When Martin Luther (1483–1546) made his big break from the Roman Catholic Church, he originated a new doctrine, which he set up as the foundation stone of Protestant belief. That doctrine is “justification by faith alone,” also known by its Latin shorthand name, sola fide (“by faith alone”).
And yet, because Protestants—especially evangelical Protestants—are so vociferous about faith alone, many people think that being saved by faith alone is the cornerstone of Christianity, and the most important teaching in the Bible.
There’s only one problem: The Bible doesn’t actually say that we are saved by faith alone.
In fact, in the one and only place in the entire Bible where “faith alone” appears, it is specifically rejected as “justifying,” or saving a person:
You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. (James 2:24)
This doesn’t seem to bother most Protestants. They say that the important thing about being saved by faith alone is that it means salvation is completely God’s work; we can’t take any credit for it by piling up enough good works to earn heaven for ourselves. However, as I said in this comment on my article, “Faith Alone Does Not Save . . . No Matter How Many Times Protestants Say It Does,” doing good works has nothing to do with earning heaven.
Besides, there are deeper problems with Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone. It is based on a whole series of non-Biblical and false doctrines, without which it falls to the ground:
- God is a Trinity of Persons.
- We are born with Original Sin from Adam, and are guilty from birth.
- It is impossible for us to be righteous or to satisfy God’s justice.
- God the Father therefore condemns us to eternal hell.
- Jesus Christ paid the price, or penalty, for our sins
- This satisfied the Father’s justice, and appeased the Father’s wrath.
- Christ’s righteousness is “imputed” to those who believe in him.
- The Father then accepts us as righteous even though we are still sinners.
These are the faulty foundations of faith alone.
Let’s look at each of them, and see why no matter how good salvation by faith alone may sound to some people, these faulty and crumbling foundations completely invalidate the doctrine that Luther invented in order to make a decisive break with the Catholic Church.
1. God is a Trinity of Persons?
The idea that God is a “Trinity of Persons” is the oldest of the faulty foundations of faith alone.
Let’s be clear. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that God is a trinity of persons, that God is “three in person but one in essence,” and so on. These ideas were invented by various Christian theologians and bishops several centuries after the Bible was written. They became part of official Christian doctrine only after the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, and especially after the Athanasian Creed was written a century or two later.
This isn’t the place to show that the Trinity of Persons is a faulty and false human-invented doctrine. For that, please see the first three articles linked at the end.
Although the Bible does not teach that God is a Trinity of Persons, that doctrine is a necessary foundation for the doctrine of justification by faith alone.
That will become clearer as we cover the remaining faulty foundations of faith alone. Meanwhile, here’s the short version:
Salvation by faith alone is based on the idea that God the Father is angry with us due to our sins, and that God the Father’s justice requires that we be punished for our sins. But as the theory goes, we fallen, finite humans are incapable of satisfying God’s justice by our own efforts, which means that we are inevitably doomed to spiritual death—meaning eternal hell—as our punishment from God.
To overcome this intolerable situation (so the theory goes) God the Son, whom we know as Jesus Christ, came to earth and lived a perfect, sinless life, and then died on the cross instead of us, thus satisfying the justice and assuaging the wrath of God the Father. And since the sinless, divine Christ died instead of us, this pays the penalty that we should have paid for our sins.
From this brief synopsis, it is clear that if the Father and the Son are not separate “Persons” of God, the whole scheme of justification by faith alone simply doesn’t work. This theory of justification requires that one “Person” of God—the Son—must suffer and die to satisfy the requirements of another “Person” of God—the Father.
In short, if there is no Trinity of Persons in God, the doctrine of justification by faith alone completely falls apart.
And as shown in the first three articles linked just below, the doctrine of the Trinity of Persons is a false doctrine that is taught nowhere in the Bible, but was invented by human beings.
The Trinity of Persons is the first and most basic false, non-Biblical foundation of faith alone.
For Part 2, click here: The Faulty Foundations of Faith Alone – Part 2: Original Sin?
For further reading: