faith – Good Question

Are we saved simply by believing, or are there works we need to demonstrate?

Q. Jesus says near the end of the Sermon on the Mount, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’”

The point of the passage seems to be that those who are rejected were trusting in their works since the justifications they bring to Jesus are the things they did in His name—they weren’t trusting in what He did for them. If that is truly the point, is it enough to simply understand intellectually what Jesus did and believe that we are saved by grace as an unearned gift ? It seems that the Bible kind of says that one is saved solely on an intellectual basis, but at the same time that one isn’t truly saved unless one demonstrates works as well. How do you read that?

That passage from the Sermon on the Mount might not be the best one to use in order to address your question, because at least as I see it, the issue there isn’t believing vs. works. The issue is trying to use Jesus’ name in exorcisms or prophecies as if it were some kind of magic word, without being a committed follower of Jesus personally–like the sons of Sceva we read about in Acts who were trying to cast out demons by saying, “In the name of the Jesus whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.” (Note that the statement you quote comes in the section of the Sermon on the Mount that begins with Jesus saying, “Watch out for false prophets.”)

I think a better way to address your concern would be to compare and contrast the biblical perspectives you summarized at the end of your question: either that salvation comes by grace through faith, apart from works, or else that some kind of works are needed. For example, Paul writes in Ephesians, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” But James writes, seemingly contradictorily, that “a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.”

However, we can tell that Paul and James really aren’t contradicting one another by the way they both appeal to the biblical statement that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”

In Romans Paul appeals to the fact that this was said of Abraham before he was circumcised. Thus he didn’t have to do any kind of works (such as being circumcised or anything else) in order to earn righteousness. His salvation was a gift that came by faith.

But James appeals to the very same statement to argue that we would never know that Abraham had genuinely saving faith unless he did something to demonstrate it. That’s why James says that “Abraham was justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar”–not justified in the sense of being made righteous, but in the sense of being shown to be righteous. Only a person who was truly trusting God in faith would have obeyed such a difficult command.

And so if we claim to have been saved by trusting and believing in what Jesus did for us, we should reasonably expect that salvation to manifest itself in “works,” not things we do to earn or secure our salvation, but things that flow naturally from it: deeds of obedience, consecration, sacrifice, and service. These, both Paul and James would agree, are the signs of true faith.

Does doing science make a person less likely to believe in God?

Q. It would be difficult to expect scientists to employ anything other than “methodological naturalism” (a commitment to work only from empirical data) in their work. If they didn’t, for every attempt to explain natural phenomena, they would have to add the possibility of supernatural causation or involvement, which would definitely be unproductive. But do you think that methodical naturalism in any sense encourages “metaphysical naturalism” (the presupposition that there is no supernatural, and that natural causation can explain everything)?

This is the second part of a detailed question that I’ve posted in its full form here. (The terms “methodological naturalism” and “metaphysical naturalism” come from a book by Brian Alters.)

In response to this part of the question, I’d have to say no, I don’t believe that the discipline of working only from observable, measurable data and seeking the most reasonable explanation for one’s observations necessarily encourages disbelief in the supernatural. I can imagine a scientist who was also a person of faith saying, “Let’s see how much we can account for this way,” but still expecting that in the end there would be many things that could only be regarded with reverent wonder.

The lives of scientists throughout the centuries who have also been people of deep faith provide abundant anecdotal evidence that methodological naturalism does not inevitably lead to metaphysical naturalism. Such scientists include Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, Newton, Linnaeus, Faraday, Mendel, Pasteur, and, more recently, Francis Collins of the Human Genome Project. Numerous further examples could be given. Many of these scientists have written about the compatibility of faith with scientific endeavor. (See, for example, Collins’ book The Language of God.)

Along those lines, in my book Paradigms on Pilgrimage, co-authored with Stephen J. Godfrey (himself a widely published scientific researcher), I cite the example of King Solomon, who was noted for his natural-scientific investigations, and paraphrase one of his proverbs this way: “God has hidden countless fascinating and wonderful things in his creation, and he wants us to delight in discovering them.” I go on to say that “when we do, we bring him pleasure by fulfilling his purposes. So all those who are called to scientific enterprise should pursue that calling without fear or doubt, but rather with joy and enthusiasm.”

In other words, we can adopt the discipline of “methodological naturalism” for the purposes of science without worrying that it will lead to “metaphysical naturalism.”

(The entire text of Paradigms on Pilgrimage is now available free online.)

Sir Isaac Newton, scientist and believer (portrait by Godfrey Kneller, 1689, courtesy Wikipedia)

Is it fair for Jesus to bless those who believe without seeing when this is so hard for some people?

Q. “Blessed are those who believe but do not see.” Some people have a very hard time with this.

I can understand why you say that. People tend to be oriented towards one of the senses as their chief means of acquiring information and making sense of the world. We speak of people as being “visually oriented,” or as “auditory learners,” etc.

For a visually oriented person, seeing literally is believing. The best way to get them to understand something is to show them. The world around them registers vividly in pictures in their minds, and that’s how they grasp things and make coherence of them. So it can be discouraging for such a person to encounter biblical statements such as, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

However, we need to appreciate that when Jesus said this to Thomas after inviting him to touch the wounds in his hands and side (was Thomas actually a tactile learner?), Jesus was actually observing that Thomas had the privilege of being an eyewitness to his life, ministry, death and especially resurrection. Everyone afterwards would have to believe in these things based on the testimony of those who had witnessed them. And so Jesus pronounces a blessing on all who believe in the witness of His chosen messengers.

Jesus isn’t privileging one way of knowing over another. In fact, in the Bible we often see God “speaking the language” of visually oriented people to help them believe and obey. He told Abraham, for example, to look up in the sky and count the stars, because that’s how many descendants he would have. Many of Jesus’ parables are actually vivid word pictures, like the ones about a camel going through the eye of a needle or a tiny mustard seed growing into a great tree. You really need to visualize these to “get” them. So God is an equal-opportunity communicator!

I was struck by this distinction between the visual and auditory styles when I was working on the Isaiah study guide. Some people believe the words of a single prophet are found throughout the whole book of Isaiah, while others who are equally committed to the inspiration and authority of the Bible as the word of God believe that a second prophet speaks later in the book. In the guide I explain the reasons for holding these different understandings.

One reason why many people believe there are two prophets is that in the first part of the book, God communicates with the prophet primarily through visual means, including an amazing vision of heavenly worship that becomes his calling. For his part, this prophet communicates with the people largely by acting out “signs” and even by putting up placards.

In the second part of the book, however, God communicates with the prophet primarily through speaking. This prophet is called when he hears and answers a voice. He later describes how God speaks to him as he awakens each morning.

This illustrated for me how God graciously adapts his communication to each one of us, “speaking our language” to help us understand who he is and how we can follow him. God knows that for many of us, seeing is believing. So he shows us things visually and then expects us to trust and obey him in light of those things—that’s where faith comes in.

So I’d encourage you to remember times when God has spoken to you through visual means. When have you experienced God in the beauty of creation? What objects has God brought into your life that speak of his love and care? What things have you observed that have served ever since as mini-parables about some aspect of God and his ways?

I think that if you reflect on experiences like these, you’ll find that you truly have been blessed, through what you’ve seen.