Roman Catholicism is a false religion. The gospel according to Roman Catholicism is not salvific. This is a point where most Christian Pluralists will disagree with Faith Alone in Christ Alone.
When we say “Faith Alone in Christ Alone,” we refer to the school of thought that a man is saved when he believes in Christ Alone for salvation, rather than believing in his own work, or, by extension, in some combination of Christ’s work and his own works. When we say, “Christian Pluralism,” we refer to the school of thought that a man does not need to believe in Christ for salvation, but can rely on his own works instead, so long as he has some belief about Jesus. There are various camps within both of these schools of thought, but that’s the issue in a nutshell (read a more thorough and boring article here or download a full book here).
A common attack against Faith Alone in Christ Alone is that it implies that nobody was saved before the Reformation, when “Faith Alone in Christ Alone” was discovered. The gospel was not discovered in the Reformation, but that’s beside the point. Pluralists have accused our theology of saying that nobody was saved before John Nelson Darby ‘invented’ dispensationalism. Darby did not invent dispensationalism, but that’s beside the point. Other pluralists have accused our theology of being born in the 1980s so that nobody was born again over 40 years ago. This is also false history, but that’s beside the point.
The accusation, however it is packaged, is that nobody believed in Christ alone for salvation before a certain point in history (be it 40 years or 500 years), therefore it is not the sole way of salvation and we must accept Roman Catholicism as salvific. This accusation fails on several points, but here are two:
First, it assumes that Church History should be the lens through which we interpret the Gospel. A problem with this is that Church History is not a real discipline. We can study the politics of religion and the writings about Christianity through the ages, but that’s not properly “church” history. The church is this global organism of believers around the world, the vast majority of whom never wrote a book that we can study today.
Second, it assumes that everybody who was a ‘Christian’ agreed with the Roman Catholic Church’s gospel on all points at all times. This is nonsense. The Bible has been around this whole time — are Christian Pluralists trying to say that nobody noticed the Epistle to the Romans until Luther came along? Does nobody understand Ephesians 2:8–9 unless he first understands a pretribulational rapture? Did nobody read John 3:16 until Zane Hodges published a critical Majority Text? Of course people can believe without all of that!
Here is an analogy that may be helpful:
Suppose there was a magic elf with a magic bucket of paint. The elf and the paint are both invisible to the naked eye and you can only see the paint if you have a magic monocle. Once the paint gets on you, it is impossible to get off, but fortunately, nobody notices because there is only one magic monocle. Now, suppose that any time someone believes in modalism, this elf materializes, splashes the paint all over him, then runs away laughing into the night.
Ok, that is a rather fantastic situation, but now suppose you go into a church — a good church that does not teach modalism — and you look through the magic monocle at the crowds. Do you think you might notice that some of the church members have some paint on them? Probably several. Maybe even some of the church leaders!
A common experience among new believers is to explore the doctrine of the Trinity and slip in and out of heretical doctrines as they work through it. You’ll hear it pretty often; a newbie might say something like, “So, God is like water with three forms: sometimes He is the Father, sometimes the Son, and sometimes the Holy Spirit?” Well, at that moment, the elf would have splashed the irreversible paint on him. Obviously, we would correct him and say something, “Well, not exactly. Each of the three Persons of the Trinity is eternal,” and so forth, but the fact remains that there was a brief moment when this guy was a modalist. He did not read any modalist literature, nor listen to a modalist sermon, but he connected a few dots in a particularly incorrect way that got him elf-marked for life. I think a lot of people in Church today have had such a lapse, even if was for a short period many years ago.
So, why bring up the modalism heresy? Well, I would say that if a Protestant can slip in and out of modalism so easily, then perhaps it is also easy for a Catholic, Adventist, Church of Christ guy, or whoever else, to slip in and out of Faith Alone in Christ Alone.
Suppose an unsaved churched person had heard a works-based gospel his entire life. He could be reading John one day and think, “Wait, this means that not my works, but Christ’s works are meritorious. All I have to do is believe in Christ! This finally makes sense! …no, wait a minute, that’s not right. I need to earn my salvation.” Well, this man is now saved. For that brief second, he believed in Christ, not himself and the result is the irreversible gift of eternal life.
A real-world example: I have a friend who was saved thanks in part to a bathroom break. A works-salvation guy was explaining his gospel to him. His method was first to explain that we are saved by believing in Christ and then to explain that saving faith is working faith, so really you need to trust your own works in addition to knowing certain things about Jesus.
So, the evangelist goes through this whole thing about how you only have to believe in Jesus, then halfway through he says, “Excuse me, I need to go to the bathroom real quick.” The evangelist goes to the bathroom and my friend is left there alone, thinking through what he has just heard to this point (he had not yet heard the number about trusting his own works) and he believes in Christ for eternal life. He was saved during a bathroom break! The evangelist comes back from the bathroom and confuses this newly saved guy into thinking that works are a condition for salvation, but God had already saved my friend despite the evangelist. Fortunately, my friend was able to get back on the right path a few years later, but the whole experience left him with some deeply rooted scars, which now contribute to his passion for clear evangelism.
Many people have been saved despite listening to doctrinally-unsound evangelists and going to doctrinally-unsound churches. But every salvation has come only when someone believes in Christ alone for eternal life. The Christian Pluralist criticism of Faith Alone in Christ Alone on the grounds of Church History simply does not stand.
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