Sola Fidelity

“Paganism declared that virtue was in a balance; Christianity declared it was in a conflict: the collision of two passions apparently opposite. Of course they were not really inconsistent; but they were such that it was hard to hold simultaneously. Let us follow for a moment the clue of the martyr and the suicide; and take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. “He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,” is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice.

He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not done so. But Christianity has done more: it has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the sake of dying. And it has held up ever since above the European lances the banner of the mystery of chivalry: the Christian courage, which is a disdain of death; not the Chinese courage, which is a disdain of life.”GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Chapter VI. THE PARADOXES OF CHRISTIANITY

Upon reading this, my mind immediately went to the paradox of fear and faith.

We must always have faith in God’s promises and never doubt them, for this sin angers Him (Psalm 78:21-22). But we must also fear Him and not presume on our covenant standing that we do not have to work out our salvation (Philippians 2:12). There seems to be a need for balance here. There are those who have an unhealthy amount of fear and little faith. This is doubt. But there is also a sort of faith that has no fear. This is the presumptuous sort of faith Paul rebukes in Romans 11

17 If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, 18 do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. 19 You will say then, “Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.” 20 Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but be afraid. 21 For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either. 22 Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off.

I was recently warned on this thread over at Green Baggins that I was teaching my children to “presume” upon God’s grace. My answer to that is simply that there is no room for presumption where there is fear. Faith without fear is presumption or arrogance, as the apostle put it.

So the remedy for presumption in our children is a healthy dose of warning and fear. But if there is too much of that, they begin to doubt. The way we cure doubt is by declaring to them God’s promises and assuring them that those promises are theirs as God’s children in Christ. They need to be taught both to have faith and to fear. Saving faith both trembles at the threatenings, and embraces the promises of God for this life, and that which is to come. (WCF XIV.II)