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Introduction

In the recent debate/conversation that Jared Longshore and I had with Chris Gordon, there was one exchange that I thought I needed to get back to. I was asked to respond to something I had said in an interview back in 2004, and I was not entirely happy with how that response sounded in our discussion with Chris. At the very least, it needed more discussion and so I thought I should take this opportunity to clarify further.

I do so, again thanking Chris for the opportunity that this exchange has created—I asked Chris for his notes on that portion of our exchange, which he very kindly provided, and which gave me the ability to go back to look at the broader context of what I had said. I mean, 2004 was two decades ago and I don’t even remember what I had for breakfast that day.

Christian Renewal magazine had interviewed the “Monroe Four,” and that interview was later reprinted by the Council of Chalcedon (2004, Issue 1, p. 38). In the interview, I was asked the following: “Doug, when you cite ‘continuing in goodness’ in Romans 11 [:22] in your 2002 lecture, is that the cause of our salvation or the fruit of it?” To this I responded with a yes, which got a laugh.

DW “[W]e continue in God’s goodness by trust. We stand by faith—they [unbelieving Israel] fell, but you stand—doing that to the end is how you come to your salvation.”  

Wilson: “I would say it’s a muddling of categories. I do think I would probably agree with Steve [Schlissel] that the fruit of belief is more than simply evidence. It’s more organically connected to saving faith than that.” 

So the question before us today is what I meant by “organically connected.” I say that the “fruit of belief” is more than raw evidence. More than what? It is “more organically connected to saving faith than that.” What mean?

Sola Fide Under a Microscope

The question asked back in 2004 was whether continuing in goodness was, in my thinking, the cause of salvation or the fruit of it. The thing I want to point out here is that the question referenced salvation, not justification. Continuing in goodness is not in any way a contributing cause of justification, nor could it be.

The question concerned salvation, which is a much broader concept than is justification. It is proper to say that a man has been saved, is being saved, and will be saved. The doctrine of perseverance is a doctrine that encompasses time, and it is a process that concludes in our final salvation. By contrast, justification is particular forensic action on God’s part, occurring at a moment in time. It is God’s declaration of righteousness, and is not a process at all. It would not be possible for any process, like “continuing in goodness,” to contribute to justification. But it really is appropriate for a converted man to seek eternal life and immortality by “patient continuance in well doing.”

But while salvation is a process, for those who are genuinely justified, and truly converted, it is a guaranteed process. The one who began a good work in you will complete it (Phil. 1:6). The Holy Spirit is given to such a one as an earnest payment, a guarantee that the process that God has begun will in fact be completed (Eph. 1:14; Cor. 1:22: 5:5). When someone falls away from the faith, the proper conclusion is that he never had the root of the matter in him—“yet he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while. For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles” (Matt. 13:21). If he had had the root of the matter in him, he would have persevered.

So then, what do I mean by “organically connected?” In what way is the “fruit of belief” connected to “saving faith.” I do not mean anything that brings any kind of good deeds that occur across time—alms to the poor, helping old ladies across the street, singing in the choir—into the justification equation. So the organic connection would be this. Justifying faith does not evaporate once the moment of justification has passed. The justification itself is over and done because the declaration of “not guilty” has been made. But the faith that did nothing other than rest in and receive the imputation of Christ’s righteousness does not, at that moment, go out of existence. That faith, which was given by God, remains alive. It is living faith, and moreover, it is still alive. It is still alive, and ready to do other things. The other things that it does are in the realm of sanctification—not justification—but they are done by the same faith. Smith changes the oil in his car on Monday and takes his wife to dinner on Tuesday, and changing oil and dinner dates are completely different things. But Smith is the same man who does them both.

Paul says, quoting Habakkuk, that the just shall live by faith. This living by faith is obviously a process. The process is initiated in the moment of justification, but that same faith remains in order to tackle the challenges of sanctification.

From faith to faith, living by faith. The inaugural moment of this lifetime of faith is the moment of justification. The process of justification does not continue past that moment, it is punctiliar, over and done. The verdict has been declared by the judge, and He does not have to keep declaring it over and over. But the instrument of faith that rested in the righteousness of Christ, and received the righteousness of Christ, is a faith that is still there. That faith remains. That faith does not evaporate or disappear. That is one aspect of the organic connection between the saving faith and the fruit of belief.

There is another aspect of the organic connection that I need to mention. I have also written before that this living faith is also an obedient faith, and have said that living faith and obedient faith are the same thing. This has made some people think that I am talking about various aspects of sanctification-obedience, which I am not. I am not talking about the various kinds of good deeds obedience mentioned earlier at all.

So in what way would justifying faith be obeying? There are two ways. The first is that justifying faith obeys by coming into existence at the command of God. Living faith obeys the same way light obeyed at the beginning by coming to be light. God said “let there be light,” and the light obeyed. This is not playing with words because Paul compares the conversion of a sinner to this very event.

Why did light come to be? It was commanded to. Why did light appear in my heart? It was commanded to.

So justifying faith is obedient faith in the same way that the sculpted dust that was to become Adam was obedient

So when Adam became a living soul, he was obeying. In the same way, when living faith comes into life because of the Word, it is coming into existence the same way that all contingent things do . . . by obedience to the creative Word.

And this is why the language of gospel obedience is not at all alien to the New Testament (2 Thess. 1:8; 1 Pet. 4:17). The gospel is something to be obeyed, but not by going about to establish a righteousness of our own (Rom. 10:3). So a living, obedient faith can be described this way because it comes into existence, as commanded, and it rests in and receives the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ. Saving faith does not do anything other that this in justification, and outside this orthodox and Protestant position I refuse to step.

Sola Fide in Summary

A sinner is dead in his transgressions and sins. In the darkness of this unbelief, God commands the light of faith to shine, speaking the authoritative Word. That faith comes into existence as commanded and the sinner turns away from sin and toward Christ. The motion of turning away from sin is also a gift from God, and is called repentance. This same motion of turning toward Christ is called faith, and all of it is the gift of God lest any man should boast. The forensic declaration of “not guilty” is pronounced by God, and is received by the sinner who is resting in the truth of that declaration. This resting and receiving has three aspects which the Reformed doctors call assensus, notitia, and fiducia—assent, knowledge, and trust. The believing sinner must know content of what he believes, he must assent to that content, and he must personally entrust himself to it. This fiducia is where the affectional element that John Piper argues for resides.

None of this is the result of a life of good works, but all of it is absolutely the cause of a life of good works.

The Need for Good Will

In our discussion with Chris, in response to one of the questions, I brought up the nature of justifying faith, which is that it is living faith. This is the only kind of justifying faith which God ever gives, and faith really is a gift of God lest any man should boast. I pointed out that this is a confessional issue for us because the Westminster Confession explicitly says that that justifying faith is “no dead faith,” but rather living.

When I brought up this passage from Westminster, Jared added the detail that this saving faith “worketh by love.” Chris responded to this by saying that this was a synecdoche (where the part represents the whole, or occasionally where the whole represents the part), and one response could be to ask how calling this a synecdoche addresses the problem. Which is the part? Which is the whole? The Confession simply says that justifying faith is “no dead faith,” but is something that works by love. If “the part” is the moment of justification, and “the whole” is the justified person’s entire life, where this same faith remains a living faith, and continues to work by love, then we may shake hands in fellowship because this is what I am saying.

But apart from whether this is a synecdoche or not, I am not concerned to dispute that point, but rather to point out that in this controversy thus far we have not be granted the right to explain anything with synecdoches. If Westminster says something that sounds fishy to the Truly Reformed, the expression is covered in love, and interpreted charitably—as a synecdoche, say. But if we say the very same thing, the same response is not forthcoming. We are assumed to be introducing human works into the process of salvation, which really would be heterodox. That is why I don’t do that.

Suppose someone belonged to a fringe sect that was TTR (terrifically and truly Reformed), such that they rejected Westminster as heretical because they alleged it was teaching a form of “works salvation.” Are there any phrases in the Confession that such gnat-stranglers could catch at and seize upon? Well, sure. Look again at the statement above. The divines there say that faith is the “alone instrument” of justification, which is fine, but then they go on to say that it is always accompanied by “all other saving graces.” Saving graces? Saving graces? Apart from faith, what other saving graces could there be?

A normal person would respond to an argument like this by saying “look, we all know what they meant.” And we would know what they meant too, because we are reading them with good will.

One of the central reasons why Chris Gordon’s invitation to us was so important is that it provided an opportunity to establish that kind of good will. I know that Chris Gordon has no problems at all with the Westminster Confession’s treatment of saving faith. I also happen to know that I am fully in accord with the Westminster doctrine of saving faith. The only remaining barrier on the subject then would be the kind of distrust that has built up over years of controversy and shouting across Online Chasms. Chris has done a wonderful thing when he opened the door to an actual conversation.

Excerpts from That 2004 Interview

I have included below my responses in the original interview. The interview was with all four of us, and is therefore pretty long. I have culled my responses from that interview, and included them below for your edification and amusement. I have not included this portion on the video recording of this, but if you go to dougwils.com, you can find it all there. Thanks much.

Q: Doug, do you believe the Lord’s Supper is only for those of years and ability to examine themselves, and if so, what does self-examination mean?

D. Wilson: We’re not a strict paedocommunion church. We would ask people not to bring a baby from the hospital to the Table. But any baptized child can come to the Table as long as the parents instruct him each instance of the Supper, and the child is able to heed the instruction. Heeding this instruction can occur on a very immature level. In many churches, they’ve raised it to an examination for ordination. These churches tell children, “Grow big and strong and then we’ll give you some food.” That turns the Supper on its head. In our church, we let children as young as one or two years come to the Table, when the child is tracking. “Billy,” we’ll say, “this is the Lord’s Supper, it’s special.” I spoke English to my children before they knew it. It’s the same thing.

Q: What’s the difference between godly self examination and unhealthy introspection?

D. Wilson: We should discern what the Bible tells us to discern. That is not primarily our sins, but rather the body. The church congregation is that one loaf. There is unity in the body and we ought to discern any sins that would disrupt the body. But that doesn’t mean turning into little cocoons that discern only our own sins. That’s not discerning the body or what’s going on in the Supper. We should discern what’s going on in the congregation and confess sins that broke the unity of the congregation. We need to be aware of our sins, but not be overwhelmed by them because we’re forgiven. God tells us to look away from ourselves to Christ.

Let me add this: Say, there’s a six-year-old who says, “I love Jesus” and asks if she can take communion and is refused by the elders because they say she doesn’t understand it deeply enough. She’s discerning the unity of the body and they are not; she should come to the Table and they should disqualify themselves.

Q: Is introspection rampant at the Lord’s Table? Haven’t we gotten better on this regarding frequency, doing away with the preparation services, etc.?

D. Wilson: In the TR (‘truly’ Reformed) world, the burden of proof is on the sheep. They have to prove that they really are sheep rather than the other way around—that the sheep is really a wolf and is to be kept from the Table.

Q: Do you have a problem with the doctrine of the visible and invisible church, Doug?

D. Wilson: Augustine gave us the notion of a pilgrim and eschatological church. That’s what I was proposing in my lecture. I was not trying to jettison the distinction between the visible and invisible church, just showing that there is more to it than that. I’m trying to emphasize the importance of history and time in how we understand the church, instead of thinking of it in Platonic categories—one up there and another here, both of them static.

If you emphasize the elect and the invisible church only, I’d have to ask, What do you mean? If I said there’s a heavenly Doug Wilson and an earthly Doug Wilson, which one is real? We think of one over the other, the invisible over against the visible, and then we end up disparaging the visible church. That’s the problem I was attacking.

Q: Jesus sternly warns that if a man abide not in me he is cast forth as a branch and is withered and men gather them and cast them into the fire and they are burned” (John 15:6). You cite this teaching in your lecture, Doug. Doesn’t perseverance of the saints understand, in this example, that the reason there is no perseverance is because there is no saintliness?

D. Wilson: Let me ask a question: Do we believe in the perseverance of all the branches? No, right? I’m not denying the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, just its usefulness as a shibboleth. We can just say, “perseverance of the saints, perseverance of the saints” like the folks in Jeremiah’s day said, “the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord,” but God does things to temples and to a lot of other things He gives us. The five points of Calvinism have turned into a bronze serpent for many of us.

D. Wilson: We baptize infants because they’re covenantally holy (1 Cor. 7). Unless we’re prepared to say each infant is elect, then we believe there will be saints who will fall away. But I do believe in the perseverance of the elect of God.

Q: Let say someone is under discipline and has been excommunicated because of adultery. Is that person still in covenant with God?

D. Wilson: An adulterer is under obligation to make restitution. If his wife divorces him, she’s under no obligation to him, but he is to her regardless of the result. An excommunicated person has a covenantal obligation to the church, not the other way around.

Q: I’ve always understood excommunication as being tantamount to death. What’s bound on earth is bound in heaven.

D. Wilson: An excommunicated person is not in the covenant, just as the one divorced is not married. But the excommunicated can return and needn’t be baptized again. Until then he is treated as an unbeliever, an outsider.

Q: The Jews in wilderness—wasn’t their problem that they didn’t combine being in the covenant and the blessings of the covenant with faith, and so were lost even though they were delivered from Egypt and God was their God? Does this not bolster the argument for justification by faith?

D. Wilson: They were delivered from Egypt but didn’t combine their deliverance with faith. So? The question assumes we’ve denied justification by faith.

Q: I’m looking at your addresses on the one hand, and the RPCUS statements on the other, so I’m trying to find the place where the points of disagreement are.

D. Wilson: If you’re asking if a man can be right with God and go to heaven without faith, then we’d all say no.

D. Wilson: I’m prepared to say a baby can have faith. But if the baby can’t have faith then he can be right with God apart from faith. But I believe if John the Baptist can leap for joy in his mother’s womb and if from the lips of infants God has ordained praise —if they can praise, rejoice—then they can trust. Trust doesn’t have to be mature trust. If it had to be mature faith we’d all be in trouble. But if we allow for faith as a gift of God, then we’re saved by faith from first to last. That we deny the necessity of faith is ludicrous. We all have a strong doctrine of apostasy. What drives apostasy is unbelief, and the engine that drives salvation is faith and only faith.

Q: But not “faith only”?

D. Wilson: Not bare bones faith. Not assent. Devils have that. True faith is more than assent. We are being accused of denying sola fide because we deny solus assensus. This is the rub, since we’re all affirming this. Why are we heretics because we say faith cannot be separated from trust and obedience, and because we say saving faith cannot be separated from a life of obedience and trust?

Q: So is this a matter of emphasis? Is the misunderstanding with being saved, being justified by faith, that the accent is outside human experience, even to the point excluding obedience?

D. Wilson: If God turned me into an apple tree, I must bear apples. That’s a “condition” of having to bear apples. But it’s not the ground of anything. I didn’t turn into an apple tree by bearing apples, but if He turns me into an apple tree I will bear apples.

Q: Has Confessionalism replaced an active, living faith in Reformed churches? If so what is the solution?

D. Wilson: Yes, in many cases it has. In many other cases, non-Confessionalism has replaced an active, living faith. In all cases, the problem is sin—not the Confessions. When we make idols, we often do so out of innocent materials. The solution is to preach the Word like the house was burning down, sing the psalms like we believed them, learn how to incorporate wine and chocolate into the sabbath, come to the sacraments in humble reliance on the Holy Spirit, and pray for a tsunami reformation.

We are in line with the Torah (the Law) and the Talmud (the interpretation) of the Westminster Confession, but we have run afoul of the Midrash (oral tradition) of American Presbyterianism on what these phrases mean.

Q: So there’s justification and ensuant to that is sanctification, a one-two step, whereas for you it’s all of a piece?

D. Wilson: Justification to them is something that happens and has to be tied up with a bow, and then we can move on to sanctification. But when God gives faith, that faith doesn’t immediately croak. It is a saving faith, and that same faith is the lone instrument for sanctification also. One can’t be apprehended without the other. They are distinct but not separable. You can’t make an ontological distinction. It is an organic whole for us.

Q: Doug, when you cite “continuing in goodness” in Rom. 11 in your 2002 lecture, is that the cause of our salvation or the fruit of it?

D. Wilson: Yes (laughter all around).

Look, in Colossians Paul says as you received Christ so walk in him. So the way we become Christians is the way we stay Christians is the way we finish as Christians—by faith from first to last. So we continue in God’s goodness by trust. We stand by faith—they fell, but you stand—doing that to the end is how you come to your salvation. It’s the gift of God lest anyone boast. I believe we are saved by faith from first to last, which is why I have been accused of denying sola fide. Wisdom is vindicated by her children.

Q: The Reformed tradition does have its macros—but it seems you have your own macros going on. You qualify quite a bit in your addresses) but there are places where you don’t. It’s those places where people seem to have problems.

D. Wilson: This controversy didn’t start with anyone seeking qualifications. We offered qualifications where we thought there would be difficulties, but the other side just came out swinging.

Q: But you don’t want to talk much about that—at least not at the conference. Why? Pastoral theological reasons?

D. Wilson: Our opponents have not put together our lectures on salvation by faith and our lectures on apostasy. The latter are about how someone can be in the covenant and not have faith. That’s the grand qualification, and it was not heard. They see that as a denial of perseverance of the saints rather than as a qualification of the sola fide talks. Put them together and they’re fully orthodox.

[Responding to a point John Barach made from the Westminster]

D. Wilson: If I said this at a TR meeting, I’d have to dodge dead cats and ripe vegetables.

D. Wilson: On qualifications, the problem is not context. We supplied plenty of context. In the dicta heroica of Luther—you know, what he said about Law or James—- if taken in isolation it could be construed as heretical or heterodox. People go for broad context for Luther because they have good will toward him. People miss the context of what we’re saying because good will is missing. They don’t want to find out we’re not heretics. If good will were there, it would be a lot easier to make Luther sound like Zane Hodges than to make Schlissel sound like the Pope. We don’t do this to Luther because we’re Protestants. We like him. We’d be happy to debate our opponents, but I object to the absence of good will that is causing all this.

They’re tied to a kind of ritualism. You know how Ambrose Bierce defined ritualism in The Devil’s Dictionary? ”A Dutch garden where God walks in rectilinear freedom, keeping off the grass.” We’ve created grooves in our Confessions where God may walk, and where His Spirit may move, but now He has decided to move somewhere else. He is walking on our grass.