This is the third and final installment of a series. Read part 1, Faith is Obsolete Now?, here; and part 2, Have We Clarified the Gospel Yet?, here. I will be following up with an addendum on the content of the Gospel.

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Faith is not the human notion and dream that some people call faith. When they see that no improvement of life and no good works follow—although they can hear and say much about faith—they fall into the error of saying, “Faith is not enough; one must do works in order to be righteous and be saved.” This is due to the fact that when they hear the gospel, they get busy and by their own powers create an idea in their heart which says, “I believe”; they take this then to be a true faith. But, as it is a human figment and idea that never reaches the depths of the heart, nothing comes of it either, and no improvement follows.

Martin Luther

In this series I am laying out objections to recent trends in favor of redefining faith as faithfulness or allegiance.

In part 1, I joined the conversation essentially in media res, and registered my first objection: faithfulness / allegiance simply don’t supply appropriate glosses for pistis-words when you import them into actual Scripture where pistis is in play. In part two, I showed how faithfulness / allegiance as glosses for pistis-words muddles the good news of the gospel, and in fact, have been pressed into the service of a rather murky articulation of the “gospel.”

In this post, I intend to demonstrate that faith simply works better as a translation for pistis-words than the proposed alternatives. In other words, so long as it is properly defined and understood, pistis-as-faith is not only conceptually truer to what Scripture means; practically it will yield better fruit both in terms of quantity (we will see Christians more freely loving God and serving their neighbors in ways we can quantify); and quality (the fruit of the life of faith will be healthier: less anxious, not self-righteous, cultivating and maturing the fruit of the Spirit).

And I shall support this claim by means of three types of theological arguments: historical, systematic, and practical / applied.

But before I do that, I want to lay out what, based on my engagement with the pistis-as-allegiance / faithfulness side, seems to be at stake for them. Because I do think they raise significant and relevant issues. I simply don’t agree that these issues are best addressed by redefining faith.

• Concern about a purely cognitive or passive faith. The concern here is that faith as trust is mere mental assent to facts, or passive reception. This does nothing to reshape behavior. I want to show that, historically the Reformational understanding of faith has both a passive (receptive) dimension and an active (expressive) dimension that doesn’t require collapsing works into faith (such that faith = obedience) as allegiance or faithfulness do. This is not merely semantics, either. In theology precision is necessary because clarity is good pastoral practice. Regardless, I would hope we’re all agreed that the point of faith in Christ isn’t mere behavior modification.
• Covenantal and ethical dimensions. Proponents of pistis-as-allegiance / faithfulness fear that the covenantal and relational aspects of pistis are lost when it’s translated as faith. They argue that pistis is about covenant loyalty and reliability between covenantal partners (i.e., Yahweh / Israel; Christ / Church). It is not about belief in propositions or a one-time act of trust. Incidentally, I would agree that pistis is neither mere belief in propositions, nor a one-time act of trust. All the Reformers would also agree on this point.
• Pistis-as-faith diminishes the scope of the Gospel. Those on the allegiance / faithfulness side argue that pistis-as-faith shrinks the Gospel to the forgiveness of the individual’s sins and going to heaven when you die. The cosmic implications of the Gospel — bodily resurrection and the renewal of the heavens and earth at Christ’s return — are lost when we view it primarily through the lenses of individual salvation. This truncated Gospel, received by faith (again, for them a matter of mental assent) treats vital concepts like kingdom, discipleship, resurrection, and new creation as optional add-ones. I one thousand percent agree that the Church-at-large has gravely erred by treating a robust eschatology marked by resurrection hope and cosmic renewal as an esoteric upgrade, rather than a central concern. But changing faith (again, rightly defined) to allegiance is a non sequitur here. In short, while the Gospel must mean much more than the salvation of individual sinners; it must not mean other than; and it certainly should not offer them less than this. A Gospel which only offers us the comfort of a far-off setting to rights if we prove ourselves faithful enough [1] is not good news. It is as much a pie-in-the-sky theology as the “escape hatch” eschatology offered by the “going to heaven when I die” model. [2] A Gospel that doesn’t give instant relief and ongoing assurance to repentant sinners isn’t good news.

I will address this third concern in an addendum post that will serve as a sort of appendix to the series. I shall call it something like: The Gospel Received by Faith.

But what follows in this post is why — based on historical, systematic, and practical theology — faith works better than faithfulness or allegiance for addressing the first two concerns raised.

A living, daring confidence in God’s grace: The Reformers on Faith

One of the most common criticisms of the pistis-as-faithfulness / allegiance folks is the old chestnut of easy believism. Again — not naming names, merely citing ideas — let’s hear from one of our present day discipleship gurus his complaint about how the gospel is being presented:

Today, this message is typically presented as the story of God’s amazing love, unmerited grace, and free offer of eternal life. Well-meaning preachers tell us that by accepting Jesus as our personal Savior and praying a simple prayer, we can be “saved” and go to heaven. All that’s necessary to seal this salvation deal is to believe Jesus is the Son of God and that He died for our sins and rose again. This message is often called the “good news of Jesus Christ” or the “gospel of salvation.”

Are there churches, Christian camps, youth rallies and the like where the gospel is presented this crassly? Sadly, yes. I without hesitation will join with team faithfulness / allegiance in saying: My brethren, these things ought not so to be (James 3:10 KJV).

But this tragic state of affairs is no justification for trying to revise the lexicon, either.

Ultimately, none of this is a new problem. Both the easy profession of faith; and the charge that salvation sola fide (“through faith alone”) is the leading cause of such a nominal faith; are but recycled bugbears that have been a source of consternation in the Christian faith from the beginning.

Now, there are primarily two reasons why this is so:

1. The devil doesn’t come up with new ideas. It’s kind of like how every new heresy is just some old one remixed and rebranded. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example, are just the old Arians with extra accessories. The fact is, Satan unleashed about five or six rather tedious heresies in the Church’s salad days, [3] and hasn’t managed to come up with any new or interesting ones since. Note: I’m not saying that our faithfulness / allegiance partisans are heretics. Not every wrong idea stoops to the level of heresy. I am saying that they’re retreading an old detour the enemy set in ages past, and it is disheartening to find ourselves here again. Alas.
2. Chronological snobbery is a heck of a drug. And unfortunately, since modern popular Christianity in America is almost entirely divorced from confessional standards and the ancient ecumenical Creeds; and we likewise don’t read old books; we lack the historical awareness necessary for critical insight our present moment. As C.S. Lewis wryly admonished in his essay “On the Reading of Old Books”: If you join at eleven o’clock a conversation which began at eight you will often not see the real bearing of what is said. Remarks which seem to you very ordinary will produce laughter or irritation and you will not see why—the reason, of course, being that the earlier stages of the conversation have given them a special point. In the same way sentences in a modern book which look quite ordinary may be directed at some other book; in this way you may be led to accept what you would have indignantly rejected if you knew its real significance. Too many involved in current conversations are those Lewis characterized as joining a conversation at eleven o’clock which began at eight o’clock. They may even know enough to see that the current arguments about how pistis-words should be translated are directed at the Protestant Reformation. But what they don’t know is what the Protestant Reformers meant by sola fide; what they were responding to; and what was at stake in the controversies of their time. In short, many are developing strong opinions about the matter without the prerequisite historical awareness that would qualify them to make a righteous judgment.

Point is, this faith vs. faithfulness debate is really just another iteration of an argument that’s about as old as Christianity itself. When St. Paul’s opponents challenged him, asking: So are we doing away with the law by this faith? (Romans‬ ‭3‬:‭31‬ ‭EHV‬‬); what you’re hearing there is essentially the author above’s complaint: All that’s necessary to seal this salvation deal is to believe Jesus is the Son of God and that He died for our sins and rose again.

While that author wants to frame it in the crassest, most transactional language possible, he’s bumping up against what St. Paul actually taught, which was: if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved (Romans‬ ‭10‬:‭9‬ ‭ESV‬‬). Don’t you just hate it when pesky Scriptures get in the way of your solid point?

The point is, the pistis-as-allegiance / faithfulness party downgrades faith to mere mental assent, thereby creating the strawiest of strawmen so they can then proudly announce: You see, faith is not enough!

But again, this is nothing new. They’re just going through the same motions Martin Luther lit into in the quote that opened this post: When they see that no improvement of life and no good works follow—although they can hear and say much about faith—they fall into the error of saying, “Faith is not enough; one must do works in order to be righteous and be saved.” This is due to the fact that when they hear the gospel, they get busy and by their own powers create an idea in their heart which says, “I believe”; they take this then to be a true faith.

Notice the diagnosis Luther presented. The problem is not with faith, or with how the Gospel is given them. The problem is that what they call faith is merely an idea in their heart that they have by their own powers created.

In short, not one of the Reformers would have classified pistis as mental assent. When they declared that salvation comes to us sola fide, they did not mean “by a head nod and sinner’s prayer alone.”

Luther, for instance, declared:

Faith, however, is a divine work in us which changes us and makes us to be born anew of God … and makes us altogether different … in heart and spirit and mind and powers; and it brings with it the Holy Spirit.

For Luther and the other Reformers, coming to faith is never merely a personal decision reached when one has been persuaded by the technique of the preacher.

Rather, the coming-to-life of faith in the heart of a sinner is the work of God, given through the preaching of the Gospel. It is an inner resurrection. It’s Ezekiel 36:26-27: God removing the heart of stone, and replacing it with a heart of flesh — a heart that feels more acutely and has new and better desires. With this new heart comes the Holy Spirit, who makes the believer actually able to begin obeying God’s commands — which their new heart actually wants to obey! Thus we read in Philippians 2:13: for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure (ESV‬‬).

Again, Luther:

Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that the believer would stake his life on it a thousand times … And this is the work which the Holy Spirit performs in faith.

Calvin agrees, though as was his custom he was less boisterous than Luther: Faith rests not on bare knowledge but on a heartfelt trust, by which we securely repose in God’s mercy.

Luther and Calvin here speak of the passive dimension of faith, which believes, trusts, rests. We shall see the active dimension of faith in our third point below.

Now, in history — in the centuries following the Reformation — yes, some did downgrade faith to mentally assenting to propositions. The seventeenth century Reformed scholastic Francis Turretin pointed out this error, noting:

As to the acts, they are explained by theologians in different ways … Some make only one, namely assent or persuasion. Others acknowledge only two — knowledge and assent … [S]ome place equally in the intellect and the will; others … principally in the will … The more common and truer opinion recognizes three acts in faith: knowledge, assent, trust (noticiam, assensum, fiduciam).

We will explore these three aspects or “acts” of faith — noticia, assensus, and fiducia —in our next point. For now it suffices to see that post-Reformational theologians noticed that faith had been downgraded to mental assent in some quarters, and were prepared to address the error.

But there also arose in those days another group who saw the problem of defining faith merely as assent; and met that error with their own error. First out of German Lutheranism arose the Pietists. And then, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in North America, you see the development of Revivalism, especially with the advent of the Second Great Awakening.

The German Pietists and American Revivalists both committed a major blunder by moving the emphasis of faith from its object (Christ and His work); to the subject (the believer’s personal choosing of Christ, and their works that followed). The act of trusting was stressed over the object of faith.

The faith of Luther and his heirs was a work of God upon man; the “faith” of the Pietists and the Revivalists is a work of man for God. The result? First, the Pietists and Revivalists came to trust in their own faith more than they trusted in Christ. Then, they began to trust their own works more than they trusted Christ’s work for them.

We are still living with this frustrating legacy today. Indeed, the developments we see in Pietism and Revivalism are now essentially mainstream “evangelical” culture in North America and Europe. The faithfulness / allegiance redefinition of pistis is just another expression of the old Pietism.

Noticia, Assensus, and Fiducia: Faith as Defined in the Reformed Confessions

So let us turn our attention again to Turretin’s three aspects or “acts” of faith: knowledge (noticia), assent (assensus), and trust (fiducia). Understanding justifying pistis as the coming together of these three ingredients will help us see what faith was understood to be among the Reformers and post-Reformation orthodoxy.

According to Turretin, the first [act of faith] is the act of knowledge (noticia) — of all things to be believed by us, whether pertaining to our misery [4] or to the grace of God. A person must know what God says about their condemnation and its only remedy in Christ. St. Paul speaks of this when he asks: how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? (Romans 10:14 ESV)

The second act [of faith], according to Turretin, is theoretical assent (assensus), by which we receive as true and divine what we know … The assent of faith indeed has firmness and certainty because founded upon the divine and infallible word. In short, we must believe that what God says is true. I must assent that God is true when He says that I am a helpless sinner, and Christ is the only remedy for the sinner.

And then, says Turretin: The third act is fiducial and practical assent … by which we judge the gospel to be not only true, but also good and therefore most worthy of our love and desire; also the promises of grace to be most certain concerning the remission of sins and bestowal of salvation upon all believers and penitents and so also upon me if I shall believe and repent. So fiducia means believing the facts and promises of the Gospel are true in my case, so that I turn to Christ in faith and repentance.

When we, like Abraham are fully convinced that God [is] able to do what he had promised (Romans 4:21 ESV), this is fiducia. When we are able to draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water (Hebrews 10:22 ESV), this is a picture of fiducia at work.

We see a wonderful picture of assensus and fiducia together in Hebrews 11:6: And without faith it is impossible to please God. Indeed, it is necessary for the one who approaches God to believe that he exists [assensus] and that he rewards those who seek him [fiducia] (EHV).

The big idea is simply this: We already have a biblically-grounded definition of pistis that addresses the error of faith-as-mental-assent-alone. There’s no good, godly reason to remove this ancient landmark just because it’s old. The orthodox doctrines of the Trinity and the two natures of Christ are older still, but we dare not jettison those!

There’s no need to revise the historical grammar of Christianity. And there’s no reason to collapse works into faith so that the Gospel is muddled.

We see these categories made explicit in several of the Reformational confessions of faith.

The Heidelberg Catechism (1536, Germany)

Q. 21: What is true faith?
A. True faith is not only a knowledge [noticia] and conviction that everything God reveals in His Word is true [assensus]; it is also a deep-rooted assurance, created in me by the Holy Spirit through the gospel that, out of sheer grace earned for us by Christ, not only others, but I too [fiducia]; have had my sins forgiven, have been made forever right with God, and have been granted salvation.

From the Second Helvetic Confession, ch. 16 (1566, Switzerland)

Christian faith is not an opinion or human persuasion, but a sure trust, [fiducia] and an evident and steadfast assent of the mind; [assensus] it is a most sure comprehension of the truth of God, set forth in the Scriptures and in the Apostles’ Creed; [noticia] yea, and of God himself, the chief blessedness; and especially of God’s promise, and of Christ, who is the consummation of all the promises.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism (1648, England)

Q. 86: What is faith in Jesus Christ?
A. Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive [assensus] and rest upon him alone for salvation, [fiducia] as he is offered to us in the gospel [noticia].

What we see in all these confessions, spanning more than a century, is that they all define faith as noticia, assensus, and fiducia. None of them countenance salvation by assensus alone. Notice particularly that, even where the Second Helvetic Confession highlights assensus, it places important qualifiers on it, calling it an evident and steadfast assent of the mind. There’s a public dimension to it (evident); and it’s not a one-time profession, but perseveres and endures (steadfast).

Note as well the covenantal assumptions expressed in these confessions. Faith receives and rests upon Christ as he is offered to us [the Church] in the Gospel; for Christ … is the consummation of all the promises. Saving faith receives the promises of Christ as fulfilled in the Gospel — under the covenant of grace. And it does so publicly and steadfastly.

So when we see how the post-Reformation theologians actually articulated faith, it is obvious that they did not mean by it a mere mental assent. It is a matter of the intellect, the will, and the affections. Nor did they conceive of faith as a one-time act, but a steadfast and evident trust that rests in Christ.

By the way, what the Westminster Shorter calls resting upon Christ alone for salvation, could also be expressed as abiding in Christ. As in: I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing (John‬ ‭15‬:‭5‬ ‭ESV‬‬).

Abiding in Christ by faith produces good fruit: virtue, obedience, and good works. This is the outward expression of faith, and that’s what we’ll be looking at in the next section, as we move from historic and systematic theology; to practical or applied theology.

Cor meum tibi offero, Domine, prompte et sincere: Fruitful faith in Luther and Calvin

One really helpful aspect of Reformational theology is that it’s meant to be eminently practical. It’s not speculative or esoteric. While later post-Reformation scholastics — such as Turretin who we surveyed above — do analyze faith, for example, as a more abstract idea or concept; [5] those early Reformers like Luther and Calvin were intentionally doing theology for real life.

Contrary to popular modern mythology, the theology of the Reformation did not move man inward. Rather, it called believers to look outside themselves to Christ as all of their wisdom, righteousness, holiness and redemption (1 Corinthians 1:30). This move outward — as opposed to the introspective religious life of monks and nuns — also drove new assumptions about community; what is sacred and what is secular; and the individual’s place in serving and enjoying the community.

If salvation is sola gratia, sola fide, solus Christus — by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone — then, as Luther’s doctrine of social ethics is often summed up: God does not need my good works, but my neighbor does.

Rather than creating a the proverbial cold individualism, the Reformation turned the hearts of the people towards their neighbors. This outward turn was described by a renewed doctrine of vocation in which the dividing wall between the sacred and secular was torn down. The farmer, the wife and mother, the shoemaker, the artist — they all served in the universal priesthood of believers, with God loving their neighbor and tending to creation through their work. Good works are any done in faith, and that includes tilling the soil to feed our neighbors, or writing songs to delight and edify them.

This is what Luther was talking about when he wrote:

O it is a living, busy, active, mighty thing, this faith. It is impossible for it not to be doing good works incessantly. It does not ask whether good works are to be done, but before the question is asked, it has already done them, and is constantly doing them. Whoever does not do such works, however, is an unbeliever. He gropes and looks around for faith and good works, but knows neither what faith is nor what good works are.

Luther was picturing, for example, the ordinary Christian farmer and his wife, getting up and going about their daily work, loving one another and providing for their family. Luther calls their ordinary works good because they are done in faith. The farmer and his wife have already done a dozen good works before sunrise! They don’t have to go around looking for good to be doing.

There is no room for doubt regarding the allegiance of Luther’s Christian farmer, mother, cobbler, or greengrocer whose faithfulness one could see lived out in ordinary, unremarkable ways. Yet these ordinary Christians would never mistake the faith that has saved them and liberated them to love and serve their neighbors without anxiety or calculation for the faithfulness it produced in them.

Faith is God’s gift that has saved them (Ephesians 2:8-9). Faithfulness is their reasonable service in view of God’s mercies (Romans 12:1).

Calvin, meanwhile, had a motto he lived by — a prayer he often prayed: Cor meum tibi offero, Domine, prompte et sincere; that is, I offer my heart to thee, O Lord, promptly and sincerely.

These weren’t just pretty but empty words for him. It was practical theology that made a real difference in how he lived. Once, when faced with a decision that his flesh dreaded, but faithfulness to his vocation demanded, he wrote to a friend: But when I remember that I am not my own, I offer up my heart, presented as a sacrifice to the Lord . . . Therefore I submit my will and my affections, subdued and held-fast, to the obedience of God.

For Calvin too, then, faith produced in him the willingness to submit his will and affections to God in obedience. But he doesn’t conflate faith with obedience in the way those who want to make pistis-words mean faithfulness or allegiance do.

For example, pay close attention to his comments on Hebrews 11, where he says faith renders obedience to God, for it attempts and undertakes nothing, but what is according to the rule of God’s word, – and it relies on God’s promises, and thus it gains the value and worth which belongs to works from his grace alone.

Like Luther, Calvin understood faith as a living thing, which renders obedience and receives blessings. But faith is not the obedience rendered. Faith is not works, but is the instrument by which our works are sanctified, because faith relies upon the promises of God.

This is not mere semantics. Hebrews 11:1 famously declares: Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews‬ ‭11‬:‭1‬ ‭NKJV‬‬). Faith has to do with things hoped for but as yet not seen. And elsewhere we read: who hopes for what he already sees? (Romans 8:24 EHV) Yet faithfulness and allegiance — as those who want to rewrite the vocabulary of the Christian religion would define them — are concerned with what is seen, that is, with external and observable works.

Were we to understand faithfulness or allegiance merely as not falling into apostasy, [6] they would still be inadequate glosses for pistis-words, because they would be too weak.

But even this is not what proponents of pistis-as-allegiance / faithfulness mean by it. A leading champion — once more, ideas matter more than personalities — defines pistis-as-allegiance these ways:

Faith cannot be reduced to mental assent or trust; it is embodied fidelity—a life that confesses Jesus’s kingship through deeds of mercy, justice, generosity, sexual purity, and love of neighbor.

Here the writer says faith [pistis] is embodied fidelity. Elsewhere they write more about what so-called embodied fidelity looks like:

Allegiance [note again, this writer advocates that pistis is allegiance rather than faith-as-trust, JM] is embodied through our actions, by obeying Jesus’s commands, participating in the church’s mission, and by persevering in love.

Now don’t you see what they’ve done? Try fitting this into a passage like Ephesians 2:8-9. It makes nonsense not just out of the passage, but out of the Gospel itself.

For by grace you have been saved through deeds of mercy, obeying Jesus’ commands, participation in the church’s mission, and — don’t forget! — sexual purity. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

And though the writer states that: Allegiance does not mean perfect obedience or earning salvation; it’s hard to make sense of that claim. If pistis = allegiance, and allegiance = embodied fidelity, and embodied fidelity = obedience to Jesus’ commands, sexual purity, and participation in the church’s mission … then yes, it absolutely means “earning your salvation.” It means salvation is by works, or through some jambalaya of grace – faith – works that no one can articulate the recipe for.

It makes no difference that the writer insists that allegiance ≠ perfect obedience. Why? Again — because I can never be sure I’ve been obedient enough or done enough works.

Again, it’s important to note the dramatic shift in perspective that occurs when we redefine pistis as allegiance or faithfulness.

Faith looks ever outside of ourselves, keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, who is the author of our faith and the one who brings it to its goal (Hebrews 12:2 EHV). Faithfulness or allegiance keeps our attention fixated on ourselves, our performance, and our affections.

Then we are ever left unable to avoid letting our left hand know what the right is doing (Matthew 6:3). Why so? Because we are self-conscious about our faithful allegiance. So we are not able to simply love the neighbor in front of us. We shall always be framing their need in light of our own duty, as our acts of allegiance play some (unquantifiable to us) role in whether we are saved or damned.

Pistis-as-faith has both a passive and an active dimension.

Faith is passive as it receives the saving grace of God: For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God (Ephesians‬ ‭2‬:‭8‬ ‭ESV‬‬). Through faith means faith is the vessel, the empty hand that receives Christ as the gift of God.

But faith is active in that it is living, and its life kindles reverence for God and stokes affection for our neighbors. This is why over and over again Hebrews says: By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice … By faith Noah … constructed an ark for the saving of his household … By faith Abraham obeyed, etc (Hebrews 11:4, 7-8 ESV). Faith is not their offerings, works, or obedience; but what drives and enables them. Thus it says they did these outward acts by faith.

The Reformers, ever practical theologians, would have said: We are saved through faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone. For faith comes with the Holy Spirit. Faith turns us to repentance. And Faith brings her sisters Hope and Love with her. Faith works through love, and those works demonstrate that faith is truly alive in us (Galatians 5:6; James 2:18).

Ultimately then, redefining pistis as faithfulness or allegiance robs it of its power, its loveliness, and its versatility. It turns our eyes from Christ — faith’s author and finisher — to our own doings. Faith is a venerable old cathedral of a word; allegiance is by comparison a dismal brutalist office building: utilitarian and impersonal.

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[1] And again, the most frustrating aspect of the pistis-as-allegiance angle is they don’t tell you how much faithfulness or what quality of allegiance is necessary to have assurance that you will stand justified before the Lord on the last day. As I pointed out in the last installment, this is because it’s literally impossible. That’s why I insist that Gospel clarity is the greatest pastoral kindness. Pistis-as-allegiance cannot give the troubled soul blessed assurance. It can only say, finally: You are not eternally secure til you’re securely in eternity. Which is essentially the soul-care equivalent of telling the needy: “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed (James‬ ‭2‬:‭16‬ ‭RSV‬‬).

[2] It is true that, as St. Paul said: If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied (1 Corinthians‬ ‭15‬:‭19‬ ‭ESV‬‬). It is equally true that we have a pitifully degraded message unworthy of the name “Gospel” if we’re unable to say without hesitation, asterisk, or remainder to the troubled soul: There is therefore [because of Christ’s faithfulness; His works and merit, not ours] now [right now and at final judgment!] no condemnation [none!] for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans‬ ‭8‬:‭1‬ ‭ESV‬‬).

[3] Here I am using the phrase according to its original meaning from Shakespeare, when Cleopatra mentions her “salad days, when I was green in judgment.” In other words, when she was young and inexperienced.

[4] When the Reformed and post-Reformational theologians use the term misery, they specifically mean our awareness that we are lost sinners and unable to rescue ourselves. It is the cry arising from the soul in Romans 7:24: What a miserable wretch I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? (EHV)

[5] And this is also necessary, worthwhile, and useful work. Doctrine needs to be systematized and written down. Why? Because that’s ultimately what’s going to give us the boundaries and the clarity we need for spiritual formation and flourishing. The Wild West is no place for forming the soul. We cannot live in tohu wa-bohu, where things are without form and void, and darkness [remains] over the face of the deep (Genesis 1:2 ESV). God creates boundaries and systems so that life can come forth and thrive. The systematic theologian is doing something similar, in service to the practical if they have done their job well.

[6] And this would be a valid understanding if we think about what these words signify in normal English discourse. When we say someone is a faithful husband or wife, we mean they are not guilty of adultery or abandonment. Likewise, my allegiance to my nation means I will not desert or defect or betray her to her enemies. There are things I could do or leave undone — serious crimes, lack of civic engagement — that might make me an irresponsible citizen, but these wouldn’t mean that I had forfeited my allegiance or been unfaithful to my country. But our pistis-as-allegiance / faithfulness friends don’t really have helpful categories for these lesser derelictions. You know what does though? Historic confessions with a Reformational definition of pistis-as-faith. For example, chapter 18, section 4 of the Westminster Confession of Faith, (1647) “Of Assurance of Grace and Salvation,” says:

True believers may have the assurance of their salvation divers ways shaken, diminished, and intermitted; as, by negligence in preserving of it, by falling into some special sin which wounds the conscience and grieves the Spirit; by some sudden or vehement temptation, by God’s withdrawing the light of his countenance, and suffering even such as fear Him to walk in darkness and to have no light:[1] yet are they never so utterly destitute of that seed of God, and life of faith, that love of Christ and the brethren, that sincerity of heart, and conscience of duty, out of which, by the operation of the Spirit, this assurance may, in due time, be revived;[2] and by the which, in the mean time, they are supported from utter despair.[3]

[1] Psalms 31:22; 51:8, 12, 14; 77:1-10; Ephesians 4:30-31 [2] Luke 22:32; 1 John 3:9 [3] Isaiah 54:7-14; Jeremiah 32:40; Micah 7:7-9; 2 Corinthians 4:8-10