The Lutheran Syllogism of Salvation
Major Premise: Christ told me*, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Minor Premise: Christ never lies but only tells the truth.
Conclusion: I am baptized (that is, I have new life in Christ).
*Christ speaks through the mouth of the called pastor.
Result of Syllogism:
1. There are no conditions established about what we are required to decide or believe in order to ensure the promise applies to me.
2. The minor premise isn’t about our faith, but about the truth of Christ.
3. Whereas the Protestant syllogism required us to believe that we believed, the Lutheran system calls us to believe that what God says is true.
4. The Lutheran need: believe the Word of Christ.
Luther’s Teaching:
Luther taught that fundamentally faith says, “God speaks truth.” Only after this did faith say, “I believe.” (So Calvin’s syllogism isn’t necessarily wrong, it’s just misplaced – it shouldn’t be fundamental, but secondary.) According to Luther, faith may say, “My faith is weak” or “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief,” but faith, if it is to remain faith, cannot deny the truth of God’s Word. In short, faith does not rely on faith; faith relies on the Word.
End Result: sola fide doesn’t mean we rely on our faith; it means we rely on the truth of God’s Word.
In Luther’s words, “Whoever allows himself to be baptized on the strength of his faith, is not only uncertain [because he doesn’t know for certain whether he believes], but also an idolater who denies Christ. For he trusts in and builds on something of his own, namely a gift which he has from God [that is, faith], and not on God’s Word alone.”
Nota Bene:
Eternal salvation requires the gift of persevering in the faith and Luther (along with Calvin and others) did not suggest this gift was given in Baptism – Baptism isn’t a magical, free ticket, but that’s for another post.
4 comments:
Your two-part series was really helpful for me.
I've been reading lately about the KK principle in epistemology: if you know x, then you know that you know x. The premise that Calvin seems to be relying on (in your formulation) is very similar. In order to believe x, you have to know that you believe x.
Lutherans are standing on firm ground, I think, in denying Calvin's principle. Most epistemologist think that the KK principle is false and I expect that Calvin's might be false for similar reasons.
Do you think that the Lutheran epistemology requires a lack of knowledge that you don't believe? In other words, is the following reasoning problematic (because of the addition of Minor Premise 2)?
Major Premise: Christ told me*, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Minor Premise 1: Christ never lies but only tells the truth.
Minor Premise 2: I know that I do not believe (I've converted to being an atheist, say).
Conclusion: I am baptized (that is, I have new life in Christ).
This is interesting stuff. =)
I’m still trying to wrap my brain around not knowing you don’t believe. I’ll give this my best and if I totally miss your question, throw the ball again and I’ll keep swinging.
Lutheran epistemology teaches that we (the baptized) do know we don’t believe – it’s an everyday thing. When we look inward, we see a sinner and unbeliever who constantly rebels against our Creator. Yet, in Christ, we are saints – it’s the sinner/saint thing. So, do the baptized know they believe and don’t believe? I think the answer is yes. So, the struggle for the baptized is to trust that God is true even when we struggle with unbelief inside. Does that make sense? I guess the short of it is: Is God trustworthy? Are His promises/Gospel trustworthy? I’m not sure anything other questions really matters. If you answer “yes,” then you’ve already answered whether you believe.
I like that response: in an important sense, none of us believe the Gospel (the sinner part). But God gives us faith that covers over our lack of faith (the saint part).
The Lutheran strategy is to just keep insisting that the question "do I believe?" is the wrong question to be asking.
John Piper makes a similar point in one of his books I was reading recently: sometimes, in the depths of depression especially, a Christian will become convinced that he does not have faith. But he often still does.
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