Beatnik Christianity Rebuffs Inane Religious Frameworks Like Protestant “Faith vs. Works”

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If you study theology long enough, you’ll inevitably come to a point where there are certain topics you don’t ever want to discuss again. It’s not that the topics grow uninteresting. It’s because the warped manner in which people insist upon framing the discussion is. just. so. freaking. awful. It’s exasperating. The god-awful Arminianism vs. Calvinism debate being the quintessential Bible college example. This is also how I feel about the eternal debate about the relationship between faith and works. For the life of me, I cannot comprehend why we’ve made this so bloody difficult.

Belief ≠ faith. It never has. People often use these terms interchangeably, but they’re not. There’s all sorts of fancy definitions of belief, of course, but for the sake of simplicity let’s call it cognitive assent. It means one understands something to be accurate or agrees with a perspective. Well, just because a person believes something is true doesn’t mean he or she has faith in it. James wrote faith without works is dead. In other words, it’s not enough to inwardly believe in the veracity of a thing. Faith is belief outwardly manifested. It must be acted upon. To be alive, it must be living.

My view is straightforward: A + B = C. Belief + Action = Faith. It’s that simple. It’s like the double missile in Crimson Tide. The Captain and XO have to align in the interpretation of their orders for their submarine to launch its nuclear missile. The Belief key and Action key have to be turned at the same time to launch the Faith missile. With this basic formula, that half millennium of the Catholic and Lutheran spatting over justification seems so very stupid.1 All because these Late Medieval Western intransigents refused to adopt James’ quite Jewish point of view.

For the theology nerds out there, I agreed with the initials gang of E.P Sanders, James D.G. Dunn, and N.T. Wright long before I heard of the so-called “New Perspective on Paul.” Yes, we’re justified by faith through grace, but, once again, faith isn’t merely an internal affirmation. A + B = C. Within a Jewish understanding, it’s about covenant faithfulness. Just as faith is a synergy of belief and action, so justification is about inward citizenship in, and outward allegiance to, the Kingdom of God. Both/and, not either/or. Luther botched that one and I’m tired of talking about it.

The original beatniks… Oh, screw it. I’ve got no earthly idea how to tie in the Beat Generation other than to say they, too, were annoyed by inane religious frameworks. With that I’ll leave you with a pair of my favorite N.T. Wright quotes: 1. “For too long we have read Scripture with nineteenth-century eyes and sixteenth-century questions. It’s time to get back to reading with first-century eyes and twenty-first-century questions.” 2. “When you’re writing theology, you have to say everything all the time, otherwise people think you’ve deliberately missed something out.”