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Faith & Fidelity: Part 2, What Should We Believe?

Faith & Fidelity: Part 2, What Should We Believe?

Last updated on: March 29, 2017 at 6:06 am by Coleman Glenn

Faith & Fidelity: Part 2, What Should We Believe? 2017-03-29T06:06:01-07:00 Coleman Glenn

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This is the second in a series of posts on the connection between belief and faithfulness, sparked by Matthew Bates’s new book Salvation by Allegiance Alone. In the first post I explored the book’s primary thesis: that the overarching meaning of “faith” (Greek pistis) in the New Testament is allegiance to Jesus as Lord and King, rather than belief as an intellectual assent.

Bates doesn’t suggest that “pistis” never means “belief,” or that faith as belief is unimportant. He identifies three dimensions to allegiance: mental affirmation, professed fealty and enacted loyalty. Mental affirmation is the starting point of faith.

In particular, this means mental affirmation of the gospel. What is the gospel? Bates suggests that a lot depends on the answer, and that many Christians have gotten it wrong. The gospel, Bates says, is not simply, “If you believe that Jesus died for your sins and have said the sinner’s prayer, you are saved,” but instead is the entire story of Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection, and most importantly, His enthronement as King after the resurrection. Here’s Bates’s outline (drawn from the work of C.H. Dodd); the emphasis on the seventh point is Bates’s, since he sees this as the climax of the gospel:

Jesus the king:

preexisted with the Father,

took on human flesh, fulfilling God’s promises to David,

died for sins in accordance with the Scriptures,

was buried,

was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,

appeared to many,

7. is seated at the right hand of God as Lord, and

will come again as judge.

The New Church statement of faith from True Christian Religion §3 similarly focuses on Jesus’ incarnation and eventual glorification and reign. It is not identical to Bates’s outline, but they run roughly parallel:

Jesus the king

Jehovah God is love itself and wisdom itself, or is good itself and truth itself; and in respect to Divine truth, which is the Word,

1. preexisted with the Father,

and which was God with God,

2. took on human flesh, fulfilling God’s promises to David,

He came down and took on the Human

3. died for sins in accordance with the Scriptures,

for the purpose of reducing to order all things that were in heaven, and all things in hell, and all things in the church; because at that time the power of hell prevailed over the power of heaven, and upon the earth the power of evil over the power of good, and in consequence a total damnation stood threatening at the door. This impending damnation Jehovah God removed by means of His Human, which was Divine truth, and thus He redeemed angels and men,

4. was buried,

5. was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,

and thereupon He united, in His Human, Divine truth with Divine good or Divine wisdom with Divine love;

6. appeared to many,

7. is seated at the right hand of God as Lord, and

and so, with and in His glorified Human, He returned into His Divine in which He was from eternity.

8. will come again as judge.

From these words it is clear that without the Lord’s coming into the world no one could have been saved. It is the same today; and therefore without the Lord’s coming again into the world in Divine truth, which is the Word, no one can be saved.

There are clearly some major and important differences here, stemming largely from different interpretations of the Trinity and the last judgment / second coming. But the general pattern is the same: the content of faith is a faith in Jesus Christ and what He did, not just in His death, but in His birth, life, death, and resurrection. And on the most important thing we agree – if the gospel has to boiled down to only one statement, it is this, per Bates:

The gospel is, in the final analysis, most succinctly good news about the enthronement of Jesus the atoning king as he brings the wider stories [of Israel and creation] to a climax. (p. 30, emphasis his)

Compare this to the summary of the gospel in True Christian Religion:

The Lord God Jesus Christ reigns, whose kingdom shall be for ages of ages, according to the prediction in Daniel 7:13-14, and in Revelation 11:15. (§791)

Why does any of this matter? For Bates, this true gospel is the starting point of allegiance. And I think it’s particularly valuable for Swedenborgians to recognize the particular faith of the New Church as outlined above as a starting point. It seems to me that we have a tendency to jump too quickly past the content of that statement of faith to the way we are called to act on it – by shunning evil and doing good. It is right that we focus more on life than on belief. But that statement of faith, that formulation of the gospel, tells us who the Lord is; and that is vital information if we are going to act from Him in loving our neighbor, which is the whole purpose of shunning evils and doing good.

I would also argue, though, that belief is not only a starting point. Scripture does show that we do need to have some kind of faith before we can act in obedience. But it also clearly teaches that we can’t even believe the truth on a deep, genuine level until we have acted in allegiance to it. I’ll write about that in the next post in the series.

(Image of Christ the King from Melkite Catholic Annunciation Cathedral by John Stephen Dwyer, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link)

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faith and fidelity

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Previous Post

March 27, 2017

Faith & Fidelity: Part 1, Allegiance vs. Faith

Next Post

March 31, 2017 Faith & Fidelity: Part 3, The Upward Spiral of Faith

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