Title: What is Saving Faith?

Subtitle: Rethinking the faith by which the sinner is saved

Author: Christopher Travis Haun for http://rethinker.net/soteria/faith

Update: September 2008 [started. No chapters are yet at first draft stage however.]

Copyright: This rethink may be reproduced as long as no changes and/or charges are made.

Feedback: Please feel free to send questions, suggestions or constructive criticism to CTHaun[AT]Rethinker[DOT]net

What if there are ultimately two types of Christians:

those who believe in Christ and those who believe they believe in Christ?

Contents:

Ch. 0 |Ch. 1 | Ch. 2 | Ch. 3 | Ch. 4 | Ch. 5 |Ch. 6 | Ch. 7 | Ch. 8 | Ch. 9 | Ch. 10 | Ch. 11 | Ch. 12 | Ch. 13 | Ch.14 | Ch.15

Chapter 0: Summary and Introduction

Chapter 1: Believing versus Pretending

Chapter 2: Faith as Assent – Hearing and Believing. (Believing that…)

Faith as Assent of the Mind to Propositions as Being True

Chapter 3: Faith as Confession – Public Confession and Baptism

Chapter 4: Faith as Reliance

Faith can be understood as reliance/trust/dependence which is invested into a specific object for a specific purpose. Believing in or believing into.

Chapter 5: Faith as Boasting

Faith as Boasting - What are you boasting in?

Chapter 6: Faith as Hope

Chapter 7: Faith versus Doubt and Unbelief

Chapter 8: Faith and Faithfulness

Chapter 9: Faith and Repentance

Chapter 10: Faith versus Fear

Chapter 11: Persevering Faith

Must faith Persevere? Or is a single “decision for Christ” enough despite future falling away from the faith?

Chapter 12: Personal Faith

Must Faith be Personal rather than Corporate? Experiential and Existential? Invitation? Existential? Invite Jesus into your heart? Invite Jesus into your life?

Chapter 13: Faith and Freedom?

Faith and Freedom - Is Faith a free choice or is it a Gift?

Faith and Free Will – Is human faith a coercive gift of God? Or as a human response. The parable of the swimmers. Some translation issues. An attempt to cool the Calvinism-Arminianism debate.

Chapter 14 – Faith and Obedience

Chapter 15 – Faith and Good Works

Test yourself to see if you are in the faith?

Summary and Introduction

The “salvation equation” seen clearly in Ephesians 2:8-10 is:

By Grace

Through Faith

Not by Good Works

For Good works

This rethink will attempt to delineate the New Testament’s multi-faceted presentation of ‘saving faith.’ This rethink attempts to decode the phrase “through faith.”

Faith is frequently presented as hearing and simply believing propositional about ourselves, our sin, God’s judgment, God’s love/grace/mercy, and/or Jesus person and work. One hears the truth and assents to those truths as true. It seems true that people were accepted into the earliest churches by a public confession of their faith in Jesus as Lord at the time of water baptism. But it is also true that faith is also often portrayed in a more robust sense where faith is clearly a persons’ trust/reliance/dependence invested into a specific object (God himself, God’s mercy, God’s grace, Christ’s person and provision) for a specific purpose—protection from a specific risk. There is also a possibility that occasionally the lines between ‘faith’ and ‘faithfulness’ blur. The relationships between faith and repentance, hope, and baptism are close ones. The question of whether or not a single momentary decision faith is saving will be explored as we question whether or not faith must persevere to be true, genuine, and saving. The common notion of “inviting Jesus into your heart” will be reconsidered.