In modern times, faith has been, wrongfully, “rationalized” and “psychologized,” just as, in the medieval period, it was “legalized” and ruined, by reduction, to mere assent to facts.
Negatively, a saving faith is not, merely, a rational act, intellectual assent to words or propositions. Alexander Campbell, a founder of Disciples of Christ and The Christian Church, and some of his followers, have made faith, along with repentance and baptism, steps to regeneration. It is supposed to be, simply, belief in the truth. If that were all faith is, of course, faith would not be enough to save. The definition of faith at the Roman Catholic Council of Trent, wherein the evangelical doctrines were anathematized, practically equates faith with intellectual assent to truth only. As earlier noted, sometimes the New Testament does dignify mere assent to truth with the words “faith” and “believe,” but always makes clear that salvation is not involved. The case of Simon Magus, who “believed” but whose “heart” was “not right” (Acts 8.13, 18-31) is illustrative of this as well as the cases in the opening paragraph of the previous paragraphs above (see, also, John 12.42-43).
Nor is faith a work of meritorious value for procurement of salvation, as in the Roman system. There are Roman Catholic confessional and theological documents which seem to support a proper biblical view, but the ideas are overlaid with the teaching that grace is infused into the baptized, enabling them, by various virtues and works, including faith, to merit salvation. Romans 4,4-5, 16 and 11.6 specifically deny such a perverse interpretation. One of the great gains of the Reformation was clarification of this matter.
Schleiermacher’s “feeling of dependence” theory of faith – the psychologizing and emotionalizing of faith – is unscriptural, as well.
From: Systematic Theology: Biblical and Historical by Robert Duncan Culver (Fearn: Mentor, 2005), p. 716.
