Sola Fide

Review: Worship By Faith Alone

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Worship By Faith Alone (Dynamics of Worship). Zac Hicks, foreword by Ashley Null. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023.

Summary: Addressing the contemporary concern for “gospel-centered” worship, looks at how Thomas Cranmer, deeply committed to justification by faith alone in Christ alone, reformed the worship, liturgy, preaching and devotion of the Church of England.

For many of us outside Anglican circles, the name of Thomas Cranmer comes with few associations. We may remember his role in the editing of the Book of Common Prayer. Until reading this work, I did not realize how pervasive his role and work was in the English Reformation, touching on every aspect of the worship, liturgical materials, and preaching of the Church of England. I also did not realize what a profound influence Cranmer’s bedrock belief in justification by faith in Christ alone, had on all his efforts.

Zac Hicks seeks to do two things simultaneously in this study. One is to trace how Cranmer’s belief in sola fide informed all the revisions he made to the structure of worship, liturgy, the Book of Common Prayer, other works of devotion, and the character of preaching in the church. The other is to draw from Cranmer’s work principles for “gospel centered” worship in our own day. In so doing, he shows that Cranmer was far more than a skilled stylist or liturgical genius but that there was an order or shape to all of what he did and that was rooted in his deeply held belief in sola fide.

The first part of this work traces the evidence for the influence of Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith in the writings of Cranmer. He shows how this shapes his thinking on a wide range of issues from purgatory to the eucharist and transubstantiation, the priesthood. A most important concept for what follows is his discussion of the grammar of sola fide. In the language we use throughout worship, the focus is “not I, but Christ.” Humans are passive, respondent, whereas God in Christ is active, the actor in our salvation. Hicks traces this from Ambrose, Chrysostomm, and Augustine through the Reformer Luther and Melancthon. He stresses how Cranmer drew upon this in stressing both the promise of God and the comfort God gives.

The second part of the book shows how Cranmer applied his convictions to every aspect of worship. He begins with the structure of the liturgy. Cranmer not only simplified by elimination but re-ordered elements to remove the confusion, as he saw it, of faith and works. Hicks, here as throughout demonstrates this through side by side comparisons, here of the order of Morning Prayer and Holy Communion. He goes on to focus on how theology shaped liturgical language. through side by side examples of edits Cranmer makes to emphasize, “not I, but Christ.” He then turns to ceremonial, architecture, the arrangement of worship spaces, the move from an altar to a table reflecting the shift from what we offer God through Christ to what God gives us in Christ, nourishing us at his table. He looks at nomenclature and special ceremonies and in every area brings sola fide to bear. He shows how Cranmer shifts the focus of eucharist from consecration to reception. Finally, he discusses how Cranmers commitments were worked out in both homiletical and devotional instruction, particularly in the Book of Common Prayer.

Hick’s concluding chapter draws the implication of Cranmer’s work for “gospel centered” worship. He believes this involves:

  1. Analyzing the structure of our services.
  2. Analyzing our theological terminology.
  3. Analyzing our rituals, actions, and architecture.
  4. Analyzing our devotional piety.
  5. Analyzing our preaching.

Hicks offers illustrative examples under theological terminology of how two common worship songs, “I Surrender All” and “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus” might be written to reflect a “not I, but Christ” focus, “Christ Surrendered All” and “God has Decided.” The section on theological terminology includes seven subpoints, each worth careful attention. Language matters and we would do well to imitate Cranmer’s scrupulous care in these matters.

This book delightfully surprised me, in its study of the thorough-going revisions Cranmer made to Anglican worship, the theological center that informed that work, and the challenge for our worship today. I believe far too many languish in churches where the structures, whatever liturgy there is, music, and preaching, focus on us, our experience of God, our needs and our obedience and not what Christ has done, is doing, and will do for his people, and how by faith we might appropriate and live into that work. Zac Hicks has not given us a dry, dusty academic study of an English Reformer but a compelling model of what happens when the church’s worship life is ordered around sola fide, the idea of “not I, but Christ.” This book was a breath of fresh air!

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: Getting the Gospel Right

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getting the gospel right

Getting the Gospel Right, R. C. Sproul. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2017 (repackaged edition, originally published 1999).

Summary: A critical discussion of the Evangelicals and Catholics Together statement “The Gift of Salvation” (1997) centering on what it sees as an inadequate understanding of justification by faith alone, accompanied by a discussion of “The Gospel of Jesus Christ,” a statement by evangelicals in response.

“…that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (John 17:21)

Many Christians, surveying the landscape of a church riven through history by schism and division, believe this is a scandal that undermines witness to an unbelieving world. They find support for this idea in the prayer of Jesus for his followers, connecting their oneness to the world believing that the Father sent the Son. And this has moved some to come together with other believers from other parts of the church to see if they might articulate a common basis for a shared witness to the one Lord they believe in. In 1994, Richard John Neuhaus and Charles Colson convened a group of evangelical and Catholic leaders to see if this might be possible. Over the years this group has released a series of statements on various, often controverted, issues including justification, Scripture, the communion of the saints, Mary, the sanctity of life, religious freedom, and in 2015, a statement of marriage. The statements have explored both what might be affirmed in common, and what differences remain, while focusing on common witness to the risen Lord.

Needless to say, such efforts have come in for harsh criticism from evangelicals and Catholics alike. R.C. Sproul’s book, recently released in “repackaged” form represents an example of the criticism these statements have faced, focused here around the second of the statements, released in 1997, “The Gift of Salvation,” that addresses the matter of justification and the Reformers’ commitment to sola fide (justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone), a major fault line between the churches of the Reformation and the Roman Catholic church.

On its face, Sproul contends that “The Gift of Salvation” appears to be a statement evangelicals could embrace and a breakthrough affirmation by Catholics. In particular the statement affirms:

  1. Justification is received through faith,
  2. Justification is not earned by good works or merits of our own,
  3. Justification is entirely God’s gift,
  4. In justification God declares us to be his friends on the basis of Christ’s righteousness alone, and
  5. Faith is not mere intellectual assent but an act of the whole person, issuing in a changed life.

(Summary quoted from “An Appeal to Evangelicals” but essentially the same as Sproul).

Sproul finds that while, in the words of the statement “this agrees with sola fide,” it fails to affirm key ideas of what the Reformers meant by sola fide. In particular, these statements fail to deal with a crucial difference in how Christians are declared righteous friends of God. For Reformed believers, this has involved the believe in imputation–that our sins were imputed to Christ on the Christ and his righteousness imputed to us, apart from any work or merit on our part. The Catholic understands that while we are saved by grace through faith, this is assisted by God’s infusing of a person with a saving righteousness, with which it is important to cooperate in order to be justified. These and other differences are, in fact acknowledged in the statement as matters for further study and dialogue. For Sproul, the lack of agreement at this point undermines common witness, and in fact he contends that these are in fact different gospels.

The first part of the book discusses “The Gift of Salvation” with a statement by statement critical review. Sproul concedes the evangelical bona fides of the evangelicals who signed the statement and the good will of the signers but believes that the infelicities (at very least) or worse, the “studied ambiguities” that conveyed an apparent unity through the use of imprecise language that could be understood differently by each party are dangerous because they reflect a dangerous departure from sola fide.

The second part of the book begins with a statement drafted in response to “The Gift of Salvation” titled “The Gospel of Jesus Christ.” This statement summarizes a Reformed understanding and also includes a series of affirmations and denials to clearly delineate both what evangelicals do and do not believe. Sproul then expands upon each of these affirmations and denials. Signers of the statement include evangelical signers of “The Gift of Salvation” and evangelicals who disagreed with the statement–an effort to mend the rift within evangelicalism caused by the statement. The book concludes with appendices that contain the complete text of both statements, and lists of their signers.

Sproul could have been a great lawyer! Lawyers scrutinize language for any ambiguities that could lead to disagreement between contracting parties. He realizes that fuzziness of ideas or “studied ambiguities” generally end badly through misunderstandings or doctrinal drift. Both Catholic and Evangelical commentators on this statement have noted this concern. Sproul’s concerns and careful work cannot be lightly dismissed in an age that is careless with words and increasingly inured to a culture of deceit.

What troubled me was an attitude that seemed satisfied with affirming orthodox evangelical belief and differentiating it from Catholic belief, without any further effort to propose how the divide might be healed. Sproul certainly acknowledges there are genuine Catholic believers, but in contrast to Colson and Neuhaus, does not seem to have any sense of urgency for common witness amid the pressing challenges of our day, nor for efforts to root that witness in a shared theological understanding. Likewise, the book does not address more recent discussions around justification within the evangelical community resulting from New Perspective scholarship.

What I find myself wrestling with, while appreciating Sproul’s theological precision, is what seems an unspoken assumption that the Reformed tradition reached a terminus with statements like the Heidelberg Catechism and Westminster Confession, and likewise Catholicism in the Council of Trent. While each of these reflected a developing understanding, albeit contrasting, of the testimony of our shared scriptures, is no advance in understanding possible in our day? Is there no possibility of development of doctrine (such as occurred as the church sought to articulate its understanding of the Trinity and Incarnation in earlier centuries)? Have we concluded that no further understanding is possible of the authoritative testimony of scripture that could lead to agreements that are not exercises in “studied ambiguity”? And is there no value in proximate shared understandings along the way, that honestly acknowledge differences while affirming ways, and bases by which we might stand together in a secularizing age?

R. C. Sproul, and the signers of “The Gospel of Jesus Christ” may well have gotten that gospel “right.” I found nothing with which I took exception. Yet my reading left me with questions of how we might be one, not merely “invisibly” as Sproul discusses in the beginning of this book, but in visible ways that the world may see, and thus believe.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.