aglow or halo of indescribable con-sciousness.” Others said similar things.

For the benefit of the Christianreader who knows little about the history

of psychology and is anxious to arrive ata Biblical view of the matter, it may besuggested that view number two may beof some help, but that the others are oflittle value for anything.

Not all psychologists were asdisappointing as the Wurz- burgers.Bertrand Russell was somewhat moredefinite. Rus- sell was of course avigorous enemy of Christianity; further-more he changed his opinions ratheroften; nevertheless, his view of belief isa background against which a Christianmust work. “The content of a belief,”says Russell, “may consist of wordsonly, or of images only, or of a mixtureof the two, or either or both togetherwith one or more sensations. . . .In this

[latter] case your belief consists of asensation and an image suitablyrelated.”

On this section, not given here infull, Blanshard remarks, “Now a roughcount discloses in this passage somefifteen distinguishable propositions, ofwhich one seems to me true, onedoubtful, and thirteen false.”Obviously,therefore, secular philosophers disagreeconsiderably as to the nature of belief.Though none of them is interested indefending Christianity, Christians mightnonetheless find some worthwhilesugges- tions as to the nature of faith.The material certainly offers us a widechoice.

This welter of conflicting opinions,

continues Blanshard, “tends to supportthe view of James that belief is‘perfectly distinct, but perfectlyindescribable in words,’ that ‘it feelslike itself—and that is about as much aswe can say.’ However [still Blanshard]this is not quite all we can say. We cansay that belief is not sensation, that it isnot the use of words or images, thoughthese may accompany it, and that it isnot the same as desire or feeling. . . .James, to be sure, thinks it is a feeling,and speaks of those states of intoxicationin which a man’s soul will sweat withconviction and he be all the whileunable to tell what he is convinced of atall.”

Unfortunately, at least in the present

writer’s opinion, many Christians,motivated by an irrational pragmatism orby an even more extremely irrationalmysticism, consider belief to be anemotion or feeling. To be sure, somebeliefs stir the emotions, but the verysober belief that a man has five fingerson each hand is as much a belief as someshattering bad news. Nor can believinggood news, namely the Good News, be amere emotion.

Blanshard appropriately notes thattwo Roman Catholic philosophers,Descartes and Newman, in differentways, made belief an act of will. Hehimself holds that this is too specific anddefinite—a strange criticism—but thenhe adds that belief is “virtually identical

with mind on its intellectual side.” Ascorroboration he quotes Mill: “Itsdistinctive character is such. Mill said,that ‘when we arrive at it, we seem tohave reached, as it were, the centralpoint of our intellectual nature’ which allother functions presuppose.” In defenseof this proposition he adduces thefollowing instance. “How importantbelief is for perception may be madeclear by considering (1) that if inperceiving an orange our thought wereconfined to what we see, we shouldremain penned in a coloured patch andnever arrive at an orange at all, and (2)that to say, as some writers do, that weshould even see a coloured patch is,strictly, wrong. One can no doubt see a

colour, but at the level at which oneapprehends a coloured patch,rudimentary judgement is pres- ent. Totalk of ‘sensing patches of colour,’except by way of metonomy, is to talkloosely; no patch could possibly besensed.”

College students, bank tellers, andmany Christian apolo- gists exhibitsurprised disbelief that one cannot sensea patch of color. What can possibly bemore evident than that we see color? ButBlanshard, independently arriving at aconclusion that St. Augustine long agoexpressed, insists that adults, if notbabies, can have no sensation of blueminus all intellectual interpretation.Here the serious reader should begin to

con- sider what a sensation might be,and how, if there is such a thing, it can fitinto a theory of learning.

Although Blanshard was not aChristian, he was not particularlymotivated by anti-christian bias in thesepassages.4 Therefore, it is just possiblethat some of his observations could beincorporated into a Christian philosophy.At any rate, there are good orthodoxChristian apologetes today who, in myopinion, teach nonsense because they areunacquainted with professional studiesof sensation, mind, and belief. Even theirrelatively faithful biblical account ofsaving faith is defective because they donot understand faith simpliciter. Thebiblical account of saving faith

presupposes a view of human nature, notmerely as sinful, but as natural. Theassertion that men believe falsehoods,being deceived by Satan, does notexcuse the apologete from searching outthe Biblical view of sensation,perception, intellection, volition, andbelief.

3. Generic and Secular Belief: H.H.Price

In 1960 Professor H.H. Pricedelivered one of the Gifford Lectureseries at the University of Aberdeen.These lectures, considerably expanded,were published by George Allen &Unwin in 1969, under the title Belief.Some thoughts from its 488 pages willserve as another example of how secularscholars treat the general subject ofbelief. Obviously no summary of theentire work is possible here.

The opening pages describe twocontrasting methodolo- gies betweenwhich, Price seems to say, every studentof the problem must choose. Thetraditional method and the only method

used until recently assumes that“believing is a special sort of mentaloccurrence (sometimes described as a‘mental’ act . . . [which] need notnecessarily be introspected by theperson in whom it occurs; but it alwayscould be ... . The modern way of treatingbelief is quite different. Believingsomething is now generally regarded notas an occurrence . . . but as adisposition. . . . This is equivalent to aseries of condi- tional statementsdescribing what he would be likely tosay or do or feel if such and suchcircumstances were to arise. Forexample, he would assert theproposition (aloud, or privately tohimself) if he heard someone else

denying it.... He would use it, whenrelevant, as a premise in his inferences... he would act as if it were true. If itwere falsified he would feel surprised,and would feel no surprise if it wereverified. . . . The occurrent believings or‘acts of believing’ which the traditionaltheorists discussed are on this viewmythical entities” (pp. 1920־).

Although Professor Price herepictures these two views as mutuallyexclusive, and although the adherents ofthe contem- porary method do so also,for they refer to the traditional view asmythical, Price nonetheless hints that thetraditional view can accommodate thelater view even if the latter cannotaccommodate the former. This non-

reciprocal relationship is of someimportance, as will be seen some pagesfurther on. At the moment Price’s hintcan be expanded by saying that althoughbelieving something for many years maynot be an instantaneous act, there musthave been some such act when a personpasses from ignorance, inattention, oreven disbelief to a conscious acceptanceof the proposition in question. Thetraditional analysis does not or need notdeny that I believe two and two are foureven when my mind is occupied with achess problem or when I am asleep. Thecontemporary view some- times makesuse of prejudicial expressions. On page189 Price says, “As Professor Ryle haspointed out, it sounds very odd indeed to

say ‘at half past three I was engaged inbelieving that Oxford would win theboat race.’ ” Price himself recognizedthe inappropriateness of Ryle’sillustration and replies, “it does makesense to say that I assented to aproposition p at half past three today.”Does this then not permit us to say thatphiloso- phically the initial act ofbelieving is the more important?Christians, who read “Believe on theLord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt besaved,”cannot minimize this initial act,no matter how useful it is to remember,on a later relevant occasion, that stuffedgreen peppers resulted in indigestion.

Perhaps these remarks relative tothe first pages of Price’s second lecture

have pushed us a little too far forward.But the religious implication will returnus to a noteworthy page in the firstlecture. There Price makes anobservation which this monograph alsowishes to emphasize. Suppose someonesays, “What difference does it makewhich of these two analyses of belief—if either—is the correct one? Who careswhether‘Jones believes that p' is or isnot a purely dispositional statementabout Mr. Jones? . . . My reply, however,is that in philosophy the longest wayround is often the shortest way home. ...If belief in a religious world-view iswhat interests us most, we shall be in abetter position for considering thissubject if we first pay some attention to

the nature of belief in general” (pp.Price mentions one specific .(־2324example of the coincidence of thesecular and the religious problem: it is“the distinction between believing ‘in’and believing ‘that’ ” (p. 348). We mayboth believe that the president haswisely vetoed a bill, and, or, we maybelieve in the president. Pilate seems tohave believed that Jesus was innocent,but he did not believe in Jesus. Theremust be some distinction between thesetwo beliefs, whether their object is thepresident or Jesus. What is thisdistinction? If we mistake the difference,the result to ourselves will be moreserious in the latter case than in theformer. The present mono- graph will,

later on, pay particular and detailedattention to what the New Testamentteaches on this point.

Another element in secularphilosophy which reappears in religiousdiscussions, or rather an elementdiscussed in religion for centuriesbefore Bertrand Russell and otherslatched on to it, is the alleged distinctionbetween knowledge by “acquain- tance”and knowledge by “description.” Price,loquaciously enough to justify theomission of several phrases, writes as follows: “Various sorts of dependentclauses . . . follow the verb ‘to know.’But sometimes it is not followed by adependent clause at all. Instead, itgoverns an accusative—a noun or a noun

phrase. We speak of knowing Mr.Robertson Smith . . . or KensingtonGardens. . . . This is very different from‘knowledge that’ ” (p. 50).

The importance of this distinction,or, more accurately, the importance ofdeciding whether or not there is such adistinction, is considerable, and thedevout non-philosophical Christian canhardly suspect at this point howimportant it is for understanding John’sGospel.

Price continues: “ ‘Knowledge that’may be called a ‘pro- positionalattitude.’ But the knowledge we are nowdiscussing is not a propositional attitudeat all. It is sometimes called knowledgeby acquaintance. One cannot have it

unless one has actually encountered [bysensory perception?] the person or thingwhich is known. . . . Perhaps we cannotknow anything by acquaintance withoutcoming to know at least some facts ortruths about it. But certainly we canknow truths or facts about somethingwithout being acquainted with it. . . .Students of Roman History may knowmany facts about Julius Caesar, but theyare not in a position to know him.”

The Christian must now askhimself, Can one know Jesus Christ withthe knowledge of acquaintance, that is tosay, by sensory perception? Or is ourknowledge of Christ merely unimportantknowledge about him? Is “knowledgeabout” unimportant? Is there any

knowledge that is not “knowledgeabout” ?

Price, to support the contention thatthere are two distinct types ofknowledge, adduces the use, in somelanguages, of two different words forknow, cognoscere and scire, connaitreand savoir, kennen and wissen. Priceallows that English has now deleted thisdistinction. Price does not appeal to theGreek verbs gignosko versus oida. Theuse of these two verbs is much tooconfusing for Price’s purpose. Liddelland Scott report gignosko (same root asthe Latin cognoscere) as “come to know,perceive, and in past tenses know withthe accusative; as distinct from oidaknow by reflection, gignosko - know by

observation.” But then the lexicon adds amost interesting instance fromAristotle’s Posterior Analytics: “It isdifficult to know (gnonai) if one knows(oiden) or not; for it is difficult to know(gnonai) whether or not we know(ismen) by means of the first principlesin each case” (76 a 2627־). Ismen is thefirst person indicative plural of oida It isa second perfect of eidon, to see, relatedto the Latin video. Under eido Liddelland Scott give “see, perceive,. . . beforethe eyes,. . .experience,. . .see mentally,perceive . . . examine, investigate,. . .consider. . . . oida 1 see with the mind’seye, i.e., I know . . . The aorist andperfect are usually supplied by gignosko... be acquainted with,. . . one acquainted

with the fact. . . with knowing mind . . .ouk oid’ei I know not whether. . . .”

Now try to explain Aristotle’smeaning while observing Price’s allegeddistinction. Should we say, “It isdifficult to know by reflection whetherwe perceive by the eyes”?Or if oidameans to know by reflection andgignosko means to know by observation,as the lexicon said (see above), shouldwe trans- late Aristotle as “It is difficultto know by observation whether weknow by reflection”?Hardly: Aristotleseems to use the two verbssynonymously. If indeed Latin, German,and French made a systematicdistinction, why cannot we say that theGreeks were more philosophic than the

Latins and the later English discoveredthat the earlier Anglo-Saxon wasconfused? In recent days severalphilosophic authors have tried to basetheir theories on linguistic usage. Thepresent writer does not approve. Price’sstatement that “In the examplesmentioned earlier (knowing a person, ora country, or an object such as an oaktree) it was plausible to say thatknowledge by acquain- tance is not apropositional attitude at all” (p. 52), is astate- ment which, plausible as it mayseem to some people, seems to at leastone person to be definitely false.

To examine all the details thatProfessor Price adduces, nearly everyone of which is intensely interesting, at

least to a philosopher, would discouragesome less professional readers.However, even the less professionalshould be warned that Price’s relianceon the occurrence of sense data (e.g., pp.57 ff.) is rejected by the neohegelianBlanshard as well as by the greatChristian theologian St. Augustine.Locke insisted on sense data, and Kant,in a very different setting, spoke of DasGege- benes, but the beginning student inphilosophy must be warned that such isnot a point of universal agreement. Thesubject is really quite complicated.

There is also another immediacy,often emphasized by contemporaryconservative Christian apologetes. It isself- knowledge. Price says, “Surely

each of us must know himself in somedegree. . . We certainly do possess it”(p.62). I acknowl- edge that Price addssome qualifications. But at the moment 1merely want to cast doubt on thepossibility of knowing one’s self byquoting, “The heart is deceitful above allthings and desperately wicked: who canknow it?” The following verse suggeststhat only God knows a man. If nowknowledge by acquaintance is anunintelligible phrase, equallyunacceptable is Price’s and Russell’sdescription of knowledge by descrip-tion. In both cases the object ofknowledge is misconstrued. Furtherelucidation here of the object ofknowledge would too much tax the

reader’s patience. The main point is torealize how complicated the subjectmatter actually is.

Price’s book is detailed,complicated, and very interesting. Attimes it is disappointing. At one point,discussing Locke’s theory of degrees ofassent (p. 131), he says, “Thesedoctrines of Locke . . . may strike us as just obviouscommon sense.” This phraseology doesnot bind Price to agreement with Locke,but they suggest that he does, for on thenext page he adds, “Do we not all agreewith Locke that a lower degree of assentmay be justified when a higher degreewould not be?” The answer to thisrhetorical question is. No, we do not all

agree, and Locke’s view is not obvious“common sense.” Price continues on thefollowing page (p. 133) “Locke's twodoctrines, then—that assent has degrees[here 1 am not interested in the second]may easily seem platitudinous.” Grantedthat he immediately con- tinues bydiscussing Cardinal Newman’s contraryargument, he yet seems to accept Locketoo easily. Indeed, he says, “1 shall tryto show that Locke is more nearly rightthan Newman.” Later on (p. 204) heagain mentions Locke's theory that assenthas degrees; and throughout the book heseems to delight in describing minutedifferences in consciousness; yet onpage 207 Price admits that “You cannotpartially decide for /7, or half choose

it.” And after some interestingdescription of our reac- tions toimplausible news, he allows that “assentmay be volun- tary in the long run, atleast sometimes, even though in the shortrun it is quite beyond our voluntarycontrol” (p. 223).

Continuing this discussion ofNewman many pages later. Price notes afundamental blunder that nearly allEmpiricists fall into. Pages 324-330describe the unusually vivid imagery bywhich Newman carried on his thinking:not only visual imag- ery, but the otherfour types as well. Then Newman, likeHume5 , assumed that all people hadsimilar imagery. Francis Galton, thirteenyears after Newman's Grammar of

Assent, in his Inquiries into HumanFaculty, recorded empirical disproof ofthis assumption. Since the present writeris intimately acquainted with one who has nosuch imagery at all, he consid- ers all empiricismto be vitiated ab initio. This applies to Price aswell as to Newman and Hume. Of course somethings Price and Newman say are inconsistentlytrue, or may be true by some adaptation, as when,for example, Price in a footnote on page 333 says“Newman seems to admit [that]. . . .Real assent

is in itself an intellectual act.”6

If some devout readers find these mattersa little too far removed from religiousimportance, Price’s next to last chapter canhardly fail to suggest that Christians can profit bysuch discussions. The title is, Belief‘in’ andBelief ,that. ’

On pages 426ff. Price notes that inreligious circles belief in is of more interest

than belief that. The latter is a more secularconcept; and the devout insist that there is agreat difference between them. Philosophers onthe other hand usu- ally think not and attempt toreduce in to that. However, as Price notes,even secularists use belief-in. A blind manbelieves- in his dog. Englishmen used to believe-in the British Empire. Some parents believe-in aliberal arts education for their chil- dren.Women’s lib believes-in killing babies. Can thesebeliefs- in be reduced to beliefs-that? Forexample, belief in the Loch Ness monster simplymeans someone believes that there is such acreature. The Tories of the nineteenth centurydid not believe in Gladstone; that is, they did notbelieve that he was a good prime minister. Butsince a person who believes in God in the sensethat there is a God may himself be irreligious,belief-in may seem to contain an irreduciblefactor.

Price thus concludes that belief-in has two

senses, one reducible and the other not (p.435); but his argument is weak. Hemakes a distinction between factualbeliefs and evaluative beliefs, yet he hasa hard time finding an evaluation thatcannot be expressed factually. Does notbelief-in militarism, or in pacifism,reduce to belief-that factually it isprofitable in one way or another?Price’s opponents argue that the objectof such a belief is an evaluation and webelieve that the evaluation is correct.The difference between various beliefslies in the objects or propositionsbelieved, not in the nature of belief.

When Price begins to argue againstthe reduction of belief in to belief that,his line of thought becomes confused.

Some of it is too trivial. For example,“to believe in my physician” cannot bereduced to “to believe that he is amorally good man,” or that “he is goodat water-colour painting:” he must be“good at curing diseases” (p. 442).Precisely: This triviality is a systematicconfusion, for belief in my physician isobviously belief that he isagood doctor.Makingmuch ofthedistinction between afactual belief and an evaluative belief,he repudiates the reduction on the groundthat the one is not the other. This device,clearly, substitutes one proposition foranother; the object of belief is changed,but changingthe object of the belief doesnot indicate any theoretical differencebetween factual and evaluative beliefs.

To believe-in a certain value, virtue forexample, is to believe-that virtue is avalue. The logic, the analysis, the natureof “All a is b” remains identical nomatter what values are assigned to thetwo variables.

By such a confused procedure,Price finally concludes “Trusting is not amerely cognitive attitude. . . . Theproposed reduction leaves out the‘warmth’ which is a characteristicfeature of evaluative belief-in. ... If it isdisagreeable to be compelled to talkabout ‘the heart,’the fact remains thatmost of us have one, as well as a head”(p. 452).

Later on the Biblical view of such adistinction between the heart and the

head must be stated. Flere as this secularsection comes to an end, one need noteonly that after pages and pagesdescribing various beliefs, Price givesno explana- tion of his words warmth,head, or heart. The defect is major. Hehas solved his problem withmeaningless words.

A technical point relative to thisgap in Price’s argument comes at the topof the same page: “Trusting is not merelya cognitive attitude.” One need not rejectthis statement as false. Rather it ismisapplied. No belief is a merelycognitive attitude. After spending somany pages on Newman’s Grammar ofAssent, Price should have considered thepossibility that every belief is a

volitional attitude, or volitional act. Assuch it has no bearing on the reducibilityor irreducibility of in to that.

It should now be clear that secularanalyses of belief are applicable to thesame problem in Christian Theology.Some Scriptural material is asdescriptive as Price’s many pages; someis more analytical. The problem isidentical, and we should not refuse tolearn even from those with whom we arein basic disagreement.

There is one further lesson we maylearn. Professor Price is so very honestthat he does all he can to find somevalue in every view he discusses. Theresult is that every view becomesequally or almost equally questionable.

If we, like him. were left to our ownnatural resources, we could have littleconfi- dence in any view. Though Pricestates some preferences, the whole givesan impression of skepticism. The morewe study his arguments, the more thisimpression is reinforced. But weChristians do not claim to rely on ournatural resources. We claim to havereceived a supernatural revelation. If wepatiently study this revelation andcarefully avoid illogicalities, we shallreach the truth, or at least some of it.

4. Roman Catholic ViewsIn the preceding section the

material from Price included some of hisremarks on Cardinal Newman. Moreneeds to be said about Roman Catholicviews. Perhaps we should refer to theRoman Catholic view in the singular, forthe several writers are in substantialagreement. Hence w׳e shall go back toNew־׳ man's source, Thomas Aquinas,and forw׳ard to the recent M.C. D’Arcy,S.J.

Since the early Christians, beforeA.D. 325, had not settled upon thedoctrine of the Trinity, it is notsurprising that they had no clear view offaith. Tertullian spoke about believ- ingon authority rather than by personal

investigation and knowledge. AfterAthanasius, Augustine had more to say.Faith for him was voluntary assent to thetruth. This is more to the point thanTertullian’s very good, but quiteinadequate passages.

As one of the greatest thinkers inthe history of philosophy and theology,Thomas Aquinas demands notice. Here arefer- ence to a previous medievaltheologian, Hugo St. Victor, willconveniently introduce the discussion.Hugo proposed a defi- nition of faith thatwas widely accepted both before andafter the Protestant Reformation: “Faithis a kind of certainty con- cerning absentrealities that is superior to opinion andinferior to knowledge." This sort of

division is reminiscent of the finedistinctions described by H.H. Price,which can be useful only if each isdistinctly defined. Thomas, however,strikes deeper. He objects that a meanmust always be homogeneous to its twoextremes. Since both science andopinion have propositions as theirobjects, the objects of faith (which isintermediate between them) mustlikewise be propositions. Then Thomas,always willing to present an opponent’sview, acknowledges that contrary towhat he has just said, the Apostles’Creed asserts “I believe in God theFather Almighty,” and this is differentfrom the proposition, “God is Almighty.”Therefore, echoing Hugo St. Victor, faith

concerns a reality, not a propo- sition.Further, in heaven faith gives way tovision, as I Corin- thians 13:12 says; andthis is a vision of God himself, not aproposition; therefore similarly theobject of faith is a person, not aproposition.

After stating opposing viewsThomas does not always come down onone side as against the other. Hesometimes effects a combination. Here,noting the divergency, he gives thisconclusion in the Summa Theologica(Blackfriars edition, Vol. 31, pp. 11 ff.):“The way the known exists in theknower corresponds to the way theknower knows. . . . For this reason thehuman mind knows in a composite way

things that are themselves simple. . . .From the perspective of the one believ-ing, the object of faith is somethingcomposite in the form of a proposition.... In heaven . . . that vision will not takethe form of a proposition, but of a simpleintuition.”

This quotation presents two and ahalf puzzles. First is the triviality,tautology, or vagary that the way theknown exists in the knower correspondsto the way the knower knows. This doesnot describe what these ways are, andtherefore leaves in doubt whether or notthe way the knower knows is the way theobject itself exists. The second andthird, or second and a half puzzle,concerns the distinction between

knowing in this life and knowing inheaven. If God is so simple as not to bea proposition, so simple as not to be asubject with predicates, how can he turninto a subject and predicate when heenters a human mind? Or otherwise, ifour propositional knowledge of God betrue, what becomes of this truth inheaven? Does it become false? Thomassays that God becomes a vision orsimple intuition. Vision, however, aswhen Scripture says that we shall seehim face to face, is clearly metaphorical,for God is not a visible body. And as forintuition, some philosophers haveasserted the occurrence of intellectualintuitions, espe- dally axiomaticpropositions. It is hard to credit the idea

that truth can be non-propositional. Thesingle word cat is neither true nor false.The proposition, “this cat is black,” maybe true; but how can a subject minus apredicate be true all alone by itself? YetGod is the truth, and his mind, hisomniscience, is the totality of all truths.

Another of Thomas’ points is evenmore clearly implausi- ble. He insiststhat we cannot believe anything that isfalse. To quote: “Nothing can be thecompletion of any potentiality . . . exceptin virtue of the formal objective of thatpower. For example, color cannot be thecompletion of sight except through light.... Nothing therefore can come underfaith except in its status within God’struth, where nothing false has any place.

. . . We can only conclude that nothingfalse can be the object of faith.”

Such was not Augustine’s view, andon the face of it St. Thomas’statement isjust plain false. And if so, Thomas hasbelieved a false proposition, which hesaid no one can do. People believe manyfalse propositions. Augustine used as anexample the belief of a boy that a certainman and woman were his parents,whereas he had actually been adoptedsoon after his birth.

This is so obvious that we mustsuppose Aquinas to have meantsomething else. If he had saving faith inmind, instead of faith in general, hisstatement would be true. Saving faithmust be belief in something God has

said, not something Herodotus or Celsushad said. Therefore the object of faithmust be true and cannot be false. No onecan be saved by believing a falsehood.But with this quite understandablemeaning, the meaning of faithdisappears. It reduces to a tautology,namely, faith can have no false statementas an object because we refuse the namefaith to any belief that has a falsestatement as its object; and thus Thomashere gives no information as the natureof belief and its place in one’sconsciousness. Of course, this is not allSt. Thomas said.

Some pages further on (Blackfriars’edition, p. 61) Thomas gives a fullerexplanation: “The verb to think can be

used in three senses. The first is thewidest sense—any act of intellectualkriowing. . . . The second is a narrowersense, where thinking designates athinking of the mind that is accompaniedby a certain searching prior to reachingcomplete understanding in the certitudeof seeing. . . . The third sense is an act ofthe cogitative power [and has no part inthis discus- sion.]... In its first andbroadest sense, ‘to think with assent’does not bring out the precise meaning.... If, however, to think is understood inits proper sense, the text does expressthe meaning distinctive of the act ofbelief. Among the acts of the intellect,some include a firm assent withoutpondering—thus when someone thinks

about what he knows scientifically . . .Other mental acts are . . .inconclusive. ..suspicion. . . opin- ion. The act ofbelieving, however, is firmly attached toone alternative, and in this respect thebeliever is in the same state of mind asone who has science or understanding.”7

Since this is not a treatise on

Thomistic philosophy and cannottherefore analyze the innumerabledetails, a rather summary conclusion,minus the niceties and requisite modifi-cations, may be permitted. The last ofthe quoted sentences, identifying thebelieving state of mind with thescientific state of mind, more or lessjustifies the conclusion that faith, for

Thomas, is an assent to an understoodproposition. And to that extent weagree.

Somewhere in a discussion onfaith, the Romish view of “implicit” faith should be considered.When an Italian or Irish peasant assertsthat he believes whatever the Churchteaches, though, of course, hisknowledge of what the Church teachesembraces no more than one percent ofthe Tridentine confes- sion, he is said tohave implicit faith. Even an educatedCatholic, a professor of philosophy in asecular university, did not know theessential element that makes baptismvalid. But all such people profess beliefin whatever the Church teaches.

Protestantism has always rejected thisproposition as absurd. It should be clearthat no one can believe what he does notknow or understand. Suppose a personwho knows no French is told, “Dans ceroman c’est M. DuPres qui est lemeurtrier”: can he believe it? If hecould, it would greatly ease the work offoreign missionaries: they could preachto the Chinese or Ban- tus in Englishwithout having to spend years learningthe native language. But in reality no onecan believe what he does not understand,even if it is expressed in his own mothertongue. Certainly the Scriptures do notcountenance faith in what isunintelligible. Speaking in foreigntongues, though God under- stands, does

not edify because in the congregation noone understands. The message must betranslated into the known language. It isbetter to speak five intelligible wordsthan ten thousand in an unknown tongue.If the people do not under- stand, howcan they say Amen? The sacred writersconstantly emphasize doctrine,knowledge, wisdom, and edification.This argument, though given here in anegative form as an objection to anopposing view, must be taken as apositive element in the constructiveconclusion that will eventually follow.Allow the addition of another verse.Matthew 28:20 says, “Teaching them toobserve all things whatsoever Icommand you.” Nothing is to be left

untaught. A person cannot “observe” adoctrine or obey a command unless heknows it. Faith is strictly limited toknowledge.

Romanism’s implicit faith contrastswith Calvin’s discus- sion in theInstitutes, (III, ii). Ridiculing theirdoctrine he says, “Is this faith—tounderstand nothing? . . . Faith consistsnot in ignorance, but in knowledge. ... Bythis knowledge [of Christ’spropitiation], I say, not by renouncingour under- standing, we obtain anentrance into the kingdom of heaven ....the apostle [in Romans 10:10]. . .indicates that is not sufficient for a manimplicitly to credit [believe] what heneither understands nor even examines;

but he requires an explicit knowledge ofGod and of Christ” (III, ii, 2, 3).

At this point it is a questionwhether it is better to continue withCalvin’s refutation of implicit faith, andso extend the section on Romanism, or topostpone such material and use itpositively in the exposition of Calvin.We shall do the latter and turn here toanother Roman Catholic author.

M.C. D’Arcy, S.J. published a bookof the title The Nature of Belief.8 After apreliminary chapter, aptly described byone of its sub-heads, Spiritual Crisis inthe West, Chapter II discusses thepossibility of truth.

In view of the irrationalism ofcontemporary society D’Arcy’s first

task, therefore, is “to restore confidencein the intellect” (p. 30). He describes thevarious emotional tensions of the presentage that interfere with the populace’sability to think clearly. To correct thepresent nihilism one must “first . . . showthat the mind is not material.” To do thisD’Arcy depends largely on the argumentthat material bodies can bequantitatively measured, and that whichcannot be quantified or dissected intoparts is spirit or thought.

The reader must not suppose thatthe present writer agrees with everythingthat D’Arcy says. In contrasting themind’s grasping a thought and the hand’sgrasping a coin, D’Arcy says, “The coinis or is not in my hand—that is a fact and

not a truth” (p.32). Obviously it is atruth. Did he not print the proposition onthe page? Another point of disagreementis D’Arcy’s use of imagery, in which heresembles Cardinal Newman and St.Thomas, though he does not seem soextreme as they.

When one author constantlycriticizes other authors, the reader maybe repelled by the negativism. Let it berepeated that contrasting views bringboth sides into sharper focus. And notonly so, the writer criticized may setforth some very acceptable material. Inthese pages D’Arcy makes some excel-lent points on the distinction betweensoul and body to the discomfiture ofbehaviorists. However behaviorism is

not the present subject.9 After Chapter II has defended The

Possibility of Truth, Chapter III directlyattacks the problem of Belief. He beginsby distinguishing belief from knowledge.His argument is very plausible. “Belief .. . carries us beyond the obvious inexpe- rience and the self-evident inpropositions. . . . There is very little thatwe can know with the certainty ofabsolute proof. . . . All that falls short ofdemonstrable certainty has beenincluded under the word ‘belief’ ” (pp.50-51). Nevertheless “we must becareful not to underrate this belief andreckon it necessarily uncertain. . . . Thisform [of belief] goes also by the name offaith, and on analysis seems to mean a

state of mind ... of absolute certainty” (p.52).

The notion of certainty—a notionmany other religious writers adopt—requires some scrutiny. People arecertain of all sorts of things. RomanCatholics of earlier centuries werecertain about the Donation ofConstantine; and Neo-Platonicmysticism infiltrated the church becauseall the churchmen were certain thatPaul’s Athenian convert, Dionysius theAreopagite, was the author of the DivineNames. His mysti- cism or negativetheology still afflicts, in a variety ofmodified forms, a number of professingChristians even though they have neverheard of the pagan Proclus whom

Dionysius pla- giarized. In lessermatters some people have been certainthat a witch’s brew could cure warts,and in government affairs thecommunists are certain that they shallrule the world. It would seem thereforethat certainty has little to do with truth. Ifso, its insertion in theology andapologetics only renders uncertain thenature and value of faith.

As was said above, D’Arcymoderates some of Newman’s extremepositions. It is not essential here todecide rigorously to what extent this isso, for the aim at the moment is more orless confined to presenting variousviews, even if negatively, as helpfulsuggestive material. We note therefore

that D’Arcy quotes Newman as follows:“There are three conditions of certitude:that it follows on investigation andproof, that it is accompanied by aspecific sense of intellectual satisfactionand relief, and that it is irreversible. Ifthe assent is made without rationalgrounds, it is a rash judgment, a fancy, ora prejudice; if without the sense offinality, it is scarcely more than aninference; if without permanence, it is amere conviction” (p. 92).

Newman’s conditions herecertainly rule out the certainty that awitch’s brew will cure warts. But dothey leave anything untouched? Does “aspecific sense of intellectualsatisfaction” guarantee that a belief is

based on truly rational grounds? Are notirrational grounds sometimes acceptedas rational? If the assent is “withoutpermanence,” it is “a mere conviction.”In that case, how can one distinguishbetween certitude and con- viction?What justifies the assertion that T shallnever change my mind as long as I live*?Who knows what he will believe tenyears from now? Newman gets rid ofwarts rather well, but he also removescertainty at the same time.

Although D’Arcy realizes thatNewman used some vague and doubtfulterms, such as instinct, sense, illativesense, prob- able, he himself, in tryingto avoid Newman’s infelicities and topresent a better version of the general

theory (p. 103), introdu- ces terminologyequally vague. He asserts in oppositionto Newman that “notions can beabsolutely valid, that first prin- ciplesare not assumptions or instincts, and thattherefore conclusions can beunconditional” (p. 104). Suggestingtimidly that assent is not distinct fromconclusion, he allows that manyarguments or conclusions “in which wecan find no flaw leave us quite cold,while others touch us to the quick.” Nodoubt this is so, for no one isenthusiastically interested in everypossible subject of debate. But if oneunderstands an argument on anuninteresting subject, is not his assent,refrigerated as it may be, as much an

assent as his passionate belief thatRubens is better than Rembrandt or thatthe New York Yankees are superior tothe Philadelphia Phillies? Applying hisprinciple to belief in God D’Arcycontinues, “Many listen to arguments forthe existence of God, and, ifunprejudiced, assent, but remainindifferent until some day, please God,they realize the value of God and the callto act on what they know to be true”(p.105). Here is a major flaw in D’Arcy’sargument. He speaks as if we assent toGod and are later moved to act on thatassent. But this is a mistaken analysis,for in the situation described there aretwo assents, not just one. First, the manbelieves that God exists. This may mean

that he believes there is some sort ofpower in the universe superior to man. Itmight even mean there is power that canbe utilized, avoided, or ignored. Beliefin God covers a multitude of sins. Withthree or four billion human beingsinhabiting the earth, belief in Godusually does not mean belief in theTriune God. In fact “belief in God”hardly means anything. Then later,please the God and Father of our LordJesus Christ, the man believes somethingquite different. The nature of assent inthe two cases is the same, but thepropositions assented to are altogetherdifferent. One can never believe x ; onemust believe that x is y.

Beyond this D’Arcy uses some

terms as vague as New- man’s:“comparative apprehension,”“degrees ofcloseness and obscurity” (based on whatI believe to be a misinterpretation ofDescartes), “self-evidence,” “directapprehension of reality,” “intuition,”“dogmatic” as opposed to some othertype of assent. In these pages (103-111)there is much that is interesting and muchthat is suggestive—at least it suggestsmany problems—but an acceptable viewof assent or belief seems to be absent.

If the unphilosophical reader findsa recital of D’Arcy’s details somewhatboring, the present writer sympathizeswith him. In chapters VI and X there areepistemological and meta- physicalanalyses, in great detail, but which seem,

to one who disagrees with the underlyingassumptions, seriously mistaken. WhatD’Arcy takes as self-evident, anotherlooks on as impos- sible. Let ustherefore skip over to the final chapteron Divine Faith, even if we have missedmuch of the preparatory material.

He briefly sums up this preliminaryepistemological mate- rial (with which Ithoroughly disagree) in a paragraph ofrather pleasing literary merit. “We areconstantly engaged,” he says, “oninterpreting natural objects, friends, theworld of politics and art and history, andwe carry this habit of mind to greaterproblems, to an interpretation in fact ofthe whole of reality. Only here we findthat the task is too much for us. . . . We

are encouraged to find, nevertheless, thatknowledge is a trust- worthy guide[which allows us to see a] direction andpattern in the universe. To return to anold example, the interpretation of thework of a master in music or paintingcomes out right and unmistakable whenwe have assimilated his mind and madeit our own by affectionateunderstanding.”

Why cannot we very wellunderstand the mind and art of FelicienRops with disgust and enmity instead ofwith affection?

“Is it not then possible that theremay be an interpretation of the whole ofexperience, strange and foolish to thosewho enjoy their prejudices, but to the

ones initiated, the wisdom and power ofGod? . . .The credentials are there for allto examine, proofs are offered . . . Faithis not vision ... it is rather the beginningof a new life . . .” (p. 209). On the nextpage he defines faith as “the act as thatwhereby we believe without doubtingwhatever God has revealed. . . . Faith isbelief on the authority of God revealing.The motive of faith is the truthful- nessof God who speaks. Faith is an act ofsubmission of the intellect to God . . .and at the same time it is a laying hold ofsome truth which He has revealed.”

Divest this of the epistemologicalbasis on which D’Arcy supports it andthe statement is very good, with oneexception. D’Arcy here makes a

distinction between an act of submissionto God and something else that happens“at the same time,” namely, “a layinghold of” or belief in and acceptance ofsome true propositions. What is thedistinction? Why are not these two thesame thing?

Perhaps on the next two or threepages (211-213) D’Arcy inadvertentlytends to identify them, thus evincingsome confu- sion; but of this theadvanced student must judge for himselfby reading the book. One of hissentences is, “Faith therefore is seen sofar to consist in the believing of truths onthe authority of God” (p. 212).

Yet there is confusion or vagueness,for he continues on the same page to say,

“The life of a fox terrier is higher thanthat of a foxglove, and the life of a manis in turn above that of a dog. Let ussuppose that a dog were for severalhours of the day allowed to live the lifeof a human; it would then be exertingpowers which were above the capacityof its nature.” So it is with supernaturalfaith.

Other authors have pictured man asa bird, for whose instruction God mustdescend and chirp. The chirping is notdivine language—birds cannotunderstand language—it is humanlanguage which God must use for Hisbirds; but unfor- tunately the divinemessage cannot be put into birdlanguage, and God finds it impossible to

get His ideas across. This illustration ofthe inadequacy of human language ismore extreme than D’Arcy’s view, butboth, in my opinion, misun- derstand thatman is the image of God (I Corinthians11 ;7). Since man is God’s image, man’slanguage is God’s language, and wethink God’s thoughts after Him—notsome different analogical thoughts, butGod’s thoughts themselves. However,though we reject the Thomistic doctrineof analogical knowl- edge, Thomas’statement that “Faith is an act of theintellect, under the command ordirection of the will” (p. 213) is excel-lent, if it is detached from Thomisticempiricism and incorpo- rated into anAugustinian philosophy. Unfortunately

some Reformed theologians, if indeedthey wish to do so, are not completelysuccessful.10

5. Biblical DataAlthough a Christian does not ask

for any extended argument defending theappropriateness of using scriptural data,he might be encouraged by the fact thatthe secular investigations of belief areso various and inconclusive, dependingas they do on experience, that even thesecular writers themselves ought towelcome divine revelation. God createdman and therefore knows more abouthuman nature than any psychologistcould ever discover experimentally.Then, too, the Romanist writers, eventhough they believe that the Bible isinfallible, use it insufficiently and oftenmisinter- pret it by reason of tradition,papal pronouncements, and what may be

called fallacious scholastic arguments.The Reformers, on the other hand, notonly appealed to Scripture, as opposedto the secularists, but to Sola Scriptura,as opposed to the Romanists.

For this reason it is appropriate atthis point to insert a preliminary anuountof scriptural data. Later the discussion ofeach theologian in turn will also bestudded with biblical citations; but asample here will serve as an acceptablefoundation.

Seminaries have traditionallydivided theology into two courses. Themore elementary one is called BiblicalTheology, the more advanced is calledSystematic Theology. The first collectsall the biblical data, usually in the order

of its temporal disclosure to man:Genesis, then Malachi, then the Gospelsand Apocalypse. After this fund ofinformation is laid on the table, thetheologian reorganizes it systematically.That is, he first collects all theinformation on God’s nature, then all theinfor- mation on God’s rule over theuniverse, then sin, redemption, and soon. The result is a logical system. Thisprocedure is here followed within anarrower range. First the biblical datawill be collected, perhaps notexhaustively, nor altogether in stricthistorical order, but a sample of what ismeant will be given. Then somesystematic and general inferences willbe attempted.

First, then, the references. God toldNoah that there would be a great flood.Genesis 6 may not use the word faith,but it makes clear that Noah believedwhat God said. Abraham is sometimescalled the father of the faithful. Not onlydoes the Old Testament describe howfirmly he believed God’s prophe- cies,but Galatians in the New Testamentidentifies Christian faith with the faith ofAbraham. Romans 4, Hebrews 11, andJames 2, also make Abraham’s faith apart of their argument.

The role of faith in the OldTestament should not be minimized. Onecould use Jacob, Joseph, Moses,Gideon, David, and Daniel (to nameonly a few) as examples. Some- times

disbelief, the absence of faith, ismentioned; and in Psalm 78:2132 ,22־,in addition to the merely historicalevent, the consequences of unbelief arestated: “Anger also came up againstIsrael because they believed not in God... .For all this they sinned still andbelieved not in spite of his wondrousworks.”

The word believe in this quotationis a Hebrew term only twice translatedfaith, sometimes translated truth ortruly, but frequently translated believe.

One can learn about the fact offaith, i.e., the instances, the nature offaith, its importance and its variousrelations from negative as well as frompositive examples. Isaiah 7:9 says, “If

ye will not believe, truly ye shall not beestablished.” This is not now the placeto consider whether the KJ translationwill means that belief is voluntaryassent; here we are merely col- lectingexamples of data. II Chronicles 20:20states the con- verse: “Believe in theLord your God, so shall ye beestablished; believe his prophets, soshall ye prosper.”

Since this is not a text book on OldTestament Biblical Theology—Oehler-Day produced a volume of 593 pages—the verses picked must be taken assimply samples. The theme of BiblicalData is even more difficult when wecome to the New Testament. A short listmust suffice. A verse often quoted is

Hebrews 11:1 Faith is the substance ofthings hoped for, the evidence of thingsnot seen.

Some people take this as adefinition of faith. It is no more adefinition than “A triangle is somethingone studies in geome- try courses.” It isnot even so clear. Most people knowwhat a geometry course is—though withthe serious deterioration of publiceducation in the United States fewerpeople have a satisfactory notion—buthardly anybody knows what the wordsubstance means. Is it a substance in thesense that wheat is the substance out ofwhich bread is made? The NAS tries toclarify the verse by translating it

Hebrew 11:1 Faith is the assurance

of things hoped for, the conviction of things not

seen. Arndt and Gingrich’s Lexicon gives

both meanings for hypostasis: substanceand conviction. It also gives reality andactual being. The more completeLiddell and Scott lists the act ofstanding under, sediment, abcess, soup,duration, origin, courage, resolution,real nature, as well as substance,actual existence, wealth, and title deedto property. The other word in the verse,evidence or conviction (elegchos),means proof, reproof, correction (Arndtand Gingrich) and disproof, refuta- tion,scrubbing, catalogue, inventory(Liddell and Scott). This information

should warn the reader that althoughquoting verses is an indispensableprerequisite for formulating Chris- tiandoctrine, much more is required.

Nor is the exact meaning ofindividual Greek words the onlydifficulty. It is possible to knowaccurately every word in a sentencewithout knowing the meaning of thesentence. For example, James 2:20speaks of a dead faith. James also saysthat Abraham was justified by works andnot by faith alone. How does this fit inwith what Paul says? However let usquote a half a dozen verses or so as asmall sample of the data necessary to astudy of faith.

Mark 11:22 Have faith in God.

John 6:29 This is the work of God, thatyou believe in whom he has sent. Acts 20:21 Repentance toward God andfaith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Romans 4:19 Not being weak in thefaith . . . Ephesians 2:8 By grace you have beensaved through faith. Hebrews 12:2 Looking to Jesus, theleader (ruler, prince) and perfector ofthe faith . . . Jude 20 Building up yourselves on yourmost holy faith . . . Revelation 2:13, 19 Thou . . . hast notdenied my faith ... I know thy faith. Revelation 13:10 Here is the patienceand the faith of the saints. Revelation 14:12 They keep the

commandments of God and the faithof Jesus.

These arbitrarily selected versesall contain either the noun faith or theverb believe from which root the noungets its meaning. This is a very smallsample because the verb believe, byrough count, occurs 248 times in theNew Testament and the noun faith orbelief occurs 244 times. No doubt thereader will be glad that not all 492verses were quoted.

Here is as good a place as any tosound a warning. The term faith has twovery distinct meanings. Sometimes itmeans the mental activity of believing.Indeed it is this meaning which is thesubject of the present study. In the list

just quoted this meaning occurs in Mark11:22, John 6:29, and Acts 20:21; whilethe second meaning, namely thepropositions believed, occurs inRevelation 2:13, 19 and 14:12. Thissecond meaning is prominent in thePastoral epistles. Although many peopleconfuse the two and slip from one to theother without realizing what they aredoing, this warning should enable anattentive reader to identify each throughout thepresent monograph.

Before we leave the sphere ofbiblical data and proceed to somethingmore systematic, it may be well todiscuss a difficult verse in anticipationof further troubles. The end in view,

viewed perhaps from afar, is thedefinition of faith. Examples ofdifficulties will help us find thedefinition. Now, James 2:20 is apuzzling passage. He speaks there of adead faith and describes it as a faithunproductive of good works. Preciselywhat a man of dead faith actuallybelieves is not too clear. One thing,however, is clear: The word faith herecannot mean “personal trust” in the sensethat some popular preachers impose onit in distinction to belief. ‘Dead trust’w׳ould be an unintelligible phrase.Clearly James means a belief of somesort: and the only belief James mentionsis the belief in monotheism. Islamtherefore would be a dead faith.

There are some other varieties offaith which may be mentioned as thissubsection concludes. Matthew 13appar- ently refers to what sometheologians call “temporary faith.”Hodge (111, p. 68) writes, “Nothing ismore common than for the Gospel toproduce a temporary impression . . .Those impressed, believe.” But Hodgedoes not say precisely what theybelieve. He hardly acknowledges thatthe person in the parable who isrepresented by the stony places believesany־ thing, even though we read “heareththe word and anon with joy receivethit.”This sounds as if the stony manbelieved some or even all of the gospel.However, the previous verses describe

such men as “seeing, see not; andhearing hear not; neither do theyunderstand;” following which Jesusquotes Isaiah. A per- son can indeedhear words without understanding them,but can he thus believe them, and can hereceive them with joy? Clearly there aretroubles here that we must ponder.

Other theologians speak of an“historical” faith, by which, strangely,they do not mean only a belief in thetruth of historical events recorded in theBible, but also in some, many, orperhaps all the Biblical norms ofmorality. Possibly the rich young rulerwould exemplify this sort of faith. Hecertainly believed that he had kept allthe commandments; but unfortu- nately

this was a mistaken belief. How muchelse of the Old Testament he believed(Genesis 17?) is not clear.

One further point may be madebefore the systematic exposition begins.It has more to do with church historythan exegesis. In the second century awidespread heresy almost engulfed anddestroyed the Church. It was Gnosticism.The name comes from the word gnosis,knowledge. Later theologi- ans havesometimes contrasted faith withknowledge. This is the wrong contrast,for two reasons. First, II Peter 1:3 saysthat everything pertaining to godlinesscomes to us through knowl- edge. Thereare many supporting references. ThePastorals have several. The second

reason is that the knowledge of whichthe Gnostics boasted was a theory ofcosmology, including highly imaginativeaccounts of what happened beforeGenesis 1:1.

Admittedly, the Gnostics weredevoid of Christian faith; but the contrastis not between faith and knowledge—itis a contrast between the differentobjects known or believed. TheGnostics knew, or believed in, thirtyeons, a docetic incarna- tion, and apseudo-atonement. The Christiansbelieved a dif- ferent set ofpropositions. Since, however, somestudents of evangelistic zeal mayquestion the value of a “merely secular,psychological” analysis of belief, it is

best to show the impor- tance andnecessity of saving faith. Then as savingfaith is recognized as a species ofgeneric faith, the analysis will have itsproper setting.

The reader will doubtless bedisappointed at the inade- quacy andinconclusiveness of the previousparagraphs. But in a sense that was theirpurpose: they gave a sample of thebiblical data and by indicating a few ofthe problems showed the need of a moresystematic procedure. One might thinkthat a systematic exposition of faithwould now begin with a defini- tion offaith. This would indeed be proper; butthe reader would immediately ask,“How do you get that definition from the

Bible?”This is what we shall attempt toshow, and we shall begin with a surveyof Reformation views.

6. John CalvinThe section on Roman Catholic

Views contained some of Calvin’s attackon the doctrine of implicit faith. Acontinuation of this subject will show’that arguments which some peopledislike as negative—it is unpopular tobe negative—are logi- cally as positiveand as constructive as any others. Toassert that some books are notinteresting is to deny that all books areinteresting. Denials and assertions,positives and negatives, are inseparable.When Calvin attacks implicit faith, heproclaims the Protestant doctrine ofexplicit faith. Therefore, we shallcontinue to quote some lines from theInstitutes. One must realize, of course,

that Calvin is discussing saving faith, forwhich reason not everything he says istrue of generic faith. This is ratherobvious and need cause no confusion,for the differences between Islamic,Jewish, or communistic faith andChristian faith can hardly escape notice.

Now, Calvin: “Paul connects faithas an inseparable concomitant withdoctrine, where he says. . .‘as the truth isin Jesus . . . [and] the words of faith andgood doctrine’ . . . . Faith has a perpetualrelation to the word. . . . ‘These arewritten, that ye might believe.’.... Takeaway the word, and then there will be nofaith left. . . We must further inquire whatpart of the word it is, with which[saving] faith is particularly concerned. .

. . When our conscience beholds nothingbut indignation and vengeance, howshall it not tremble with fear? . . . Butfaith ought to seek God, not fly from him.But suppose we substitute benevolenceand mercy. [And Calvin quotes a numberof verses]. . . Now we shall have acomplete definition of faith, if we say,that it is a steady and certain knowledgeof the Divine benevolence towards us,which, being founded on the truth of thegratuitous promise in Christ, is bothrevealed to our minds, and confirmed toour hearts, by the Holy Spirit” (III, ii, 2,3, 6, 7).

This emphasis on doctrine, thetruth, the word, the prom- ise, sets thestandard for Reformation theology. With

due respect to Calvin, however, one mayask whether or not the concludingdefinition tends to confuse faith withassurance. More on this later. It may alsobe doubted whether the defini- tion is“complete.” At least there is more to besaid. It is clear, however, that Calvinemphasizes knowledge, in particular theknowledge of God’s promise. Hence theobject of belief is a proposition.

In reading Calvin one mustconsider the date of the Insti- tutes. Thiswork was first published in 1536. Thefinal edition, much enlarged, came in1559. The Council of Trent was calledin 1542; it recessed in 1547 andresumed in 1551. It recessed again from1552 to 1562; and its final decisions

were confirmed by the Pope in 1564.Thus, Calvin began writing before theCouncil convened; he finished his workbefore the Council concluded; and hencehis description of Romanism could notbe accurately based on the Council’sconclusions. He had to use concreteexamples from actual authors andpreachers. The result is that some of hisdescriptions of Romanism are not true ofwhat later became the official Romanposition.

For example, in III, ii, 8, he says,“They maintain faith to be a mere assent,with which every despiser of God mayreceive as true whatever is contained inthe Scripture.” Now, maybe some brashSchoolman or stupid monk said this; but

it is not the post-tridentine officialposition. In the twentieth centuryCatholic Encyclopedia, faith is stated tobe “fiducial assent.” Nor is it clear thata despiser of God can receive as truewhatever—some things no doubt, buteverything?—is con- tained in theScripture.

However much we oppose theRoman church, even to asserting theReformation view that the Papacy is theanti- christ, it is unnecessary, and we doour cause no good, to misrepresent theseidolators. Hence, since it wasimpossible to include everything aboutCatholicism and exclude everythingabout Calvin in the earlier section, sotoo in this section they are again

intermingled. As a matter of history,therefore, a few paragraphs on thedecrees of Trent follow. These decreescon- tain much that is wrong. They teachthat baptism is the instru- mental causeof justification and that in justificationGod makes us just. They assert humancooperation and deny irre- sistiblegrace; and many other things, includingof course the abominations of the Mass.However, and nonetheless, there aresome remnants of Christianity. Thequotation following concerns faith, andthough mixed with stultifying error, thereare some good phrases.

Sixth Session, chapter VIII: “Weare therefore said to be justified by faithbecause faith is the beginning of human

salvation. . . . without which it isimpossible to please God. . . . We aretherefore said to be justified freelybecause none of those things whichprecede justification—whether faith orworks—merit the grace itself ofjustification . . . otherwise grace is nomore grace.”

Then follow (Chapter IX) arepudiation of Reformation heretics,(Chapter X), the increase ofjustification, then on keeping theCommandments, presumption andpredestination, perseverance, (ChaptersXI, XII, XI11) etc.

After Chapter XVI come someCanons opposing the Reformation viewof Justification. For example, ‘if any one

saith that men are justified either by thesole imputation of the justice of Christ. .. . to the exclusion of [infused] grace andthe charity that is poured forth in theirhearts by the Holy Ghost, and is inherentin them. . . . let him be anathema”(CanonXI).

Even here this is not so bad as itsounds to post- reformation ears; or atleast the error is often incorrectly identi-fied. The Romanists included in theirterm justification what the Reformersand the Bible call sanctification. Thislatter of course requires infused graceand love. A more accurate identi-fication of the Romish error would betheir complete blindness to biblicaljustification. They used the term, but they

omitted and denied God’s judicial,justifying acquittal.

In addition to the decrees of Trent,something from the Dogmatic Decreesof the Vatican Council (A.D. 1870)forms an interesting historical note.“Chapter 111, On Faith. Man beingwholly dependent upon God, as upon hisCreator and Lord ... we are bound toyield to God, by faith in his revela- tion,the full obedience of our intelligence andwill. And the Catholic Church teachesthat this faith, which is a supernaturalvirtue, whereby, inspired and assisted bythe grace of God, we believe that thethings which he has revealed are true . . .because of the authority of God himself .. . But though the assent of faith is by no

means a blind action of the mind, still noman can assent to the Gospel teaching,as is necessary to obtain salvation,without the illumination and inspirationof the Holy Spirit who gives to all mensweetness in assenting to and believingin the truth. Wherefore faith itself, evenwhen it does not work by charity, is initself a gift of God, and the act of faith isa work appertaining to salvation, bywhich man yields volun- tary obedienceto God himself, by assenting to andcooperating with his grace, which he is able toresist.”

This is certainly not Reformationtheology, and some of its phrases clearlycontradict the teaching of Scripture.

Never- theless it may appear that Calvindid not correctly anticipate theTridentine Symbol when he gave theRomish definition of faith as “a mereassent with which every despiser of Godmay receive as true whatever iscontained in the Scripture.”

In addition to the fact that Calvinwrote before the Coun- cil of Trentassembled, and finished writing before itcon- eluded, misunderstandings,especially on our part today, can arisebecause of changes in the meanings ofwords over four centuries. Calvin says“the assent which we give to the Divineword ... is from the heart rather than thehead, and from the affections rather thanthe understanding.” Since the Scripture

never contrasts the head and the heart,but frequently contrasts the heart and thelips, one ought to suppose that by headCalvin meant the understanding and byheart the will. Nor is “the obedience offaith,” which he quotes in the very nextsentence, an “affection:” it is a volition.Obedience is always voluntary. A fewlines below Calvin speaks more clearly:“It is an absurdity to say, that faith isformed by the addition of a piousaffection to the assent of the mind,whereas even this assent consists in apious affection, and is so described inthe Scriptures”(lll,ii,8).

If much that Calvin says exposesthe errors of Rome, these last wordsshould warn evangelicals not to belittle

assent, “mere” assent of the mind, forthis voluntary acceptance of the truth isitself a pious action (if not an“affection”).

The Larger Catechism (Question72) will serve as a con- elusion for thiscontrast between Romanism andCalvinism.

“Justifying faith is a saving grace,wrought in the heart of a sinner, by theSpirit and word of God, whereby he,being convinced of his sin and misery,and of the disability in himself and allother creatures to recover him out of hislost condition. not only assenteth to the truth of thepromise of the gospel, but receiveth andresteth upon Christ and his righteousness

therein held forth, for pardon of sin, andfor accepting and accounting of hisperson righteous in the sight of God untosalvation.”

Unfortunately there is one phrase inthis answer that seems to deviate fromCalvin, and for which the proof textfollows an inaccuracy in the King Jamestranslation. The phrase is “not onlyassenteth . . . but receiveth and resteth.”The addition of these words seems to bea denial that the assent itself can be“pious.” Not to extend this subsectionunduly, for some of the later discussionwill cover the point, one may study theexegesis of Ephesians 1:13, in Hodgeand other commenta- tors. Though itdiffers somewhat from H odge, the

student may consider this translation: “Inwhom also you received an inher-itance, having heard the word of truth,i.e., the gospel of your salvation, inwhich [neuter] also having believed, youwere sealed . . . .” The emphasis here ison having believed the good news.

The relation between faith andknowledge had been a matter ofdiscussion long before Calvin. Not tomention Cle- ment’s Stromata (V, 1) orCyril of Jerusalem (CatecheticalLectures, V, 4), we note that Augustinetook as a sort of motto “Credo utintelligam, ” and Aquinas held that“Intelligo ut credam. ” But the seemingsharpness of the disagreement ismodified by the consideration that the

two theologians did not use intelligo inthe same sense. The empiricalAristotelianism of Thomas and therational Platonism of Augustine separatebefore questions of faith can beconsidered. Calvin in general followsAugustine, and his view of Scripturediffers from that of Aquinas.

It is true that Calvin seems to placesome reliance on the cosmologicalargument, compromising Sola Scriptura\and he also seems to prove or at least tosupport the truth of Scripture byevidential reasons in the Institutes I,viii, whose title is “Rational Proofs toEstablish the Belief of the Scripture.” Abetter title would have been, HistoricalEvidences of the Bible’s Divinity.

Indeed, the Westminster Confession (I,v) correctly evaluates these evidencesand accurately reproduces Calvin’sview that the Scriptures are self-authenticating. In fact, in his precedingchapter (1, vii, 5) Calvin so declares.He says explic- itly that the Scriptures“ought not to be made the subject ofdemonstration and argument fromreason.” Therefore he should not haveused the misleading title of I. viii. Weought to understand likewise theintended force of his so-called cosmo-logical arguments, though admittedlythey are more embar- rassing thanchapter eight.

In recent years some disciples ofKierkegaard, and many sincere, though

inadequately educated, apologetes, havemis- interpreted Calvin’s view, andespecially some of his still medievalterminology. Perhaps “Thomisticterminology” would be a betterexpression, for though medieval itremains in com- mon use today. Themisapprehension is that when Calvinrejects “reason,” and belaborssecularists as proud and high minded,and warns against “curiosity,” he meansto reject logic. This is a rather strangemisapprehension, for Calvin is widelycastigated as being all too logical. Theword reason therefore should beunderstood to mean sensory experience,on which, according to Aquinas, allknowledge is based. The contrast is not

between reason and revelation, as ifrevelation were irrational, but betweenordinary human experience with itsimplications and, on the other hand,divinely revealed information. As forlogic we appeal a second time to the“good and necessary consequence” ofthe Westminster Confession. Thoseauthors who speak of Calvin's“abdication of reason from itssovereignty" either misunderstand or uselanguage almost certainly to bemisunderstood in the twentieth century.

Consider this passage whichconcludes a well written page: “No mancan have the least knowledge of true andsound doctrine without having been adisciple of the Scripture. Hence

originates all true wisdom. . . . Forobedience is the source, not only of anabsolutely perfect and complete faith,but of all right knowledge of God"(Institutes, 1, vi, 2). The followingsection details the aberrations of a mindthat depends on natural resources. Thisexplains Calvin’s antagonism toward“curios- ity,” as mentioned just above—an antagonism that secular thinkersidentify as Calvin’s original sin. Butthough he could not include thenecessary context in every instance, it isclear enough in some: “. . . observe onerule of morality and sobri- ety; which is,not to speak, or think, or even desire toknow, concerning obscure subjects,anything beyond the information given in

the Divine word” (I, xiv, 4).11 Thisadvice may indeed put astronomy andbotany beyond our interest, but in viewof Calvin’s enormously extensivecommentaries, he opened up spaciousvistas for “curiosity.” There is a greatscope for faith and knowledge.

In this scriptural context, not in thecontext of Aristote- lian empiricism, wecan formulate a proper view of faith andits relation to knowledge, volition, oranything else pertinent. With our basis inScripture we need not accept theThomistic position that we cannot knowwhat we believe and cannot believewhat we know.

T.H. Parker is the author of a veryfine study on Calvin '5 Doctrine of the

Knowledge of God (Eerdmans, reviseded. 1959). If Warfield’s Calvin andCalvinism (Oxford University Press,1931) is a must, Parker’s book is solikewise. But both these authors flounderon occasion. No doubt the present writerdoes so too: each reader must judge forhimself where. But with whateverconfusion he may be tainted, Parker’s isone he wishes to avoid.

Parker writes (p. 106): “Theknowledge of God cannot be regarded asone of the branches of epistemology, butdiffers fundamentally from all otherforms of knowing. . . .Not only is theobject of this knowledge different fromother objects of his [man’s] knowledge,but because the object of this knowl-

edge is God, whose difference from manis such that there exists a religiousdiscontinuity between man and Him, theknowing itself is not of the same kind asthose acts of knowing which have fortheir object something in the samedimension as man. . . . Knowing God isa unique activity in man’s expe- rience,having its own categories. It runs therisk, if it borrows from the categories ofgeneral epistemology, of destroyingitself by turning its direction from itstrue object, God, to an idol fabricated byitself.”

After carefully reading thisparagraph one must conclude that theconfusion is substantial and not merelyverbal. Note that Parker assigns to the

knowledge of God categories that aredifferent from those of generalepistemology. God is not merely adifferent object of knowledge: ouractivity of knowing is epistemologicallydifferent. Now, Parker does not enumer-ate the categories through which otherobjects are known. Worse, he does notenumerate the categories through whichGod is known. If he cannot state thesetwo lists of categories, how can hediscover that they differ? Of course, ifKantian space and time were categories,which they are not, they would not beapplicable to God. But if unity, plurality(trinity), reci- procity, and others arecategories, and if these are not applica-ble to God, how can we assert of God

the clearly expressed scripturaldescriptions? If the forms of logic are,or are depend- ent on, the categories,and if they are excluded from theknowledge of God, then we mustconclude that God can be bothomnipotent and limited, both omniscientand ignorant, both spiritual andcorporeal. Why is it permissible to saythat a cat is not a dog, yet impermissibleto say that God is not Satan? Whenman’s knowing straddles two mutuallyexclusive epis- temologies, he must bebeside himself.

If one is less than enthusiastic aboutthis criticism through a distaste for Kant,the objection can be restated inAristotelian terms. His categories

included substance, quality, relation:Athanasius thought that the category ofsubstance was neces- sary; surely thethree Persons have relations to oneanother, and to us as well; and is Parkerwilling to assert that God has noqualities? Mercy, for instance? Surely ifa theologian wants to maintain that thehuman mind uses other categories whenthinking about God, he ought to namethem. To refuse to name them is impolite.To be unable to name them is disastrous.

In spite of some appearances to thecontrary Calvin really restrictsknowledge to the Scriptures, and soavoids Parker’s irrationalism. Calvinsays (III, ii, 14) “When we call it knowl-edge, we intend not such a

comprehension as men commonly haveof those things which fall under theirsenses.” But in doing so, he is notsuggesting different categories, he is notdenying the law of contradiction; he is,rather, rejecting Aristotelianempiricism.

In the Institutes also (III, ii, 34) hesays that “when we are drawn [toChrist] by the Spirit of God ... we areraised both in mind and in heart abovethe reach of our own understanding. Forillumined by him, the soul receives, as itwere, new eyes for the contemplation ofheavenly mysteries, by the splendor ofwhich it was before dazzled. And thusthe human intellect, irradiated by thelight of the Holy Spirit, then begins to

relish those things which pertain to thekingdom of God.” This language is toofigurative for us to pin down its exactmeaning, but at least there is no hint in itthat the illumination of the Holy Spiritproduces an activity apart from theapriori law of contradiction. IndeedParker inconsistently admits it, for hesays, “This must not be taken literally,however; Calvin did not mean that ournatural faculties are destroyed when webelieve and new faculties given to us bythe Spirit” (p. 108). What is given to usis not a new and different set ofcategories, but faith. “It is man whoknows, but his knowledge is faith—byvirtue of the supernatural gift of God”(p. 109). Calvin in many places denies

that the fall made man an irrationalbeing. So far from this is he that hiswording sometimes reminds us of theRoman- ist view that in the fall man losta donum superadditum. Man’s“soundness of mind and rectitude ofheart were destroyed. . . . Reason bywhich man distinguishes between goodand evil, by which he understands andjudges [in matters of mathematics andcosmology], being a natural talent, couldnot be totally destroyed. . . . In this senseJohn says, ‘the light’still kshineth indarkness’ ” (II, ii, 12). Calvin with hisconsuming interest in saving faith doesnot write at length on generalepistemology; but it is fair, I believe, tosay that for him man frequently fails to

use the laws of logic properly. Not onlyare the laws themselves untouched bysin, but also man’s obligation to usethem is in no sense diminished. Calvin isno anti-intellectual or irrationalist. Hiscomment on Acts 17:22 says, “The mindof man is His [God’s] true image.”

One author tries to complicateCalvin’s theory by distin- guishingbetween scientia and cognitio. In hisCommentary on John 10:38 Calvinwrites, “Although [John] places faithafter scientia,12 as if it were inferior, hedoes so because he has to do withunbelieving and obstinate men . . . forrebels wish to be sure before theybelieve. And yet our gracious God . . .pre- pares us for faith by a notitia of his

works. But the cognitio of God . . .comes after faith.” This distinctionshould not be pressed as if it were aformal theoretical difference. Calvindoes not uniformly preserve thisdistinction. And in this passage fromJohn the notitia is the sensible cognitionof Christ’s miracles. Furthermore,Calvin seems to have stumbled when heconcludes that a prior notitia must besuperior to a tempor- ally later faith.

7. Thomas MantonWas it not Aristotle who said that

after a great thinker had laid down themain lines of a system, inferior mindscould easily work out the details? Thereis some truth in this, but it does aninjustice if the second thinker happens tobe a genius too. Even if not a genius, thelater thinker merits the credit ofexplaining the matter more fully andanswering questions that readers oflesser intelligence ask. Now, ThomasManton(1620- 1677) was no genius, buthe and others of his age are mistreatedwhen liberals haughtily refer to them asthe later scholastic exponents ofProtestantism.

Thomas Manton, though vulnerable

to several criticisms, neverthelessexpresses a view that has often beenrepeated in evangelical productions. Hisanalysis of belief, expounded in hisCommentary on James, separates it intothree parts: noti- tia, assensus, andfiducia, or understanding, assent, andtrust. Perhaps even theologians whofavor this analysis of belief might omitfiducia if they confined themselves tobelief as such; for in colloquial languagea person who believes that Colum- busdiscovered America in 1492 is not takenas an example of trust. Yet, even so, ishe not actually an example ofconfidence? The word trust is a peculiar word, asthe word confidence has just shown.

There is further discussion of trust. Quoting James 2:19 Manton

remarks that the faith here is a “barespeculation” and cannot possibly saveanyone.

That this faith cannot save is verytrue. It is no more than a belief inmonotheism. This the Moslems possess.But however it may be with Moslems, itseems incorrect to call the faith of devilsa bare “speculation.” This word often isused to refer to some proposition that isso unverifiable as to be more likely falsethan true. Granted, Manton also calls it aknowledge; and this is better, because onthis point, if on nothing else, the devilsbelieve the truth.

He continues: “ ‘Thou believest;’

that is, assentest to this truth.” Belieftherefore is an act of assent to the truth.Yet, Manton adds, believing is the“lowest act of faith.”

Is there a higher act of faith? If so,is it higher because it has a moredetailed object, i.e., a greater number ofproposi- tions? But in this case it wouldbe still an ordinary act of believing. Oris it higher because some psychologicalelement beyond the act of believing ispresent? What would that ele- ment be?

Manton continues with the object ofthis belief. “There is one God. Heinstanceth in this proposition, though hedoth limit the matter only to this.” This isa now rare usage of the verb, not noun,to instance. It means, to give an

instance; the proposition, “there is oneGod,” is therefore an instance ofspecification of what the man believes,Manton suggests that the man believes orassents to “other articles of religion.”This is doubtless true, for nearlyeveryone who believes in any sort ofGod believes something else about himbeyond bare exist- ence. That the manhas an extensive Jewish or Christiantheol- ogy, however, is not clear.

“Thou doest well,” quotes Manton;“it [the Scriptural phrase] is anapprobation of such assent, so far as it isgood and not rested in.”

Again Manton has described the actas voluntary assent . . . naturally, allassent must be voluntary. But what also

needs to be noted here are the words“rested in.” When we say we rest in, orshould not rest in, this or that, do wemean that in addition to notitia andassensus there is some other psycholog-ical element in saving faith called“resting ” ? Or does it mean that savingfaith, rather than being psychologicallydifferent, must be an assent to otherpropositions in addition to mono-theism? The latter seems to be the case,whether or not Manton meant it so. Weshould not “rest in,” i.e., be satisfiedwith the single proposition, (“There isbut one God.”) This proposition even thedevils accept. But for salvation menmust not only accept the monotheisticproposition, but as well other proposi-

tions relating to the Atonement. On the next page Manton notes that

the devils assent to this one truth and toother truths revealed in the word, evento “many truths in the Scriptures” (on thefollowing page). But how much of theBible the devils believe, justification byfaith perhaps, is a question that we inour ignorance of satanic psychologycannot answer. Manton apparently wantsto max- imize the devils’ orthodoxy.

“Bare assent,” says Manton, “to thearticles of religion doth not infer truefaith. True faith uniteth to Christ, it isconversant about his person.”Twofactors seem to be confused in Manton’smind: the psychology and thepropositions. Does this quotation mean

that saving faith, in addition to belief inmonotheism, must also include theChalcedonian Christology? Certainly anassent to Chalcedon, however “bare,” is“conver- santabouthis person.”Or doesManton’s statement mean that the devilsthemselves subscribe to Chalcedon, andthat “con- versant” is a psychologicalelement in addition to assent? It wouldseem so because otherwise no contrastcould be made between “assent to thearticles of religion” and “conversantabout his person.”

Faith “is not only assensusaxiomatic an assent to a Gospel maximor proposition; you are not justified bythat, but by being one with Christ. It wasthe mistake of the former age to make the

promise, rather than the person of Christ,to be the formal object of faith.”

The mention of the person of Christis pious language. Similar expressionsare common today. One slogan is, “Nocreed but Christ.” Another expression,with variations from person to person,is, Faith is not belief in a proposition,but trust in a person."

Though this may sound very pious,it is nonetheless de- structive ofChristianity. Back in the twenties, beforethe Methodist Church became totallyapostate, a liberal in their GeneralConference opposed theologicalprecision by some phrase centering onChrist, such as, Christ is all we need. Acertain pastor, a remnant of the

evangelical wing of the church, had thecourage to take the floor and ask thepointed question, “Which Christ?”

The name Jesus Christ, at leastsince 1835 in Strauss’ Leben Jesu, hasbeen applied to several alleged persons.Strauss initiated the “Life of JesusMovement.” It ran through Ernest Renanto Albert Schweitzer.13 14 But the personsdescribed are nothing like the persondescribed in the Creed of Chalcedon,nor, for that matter, are they alikeamongst them- selves. It is necessarytherefore to ask, Which Christ? or,Whose Christ? The Christian or Biblicalanswer is the Creed of Chalcedon. Aperson can be identified only by a set ofpropositions.

This is what Manton refers to as themistake of the former age. ThomasManton was a Puritan of the seventeenthcentury, and when he speaks of “theformer age,” he is not referring toapostate Romanism, but to the Reformersthemselves. Hence he is a witness thatthey defined faith as an assent to thepromise of the Gospel. By the sametoken, he wishes to intro- duce someother element into faith in addition tothis act of will. What is it? He answers,“There is not only assent in faith, butconsent15 ; not only an assent to thetruth of the word, but a consent to takeChrist. . . . True believing is not an actof the understanding only, but a workof all the heart. ”

A careful study of these words, andof the complete con- text in Manton, plusa comparison with the Scripture, shouldconclude that Manton is confused. Thefirst point is that the word consentreceives no explanation. It makes apleasant alliteration with assent, butliterary style is no substitute foranalysis. Is “consent” an act of will?Ordinary language would make it seemso; but if so, how is it different fromassent? If “consent” is not voluntary, andif it cannot be an act of the understandingeither, what sort of mental state is it?Then too, when he says that “truebelieving is not an act of the under-standing only, but a work of all theheart,” he is not accurately confronting

“the former age.” The former age neversaid that true believing, or falsebelieving either, is an act of the under-standing only. The former age and muchof the later ages too specify assent inaddition to understanding. They makethis specification with the deliberate aimof not restricting belief to understandingalone. One can understand and lecture onthe philosophy of Spinoza; but this doesnot mean that the lecturer assents to it.Belief is the act of assenting tosomething under- stood. Butunderstanding alone is not belief in whatis understood.

Manton himself acknowledges, “1confess some expres- sions of Scriptureseem to lay much upon assent, as I John

4:2 and 5:1; I Corinthians 12:3; Matthew16:17; but these places [Mantonstrangely says] do either show thatassents, where they are serious and uponfull conviction, come from some specialrevelation; or else, if they propoundthem as evidences of grace, we mustdistinguish times.”

Now, Matthew 16:17 is not clearlya special revelation. It can well be, andmore probably is, an illumination suchas God gives to every believer. Nor is ICorinthians 12:3 a special revelation: itrefers to all men—it is a completelygeneral statement—and cannot applyonly to the few recipients of specialrevelation. Unless therefore one wishesto be very dog- matic about Peter in

Matthew, all of these verses, inManton’s opinion, are to be set aside,are to be explained away, by“distinguishing the times.”True enough,God administered the covenant in theOld Testament in a manner different fromhis administration of the New. Then too,but the differences are much lessimportant, the apostolic age, and thefollowing two centuries, faceddifficulties that do not so directly troubleus now. But such historical differencesare entirely irrelevant to the presentdiscussion. Whether the propositionsand promises of the Old Testament weremore vague and less specific than thosein the New, and whether the truths of theGospel seemed more “contrary to the

ordinary and received principles ofreason” there than now (which is muchto be doubted), all this is irrelevantbecause the mental act of believing is thesame in every age and every place.Manton’s account of faith is there- foreconfused, and it has led him to set asidesome instructive New Testamentmaterial.

The crux of the difficulty with thepopular analysis of faith into notitia(understanding), assensus (assent), andfiducia (trust), is that fiducia comesfrom the same root as fides (faith). TheLatin fide is not a good synonym for theGreek pisteuo. Hence this popularanalysis reduces to the obviously absurddefinition that faith consists of

understanding, assent, and faith.Something better than this tautology mustbe found.

8. John OwenIf now Thomas Manton has

deserved mention, all the more so doeshis younger and greater contemporary,John Owen (1616-1683), who, amongother things, wrote a four thousand pagecommentary on Hebrews. Here hissmaller four hundred and fifty page bookon Justification by Faith compels ourattention. The page numbers are those ofthe Sovereign Grace edition of 1959.

On page 70, Owen begins anexamination of the nature of faith. But thereader must take care. The examinationis intro- duced thus: “Of the nature offaith in general, of the especial nature ofjustifying faith, of its characteristicaldistinctions from that which is called

faith but is not justifying. . . No objection can be made to such

an examination; but the student shouldtake care to understand what the natureof faith is in general. Justifying faith is aspecies of faith, and if one does notknow what faith in general is, one cannotknow what the faith is that justifies.Does Owen keep this distinction clear?

Unfortunately, he does not make itsufficiently clear to us. In fact he says,“The distinctions that are usually madecon- cerning faith ... I shall whollypretermit; not only as obvious andknown, but as not belonging to ourpresent argument.” Owen seems to havehad an optimistic view of his generation.But even if these distinctions were as

obvious and well known then as he says,they are not so today. But even“pretermitting” much, Owen cannotescape giving some indication of whatthe act of believing is.

His very next paragraph speaks of anon-justifying “his- torical faith.” It isnot because this faith has much to dowith history that it is called historical. Inaddition to events of history, this faithbelieves the promises of the Gospel.“But it is so called from the nature ofthe assent [ital. his.] wherein it dothconsist.” Apparently then there are twokinds of assent. All faith is assent; butjustifying faith is a different variety ofassent. What this difference specificallyis, Owen does not say. He indeed says

the difference does not lie in the objectof the faith, the proposition believed, butin the nature, or psycholog- icalcharacteristics of this particular type ofassent. We would like to know what thisdifferent psychology is.

Owen is quite clear that “all faith isan assent upon testi- mony” (p. 72).“Divine faith is an assent upon a divinetesti- mony.” Obviously divine testimonyis different from human testimony; and asthe great Puritan said, the effects of somebeliefs differ vastly from the effects ofother beliefs. But differ- ences in effectsas well as in objects are irrelevant to theques- tion whether there are species ofbelieving. It is to be feared that somenotion of “species of beliefs” has been

confused with “species of believing.”Nor is a reference to a temporary faithas opposed to a permanent faith anymore relevant. In fact Berk- hof {op. cit.p. 501) who follows Owen, adds thattemporary faith may last all throughone’s life, that it is not necessarilyhypocritical, and that it includes astirring of the conscience. No wonder heremarks that “Great difficulty may beexpe- rienced in attempting todistinguish it from saving faith.” Thisview also bears on the doctrine ofassurance. Yet Owen says, “Justifyingfaith is not a higher, or the highest degreeof this faith, but is of another kind ornature” (p. 72). Yet all his evidenceshows not a different type of believing,

but a different object of belief. He refersto: (1) different causes, (2) differentobjects of a previous or preparatorybelief, and (3) different objects of faith(p. 80), though he had previously ruledout objects as the difference.

As Owen’s account continues, theconfusion grows worse. Not only doeshe misunderstand the Roman position,describ- ing their faith as an assent thatdoes not produce obedience; but also heis dissatisfied with “such a firm assentas produceth obedience unto all divinecommands” (p. 81): dissatisfied becausesomething further is necessary. ForOwen, faith seems to have three maincharacteristics, the third of which haseight subdivisions.

The first of these three is assent tothe truth: “all divine faith is in generalan assent unto the truth that is proposedunto us upon divine testimony.”Thesecond point is rather a reasser- tion ofthe first. The only difference seems to bethat the first refers to some limitednumber of truths a given individualhappens to know, while the secondincludes “all divine revela- tion,” oreven “all divine truth,” a phrase thatincludes divine truth that God has notrevealed. Presumably Owen did notmean what he said. But even with theproper restriction, it is not likely that anew Christian, recently justified,understands and assents to everyproposition in the Bible. After a lifetime

of study a learned theologian couldhardly know so much. But, one may say,even the new Christian assents toBiblical infalli- bility. Quite so, that is asingle proposition. Does he then haveimplicit faith in all the other Biblicalpropositions? On the contrary.Evangelicalism excludes the Romishdoctrine of implicit faith.Hencejustification cannot depend on ourassent to all revealed truth. Justifyingfaith must be an assent to some truths,not all. Even Owen himself, after havingsaid “all divine revelation,” restrictsjustifying faith to some truths only. But inaddition to whatever, all or some, isbelieved, Owen insists that justifyingfaith must include certain causes and

adjuncts beyond assent. His third paragraph begins with an

explicit denial that faith is an assent, “beit never so firm and stedfast, norwhatever effects of obedience it mayproduce.” Nor does it equally respect alldivine revelation, but only some. Thenfollow eight points, mainly negative.

1. Assent is not “an act of theunderstanding only.” Owen’simmediate refutation is hardlypertinent; but since no one everheld the point he opposes, foreveryone adds some- thing tosimple understanding, one may takeOwen’s first subpoint merely as anattempt to be complete.

2. Here Owen objects to the

proposition that “All divine truth isequally the object of this assent”(p.82). If it were, so his refutationgoes, the proposition that Judaswas a traitor would as much effectour justification as that Christ diedfor our sins. Near the end of thismonograph an attempt will be madeto specify what proposition orpropositions are essential to savingfaith. Owen’s adverb equallyjustifies his assertion, though hemight have added (if it were hisopinion) that the proposition aboutJudas can be a part of justifyingfaith.

3. He next denies that “Thisassent unto all divine revela- tion

may be true and sincere wherethere hath been no previous work ofthe law, nor any conviction of sin.”Owen may well be correct inmaking this denial, even though thesudden conver- sion of Paul seemsto conflict with it. But in any caseand no matter how true, theparagraph contributes nothing to ananalysis of the act of believing.

4. Point four is very confused,and point (5) asserts, what is atbest doubtful, that the devils inJames assent to everything in theBible. Point (6) asserts that hopeand trust are not contained in a“mere” assent to the truth, “but theyrequire other actings of the soul

than what are peculiar unto theunderstanding only.” But is notOwen off the track? Of course hopeand trust require the volition ofassent as well as an understandingof the promise or hope.

Point (7) strays completely awayfrom Scripture and depends entirely onintrospective experience. Thus hisobjec- tion to assent here is given solelyon his own authority, rather than upon theauthority of Scripture. It should beobvious by now that Owen has neitherrefuted the position that saving faith is avolitional assent to an intellectualproposition, nor presented anyalternative analysis of its nature.

(8) Point 8, however, is indubitablebecause it is a puerile tautology. “Thatfaith alone is justifying which hathjustifica- tion actually accompanying it. .. . To suppose a man to have justifyingfaith and not to be justified, is tosuppose a contra- diction.” Of course itis; but for that very reason it is a fallacyto conclude “Wherefore it is sufficientlyevident that there is somewhat morerequired unto justifying faith than a realassent unto all divine revelations” (p.83).

Owen continues for severaldifficult pages. He objects to identifyingthe object of faith with Christ's promiseof forgive- ness. Instead he maintainsthat Christ himself is the object of

justifying faith. Although this soundsvery pious, Owen and others might nothave said this, if instead of the term faiththey had used the Scriptural wordbelieve. When we believe a man, webelieve what he says. Nor does it helpOwen’s view to insist on the scripturalphrase, believe in Christ, as somethingessentially different from believingChrist. As we said before, believ- ing ina man may indicate a willingness tobelieve what he will say in the future aswell as what he has said in the past. Butbelief must always have a proposition asits proper object, and therefore must beassent. Owen, let it be repeated for thesake of clarity, does not deny that assentmust always somehow be included in

faith. Speaking of the promises offorgiveness he says, “It cannot be butthat in the actings of justifying faith,there is a peculiar assent to them.Howbeit, this being only an act of themind, neither the whole nature nor thewhole work of faith can consist therein”(p. 87). Now it may well be said that thework or results of faith are several, butsuch results, such as the preaching of thegospel by an evangelist, are notjustifying faith—they are works ofrighteousness, none of which justify; butif faith or believing itself is not an act ofthe mind, there remains no hope forfinding it anywhere else. Dare wesuggest that it is the work of the fingers,lungs, or stomach?

All the foregoing comes fromOwen’s chapter on the causes and objectof justifying faith; and this may to acertain extent excuse the confusion. Thefollowing chapter is the nature ofjustifying faith; and it would seem betterto have described what belief is beforespecifying the object of particu- larbeliefs.

At the beginning he remarks that thefaith he is discussing is a sincere faith.So be it. Assent is always sincere. Nomatter what a person believes, hebelieves it sincerely. A person does notalways sincerely state what he believes.He may obscure or even deny hisbeliefs. But assent to a proposition isipso facto sincere.

Owen then gives negative as wellas positive examples. “The unbelief ofthe Pharisees . . . is called the‘rejectingof the counsel of God’. . . most of thosewho rejected the Gospel by theirunbelief, did it under the notion, that theway of salvation and blessedness proposed therein wasnot a way answering divine goodness . .(p. 94-95). Surely this quotation is a statement of truth; but it confutes muchthat Owen has said, for whereas thedisciples assented to Christ’s statementswhen they understood them, thePharisees assented to or believedcontra- dictory propositions. Therefore,one must reject what Owen says a fewlines below; to wit, “unbelievers . . .

may give an assent unto the truth of it[the gospel], so far as it is a mere act ofthe mind.” This is logical nonsense,psychological impossi- bility, andtheological confusion. His only defensehere, just a few lines below, is that he isno longer talking about sincere faith butonly insincere faith.

However severe this criticism ofOwen may seem, let not the studentsuppose that Owen is to be despised. Heis one of the greatest Puritans, and weshould be extremely happy if we couldmake as few mistakes as they did.Furthermore, for all the confusion on thispoint, Owen nonetheless seems toacknowledge that believing is voluntaryassent to an under- stood proposition.

Put aside questions as to the object orobjects believed, recognize that phrasesnot containing the words voluntary orassent may nonetheless have the samemeaning, and realize that the act of beliefis psychologically the same no matterwhat is believed, and it is hard to find aphrase descriptive of belief better thanvoluntary assent.

Thus in his great commentary onHebrews, at chapter eleven, verse 3,Owen says, “ ‘By faith we understand,’that is, by faith we assent unto the divinerevelation. ... we come not only to assentunto it as true, but to have a duecomprehension of it [creation] in itscause, so as that we may be said tounderstand it. . . . Those who firmly

assent unto divine revela- tion, dounderstand the creation of the world, asto its truth, its season, its manner, andend.” Perhaps Owen is too optimistic asto the extent of our understanding; butagain faith or belief is a volitional assentto an understood proposition.

9. Charles HodgeCharles Hodge, on all counts, is a

theologian whose views must beconsidered. He is the soul and center ofAmerican Presbyterianism, properly so-called. His discussion of faith begins inVol. Ill, page 41, of his SystematicTheology, with the words, “The firstconscious exercise of the renewed soulis faith. ... In the order of nature [thestages in which salvation advances] itmust precede repentance.” Though thefirst of these two sentences shows thatHodge is chiefly interested in savingfaith, he must perforce say somethingabout generic faith in order to produceany respectably comprehensive the- ory.The second sentence is doubtful. When

such doubtful, vague, or puzzlingstatements appear, it is worth the timeand trouble to analyze them. In this casethe difficulty lies in the colloquial use ofthese terms. Presumably Hodge meansthat one must believe the gospel (faith)and by so doing learn that repentancefrom sin is necessary. Butetymologically repent- ance means achange of mind, not necessarilyrestricted to specifically moral matters.It can include a change of mind withreference to all theology, and that toobeyond a simple under- standing of thedoctrines such as any infidel may easilyachieve, so as to take in the belief thatthose understood doctrines are true. Inthis sense faith and repentance, both gifts

of God, are the same thing. Hodge lacksclarity here because he separates faithfrom repentance by imposingunacceptable limits on both. Faithincludes the moral precepts; andrepentance, though not colloquially,surely includes the belief that Jesus isLord. If they are separated, and ifrepentance is limited to sin and morality,it becomes a subdivision of faith; but ifrepent- ance has the broad meaning ofany change of mind, faith is itssubdivision. What then is the precisenature of faith?

“Faith ... is assent to the truth” (p.42). Here and else- where in this sectionHodge emphasizes trust as being themeaning of the Greek word. Some

authors and many preachers contrasttrust in a person with belief in aproposition. They often disparage“intellectual belief.” They must thendisparage all belief, since there is noother kind. But if trust and belief aredifferent things, even if not antitheticalthings, how is trust defined? When apreacher does not tell his congregationwhat he means by his main terms, thepeople are confused, often withoutrealizing it. But Hodge does better. Hespeaks most frequently of trusting that astatement is true, rather than trust in aperson. In fact, on the same page he addsthat faith is “that state of mind in which aman receives and relies upon a thing astrue.” He connects this with trust by

saying, “To regard a thing as true is toregard it as worthy of trust”(p. 43); andso he does not divorce trust from truth,but continues with a quotation from St.Augustine, “To believe is nothing elsethan to think with assent.” Some of hisfollowing pages seem inconsistently tomodify this view, but, as we shall see.this is. all in all, Hodge’s basicposition.

Speaking more particularly ofsaving faith, but with explicit referencesto generic faith also, Hodge admirablyrejects the flowery rhetoric of thoseplatform theologians who call “faith aspecial organ for the eternal and holy. Itis not necessary [says H odge] to assumea special organ for historical truths, a

special organ for scientific truths, andanother for the general truths ofrevelation, and still another for theeternal and holy” (p. 44). Even“Limiting it to a consciousness ofreconciliation with God [as J.E.Erdmann did] is contrary to the usage ofScripture and of theology”(p. 45).Inadequate also are those views whichtry to define faith as intermediatebetween opinion and knowledge. Forexample, “Locke defines faith to be theassent of the mind to propositions whichare probably but not certainly true. ... Tobelieve is to admit a thing as true,according to Kant, upon groundssufficient sub- jectively, insufficientobjectively. . . . In all these cases the

only difference between opinion, belief,and knowledge is their rela- tivestrength” (pp. 46-47). PresumablyHodge means to reject any view thatdepends on relative strength, even ifopinion and knowledge can be clearlydefined.

A puzzling paragraph comes a littlelater, for on pages 5152־ Hodgedescribes several psychologicalvariations of faith, concluding that faithis not always a voluntary assent, on theground that sometimes people believeagainst their will, and in other instanceswish they could believe, but cannot.These two cases supposedly show thatbelief is not within the power of thewill. The argument is of course

fallacious, for even if a person stronglydislikes a theory or doctrine, and reluc-tantly considers it carefully, perhapswith a view to refuting it, the evidencefor it may prove overwhelming and withpain and regret he accepts it, against hisprevious will, but neverthelessvoluntarily.

Under the heading “DefinitionsFounded on the Objects of Faith,” thereis likewise some confusion. ActuallyHodge does not discuss the objects offaith, but reverts to the accom- panyingcircumstances, in particular thedistinction between faith and knowledge.If we believe a certain propositionbecause someone informs us about it, wehave faith; but if we prove it for

ourselves, we have knowledge. Notethat it is the same proposition in bothinstances. Faith is not distinguished fromknowledge by its object, as the subheadpromised, but by our method of learningit. “When he understands the demon-stration of that proposition, his faithbecomes knowledge” (p. 54). A more consistent dependence onthe object believed would result in amore consistent solution of the problem.But when Hodge, by making knowledgedepend on demonstration, concludes that“faith means belief of things not seen, onthe ground of testimony” (p. 62), acurious situation has arisen. Stated inother words, Hodge is saying that webelieve the “thing” because we believe

the testimony. This reduces to theposition that “faith or belief is a beliefby means of belief.”

A few pages ago Hodge seemed tohave rejected the notion that thedistinction between faith, opinion, andknowledge was based on their relative“strength.” But now the rejection is notso clear. Echoing some Thomisticsentiments he explains that faith is notknowledge because we believe what wecannot prove. To quote: “Reason begins.. . with taking on trust what it neithercomprehends nor proves. . . .” In onesense of the words this is utter nonsense.Reason or no reason, a person cannottake on trust what someone states in anincomprehen- sible foreign language.

Hodge is not guilty of nonsense such asthis. He means that we may believe ageometrical theorem without havingdeduced it ourselves. This is notnonsense: It is tautology. It merely meansthat we have not demonstrated what wehave not demonstrated. His followingsentence is, “Faith is a degree ofcertainty less than knowledge andstronger than probability” (p. 62).

One must ask, By what thermometerare these degrees measured? Are theunits centimeters or ounces? One mustalso ask, What is probability? Theprobability of shooting twelve with twodice is one over thirty-six. Then further,are there not students who, afterdemonstrating a theorem, are more

certain of some teen-age superstitionthan of Euclid’s reasoning? Much, nearlyall, of Hodge’s confusion arises from hisempiri- cal epistemology. “The groundof knowledge is sense or rea- son”(p.75). He thinks that science proves thetruth of its laws, demonstrates them,with the result that the laws of physicsare not tentative hypotheses but eternaltruths. This was of course the commonlyaccepted Newtonian position of thenineteenth century; but the twentiethcentury has almost without excep- tionrejected it. Einstein replaced Newton,and no one yet knows who will replaceEinstein in the twenty-first century.16

Hodge holds that science dependson “sense and reason;” but if sense is

unclear, reason is more so. Thismonograph is far from denying that“Faith is founded on the testimony ofGod” (p. 64). But the axiom that theBible is the Word of God does notjustify Hodge’s notion of what he callsknowledge. Where- as Hodge seems tolimit reason to the deduction of physicallaws from sensory observations, onemight better define reason as thededuction of theology from Scripture; or,still better, simply the deduction ofconclusions from premises. Anti-Christian scientists take advantage ofHodge’s phraseology, even though fewhave ever heard of Hodge, and concludethat faith is unreasonable, irrational, andthat we all should adopt “scientism” as

the true philosophy. On the contrary thepresent writer holds that it is rational tobelieve what God reveals. Hodge’sseeming limitation of reason to physicsis unfortunate. Nevertheless, Hodgeagrees that “Faith is the reception oftruth . . . the record which God hasgiven to his Son” (p. 65), and he quotes IJohn 5:10 in Greek.17 Hodge adds, “Its[faith’s] object is what God hasrevealed.” Then below, on the samepage, “Faith is the reception of truth. . ..”

Unfortunately, the confusion as tokinds of faith soon reappears (p. 67). Ofcourse Jewish faith is not Islamic faith,nor is either of these Christian faith. Onemight also list Doliti- cal faith and a

faith in A.T.&T. stock. But this is not adifference in the definition of faith: It isa difference in the object or propositionsbelieved. They are still all assents.Many theologians fall into thisconfusion.

These criticisms do not mean thatHodge’s theology is bad. On thecontrary, it is very good. Every manmakes mis- takes, but in theology Hodgemakes fewer and those less inimportance than any other I have read.The criticism is that he obscures hisgood theology by setting it in abackground of false philosophy, and thisobscures the truth and confuses thereader. No doubt he would direct thesame criticism against me, for he is very

convinced of the Scottish common sensephilosophy which I regard as horrible.

However, he is not so irrational asmy criticisms may have suggested. Heprobably had not heard of Kierkegaard,but he answers him clearly and bluntly.“The assumption that reason and faithare incompatible; that we must becomeirrational in order to become believersis. however it may be intended, thelanguage of infidelity; for faith in theirrational is of necessity itself irrational.It is impossible to believe that to be truewhich the mind sees as false. Thiswould be to believe and disbelieve thesame thing at the same time. . . . Faith isnot a blind, irrational conviction. Inorder to believe, we must know what we

believe, and the grounds upon which ourfaith rests”(p. 83). Here we have aperfectly clear assertion of the universalrule of logic. No one can deny the law ofcontradiction and defend Christianity.Later on, after one or two confusingsentences, Hodge says explicitly, “Thecognition of the import of theproposition to be believed, is essentialto faith; and conse- quently faith islimited by knowledge. We can believeonly what we can know, i.e., what weintelligently apprehend” (p. 84).

This is an admirable statement,even though it obviously uses the termknowledge in a sense different from thatwhich he previously used. It alsobecomes clouded over when he won-

ders “Whether faith is purely anintellectual exercise”(p. 89). If by thesewords he meant to suggest that faith is avolitional as well as an intellectualactivity, there could be no criticism; butwhen he explicitly mentions“affections,” the introduction of anemotional element seems to beintended.18 That emotions sometimesaccompany volitional decisions cannotbe denied; but this is far from insistingthat an intellectual decision has emotionas a necessary ingredient. In connectionwith Roman- ism Hodge says,“Regarding faith as a mere [pejorativeIan- guage] intellectual or speculativeact [though Thomas did not regard faithas a speculative or philosophical act],

they consist- ently deny that it [faith] isnecessarily connected with salvation.According to their doctrine a man mayhave true faith, i.e., the faith which theScriptures demand, and yet perish” (p.90). To support this statement Hodgequotes the Council of Trent, Session vi,Canon 28. But the Canon says no suchthing. It errs in the opposite direction, orit says that though grace (not asProtestants define it) be lost, faithremains and the person does not perish.

In contrast with Romanism, asHodge understands it, he says,“Protestants with one voice maintain thatthe faith which is connected withsalvation is not a mere intellectualexercise״ (p. 90). And he quotes Calvin,

“fidei sedem non in cerebo esse, sed incorde”(Commentary on Romans 10:10).He also quotes the Institutes III, ii, 8,“the heart rather than the brains, and theaffections rather than the intelligence.״There are two or three difficulties in thissection from Calvin. First, cerebri,brains, is the language of behaviorismand should never be thus used in thetwentieth century. In the sixteenthcentury, however, it was a metaphoricalterm for the mind or intellect. Second,and more seriously, the Scriptures makeno distinction between the head and theheart, as if mathematics came from thehead and faith from the heart. The OldTestament frequently contrasts the heartand the lips—sincerity versus hypocrisy

—but the term heart, at least seventy-five percent of the time in the OldTestament, means the mind or intellect.

It may seriously deface theorganization of this mono- graph, and itcertainly interrupts the account ofCharles Hodge, but because of itsimportance, including the fact thatCalvin seems involved too, not to speakof hundreds of present day pastors, itseems essential to include an awkwardlylengthy interlude on the alleged contrastbetween the head and the heart—aninterlude devoted to Biblical exegesis.19

The aim of citing the following

Biblical data—an unusu- ally extendedlist for such studies as this, but only a

small fraction of the textual instances—is to show as clearly as possible whatthe term heart means. Were themisunderstand- ing less pervasive, werethe pastors less Freudian and moreBiblical, were the congregations lessconfused and misled, a much briefer listwould have sufficed. Present ignorance,however, would justify even a moreextensive documentation than that whichnow follows. Genesis 6:5 The Lord saw . . . that everyintent of the thoughts of his heart wasonly evil continually.

Here the heart is connected withthinking. Whatever emo- tions the sonsof God may have had upon seeing thedaughters of men, the verse refers to

their thoughts—and not merely thoughtswith regard to ungodly marriages, butwith reference to their conduct ingeneral. Their thoughts surely includedthoughts on finances and most certainlythoughts on theology. They thought ituseless to think of God. Genesis 8:21 The intent [King James:imaginations] of man’s heart is evil fromhis youth.

This verse, like the preceding,indicates theological think- ing. Theactivity of intellection is clear. A secondactivity is also implied in both theseverses: the word intent in the phrase“the intent of the heart” seems to indicatevolition. The Hebrew word means bothconcept and purpose. Very obviously

this is not emotional, for the versepictures a settled, lifelong philo- sophy.Emotions are sudden, transientupheavals. Since men’s conduct isgoverned by these lifelong principles,the term heart also indicates volition aswell as intellection. Genesis 17:17 Abraham fell on his faceand laughed and said in his heart, Will achild be born to a man one hundredyears old?

Perhaps Abraham felt someemotion of contempt at God’s stupidity,but his heart raised an intellectualobjection to God’s promise. He said,because he thought in his heart, that aman of a hundred cannot engender norcan a woman of ninety give birth to a

child. This is biological intellection; andit is sound thinking, except when Godmiraculously intervenes. Genesis 20:6 Yes, I know that in theintegrity of your heart you have donethis.

No doubt Abimilech experiencedsexual emotions upon seeing beautifulSarah, but in this verse and in thepreceding the heart is described asthinking that Sarah was Abraham’s sisterand not his wife. This was anintellectual judgment, and it is thejudgment, not the emotion, that isassigned to the heart. Exodus 4:21 I will harden his heart sothat he will not let the people go.

Here the intellectual judgment is in

the background. Of course Pharaoh hadjudged or thought that the Israelite slaveswere financially valuable to Egypt; butthe point of this verse has to do withvolition rather than with intellection.God would harden or strengthenPharaoh’s will to refuse Moses’ demand.Perhaps fifteen or twenty percent of theOld Testa- ment instances of the termheart refer to volition rather than tointellection. Naturally, as we shall see,volition always depends on a priorintellection. Very few instances of theterm heart refer distinctly to emotions.

Exodus 7:3 says the same thing. Exodus 35:5 Whoever is of a

willing heart, let him bring ... [a]contribution: gold, silver, bronze.

The Hebrew term for willing canbe translated voluntary ormagnanimous. The term heart thereforestands for volition and not emotion. Deuteronomy 4:9 Keep thy souldiligently, lest thou forget the thingswhich thine eyes have seen, and lest they[the things] depart from thy heart all thedays of thy life.

Here the heart is described as therepository of historical information,which information includes the TenCommand- ments and the subsidiarylaws. No doubt Moses here commandsvoluntary obedience, but the contents ofthe heart are propositions concerninghistorical events. The heart knows.There is nothing emotional here.

I Samuel 2:1 My heart exults in theLord.

It is true that sometimes the termheart refers to emotions. Here, ratherclearly, Hannah is emotional. Of courseshe is also theological, especially if wehold that she prefigures the VirginMary’s Magnificat. Nevertheless,Hannah and Mary both spokeemotionally. In about ten percent of theOld Testament instances of the wordheart emotions are definitely indicated.

1. Samuel 2:35 I will raise up formyself a faithful priest who will doaccording to what is in my heartand in my soul [King James:mind].

The terms heart and soul here arepresumably synonyms, as in the NewTestament “heart, soul, strength andmind” are synonyms for the purpose ofinclusiveness. Here soul (Hebrewnephesh) does not mean what it means inGenesis 2:7, where God formed man ofthe dust of the ground, breathed into himthe breath or spirit of life, and manbecame a living soul. In Genesis andgenerally in the Old Testament soul is acomposite or compound of clay andspirit, incarnate man. This is not true in ISamuel 2:35, for God is not a compoundof earth and spirit. “What is in my heartand in my soul” refers to God’s plans forthe future. They cannot be emotionsbecause the immutable God is

impassible and no more has emotionalups and downs than he has arms andeyes.

1. Samuel 7:3 Go, do all that is inyour mind [King James: thineheart], for the Lord is with thee.

The King James is the accuratetranslation; the NAS is the correctinterpretation. David had plans forbuilding a temple. God, as we know,cancelled these plans, but nonethelessthe contents of David’s heart werearchitectural propositions. Psalm 4:4 Meditate in your heart uponyour bed and be still.

Here intellection is commanded

and emotions are explic- itly forbidden.Meditation is a strictly intellectualactivity. It requires quiet and stillness.Emotion hinders, distorts, or almosteradicates thinking. Acting under thestress of emotion we usually act blindly.An emotionally overwrought student,having had a spat with his sweetheart,can’t memorize the Greek irregularverbs or solve a problem in physics.Nor can he do theology. We mustmeditate and be still. This commanddispleases pragmatic Americans. Psalm 7:10 Who saves the upright inheart.

The context rather clearly specifiesrighteous conduct; that is, the heart herechiefly refers to volition. Unhypocritical

assent to God’s commands ispresupposed as a background. Psalm 12:2 They speak falsehoods toone another; with flattering lips and witha double heart they speak.

Obviously this is an intellectualactivity. The heart, that is, the intellect,has devised false statements for thepurpose of flattering. To utilize deceitrequires at least a modicum ofintelligence. Also note the contrastbetween the lips and at least one heart,the heart that knows its purpose andrecognizes the falsehoods. Psalm 14:1 The fool hath said in hisheart, There is no God.

The man may be a fool for thinkingso, but nonetheless he thinks in his heart

—it is the heart that thinks. The contextwhich follows speaks of corrupt andabominable deeds, but these have theirorigin in the heart that thinks. Psalm 15:2 He who . . . speaks truth inhis heart.

Unlike the fool of Psalm 14, theman here thinks and speaks the truth. Theremainder of the Psalm describes someof his actions, none of which isemotional. He speaks to himself in hisheart and what he says is the truth. Theterm heart obviously means the mind orintellect. Isaiah 6:10 Make the heart of this peopledull . . . and their eyes dim . . . lest theysee with their eyes . . . under- stand withtheir heart, and repent and be healed.

Explicitly the heart is heredescribed as the organ of understanding.Repentance, mentioned in the finalphrase, is a change of mind. How can somany preachers who claim to beBiblical have missed so much in the OldTestament? They speak with devoutfervor, but their message owes more toFreud than to the Scriptures. Also noteparenthetically that the eyes mentionedhere are not the two orbs in the front ofthe face. It is not sensation that isalluded to; the seeing is also anintellectual seeing, as when one “sees”the solution of a problem. Isaiah 10:7 [God uses Assyria for hisown purpose] Yet it does not so intend,nor does it plan so in its heart.

The General Staff of the AssyrianArmy works out mil- itary plans in itsheart. It is unaware that God is usingthem for his purpose. Nevertheless theydo the planning and thinking in theirhearts. This takes intelligence. The hearttherefore is the mind or intellect. Isaiah 33:18 Your heart will meditate onterror.

Not only is meditation referred tothe heart, but the con- text specifiescounting and weighing. This heart willno longer be baffled by “unintelligiblespeech which no one comprehends or astammering tongue which no oneunderstands.” Presumably the converse,comprehension and understanding, willbe the case. This is what the heart does.

Isaiah 44:18, 19 They do not know nordo they under- stand, for he has smearedover their eyes so that they cannot seeand their hearts so that they cannotcompre- hend. . . . Nor is thereknowledge or understanding.

Note again that the eyes and theseeing have nothing to do with literalsensation, but with comprehension. TheScriptural evidence that the term heartmeans the mind, the intellect, theunderstanding, is becoming tedious inlength. But the emo- tional error is so widespread that it ought to be buried undera thousand verses. We shall, however,add only another half dozen to the OldTestament list. Jeremiah 3:17 Nor shall they walk any

more after the stubbornness of their evilheart. 5:23, 24 A stubborn andrebellious heart. . . they do not say intheir heart. Let us now fear the Lord ourGod. 9:26 Uncircumcised of heart.23:16 They speak a vision [revelation]of their own heart.

The last of these referencesenvisages the mind or under- standing.The others seem to refer more directly tothe will or volition. Yet there can be novolition without a prior intellec- tion. Zechiariah 7:10 Do not devise evil inyour hearts.

Jeremiah 3:17 More directlyindicated the volition, with theunderstanding presupposed. This verseindicates the intel- lect, with later

volition implied. Now׳, just in case some

enthusiastic evangelist should say thatthe emotional New׳ Testamentcontradicts and supersedes theintellectual Old Testament, w׳e shallsupply another tedious list. Matthew 5:8 Blessed are the pure inheart. 5:28 . . . has committed adulterywith her already in his heart.

If these two verses do not clearlyrefer to intellection or comprehension,they at least and clearly enough refer tovoli- tion. Even if adultery includesemotions, as it does, the empha- sis hereis on the decision or volition. Matthew 6:21 Where your treasure is,there will your heart be also.

Depositing one’s treasure in a safeplace requires first a judgment ofevaluation and then a volition that placesthe treasure there. Depositing one’s paycheck in a bank is not usually anemotional affair. Matthew 9:4 Wherefore think ye evil inyour hearts?

The men whom Jesus herecastigates had been guilty of drawingsome invalid inferences. Theirinferences were indeed fallacious, or atleast based on a false premise; but theiractivity was nonetheless ratiocination. Matthew 11:29 1 am meek and lowly ofheart.

In this situation emotion iscompletely ruled out. Meek- ness and

lowliness do not comport withemotional outbreaks. The mind must becalm. Matthew 12:34, 40 Out of the abundanceof the heart the mouth speaks... for asJonah was three days and three nights ...so shall the Son of Man be in the heart ofthe earth.

Verse 40 is quoted here to showhow the term heart can be usedmetaphorically, and also because the listis to contain every instance of Matthew’suse of the word. This assumes that theterm is missing from verse 35. It is verse34 that advances the argument. When aman thinks, meditates, ponders, andarrives at well-thought-out ideas, hespeaks them. He speaks with his mouth,

but the organ of thinking is the heart. Matthew 13:15, 19 This people’s heartis waxed gross [NAS: has become dull]. . . lest they should understand with theirheart. . . . When anyone hears the wordof the kingdom and does not understandit, the evil one comes and snatches awaywhat has been sown in his heart.

Could it be any more clearlyexpressed that understanding is thefunction of the heart? Someone hears thegospel for the first time and does notunderstand it. The words remain in themind for a time; but since he does notunderstand, the evil one easily eraseseven the words. Matthew 15:8, 18, 19 This people . . .honoreth me with their lips, but their

heart is far from me. . . .Those thingswhich proceed out of the mouth comeforth from the heart. . . for out of theheart come evil thoughts, murders

The contrast of verse 18 is thatbetween the heart and the lips. It is notthe now popular contrast between thehead and the heart. The people inquestion are hypocrites. After a shortconversation with his disciples Jesus,speaking more generally, teaches thatwhat a man says originates in his heart.This is true even of the hypocrite, for hehas already thought in his heart that itwould be best to say what he does notbelieve. Thus, though he speaks well, heplans murder in his heart. Emotions donot plan murder.

Matthew 18:35 If ye from your heartsforgive not . . .

Jesus here contrasts, at least byimplication, an insincere forgivenesswith a sincere forgiveness. One mightspeak words of forgiveness, yet harbordeep resentment. To forgive from theheart indicates a forgiveness that isone’s basic intent and thought: the wordscorrectly represent the mind. The heartis the mind. Matthew 22:37 Thou shalt love the Lordthy God with all thy heart, and with allthy soul, and with all thy mind.

This is not a metaphysicaltrichotomous theory of humanpersonality. The three terms aresynonymous, joined together for

emphasis. They do not separate the heartand the mind: They identify them. Matthew 24:48 If that evil slave says inhis heart . . .

Here the slave, having concludedthat his master will not return for a longtime, hatches a plan to defraud theinferior slaves. He hatches this plan inhis heart. He has thought out all or mostof the details. The function of the heart isto think and plan. The heart is theintellect.

This has been, I believe, acomplete list of every instance of theterm heart in Matthew’s Gospel.Confused Calvinists should now adjustthe thoughts of their hearts to conformwith Scripture, even if Arminians find it

impossible to do so. But wait. It may resemble

continuing blows on one who is alreadyknocked out on the canvas, but somelater books of the New Testament mustbe mentioned.

The Book of Acts contains abouttwenty instances of the word heart. Thefirst occurrence is in 2:26 and can veryplausi- bly refer to the emotions. It isquite true that the term heart in a fewinstances refers to the emotions. I n thesame chapter, verse 37, “pierced to theheart,” or “smitten in conscience,” mayinclude a tinge of emotion, and verse 46,“gladness and sincer- ity of heart” mayhave an emotional overtone.

Acts 4:32 concerns a judgment on

economic policy that eventually becamea disappointment; while Acts 5:3, 4refer to the heart of Ananias as havingplanned to lie to the Holy Ghost. It was adeliberate economic planning, anactivity of the mind, without a trace ofemotion. In Acts 7:23 Moses, when fortyyears of age, decided—“it entered hisheart”—to inspect the condition of theJews in Egyptian slavery. This was aconsidered political step that turned outotherwise than Moses had planned.Verses 39 and 51 also refer to politicalplanning, with a religious decisioninvolved in the latter verse. Acts 8:21,22 as well refer to personal gain orprestige; no emotional element isobvious. Acts 8:37, even if spurious, is

still Greek, and it identifies the functionof the heart as believing that Jesus Christis the Son of God. This is a theologicaljudgment. There are eight additionalinstances of the term heart in Acts, andthe reader is encourged to look them up.

Romans seems to have fifteeninstances of the term. In Romans 1:21 theheart is connected with a false theology,and three verses later this results inimmorality. The immorality includedsexual emotions, but it also includedidolatry and the worship of animals.This is theology too. Romans 2:5 refersto an unrepentant heart, more theologicalthan emotional; Romans 2:15, as 1 see it,asserts certain apriori principlesderived from the creation of Adam. This

is the structure of the human mind. Thelast verse of the chapter contrasts purelyexternal conformity with religioustradition versus the sincere theology of aregenerate Israelite. There is anintellectual difference.

Some people may want to seeemotions in Romans 5:5. It would behard to prove. Romans 6:17, speaking ofobedience, uses the term heart forvolition. Romans 8:27 is anotherinstance. If “unceasing grief’ is indeedan emotion, then 9:2 uses the word inthis sense. But 1 cannot see that “myheart’s desire and prayer” in 10:1 is anemotion. It is rather a fixeddetermination. The instances in 10:6, 8,9, 10 are indisputably intellectual, or

volitional in the assent of verses 9 and10. The final reference in Romans is16:18 in which the subject is intellectualdeception.

First Corinthians has fivereferences: 2:9; 4:5; 7:37 twice; and14:25. The first of these refers totheological doctrines underivable inempirical philosophy, but received,understood, and believed throughrevelation. Note the emphasis on mind(Greek nous) at the end of the chapter. ICorinthians 4:5 has nothing to do withemotion. Chapter 7:37 refers to aprinciple of parental control; and 14:25concerns a knowledge of one’s previousconduct, now recognized as sinful.

If any reader finds this list tedious,

let him consider how tedious it is for thepresent author to check it out and write itdown. The term heart occurs about 160times in the New Testament. Theinstances now given, both from Old andNew, conclusively show that the basicmeaning of the word is mind or intellect.Volition, usually the assent tointellectually under- stood propositions,is also a meaning, and emotion is rarelythe point of the passage. Suppose weagree not to complete the enumeration,but just stop right here.

Before the intrusion of this materialon the head and the heart, the argumenthad begun with “two or three difficultiesin this section from Calvin:” first, theunfortunate behavioristic overtones of

some of Calvin’s language; second, thedefective grasp of Biblical psychologyin many writers; and now we proceed tothe third point. The context in Calvinfrom which the unfortunate language wasquoted insists that “it is an absurdity tosay that faith is formed by the addition ofa pious affection to an assent of themind; whereas even this assent is apious affection.” Calvin uses the termaffection to denote a voluntaryintellectual assent. Not all assents arepious. Not only may one assent,unknowingly, to a falsehood; but also anassent to a proposition of geometry isnot a “pious״ assent. Here Hodge withmany others confuses the nature of theassent with the propositions assented to.

The effect, indeed the unwittingacknowledgment, of this type ofconfusion comes on the next page. “Thatsaving faith is not a mere speculativeassent of the understanding, is theuniform doctrine of the Protestantsymbols. On this point, however, it maybe remarked, in the first place, that . . .the Scriptures do not make the sharpdistinction between the understanding,the feelings, and the will, which iscommon today” (p. 91). Is this not anacknowledgment that Hodge and othershave imposed a foreign psychology onthe Scripture? Hodge continues, “A largeclass of our inward acts and states areso complex as to be acts of the wholesoul, and not exclu- sively of any one of

its faculties.” Here again the distinctionsare assigned in the wrong direction.Faculty psychology, large- ly abandonednow, invented parts or faculties of thesoul for various acts, while theScripture, as 1 understand it, has theunitary soul or mind acting on variousobjects. For example, conscience is nota faculty of the soul for morality andintellect a separate faculty for geometry.Rather the distinction is that in the firstcase the mind studies matters ofmorality, while in the second the sameunitary mind studies geometry. Thisview is consonant with the idea that faithin pickles and faith in God arepsychologically identical; the differencelies in the object. If, further, the older

term affection (which in Greek used tomean something like being hit with ahammer) means what we today callemotion, it must be described as asudden distur- bance in the mind’snormal intelligence. Most sins, perhapsnot all, occur because an emotion hasdisturbed the mind’s ration- ality. That iswhy the NewTestament so oftencondemns desire or lust.

Hodge’s account of faith, thoughdeformed by his empirical philosopy, isnonetheless correct in the main. Thesame page continues, “If we take thatelement of faith, which is common toevery act of believing, if we understandby it the apprehension of a thing as trueand worthy of confidence . . . then it may

be said that faith in its essential nature isintellec- tual or intelligent assent.”Granted, Hodge does not finish hisparagraph consistently, but his finalwords, if we take the term heart in itsscriptural sense, are good: “the faith thatis required for salvation is an act of thewhole soul, of the understanding, of theheart, and of the will”(p. 91). All thatremains to be done is to clarify therelation between the understanding andthe will, which together are actions ofthe heart or mind.

10. B.B. WarfieldThe great Princeton Warfield20

begins his chapter on faith with a studyof the Hebrew word we maytransliterate into the English Amen,which the verb believe in the KingJames uni- formly represents. Yet hesays that believe is a weaker and dilutemeaning of the Hebrew verb. Thestronger meanings denote fixedness,steadfastness, and reliability. Just whyfixedness is strong and believe is weak,Warfield does not explain. The Hiphilform of the verb, with one exception,means“ ‘to trust,’weakening down to thesimple‘to believe.’ ” With the prefixbeth, “It is probably never safe torepresent the phrase by the simple

‘believe’ ” (p. 468). Warfield, withoutdenying that the object of this verb canbe a theological propo- sition, stresses apersonal object more than Hodge did.He repeats the unfortunate pejorativeclaim that “This faith ... is obviously nomere assent” (p. 470). Yet to do himjustice one must note also that “The thingbelieved is sometimes a specific wordor work of God . . . the fact of a divinerevelation ... or the words orcommandments of God in general,” aswell as “God’s prophets” and “Godhimself.” He rather stresses the latter,for he continues: “The object of Abram’sfaith . . . was not the promise. . . what it[Abram’s faith] rested on was Godhimself. ... To believe in God, in the Old

Testament sense, is thus not merely[pejorative] to assent to His word, but...to rest. . . upon Him”(p. 471).

Warfield then tries to preserve thisalleged Hebrew mean- ing for the Greekpisteuo (believe) by connecting thelatter to the former through the usage ofthe Septuagint. This back- ground in theSeptuagint was necessary because “it[pisteuo] had the slightest possibleconnection with religious faith inclassical speech”(p. 472). Here again isthe confusion of mean- ing with theobject. Had pisteuo in classical Greek astrong religious connotation, its meaningmight have been too much colored bypagan superstitions. But without suchpagan con- notations its common usage

can be taken over in the New Testament.Indeed, Warfield’s attempt to justify hisview by an appeal to Xenophon’sMemorabilia undermines rather thanestablishes his position. If the Greekpisteuein was so far removed from theOld Testament Amen, how was it that theSeventy chose it as the best translation?

Similarly his argument based onPhilo’s use of pistis (faith) is vitiated bythe same confusion. Philo’s faith mayhave been naturalistic, not evensynergistic, while New Testament faithis a gift of God’s grace; but thesedifferences are irrelevant. We are nothere concerned with the cause of faith,nor with the different objects of faith, butwith the nature of faith. Whether Zeus or

Jehovah, whether botany or astronomyor mathemat- ics be the object, thequestion is, Is faith an assent? Note toothat any pagan influence that Philo mighthave absorbed—less than many peoplethink—could not have affected theSeventy, who came about two hundredyears earlier.

But for all Warfield’s aversionfrom assent, he clearly admits that“When construed with the dative,pisteuein in the New Testamentprevailingly expresses believing assent,though ordinarily in a somewhatpregnant sense,” whatever this lastphrase may mean. “When its object is athing, it is usually the spoken. . .orwritten. . . word of God”(p. 475). With

respect to pisteuein and the accusativehe says, “With these weaker [whyweaker?] constructions must be rangedalso the passages, twenty in all. . . inwhich what is believed is joined to theverb by the conjunction oti."

A “deeper sense of the word” isindicated when the verb is followed byprepositions, even though thepreposition in Mark 1:15 governs the“gospel” (p. 476). There are of coursemany instances when the grammaticalobject is a person. The exege- sis ofthese passages has already been hintedat and will be further discussed later.

When Warfield takes up “TheHistorical Presentation of Faith,” heacknowledges that “the first recorded

acts after the Fall—the naming of Eve,and the birth and naming of Cain—areexpressive of trust in God’s promise” (p.485). In the following sentence hespeaks of Noah’s “trust in God and Hispromises.” At least twice on page 486he describes the patriar- chal religion asa “religion of promise.” It is impossiblefor any honest student of the OldTestament to avoid the idea of promise,and this requires the object of faith to bea proposi- tion. Continuing his historicalsurvey Warfield writes, “The law-givingwas not a setting aside of the religion ofpromise” (p. 486).

It is necessary to remind the readerthat these criticisms of Warfield andother Calvinistic theologians with

reference to the nature of faith as assentdo not derogate from the excel- lence oftheir exposition of Biblical faith assoteric, as an endowment from God, andwhatever force and value the Scrip-tures assign to it. The point of thecriticism is that these spiritual qualitiesbelong to an act of assent, rather than toa very vague something else. Thisconfusion mars Warfield’s otherwisefine discussion of faith in James (p.495). Contrary to what he says, Jamesdid not “rebuke the Jewish tendency toconceive faith ... as a mere [thepejorative word again] intel- lectualacquiescence.” In addition to Warfield’spointing out that James wrote, “If a mansay he have faith, can the [that sort of]

faith save him?” one must note that their“intellectual acquiescence” had adifferent object; and it was thedifference in object, not the similarity inintellectual assent, that deprived theirfaith of soteric efficacy. Warfield alsofalls into the error of supposing thatHebrews 11:1 is the definition of faith(p. 498), while the remainder of thechapter is a description. It is all adescription. And it is incredible that hesays, “Least of all the NewTestamentwriters could John confine faith to amerely [!] intellectual act: his wholedoctrine is rather a protest against theintellectualism of Gnosticism” (p. 500).Warfield seems to suppose that if Johncombatted the intellectualism of the

Gnostics, he had to oppose allintellectualism.21

In his final section on “The BiblicalConception of Faith” Warfield againtakes Hebrew's 11:1 as “almost [!] aformal definition. . . it consists neither inassent nor in obedience”(p. 501). But tryas he may to make God rather than aproposition the object of faith, he mustinclude a belief in “the forgiveness ofsins . . . the revelations of this grace, andthe provisions of this mercy” (p. 502).These terms indicate certainpropositions to be believed, accepted astrue, given our assent. “Such a faith,again, could not fail to embrace withhumble confidence all the graciouspromises [!] of the God of salvation . . .

nor could it fail to lay hold with strongconviction [though one man said. Lord, Ibelieve, help thou my unbelief] on all[does anyone know them all?] thoserevealed truths ...” (p. 503). Nonethe-less a few lines farther down the page hedenies that faith terminates on thepromise, namely, those “propositionswhich declare God’s grace andwillingness to save.”

11. Minor MenDuring the life time of Charles

Hodge, John Anderson wrote a goodbook on Saving Faith.22 A shortsummary will be sufficient to outline hisviews. “He who is the object of our faithis called Christ” (p. 18). There followseveral pages on the offices of Christ.Coming to the object of faith he asks,“Whether such principles as the being ofGod, the immortality of the soul, a futurestate of rewards and punishments, asthey are known by human reason in itspresent corrupt state, are to beconsidered as objects of faith?” And heanswers, “It is absurd to call such truths. . . objects or matters of faith, whilethey are known and considered no

otherwise than as matters of reason”(p.31). Note the phrase, “as they are knownby human reason in its present corruptstate.” This phrase prevents the passagefrom being pertinent to the question ofthis study. It even seems as if Dr.Anderson thinks it possible to prove thetruth of these propositions by “humanreason” (never defined) apart fromrevelation. For example, he speaks of“These truths, not as matters of faith, butas dictates of reason . . .and whoever isan enemy [of these “rationaF’truths]must be much more an enemy of thelatter [truths of revelation]”(pp. 22, 23).Of course this is false, as anyone with aknowledge of Aquinas, or of non-thomistic presuppositionalists,

recognizes. More to the point for the present

study, Anderson acknowledges that “Thewhole word of God is indeed the objectof faith . . . [though] in the word, whichis its general object, it seeks a specialobject” (p. 38).

In Discourse 11 Anderson examines“the ACT of believing in the name ofJesus Christ, abstracted from such thingsas accompany or follow it” (p. 46). Thisfaith is not “a resolved subjection to, orcompliance with, what they call theprecepts of the gospel” (p. 50). “Thefollowing [is the] definition of savingfaith: ‘that it is a real or unfeignedpersuasion, wrought in my heart by theHoly Ghost, that, in the gospel record, . .

. God gives his Son Jesus Christ, withhis whole salvation, to sinners ofmankind indefinitely, and to me a sinnerin particu- lar’ ” (p. 54).

How much of the record one mustbelieve, he does not say; and unless /know what to believe, how can 1 knowthat anything applies to me! On thefollowing page he seems to include theknowledge of “the all-sufficiency of hisSon Jesus to accomplish our salvation.”Since this requires several pages toexplain, including 2025־ Scriptureverses, from the Old Testa- ment as wellas from the New, the object to bebelieved seems to be a somewhatextensive theology. Indeed, Scripturalexposi- tion continues for pages, and

there is no clear indication of how muchis essential to saving faith. In thisexposition, too, the act of faith, though itwas the chapter heading, seems to havebeen forgotten. But he returns to it onpage 82.

He states, “To consider the ACT ofsaving faith ... we must observe that it isa persuasion wrought in our hearts by thesupernatural operation of the HolySpirit. . . . Secondly, we observe that itis a SURE persuasion ... it must carry init real assurance” (p. 83). Though thiscontradicts the Westmin- sterConfession, he continues saying that“true and saving faith evidencesassurance to be its nature” (p. 84). It is“a belief of the gospel record” (p. 86). It

includes “all the purposes of Justifica-tion and salvation.”Then later he adds,“There is an appropria- tion in nature ofsaving faith, from its correspondencewith the record of God concerning hisSon Jesus Christ” (p. 121). “Faith isfurther distinguished . . . by its heartyapprobation of. . .the whole device ofsalvation through Christ crucified, aswell ordered in all things and sure” (p.129). This surely takes in a great amountof theology.

Anderson frequently mentionsbelief in the promise. A promise, and theparticular promise he mentions of a sonto Abram, is a proposition; but he doesnot specify any particular promise to us,speaking only generally of “the word of

the gospel”(p. 137). “The appropriation. . . arises from the matter believed, orfrom the records that God hath given us .. .” (p. 146). “Strong faith. . . is thatwhich proceeds most singly upon theground of God’s word of promise” (p.146). This is in general true, and in themain Anderson seems to hold that theobject of faith is propositional.

Johan H. Bavinck, another minorwriter, is the author of a book whosetitle is Faith and Its Difficulties.23 Itmay not be his best work, but its titlebrings it within the scope of thisinvestigation.

A man’s publications must in someway reveal what we may call hispsychological constitution. Bavinck’s is

evident on his first page: “One ispossessed with a feeling of awe whenone begins to talk about God.” Perhapsthis ought to be so. Trying to imaginewhat that omnipotence is which couldcreate ex nihilo the galaxies astronomytalks about, should discourage us fromtrying to imagine. But Bavinck’s anxietybefore God seems to stem from a lessjustifiable anxiety before his humanfriends: “Even when I talk with a friendabout my fellow man, who has the samepeculiarities and weaknesses that 1have, I realize that at any moment I runthe danger of doing him an injustice . . .that 1 will attribute ulterior motives,while in reality there are none.” Thoughthis is a danger in published works—I

have misrepresented D’Arcy bysummarizing only a part of his book—and while the attribution of ulteriormotives of others than authors ispossible, it occurs in only a small, avery small proportion of conversations,and is certainly not an important factorto govern a study of faith. But Bavinck isso gripped by anxiety he denies whatmany Reformed theologians assert,namely, that we can think God’s thoughtsafter him. After denying this he adds, “1am convinced that no language has theword power adequately to express theineffable majesty of His Being. We wishto speak about the unknown God” (p. 9).

Since language is a gift from Godwith the purpose of enabling us to speak

about him and to him, and since theBible contradicts the idea of God’sbeing unknown or “totally other,”Bavinck’s theory of language should beviewed with suspicion. Of course no onedenies that we are ignorant of what Godhas not chosen to reveal. The well-known verse in Deuteronomy (29:29) isexplicit and in thinking it we think thatthought of God after him. Further, if Godis unknown, there is no good reason forwriting a book on faith. Even if we oftenmisunder- stand, yet we must sometimesget the truth, for that is why God gave usa book that is profitable for (true)doctrine, for reproof, and instruction inrighteousness. Even when Bavinckacknowledges that “This does not mean

that there is no way by which we maylearn to know him,” he adds that formany people of our generation “He isnothing else but the UNKNOWN.”Granted, he does not use the termunknowable in this sentence; but he hascapitalized UNKNOWN, and this aftersaying that language is (inherently)inadequate.

Bavinck of course wants to makethis unknown God somewhat knowable.“Nature’s overwhelming greatness”leads man “irresistibly . . . forced toconfess that there must beSOMETHING,” though “Nature in itselfis an unfathomable riddle. . . . That Godof nature is for us the Unknown God.”Then “guidance and direction” occurs to

us on our “good days and bad days . . .and in all these things the great Ruler ofour lives speaks to us.” He is now seenas “the Regent of our life.” Finally “wemeet God. . . in Jesus Christ. ”Thenapparently by faith we merge theSOMETHING, the Regent, and Christinto one. But still “we shudder at theappalling unknowness of God.”Bavinckspeaks of being “Oppressed with fearand anguish,” and he “shudders.”Several times he uses the phrase “themysterious Other.”

Can such a disturbed mentality giveus a clear concept of faith?

Of course Bavinck believes thatthis Unknown Something has spoken inJesus Christ. But if language is

inadequate, do Christ’s words give usany knowledge? Are Christ’s words onlyunintelligible pointers to Something thatsoothes our disturb- ing emotions?Bavinck indeed says that “God revealedhis eternal and holy will of salvationthrough the Cross of Christ” (p. 27). Butis the Cross a symbol, a myth, orinexplicable fact? Or did God throughMatthew, Paul, and John give anintelligi- ble explanation of thesignificance of Christ’s death? And dowe, when we read words, obtainknowledge thereby? Bavinckpresumably believes that Christ’s deathwas a vicarious and propitiatorysacrifice, but these pages do not showhow his presuppositions justify the

possibility of such information. A few pages later he gives other

criteria of faith: “If the palace ofCaiaphas would have collapsed in thenight of Jesus’ condemnation, or if Pilatehad been struck dead in the midst of thehearing—faith would not be faithanymore. . . . Everyone would be forcedto bend and give in. The facts wouldforce us, against our wills, to agree withGod”(p. 28). This is unsatisfac- tory forseveral reasons. First, there is still nodefinition of faith. Second, in OldTestament times there were events asspectacular as the collapse of Caiaphas’palace would have been, and it was nottrue that “faith would not be faith anymore.”Third, Jesus said that even if

some people would return from hell andtell their brothers of the penaltiesbeyond the grave, they would not “beforced against (their) wills to agree withGod.” An author should not allowfervent devotion or literary charm tohide the truth. On the next page (p. 29),Bavinck describes a mustard seed assomething“infinitesimally small,” whichvisibly it isn't. Now. no doubt somereaders will consider such objections asnit-picking. Yet it is not an infinite-simally small point: It is symptomatic ofcarelessness. If, how- ever, I seemsevere, let me say that pages 33-36,though too rhetorical to suit my taste, arenonetheless very true.

Eventually Bavinck gives what

seems to be intended as a definition offaith: “Faith really is nothing else but thecour- ageous decision that 1 will nomore indulge in self-contem- plation andspeculation” (p. 45). Obviously thisstatement is unacceptable. First, it doesnot apply to many of the beliefs whichthe secular writers enumerate. Nor is itbiblical. Surely to confess that Jesus isthe Messiah and that God raised himfrom the dead is more than “nothing elsebut a courageous decision ... no more[to] indulge in self-contemplation.” Notonly is there something else, but whatBavinck says is excluded is actuallyincluded, unless self-examination, whichScripture commands, is not self-contemplation.

The remainder of the book leads toour conclusion that its title is amisnomer. It deals with cares oftemptation and spiritual struggle, but haslittle to do with faith. As such it probesthe sinful tendencies of even the bestChristians and may prove of great helpto many people. But it will impederather than enlarge one's understandingof the gospel message.

12. John Theodore MuellerAfter the earlier sections of this

study, sections on secular views ofbelief, and after the Roman Catholicviews, the material has been limited tothe Calvinistic tradition. Obviously thepresent writer is a Calvinist, writingchiefly for Calvinists, with some pioushopes that others also may be influenced.Now, there is nothing wrong in confiningone’s attention to Calvinism. But since itwas Luther, and not Calvin, who firstbrought the doctrine of justifica- tion byfaith to the attention of Europe, and sinceLutheranism is the numerically largestdivision of evangelicalism, we oughtgrate- fully to acknowledge the fact,even though the reference be inade-

quate. John Theodore Mueller is a recentand excellent Lutheran theologian. In hisSystematic Theology (p. 325) he usesthe com- mon three-fold division ofknowledge, assent, and confidence. Buthe seems—and this puzzles a reader—torestrict knowledge and assent touninterpreted historical events. Surely hecannot have meant this, for obviously aperson can believe a doctrine as well asan historical event. Some modification,fortunately, occurs on the next page,where he says, “However, if the termnotitia is under- stood in the sense oftrue spiritual knowledge of Christ. . .andthe term assensus is conceived asspiritual assent to the promises of theGospel . . . then both of these terms

include the fiducia cordis This, of course, makes fiduciaredundant.

Even on the puzzling page he said,“Faith which justifies is not merely aknowledge of history. . . but it is assentto the promise of God. . . .”And twopages earlier (p. 323) he had asserted,“Saving faith is always fides actualis[not the Romish implicit faith], or theapprehension of the divine promise byan act of the intellect and will.”

Though we hold Martin Luther inhighest honor, later Luth- eranism hasbeen more Melanchthonian thanLutheran. Even so, the Missouri Synodand Concordia Seminary are to beadmired for turning back the assaults of

liberalism in the past decade. Yet, if thepresent study has taken some Calviniststo task on this or that point, it ispermissible to state some difficultiesfound in Professor Mueller’s learnedtome. These difficulties are not so muchlocated in the psychology of believing,for Mueller is very clear on the basicevangelical doctrine of assent, widelyforgotten by non-lutherans who still callthemselves evangelicals. The differenceto be noted in the interest of a morebalanced though still inadequatepresenta- tion has to do with thepermanence of belief.

At first sight Mueller seems to bevery Calvinistic. He writes, “It is clearthat a believer is in full possession of

divine pardon, life, and salvation fromthe very moment in which he puts histrust in Christ. . . . For this reason thebeliever is also certain of his salvation,for saving faith is in its very nature thetruest and greatest certainty. If [anygroups] deny that the believer may besure of his salvation, it is because theyteach that salvation in part at leastdepends upon the believer’s good works. . .”(p. 329).

These words could easily be takento imply the Calvinistic doctrine of theperseverance of the saints, if not that ofirresistible grace. But later, on page 436,M ueller denies that all persevere andrejects Calvin’s teaching that faithcannot be lost. “The Calvinistic doctrine

of final perseverance is unscriptural”(p.437). “Calvinism cannot comfort abeliever with real assurance ofsalvation” (p. 438). Yet, strange to say, on the nextpage (p. 439) he states that “As God didnot omit anything to prepare salvationfor [the believer], so also he omitsnothing by which this salvation isjinaliter attained.”

Now, an astute theologian may seemore clearly than a layman who wouldbe deceived how this wording canescape Calvinism. Even some Arminiansassert assurance—in the sense that theyare sure they would be taken to heaven ifthey should die right now, though if theylive longer they may lose their faith and

be lost. Similarly Mueller said, “Everytrue believer in Christ therefore is sureof his [present!] state of grace andsalvation” (p. 332). But many of us willindeed live until tomorrow. ThereforeMueller’s rejection of Calvinisticcomfort cannot be of much comfort toLutherans.

13. The End of HistorySome of the more professorial

readers of this book may bedisappointed that so little attention ispaid to current authors and so much toearlier theologians. There is a simpleexplanation. The earlier theologians, asthe quotations indicate, wrote ratherexten- sively on the subject, whereasduring the second and third quarters ofthis century the material has been shorterin length and poorer in quality. Oneexample illustrates both deficiencies. InThe Presby- terian Journal (November26, 1980) a contributor had an articleentitled “Justification—Faith andWorks.” Particularly noticeable is thewriter’s failure to define his terms. To

quote: “The message of James becomes

especially important when the teachingof bare faith-justification, or evenassent-justification, arises to trouble thechurch, as it evidently was doing in hisday, and as it is certainly doing in ours.This is the view that justifying faith doesnot necessarily include obedience orgood works.

“The man who relies on assent-justification claims he has justifying faithwhen what he has is no more thanintellectual assent to the Gospel and adesire to escape eternal damnation. Theone who relies on assent-justificationsays, ‘I accept Christ as Savior, but notyet as Lord.’He thinks he is assured of

salvation because he has faith, but hedoes not understand what faith truly is.

“To understand the words of James,‘a man is justified by works,’ to mean nomore than that he demonstates hisjustification by his works, leaves the onewho relies on assent- justification afalse way of feeling that all is well withhis soul.”

In addition to his loose terminologythe writer depends on false assertions.The end of the first quoted paragraphinsists that ‘assent-justification’ “doesnot necessarily include obedience orgood works.” The word necessarilyperhaps saves the paragraph from beingoutright false, provided the writer canquote an expo- nent of assent who

explicitly says that good w׳orks are notincluded. Or, perhaps the truth of thestatement can be defended by insistingthat those who defend assent do notinclude good works in assent—they onlysay that good works follow. But withouteven this excuse the next to last sentencein paragraph two, namely, “The one whorelies on assent-justification says, ‘Iaccept Christ as Savior, but not yet asLord,’ ”cannot escape the charge ofoutright falsehood. None of theCalvinistic theologians quoted aboveever said any such thing. It is regrettablethat a periodical, supposedlyCalvinistic, should print suchincompetent drivel. The Apostle Paul inhis day met the essentially similar

objection that justification by faith aloneencouraged immorality. He defended hisposition in Romans VI, VII, and VIII.

14. The Necessity of FaithTo this point the discussion has

been centered on the history of thedoctrine. The objections to some parts ofthe various views, though in appearancenegative, were, as earlier indicated,actually positive and constructive.Turning now from the historical matrix,the study will try to collect andsomewhat organize these previousconclusions. Then, too, although therewas a section on Biblical Data, moreBiblical data are to be added. To beginwith, a relatively non-controversialpoint will be made, not only to round outthe exposition, but also because it leadsinto a most embarrass- ing puzzle. Thethesis is that faith is necessary to

salvation. One difficulty in the doctrine of

justification by faith alone has to do withinfants and imbeciles. Most Christiansbelieve that some who die in infancy aresaved, and many believe that all who diein infancy are saved. But if faith isnecessary, and if infants are incapable ofbelieving anything, what happens toCalvinistic theology? The usual answeris to deny that faith is universallynecessary and that infants and someothers are justified without faith. TheLutherans, however, are more consistent.They hold that infants can exercise faitheven before birth. Of course, how theycan believe the gospel which they cannotpossibly have heard remains a mystery,

for the Scripture says. Faith cometh byhear- ing. On the other hand, Lutheranshave a powerful point in their favor asthey cite the case of John the Baptist,who was filled with the Holy Ghostwhile yet in his mother’s womb.

The anti-christian Supreme Courtshould consider this when they legalizethe murder of babies on the ground thatthey are not yet human beings.

Be this all as it may, SupremeCourt, Calvinism, and Luther- anism,each reader must decide for himselfwhether the following Biblical passagesrequire the conclusion that faith is anecessity for salvation. And if faith isnecessary to salvation, it is necessaryfor theology also. We must understand

what the Scriptures say. The followingverses, or at least some of them, seem toteach that faith is necessary. Assuredlythey teach more than this, and referencesto them must later be made inexplanation of other phases of thedoctrine. But they are given here for thesole purpose of pointing out thenecessity of faith. John 3:15, 16 Everyone who believes inhim has everlasting life ... He whobelieves in him shall not perish. Acts 16:31 Believe on the Lord Jesus,and thou shalt be saved.

Strictly speaking these two versesdo not show that faith is necessary tosalvation. They show that faith issufficient. If some- one believes, he has

eternal life. No one is lost who believes.But these two verses, if taken alone,allow for the possibility that somethingelse could be substituted for faith.Suppose I am driving south on Interstate65, and in Kentucky I come to Cave City.The attendant at the gas station says, “Ifyou take routes 9 and 231 you willsurely get to MurphreesboroTTrueenough. But it is also true that if Icontinue on 1-65 and 24 1 shall get toMurphreesboro just as well. Now . . . Mark 16:16 He who believes and isbaptized shall be saved, but he who doesnot believe shall be condemned. teaches not only that faith is sufficient,but also that without faith salvation isimpossible. However, since some

scholars do not regard this as part of thecanon, three other verses follow. James 3:18 He who believes in him isnot judged; he who does not believe isjudged already. James 3:36 He who believes in the Sonhas eternal life; but he who disobeys theSon shall not see life.

Hebrews 11:6 Without faith it isimpossible to please [God].“

These verses are sufficientlyexplicit; but the general doctrine ofjustification by faith alone is a strongerproof than a few sample verses. Thepassages on justification may not singlybe so explicit: It is necessary to combine them anddraw inferences. But in view of the last

half of Romans 3, and for that matter ofthe last half of Romans 5, the conclusionis the more compelling because the baseis broader.

15. The LanguageSince faith is of such importance,

and even if it were not of suchimportance, theology must determine itsmeaning. Those who wish to talk about itought to know the nature of thatparticular kind of faith which isnecessary for salvation. Her- manHoeksema (Reformed Dogmatics, GrandRapids, 1966, p. 479) begins his chapteron Saving Faith with this paragraph:“Saving faith is that work of God in theelect, regenerated, and called sinnerwhereby the latter is ingrafted intoChrist and embraces and appropriatesChrist and all his benefits, relying uponhim in time and eternity.” Aside from thefact that some of the verbs in this

sentence are too vague to be useful, onemay admit that the sentence is true. But itis not a definition of faith. To say thatfaith ingrafts us into Christ says less thanto say roast beef gives us nourishment.The latter does not tell us what beef is.Nor does the former tell us what faith is.Theological terms need to be defined;they need to be understood; or else wedo not know what we are talking about.To make progress toward a definition,we begin with the usage of the language.

The Greek verb means believe. Soit was translated in the previous versesquoted. Here will follow some instancesof its ordinary use, both in pagan sourcesand in the Bible. The Biblical versesfrom the Septuagint are not chosen

because they are Biblical, but, like thepagan sources, they show how the wordwas used in pre-christian times. Whenthe New Testa- ment authors began towrite, they perforce used the commonlanguage. Aristotle, De Anima 428 b 4: The sun isbelieved to be larger than the earth. Aristotle, Meteorologica 343 b 10 [On acertain point] it is necessary to believethe Egyptians. Thucydides 1,20, It is hard to believeevery bit of evidence about them. Psalm 78:22 in the Septuagint translationsays that the Israelites “did not believein God.” Isaiah 53:1 Who has believed ourreport?

Even though this is the commonusage—and in a moment a large numberof New Testament passages will showthe same thing—a number of theologiansgive the impression that the translationbelieve is misleading. They want tomake “faith” something other than“mere” belief. The following lengthy listhas some bearing on this conviction. John 2:22 They believed the Scripture. John 3:12 If 1 told you about earthlymatters and you do not believe, howshall you believe if 1 tell you aboutheavenly things? John 4:50 The man believed the wordthat Jesus had spoken to him. John 5:47 If ye believe not that man'swriting, how shall ye believe my

words? John 6:69 We have believed and knowthat thou art the Holy One of God. John 8:24 If ye believe not that 1 am(what 1 claim to be) ye shall die in yoursins. John 8:45 Because I tell you the truth,you do not believe me. John 9:18 But the Jews did not believe .. . that he had been blind. John 11:26 Do you believe this?

27 Yes, Lord, I believe that thou artthe Christ. John 11:42 1 said it that theymay believe that thou hast sent me. John 12:38 Who hath believed ourreport? John 13:19 Ye may believe that I am he.

John 14:29 Now I have told you beforeit happens, so that when it happens youmight believe. John 16:27 And have believed that Icame out from God. John 16:30 We believe that thou earnestforth from God. John 17:8 have believedthat thou didst send me. John 17:21 that the world may believethat thou hast sent me. John 20:31 These are written that youmight believe that Jesus is the Christ, theSon of God. I Corinthians 13:7 Love believeseverything.

In reading over these versescarefully, the student should note that theobject of the verb is sometimes a noun

or pronoun denoting a statement (word,this, things, writings), and some- times aperson (in this list, me\ in other versesGod), and sometimes there is no explicitobject at all. The significance of thiswill become apparent in a moment.

To be specific and to make the NewTestament data clear, note that the objectof belief in John 2:22 is the Scripture; inJohn 3:12, earthly and heavenly things,i.e., information con- cerning earthly andheavenly society; in John 4:50 the manbelieved the word, not a single wordlike sun, rain, or Jerusa- lem, but rathera sentence. The Greek word logoshardly ever means a single word, and theusual translation of John 1:1 is a mistakethat has befuddled nearly everybody. In

John 6:69 the object of the verb believeis the phrase “that thou art the Holy Oneof God.” Other cases of believe that areJohn 8:24, 9:18. 11:27, and at least eight others in thelist.

It is clear that the Greek verbpisteuo is properly trans- lated believe;and it would have been much better ifthe noun pistis had been translatedbelief. An English novel. The Way of AllFlesh, indicates that in the lateeighteenth and early nine- teenthcenturies the evangelical Anglicansrecited the Belief, rather than the Creed.The author seems to assume that thecongregations did not know that credomeans / believe. The partial examination

of the verses just above shows what theobject of belief is. Usually it is the truth.Even where the grammatical object isnot a phrase, the sense requires it.

The Scriptures contain manyinstances of the verb with the noun Godas their explicit object. Though none ofthe verses in the last group quoted hasGod as the explicit object, everyoneremembers that “Abraham believedGod.” The verb here should not be takento mean something different from itsother instances. What Abraham believedwas the promise of God. God said, “1am thy shield . . . This shall not be thineheir . . . So shall thy seed be. And he[Abraham] believed in theLord”(Gcnesis 15:16־): and “Abraham

believed God”( Romans 4:3). In Englishtoo, when we say we believe a person,we mean we agree that his statement istrue.

If this is now settled, still somepeople assert that there is a distinct andimportant difference between believinga state- ment or even believing a personand believing in a person.

Before the argument resumes, it isbest to collect some more Scripturaldata. Matthew 18:6 and Mark 9:42 one ofthese little ones who believe in [eis]me. John 1:12 He gave power to them whobelieve in [eis] his name. John 2:11 His disciples believed in

him. John 2:23 Many believed on [cw] hisname. John 7:5 Neither did his brothersbelieve in him. John9:3536־ Do youbelieve on the Son of God . . . who is he,Lord, that I may believe on [c/s] him. John 12:36 Believe in [eis] the light. John 14:1 Ye believe in [eis] God,believe also in me. Acts 16:31 Believe on [epi] the LordJesus and thou shalt be saved and thyhouse. Romans 4:18 Who against hope believedin [epi] hope. I Timothy 1:16 Believe on [epi] him tolife everlasting. I Peter 1:21 Who are believers [noun] in

God. The first reference in this last list

speaks of young children. They cannothave had much theological education.The pas- sage of course does not meanthat we should be like children inrespect of their ignorance, nor, as issometimes wrongly assumed, in respectof their innocence. But rather theybelieved that Jesus would somehowbless them. If anyone wish to say thechildren trusted in him, well and good;to trust is to believe that good willfollow.

The contrast between John 2:11,23and John 7:5 is that some believed Jesuswas the Messiah and some did not.

John 12:36 and its context speak of

light. The light seems to be the OldTestament in verse 34. It may also beChrist’s interpretation of the OldTestament prophecies. Later Christwould be taken away and the OldTestament would be dark- ness to them.Verses 35 and 36 need not be translated,','While you have light,” but equallygood grammar allows “As you havelight”; i.e., use whatever degree of lightyou now have. Here, as often, the contrast between lightand darkness is the contrast betweentruth and falsehood.

The final verse in the list uses thenoun believers, or a substantiveadjective if you wish. It does not meantrusting or faithful; but believer. Acts

16:1 refers toTimothy’s mother as abeliever (feminine form). Ephesians 1:1is better translated “to the believers inChrist Jesus,” as also in Colossians 1:2and a dozen other places.

These references are cited becausesome people find a great differencebetween believing a person andbelieving in him. There is no doubt adifference, but it is quite different fromthe difference these people think theyhave in mind. Attentive readers whoread their publications will concludethat very likely they have nothing inmind, for they regularly avoid statingwhat the difference is. Let us use ahuman exam- pie, for if we begin bytalking about believing in God, our sense

of piety may deceive us. Any ordinaryinstance will do. I meet a stranger on theplane and we begin to talk. Hisconversation indicates that he is achemical engineer. Somewhere along theline he remarks that a certain chemicalprocess does so and so. 1 believe him; Iaccept his statement as true. But I do notfor that reason believe in him. He maybe a scoundrel. Occasionally engineersare. On the way home I sit next to a verygood friend of longstanding. He is alawyer. He tells me about some legalmatter. But now 1 not only believe thisone statement: 1 believe in him becauseI believe that anything he will tell me inthe future, especially if it concerns law,will be true. 1 believe he always tells

the truth and always will. Of course,since he is a human being, he may makea mistake. But when we believe in God,we believe that he will never make amistake. To believe in is simply areference to the future beyond thepresent single statement.

Then too some preachers who havehad a year or two of Greek make allegedly scholarly remarksabout a difference between a NewTestament belief and a pagan Greekbelief. A better scholar, Kittel (Vol. VI,pp. 203208־) has these things to say.“There is nothing distinctive in the NTusage ... as compared with Greek usage.. . . Pisteuein eis is equivalent topisteuein oti, to regard credible or true.

Pisteuein eis XJ . . . simply meanspisteuein oti I. apethanen kai aneste. ...In John especially pisteuein eis andpisteuein oti are constantly usedinterchangeably. Compare also Acts8:37 E24 . . . . This is proved also by thepassive expression episteuthe(ci. ITimothy 3:16) and the fact thatpistis eisis equivalent, not topistis c. dat. but topistis c. gen obj. . . .”

Two pages later he says, “Pisteuein. . . often means to believe God’s words.Belief is thus put in Scripture (James2:22), in what is written in the Law, inwhat the prophets have said (Luke24:25) ... in Moses and his writings(James 5:46 ff.).” Compare also pp.208, 222.

To translate or to summarize alittle, Kittel said: To believe in isequivalent to believe that. To believe inChrist Jesus simply means to believethat Jesus died and rose again. In Johnespecially to believe in and to believethat are constantly usedinterchangeably.

In opposition to Kittel’s linguisticstudies, some theolo- gians and manyministers wish to minimize belief anddetach faith from truth. Louis Berkhofstrangely tends in this direc- tion. Sinceat this time he commands widespreadrespect and since many schools use hisbook, it proves profitable to con- eludethis subsection with a few paragraphsconcerning his views. The material

comes from his Systematic Theology,fourth edition, 1969, Part IV, chapter 8,pp. 493 ff.

He admits that John 4:50 uses theverb pisteuo in the literal sense ofbelieving that a proposition is true.Naturally; for the explicit object is theword or sentences that Jesus had justspoken. Similarly John 5:47. Berkhofeven allows Acts 16:34, Romans 4:3,and II Timothy 1:12 to mean belief in thetruth of a proposition, although theexplicit object of the verb is God orChrist.

In spite of these instances, wherethe predicate is the noun God, though theactual and immediate object is aproposition, and particularly in contrast

with the instances where the object isexplicitly a proposition, Berkhof says,“On the whole this construction isweaker than the preceding” (p. 494),where pisteuo means “confident trust ina person.” But why weaker? Would itnot be more accurate to say that thisconstruction with a proposition as theobject is more literal and accurate thanthe preceding abbreviated expressions?Berkhof con- tinues, “In a couple ofcases the matter believed hardly risesinto the religious sphere, John 9:18, Acts9:26 . . . But if these are instances ofordinary usage, and not particularlyreligious, such as “The Jews did notbelieve that he had been born blind,” itshould show all the more clearly what

the ordinary meaning of believing is. Noreligious motif is there to distract one’sunderstanding. It is true that the object ofbelief in such instances does not riseinto the religious sphere; sometimes theobject may be banal or trivial; but thepoint at issue is not the object of beliefor faith, but the nature of faith and themeaning of the verb pisteuo.

From page 493 on, Berkhof speaksas follows. Pistis (the noun) andpisteuein (the verb) “do not always haveexactly the same meaning.” He specifiestwo meanings of the noun in classicalGreek. “It denotes (a) a convictionbased on confi- dence in a person and inhis testimony, which as such isdistinguished from knowledge resting on

personal investiga- tion; and (b) theconfidence itself on which such aconviction rests. This is more than amere intellectual conviction that aperson is reliable; it presupposes apersonal relation to the object ofconfidence, a giving out of oneself torest in another.”

The lexical information of thisquotation is accurate enough; but thecomments are groundless. Why isconfidence in a person’s truthfulnessmore than “a mere intellectual con-viction that a person is reliable” ? Whatis intended in the pejorative use of theword “mere” ? Why is a conviction ofanother person’s honesty and reliabilitynot a “personal relation” ? And can any

intelligible sense be found in the phrase“a giving out of oneself to rest inanother” ?

However, to continue the quotationsfrom page 494 on, we read that in theNewTestament“the followingmeanings[of the noun pistis] should bedistinguished; an intellectual belief orconviction, resting on the testimony ofanother, and there- fore based on trust inthis other rather than on personal inves-tigation,25 Philippians 1 ;27 [whichrather obviously refers to the doctrinesof the gospel], II Corinthians4:13, IIThessaloni- ans 2; 13 [the object here istruth] and especially in the writings ofJohn; and (b) a confiding trust orconfidence . . . Romans 3;22, 25; 5:1, 2;

9:30. 32. . . . This trust must bedistinguished from that on which theintellectual truth mentioned above under(a) above rests.”

But why? No reason is given. Is itnot true that “a confid- ing trust orconfidence” depends on previousinstances of being told the truth? Thefirst time I meet a man and hear himspeak—unless he comes already highlyrecommended, which merely pushes theillustration one step backwards—1cannot reasonably grant him a confidingtrust or confidence. After i haveobserved his habit of always telling thetruth. I can have confidence in him. Butthis is also an intellectual belief that heconstantly tells the truth. It differs from

the former only in the circumstance thatthe object of the belief is a differentproposi- tion. First, I believed that achemical formula would do so and so;now I believe that he always tells thetruth.

Berkhof cited some references tosupport his contention. But Romans 3:22does not support him. It merelymentions, in four words, “faith in JesusChrist.”The immediately followingwords are “to all who believe.” Whatthey believe is more explicitly stated in3:25, which Berkhof also lists. Thephrase is “through faith in his blood.”Clearly this is not baldly literal. Bloodis a symbol for the Atonement. It cannoteven be re- stricted to Christ’s death, for

the Pharisees themselves believed thatChrist died. What the Pharisees did notbelieve was the significance of Christ’sdeath, namely, that he paid the penalty ofour sin. Verses 25 and 26 are the bestsummary in the New Testament of thecore of the gospel: the doctrine ofjustification by faith; and this doctrine—a set of propositions—is the object ofbelief. Nor do Berkhof’s other citations(Romans 5:1, 2; 9:30, 32) support hisconclusion. They make no distinctionsuch as Berkhof makes. They simplyspeak of faith. By saying five linesbelow that “This last [yielding of Christand trusting in him] is specifically calledsaving faith,” Berkhof implies that theconviction of the truth of the gospel and

“intellectual trust” is not saving faith.Romans is a great book, and we arewilling to quote it, more than willing,anxious: Romans 10:9 says that “if youconfess with your mouth that Jesus isLord, and believe in your heart that Godraised him from the dead, you shall besaved.” As the Old Testament has madeabundantly clear, the heart is the mind;and believing that God raised Christfrom the dead is as intellectual anexercise as believing that two and twoare four.

On page 495 Berkhof continues,Faith “is also represented as a hungeringand thirsting. . . . In eating and drinkingwe not only have the conviction that thenecessary food and drink is present, but

also the confident expectation that it willsatisfy us.”

There is a major flaw in thisparagraph: it misapplies a metaphoricalexpression. Hungering and thirsting arefigures of speech, as is nourishment also.Of course having food pres- ent beforeus does not nourish us. It must be eaten.Now, Berkhof compares the uneatenfood before us with believing the gospel.This requires, in the spiritual applicationof the metaphor, an additional factorbeyond believing. A proper applicationof the metaphor would compare lookingat the food before eating it with hearingthe gospel before believing it. In neithercase is there nourishment. Nourishmentcomes, literally, when we eat; spiritually

when we believe the good news.Understanding the words of theevangelist is an intellec- tual act and itdoes not save; believing those wordsafter having understood them saves. Butthis too is an intellectual act. The objectsof propositions are different. The firstact, in unbelief, is “I understand that theevangelist thinks Christ died for man’ssins.”The second act is “I believe that itis true that Christ died for man’s sins.”These are both cases of intellectual orvoli- tional assent; but the objects, i.e.,the propositions, differ immensely.

There are, he says, other instancesof the verb believe where “the deepermeaning of the word, that of firm trustfulreliance, comes to its full rights.” But

Berkhof, like others, fails to show howthis “deeper meaning” differs from thestraight- forward literal meaning. Amongthe many instances of the verb believe,there is, to repeat, a difference ofobjects. One may believe that two andtwo are four and this is arithmetic; onemay also believe that asparagus belongsto the lily family, and this is botany.Botany is not mathematics, of course; butthe psychology or linguistics of believeis identical in all cases. Therefore, oneshould not confuse an analysis of beliefwith an analysis of numbers or plants.Christ’s promises of salvation are vastlydifferent from the propositions ofbotany; but believ- ing is alwaysthinking that a proposition is true. The

further development will also supportthis conclusion.

16. Person or Proposition?While Professor Berkhof serves as

a good example, many other Protestanttheologians also, both Lutheran and Re-formed, tend to make a sharp distinctionbetween “a confident resting on aperson” and “the assent given to atestimony.” “Confident reliance” issupposed to differ from “intellectualassent.”

The term resting or reliance isseldom if ever explained in theologybooks. One is left in the dark as to whatit means. An illustration may furnish aclue and make the words intelligible.Suppose a high school student isassigned a problem in geome- try. Heworks out a solution, looks at it from all

angles, perhaps he corrects a smalldetail and then tests each step again tosee if he has made a mistake; seeingnone he now puts down his pencil andrests. That is to say, he has assented tohis argument. He believes he now hasthe truth.

But most theologians are not soclear, nor can they, as earlier indicated,bolster up their imagined distinctionwith references to pisteuein eis, for afew paragraphs back Kittel disposed ofsuch a contention. English also has thesame usage. As modernism developed inthe 1920’s and suspicion attached to thisor that minister, people would ask, Doeshe believe in the Virgin Birth, Does hebelieve in the Atonement? They did not

ask, Does he believe the Virgin Birth?The preposition in was regularly used.But of course the meaning was, Does hebelieve that the Virgin Birth is true,Does he believe that Christ’s death wasa substitutionary sacrifice? Thus, tobelieve in a person is to be confident,i.e., to believe that he will continue totell the truth.

In spite of the popularity andsupposed superior spiritual- ity of thecontrast between a mere intellectualproposition and a warm, living person, itrests on a mistaken psychologicalanalysis. Even Berkhof admits, with atleast an appearance of inconsistency,that “As a psychological phenomenon,faith in the religious sense does not

differ from faith in general. . . . Christianfaith in the most comprehensive sense isman’s per- suasion of the truth ofScripture on the basis of the authority ofGod” (p. 501).

This is an excellent statement andshould be defended against Berkhof’sprevious contrary assertions.

17. The ObjectStill a most embarrassing question

has not yet been an- swered, or evenasked. It is this: If the object of savingfaith is a proposition, what is thatproposition? Surely no one is justifiedby believing that Abraham lived about2000 B.C., or that Saul was the firstKing of Israel, though both of thesepropositions are completely Scriptural.Nor can we as Protestants believeimplicitly whatever the Bible says.Calvin put it tersely: implicit faith isignorance, not knowledge. What one hasnever heard or read cannot be believed,for faith cometh by hearing. Hearingwhat? We do not hear or read the wholeBible every day; we cannot remember it,

if we read it through once a year. And arecent convert has probably never readit all. Then which verse, of the severalan evangelist might quote, is the onewhich, believed, justifies the sinner?Has any reader of this study ever heard aminister answer or even ask thisquestion?

When this subject was touched onmany pages back, it was said thatrepentance was necessary. “Repent andbe baptized” is a well-known command.But it does not answer the presentquestion. To repent is to change one’smind. But in what respect? Beliefs,resolutions, ideas come and go. We arealways changing our minds, andobviously there are many changes of

mind that have nothing to do withjustification. The question presses uponus: which change of mind?

Among the theologians previouslyquoted, Owen’s discus- sion stimulatesthis question. Any attentive reader—there are many inattentive—must facethe problem. But though the question isso obvious, the answer is not. Indeed,the question has no answer; that is, it hasno single answer. Centuries ago asomewhat similar situation and difficultyarose and was given an impossibleanswer. Years after Athanasius wrote theNicene Creed, a so-called AthanasianCreed was formulated that pro- nounceddamnation on everyone who did notbelieve its numerous propositions on

theTrinity. The propositions them- selvesare on the whole very good; but less thanone percent of the Christian communitycan recite them from memory. Possi- blynot more than twenty-five percent haveeven heard them. No Calvinist wouldassert that salvation requires us tobelieve them explicitly. On the oppositeend of the scale from those who wouldinsist on the wording of the AthanasianCreed, some independent churches writetheir own creed of five or six articleswith fewer words than this one articleon the Trinity. But are these few theirreducible minimum for salvation? Thequestion above asks for precisely thosebeliefs which are neces- sary forjustification.

Consider the case of Justin Martyr,one of the earliest heroes of the faith.Did he really have saving faith? He wasa Christian, was he not? He died for thename of our Lord and Savior. He musthave been regenerated and justified,must he not? But it is doubtful that anystrong Lutheran or Calvinistic churchwould have admitted him even tocommunicant mem- bership. His view ofthe Atonement was abysmal. Quitepossi- bly the strife-torn church inCorinth, troubled with fornica- tion,law-suits, and idol-worship—itsmembers do not seem to have deniedChrist’s resurrection, but they haddenied the resurrection of believers—had a better theology than Justin Martyr.

But to what justifying propositions didhe or they assent?

Now, Justin Martyr was not amoron. Morons have doubtless beenregenerated and justified. Somemembers of extremely primitive tribesalso, with their minds incrediblyconfused. What propositions did theybelieve? Is there any passage inScripture that identifies, in a scale ofdecreasing knowledge, the veryminimum by which someone can still bejustified?

But even if a minimum ofpropositions could be listed, belowwhich number justification wereimpossible, it would still be the wrongquestion with a perverted outlook. This

is the basic weakness contributing to thelow spiritual level of most so-calledfundamentalist congregations. TheChurch is neither commanded,encouraged, nor even permitted to besatisfied with a bare minimum of half adozen doctrines. HistoricPresbyterianism is in a much betterposition with its multi- paragraph thirty-three chapters of the WestminsterConfes- sion. The Bible commands themaximum, not the minimum. Jesus said. Matthew 28:19,20 Teach all nations. . .instructing them to observe all whatever1 command you.

There seems to be no otherconclusion but that God justifies sinnersby means of many combinations of

proposi- tions believed. For whichreason a minister should not confinehimself to topics popularly thought to be“evangelistic,” but should preach thewhole counsel of God, trusting that Godwill give someone the gift of faiththrough sermons on the Trinity,eschatology, or the doctrine ofimmediate imputation.

18. A ConclusionThe sections of this monograph

have presented some of the history of thedoctrine of faith and have explained afair amount of its Scriptural basis, alongwith a few Calvinistic implications.That the drawing of valid implications isjusti- fied, the Westminster Confessionasserts in I, 6: “The whole counsel ofGod, concerning all things necessary forhis own glory, man’s salvation, faith, andlife, is either expressly set down inScripture, or by good and necessaryconsequence may be deduced fromScripture.” Obviously; for otherwisehow could any orthodox minister preacha sermon? This depend- ence onimplication, deduction, necessary

consequence is indispensable for thepropagation of the gospel. Those “reli-gious” people who decry logic lackevery basis for proclaiming any messageat all. No declarative sentence can havea meaning except in virtue of the law ofcontradiction. See St. Aristotle,Metaphysics, Book Gamma. Or if theMetaphysics is not on your night table,read the Gospel and First Epistle ofJohn.

The present theological climate,however, is inimical to clear thinking.Intellectualism is in disgrace. Even sucha con- servative, orthodox theologian asG.I. Williamson (The WestminsterConfession of Faith, Presbyterian andReformed Pub- lishing Co., 1964),

though he does not deny the section ofthe Confession just quoted, passes overthe matter of deduction in one sentence(p. 11). He then immediately tries torestrict its application by saying, “TheLaw of Moses, for example, is notexpressed by way of abstract principles.Moses declared the law in terms ofconcrete instances.”This is ridiculous.The Ten Commandments do not include asingle concrete case. They forbid allmurder: They mention neither Cain norLamech. They condemn all adultery:They do not specify any single instance.They prohibit all theft: Rachel’sparticular example is missing. Ofcourse, Williamson is not consistentlyopposed to deductive logic. He rather

represents those conservative theo-logians who have not completelyescaped the influence of contemporaryirrationalism.

By and large, twentieth centuryreligion is irrational and anti-intellectual. The earlier modernism wascovertly so; the later humanism, neo-orthodoxy or existentialism are violentlyso. Anti-intellectualism has no place forBiblical and Calvinis- tic faith.Scriptural “information,” or historicalstatements as Kierkegaard put it, havenothing to do with salvation; andsalvation itself is sometimes reduced toan earthly life minus anxiety. Karl Barth,for example, ridicules the empty tomband talks vaguely about “the Easter

event.” Instead of preachingpropositions, these men recommend anirrational experience, an encounter, awager, a confrontation. If anything is tobe believed, it is that authenticChristianity is self-contradictory.26

This religious neo-orthodoxy isparalleled by atheistic existentialism.And modern culture as a whole isimpregnated with Freudianirrationalistic emotionalism. Even if thetemper of the times cannot be altered,maybe a few ministers who want to beorthodox can be shown how much theirsecular educa- tion, not only in theschools but also through the press, hasdiluted their gospel, and thus bepersuaded to return to Calvin and Paul.

Saving faith as assent, truth aspropositions (there is no other kind oftruth), the inerrancy of Scripture, withthe out- right rejection of allirrationalism, are integral parts of asingle system.

On one or the other of these severalpoints, consider Calvin once more.

In his Commentary on John 3:33Calvin wrote, “. . . giving their assent toGod . . . To believe the Gospel is nothingelse than to assent to the truths whichGod has revealed.”

On John 6:40 he says, “That manoffers an aggravated insult to the HolyGhost, who refuses to assent to hissimple testimony . . . Faith proceedsfrom the knowledge of Christ.”

At John 6:69 we read, “. . . webelieve and know. . .Faith itself is trulythe eye of the understanding . . .Knowledge is connected with faithbecause we are certain and fully con-vinced of the truth of God.”

Then on John 17:8, “Nothing whichrelates to God can be known aright butby faith, but in faith there is suchcertainty that it is justly calledknowledge.”

Commenting on Ephesians 4:13,which states the goal of a unity of faithand a mature knowledge of the Son ofGod, Calvin teaches that “Enthusiasts[Pentecostals et al.] dream that the use ofthe ministry ceases as soon as we havebeen led to Christ [because we can now

depend on guidance and visions], . . . Paul maintains that we mustpersevere . . . make progress till death . .. that we must not be ashamed to be thescholars of the church, to which Christhas committed our education.”Theepistle and the commentary continue bywarning us not to remain children,deceived by every wind of false anddeceitful doctrine, but to becomemature.

Note too how maturity is describedin Hebrews 5:11 —6:2. The babe inChrist, who has been nourished on milk,must now eat solid food and become ateacher. The doctrines of repent- anceand faith, of baptism and ordination, ofthe resurrection and the final judgment,

are elementary. One must press on to thematurity of more complex theology:namely, all three volumes of Hodge.

Foundational to this intellectualism,this rationalism, or however anyonewishes to name this emphasis on truth, isthe doctrine that man is the image ofGod. One should not try to dilute thisdoctrine by picturing man as a containersomewhere within which the image ofGod may be found. I Corinthians 11:7does not say that man has the image ofGod; it says that man is the image ofGod. This image, which distinguishesman from animals, is rationality. It wasnot destroyed by the fall, for we are stillhuman beings and not animals. We arestill generi- cally rational, though sin has

considerably damaged our use of reason.We add up our check stubs incorrectly,and our emo- tions drive us into foolishconduct (or worse). But we are stillhuman because we are the created imageof God. Though we often believefalsehoods, we are still obligated tobelieve the truth. And if God causes usto believe, since faith is the gift of God,then we are slowly renewed in theknowledge and right- eousness of ouroriginal creation.

Incidentally, this is a further reasonfor rejecting the empirical epistemologyof Thomas and some Protestants. Adamwas created, having knowledge. TheThomists go so far as to say that Paul inthe first chapter of Romans placed his

stamp of approval on empiricism and thecosmological argu- ment. There is adifferent interpretation of chapter one;but Romans 2:15 is a sufficientrefutation of the tabula rasa theory. In the split second of his creation, Adam,before he could rub his eyes and see thesun, had a knowledge of God, and oflogic too.

If any reader is disturbed by thepresent author’s insistence on logic,reason, intellect, and knowledge incomparison with his lack of emphasis onrighteousness, it should be rememberedthat (1) there can be no righteousnesswithout knowledge, (2) Americanevangelicalism puts most of its emphasison conduct, morality, the fruits of the

Spirit, and “practical” Christianity, (3)there is a woeful lack of emphasis ontruth, theology, the teachings ofScripture. Of course these teachingshave moral implications, but therighteousness enjoined in Romans 1215־plus some in chapter 16hasasitsfoundation the eleven precedingchapters. Does it not follow thereforethat a minister should preach elevensermons on deep doctrine to every six orfive and a half on conduct? The lattershould by no means be omitted: Thecrime and depravity of American societyis without parallel in history since thetime of the Roman Empire. Nor has theChurch itself much to be proud of. But aone-sided preaching of righteousness

will have little effect on Las Vegas orNew York. Not until this alcoholic,drug-ridden scum hears and believes—faith cometh by hear- ing, not by mysticencounters—hears and believes the doc-trines of theTrinity, the Incarnation, theAtonement, Justifica- tion by faith, andthe Second Advent, will there be anymoral improvement. It is Justificationthat produces Sanctification, andJustification occurs by means of faith.

The present writer. I hopeevidently, does not disparagerighteousness; but the topic of themonograph is faith, and to the mainconclusion the argument now returns.

The most common analysis ofpersonality among conser- vative

Christians today is the three-folddivision into intellect, will, andemotions. As a matter of fact, a two-folddivision into intellect and emotion isprobably more common, for a Freud-ian, sexually-oriented society hasdiscarded the will. It was not always so.Whedon’s The Freedom of the Will waspublished in 1864; Girardeau’s The Willin its Theological Relations waspublished in 1891; and in 1898 cameArchibald Alexander’s Theories of theWill. The first two are Arminian, and nodoubt Arminians, if asked, will stillassert the freedom of the will, but youhave to ask them; for the Nazarenes, thePentecostals, the Holiness groups giveme the impression of having forgotten

the will in their constant stress ofemotion. Henry B. Smith, a Calvinist oflast century (System of ChristianTheology, New York, 1884, p. 540)divided “the whole soul” into intellect,will, and sensibilities. Strange, even theempirical theologians of today hardlyever mention sensation in thisconnection, how- ever much they makeuse of it in epistemology.

A paragraph on Augustine willprove profitable. Since he thought ofman as a replica of the Trinity, heneeded a three- fold division, but he didnot always come up with the same three.Sometimes it was mens, notitia, andamor(mind, knowl- edge, and love);more frequently it was memoria—

Augustine defended the continuity of theresurrected saint with his earthly life onthe basis of a continuing memory—intelligentia, and voluntas. He alsoenumerated memoria (not of oneself, asabove, but “memory” of God),intelligentia, and amor.

Those who know little about theBible and less about the history oftheology will delightedly grasp atAugustine’s love, with the remark,“There you have emotion, and the Biblesurely says a lot about love.” In answer,one must admit that Augustine not onlystressed love, but even placed it in aposi- tion superior to intellect. But thelove Augustine had in mind, and love asconsidered in Scripture, is a volition,

not an emo- tion. The Scripturecommands love. Commands areaddressed to the will. Emotions areinvoluntary. One should not interpret,misinterpret. Scriptural love in terms ofthe secular psy- chology of the twentiethcentury. God has no emotions, and hisimage, man, in his unfallen state, mayhave been analyzed into intellect, andwill, knowledge and righteousness.Emotion and disease came in with thefall.

Earlier in this century J. GreshamMachen defended, and suffered for, theprimacy of the intellect. “To thepragmatic skepticism of the modernreligious world, therefore, the Bible issharply opposed: against the passionate

anti-intellectualism of a large part of themodern Church it maintains the primacyof the intellect; it teaches plainly thatGod has given to man a faculty of reasonwhich is capable of apprehending truth,even truth about God״ ( What is Faith. p.51; The Macmillan Co., 1925).

To summarize a few thoughts fromhis introductory chap- ter is not so muchplagiarism as a recommendation that thepopulation of this ninth decade returnand read this classic of the third.

Machen begins by noting that somedevout souls regard an analysis of faithas “impertinent and unnecessary. Faith . .. cannot be known except by experience,and . . . logical analy- sis of it. . . willonly serve to destroy its power and

charm. . . . Religion is an ineffableexperience; the intellectual expression ofit . . . theology may vary and yet religionmay remain the same” (p. 13). Thosewho entertain this view avoid definingtheir terms. “They are greatly incensedwhen they are asked to tell in simplelanguage what they mean by these terms(atone- ment, redemption, faith). Theyfind it “disconcerting to be asked whatfaith is”(p. 14).

The same anti-intellectualism isevident in secular educa- tion also.Machen lived before the invention of thephrase, “Johnny can’t read;” but hecould say, “The undergraduate student ofthe present day is being told that. . . theexercise of

memory is a rather childish andmechanical thing, and that what he isreally in college to do is to think forhimself and to unify his world.” Laterthis phrase became “to do one’s ownthing.”“He usually made a poor businessof unifying his world, and the reason isclear... he has no world to unify. He hasnot acquired a knowledge of a sufficientnumber of facts in order even to learnthe method of putting facts together” (p.16). “A mass of details stored up in themind does not in itself make a thinker;but on the other hand thinking isabsolutely impossi- ble without the massof details. ... It is impossible to thinkwith an empty mind”(p. 20).

The decline of intellectualism, if

“lamentable in secular education, istenfold worse in the sphere of theChristian religion. . . . Bible classestoday often avoid a study of the actualcontents of the Bible as they wouldavoid pestilence or disease; to manypersons in the Church the notion ofgetting the simple historical contents ofthe Bible straight in mind is an entirelynew idea”(p. 20-21).

In addition to secular education andthe Church, anti- intellectualism hasinvaded the Christian home. “I did notget my knowledge of the Bible fromSunday School, but . . . [from] mymother at home. And I will venture tosay that although my mental ability wascertainly of no extraordinary kind [a

statement proved false by hisextraordinarily compe- tentpublications] I had a better knowledgeof the Bible at fourteen years of age thanis possessed by many students in thetheological seminaries of the presentday”(p. 22). The present writer toomemorized the Shorter Catechism by thatage. But “the lamentable fact is that theChristian home [two exceptions are mydaughters and their children] as aneducational institu- tion, has largelyceased to function.” Now fifty yearslater, home and family have been largelyaborted. This educational, religious, andmoral decline, Machen attributes to anti-intellectualism.

He gives an example—

Goodspeed’s mistranslation of the verbdikaioo. Another example is Ellwood’sperversion of history by saying that“Jesus concerned himself but little withthe question of existence after death.”

Then Machen states his purpose forwriting his book: “As over against thisanti-intellectual tendency in the modernworld, it will be one chief purpose ofthe present little book to defend theprimacy of the intellect, and in particularto try to break down the false anddisastrous opposition which has been setup between knowledge and faith”(p. 26).This introductory chapter continues foranother twenty pages, but these excerptsform a sufficient recommendation thatthe book be read again.

Let other books detail thehumanistic degradation of the publicschools under the National EducationAssociation: let the pastors point out theanti-christian bigotry of the presentSecretary of the federal Department ofEducation; let a Moral Majority mountan attack on corrupt and prodigalcongress- men. In the study at hand thesubject is saving faith.

Faith, by definition, is assent tounderstood propositions. Not all casesof assent, even assent to Biblicalpropositions, are saving faith; but allsaving faith is assent to one or moreBiblical propositions.

The Crisis of Our TimeHistorians have christened the

thirteenth century the Age of Faith andtermed the eighteenth century the Age ofReason. The twentieth century has beencalled many things: the Atomic Age, theAge of Inflation, the Age of the Tyrant,the Age of Aquarius. But it deserves onename more than the others: the Age ofIrrationalism. Contemporary secularintellectuals are anti-intellectual.Contemporary philosophers are anti-phil- osophy. Contemporary theologiansare anti-theology.

In past centuries secularphilosophers have generally believedthat knowledge is possible to man.Consequently they expended a great deal

of thought and effort trying to justifyknowledge. In the twentieth century,however, the optimism of the secularphilosophers has all but disappeared.They despair of knowledge.

Like their secular counterparts, thegreat theologians and doctors of thechurch taught that knowledge is possibleto man. Yet the theologians of thetwentieth century have repudiated thatbelief. They also despair of knowledge.This radical skepticism has filtereddown from the philosophers and theolo-gians and penetrated our entire culture,from television to music to literature.The Christian in the twentieth centuryis confronted with an overwhelmingcultural consensus—sometimes stated

explicitly, but most often implicitly:Man does not and cannot knowanything truly

What does this have to do withChristianity? Simply this: If man canknow nothing truly, man can truly knownothing. We cannot know that the Bibleis the Word of God, that Christ died forsin, or that Christ is alive today at theright hand of the Father. Unlessknowledge is possible, Christianity isnonsensi- cal, for it claims to beknowledge. What is at stake in thetwentieth century is not simply a singledoctrine, such as the Virgin Birth, or theexistence of hell, as important as thosedoctrines may be, but the whole ofChristianity itself. If knowledge is not

possible to man, it is worse than silly toargue points of doctrine—it is insane.

The irrationalism of the present ageis so thorough-going and pervasive thateven the Remnant—the segment of theprofessing church that remains faithful—has accepted much of it, frequentlywithout even being aware of what it wasaccepting. In some circles thisirrationalism has become synonymouswith piety and humility, and those whooppose it are denounced as rationalists—as though to be logical were a sin.Our contemporary anti-theologians makea contradiction and call it a Mystery.The faithful ask for truth and are givenParadox. If any balk at swallowing theabsurdities of the anti-theologians, they

are frequently marked as heretics orschismatics who seek to actindependently of God.

There is no greater threat facing thetrue Church of Christ at this moment thanthe irrationalism that now controls ourentire culture. Communism, guilty of tensof millions of murders, including thoseof millions of Christians, is to be feared,but not nearly so much as the idea thatwe do not and cannot know the truth.Hedonism, the popular philosophy ofAmerica, is not to be feared so much asthe belief that logic —that “mere humanlogic,״ to use the religious !!rationalists’own phrase—is futile. The attacks ontruth, on revelation, on the intellect, andon logic are renewed daily. But note

well: The misologists—the haters oflogic—use logic to demonstrate thefutility of using logic. The anti-intellectuals construct intricateintellectual arguments to prove theinsufficiency of the intellect. The anti-theologians use the revealed Word ofGod to show that there can be norevealed Word of God—or that if therecould, it would remain impenetrabledarkness and Mystery to our finiteminds. Nonsense Has Come

Is it any wonder that the world isgrasping at straws—the straws ofexperientialism, mysticism and drugs?After all, if people are told that theBible contains insoluble mysteries, then

is not a flight into mysticism to beexpected? On what grounds can it becondemned? Certainly not on logicalgrounds or Biblical grounds, if logic isfutile and the Bible unintelligible.Moreover, if it cannot be condemned onlogical or Biblical grounds, it cannot becondemned at all. If people are going tohave a religion of the mysterious, theywill not adopt Christiani- ty: They willhave a genuine mystery religion. “Thosewho call for Nonsense,” C.S. Lewisonce wrote, “will find that it comes.”And that is precisely what has happened.The popularity of Eastern mysticism, ofdrugs, and of religious experience is thelogical consequence of the irrationalismof the twentieth century. There can and

will be no Christian revival—and noreconstruction of society—unless anduntil the irrationalism of the age istotally repudiated by Christians. The Church Defenseless

Yet how shall they do it? Thespokesmen for Christianity have beenfatally infected with irrationalism. Theseminaries, which annually trainthousands of men to teach millions ofChristians, are the finishing schools ofirrationalism, complet- ing the job begunby the government schools and colleges.Some of the pulpits of the mostconservative churches (we are notspeaking of the apostate churches) areoccupied by graduates of the anti-theological schools. These products of

modem anti-theological education, whenasked to give a reason for the hope thatis in them, can generally respond withonly the intellectual analogue of a shrug—a mumble about Mystery. They havenot grasped—and therefore cannot teachthose for whom they are responsible—the first truth: “And ye shall know thetruth.” Many, in fact, explicitly deny it,saying that, at best, we possess only“pointers” to the truth, or something“similar” to the truth, a mere analogy. Isthe impotence of the Christian Church apuzzle? Is the fascination withpentecostalism and faith healing amongmembers of conservative churches anenigma? Not when one understands thesort of studied nonsense that is purveyed

in the name of God in the seminaries. The Trinity Foundation

The creators of The TrinityFoundation firmly believe that theologyis too important to be left to the licensedtheologians —the graduates of theschools of theology. They have createdThe Trinity Foundation for the expresspurpose of teaching the faithful all thatthe Scriptures contain—not warmedover, baptized, secular philosophies.Each member of the board of directorsof The Trinity Foundation has signed thisoath: “I believe that the Bible alone andthe Bible in its entirety is the Word ofGod and, therefore, inerrant in theautographs. I believe that the system oftruth presented in the Bible is best

summarized in the WestminsterConfession of Faith. So help me God.”

The ministry of The TrinityFoundation is the presentation of thesystem of truth taught in Scripture asclearly and as completely as possible.We do not regard obscurity as a virtue,nor confusion as a sign of spirituality.Confusion, like all error, is sin, andteaching that confusion is all thatChristians can hope for is doubly sin.

The presentation of the truth ofScripture necessarily involves therejection of error. The Foundation hasexposed and will continue to expose theirrationalism of the twentieth century,whether its current spokesman be anexistentialist philosopher or a professed

Reformed theologian. We oppose anti-intellectualism, whether it be espousedby a neo-orthodox theologian or afundamentalist evangelist. We rejectmisology, whether it be on the lips of aneo-evangelical or those of a RomanCatholic charismatic. To each error webring the brilliant light of Scripture,proving all things, and holding fast tothat which is true. The Primacy of Theory

The ministry of The TrinityFoundation is not a “practical” ministry.If you are a pastor, we will not enlightenyou on how to organize an ecumenicalprayer meeting in your community orhow to double church attendance in ayear. If you are a homemaker, you will

have to read elsewhere to find out howto become a total woman. If you are abusinessman, we will not tell you how todevelop a social conscience. Theprofessing church is drowning in such“practical” advice.

The Trinity Foundation isunapologetically theoretical in itsoutlook, believing that theory withoutpractice is dead, and that practicewithout theory is blind. The trouble withthe professing church is not primarily inits practice, but in its theory. Christiansdo not know, and many do not even careto know, the doctrines of Scripture.Doctrine is intellectual, and Christiansare generally anti-intellectual. Doctrineis ivory tower philosophy, and they

scorn ivory towers. The ivory tower,however, is the control tower of acivilization. It is a fundamen- tal,theoretical mistake of the practical mento think that they can be merely practical,for practice is always the practice ofsome theory. The relationship betweentheory and practice is the relationshipbetween cause and effect. If a personbelieves correct theory, his practice willtend to be correct. The practice ofcontemporary Christians is immoralbecause it is the practice of falsetheories. It is a major theoretical mistakeof the practical men to think that they canignore the ivory towers of thephilosophers and theologians asirrelevant to their lives. Every action

that the “practical” men take is governedby the thinking that has occurred in someivory tower—whether that tower be theBritish Museum, the Academy, a home inBasel, Switzerland, or a tent in Israel. In Understanding Be Men

It is the First duty of the Christianto understand correct theory—correctdoctrine—and thereby implementcorrect practice. This order—firsttheory, then practice—is both logicaland Biblical. It is, for example,exhibited in Paul’s epistle to theRomans, in which he spends the firsteleven chapters expound- ing theory andthe last five discussing practice. Thecontempor- ary teachers of Christianshave not only reversed the order, they

have inverted the Pauline emphasis ontheory and practice. The virtuallycomplete failure of the teachers of theprofessing church to instruct the faithfulin correct doctrine is the cause of themisconduct and cultural impotence ofChristians. The Church’s lack of power is the result ofits lack of truth. The Gospel is the powerof God, not religious experience orpersonal relationship. The Church has nopower because it has aban- doned theGospel, the good news, for a religion ofexperiential- ism. Twentieth centuryAmerican Christians are childrencarried about by every wind of doctrine,not knowing what they believe, or evenif they believe anything for certain.

The chief purpose of The TrinityFoundation is to counter- act theirrationalism of the age and to exposethe errors of the teachers of the church.Our emphasis—on the Bible as the solesource of truth, on the primacy of theintellect, on the supreme importance ofcorrect doctrine, and on the necessity forsystematic and logical thinking—isalmost unique in Christen- dom. To theextent that the church survives—and shewill survive and flourish—it will bebecause of her increasing acceptance ofthese basic ideas and their logicalimplications.

We believe that the TrinityFoundation is filling a vacuum inChristendom. We are saying that

Christianity is intellectually defensible—that, in fact, it is the only intellectuallydefensible system of thought. We aresaying that God has made the wisdom ofthis world—whether that wisdom becalled science, religion, philosophy, orcommon sense—foolishness. We areappealing to all Christians who have notconceded defeat in the intellectual battlewith the world to join us in our efforts toraise a standard to which all men ofsound mind can repair.

The love of truth, of God’s Word,has all but disappeared in our time. Weare committed to and pray for a greatinstauration. But though we may not seethis reformation of Christendom in ourlifetimes, we believe it is our duty to

present the whole counsel of Godbecause Christ has commanded it. Theresults of our teaching are in God’shands, not ours. Whatever those results,His Word is never taught in vain, butalways accom- plishes the result that Heintended it to accomplish. ProfessorGordon H. Clark has stated our viewwell:

There have been times in thehistory of God’s people, for example, inthe days of Jeremiah, when refreshinggrace and widespread revival were notto be expected: the time was one ofchastisement. If this twentieth century isof a similar nature, individual Christianshere and there can find comfort andstrength in a study of God’s Word. But if

God has decreed happier days for us andif we may expect a world-shaking andgenuine spiritual awakening, then it isthe author’s belief that a zeal for souls,however necessary, is not the sufficientcondition. Have there not been devoutsaints in every age, numerous enough tocarry on a revival? Twelve such personsare plenty. What distinguishes the aridages from the period of the Reformation,when nations were moved as they hadnot been since Paul preached inEphesus, Corinth, and Rome, is thelatter’s fullness of knowledge of God'sWord. To echo an early Reformationthought, when the ploughman and thegarage attendant know the Bible as wellas the theologian does, and know it

better than some contemporarytheologians, then the desired awakeningshall have already occurred.

In addition to publishing books, ofwhich Faith and Saving Faith is thefifth, the Foundation publishes abimonthly newsletter, 772e TrinityReview. Subscriptions to The Review arefree; please write to the address belowto become a subscriber. If you wouldlike further information or would like tojoin us in our work, please let us know.

The Trinity Foundation is a non-profit foundation tax- exempt undersection 501 (c)(3) of the InternalRevenue Code of 1954. You can help usdisseminate the Word of God throughyour tax-deductible contributions to the

Foundation. And we know that the Son of God iscome, and hath given as anunderstanding, that we may know himthat is true, and we are in him that istrue, in his Son Jesus Christ. This is thetrue God, and eternal life. John W. Robbins President

Intellectual AmmunitionThe Trinity Foundation is

committed to the reconstruction ofphilosophy and theology along Biblicallines. We regard God’s command tobring all our thoughts into conformitywith Christ very seriously, and the bookslisted below are designed to accomplishthat goal. They are written with twosubordinate purposes: (1) to demolishall secular claims to knowledge; and (2)to build a system of truth based upon theBible alone. Works of PhilosophyBehaviorism and Christianity, GordonH. Clark $5.95

Behaviorism is a critique of bothsecular and religious behaviorists. It

includes chapters on John Watson,Edgar S. Singer Jr., Gilbert Ryle, B.F.Skinner, and Donald MacKax Clark'srefutation of behaviorism and hisargument for a Christian doctrine ofman are unanswerable. A Christian Philosophy of Education,Gordon H. Clark $8.95 The first editionof this book was published in 1946. Itsparked the contemporary interest inChristian schools. Dr. Clark hasthoroughly revised and updated it, andit is needed now more than ever. Itschapters include: The Need for aWorld-View, The Christian World-View,The Altemath'e to Christian Theism,Neutrality, Ethics, The Christian Philosophy of Education, Academic

Matters, Kindergarten to University.Three appendices are included as well:The Relationship of Public Educationto Christianity, A Protestant World-View, and Art and the Gospel A Christian View of Men and Things,Gordon H. Clark $8.95 No other bookachieves what A Christian View does:the presentation of Christianity as itapplies to history politics, ethics,science, religion, and epistemology.Clark’s command of both worldlyphilosophy and Scripture is evident onevery page, and the result is abreathtaking and invigoratingchallenge to the wisdom of this world Clark Speaks From The Grave,Gordon H. Clark $3.95

Dr. Clark chides some of hiscritics for their failure to defendChristianity competently Clark Speaksis a stimulating and illuminatingdiscussion of the errors ofcontemporary apologists. Dewey, Gordon H. Clark $2.00

Dewey has had an immenseinfluence on American philosophy andeducation. His irrationalism, theeffects of which we can see ingovernment education, is thoroughlycriticized by Clark Education, Christianity, and the State$7.95 J. Gresham Machen

Machen was one of the foremosteducators, theologians, and defenders

of Christianity in the twentieth centuryThe author of numerous scholarlybooks, Machen saw clearly that ifChristianity is to survive and flourish,a system of Christian grade schoolsmust be established This collection ofessays captures his thought oneducation over nearly three decades. Gordon H. Clark: PersonalRecollections, $6.95John W. Robbins, editor

Friends of Dr. Clark have writtentheir recollections of the man.Contributors include family members,colleagues, students, and friends suchas Harold Lindsell Carl Henry, RonaldNash, Dwight Zeller, and MaryCrumpacker. The book includes an

extensive bibliography of Clark's work Logic, Gordon H. Clark $8.95

Written as a textbook for Christianschools, Logic is another unique bookfrom Clark’s pen. His presentation ofthe laws of thought, which must befollowed if Scripture is to beunderstood correctly, and which arefound in Scripture itself, is both clearand thorough. Logic is anindispensable book for the thinkingChristian. The Philosophy of Science and Beliefin God $5.95Gordon H. Clark

In opposing the contemporaryidolatry of science, Clark analyzesthree major aspects of science: the

problem of motion, Newtonian science,and modem theories of physics. Hisconclusion is that science, while it maybe useful, is always false; and hedemonstrates its falsity in numerousways. Since science is always false, itcan offer no objection to the Bible andChristianity Religion, Reason and Revelation,Gordon H. Clark $7.95

One of Clark’s apologeticalmasterpieces, Religion, Reason andRevelation has been praised for theclarity of its thought and language. Itincludes chapters on Is Christianity aReligion? Faith and Reason,Inspiration and Language, Revelationand Morality and God and Evil It is

must reading for all seriousChristians. Thales to Dewey: A History ofPhilosophy, paper $11.95Gordon H. Clark hardback $16.95

This volume is the best one volumehistory of philosophy in English. Three types of Religious Philosophy,Gordon H. Clark $6.95 In this book onapologetics, Clark examinesempiricism, rational- ism, dogmatism,and contemporary irrationalism, whichdoes not rise to the level of philosophy. He offers asolution to the question, “How canChristianity be defended before theworld?” Works of Theology

The Atonement, Gordon H. Clark$8.95

This is a major addition to Clark’smulti-volume systematic theology InThe Atonement, Clark discusses theCovenants, the Virgin Birth andIncarnation, federal headship andrepresentation, the rela- tionshipbetween God's sovereignty and justice,and much more. He analyzestraditional views of the Atonement andcriticizes them in the light of Scripturealone. The Biblical Doctrine of Man, GordonH. Clark $5.95

Is man soul and body or soulspirit, and body? What is the image ofGod? Is Adam's sin imputed to his

children? Is evolution true? Are mentotally depraved? What is the heart?These are some to the questionsdiscussed and answered from Scripturein this book Cornelius Van Til: The Man and TheMyth $2.45John W. Robbins

The actual teachings of thiseminent Philadelphia theologian havebeen obscured by the myths thatsurround him. This book penetratesthose myths and criticizes Van Til’ssurprisingly unorthodox views of Godand the Bible. Faith and Saving Faith, Gordon H.Clark $6.95

The views of the Roman Catholic

church, John Calvin, Thomas Manton,John Owen, Charles Hodge, and B.B.Warfield are discussed in this book Isthe object of faith a person or aproposition? Is faith more than belief?Is belief more than thinking withassent, as Augustine said? In a worldchaotic with differing views of faith,Clark clearly explains the Biblical viewof faith and saving faith. God’s Hammer: The Bible and ItsCritics, Gordon H. Clark $6.95 Thestarting point of Christianity thedoctrine on which all other doctrinesdepend, is “The Bible alone is the Wordof God written, and therefore inerrantin the autographs. ” Over the centuriesthe opponents of Christianity with

Satanic shrewdness, have concentratedtheir attacks on the truthfulness andcompleteness of the Bible. In thetwentieth century the attack is not somuch in the fields of history׳ andarchaeology as in philosophy Clark'sbrilliant defense of the completetruthfulness of the Bible is captured inthis collection of eleven major essays. The Incarnation, Gordon H. Clark$8.95

Who was Christ? The attack on theIncarnation in the nineteenth andtwentieth centuries has been vigorous,but the orthodox response has beenlame. Clark reconstructs the doctrineof the Incarnation building upon andimproving upon the Chalcedonian

definition. In Defense of Theology, Gordon H.Clark $12.95

There are four groups to whomClark addresses this book: the averageChristians who are uninterested intheology the atheists and agnostics, thereligious experientalists, and theserious Christians. The vindication ofthe knowledge of God against theobjections of three of these groups isthe first step in theology The Johannine Logos, Gordon H. Clark$5.95

Clark analyzes the relationshipbetween Christ, who is the truth, andthe Bible. He explains why John usedthe same word to refer to both Christ

and his teaching. Chapters deal withthe prologue to John’s Gospel, Logosand Rheemata, Truth, and SavingFaith. Logical Criticisms of TextualCriticism, Gordon H. Clark $2.95 Inthis critique of the science of textualcriticism, Dr. Clark exposes thefallacious argumentation of the modemtextual critics and defends the viewthat the early Christians knew betterthan the modem critics whichmanuscripts of the New Testament weremore accurate. Pat Robertson: A Warning to America, John W.Robbins $6.95 The ProtestantReformation was based on the Biblicalprinciple that the Bible is the only

revelation from God, yet a growingpolitical- religious movement, led byPat Robertson, asserts that God speaksto them directly This book addressesthe serious issue of religious fanaticismin America by examining thetheological views of Pat Robertson, Predestination, Gordon H. Clark $7.95

Clark thoroughly discusses one ofthe most controversial and pervasivedoctrines of the Bible: that God is,quite literally Almighty Free will, theorigin of evil, God's omniscience,creation, and the new birth are allpresented within a Scripturalframework The objections of those whodo not believe in the Almighty God areconsidered and refuted This edition

also contains the text of the booklet,Predestination in the Old Testament. Scripture Twisting in the Seminaries. Part 1:Feminism $5.95 John W. Robbins

An analysis of the views of threegraduates of Westminster Seminary onthe role of women in the church The Trinity, Gordon H. Clark $8.95

Apart from the doctrine ofScripture, no teaching of the Bible ismore important than the doctrine ofGod Clark’s defense of the orthodoxdoctrine of the Trinity is a principalportion of a major new work ofSystematic Theology’ now in progress.There are chapters on the deity’ ofChrist, Augustine, theincomprehensibility of God, Bavinck

and Van Til, and the Holy Spirit, amongothers. What Do Presbyterians Believe? Gordon H.Clark $7.95

This classic introduction toChristian doctrine has been repub-lished It is the best commentaryי on theWestminster Confession of Faith thathas ever been written. Commentaries on the NewTestamentColossians, Gordon H. Clark $6.95 Ephesians, Gordon H. Clark $8.95 First and Second Thessalonians,Gordon H. Clark $5.95 The Pastoral Epistles (I and Π Timothyand Titus) $9.95

Gordon H. Clark All of Clark’s commentaries are

expository* not technical and arewritten for the Christian layman. Hispurpose is to explain the text clearlyand accurately so that the Word of Godwill be thoroughly known by everyChristian. Revivals of Christianity*come only through the spread of God’struth. The sound exposition of theBible, through preaching and throughcommentaries on Scripture, is the only׳method of spreading that truth. The Trinity Review

The Foundation’s bimonthlynewsletter, The Trinity Review, hasbeen published since 1979 and hascarried more than seventy major essays

by Gordon H. Clark, J. GreshamMachen, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, CharlesHodge, John Witherspoon, and others.Back issues are available for 40φeach. The Trinity Library

We will send you one copy of eachof the 30 books listed above for the lowprice of $150. The regular price ofthese books is $218. Or you may1 orderthe books you want individually on theorder blank on the next page. Becausesome of the books are in short supplywe must reserve the right to subshtuteothers of equal or greater value in TheTrinity Library

Thank you for your attention. Wehope to hear from you soon. This

special offer expires June 30, 1992. 1. Revised in 1965 as What Do Presbyterians Believe?

2. Combined in 1980 as I & II Peter.

3. Combined in 1987 as Predestination.

4. It is otherwise in his 620 page Reason andBelief(George Allen & Unwin, 1974). Herehe uncritically reproduces the mistakes ofMoses in the Ingersoll manner, the criticaltheories of Wellhausen on Jewish history,without mentioning these two names, andin general the destructive higher criticism.His exegesis is unconsidered and takes noaccount of conservative views. Twoexamples are the number of angels at thetomb Easter morning and the impossibilitythat God can be both one substance andthree Persons. In addition to these“contradictions,” which any Christiangarage mechanic can handle, there isanother one less well-known. In 11 Samuel6:23 we read that Michal, the first wife ofDavid, had no children to the day of her

death; but in II Samuel 21:8 she is said tohave borne five sons. Blanshard, to thedetriment of his scholarly reputation,suppresses the evidence that somemanuscripts of the latter verse read Merab,not Michal. Even the liberal RevisedStandard Version prints Merab.

5. Compare my Thales to Dewex (Jefferson,Maryland: The Trinity Foundation, 1989),pp. 382-384.

6. Read the literary gem. The Passion for theTheoretical (pp. 334-336). Price does nothimself have the same enthusiasm hedepicts in the mathematician and logician;but others do. May one add among theseothers the ideal theologian. By the timePrice takes Newman to page 345, Newmanseems to be an outright idolator. This is aconstant danger in Romanism.

7. The notes in the Blackfriars’ edition listother passages that go into further details.

8. Herder Book Co., 1958; reprinted, Greenwood

Press, 1976. 9. Compare Clark, Behaviorism and Christianity

(Jefferson, Maryland: The Trinity Foundation,1982).

10. See my Language and Theology (Jefferson,Maryland: The Trinity Foundation, 1980).

11. The system of apologetics, defended by thepresent writer in his other publications, hasbeen vigorously condemned for adhering toCalvin’s admonition.

12. Of course, to the confusion of Americancollege students, scientia does not meanwhat they mean by science.

13. In recent years the neo-orthodox andpseudo-evangelicals have propounded thepious nonsense that the Greek word forfaith (pistis) should be understood by its usefora Hebrew term and not in its Greekmeaning. The Hebrew term or terms meantrust or faithfulness and not belief. JamesBarr, who can in no sense be thoughtfavorable to what Manton calls “the

mistake of the former age” i.e., “themistake” of the Protestant reformers, inhis superbly scholarly volume. The Semanticsof Biblical Language (Oxford UniversityPress, 1961), reduces the pseudo-evangelical view to unscholarly ruins.

14. Compare Geerhardus Vos, The Self-Disclosure ofJesus, George H. Doran, 1926.

15. Possibly the first systematic theologian touse this term was John of Damascus orDamascene: "fides est non inquisitusconsensus;” i.e., “faith is an unquestionedconsent."

16. Compare The Phibsophy of Science and Belief inGod (Jefferson, Maryland: The Trinity Foundation,1987); and Horizons of Science, ed. Carl F.H. Henry(Harper & Row, 1978), last chapter.

17. Compare my commentary on First John (Jefferson,Maryland: The Trinity Foundation, 1980).

18. Not so in Jonathan Edwards’/l Treatise ConcerningReligious Affections.! oward the end of Part I.Section I, he says, “The will and the affections ofthe soul are not two faculties; the affections are not

essentially distinct from the will, nor do they differfrom the mere actings of the will." SimilarlyThomas Goodwin (1600-1679) in his An Expositionof Ephesians, at Ephesians 1:14 (Sovereign GraceBook Club. 1958, p. 259, bottom paragraph) statesas an accepted fact that “You know the soul of manhath two great faculties ... he hath an understanding,he hath a will and affections.” Since the soul is saidto have two functions, it is clear that affection andvolition are synonymous.

19. Anyone who wishes to write or preach on Biblicalpsychology must, really must, read The BibleDoctrine of Man by John Laidlaw, second edition, T.& T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1895. The presentparagraphs use, add to, and subtract from Laidlaw’ssuperb study.

20. “The Biblical Doctrine of Faith.” in BiblicalDoctrine (Oxford University Press, 1929), pp. 467-508.

21. As for John’s intellectualism, see The JohannineLogos, and my commentary on First John,Jefferson, Maryland: The Trinity Foundation. Thesetwo and the one on Colossians also present a view ofthe relationship between Christianity andGnosticism rather different from the view popular in

W'arfield’s day. 22. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: United Presbyterian

Board of Publication, Fifth ed. 1875. 23. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B.

Eerdmans, Company, 1959. 24. Even if the verse is spurious, the Greek is

genuine. 25. Though it is not necessary to the main

argument, one may note that the phrase“rather than on personalinvestigation”conflicts with actual usage. Ascientist person- ally investigates this orthat phenomenon: he accepts a great dealof evidence in favor of a certain hypothesis;and he believes that this equation is thecorrect explanation. That belief maydepend on the testimony of someone wethink competent goes without saying: butthis condition should not be made a part ofthe definition of faith.

26. Karl Barth’s Theological Method (Presbyterianand Reformed Pub. Co., 1963). Paul K.

Jewett, Emil Brunner’s Concept of Revelation,James Clarice & Co., 1954.

Table of Contents

Faith and Saving FaithGordon H. ClarkCONTENTSPREFACE1. Introduction2. Generic Faith: Brand Blanshard3. Generic and Secular Belief: H.H.

Price4. Roman Catholic Views5. Biblical Data6. John Calvin7. Thomas Manton8. John Owen9. Charles Hodge10. B.B. Warfield

11. Minor Men12. John Theodore Mueller13. The End of History14. The Necessity of Faith15. The Language16. Person or Proposition?17. The Object18. A ConclusionThe Crisis of Our TimeIntellectual Ammunition