Protestant theology asserts we are not saved by our works.
The Reformation insight was profound: God alone is righteous, and so we cannot make ourselves right with God through our good works.
Rather, we are saved/justified by faith alone, by Christ alone, by grace alone. “Saved by grace through faith in Christ apart from the works of the law.”
This doctrine has become a caricature of itself, causing all sorts of confusion. Christians who adopt it end up denigrating good works, as if an emphasis on good works were inherently a form of “works righteousness.”
It’s as if the very same Protestants who emphasize biblical faith have overlooked Titus’ encouragement to “be zealous for good works” and James belief that “faith without works is dead.”
In this bizarre “Christianity is only about faith” system, any emphasis on good works is problematic because, supposedly, we are to focus on faith rather than works, as if faith all by itself and apart from works were really the “main thing.”
But this caricature of good works overlooks the core idea in Reformation teaching on the doctrine of good works, which was that there are different kinds of works, works directed “above” and works directed “below.” Works aimed above us are indeed works attempted to mollify or impress God in order to gain favor (salvation). But there’s another kind of good work, works aimed below, which are the works we do for our neighbor in need.
I think most caricatures of “works righteousness” and much of anti-good-works theology fails to rightly distinguish between these kinds of works, and causes all kinds of confusion in the process.
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Additionally, and herein lies the rub, the average person, including the average Protestant, doesn’t adhere very well to the idea of faith alone. Most people left to their own devices tend to believe something quite like what is depicted in popular shows like Good Omens or The Good Place. That is, those who go to heaven do so because they, on average, did more good than bad, and conversely those who go to hell do so because they, on average, did more bad than good.
This has become even more complicated in our modern era because many people now believe some form of universal salvation (I count myself among them) and many others believe essentially that whatever salvation is, it’s related to this life rather than a “life after.” That is, they doubt there is a life “after life” (I do not count myself in this number, those I do have a kind of Walt Whitman-esque sense of what life “after life” will be like).
What this means in practice is a) the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone, though repeated over and over in our theologies, hasn’t quite “caught on,” if the surveys are any indication, and b) we need a better approach to a doctrine of good works, and honestly, we need a right way of believing, even celebrating, that good works “save.”
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How then are we to think about good works? Well, I’d argue we might start by elevating them much higher in our theology. Good works are central. They are, in fact, the main thing.
Our neighbors need our good works.
Christ modeled a persistent pursuit of good works.
Scripture encourages us to be zealous for good works.
Our good works save, not in the sense that they garner eternal salvation for us, but in the much deeper and more important sense of saving—they heal, salve, restore us and our neighbor.
Admittedly, good works are not easy. In fact, they’re damn hard. Most of us, most days, prefer to choose comfortable works, self-satisfying paths.
Good works are difficult because they require of us integrity, discipline, selflessness that is not self-abnegation.
In the words of the commitment card Martin Luther King Jr. distributed to volunteers in Birmingham, good works invite us to “sacrifice personal wishes in order that all humans might be free.”
Some of the good works we perform do not receive the kind of attention they deserve. Good works include everyday works like changing diapers and driving safely on the right side of the road. Good works also include doing our jobs well, parenting well, etc.
But good works are also part of systems. Many of us are far better at performing the small, simple good works necessary for daily neighborliness, like donating some of or proceeds from our small businesses to help the local homeless shelter.
Far more difficult for is the sacrifice necessary to speak up in our place of business against business practices that are inherently unjust toward workers and customers.
More difficult still is for us to perform the good works necessary to stop injustices in our nation or world.
I do not intend here in this short post to try and work out an entire catalog of what counts as good works. In any event that would be impossible. Good works are free, contextual, sometimes contrary to perception (that is to say, often a truly good work can be perceived as a bad work), and wondrously varied.
But if we believe things can be “saved,” and if we mean by such salvation not just a theoretical eternal salvation that takes place after this life, but rather the saving of this life now, the one we are currently living, then in fact we need to believe and trust that good works will save us.
Returning to the division between things “above” and “below,” ostensibly the whole reason the gospel is good news has to do with the reality we no longer need concern ourselves with saving ourselves in the “above” sense because this salvation was accomplished in and through Christ’s “good work.”
Regardless of how you understand that work, and actually even if you don’t believe in it, nevertheless what it can teach us is that such a doctrine makes us radically free to think about good works in the right way.
We do not need any good works that strive to accomplish something other than for our neighbor in their need.
Additionally, it sets us free to be “responsible” toward our neighbors (and the world) in ways radically different than if we were more centered on living a personal life we have abstractly defined as “salvific” apart from good works.
That is to say, a proper theology of good works as “saving” facilitates us redefining the “good life” as something other than the one we often have been taught in our tutelage under alternative construals (most of them class constrained, that is to say, shaped by deeply ingrained beliefs about status, which is what we actually thinks count as salvation).
Good works save us from the exhausting pursuit of status. Good works save us for our neighbors. Heck, good works even save us for ourselves.
Christian doctrines concerning works righteousness that downplay good works, strangely over-state grace in order to make us passive and obviated of responsibility, and abstract our religion into realms of pure noetic belief, don’t “work.”
As James writes, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”
As a conservative Lutheran I mostly agree, but you are basically just paraphrasing the distinction between Luther's Active and Passive righteousness. However, as a progressive, how do you define good works? Why do you get to keep the command to help the poor but jettison that sex is a good work only when done inside a marriage between one man and one woman? (Also, if there is universal salvation, why do good works at all? You are preaching the commands of the Law but neutering it's ultimate threat.)