On only telling half the story – yet another response to Martyn Percy
by Martin Davie:
Many years of teaching theology have convinced me of the vital importance for good theology of telling the whole story. Thus we have to tell people that God is one and also three, that Jesus is fully divine and fully human, that the Bible is a book of human words and also the words of God and that salvation is a matter of divine election and also a matter of human decision.
In all these areas we have to tell the whole story by maintaining both truths simultaneously. The same also applies when we think about faith and works. We have to say that both are necessary for salvation. It is a failure to recognize this that I think is the crucial error in Martyn Percy’s new article ‘Wheat and Tares and Labourers in Vineyards – A commentary on the responses to ‘Sexuality and the Citizenship of Heaven’.
Salvation is a matter of faith, of accepting the Gospel message of the grace of God in Jesus Christ which is, as the parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16) makes clear, available to all without distinction. This is the point made by St. John in John 3:16 ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.’ It is also the point made by St. Paul in Romans 3:21-26:
‘But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction; since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies him who has faith in Jesus.’
However, this is only half the story. Works are also necessary for salvation, not because good works can ‘put away our sins and endure the severity of God’s judgement'(Article XII), but because saving faith necessarily shows itself in good works, that is to say, in behaving in a way that is pleasing to God. Thus Jesus himself declares in Matthew 7:21-23:
‘Not everyone who says to me, `Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, `Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, `I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers.’’
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