There comes a time when even the most sacred of cows must face the mincer. Is it time to ditch justification by faith?
Justification by faith alone.
It is a phrase which tugs at the heart strings of Evangelicals all over the world. In many ways, it is what we stand for a dependence on God’s grace in the face of our own inadequacy and the surpassing merit of the work of Christ.
But the gospel can never be fixed in one formulation of words. The march of language is unremitting. The meaning and connotation of words will not stand still, and the words that bring salvation to one generation may bring mystification to another.
A painful example of this has been the failed attempt, in Anglican circles, to retain the word ‘priest’ to mean ‘presbyter’ (that is, ‘elder’). This may have been because of the persistence of natural religion, or Roman Catholicism, or the rise of Anglo Catholicism whatever the reasons, ‘priest’ still carries the connotation of a ‘holy man’ or intermediary (see ‘When the Prayer Book is Wrong’ in Briefing #25). We must discontinue using the word ‘priest’; it is dangerously misleading.
While most Evangelicals would concur with these thoughts about ‘priest’, and would prefer to use ‘minister’ or ‘pastor’, we haven’t come to terms with how our changing language affects a phrase like ‘justification by faith alone’.
‘Justification’
In theological circles, ‘justification by faith alone’ has retained much of its New Testament and Reformation meaning. Technical terms tend to shift in meaning much more slowly than everyday language. As theologians talk to each other about ‘justification’ (and sometimes it seems as if they only talk to each other!), they do so with a knowledge of the phrase’s semantic and historical range of meaning. The well-taught Christian in the pew also has some concept of what ‘justification by faith’ means, but only because the phrase’s theological content has been revealed to them, at least in part. For the purpose of talking with each other, having this precise theological phrase is a help, and its preservation does no real damage. However, for evangelism, it is a disaster.
The word ‘justification’ is not used much in normal Australian conversation. When it does crop up, it is usually related to making excuses for yourself. Sometimes ‘justification’ is used in terms of giving reasons for what we have said or done, as in, “What justification can you give for that sort of behaviour?”. In the end, reasons and excuses merge together, and, in the religious sphere, most Australians think that all reasons are just excuses anyway.
‘Faith’
Unlike ‘justification’, the word ‘faith’ is used widely in our community, and almost exclusively in the area of religion. This may mean that we are able to build theological bridges to the community through that word. Unfortunately, however, society uses the word ‘faith’ quite differently than we do. To make matters worse, some of our theological opponents use ‘faith’ in much the same way as the non-Christian. Thus, confusion abounds when Christians preach on ‘faith’.
For most Australians, ‘faith’ means something like ‘superstition’. ‘Faith’ is an irrational, spiritual experience whereby you believe things which you know by your rational mind cannot be true. It is a leap in the dark, not just with a lack of evidence, but when the evidence points in the opposite direction. ‘Faith’ is a feeling that some people have, but many are not blessed with. It is the opposite of reason and fact.
In the Scriptures, ‘faith’ is nothing like this. Biblical ‘faith’ is firm confidence in a person, or his word, or some fact. ‘Faith’ is closely associated with the concepts of truth and certainty. It is often a matter of ‘faithfulness’. It is not a particularly spiritual or religious act. You can have Biblical ‘faith’ in your wife or your car or your accountant.
There are some perfectly good non-religious English words which convey the
Biblical concept of ‘faith’—words like ‘rely’, ‘depend’ and ‘trust’. These words are all better translations of the biblical idea than the word ‘faith’. No one is tempted to view ‘dependence’ or ‘trust’ as some kind of esoteric religious superstition.
The issue is confused further by the lack of an object in modern usage of the word ‘faith’. When we talk about ‘having faith’, the non Christian Australian does not immediately say, “But faith in what?”. For modern Australians, ‘faith’ is a quantity; it is an end in itself. You either have it or you don’t.
Within the Bible, faith always requires an object a person or thing or message. If you have your faith in something unreliable, then your faith is misplaced. But it is still ‘faith’. Everybody has ‘faith’. The only difference is the object of people’s faith. The Christian has his faith in Jesus—that he died for our sins and rose again to be Lord of all. The non-Christian is depending on all this not being true. But each are relying on something, and one will discover eventually that their faith was misplaced.
If we replace the word ‘faith’ with ‘rely’ or ‘depend’, perhaps we might communicate that faith is only as significant as its object. If we say to a non-Christian, “What you must do is depend,” he will rightly ask, “Depend? Depend on what?”. It is hard to see ‘dependence’ as an end in itself. It is a word which demands an object. The important thing is obviously the thing or person on which you are depending. ‘Depend’ has another advantage. Its natural opposite—’independence’—helpfully summarizes the Biblical concept of sin.
The usage of the word ‘faith’ becomes even more confused when we bring in the idea of ‘belief’. In English, ‘faith’ is a noun with no verbal form (unless we use the passive ‘to have faith’). If we want to use a verb, we switch to ‘believe’, which also has a noun form: ‘belief’. Most modern readers know nothing about nouns and verbs, and assume that ‘believe’/’belief’ and ‘faith’ are somehow different in meaning.
The dictionary reflects this subtle difference.1 Both words have as their primary meaning “to put trust or confidence in”. However, in its wider usage, ‘faith’ includes “spiritual apprehension of divine truth apart from proof”. Here is our leap in the dark. The wider meaning of ‘believe’, on the other hand, is to “accept the truth of a statement; suppose, think, be of opinion that [something is true]”. The scientist may say, for example, that he ‘believes’ that a certain theory is true, by which he means that there is ‘evidence to suggest’ that it is true.
In other words, the difference is between superstition and reason. The Christian has ‘faith’ that God created the world. The scientist ‘believes’ that this is not the case. Such is the current usage of our society.
Christians have adopted this subtle distinction in our own jargon. We do not talk about ‘justification by belief’ even though that would be a quite correct use of the word. To us, ‘justification by belief’ sounds like we are justified merely by giving intellectual assent to the gospel. We think that ‘faith’ is a much more relational word, expressing our complete trust and confidence in the death of Christ on our behalf. We preach that it is not sufficient to merely ‘believe’ that Jesus is Lord (even the demons ‘believe’); you must put your ‘faith’ in Jesus as Lord.
This distinction makes sense to us, but it would have meant nothing to the New Testament writers. It also does not make sense to non-Christians. They hear us saying that it is not enough to rationally accept (’believe’) that Jesus is Lord; you must take a leap in the dark (’have faith’) as well.
Conclusion
Our concern is to make the gospel clear to our contemporaries. We are horrified at the thought of running our church meetings in Latin, but we hardly blink an eye at using theological jargon that is meaningless (or misleading) to ordinary people. We cannot stop our language changing. Our only alternative is to change along with it, and express the gospel in terms that are within the grasp of the average person.
For those of us who have been raised in the great Protestant traditions of the Reformation, it is difficult to accept that a phrase like ‘justification by faith alone’ now actually prevents people from understanding the gospel. In the 16th century, it made sense, but we do not live in the 16th century. Every day, the media defines the word ‘faith’ in a way that cuts across our gospel message. They are the linguistic pedagogues of our society. They set the agenda for how words and phrases are used in normal conversation. It is enough that we have to contend with the media over the ideas of Christianity; we do not need to fight with them over language as well. It is futile.
We must ditch the word ‘faith’ and replace it with the quite acceptable synonyms of ‘trust’, ‘rely’ and ‘depend’. This needs to be adopted by our apologists and evangelists, by our preachers and teachers (and thus by the bulk of Christians evangelizing their friends), and, most of all, by our Bible translators. In missionary work, we pay close attention to translating the ideas of the gospel into word forms that make sense in the particular culture we are addressing. It is time we did the same in our own culture.
Endnotes
1 Quoting from the Concise Oxford.
