1. Saving faith has only the Gospel as its object.
The object of faith, in so far as it brings into possession the forgiveness of sins, is only the Gospel, not also the Law or the whole of the Holy Scriptures. It explicitly states Gal. 3:12: 6 5& vOpLoc obK Eottv Ek Tiotews. Of course, faith that believes the gospel, that is, the forgiveness of sins, is also active in the law. Faith alone writes the law of God into the heart (Jer. 31:31 ff.) and thus establishes it (Rom. 3:31). It is effective in love (61! ayaanc evepyovuévn Gal. 5:6), and love is the fulfillment of the law (Rom. 13:10). Faith is also active in the whole of Holy Scripture, accepting it as God's word on God's testimony (Jn 10:35) and using it diligently (Jn 5:39). But it is not through this activity in the law and in the whole of Scripture, but by excluding it, ywpic py@v vopov, that faith attains the forgiveness of sins and salvation.!) Whoever extends the object of faith, in so far as it makes partakers of the forgiveness of sins, to make, with the Romans,!!® the Arminians!!°) and Unitarians '!®* also the law or the whole word of God the
late patere volunt obiectum fidei iustificantis, quam late patet verbum Dei; uttb cap. 8: Fidei iustificantis obiectum non est specialis Dei misericordia, sed omnia, quae Deus revelare dignatus est. (Catholics want to make the object of justifying faith as wide open as the word of God is wide open; etc. chap. 8: The object of justifying faith is not God's special mercy, but all that God has deigned to reveal.
their justifying faith is obedience to Christ as the new legislator. Catechism. Racov., cap. IX, de fide, qu. 418 sq. object of the fides iustificans qua iustificans, thereby transforms Christianity into pagan works doctrine. When Bellarmin praises it as an advantage of the Roman concept of fides iustificans that according to this concept tam late patere obiectum fidei iustificantis, quam late patet verbum Dei, and omnia, quae Deus revelare dignatus est, this "prince among the Roman theologians" thus reveals his complete lack of understanding with regard to Christian doctrine. At the same time it is obvious that with this extension of the object of faith there can never be a certainty of the forgiveness of sins. Even the most learned theologian will always have doubts as to whether he has really taken everything revealed in the Scriptures, including all historical events, into his own mind. Bellarmin's assertion serves the ieee eR Tay ae on which everything else in the Papal Church is also based. On the other hand, it should be noted that the fides iustificans and salvans can also be in those who do not know the Scriptures in all their parts, yes, even in those who err in certain parts of the revealed doctrine out of weakness, as Scripture abundantly testifies. '!°°) Orthodoxy and the state of faith do not coincide. Of course, there is no orthodoxy without saving faith; he who does not believe the Gospel does not believe any part of Christian doctrine with faith worked by the Holy Spirit. But there is saving faith without orthodoxy with regard to all parts of Christian doctrine. Luther, the Lutheran Confessions and the dogmatists,'!° confess this truth, even though they do not grant anyone the power to dispense with the acceptance of even one piece of Christian doctrine.!'7 It goes without saying that all modern theologians who deny the satisfactio vicaria and who want to "deepen" the "concept of atonement" by including in it the "rebuilding of humanity" "guaranteed" or "guaranteed" by Christ, have no Gospel in the sense of Scripture as an object of faith. The Gospel is not for them the message of a world reconciliation that has taken place and that
[Trigl. 19]; Hiilsemann, Calv. Irreconciliabilis, p. 432 sqq. (with Baier I, 62).
articles. The same matter will be treated in the chapter The Doctrine of the Church.. faith takes hold of, but the Gospel is for them the stimulus for the "transformation of mankind" that Christ supposedly only "guaranteed" or "vouchsafed", but which men must procure for themselves before they may consider themselves reconciled with God. Any denial of satisfactio vicaria annuls the Gospel and places it in Roman territory. The Roman Catholics, in order to eliminate the Gospel as an object of saving faith, have tried to press the Lutherans with the objection that the object of faith is named very differently in Scripture and therefore cannot be found only in the Gospel. Quenstedt deals with ''! the Jesuit Vasquez, who even asserted that therefore not only God's grace or God's mercy could be the object of the fides iustificans, because in the Scriptures this faith is also described as faith in Christ, the Son of God. Quenstedt answers that Vasquez and comrades either did not understand the Lutheran doctrine or were maliciously perverting it (cavillari). God's "grace" and "Christ" are not mutually exclusive, but rather inclusive. When Lutherans say that God's grace is the object of faith, they always mean the grace of God in Christ, that is, for the sake of Christ's vicarious satisfaction, and when they say that Christ is the object of the saving faith, they always mean Christ in his vicarious work, whereby grace is acquired and promised in the Gospe Here, too, a fundamental error of modern positive theologians must be pointed out. With great emphasis they point to Christ's person as the object of faith. But they do so in the sense that they contrast Christ's person with Christ's work. By emphasizing the person of Christ, they want to reject Christ's work, his fulfillment of the law in place of men and his suffering in place of men, as an object of faith. With this, once again the object of the saving faith according to the Scriptures and the saving faith itself has been abandoned. We only believe in Christ for our justification and salvation when 1 1173)
mediatore, sive in gratia Dei, sive in promissione gratiae propter Christum mediatorem facta id consistere dicas. Tantum in modo concipiendi et loquendi est diversitas. [Google] (Examen, De fide, qu, 7) we believe in Him as the One who was crucified for the payment of our sins (1 Cor. 2:2), shed His precious blood (1 Petr. 1:18), gave His life unto death (Matt. 20:28; Rom. 5:10) and fulfilled the law given to man (Gal. 4:4-5). Even if Scripture names the God who raised Jesus from the dead as the object of the saving faith (Rom. 10:9), we have the same object in fact, namely the God who forgives sin to mankind solely for Christ's substitutionary work. Thus Holtzmann correctly says that even the Resurrection alone is the object of faith, because the Resurrection is the proof of the deed, "that the wrath under which the dying man appears to have been placed has also really ceased with his death".!! The error, according to which Christ is not in his vicarious work but in his person to be our justice before God, is expressly rejected in the Third Article of the Formula of Concord with ample scriptural justification. 1!’