Justified by Faith Alone E-Book

R. C. Sproul

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 52

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

Luther said that the doctrine of justification by faith alone is "the article upon which the church stands or falls." R. C. Sproul follows Luther's lead in his concise and compelling work, now repackaged and republished. Justified by Faith Alone surveys the main tenets of the doctrine of justification in Roman Catholicism and evangelicalism. Sproul is careful to accurately represent Catholic beliefs and observes that while both traditions agree that faith is necessary for justification, the difference lies in whether faith alone is sufficient. He explores problems with the Catholic doctrine and champions the sole sufficiency of Christ for our salvation. Effective and engaging, Sproul does not shy away from difficult theological terms and ideas, but capably guides readers through this famous doctrinal dispute. To those who decry the doctrines of imputation and justification by faith alone as "legal fiction," Sproul warns that nothing less than the central message of the gospel is at stake.

Leseprobe

Justified by Faith Alone

Copyright © 2010 by the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals

Published by Crossway 1300 Crescent Street Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided by USA copyright law.

The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals exists to call the church, amidst our dying culture, to repent of its worldliness, to recover and confess the truth of God’s Word as did the Reformers, and to see that truth embodied in doctrine, worship, and life.

Cover design: Dual Identity inc.

Cover photo: iStock

First printing, 2010

Printed in the United States of America

Scripture taken from The Holy Bible: New International Version®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. The “NIV” and “New International Version” trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica. Use of either trademark requires the permission of Biblica.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-1556-9 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-1557-6 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-1558-3 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-2483-7

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sproul, R. C. (Robert Charles), 1939-    Justified by faith alone / R.C. Sproul.    p.    cm. — (Today’s issues)    Includes bibliographical references.    ISBN 13: 978-1-58134-078-5    ISBN 10: 1-58134-078-8 (booklet)    1. Justification—History of doctrines. 2. Faith. I. Title. BT764.2.S673         1999 234'.7—dc21                                                                          99-12506

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Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

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CONTENTS

Preface

1 What Was Wrong with Luther?

2 The Roman Catholic Doctrine

3 The Evangelical Doctrine

4 The Nature and Role of Saving Faith

5 Faith and Works

For Further Reading

PREFACE

These are not good days for the evangelical church, and anyone who steps back from what is going on for a moment to try to evaluate our life and times will understand that.

In the last few years a number of important books have been published all trying to understand what is happening, and they are saying much the same thing even though the authors come from fairly different backgrounds and are doing different work. One is by David F. Wells, a theology professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts. It is called No Place for Truth. A second is by Michael Scott Horton, vice president of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. His book is called Power Religion. The third is by the well-known pastor of Grace Community Church in California, John F. MacArthur. It is called Ashamed of the Gospel. Each of these authors is writing about the evangelical church, not the liberal church, and a person can get an idea of what each is saying from the titles alone.

Yet the subtitles are even more revealing. The subtitle of Wells’s book reads Or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? The subtitle of Horton’s book is The Selling Out of the Evangelical Church. The subtitle of John MacArthur’s work proclaims, When the Church Becomes Like the World.

When you put these together, you realize that these careful observers of the current church scene perceive that today evangelicalism is seriously off base because it has abandoned its evangelical truth-heritage. The thesis of David Wells’s book is that the evangelical church is either dead or dying as a significant religious force because it has forgotten what it stands for. Instead of trying to do God’s work in God’s way, it is trying to build a prosperous earthly kingdom with secular tools. Thus, in spite of our apparent success we have been “living in a fool’s paradise,” Wells declared in an address to the National Association of Evangelicals in 1995.

John H. Armstrong, a founding member of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, has edited a volume titled The Coming Evangelical Crisis. When he was asked not long afterwards whether he thought the crisis was still coming or is actually here, he admitted that in his judgment the crisis is already upon us.

The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is addressing this problem through seminars and conferences, radio programs, modern REFORMATION magazine, Reformation Societies, and scholarly writings. If you are troubled by the state of today’s church and are helped by this book, we invite you to contact the Alliance at 1716 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103. You can also phone us at 215-546-3696 or visit the Alliance at our Web site: www.AllianceNet.org. We would like to work with you under God “for a modern Reformation.”

James Montgomery Boice Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals

CHAPTER ONEWHAT WAS WRONG WITH LUTHER?

What was the matter with Martin Luther? some might ask. The matter with Luther was a matter of the greatest possible urgency. The matter with Luther was that sin matters. The matter with Luther was that salvation matters, ultimately and eternally. Luther felt the weight of these matters to a degree few people, if any, have felt them in human history. These issues mattered enough to Luther to compel him to stand against the authority of church and state in a lonely and often bitter contest that made him Luther contra mundum.

Following the ancient Aristotelian form-matter schema, historians have pinpointed the doctrine of justification by faith alone (sola fide) as the material cause of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. It was the chief matter under dispute. Luther considered it “the article upon which the church stands or falls.” At a personal level he understood that it was the article upon which he himself stood or fell.

Thus, since the Reformation the doctrine of sola fide has been the defining doctrine of evangelical Christianity. It has functioned as a normative doctrine because it has been understood as essential to the gospel itself. Without sola fide one does not have the gospel; and without the gospel one does not have the Christian faith. When an ecclesiastical communion rejects sola fide