The Content of Faith: Expandable or Not?
Dec 6th, 2007 by John
In a recent post “Does Jesus the Man Save?” I asked about the content of faith. Does the “content” of saving faith expand through time?
Peter did not make it very plain that Jesus of Nazareth was God-in-the-flesh, describing Jesus of Nazareth only as a Spirit-empowered man. Peter did not emphasize Jesus’ deity. Did the Jews in Acts 2 who believed in that human Jesus and the Gentiles in Acts 10 who believed in that human Jesus experience real salvation? It seems that they received Jesus as God’s anointed human agent for deliverance, i.e., as Messiah. Being Messiah in their minds did not necessarily mean being deity.
Again, I am not denying the deity of Jesus of Nazareth. I believe that Jesus is 100% God and 100% human being in one person forever. That is not my issue. My issue is the content of faith.
Does the content of faith expand? As Paul extrapolated out the deity of Jesus in the context of Jewish monotheism, did the content of faith flex to include that, too? When the early church councils hammered out the creeds (Apostles’ and Nicene), did the content of faith have to include those ideas? When Martin Luther trumpeted sola fide—justification by faith alone–did the content of faith have to include that? Is the content of faith like the idea of ‘progressive revelation’?
What is essential saving faith? Were the Jews on Pentecost Day (Acts 2) and the Gentiles in Cornelius’ house (Acts 10) “grandfathered in” even though they only believed in/received Jesus as a Spirit-empowerd man?
What are your thoughts?
Popularity: 3% [?]
I’m interested in this same idea as it relates to ‘church membership’. What is (should be) required for someone to be included in ‘the church’ - both universal and local (and are they really different?).
Sorry - no answers - only more questions!
I read a book a few months ago by Dallas Willard called Hearing God. One of the ideas was that the development of a true conversational relationship with God means that He will speak to us in a way that we can understand. Wouldn’t this imply that the content of faith–as a person truly walks with God–must move beyond prior revelation? Is that what you mean by expanding the content of faith?
The notion of “saving faith” is something I struggle with. This seems very much like an input/output model: if I do it the right way then I get salvation. If I believe the right teaching I win. Doesn’t this make God out to be the Great Carnival Worker in the sky? The adjective suggests there is a bad faith and a good faith; a faith that isn’t quite up to par. If faith comes from God anyway, that makes it his fault if I don’t get it.
Rustin,
I do think there is a tie between these two issues—faith that embraces salvation and rightly belonging to the redeemed community. I am focused on the first of these.
howard walters,
I don’t think I am using “expanding” to include uninscripturated revelation, i.e., along the lines of Willard’s *Hearing God* (though I highly value that book).
Some content about Jesus the Christ must be embraced in the concept of faith. I am wondering what that content essentially is.
I am not as deterministic as you seem to be in saying, “If faith comes from God anyway, that makes it his fault if I don’t get it.” I have a much more highly interactive vision of God than classic theistic determinism coming to us from Augustine on.
[...] friend and mentor John Frye over at jesus the radical pastor has a a few posts (here and here) on the content of faith. In the first post he address the fact the in Acts 2 and 10 people [...]