This blog will do a quick analysis on one aspect of the American Christian theology known as SOLA FIDE (only faith). That is, you are ‘saved by faith alone’. To that they add, ‘once saved, always saved’, and ‘you can’t lose your salvation’ (eternal security). There are other ways they say it, but that should be enough to clue you in on what I’m going to talk about.
While reading Sweet’s book (Religion in Colonial America), the thought occurred to me that he is saying, in principle, what I’ve been saying about modern churchianity for years. Only I’m pointing out the opposite extreme. Here’s what he says:
The New England clergy were now divided into conflicting parties over the revival. The General Convention of Congregational Ministers in Massachusetts adopted a Testimony “against several Errors in Doctrine and Disorders in Practice” in May 1743. As errors in doctrine growing out of the revival they named the prevalence of “secret impulses upon the mind without due regard to the written word”; the contention that “none are converted but such as know they are converted and the time when”; that “assurance is of the essence of saving faith,” and, finally, “that sanctification is no evidence of justification.” (p 289)
The complainants were right. But their opponents were also right. Either way, I want you to note the bold statement above. Their point is couched in theological terms. In layman’s terms, the European Christians were claiming that the new American Christian ideology was wrong because it requires people to provide emotional evidence as proof of their faith in Christ before they could acquire church membership. But over in Europe (and England) a Christian’s religious status was determined by their national citizenship. Back then baptism determined one’s national allegiance. The domestic conflicts that caused, including political revolutions, was the main reason why America’s founding fathers’ separated the state from the church.
That way, they could establish an environment that would allow peoples of all different Christian beliefs to be in the same nation and not be at war with each other. That was the main reason why America’s founding fathers’ separated the church from the state. Their new political doctrine was designed to remove the state’s control over the church and also remove the church’s myriad of theological differences from politics. That meant Americans would live with NO STATE CHURCH and NO STATE INTERFERENCE WITH CHRISTIAN RELIGION. As a side note, today’s 501(c)(3) federal tax exempt corporate churches under the authority of Title 26 of the U.S. Code are a total violation of America’s founders’ intent which they memorialized in the 1st Amendment of the federal Constitution.
You can see in Sweet’s historical account that pre-Constitutional colonial America was fighting a religious civil war, albeit a WORD-WAR. I’m talking about the equivalent to today’s MSM. This war was all about ideologies embodied in words. It was the same as it is today, a war for control of the minds of the masses. Whoever controls the masses controls society and gets the money. Unfortunately, due to the religious leaders’ refusal to amicably and peaceably work through their differences, the state stepped in and started the process of regulating religious behavior. Very slick how the devil gets control of Christians!
Moreover, the church leaders for all factions were so caught up in their unBiblical theological arguments that they couldn’t see how they already lost the battle by the state regulating them. Stupid church leaders! Instead, they should have studied the Bible on the subject. If they had, they would have arrived at the conclusion that the offices in the church are directly appointed and commissioned by Jesus, not by MEN (Ephesians 4). That would have settled the matter. However, that also would have put them all out of office, or humbled them into realizing that they were mere men who where either self-appointed or appointed by other man, but certainly not God! So even on this vital subject they were WRONG. As a result they persisted in their disunity due to squabbling over the traditions of man. They certainly didn’t learn anything from the NT historical accounts of the early church. What’s more, Saint Paul directly addresses this issue in his 1st letter to the Corinthians, chapter 1:12 & 6:1-11. When religious egos collide, everyone in the church suffers. How sad!
By way of contrast, my previous blogs show you what I believe to be the truth about this. In a nutshell, modern Christianity, with their lop-sided preoccupation with SOLA FIDE theology, has swung to the opposite extreme. Instead of relying on their membership in the state regulated church of European roots, they became obsessed with the EMOTIONAL EVIDENCE of their RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD. Now I’m not saying that the state religious requirements of that time were Biblically-based. I’m sure some of it was. Instead, I’m saying that the church shifted its focus to the INDIVIDUAL instead of the GROUP (the state). And with that focus came a change in practice, which eventuated in today’s Christianity, which is a LAWLESS RELIGION.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s lawful with respect to the United States federal government. But it’s lawless with respect to God and His Law, that is, the law that Jesus himself obeyed, which made him the perfect atonement for humanity. Imagine? Christians are snubbing their noses at the very law that Jesus obeyed, which made him the man that he was, which is the churchians one and only role model! “We want to be like Jesus.” Really? He obeyed God’s law (and 2nd Temple law as well!). But Christians repudiate God’s law!
Anyway, at least back during the colonial era they had some sort of order handed down by the state, even though it wasn’t entirely based on Biblical-law. But when they abandoned that structure for EMOTIONAL RELIGION, they threw the baby out with the bath water. Thankfully, the colonial churches eventually came to a theological agreement. Hence, both factions merged so that American Christianity became a marriage of the old religion dominated by the new religion, or as Sweet says, “thus uniting Calvinism with the pietistic spirit” (p280). In other words, they combined religious propaganda with emotional mysticism. That’s the history of it, no doubt about it.
Today’s result is a modern Christianity that lacks all discipline in SPIRITUAL things. By ‘spiritual’ I mean OBEDIENCE TO GOD’S LAW. That’s the sum total of spiritual discipline. And I’m not talking about 2nd Temple law or post-Yavneh rabbinic law. Like the Apostle Paul says, Christians must “work out [their] salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12). In other words, Christians need BOTH. They need a pure motive in their dedication to God’s sovereign leadership in the Jesus covenant, along with a committed and growing knowledge of and obedience to God’s law. That’s basically what I’ve been saying all along in all my blogs. So instead of todays’ SOLA FIDE half-truth that abandons Biblical duties for FAITH FEELINGS, Christians need to return to the Bible as a BOOK OF LAW for both INDIVIDUAL SELF-GOVERNANCE and America’s SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS (that is, the government’s law, justice and law enforcement).
Evangelical theologians claim that Jesus fulfilled God’s law, which gave him the authority to procure humanity’s redemption (for all those who have FAITH in his atoning death). Therefore (they reason), Christians don’t have any obligation to obey God’s law any longer, since Jesus’ fulfillment of those laws rendered them obsolete for Christians. Besides (they reason), those laws were given to Israel, not to the church, so they don’t apply to the church. And now that Christians are part of a NEW covenant, the OLD covenant LAWS don’t apply to them. I discuss the fallacies of this rationale in previous blogs.
Besides the fact that the ‘terms and conditions’ of the Covenant they supposedly signed-onto require their obedience to God’s law, there’s that pesky little detail about WHO’S LAW THEY ACTUALLY ARE OBEYING while they are not obeying God’s. The answer is obvious. They’re obeying whatever the Legislature enacts and whatever the Executive enforces, plus all the rules and policies of their immediate social setting (besides their own passions and desires!). According to their own theology, SATAN CONTROLS ALL HUMAN GOVERNMENTS. So WHO are they obeying when they aren’t obeying God? The inescapable conclusion is that they’re obeying SATAN..
The problem with that theological position is the results of it, which none of them will experience during the course of their lifetime, since such social changes require generations of development before they become manifest to personal experience within the social setting. So these churchians will never receive their just deserts for their stupid decisions in their own life-time. Instead, they’re going to have to wait till JUDGMENT DAY to discover that their emotion-based theological mindset was DEAD WRONG. The sad thing about that is, they’re unreasonably obstinate about their religious ideologies, and will never admit they are wrong, because they’ve abandoned all analytical thinking in favor of TRUSTING IN RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY instead of trusting in the true meaning of the God’s Word found in the Bible.
Here is one of their most touted theological arguments against obeying God’s law, besides what I stated above: SO THAT NO MAN CAN BOAST BEFORE GOD. They get that out of the Apostle Paul’s NT letter to the Ephesians (2:8-9). Unfortunately, those churchians take that verse out of context and invent their own meaning based on their own contemporary ideological context. Today’s Christians certainly aren’t 2nd Temple JEWS, right? So how can they know what Paul meant when he said that, unless they put themselves in his mindset first, which they refuse to do? When you think about the absurdity of the BOASTING idea, you have to laugh at their stupidity to even believe it! But like I’ve said many times before in previous blogs, they’re being CONNED by religious leaders. So what more can you expect? Poor sheeple!
Now let’s think about the idea of BOASTING BEFORE GOD (without getting into the depths of Paul’s historical setting). First of all, it’s a maxim of Biblical theology that God is omnipotent and omniscient. So, no man or supernatural being can ever over-power or out-whit Him. Secondly, do you think God takes it personally if someone brags about his or her achievements to Him? I mean really, do you think He can be impressed by human ego or ‘get offended’ by it? It’s a joke to even consider that possibility! But this is the CONJOB that modern churchians have fallen for. So even if I totally obeyed all of God’s law, which has been ‘handed down’ by Him as ‘special revelation’ to His theocracy of ancient Israel, do I then have the power to confront God and lay claim to having a right to ‘get a pass’ into ‘heaven’? How stupid is that? Well, I’ll tell you.
Firstly, the idea of ‘getting into heaven’ is totally modern. It’s definitely not part of the 2nd Temple mindset. As I’ve said in previous blogs, the word ‘heaven’ in the Bible is a reference to GOD instead of to A PLACE. So right off that bat the theology is wrong. Secondly, their theological ‘doctrine’ is based on the premise that perfect obedience to God’s law will get you into heaven, although no man is capable of such obedience. Honestly, do I want to trust in a ‘god’ like that? I don’t think so! Moreover, I’ve never seen that idea anywhere in the Bible. In fact, it’s a man-made concept that’s become a part of standard Christian THEOLOGY from repeated use over the generations. Like the church father Tertullian said, “custom without truth is error grown old”.
As stated in previous blogs, obedience to the ‘covenant stipulations’ was REQUIRED of a ‘vassal state’. Or as Jesus says in Luke 17:7-10, “we are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty”. The Apostle James tells us that under the covenant there is a requirement to obey the whole law (2:10). The point is, when you sign-onto a covenant agreement, you are bound to the terms and conditions of the covenant (the ‘stipulations’ of the covenant). There’s nothing whatsoever religious about it. It’s a simple matter of MAINTAINING HONOR by fulfilling one’s obligations to an agreement that one has voluntarily and knowingly entered into. Hence, the laughable ‘perfection claim’ is based on a false premise and false facts from the outset!
What is the detrimental result of an EMOTION-BASED RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD?
JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL!
In other words, it’s the Christian’s EXCUSE to live a PASSIVE LIFE and allow everyone else to do his or her work of SANCTIFICATION for them. In other words, they will NEVER become the people that God expects the Christian to be. And it’s all because they have been deluded into believing that they don’t have to OBEY GOD’S LAW after they embrace GOD’S GRACE in the form of Jesus’ atoning death. I call that their free fire insurance policy, because they can escape the fires of hell by simply believing a formula of words, just like the magic of ancient times.
So my word of caution to all you churchians out there is:
1. Focusing solely on justification is no evidence of ‘salvation’ (justification) just as focusing solely on sanctification is no evidence of justification (‘salvation’), since you need both;
2. You had better start learning God’s law and obeying it before it’s too late, because Judgment Day is coming, and you certainly don’t want to be found on the wrong side of the law! God wants a HOLY PEOPLE to populate His kingdom, not THE WORLDLY:
19 You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder. 20 But are you willing to acknowledge, you foolish person, that faith without works is useless? (James 2)
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. (1 Peter 2:9)
Finally, here’s a good read on the covenants for those with the interest in seeing the history behind the OBEDIENCE aspect of a ROYAL GRANT (GRACE) which I discussed in previous blogs. I provide that as a courtesy to those with an interest in seeing some evidence in proof of the idea that God requires His people to obey His law even though ‘salvation’ is a ‘free gift’.
Thanks for stopping by and seeing what the Bible says about Jesus Take the Wheel Christianity.
See you in the next blog!
Reality Bible 