Understanding, Assent, and Dispositions
Suppose an evangelist begins to evangelize peasants but does not begin with 1 Corinthians 15. Can they be saved? Of course. One of Clark's statements I quoted above does hold some potential: "God justifies sinners by means of many combinations of propositions believed." This statement allows that there is a minimum of theological information necessary for a true relationship with our Redeemer, yet this statement can be construed such that it also does not require said minimum to entail a particular doctrine. That is, what the propositions of "the gospel" are that one regenerate person believes and what the propositions of "the gospel" are that another person believes may be equivocal, without overlap. Perhaps there are two sets of propositions, set A and set B, which both suffice to meet whatever minimum Clark has in mind but do not overlap.
Framed this way, I doubt it would present as an attractive option to Clark or most who follow him. If, for Clark, the faith of demons is too minimal, Hebrews 11:6 nevertheless seems to establish theism as a necessary belief for those who are faithful. Can one be saved without believing God is or exists (Hebrews 11:6)? On the other hand, I can't think of any other way in which one could attempt to coherently synthesize Clark's statement about combinations of beliefs and his statement that "There isn’t anything absolutely, no particular doctrine is absolutely necessary for a regenerate person to hold."
I will offer an alternative to Clark (on this point, at least) that might also both serve to answer a few lingering questions and develop a more robust and consistent understanding of the nature of saving faith. I'll begin by considering a following note that Doug Douma says Clark wrote in the margins of a letter to J. Oliver Buswell:
In several places you accuse me of the Greek fallacy. No doubt I am confused. The problem is extremely complex. But obviously, by the statement of Scripture in Luke 12:47 responsibility is proportional to knowledge. I think the difficulty lies in the fact that I have not made clear what the primacy of the intellect is; and I suppose at this point we pass from unessential details to the main point. Hence your remark exactly at the bottom of p.2 is quite beside the mark. [[Clark has a marginal note here connected to the fourth sentence of the paragraph: Not exactly. Knowledge increases responsibility but responsibility does not depend on personal knowledge because infants are born in sin – guilty.]] (Feb. 9th 1939, To J. Oliver Buswell, Pres. Wheaton College, PCA Archives)
Now, there are other places in which Clark says that "responsibility depends on knowledge" (
link; see also many other locations, e.g.
link). But the above paragraph balances those places by mentioning an exception. Clark's article
here also mentions this same exception when he writes, regarding Romans 1: "
In any ordinary sense of the verbs, know, suppress, or hold,
infants do not have the truth. They have not even seen stars and stones, much less the effects of sin in disease and death. There may be others than infants too... The text does not explicitly attribute this knowledge to all mankind. At the minimum
infants are excluded."
Similarly, as important qualification of Clark's position on the nature of saving faith is his intended audience. He is not writing to infants, so he typically excepts them from a discussion of faith: "
Faith, like regeneration, is necessary to salvation, if for the moment we defer discussion of infants, imbeciles, and the insane" (
link).
The question, then, becomes whether Clark thought that infants couldn't have faith in
any sense. If personal knowledge is not necessary for one to sin... must it be necessary for one to believe? Are infants excluded from a "true relationship to our Creator and Redeemer" because they cannot articulate any "minimum of information"? If nothing else, Clark was sympathetic to the Lutheran argument on this point:
One difficulty in the doctrine of justification by faith alone has to do with infants and imbeciles. Most Christians believe that some who die in infancy are saved, and many believe that all who die in infancy are saved. But if faith is necessary, and if infants are incapable of believing anything, what happens to Calvinistic theology? The usual answer is to deny that faith is universally necessary and that infants and some others are justified without faith. The Lutherans, however, are more consistent. They hold that infants can exercise faith even before birth. Of course, how they can believe the Gospel which they cannot possibly have heard remains a mystery, for the Scripture says, Faith comes by hearing. On the other hand, Lutherans have a powerful point in their favor as they cite the case of John the Baptist, who was filled with the Holy Ghost while yet in his mother’s womb. (What is Saving Faith? 2013, Chapter 14)
To my knowledge, Clark never took issue with the commonly held belief that infants can be justified. Now, Clark did write:
Of course a newly born infant cannot express his faith. No matter, say the Lutherans, infants can and some infants do have faith because some infants are justified and justification is by faith alone. This is an impressive argument; but Presbyterians, thinking of a theological expression of faith, allow other means of justification for the incompetent exceptions such as infants and the insane. (Sanctification, 1992, pg. 68)
While notable, it is not clear to me that Clark here means that infants cannot have faith. Infants, in contrast to Clark's intended audience, cannot "express" faith, to be sure. However, if possession of "faith"
simpliciter does not necessarily require the capacity to "express" it, then infants could have faith. Consider:
The positing of innate ideas or a priori equipment does not entail the absurdity of infants’ discoursing learnedly on God and logic. To all appearances their minds are blank, but the blankness is similar to that of a paper with a message written in invisible ink. When the heat of experience is applied, the message becomes visible. Whatever else be added, the important words refer to non-sensuous realities. (Christian Philosophy, 2004, pg. 203)
Even though this statement is not written in the context of salvation, one could easily apply it as follows: among infants who are regenerated, the heat of experience will eventually yield (once they have sufficiently matured) a theological expression of their saving faith. This would mean they could have saving faith as infants, albeit in an incipient form. The word of God is written in invisible ink on their hearts, and the public manifestation and confession of this message will visibly follow, assuming the infants do not die such that they sufficiently develop.
Perhaps it is too much to say that Clark affirmed that infants could have faith. I do think, however, that this position is generally compatible with his views, and it opens up an attractive alternative to his generally understood view on the nature of saving faith that avoids the dual pitfalls of requiring too little or too much theological information of the person saved. The position I am referring to can be outlined as follows (
link):
An occurrent belief is a belief one has, considers, entertains, etc. at a given time. A dispositional belief is a belief one would... have under certain circumstances - say, if one asked a person a question about whether or not he believes some proposition.
So let's look at the discussion of essential and nonessential doctrines from a different angle. Does everything one could list that I "would" need to agree with in order to be saved actually need to be an occurrent belief rather than a dispositional one? The answer is negative. When a believer sleeps, he doesn't usually, at least in my experience, actively believe "Jesus died and was raised for my sins." He's disposed to believe that. And we don't become unbelievers when we [occurrently] think something other than "Jesus died and was raised for me." All of this also indicates that even a Scripturalist who sincerely believes that "a person is what he thinks" must take "thinks" in a dispositional sense, so he should have no problem accepting this distinction.
However, in these cases, the actual or occurrent belief that "Jesus died and was raised for my sins" had already occurred at least once prior to my sleeping or thinking about something else. A better question is: do all propositions relating to the gospel need to have been occurrent at some prior time in order for one to be currently disposed to believe all of them? I don't see why. The burden of proof would be on the one who believes this to be the case to explain why.
Of course, I'm not saying one shouldn't entertain actual thoughts about the gospel. Less trivially, we can't know who is disposed to believe what. We have to act based on what we believe to be the case. This bears on the question of whether we should preach the whole counsel of God. I sometimes hear the argument that Christians should just list a minimal amount of propositions needed to be believed for salvation. That way, the audience isn't exposed to what I guess the arguers would call unnecessary potential obstacles to belief.
But in considering the above distinction between occurrent and dispositional beliefs, as witnesses, evangelists, and apologists of God's word, we only become aware that those to whom we are speaking actually were disposed to believe some doctrine when we actually confront them with it to see if they occurrently accept it, reject, or require clarification of it.
If one rejects a non-essential doctrine, while that doesn't necessarily mean the person isn't saved, the situation bears correction and watching. Christians make mistakes, but they should be teachable. It helps when the so-called teachers aren't constantly accusatory and defensive, which seems to be the case in many apologetic discussions. But sometimes, disagreements are never settled. That's just a fact of life we have to deal with. Sanctification is a process.
To the main point. If one rejects an essential doctrine, that's how we know he wasn't disposed to believe it and how we know he can't occurrently believe the gospel. If he accepts the essential doctrine, then we would have prima facie grounds - and here, Scripturalism needs to update its epistemology to account for kinds of justified belief other than infallibilistic - for believing they already had the disposition to believe it.
This point is relevant to cases where certain parts of the gospel may have been left unsaid in an evangelistic encounter, for even as, in that case, we could not have [as strong] grounds for believing that the audience became or were believers - for we would have no evidence of their dispositions toward what was left unsaid - God could know whether He had disposed them to believe. They could be saved after all.
Again, this doesn't discount or discourage us from activity, for we don't have access to this divine knowledge, assuming it is divinely known. We work with what we have. But that it is a possibility at all is of some note in a discussion about what must one "believe" to be saved.
Applied to this discussion, if I don't need to have an occurrent belief in the gospel while I sleep (or even, at times, when I am awake and am focusing on other things) to be counted among the faithful, why should an infant need an occurrent, conscious belief? There doesn't seem to be any reason that an infant couldn't have dispositional beliefs just like a sleeping person can. If this is true, must they have had an occurrent belief in the gospel at least once before they can be counted among the faithful? I don't see good reasons for thinking this. On the contrary, I see many reasons for disbelieving this (see below).
Of course, the circumstances under which the person who is disposed to believe the gospel would be able to express said belief would presuppose he or she sufficiently matures or develops such that they are able to express the belief. That just means we must qualify our description of what the "certain circumstances" are under which dispositional belief could be
evidenced. No evidence of dispositional belief can be had where there is not the capacity for expression of said belief; but absence of evidence for saving faith is need not always be viewed as evidence of absence of saving faith.
In a number of ways, this dovetails nicely with Scripture. Romans 10:14-17 does not need to imply that only persons with developed consciousnesses can have faith. Infants are just as in need of hearing the gospel as any other sinner, but if, for example, the Holy Spirit uses parents to regenerate a child in the womb or in infancy,
they are also just as capable of believing - in a dispositional sense - this gospel in which they have been raised (2 Timothy 3:15). That John the Baptist leapt in the womb has already been mentioned. Other evidences for infant faith would include Psalm 22:9 and Matthew 21:16, which ascribe actions of "trust" and "praise" to nursing infants. Finally, if it
impossible to please God apart from saving faith (Hebrews 11:6), are we to believe infants are excepted from the rank of the faithful? Is the author of Hebrews allowing for exceptions, or is it not rather the case that to such infants belong the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 19:14) precisely because they have a childlike faith, one completely dependent on Jesus and contributing no merits of one's own to the ground of one's justification before the Father?
Of course,
parents won't necessarily know or see more robust evidence of their children's faith until such a time as their children are capable of articulation. But the ignorance of parents does not cut against the potential of saving faith in their children. On the contrary, it should stir the parents to better disciple their children so that they as parents can be assured that their children have been made by God to be good trees after all.
Relatedly, this helps answer why our evangelical witness does not need to follow a programmatic method, such as repeating 1 Corinthians 15 on autopilot. The question which should be asked is whether a person is disposed to or would affirm the gospel as presented in 1 Corinthians 15 under certain circumstances (if they were asked), not whether they actually believe it at a given moment in time (such as when they are asleep). In this sense, Clark may be right after all that persons can be justified by faith in any variety of biblical propositions,
if "faith" be taken in an occurrent sense. That is, all believers are
disposed to believe in a single, definitive set of content ("the gospel"), but not all may
consciously or
occurrently believe said content at the same time.
As mentioned in the lengthy quote above, this does not make evangelism a free-for-all of teaching whatever propositions randomly come to mind. A goal of the evangelist should be to confirm the faith of the person to whom he is witnessing. As mentioned, Scripture indicates some propositions which ought to be believed (e.g. theism, Hebrews 11:6; monotheism, James 2:19; solus Christus, John 14:6; etc.). Clark is right that we ought to preach the whole counsel of God, yet one may prioritize communication of certain propositions adapted to various situations. For example, one who is already a monotheist yet struggles to understand the Trinity should discuss Scriptures which illustrate the deity of Christ. In this sense, evangelism can be viewed as pragmatic and situational, although the content of the gospel [which the faithful are continuously disposed to believe] is definitive.
To some, this initially might sound strange. Parents should tell infant children about the gospel when they can't talk or understand? But if we think about it, that's
precisely the means by which our children normally learn to talk or understand: parents talk to their children all the time - not just about the gospel - even though they don't know how to talk. Speech is creative in divine activity (Genesis 1), and this is imaged in our speaking as images of God to images of God. Parents ectypally create understanding and speech in their children by speaking to them just as God archetypally [re]creates us by speaking His word to us.
While it would be too much to attempt to prove in a post like this, I also think nonverbal communication has an understated role in teaching. Many people have the intuition that a mother cuddling her infant implicitly communicates to her infant, "you are safe and cared for," "I love you," "I have compassion on you" (Isaiah 49:15), or some such proposition. Naturally, one can mistake an inference based on nonverbal communication; perhaps my silent gesture of cranking a film reel by hand during a game of Pictionary is mistakenly interpreted by another as the reeling in of a fish. For one who understands and accepts Clark's core epistemology, this would come as no surprise, but nor should it prevent us from suggesting that communication can and does occur nonverbally. Mistaken inference can occur when one attempts to verbally communicate just as it can when one attempts to nonverbally communicate (e.g. sign language). But no one - presumably not even the most ardent disciple of Clark - would deny that humans verbally communicate.
Just as it is possible to understate the role of nonverbals in human communication, it is equally possible to overstate it. While giving cold water to little ones may be behavior due to one's being a disciple of Christ - and an act for which one will be rewarded - Matthew 10:42 does not suggest that one can infer another's kind actions are the result of being a disciple of Christ apart from verbal communication. Even where verbal communication is present, such evidence for that person being a good tree is, as has been said, fallible.
In any case, all human-to-human communication is embodied, occurring through physical means. As a result, communication is intertwined in subtle ways that we don't quite understand. Sometimes, nonverbal communication facilitates understanding in cases in which it would otherwise be impossible, like if someone is deaf. On the other hand, sometimes, it can facilitate misunderstanding (e.g. tone of voice or inflection would imply something different than a text message would convey using the same words). Difficulties in developing an empirically grounded epistemology - verbal or nonverbal, examples and difficulties of which easily could be multiplied - are apologetic evidence for why we must have a revealed epistemology for full assurance of knowledge (
link). What is being proposed here is an augmentation to a Scripturalist view of the means of communication and understanding (which relate to evangelism and fallible knowledge of the salvation of other), not of a robust epistemology.
Returning to the topic at large, in the final analysis, let us now try to outline a proper, finely tuned understanding of the nature of saving faith. If infants, imbeciles, or the insane can be counted as true believers, what do each have in common with a person whose cognitive faculties have developed to the extent that they can also express or articulate their faith? A helpful analogy from Clark might be made between faith and knowledge:
Mode and object: the mode of knowing, as I use the word, is simply the psychological activity of the knower. The object is what the knower knows. An answer to the question, How do you know, would state the mode of your knowing. An answer to the question, What do you know, would state the object. And so far throughout all the discussion I have failed to see any reason for introducing any other element; in particular the third element that has been introduced is simply unintelligible to me. (Feb 20, 1946, To Ed Clowney, WTS Archives)
Faith or belief also has modes and objects - this makes sense since faith sometimes is knowledge. Faith or belief involves understanding, assent, and trust. The objects of understanding and assent are propositions, whereas the objects of trust are persons. These objects are objective or external: you and I can have the same objects of faith at the same time without conflation of our distinct persons. The mode of faith - the psychological activity of the believer - is subjective or internal, for my psychological activity is not yours.
How it is that one's subjective, psychological activity is directed towards understanding of, assent to, or trust in these objects is always ultimately determined by God and never morally neutral. Men were created with an understanding and direction or orientation towards submission to truth and God. When Adam fell, all fell in Adam in that we participated in sin (cf. traducianism,
link). From conception, then (Psalm 51:5, Romans 1-8), our wills are now oriented towards rebellion to truth and God. We often lack understanding to the extent that as unrepentant sinners, if we accept any truth, it is not for the right reasons - it is unsound, being ultimately grounded in false premises. We do not trust God.
God works to reorient our wills towards truth and Himself again through the regenerative work of the Spirit - infants as well as fully mature men and women. This regenerative work is monergistic. This does not require the activity of our will; on the contrary, that which reorients our will is God's activity alone. Due to sin, synergy or cooperation between God and man now can only take place on the prior ground of monergism. Faith, since it entails the involvement of our wills, is one example of such a synergy. This particular activity "completes" the union of ourselves to Christ that the Spirit's regenerative work "began," although there is no temporal distinction between the two (since, at regeneration, one is at least immediately disposed to belief in the gospel; that is, the causal relation between regeneration and saving faith does not entail a time at which one was regenerate yet an unbeliever). And, as was mentioned earlier, no synergistic activity is the meritorious ground upon which we are viewed as righteous.
Essentially, then, saving faith is one's reorientation towards [the gospel] truth and God [incarnate and triune]. Just as an unregenerate [infant et al.] has a rebellious disposition towards truth and God [even if he is not able to consciously express this], a regenerate [infant et al.] has a submissive and accepting disposition towards truth and God [even if he is not yet able to consciously express this]. Again, one's will - in its activity or its disposition, direction, or orientation - is never morally neutral. We are rational, moral creatures, and our moral makeup, while mutable, is always determined (ultimately by God) towards falsehoods or truth, good or evil, God or sin. In this way, sola fide still applies to infants et al.
No doubt, there is a better way to argue for what position I have been proposing. I do think, however, that it does the job of showing how the traditional, Reformed categories for the components of faith (understanding, assent, and trust) are coherent and in line with Scripture and how categories in contemporary epistemology can be useful to explain how God actually saves people.