Bible Heaven/Bible Heaven.iso/misc/answers/answers.007

Text File | 1990-07-10 | 17KB | 271 lines

                   No "Assurance of Salvation"

     There is no more confusing topic, when fundamentalists and
Catholics sit down to talk, than salvation.  It goes beyond the
standard question posed by fundamentalists: "Have you been
saved?"  It also means, "Don't you wish you had the assurance of
salvation?"  And fundamentalists, along with many evangelicals,
think they do.  They are absolutely sure they will go to heaven
immediately after death.  They conclude from the Bible that
Christ promised that heaven is theirs in exchange for a
remarkably simple act.  All they have to do, at just one point in
their lives, is "accept Christ as their personal savior."  And
then it's done.  They will probably, thereafter, live exemplary
lives, but living well is not crucial.  It does not affect their
salvation.
     No matter what happens later, no matter how evilly they
might live the remainder of their days, their salvation is
assured.  Granted, the Holy Spirit might punish them in this life
for their sins (here many fundamentalists take a rather Old
Testament view on why one ought to be good--to avoid temporal
evils, not to gain heaven, which is guaranteed no matter what).
But in no way can they undo their salvation, because it has
nothing at all to do with the intrinsic worth of their souls or
with what Catholics term actual sins.
     Kenneth E. Hagin, a well-known Protestant evangelist, notes
that this assurance of salvation comes through being "born
again": "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of
God" (John 3:3).  "The new birth," says Hagin in a booklet called
The New Birth, "is a necessity to being saved.  Through the new
birth you come into the right relationship with God."
     There are many things that this new birth is not.  "The new
birth is not: confirmation--church membership--water baptism--the
taking of sacraments--observing religious duties--an intellectual
reception of Christianity--orthodoxy of faith--going to church--
saying prayers--reading the Bible--being moral--being cultured or
refined--doing good deeds--doing your best--nor any of the many
other things some men are trusting in to save them."  Those who
have obtained the new birth "did the one thing necessary--they
accepted Jesus Christ as personal Savior by repenting and turning
to God with the whole heart as a little child."  And that was all
they needed to do.
     For Catholics, salvation depends on the state of the soul at
death.  Christ has already redeemed us, unlocked the gates of
heaven, as it were.  (Note that redemption is not the same as
salvation but is a necessary prelude.)  He did his part, and now
we have to cooperate by doing ours.  If we're to pass through
those gates, we have to be in the right spiritual state.  We have
to be spiritually alive at the moment of bodily death.  If a soul
is merely in a natural state, without sanctifying grace, which is
the grace that gives it supernatural life, then it is dead
supernaturally and incapable of enjoying heaven.
     That, anyway, is how the Catholic Church looks at the
matter.  But for fundamentalists it makes no difference at all
how you live or end your life.  You can be Mother Teresa, yet you
will go to hell if you do not accept Christ in the
fundamentalists' sense--and there have been more than a few
fundamentalist writers who have remarked that Mother Teresa is
doomed, her (to them false) faith and earthly good works
notwithstanding.  On the other hand, you can sober up one Sunday
morning, go to church, heed the altar call, announce to the
congregants that you accept Jesus as your personal Lord and
Savior, and, so long as you really believe it, you're set.  There
is nothing you can do, no sin you can commit, no matter how
heinous, that will forfeit your salvation.  You can't undo your
salvation, even if you wanted to.
     The reason is that "accepting Jesus" has nothing to do with
turning a spiritually dead soul into a soul alive with
sanctifying grace.  Your soul remains the same.  Whether you've
led a good life or a clearly wicked one, your soul is depraved,
worthless, unable to stand on its own before God; it is a
bottomless pit of sin, and a few more sins thrown in won't change
its nature, just as taking a cleaning compound to it won't make
it shine in the least.  For the fundamentalist, sanctifying grace
is a figment of Catholics' imaginations.
     Your accepting Christ accomplishes one thing and one thing
only.  It makes Christ cover your sinfulness.  It makes him turn
a blind eye to it.  It is as though he hides your soul under a
cloak.  Any soul under this cloak is admitted to heaven, no
matter how putrescent the reality beneath; no one without the
cloak, no matter how pristine, can enter the pearly gates.
     Does this sound too good to be true?  Take a look at what
fundamentalists say.  Wilson Ewin, the author of a booklet called
There is Therefore Now No Condemnation, says that "the person who
places his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and his blood shed at
Calvary is eternally secure.  He can never lose his salvation.
No personal breaking of God's or man's laws or commandments can
nullify that status."
     Ewin cites Heb. 9:12, which states that "Nor by the blood of
goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered the most holy
place once and for all, having obtained eternal redemption."  "To
deny the assurance of salvation would be to deny Christ's perfect
redemption," argues Ewin, and this is something he can say only
because he confuses redemption and salvation.  The truth is that
we are all redeemed--Christians, Jews, Moslems, animists in the
darkest forests--but our salvation is conditional.
     Ewin says that "no wrong act or sinful deed can ever affect
the believer's salvation.  The sinner did nothing to merit God's
grace and likewise he can do nothing to demerit grace.  True,
sinful conduct always lessens one's fellowship with Christ,
limits his contribution to God's work and can result in serious
disciplinary action by the Holy Spirit."  (But how serious can
this disciplinary action be, since the loss of heaven is not part
of it?)
     "However," Ewin continues, none of the numerous examples of
sin involving God's people in the Bible ever teach or suggest a
loss of salvation.  The reason?  Salvation is by grace from the
moment of the new birth until physical death occurs."  He cites
Rom. 5:15: "But the free gift is not like the offense.  For if by
the one man's offense many died, much more is the grace of God
and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded
to many."
     What this means is that "the sinner must be declared
righteous in order to be saved.  The righteousness is imputed
(credited) to the sinner who repents and trusts only in Christ
and his shed blood for salvation.  The sinner never becomes
righteous.  He is simply declared righteous.  The righteousness
of Christ is credited to the sinner who trusts.  This wonderful
truth is expressed in these words, 'But to him who does not work
but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is
accounted for righteousness, just as David also described the
blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart
from works: Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man to whom the Lord
shall not impute sin' (Rom. 4:5-8)."
     Ewin says that "absolute assurance of salvation through
imputed righteousness can never be broken by sin.  The reason is
simple--this righteousness has nothing to do with the keeping of
God's commandments or moral law.  The Bible says, 'But now the
righteousness of God apart from the Law is revealed, being
witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of
God which is through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who
believe' (Rom. 3:21-22).  God's law or commandments were given to
point out the fact of sin.  The law shows the unregenerated man
how wicked and lost he is before a Holy God.  Keeping them or
breaking them has no part in the believer's possession of
credited or imputed righteousness."
     It is this kind of thinking that allows fundamentalists to
conclude that the New Testament, when speaking of living people
as saints, means not that they will become saints in heaven if
they follow God's commandments (this is the way Catholics
understand Paul to have written), but that they are already,
right now, saints, just like the saints in heaven.  They have no
more chance of not being allowed into heaven than do heaven's
present residents have of being thrown out.  "You are no longer
exiles, then, or aliens; the saints are your fellow citizens, you
belong to God's household" (Eph. 2:19).
     Catholics look at such verses as merely Paul's expectations
for his disciples; fundamentalists look at them as his
acknowledgement of their existing status.  Ronald Knox, in St.
Paul's Gospel, noted that there is no need "to suppose that all
these high-sounding phrases which St. Paul uses about the Church
refer to a collection of Saints already made perfect.  To be
sure, he calls all Christian folk 'saints'; it is his way; he
sees us not as we are but as we ought to be.  These 'saints' had
to be warned against fornication, against thieving, against
bitter schisms; it is the Church we know" (p. 60).
     From the Radio Bible Class listeners can obtain a booklet
called Can Anyone Really Know for Sure?  The anonymous author
says the "Lord Jesus wanted his followers to be so sure of their
salvation that they would rejoice more in the expectation of
heaven than in victories on earth.  'These thing I have written
to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may
know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to
believe in the name of the Son of God (1 John 5:13).'"  Like most
of the biblical quotations in this booklet and others, this verse
seems to imply just what the booklet's author would like us to
believe.
     He admits, though, that there can be a false assurance: "The
New Testament teaches us that genuine assurance is possible and
desirable, but it also warns us that we can be deceived through a
false assurance.  Jesus declared: 'Not everyone who says to me,
"Lord, Lord" shall enter the kingdom of heaven' (Matt. 7:21)."
But one can find true assurance.  "First, you must accept the
fact of the finished work of Christ.  Acknowledging your sin
(Rom. 3:23, 6:23) and inability to save yourself (Eph. 2:8,9),
place your trust in Jesus Christ as your personal Savior (Acts
16:13).  Having done that, you can know your salvation is real.
That's true assurance!"
     How can any fundamentalist know his salvation experience was
real, that it "worked"?  Well, he can't.  Leading a good life
immediately after being "born again" proves nothing, since one
can sin grievously at a later time.  And leading a bad life right
after being saved doesn't disprove it, since one's sins are
immaterial.  Either way, the doctrine seems nearly useless
because, when reflected upon seriously, it seems to make
impossible the very assurance it is supposed to give.
     Besides, there are verses that call the whole notion of the
assurance of salvation into question.  "I buffet my own body, and
make it my slave; or I, who have preached to others, may myself
be rejected as worthless," says Paul (1 Cor. 9:27).  This follows
the well-known verses that speak of running a race, and the race,
of course, is the race of life, the finish line being entrance
into heaven.  The author of the Radio Bible Class booklet says
that Paul "did not want to lose the reward for service through
failing to satisfy his Lord; he was not afraid of losing his
salvation."  While that interpretation seems to strain the
passage a bit (read the whole of chapter 9 yourself), it is not
entirely unreasonable, but the passage can't be read in
isolation.
     Compare it to Phil. 2:12: "Beloved, you have always shown
yourselves obedient; and now that I am at a distance, not less
but much more than when I am present, you must work to earn your
salvation, in anxious fear."  Other translations say "work out
your own salvation in fear and trembling."  This is not the
language of self-confident assurance.
     What's more, Paul tells us, "All of us have a scrutiny to
undergo before Christ's judgement-seat, for each to reap what his
mortal life has earned, good or ill, according to his deeds" (2
Cor. 5:10), and God "will award to every man what his acts have
deserved" (Rom. 2:6).  But if the only act of consequence is
"being saved," what difference do the other acts make?
     These verses demonstrate that we indeed will be judged by
what we do--and not just by the one act of whether we accept
Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior.  Yet it is not to be
thought that being do-gooders is sufficient.  The Bible is quite
clear that we are saved by faith.  The Reformers were quite right
in saying this, and to this extent they merely repeated the
constant teaching of the Church.  Where they erred was in saying
that we are saved by faith alone.  (It was Luther, in a knowingly
wrong translation, who foisted in "alone," and he gave serious
thought to junking James, which he called "an epistle of straw,"
because it clearly says faith alone is not sufficient.)
     Now if it is true that we are judged by our acts (presuming
first we have faith), then it is not enough to say that faith
alone, in the traditional Protestant sense of fiduciary faith--
mere trust in Christ's promises--can be enough.  If it were, we
wouldn't have to worry about our other acts.
     Recall that Nicodemus was told by Christ that he must be
reborn by water and the Holy Spirit (John 3:5).  In the
fundamentalist scheme of things, despite their protestations, the
water reduces to nothing at all.  For Catholics the whole phrase,
"water and the Holy Spirit," is one; it means baptism.  But for
fundamentalists only the second part of the phrase is operative.
The Holy Spirit does his job by convicting us of sin and showing
us we need to put our faith in Christ.  The water is forgotten.

Although fundamentalists may look at baptism as an ordinance, in
their thinking it is not necessary for salvation.  It's just a
nice thing to do, a way to show others in the congregation that
you're now a Christian.  There is no real connection between
baptism and salvation because baptism as such does nothing.  It
is the intellectual and heart-felt acceptance of Christ that does
it all.
     Baptism is not the only thing that seems to lose its reason
for being in the fundamentalist scheme of things.  Consider the
virtue of hope.  Paul says, in Rom. 5:2, "We are confident in the
hope of attaining glory as the sons of God."  Now the saints in
heaven do not have the virtue of hope; they have no need of it,
just as they have no need of the virtue of faith.  Of the three
theological virtues, they have only charity.  Only someone with a
chance of losing heaven can hope to gain it.
     If we, having gone through the born-again experience of the
fundamentalist, are now sure of heaven, and if we know nothing
can deprive us of it, then we have no reason to hope because we
know that heaven is ours.  But "our salvation is founded upon the
hope of something," says Paul.  "Hope would not be hope at all if
its object were in view; how could a man still hope for something
which he sees?" (Rom. 8:24).  We hope for heaven, however well
disposed we might be spiritually, because we know we still have a
chance to lose it, but we couldn't lose it if our salvation were
absolutely assured.
     "Are you saved?" asks the fundamentalist.  "I am redeemed,"
answers the Catholic, "and like the Apostle Paul I am working out
my salvation in fear and trembling, with hopeful confidence--but
not with a false assurance--and I do all this as the Church has
taught, unchanged, from the time of Christ."

                                        --Karl Keating
                                          Catholic Answers
                                          P.O. Box 17181
                                          San Diego, CA 92117