Allow me, if I might, to follow up on an important point that has arisen in the discussion following my post on Sinclair Ferguson. There are macro issues involved, so bear with me for a moment.
Prior to Nicea, there were good men who were Trinitarian in substance, but who did not use the orthodox formulations that were eventually settled on. There were also good men who were confused by the whole thing, and said muddled things. And there were false teachers who denied the Son, and who therefore did not have the Father (1 John 2:22-24) — from the first century on. But after Nicea, overt denial of the truth of God became even more problematic. Our God can save anyone He wants, but He requires us to deny that a man is saved if he denies that Jesus was God come in the flesh.
In short, you can’t tell anything definitive about this situation by comparing the positive assertion to the negative. You can affirm that Jesus is God and not be saved. Many will say, Lord, Lord. You can be muddled on how the Incarnation is supposed to be confessed and be saved. “Pastor, I keep forgetting which is the good one — homoousia or homoiousia.” You can be positively mistaken about some aspect of it. But if you deny it, in the way John talks about it here, you are lost. Now the fact that a denial is tantamount to damnation is not equivalent to saying that an affirmation is salvation. These sorts of statements simply do not work that way.
Now, remember that nobody says that if you affirm justification you are saved. Nobody thinks that we are justified by believing in justification. But we do not take this truth away with the other hand when we say that a flat denial of the free grace of God in Christ is culpable. It is culpable and the corresponding affirmation is not meritorious. Sinners hate the proclamation of grace the same way that Edmund hated the mention of the name of Aslan. Hatred of free grace is a fundamental issue for every unforgiven sinner.
I have mentioned before that we are not justified by grace through faith because we scored 100 on the justification portion of our final exam. To think that we are is actually to fail the justification portion of that exam. But after the professor has scored the exam, and told us the right answer, to go up there and argue the point with him is quite a different issue. To tell the professor that he needs to go boil his antinomian head is damnable.
I believe in creedal advance. And just as there was more leeway of expression on the Trinity before Nicea than after, so there was more leeway for expression on salvation by grace through faith before the Reformation than after. Before the Reformation you had muddles, attempted formulations, good-hearted halfway measures, and all of that. You also had the outright subversions of Pelagius and men like that. But after the Reformation, when the issues had been made crystal clear, and when the gospel had been released again in power, overt denial of the truth became much more problematic. To convene a council, carefully state the biblical gospel, and then pronounce anathemas on anyone who held to it, was both damnable and sectarian.
And when I say this, it cannot be inferred that I believe that belief in justification justifies. That in no way follows. The sheep of the Lord hear His voice, and they follow Him (John 10:27). Such men do not believe and the wrath of God remains on them (John 3:36).