In a previous post, I
discussed whether 1 Clement taught the Protestant understanding of sola fide.
Other quotations that serve as "proof" of the (absurd) claim the
early Christians were proto-Protestants in their soteriology can be seen in the
following "proof-texts" that were produced by a Protestant I ran
into:
How
can you say that when the Church Fathers used that phrase many times? For
example, Ambrose says:
"They
are justified by faith alone by the gift of God." (c.3. ad Roman.)
and
"Only
faith is appointed to salvation." (c. 9 ad Roman.)
"He
calls them blessed of whom God has decreed, without any labour or observation,
they should be justified only by faith." (c. 3 ad Roman.)
or
Cyril:
"We
should not think to be justified by work, nor hope for grace by our merits, but
by faith." (l. 4. in Ioan. c. 51.)
or
Jerome:
"When
an ungodly man is converted, God justifies him through faith alone, not on
account of good works, which he possessed not; otherwise, on account of his
ungodly deeds, he ought to have been punished. Christ, who 'knew no sin,' the
Father 'made sin for us,' that, as a victim offered for sin was in the Law
called 'sin,' so likewise Christ, being offered for our sins, received the name
of 'sin,' that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him --not our
righteousness, nor in ourselves."
or
Hilary:
"Faith
only doth justify." (cap. 8 in Matt.)
or
Theodoret
"For
not by our works but by faith alone, we have obtained the mystical good
things." (Quoted in Andrew Willet. Synopsis Papismi. I believe the
reference is lib. 7 de sacrific.)
In response to this Protestant
apologist:
Couple of things:
First, these are merely isolated
instances of the phrase "faith alone" in their writings. Moreover,
these same Fathers were very clear in other places that justification was
certainly not without the addition of works.
Second, there were over a hundred
Fathers worthy of note, yet just a tiny fraction of them ever referred to the
phrase faith alone. If the concept of "faith alone" were a vital part
of patristic theology (as it is today among Protestants), we would be seeing
the phrase all over the writings of the Fathers. As it is, we see hardly any of
it. Of all the 382 volumes in the Migne
series (221 in Latin; 161 in Greek) on the Fathers, they have only
been able to come up with about a half-dozen instances; the same applies for
the 38-volume Schaff series. That is a fact. When you add that infrequency to
the scores of Fathers that never used "faith alone" when speaking
about Justification, if anything, the consensus of the Fathers is against the
use of "faith alone," not supportive of it.
But even if that could be granted
(which it cannot) the problem is that the few Fathers who used the phrase
"faith alone" were very careful to write in other places that they
believed man was justified by works in addition to faith. We can tell by the
voluminous amount of times they spoke of works being an integral part of
Justification.
For example, you quoted from Ambrose
and Jerome who use the phrase "faith alone." But both these Fathers
state quite clearly that they believe works also justify. Ambrose states:
"Each of our merits will hand in the balance, and it is often inclined to
this side or that by the superior weight either of our good works or of our
degenerate crimes. If evil deeds turn the scale, alas for me (Letters PL 16, 2,
16). Jerome writes: "But since in the Law no one is justified before God,
it is evident that the just man lives by faith....It should be noted that he does
not say that a man, a person, lives by faith, lest it be thought that he is
condemning good works" (Commentary on Galatians, PL 26, 2, 3, 11). We can
find such quotes in all the Fathers who spoke on Justification.
As one example, take the following from
Ambrose:
Each
of our merits will hang in the balance, and it is often inclined to this side
or that by the superior weight either of our good works or of our degenerate
crimes. If evil deeds turn the scale, alas for me! But if good, then pardon is
at hand. No one is free of sin, but where goo works prevail, sins are
lightened, overshadowed, and covered up. On the day of judgment either our
works will assist us or they will plunge us into the abyss, as if dragged by a
millstone. (Letters, PL 16, 1, 16)
Here, Ambrose speaks of works meriting
eternal life in such a way that would have Martin Luther and other apologists
for sola fide turning over in their graves (or, for those alive, tearing the
hair out of their heads). Protestant apologists who claim that their understanding
of sola fide is found in the patristic literature are ignorant at best;
deceptive at worst.
In addition, as Protestant apologists
(e.g. William Webster) and historians such as Philip Schaff admit, the early
Church Fathers held, unanimously, to the doctrine of baptismal regeneration (my
post on John 3:1-7 discusses, in part, the patristic witness to this
doctrine).
Evangelical Protestantism is both contrary to the Bible and Christian history. I would urge you to rethink your religious commitment to Protestantism as it preaches a false gospel (cf. Gal 1:6-9).
