Seminary: Day 8

Day 8

　

AP: "I believe; I believe. It’s silly, but I believe." These are the well-known words spoken by young Susan Walker in the popular Christmas movie Miracle on 34th Street (1947). They provide just one example of how faith is commonly portrayed in our culture as a blind leap in the dark—believing for no reason at all. Fideism is belief without reasons. But Biblical faith is not fideism.

　

Faith, according to the Bible, is not irrational or "silly." It is not a blind commitment or an arbitrary feeling of closeness to God. What is faith then? Christianity has historically defined saving faith using 3 terms: notitia, assensus, fiducia. Notitia signifies that saving faith believes something - it has an intellectual content. Assensus refers to the intellectual conviction that the knowledge one possesses is factually true and personally beneficial. The third element is fiducia, or trust. Without this, "faith" is purely an intellectual enterprise - like the demons who know God exists, yet shudder at the thought. They refuse to trust him because they hate him. Fiducia is a personal trust in Christ as he is offered in the gospel and a complete reliance upon Him for salvation.

　

Certain opponents of Christianity confuse fideism with true faith, like Richard Dawkins who asserts that faith stifles critical thinking. Fideists believe because they believe, but the Christian fait rests on facts of history, and it is a robust worldview able to withstand questions from honest seekers.

　

CH: Martin Luther comes to disagree with the Roman Catholic view of the mass, but still sees a real presence of whole Christ in the elements. He keys in on the phrase "Hoc est corpus deum" where Christ says "This is my body." Zwingli believes that communion is a memorial, keying in on the phrase "Do this in remembrance of me." Because of Luther's dealings with radicals like Karlstadt, who also believed in a symbolic view of the elements, he associates anyone whose view is symbolic with radicalism, even going so far to say that a symbolic view is non-Christian. Calvin comes along and gives another view of communion. He says that parts of the Lord's supper are a mystery and that we must resist the urge to go beyond what Scripture says - at those points, we kneel in worship. The Lord is truly present in the Lord's supper, but it is not a physical presence. We receive the body and blood not because Christ is in the elements, but because we are united with him in heaven. These sacraments are "the visible word" and are communicated through the senses in an olfactory way. God has accommodated us in communicating through language in the Word and in the sacrament through the senses. Many years later when Luther hears of Calvin's view, he admits that had Calvin been present in his disagreement with Zwingli, they probably could have come together.