Is There Anything More Important Than Justification By Faith Alone?

[KMK]

I found a short piece by Al Mohler on ranking the importance of controversies.

Mohler wrote this:

Third-order issues are doctrines over which Christians may disagree and remain in close fellowship, even within local congregations. I would put most of the debates over eschatology, for example, in this category. Christians who affirm the bodily, historical and victorious return of the Lord Jesus Christ may differ over timetable and sequence without rupturing the fellowship of the church. Christians may find themselves in disagreement over any number of issues related to the interpretation of difficult texts or the understanding of matters of common disagreement. Nevertheless, standing together on issues of more urgent importance, believers are able to accept one another without compromise when third-order issues are in question.

He doesn't mention it specifically, but Mohler obviously believes the bodily, historical and victorious return of Christ must be either a second or first order doctrine. I would say it is a first order doctrine because to deny it leads to many other first order problems.

What would you do with a man who denies the bodily, historical and victorious return of Christ in the future? Is that someone you can call a Christian but you just can't have fellowship with? (a second order doctrine) Or do you stand in doubt of their salvation at all? (a first order doctrine?)

 

[ADKing]

The glory of God is also bound up in justification. The justified are the only ones who can give God the glory due to his name..

But why does God justify the ungodly? Your second sentence above implies that you recognize that justification is not an end in itself but is unto something else...giving glory to God. If the glory of God is the end then it has the greater importance.

I say this not at all to detract from the doctrine of justification by faith alone but only to indicate that its greates value lies not in itself but the glory it brings to God.

 

[Arch2k]

I've actually researched the quote discussed above a bit in the past and thought I would share some references:

...Hence his well-known assertion that sola fide is "the article with and by which the church stands, without which it falls" (articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae).1 Luther said of justification: "The article of justification is the master and prince, the lord, the ruler, and the judge over all kinds of doctrines; it preserves and governs all church doctrine and raises up our concience before God. Without this article the world is utter death and darkness."2

1. Martin Luther, What Luther Says: An Anthology, ed. Ewald M. Plass, 3 vols. (St. Louis: Concordia, 1959), 2:704 n.5
2. Ibid., 2:703.

From R.C. Sproul's "Faith Alone, The Evangelical Doctrine of Justification", p.67

However, in the Anthology listed above the quote is as follows:

2195 This Doctrine the Life of the Church
This doctrine is the head and the cornerstone. It alone begets, nourishes, builds, preserves, and defends the church of God; and without it the church of God cannot exist for one hour....For no one who does not hold this article-or, to use Paul's expression, this "sound doctrine" (Titus 2:1)-is able to teach aright in the church or successfully to resist and adversary....This is the heel of the Seed that opposes the old serpent and crushes its head. That is why Satan, in turn, cannot but persecute it.5

5 In Luther's theology and in Lutheran circles this teaching is, in consequence, the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae, the article with and by which the church stands, without which it falls.

So it appears that the quote that Sproul attributes to Luther is actually a footnote from Plass's Anthology. If Luther is the author of this quote, apparantly Sproul had trouble finding its reference too.