(Part Seven) Personal Faith in Christ Alone: The Forgotten Reformation “Sola” by Ron Lowe
(reflections on our discussion of Francis Schaeffer’s True Spirituality - Dead Theologians Society, June 11, 2008)

In our discussion of Schaeffer’s chapter on salvation, someone brought up some of the “solas” that defined key biblical teaching addressed by the Protestant Reformers. Sola gratia, sola fide, sola scriptura – we are saved by grace alone, though faith alone and our ultimate authority for doctrine and discipleship is scripture alone.

We shouldn’t leave out sola Christos. The object of the faith by which we are saved is Christ alone. Again, faith is personal – it is directed at the trustworthiness of a person, Jesus Christ. This is what keeps us from having faith in faith itself, or in a resume of faith. Luther emphasized that the content of faith (Christ’s redemptive work) is far more important than the greatness or intensity of our faith. Resting on the greatness of God – seen most clearly in Christ’s gracious work in our behalf – is what unites us as believers.

I have noticed and I am glad that Schaeffer repeatedly wrote in terms of our personal relationship with Christ as the determinative factor for sound doctrine and genuine piety.

When someone mentioned the role of grace in salvation, I thumbed through the chapter and didn’t notice any discussion of the gracious nature of our justification. He discussed the centrality of Christ’s work in salvation. He discussed some key features in the order of salvation (justification, sanctification, glorification). But the fact that these are demonstrations of God’s grace is foundational for understanding salvation. If I missed it, I apologize. If he did omit it, that would be a glaring oversight.

Of course you can’t say everything when you try to say anything. And if you try, you’ll never say anything, because you’ll always be saying something else. That was Richard Pratt’s way of admonishing us not to over-qualify propositional truth.

In Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity, Mark Noll points out the lamentable fragmentation of the church that ensued in the wake of the 16th century Reformation. He rightly shows that several reformers engaged in extensive attempts to reconcile with Rome, but because agreement about several foundational, gospel convictions, shared by most Protestants, could not be reached, reconciliation did not occur.

Noll offers this excellent summary of the common convictions which united the various branches of Protestantism in its infancy.


“The first generation of Protestants spoke with nearly one voice in trying to answer the foundational questions that had been so long neglected by the hierarchy of the church What must I do to be saved? The Protestant answer was to trust by faith in the free grace of God active for the justification of sinners in the work of Jesus Christ. Where can I find secure religious authority? The Protestant answer was the Bible as the sole final authority worthy of implicit trust. How should the church's spiritual interests be balanced by the need to live in the world? With not quite as much unanimity as on the preceding two questions, Protestant answers nevertheless clustered around the principle that the church was fundamentally a fellowship of priests, with all believers being called to seek God through the mediation of Christ and all believers called to act as Christ's agents in the world. (What the Protestants rejected was a restricted priesthood as well as the conviction that monastic life offered a higher form of spiritual existence than ordinary life in the world. What they offered was a theory of spiritual democracy, though also usually with considerable restrictions of their own as to who could preach and administer the sacraments.)”

If we could only regain that level of doctrinal unity …

“What you have received as heritage, take now as task and make it your own.” – Goethe