A Great New Schism:
How our misunderstanding of faith's relationship to works is rendering the Church impotent in the face of Christ's enemies.
By: John Snyder
Host of In the Public Square
john.snyder@inthepublicsquare.com

Some of us have heard of the Great Schism. It is not much known anymore, but it was a great watershed event in western history. By some estimates, it marks one of the great calamities our civilization. And for that reason, we should take stock, and learn from our mistakes.

The Great Schism occurred nearly 1000 years ago when intractable doctrinal and cultural differences tore the Greeks of the Eastern Church from the Western Roman Catholic world. This division created two irreconcilable Christian churches of uneasy distrust of each other. And as a consequence, it may be argued that our "house divided against itself" forfeited Asia, the Middle East and Africa to the thralldom of a virulent form of monotheist heresy called Islam. After 600 years of Christian Church building in Africa, Asia Minor and the Middle East-a church which included some of the most famous congregations in Christian history: Ephesus and Antioch and Alexandria, fell to the sweeping armies of Mohammed. In short, schism and a recalcitrant insistence on hierarchical power sacrificed Christ's church on the altar of political faction.

Five hundred years later came another schism-but this time one that centered on robust and theological distinctions. There had been a growing tension in the church for nearly two hundred years surrounding questions of works and faith, salvation and sanctification. These are not small questions to Christians. They are central to what a Christian is and what he must do to attain salvation. When at last the corruption of the Catholic hierarchy had hardened into distain for scripture, a great chasm opened between the reformers and the traditionalist such that no amount of reconciliatory talk could bridge the gap between what Rome was falsely teaching and what Christ had taught in His ministry among us.

To their shame, as proof of their hardened hearts, the Catholic Church chose to slaughter Reformers rather than to listen to them. So in 1521, Martin Luther led Northern Europe in a spiritual exodus out of the bondage of that same Catholic Captivity whose bishops insisted that works were an efficacious means to justify the ways of man to God. [1] And so Sola Fide became the battle cry of this new movement.

Out of that thrice divided house a new Church was born, improperly called the "protestant" church-but which rather should be referred to as the Reformed Church. Faith Only, declared Luther, citing the Apostle Paul's Epistle to the Romans, sets men free from the bondage of hierarchical priesthoods and ecclesiastical sacradotalism and properly focused our attention on our personal relationship to God and not the ephemeral works or rituals of men. Out of this grew the concept of the "priesthood of all believers." The reformers asserted correctly that we are justified by faith and not by works. But, be that as it may, this schism came at a tremendous price, like all division within the church-for there was no longer authority or even orthodoxy to challenge every man's personal interpretation of scripture. As a consequence, this part of church has often stood encumbered and impotent before the recurring challenges of history: fascism, communism, philosophical naturalism, materialism and now-most recently- the resurgence of Islam.

Schisms have consequences

So now we are entered into another age. And now comes another kind of schism-one perhaps more dangerous than those which preceded it-because this great schism will have disastrous consequence if we do not address it very soon. And the consequences of failure to address this confusion in foundational doctrine and clearly remedy it by sound theology-will be catastrophic to the purposes of the church. As Christians we are witnessing the opening of a different kind of chasm-indeed the opening of a billion fracturing and fragmenting schisms in the Christian foundation of faith-the foundation of what we believe- eroded by ideas which are distinctly non-Christian. We are living in the age of the Great Dissolution in the civic marriage between works and faith.

Presently, the common meaning of faith has become mystical and fuzzy. In today's church every man has his own faith and since faith is sufficient for God's purpose, each man is a church unto himself. And without the necessity to prove anything in works-or to establish understanding on anything but feeling- many of us belong to a church that no longer has a clear doctrine of even what it means to be a Christian. This is a dead church that cannot stand.

So terrific and disastrous is this anti-intellectualism and anti-works doctrine to the purpose of the church it threatens to render large parts of the church impossibly impotent and irrelevant. Our common church is utterly lost-because there is no common church- for every man is become a "faith" unto himself.

What do I mean?

Sola fide

The doctrine of Sola fide has come to mean something entirely different, I believe, than was originally intended by the reformers. Catholics and other denominations are not immune from this ecclesiastical disease. The doctrine of "faith only" has triumphed in one form or other in the entire Christian world and has come to trump every expectation and requirement of the universal church. "Faith only" has relieved Christendom of any burden to do anything on behalf of anyone or anything except-well-in regard to having more faith. It has left instead a fuzzy, feel-good religiosity, more akin to New-Ageism than biblical Christianity. Indeed, the utter excision of works from classical Christianity has given rise to Christian-type substitutes such as the Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormonism. One might even say, that this failure to expect works from Christians has given rise on the one hand to the heresy of Islam in the world of religion, and conversely to the secular heresy of liberalism on the other. For liberalism, as it is presently understood, desires to supplant the Church with the State, in order to affect justice, mercy and charity on the poor, where once these were entirely the province of the Church. Heresies sweep over us, with orthodoxy is weak. What should we expect? We no longer build hospitals or homeless shelters or universities. Christians are now vastly more absorbed in the high-tech quasi rock concert theatrics and coffee-houses in the front lobbies of their mega-churches. It is what Dietrich Bonoeffer called "cheap grace".

Christians of all stripes have lost the proper relationship between works and faith.

Let me begin therefore with this extremely important caveat: I am not talking about faith as a matter of redemption. I do not believe and I am not advocating in the slightest that works play any part in personal salvation. Christ did ALL THE WORK on the Cross. Period.

So I beg you to honor what I am saying. And please take care not to confuse my observations regarding the church militant and civil Christianity with any assertion regarding redemption. I am talking about both the life of the mind of the church and the life of the Church as it works in the world of men and nations and ideas.

You see, taking this idea of Sola fide as a starting point, logic points us to an ineluctable conclusion, i.e. if there is nothing we can do which entitles us to salvation- then there is nothing to be done, except-well-love and have more faith. But if there is nothing which we must "do," then really the entire purpose of the church is to teach and to "watch and wait" for Jesus to come again, to issue the sinner's prayers as often as possible. You see, even discouraging sin is a kind of work- we are not even really to bother too much about that.because.well, that is a kind of work and sins are forgiven anyway.

This is Christian Passivism. It is very much like pacifism but only a larger problem. [2] We need to reconcile this with C.S. Lewis who said that Christianity was a "fighting" religion.

Well, you see, unless you have descended into the nonsensical world of deconstructed meanings, we must somehow be doing "something" in the process of having faith. This misconception about the nature of sola fide has metastasized into several virulent strains of theology. The liberal kind is cheap grace. The Conservative kind is a reactive doctrine of pietism. We either need to do something or we don't need to do anything at all. Sola fide -what else could it mean? Forgive everything. Or expect everything. It certainly cannot mean we are required to do anything.

Those of the "protestant" persuasion are particularly susceptible to this modern contagion born out of an unresolved dilemma in the foundational statements of the reformers. The conservative brand to sola fide has become only a genre of Pharisee-ism, the liberal permutation, a mindless belief that love is everything. The former is sanctimoniousness, the latter converts man into a passive guest at a love feast.

Today almost all-Christians fall into one or the other camp or are a hybrid of both.

Frankly, a world where men do not work toward something good-sounds too much like Hinduism to me. In fact, a world where all works are God's works and all events are the will of God leaves no room for man in it. [3] Certainly there is no reason for being educated, or building institutions or working, or learning scripture! No wonder Protestants have become anti-intellectual. I can't think of a single good reason to study history or any other subject having embraced such a notion. No wonder we don't study that "Old" Testament anymore. It's irrelevant. God's operation in the world under this construction of sola Fide is only a set of miracles. Under this understanding of "faith", God's plan does not depend on anyone doing anything.

On the other hand, there remains that other nagging persistent problem if we embrace "works" as a doctrine. A world where men build with their own hands and minds Towers of Babble to the person of God is a world where God is no longer God-but a process and destination-to be achieved by human will. In this construction, the world becomes our cosmic scorecard by which God give "grace points" for all the good works we do. God is some unknowable being we work toward.

What to do?

The anti-intellectualism of modern conservative Protestantism and the deconstruction of meaning in modern liberal Protestantism have delivered American Christianity into a place where it is utterly incapable of fighting its way out. Indeed, we really have no idea what a deep crisis we are in. Why? Because conflict, thought, effort, blood, toil, tears and sweat are not in the vocabularies of modern Christianity anymore. We are brought up to believe that "love is all we need," to use the lyrics of John Lennon or to state more precisely that "faith is all we need". But while love and faith should be the object of our desire. They are ultimately important is so far as they form the habits of our mind and soul into the image of Christ, and finally as they become the impetus to what we do. You see if Christ does everything for us, we need to shoulder no burden, fight no noble or good fight, run no race, endure no pain, or pay the price for those who cannot pay themselves. Indeed we have become consumerist Christian by putting everything on our Jesus Credit Card.

We have become, in short, a Church of Sadducees and Pharisees. [4]

Below is a short list of the heresies that have flooded in to replace the void in the church. And each one of them is either a borrowing from non-Christian religion or is a modified form of some secular philosophy.

Modern Schools of Nonsense Faith

• The "God has a plan and that's the end of my obligation in the world " School. (Hinduism) Life is Process.
• The "God has given us the law and the law redeems us. Discipline is holiness" School. (Islamic) Life is work.
• The "Good works and discipline make man good" School. (Nietschean: Will becomes God.·
• The "World doesn't matter and I am at peace" School. (Buddhist) Life is illusion.
• The "You must be nice and a good person, love everyone. We are One " School. (New Age) Life is universal communion with man, nature and the life force.
• The "Obey the law to be acceptible to God" School. (Pharisees) The Law is the preeminent value of God.
• The "Jesus was a good teacher and Christianity is choked full of wisdom and social suggestions, full of rich mythology and good ethical teaching that should be see as a meta-narrative" School (Sadducees) God is unknowable except for sketchy ideas and moral precepts imparted by wise men through history from time to time.
• The "Being loved by God means He's my lover and I wait for Him to do everything for me" School. (Opium Eaters). Jesus is a drug to anesthetize us from the pain of life and the duty to do things.

We have deified love. We have defied will. We have defied magic. We have defied law. We have deified drugs. We have piety. We have deified the wisdom of man. And still we come no closer to understanding faith. Why? Because we have not deified God! Because it is only by the omnipotence of God's total sovereignty that man c an simultaneously exercise free will and still participate in a plan that is already designed ! That is the power of a mighty God!

Men may not be reincarnated-but bad ideas certainly come back to haunt us. Heresies reinvent themselves from age to age because there are only a limited number of repackaged bad ideas that circulate with any effectiveness in this fallen world.

So what does this have to do with faith?

Everything. You see all of these syndromes emerge as a consequence of not knowing and subconsciously rejecting what faith really is-and the otherwise terrifying reality of what it demands of us.

What is Faith?

The primary task of faith is to bring our will into complete and absolute conformity with God's- not to bring God's will into conformity with ours.

We see this problem expressing itself in what we expect out of prayer-which is always rightly undertaken in faith.

So long as we believe that fasting may be used to propitiate God, we are acting like the Aztecs and the Canaanites who believed that their sacrifices were sufficient to propitiate an angry God. (Please be attentive to what I am saying here.) Fasting, rather, is a way of bringing us into submission to God. Not to please God. It quells rebelliousness. For any sacrifice which is meant to please God so that he is obliged to give us what WE want-is a perversion of Sola-fideism and is, in fact, oddly, an assertion of the doctrine of works! (Remember: God does not want sacrifice; He wants obedience.) Such ideas are only specie of paganism. They assert that if we have faith that God will give us something-then God will give it.

This is magic; this is not Christianity.

This "faith is everything" school has turned many parts of Christianity into cults of primitive religion, wherein the intensity of prayer and emotion becomes the touchstones for the effectiveness of prayer and the measure of "true faith." We may as well be throwing virgins into volcanoes or sacrificing our children before Moloch-(which, by the way, is what we do-by our faithless failure to act.)

Furthermore, the idea that "faith" transforms the universe as a kind of "action at a distance"-is so dangerously close to the notion that history is idea (Hegel) or reality is created by will (Nietsche), at times Christians risk becoming little more than Jesus-o-fied German metaphysicians!

What has happened to faith?

The nature of sin is that it always turns positive goods into negative-if anything is good it is faith-but sin has turned faith into mischief and by mischief we are deceived.

A Return to True Faith

Faith is not the belief that if you pray and cry hard enough you can move mountains. Faith is the acknowledgment of the truth of what God says about the universe in which we live. And in that certainty we can do greater things than we imagine! That is why faith is so important. Not because it is magic, but precisely because it is not magic-because it holds us fast to the world as it really it-the invisible world of moral, esthetic, and providential truth that is fixed and unchanging-unlike the physical world that we inhabit, because it releases us from the fear that prevents the Christ in us from doing the things we would dare not do without Him.

Faith is the prime axiom. It is the first "given" in the geometry of how the world really works. It is the foundation of our entire intellectual, spiritual, moral, and esthetics architecture. It is our window to the absolute Truth-the irreducible givens-as the Greeks might say, and as the Hebrews affirmed in their "metaphysics". That is to say-God lives, Christ came-God is Creator-Truth exists-Murder is evil and nothing asserted to the contrary can stand. [5] These are foundational first principles (there are more--indeed they consist of everything spoken by God) of an ordered universe. For as surely as I believe that if I push my computer off my desk it will fall to the floor-the first faith principle that murder is always wrong leads inexorably to correct conclusions about God's universe. In extrapolating from that simple faith statement-we discover that situational ethics is wrong. Abortion is wrong. Genocide is wrong. Nazism is wrong. Terrorism is wrong. And ultimately-passivism is wrong.

We are obliged, therefore, in knowing, to do something of it! We have a duty to know. That is what faith is. And in that knowledge we have a corollary duty-the duty to act. We can never arrive at the idea that murder is wrong by logic as a first principle. We must accept it as a faith statement or we cannot accept it as a truth at all. We can only arrive at that moral proposition as a kind of social convention. The problem is that there are always good reasons to kill someone when needs arise.

Logically, if these first faith principles are merely assertions or social constructions, then all these moral facts are impossible to know, all these other questions about man's relationship with other men and the state and the environment and war, and what we should do about it-are up for grabs. They are only processes, narratives and storybook tales. And every failure to act-is, penultimately, an act of faithlessness. For if these truths are neither absolute nor foundational, they become negotiable and revisable and open to debate. They require no participation on our part. This is where we are today--in a world of Peter Singers and Michel Foucaults, perjurious attorneys and corporate thieves whose only absolute truth is what wets the appetite moment to moment.

You see, faith is something more-much, much more: more practical, more magical than any power to levitate an object if we pray hard enough-or to cure the sick with unceasing heartfelt prayer. The power of faith is the power to stand before the Inquisitions of Evil, before men without conscience, before Charles the Fifth, or a Nazi firing squad, or before the thugs in Communist China, and know, absolutely know that their world cannot stand. That it is doomed to failure. Even if we cannot at that moment see how. We will know, as an article of faith, that evil cannot avail itself forever in a world controlled by a sovereign God. This faith bestows an unshaken certainty in our authority to challenge the apparently ineluctable power of the ACLU or the legal terrorism of the abortion lobby. It is the transforming power to know absolutely that what you say is right-because God said it first. This is faith.

And now something more. Faith is not just certainty. It precipitates action. It is the natural and necessary corollary to any progress in human events. It is what brings man's fallen will into conformity with the mind of God. It is the motion of mankind in assent to the Logos. In short, faith without works is dead. Because human action outside the mind and will of God are dead. They are stillborn. Faith is the glue that binds human action to the Mind of God.

Be careful. Faith makes no claim to deliver you from the evils of this world. James was thrown to his death. Thomas was flayed alive. Peter and Paul and Andrew and Jesus Himself were crucified. Paul had he faith that the stones of Antioch would not break his bones-would have misapplied his faith-for he never uttered such foolishness. His faith was secured that had he been stoned to death-yet the eternal truth of his claim would stand forever . Paul who wrote those last lines in II Timothy, "I have run the race, I have kept the faith, I have fought the good fight," is not writing as a passive man who believes faith is a kind of talisman which allows him to "rely on God to do everything." Rather, Paul's faith is an active faith. Paul's faith is an impetus to action, a stubborn unbending, unbreakable certainty in the truth of God's promises to men. Faith as Paul practiced it, required action because to do anything else would have been, in fact, a kind of faithlessness. It would be a renunciation of the power of love to turn us by faith into soldiers of the Cross.

For Paul, as for all God's saints, faith is a trumpet call to action--the pull within us to obey and respond to that call, no matter the price, no matter the pain- no matter how long and hard the road may be. Because in God's ordered universe whatever happens to us in this life, there is a foreordained conclusion, an end that all the evil of this world can neither forestall or elude in any measure or in any last way. We have only the power to choose which side we are on. And more, whatever hardships, injustices, slanders, outrages, wounds, larcenies, calamities and mortalities that befall us here, all of it is secondary to the absolute certainty and promise of the triumph of justice and Christian liberty in this world under the rule of a Just and wise God, and more an eternal home heaven. That is faith.

Therefore, faith which presupposes that God always delivers us from the power of evil is nonsense. [6] Faith really means the absolute certainty that God will always deliver us from the Evil One, from the ultimate power of hell and damnation. But in this world, faith will not save your flesh-it will not save you from a car accident or resurrect your dead mother. [7] It will not spare us from folly or the evil of other men. (I do not mean to claim that there are not miracles or that God does not operate through providence-but in this way it is not faith which "causes" this-but rather, I expect, our faithful prayers to be in conformity with the will of God, come what may.) But whatever a miracle is, it is not faith which creates them-all miracles originate in God's sovereignty and mind and not from our faith.

Such faith can and will transform the world-even if it is not the magical power that some have supposed it to be. Because it is infinitely more powerful than magic. Why? Because faith is the unstoppable motive force of actions taken without regard for self. Because that is what Christ taught. That is what it means to take up the cross. That is what Christ did!

Therefore, we do not reason to faith, we reason from faith. We do not work to faith. We work by faith.

We will never find enough facts in the world to build, like Babble, a tower of reason to God. Rather we must set down the cornerstone of faith and reason ourselves on that foundation to the architecture of God's ordering principles and purposes. To our mission and to His plan. Why? Because reason without faith is a building without a foundation. Even as faith without works is a wrecked and broken, abandoned foundation. And as faith without works is dead. Works without faith are vanity and foolishness.

Faith, therefore, is the first thing-\not the last thing. And certainly it is not the only thing! Faith stands as the starting point, not the end point. It is the banner around which rally the volunteer armies of the Lord of Hosts , and which continues to stand even in its alloyed and weakened condition. It is the source of every rearguard action against the unstoppable power of evil. It is the unspoken battle plan of every partisan stirring in the forests behind the enemy lines of our ancient foe. It is the battle cry in the frontal assault on a fallen world.

Faith in the nature of God gives raise to so many other goods. It is the moral force behind republican democracy, (the faith statement that men are entitled to be treated decently and that consent is part of the acknowledgement of man's intrinsic worth). It is the ordering principle in science. (I know that the universe God made is rational and knowable-I just need to figure it out. In the beginning was the Logos .) It is a foundational principle in free enterprise (men have a right to private property and should prosper by their just labor: thou shalt not steal ). It stands forthrightly against infanticide: man is made in the Image of God. It supports the war on terrorism ( Thou shalt not murder ). So that every time we are confronted with the question of whether or not it is sometimes acceptable to kill innocent people in buildings or busses or blow up children in pizza parlors for a "good cause"-your faith as a Christian tells you-"Thou shalt not murder" and that unshakable law of God's universe- your foundational faith, reveals the clear understanding that such behavior is wrong and always will be wrong-

This certainty confounds the secularists and the logistician, only because such men reason without any proper premise. Indeed, they reason without any premise at all but there own vain imaginations.

For those without faith will weigh carefully the argument of the terrorist. They will listen to the glowing reports of German industrial production under the Nazis and make Hitler Man of the Year . They will weigh the complexities of population control against the advantages of abortion. And in their wisdom, they will become fools. Why? Because they have no faith-. They do not possess or believe in the presuppositional foundation of God's moral and metaphysical order. But as for us-we of faith-we can understand. Why? Because God promised and created a physical and metaphysical universe that is ordered and rational, one that is consistent and understandable and knowable from His revelation of first things both special and general.

The great schism we are presently witnessing is the schism between those who believe faith is a mantra or Mormon pair of pajamas and those who realize it is a call to arms-(Remember Paul's statement in Philippians: "Put on the whole armor of God"). Paul was not a passivist.

Any other kind of faith is but a cheap spiritual emotion and a residual mysticism. That is the faith of new-agers and childish Wicca-covens. Faith is fact and true and certain and gives rise to clear thinking and clear purpose, to order, to an ordered world, and is, in fact, the foundation of reason and science.

The great disconnect between faith and works, faith and action, faith and reason, marks the newest and most stubborn heresy within our church.

If we do not properly re-integrate faith and works, if we do not close this schism, if we fail to understanding that faith compels works, if we believe that faith is at war with reason, we will become a religion of Hindus and Buddhists, Opium Eaters and Pharisees. We will become nothing other than a different flavor of New Age Religion or Hegelians metaphysics. Faith is the acknowledgment of God and the Promises of God. But more, it requires actions. If we are unable to excise this heresy and reverse this schism, the Church will be unable to stand up to the great evil that is clearly coming. For that is what the Church was ordained to do. To stand in the gap and be God's servant on earth. The church as it is presently composed-is unable to do that. Because it has turned faith into a narcotic and a talisman.

But God's will shall be done. There is no escaping it. We shall mend this great wound that has opened, or it will be closed by some yet unforeseeable means within God providence. But the Church will be renewed and it will triumph. When we have disenthralled ourselves from this heresy-as we will, as is inevitable- for God always preserves a remnant- we shall turn the world upside down-or rather, set the world right side up again.

For reason without faith is vanity.

And faith without works is dead-

Amen.

*John Snyder is host of In the Public Square heard every Friday night in Sacramento , California , from midnight to 2am on KTKZ 1380 AM. Other materials are available along with archived radio programs at www.inthepublicsquare.com . Programs are also pod cast through itunes . You can contact John Snyder at: john.snyder@inthepublicsquare.com or Alexandra Berauer at alexandra.berauer@inthepublicsquare.com .

This article was originally written for the official publication of In the Public Square. You can order a free email subscription of In the Public Square Magazine by contacting matt.rosenblum@inthepublicsquare.com on our website: www.inthepublicsquare.com.

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[1] There were other immensely significant reasons for this religious exodus, including, indulgences and Papal Authority- and more, the power of the Church to dispense grace in the sacraments and confession. But for the sake of this essay I limit the discussion to the issue of faith versus works.

[2] In fact, pacifism can be viewed as a kind of specific application of passivism. Men are not called to the work of war-such world-shaking conflicts like war are matters for God to work out-not men.

[3] Indeed the modern idea of God's sovereignty and providence has degenerated into the idea that men play no part in the operations of history or states! As if works play no part. But if this were the case-why should God operate in history-the very chronicle of human action? Indeed, our modern idea of providence has had the unfortunate effect of allowing us to indulge the foolish notion that we are not instruments of Providence , and that somehow our own behavior is outside and independent of the Sovereignty of God! In short, prayer has become the very thing it was never meant to be. It has become a spiritualized form of existentialism. But prayer is anything but. Prayer is essence preceding existence-it is radical obedience. For every action undertaken out of love for God is an expression of God's providence-as surely as is every action contra God a prayer to a lie-which by His mysterious power serves only to glorify Himself. The Sovereignty of God is inescapable. What this means is-we have free will-and that free will allows us to choose the kind of Character we wish to play in a script written entirely and completely by God.

[4] Remember that these divisions among the learned classes in the time of Jesus were essentially the same as we have today.

The Pharisees were obsessed with the letter of the law and rules-indeed rules for their own sake as public and spiritual witness of sanctification and separateness. These are the folk, who won't drink alcohol, smoke or dance-who cannot fathom a pierced ear, or rock music, who feel awkward around those who indulge in these graceless pleasures and who are horrified by an emphatic utterance or an occasional profanation, but are quite alright with the most egregious heretical ideas being spouted in their churches.

The Sadducees, on the other hand, looked to Athens as co-equal or wiser than Jerusalem. They are also still among us. These are the liberal denominations, those who are "Hellenized", who see the proscriptions and prophesies of scripture as mere literary allusion, meta-narratives, stories, philosophical ideas, general precepts, moral observations, and interesting intellectual matter for the stoa and the fora. These types see scripture as a kind of lovely and rich moral tradition to be observed, but which is problematic if taken too seriously or literally. For them, one reads scripture the same way one reads the Iliad or Moby Dick-lots of good stuff to be extracted from it. For them Christianity is a philosophy and not a faith. These are our modern Unitarians and many others, who see homosexual marriage as progressive and morally tenable, ordain women as head pastors, are fine with abortion, and accept the purpose of the Church as primarily an instrument of social justice.

[5] There are more axiomatic truths in the special and general revelation of God-but they all are part of the foundational understanding and ascent to God's nature, which is properly called faith.

[6] As a result I have witnessed Christians assert that an evil event was not, in fact, evil at all. Rather, since evils occur contrary to the special protection of God, evil events must not really be evil after all.but some mysterious good! This is Hinduism.

[7] I mean this rhetorically.