I had a long conversation last night with a good friend about various theological topics. Some of them will find their way on here, in time. The first of them is the doctrine of assurance. How can we be confident that we are saved? Is such confidence possible?
For Methodists, 'assurance' historically refers to a feeling of peace and joy that our sins are forgiven. An example might be John Wesley's famous line, 'I felt my heart strangely warmed.' He goes on to say:
I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation. And an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.
On this understanding, assurance is the feeling that accompanies faith in God's promises.
The difficulty is of course that feelings can mislead us. It is entirely possible for someone to feel 'assured' of their salvation, without having the accompanying faith.
It is therefore perhaps more helpful to talk about assurance in terms of faith. God has promised that those who believe in him will have eternal life, that if we believe in the salvation won for us by Jesus on the cross, we will be saved:
It is not possible for someone to be genuinely broken by sin, genuinely to believe that Christ is the only way to salvation and genuinely to have asked God for salvation, and yet still to be unsaved.
This is the most we can say: God has promised certain things in Scripture. Therefore if God is true to his Word, then what God has promised will happen. At the end of the day we can never be 100% certain that God exists, or we would not have faith, we would simply know.
However we can be almost 100% certain that he does, and therefore almost 100% certain that we will be saved if we trust in his promises.
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I can’t say it better than this talk by Rev. Tom Honey: How could God have allowed the tsunami? This is pretty much how I’ve felt for years (see below)… plus or minus a few things.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/112
Quite a bit different than your beliefs. Sorry, but for many of us God is not good or bad, or part of an “assured” afterlife. In fact it’s very strange to me the whole idea of sin. Are you telling me that God didn’t know Adam was going to eat the apple? According to bible God is all knowing, all seeing and time doesn’t exist (Omniscient). So, either he’s not Omniscient or he knew Adam was going to eat the apple. This is just one of hundreds of flaws found in the bible. That’s how I see it anyway.
Thanks for a good post. It is a good conversation starter.
Hi Bob
Thanks for posting - I’ve listened to the talk. It is an eloquent exposition of the liberal objections to the sovereignty of God. As you can probably guess, I disagree with them, so this would be my next bit of the conversation.
I suppose I would want to ask about the importance of what the Bible says about God - that he really is the Almighty, that somehow he is behind everything that happens, either directly or indirectly by allowing things to happen.
Tom Honey’s arguments judge God by the ‘highest ideals’ of humanity. He says we should abandon traditional models, think again about God - he suggests, ‘maybe God doesn’t do things at all.’ He goes on: ‘What if God is in things? … An indwelling, compassionate presence?’
I would argue that God is so different to us that we can know nothing about him, unless he himself tells us. That is the importance of ‘revelation’. Of course, God’s supreme self-revelation is Jesus himself, ‘the exact imprint of God’s nature.’
Throughout the Bible, but supremely in Jesus, the Bible presents God as a real person - we DO know what God is like, because he has told us, because he came to us in his Son Jesus. Tom Honey argues that we shouldn’t limit God by reducing him to doctrinal systems - but I would argue that he reduces God by making him impersonal, unpowerful (if that’s even a word) and unknowable as an individual.
Now, of course I don’t have all the answers, and I don’t understand things like great suffering. However, not having all the answers does not mean that everything traditional Christian theology has said is completely wrong.
Tom ends with: ‘In the end, the only thing I could say is: I don’t know.’ I disagree that this is the most profound religious statement there is. We can say far more about God than that, because God himself has told us. There are many more profound things in the Bible, about God’s love, his grace through judgement, and so on.
Responding to terrible natural disasters is difficult and important, but I think we should be careful not to throw away everything ‘traditional theology’ has said about God on the basis of the Bible.
I hope some of that makes sense - rather than throw away what the Bible says because of a terrible disaster, I’m trying to hold onto it, while wrestling with the difficulties.
I think Honey’s principal mistake is that he seems to confuse what he is comfortable with with what is true.
The Bible consistently has people wrestling with questions like this, but the faithful people are the ones who don’t let go of God while doing so.