BWC3e: Of Faith in Christ; sola scriptura! "true inward testimony"

      This continues from Part BWC3d in a series (Table of Contents in Part BWC1) presenting Walther's edition of Baier's Compendium of Positive Theology. — This segment introduces Chapter III, Faith in Christ. Readers are reminded that, because most of these excerpts are from Walther's additions of quotes, the italics are mostly Walther's. — From pages 134-166: 

Notable Quotes: (Italics follow the original. All quotes not from Baier are from Walther's additions of quotes from third parties. Authors are indicated in bold text. Red text indicates my comments.)

[Chapter III. Of Faith in Christ]

134: "God nevertheless willed that sinners should acknowledge that satisfaction, provided for them by the Son of God, and, having grasped it by faith, make it their own"

134: Luther: "There is, of course, no doubt or lack in these words: 'Whoever believes will be saved,' etc., so that hell is already shut, heaven is open, eternal life and joy are there."

136: Gerhard: "Augustine…: 'The things which are believed are one thing, and the faith by which they are believed is another; and yet by the name of faith both are understood.'"

137: Kromayer: "it is called implicit faith when spiritual things are known not distinctly, but by their common principle, which is the Holy Scripture. For he who believes the Holy Scripture to be true, implicitly believes all that is contained in it"

137-138: Kromayer: "In a heretical sense, implicit faith is said to be: 1. by reason of a false common principle, which the Papists make to be the tradition of the church, and say that this or that is to be believed because the church believes it. For the Holy Scripture alone is the object of faith. [sola scriptura!] Acts 24:14: ‘I worship the God of my fathers,’ says the apostle, ‘believing all that is written in the law and the prophets.’"

138: Luther: The charcoal-burner's faith = blind faith - see this blog post.

138: Quenstedt: "the Papists, who assert that faith is to be defined not so much by knowledge as by ignorance"

139: Selneccer: "He who does not believe Christ, much less believes in Christ."

140: "sinners, anxious and troubled about their sins, may lift up their hearts in the universality of the satisfaction for all sins provided by Christ…Without this universality, the sinner would have no ground from which to lift himself up in the terrors of conscience"

141: Chemnitz: "For when that general foundation, establishing that whatever has been divinely revealed in the Word of God is true and certain, is not present or wavers, neither can the confidence in the promise of divine mercy forgiving sins for Christ's sake be conceived, nor can it be maintained in the struggle." [This explicitly refutes LC–MS Prof. Joel Biermann, a strong contender for the next president of the Synod!]

143: Hollaz: "For the demons are said to believe Christ, and also to believe that Christ exists; yet they are not said to believe in Christ."

145: Quenstedt: "Council of Trent. Session 6, Canon 12, reads as follows: 'If anyone says that the justifying faith is nothing other than confidence in the divine mercy, which remits sins for Christ's sake, or that this confidence alone is by which we are justified, let him be anathema.'" [This the Roman Catholic Church has not renounced.]

147: Gerhard: "the theological rule: ‘Scripture, when it speaks of faith, sometimes refers more to knowledge, sometimes more to trust.’"

148: Kromayer: "When we perceive no sense of faith, we should not immediately despair, for even the desire for faith is already faith itself, though weak. Phil. 2:13."

149: Quenstedt: "the Papists, who decree that the proper and adequate object of justifying faith is not the special mercy of God proposed in Christ, but the entire Word of God"

151: Luther: "Oh, faith is a living, busy, active, powerful thing, so that it is impossible for it not to be working good without ceasing"

152: Kahnis (modernist theologian): "the strict Lutherans always focused only on the goal of cutting off all human merit, they destroyed the psychological and moral foundation in the work of appropriating salvation."

 153: M. Chemnitz: "How then does it come that Judas is not taken up, that he does not receive forgiveness of sin, when he was yet sorry for what he had done? And what is lacking in his repentance and penance, that he cannot obtain grace? He had no faith in Christ"

156: Augsburg Confession: "the sacraments are to be used in such a way that faith comes along, which believes the promises that are presented and shown through the sacraments. Therefore, they condemn those who teach that the sacraments justify ex opere operato"

156: Luther: "that infants, being without faith, are justified through baptism, we strongly deny."

159: Gerhard: "seeds and shoots of trees: although they do not bear fruit, yet they have within them the power and nature to produce fruit in their own time: so the faith of infants"

162: "The proximate end and effect of faith is justification; then renewal; finally, eternal salvation of believers."

164: L. Hartmann: "When a person has a serious desire for the faith and the grace of God, that very desire is certainly to be regarded as the beginning of true faith, however weak it may seem"

164: Hoepfner: "the father of the demoniac acknowledged with infallible certainty, and indeed with divine faith, that his faith was true; and yet, with respect to his own adhering weakness, he calls that faith, of which he was certain, απιστίαν, unbelief, Mark 9:24" [This is my verse.]

165: Luther: "That we are children of God…this we have not from ourselves, nor from the law; but it is the testimony of the Holy Spirit, who, against the law and the feeling of our unworthiness, testifies such things in our weakness and makes us certain of it.…This is the true inward testimony, by which you recognize that the Holy Spirit is working in you" [Prof. David Scaer and Dr. Martin Noland fight against this, calling it Calvinism!]

166: Quenstedt: "very testimony of the Holy Spirit is divine…Although it is not an external revelation, it is nevertheless an internal one, proper to believers alone; namely, the internal operation of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, which does not exclude, but presupposes the external revelation made in the Word. This internal testimony of the Holy Spirit…" [See above.]

In the next Part BWC3f, Regeneration and Conversion.