Question 21. What is true faith? 

 Answer. True faith is not only a certain knowledge, whereby I hold for truth all that God has revealed to us in his word, but also an assured confidence, which the  Holy Ghost works by the gospel in my heart ; that not only to others, but to me  also, remission of sin, everlasting righteousness, and salvation, are freely given by  God, merely of grace, only for the sake of Christ’s merits.  HC, Lord’s Day 7, Q21.

Ursinus’ Expostion of this question:

Justifying faith is properly that which is defined in the catechism; according to which definition, the general nature of saving faith consists in knowledge and an assured confidence; for there can be no faith in a doctrine that is wholly unknown. It is proper for us, therefore, to obtain a knowledge of that in which we are to believe, before we exercise faith; from which we may see the absurdity of the implicit faith of the Papists. The difference, or formal character of saving faith, is the confidence and application which every one makes to himself, of the free remission of sins by and for the sake of Christ. The property, or peculiar character of this faith, is trust and delight in God, on account of this great benefit. The efficient cause of justifying faith is the Holy Ghost. The instrumental cause is the gospel, in which the use of the sacraments is also comprehended. The subject of this faith is the will and heart of man. Justifying or saving faith differs, therefore, from the other kinds of faith, because it alone is that assured confidence by which we apply unto ourselves the merit of Christ, which is done when we firmly believe that the righteousness of Christ is granted and imputed unto us, so that we are accounted just in his sight of God. Confidence is an exercise or motion of the will and heart, following something good resting and rejoicing in it. The German has it, vertauen, sich ganz gar darauf verlassen. Pistis and pisteuein the former of which means belief, and the latter to believe, are from pepeismai, which means strongly persuaded ; whence pisteuein even among profane writers, signifies to wax confident, or to rest upon any thing ; as we read in Phocilides, “Believe not the people, for the multitude is deceitful.” And in Demosthenes, “Thou art confident in thyself,” Zacharius Ursinus, The Commentary of Dr. Zacharius Ursinus on the Heidelberg Catechism, (Phillipsburg: P&R, 1994), 110-1.

On the Divine side, Ursinus states that the Gospel is:

Or, we may, in accordance with the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth questions of the Catechism, define the gospel to be the doctrine which God revealed first in Paradise, and afterwards published by the Patriarchs and Prophets, which he was pleased to represent by the shadows of sacrifices, and the other ceremonies of the law, and which he has accomplished by his only begotten Son; teaching that the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption; which is to say that he is a perfect Mediator, satisfying for the sins of the human race, restoring righteousness and eternal life to all those who by a true faith are ingrafted into him, and embrace his benefits. Zacharius Ursinus, The Commentary of Dr. Zacharius Ursinus on the Heidelberg Catechism, (Phillipsburg: P&R, 1994), 102.

Batholomaeus Keckermann (1571-1609); studied at Wittenberg, Leipzig and Heidelberg. His years at Heidelberg (1592-1601) were divided between study and teaching. Keckermann taught Hebrew and theology. From 1601 until his death in 1609, Keckermann was rector of the gymnasium and professor of philosophy in his native Danzig. His major theological work is the Systema sacrosanctae theologiae, tribus libris adornatum (1602). Richard Muller, Reformed Dogmatics 1^st edition, 1:43.

Batholomaeus Keckermann:¹

I have heard as touching the Person of Christ, now it remains, that I be instructed in the Office of Christ, and first of all that you tell me how the Office of Christ is called generally?

It is in general termed the Office of Mediator.

What is a Mediator?

Generally a Mediator imports such an one as does reconcile the party offending to the party offended, which reconciliation consists in these three things. 1. The Mediator must make intercession for him that has grieved the party offended. 2. He must satisfy the party offended for the injury and wrong done. 3. He must promise that the offender shall not offend any more. And therefore when we say Christ is a Mediator, it is as if we say that Christ is that Person that has appeased God, whom mankind by their sins had most grievously offended, and who has given satisfaction to the Justice of God by his Passion and Death, who prays for sinners, and applies his merit unto them by faith, who regenerate them by his Holy Spirit, that they may begin in this life to hate sin, and to be wary that they offend God no more.

Of how many sorts is the Office of Christ our Mediator?

Of three sorts: Prophetical, Sacerdotal, & Regal,² in regard whereof our Saviour is called Christ, i.e., anointed and appointed unto this triple Office, because in the Old Testament by God’s own command, there were anointed Prophets, Priests, and Kings.

Which is the Prophetical Office of Christ, and in what does it consist?

It consists in two things. 1. In the Office of teaching: and 2. In the Efficacy of his teaching for Christ is called a Prophet. 1. Because he has revealed God and God’s will unto Angels and unto men. For God could no otherwise be known, then by the Son, according unto that: John 1.18. “The Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has revealed him unto us.” 2. Because he has appointed and preserved in his Church the Ministry of the Gospel, and bestowed on his Church able Teachers and Ministers, fitting and furnishing them with gifts necessary for teaching, Ephes. 4.vers 11. “Christ has given some to be Prophets, others to be Apostles, and Teachers.” 3. Because he is powerfully by the Ministry of the Word, and inclines the heart of such men as are elect, to believe and obey the Gospel, Luk. 24. vers. 45. “Then he opened their understanding, that they might understand Scripture.” Acts 16. vers. 14. “The Lord opened the heart of Lydia to attend unto those things which were spoken by Paul.”

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Daille:

Sins of the world:

1) And it is this that St. Paul explains again in another way, speaking to the Athenians, and saying “that God had appointed him the Judge of the whole world! All these expressions have the same meaning as that which the church has drawn from the Scripture, and which she usually employs to signify this mystery, saying that Jesus was “seated on the right hand of God.” But you will say to me, that as the Lord Jesus is the true and eternal God, blessed for ever with the Father, had he not this dignity and glory before and during his humiliation? If he had it not, how was he God? If otherwise, how can it be said that the Father gave it him after his resurrection only? Dear brethren, I reply, that Jesus Christ was in truth the Almighty God and the lord of glory, before his humiliation. These qualities were his before all time, as he possesses them by his nature, having received them from the Father, by his eternal and incomprehensible generation. Here, however, the question is not that of his original and essential dignity, or even of his Divinity but that of his office; of that which he had being Mediator, not of that which he possessed as being Son of God simply; of that power which the Father has given him as being Son of man, as he himself says in St. John, because he is the Christ and the Mediator of the church. And this power is nothing else than the right and authority to save the world, to found the church, and to preserve it against the gates of hell, to raise up and judge the human race, and to establish afterwards a second universe, where righteousness and immortality should dwell for ever. Jesus was only invested with this great and magnificent right after having completed the work of his humiliation; and if from time to time he has performed some of its functions, it has only been by dispensation, and in virtue of the faith that he had pledged, to satisfy exactly all the required conditions for being installed into this great and Divine office of expiating the sins of the world, by a perfect sacrifice, and to support all the trials by which he should be tempted. This is the reason why he did not till then bear in his flesh the ensigns of this glorious dignity. He only took them at him resurrection, which was as it were the day of his consecration and of his coronation. Truly do I confess, that to execute the authority that he then received an infinite wisdom and power is necessary; and had he not already had such, God, who never gives the title without the qualification, nor an office without a capacity for it, would doubtless have communicated it to him. But being the Almighty God, there was no need in this respect, but to deliver to him the name and right, with which being provided, he displayed in the sight of men and angels this power of his Divinity, which till then, as it were, had been hidden under the veil of the infirmities which were necessary for our salvation. And as to his human nature, which, that he might obtain if had been clothed at his conception with the form and weakness of our poor flesh, God then (as we have before said) filled with glory, and gave it all the excellence of which it wan susceptible, while dwelling within the limits of its true being. I add this expressly to exclude the vain imaginations of those who, under pretense of glorifying the flesh of the lord, would destroy and annihilate it, declaring that by the resurrection it received the incommunicable properties of Divinity, that is to say, omnipresence and such like. John Daille, The Epistle of Saint Paul to the Philippians (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1843), 62.

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The following on the providence of God follows from Polanus’ discussion on permission of sin.

Polanus:

Hitherto concerning the parts of God’s providence: the sorts follow.

The providence of God is twofold: General or special.

The general providence of God, is that whereby the whole world is governed by a certain universal motion, Gen 7.1,2,3.

And that is declared, and especially beheld both in the preservation or destruction of things, and also in the governing of them.

The preservation of things, is that whereby God preserves all creatures, the better to declare his love towards them, Psal. 36.8, 9. Psal. 104. throughout, 105. 106. Mat. 6:36, 30.

Preservation is either universal or special.

The universal preservation, is that whereby he is present with all and every creature, even with the evil, so that he may preserve them only as long as pleases him. Psal. 104. throughout, Mat. 6.26, 30.

That is made manifest by their succeeding one another, or by continuance.

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