ISSUE 8: Living with Viable Faith

When you listen to a song, what attracts you to it, the music or the words? If the music resonates or even reverberates for you before the words, then priority is given to the music and the words become secondary, assuming that they’re listened to at all. This basically involves the medium or the message, an issue of prime importance. With the focus on the medium, where does that leave the message? What needs to be sorted out about songs is what’s primary and what’s secondary. This also applies to Christian songs, especially the ones selected for worship.

Of course, many songs are composed with the emphasis on the medium over the message. Songs of significance, however, emphasize the message, which can be intensified nonverbally by its qualitative communication from the heart. Some music could be heartfelt but the quality of that music itself is not the message of the song. A heartfelt message always resonates deeper and above any musical medium.

More importantly, the medium-message, secondary-primary process is critical for Christian faith, both in its theology and practice. What’s emphasized in Christians’ practice of faith and the theological basis (explicit or implicit) for their practice underlie each of the inescapable issues discussed in this study; and that faith will either converge with the whole message of the issues combined, or be separated (“be apart”) by the fragmentary medium the issues present. The results will either be a viable faith with integral theology and practice, or an effectively lifeless faith transitioning with variable theology and practice. And make no mistake, faith is not viable merely because you possess faith, which is an assumption too many persons make with their Christian affiliation—the medium of their faith that becomes its message at the expense of what’s primary. Could this be the reason that more and more of the younger generations have indicated no faith-affiliation as the “nones”?

The Works of Faith Work

The distinction between works and faith can be and has been confusing for Christians. This is an issue that has not been fully resolved in the theology of most Christians, especially if they consider Paul and James to be in conflict (as the verses at the top of the chapter may indicate).

Both Paul and James challenged a faith reduced to practice without relational and functional significance (Gal 5:6; 1 Thes 1:3; 2 Thes 1:11; Jas 2:14,21-24). Both countered a faith that was an end in itself or a means for oneself, even for justification (as Rom 3:28 may suggest). When justification (dikaiosyne) is seen only in its judicial aspect before God, it has lost the compatible relational function with God necessary for ongoing involvement in relationship together. Justification by faith becomes inadequate when the process is limited solely to being justified before God. This limitation involves a reduced faith, which implies a truncated soteriology focused only on being saved from sin—and that view of sin is limited also. The root of justification, however, also involves righteousness, which is not an attribute but the congruent function of a person’s whole ontology in relationship. That is, righteousness is the inner-out function of the whole of who, what and how a person is, which God and others can count on to be that person in relationship together. Being righteous engages the whole person in the fullness of soteriology and thus involves those persons directly in what we are saved to—whole relationship together in God’s new creation family.

As distinguished for the Lord, “Righteousness will go before him and will make a path for his steps” (Ps 85:13), so also righteousness constitutes the compatible involvement needed for reciprocal relationship with the whole-ly God. This essential relational process is an inner-out relational function emerging only from the vulnerable relational response of trust—the relational significance of the wholeness of faith. Therefore, the more basic issue underlying the issue of justification by faith is the nature of the faith practiced to claim justification. This basic issue addresses the sin of reductionism and its influence to redefine faith and truncate salvation without the fullness of being saved to.

Reductionism in faith-practice has had an ongoing history among God’s people, whether by ancient Jews, Christian Jews, Jewish and Gentile Christians, or modern Christians, whether for identity, ideology or justification. Such faith has the primary focus on oneself, which has no relational significance to God and functional significance to others without its relational significance of trust. The practice of such faith in relationship is outer in, and thus is measured or distant, if not detached. In contrast, the relational response of trust makes one vulnerable from inner out and engages the primacy of relationship, first with God and then with others, for the reciprocal relational involvement necessary for relationship together to be whole—not measured or distant and thus, simply fragmented.

In other words, for both Paul and James, faith is not static, passive, self-involved and a mere statement of belief. Rather, by the nature of God’s righteous relational action, compatible faith is the righteous relational dynamic, actively responding to God and others in relationship with one’s whole person from inner out as the relational outworking of one’s belief (Gal 5:6; Jas 2:17; cf. Amos 5:21-24). Anything less and any substitutes of this relational response are reductions evolved from the counter-relational workings of the sin of reductionism. The simulations and illusions of faith from reductionism is the underlying issue Paul and James challenged in its function and outcome, both of which they countered with whole faith—the wholeness of one’s relational response of trust and its relational outcome of whole relationship together with God and God’s family.

The reciprocal relational means for experiencing this definitive whole relationship together as God’s family was also at the center of this conflict for Paul. He grasped that this issue is ongoing unless understood in its proper context. In Galatians, the conflict of relational means (not an end) appears to be between “the law” and “faith” (Gal 3:1-26). Yet, this would not only be an oversimplification of Paul’s polemic but also a reduction of the law from its composition as God’s desires and terms for covenant relationship, as well as a reduction of faith as the necessary relational response to God’s promise of covenant relationship together. Paul put the issue into its full perspective.

Galatians represents Paul sharing the functional clarity for the whole gospel to address their current issue, situation and related matters in order to take them beyond the human contextualization of reductionism (not just of Judaism) to the further and deeper contextualization of God—the whole-ly God’s relational context and process embodied in, by and with the whole of Jesus. Within God’s relational context and process, the law neither reduces nor renegotiates the covenant relationship. In fact, as God’s terms for relationship together, the law is integrally compatible with the covenant and even is a vital key for the emergence of whole relationship together. That is, not as a functional key to fulfill the promise (3:21), the law serves rather as a heuristic framework (paidegogos) for both learning our human condition and discovering the source of its whole solution (3:10, 22-24; cf. Rom 3:19-20).

The reciprocal relational means both necessary to receive and compatible to respond to Jesus for whole relationship together is the issue for Paul, which then necessarily involves human ontology. When human effort is relinquished and replaced by the relational response of faith, Paul adds for functional clarity that we are no longer under the paidagogos of the law (3:25). Paul is only referring to the law’s heuristic function. This does not mean that the law (as God’s desires and terms for covenant relationship) is finished and no longer functional for the practice of faith (Gal 5:14; 6:2; cf. Rom 3:31; 1 Cor 9:21). Paul in truth wants the law (in its relational purpose) to be fulfilled relationally by human persons, and he may confuse us by stating that the law cannot be fulfilled by human effort (Gal 3:10; 5:3).

By focusing on the relational involvement of agape (Gal 5:14), however, he makes definitive how the law is or is not fulfilled. By necessity, this engages the two conditions of human ontology (whole or reduced), and Paul differentiates their respective involvement with the law (5:6; 6:15). Whole human ontology functions from inner out in the relational response of trust to be vulnerably involved with God and others in family love—just as Christ functioned (cf. Jn 15:9-12)—thus reciprocally responding to God’s desires and terms for relationship together. Reduced human ontology, in contrast, functions from outer in to try to fulfill the quantitative aspects of the law, thus renegotiating God’s terms for relationship by human terms shaped from human contextualization. This reductionism essentially redefined relationship with God to mere relationship with the law, which then disembodies the law from the whole-ly God and God’s desires for relationship together.

For Paul, the underlying issue between function by law and function by faith is clearly between reduced ontology and function and whole ontology and function. The relational consequence of the former is not only the inability to fulfill the law but enslavement to the reductionist futility of human effort (Gal 5:3-4). The relational outcome of the latter is to receive and respond to Christ for whole relationship together with nothing less and no substitutes.

In the discussion above, works and faith are inseparable, on the one hand, yet Paul also distinguishes works from faith, on the other hand. Paul sees works also as inseparable from God’s law. Works of the law in practice reflect a perceptual-interpretive lens that Paul addressed, challenged and exposed. Paul’s roots did not originate in Judaism, thus his discourse on works went beyond his religious tradition and deeper into human origin. That is, Paul is addressing human ontology and how the human person is defined, and what determines human function. Paul knew from the creation narrative that the human person was designated with “work” to accomplish (Gen 2:4-5,15). The term for work (abad) also means to serve, minister and worship. Abad then is not an end in itself by which to define human persons. Abad is a designated function in a broader context than just the individual person, which the Creator established to define human ontology and determine human function. The issue for abad becomes whether this broader context is to serve the physical creation, minister to the human creature or worship the Creator. This is an ongoing problem of the perceptual- interpretive lens that will determine our perception of work, the significance of its context and what will define the human person. Paul was addressing these issues in his discourse on works.

Relationship in God’s likeness is the deeper context of abad that established the roots for Paul’s perceptual-interpretive lens defining all works, inclusive of all human activity for physical creation, for human creatures or for the Creator. In Paul’s deeper theological framework, therefore, the primary work defining human ontology and determining human function is relational work: namely, the whole person from inner out in the vulnerable relational response of trust with God (faith) and in the vulnerable relational involvement with others in relationship (agape, Gal 5:6)—which can be counted on when relational work functions in righteousness. All other works and human activity are secondary to this relational work in the primacy of relationship together. If persons are defined by doing secondary work or activity, for Paul this constitutes a reduction of the person created in God’s qualitative image and relational likeness, a reduction which signifies a quantitative perceptual-interpretive lens redefining human ontology and function from inner out to outer in.

In Paul’s polemic, if persons define themselves by this reduced human ontology and by their function in the works of the law, then they are obligated to do “all the things written in the book of the law” (Gal 3:10) and are measured by “the entire law” (Gal 5:3). Without complete and perfect adherence, they can never fully measure up on these terms; therefore they are deficient (“cursed”) and must be deemed as less and unacceptable to God, that is, on these redefined terms based on reduced human ontology constituting persons by what their works. Paul is only raising a hypothetical process of works on human terms, not God’s terms. By this polemic, Paul challenges the assumptions about theological anthropology of all his readers.

To be sure, good works are inseparable from relational faith because of the relational nature of God’s communication revealing the law (cf. Num 12:6-7). God’s law, without reduction and disembodiment, expresses God’s desires and terms just for reciprocal relationship together in the covenant of love. Thus, observing the law is more accurately described as the relational function of responding to God’s desires for relationship, which for Paul became the experiential truth of his discipleship with Christ in relationship (cf. Acts 26:16b; 1 Cor 11:1)—just as Jesus made definitive for observing the law (Mk 10:21) and for serving him (Jn 12:26). God did not vulnerably share these desires and terms for the sake of the moral and ethical conformity of persons in doing good; such works simply reduce persons to the limits and constraints of the human condition. The relational response of God is to redeem persons from such reductionism and to reconcile them to whole relationship together (Gal 4:3-7, pleroma soteriology)—the redemptive reconciliation at the heart of the whole gospel.

The integral convergence of faith and works is illuminated by Paul and reinforced by James. If the perceptual-interpretive lens used doesn’t discern Paul’s and James’ relational language, they would exhort their readers to “take heed.” Consider again: The reciprocal relational response of trust is the vulnerable involvement necessary to be compatible with God’s relational response communicated in the relational message of the law, and to be congruent with the human ontology and function created in relational likeness to the whole of God. Merely doing good and good works, even with good intentions, reduce God’s relational response, God’s law, human ontology and function. James does not make works an end in itself, as if the medium of works is the message of faith. Paul’s polemic exposes these reductions and illuminates the good to make them whole. The wholeness of his theological discourse on good defines unmistakably its determinant relational work by those who function from inner out ongoingly in reciprocal relational response back to God for nothing less than and no substitutes for the primacy of whole relationship together—what the whole-ly God saves us to, which is indeed the only good news for the inherent human condition’s relational need and problem. No amount of good works alone is sufficient to meet this need and adequate to resolve this problem.

Paul’s theology gives the basis for the relational context and process of faith to constitute faith’s primary function: the relational work of ongoing reciprocal involvement in trust of whole-ly God. The practice of the relational work of faith unfolds in the relational outcome of related works, which are secondary to the primacy of faith’s relational work but inseparable from it. When these related works are not integrated with faith’s relational work, then faith becomes “useless…is dead” (as James clarified, Jas 2:20,26). The integral theology and practice that Paul and James make definitive for Christian faith likewise clarifies, corrects and confirms what is viable for all Christians in their faith. In spite of how Paul and James are interpreted with a variable practice, what is integral for them is irreducible and nonnegotiable.

Living Viably in the Human Context

Listen and learn! Our surrounding contexts bear down on us to influence our persons, relationships and churches to remain in transition. Moreover, the human condition renders us ongoingly by default to be anything less than whole, to be fragmented by any substitutes. The most influential medium today, for example, is social media, which typically misrepresents the Christian faith by disseminating misinformation from unscrutinized sources. Consider if you will: If Jesus had a social media account, how many more “followers” would he have today than before? But, if he posted the relational message of faith encompassing the Sermon on the Mount, would those more followers still give Jesus “likes”? In addition, do virtual gatherings in the church (as in the COVID pandemic) reinforce the convenience of the medium as the message as well as the comfort of the secondary over the primary, which churches generate virtually even in person?

Given our surrounding contexts, however, the viability of faith’s relational work (1) clarifies its primacy over the secondary function of all related works, and (2) corrects the misinformation, misrepresentation and mistaken practice of the medium of works composing the message of faith. Whenever such a medium composes the relational message of faith, what others hear and see has no substantive quality to distinguish that faith as viable and thus to constitute it as living. This appears to underlie the practice of spiritual disciplines and formation, which Dallas Willard was instrumental in developing but who was also wary of its practice by many Christians. The issue is this practice becoming merely an end in itself, thus making the medium of spiritual works primary over or at the loss of its relational purpose constituted by the message of faith’s relational work.

Therefore, the relational work of our faith is ongoingly challenged more and more by the inescapable issues discussed above. And faith’s relational work comes alive on the narrow relational Way based on the experiential Truth for the whole Life embodied and enacted by the whole-ly Word. Its purpose alive is just for all Christians to be vulnerably involved in reciprocal relationship together, both intimate and equalized as his church family in the qualitative image and relational likeness of the Trinity. Accordingly, on the basis of righteousness (as in Ps 85:13; Mt 5:6) we all need to account specifically for the depth level of who, what and how we are that can truly be counted on by God and others in this relational reality.

For this integral relational context, process and outcome, all Christians are accountable whole-ly from inner out—individually as persons and collectively as church. Take heed!

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