Soli Deo gloria

there are other evangelicals whose conceptions are similarly coloured by an underlying naturalism out of which they have formed their better confession by a like process of modification and correction the former of these parties is represented by the evangelical lutherans who accordingly delight to speak of themselves as adherents of a conservative reformation that is to say as having formed their evangelicalism on the basis of the sacerdotalism of the church of rome out of which they have painfully perhaps though not always perfectly made their way the other party represented by the evangelical arminians whose evangelicalism is a correction in the interest of evangelical feeling of the underlying semi-pelagianism of the dutch remonstrance over against all such forms there are still other evangelicals whose evangelicalism is more the pure expression of the fundamental evangelical principle uncoloured by intruding elements from without amid this variety of types it is not easy to fix upon a principle of classification which will enable us to discriminate between the chief forms which evangelicalism takes by a clear line of demarcation such a principle however seems to be provided by the opposition between what we may call the universalistic and particularistic conceptions of the plan of salvation all evangelicals agree that the power exerted in saving the soul is from god and that this saving power is exerted immediately upon the soul but they differ as to whether god exerts this saving power equally or at least indiscriminately upon all men be they actually saved or not or rather only upon particular men namely upon those who are actually saved the point of division here is whether god is conceived to have planned actually himself to save men by his almighty and certainly efficacious grace or only so to pour out his grace upon men as to enable them to be saved without actually securing however in any particular cases that they shall be saved the specific contention of those whom i have spoken of as universalistic is that while all the power exerted in saving the soul is from god and this power is exerted immediately from god upon the soul yet all that god does looking to the salvation of men he does for and to all men alike without discrimination on the face of it this looks as if it must result in a doctrine of universal salvation if it is god the lord who saves the soul and not man himself and if god the lord saves the soul by working directly upon it in his saving grace and then if god the lord so works in his saving grace upon all souls alike it would surely seem inevitably to follow that therefore all are saved accordingly there have sometimes appeared earnest evangelicals who have vigorously contended precisely on these grounds that all men are saved salvation is holy from god and god is almighty and as god works salvation by his almighty grace in all men all men are saved from this consistent universalism however the great mass of evangelical universalists have always drawn back compelled by the clearness and emphasis of the scriptural declaration that in point of fact all men are not saved they have found themselves therefore face to face with a great problem and various efforts have been made by them to construe the activities of god looking to salvation as all universalistic and the issue as nevertheless particularistic while yet the fundamental evangelical principle is preserved that it is the grace of god alone which saves the soul these efforts have given us especially the two great schemes of evangelical lutheranism and evangelical arminianism the characteristic contention of both of which is that all salvation is in the hands of god alone and all that god does looking to salvation is directed indiscriminately to all men and yet not all but some men only are saved over against this inconsistent universalism other evangelicals contend that the particularism which attaches to the issue of the saving process must just because it is god and god alone who saves belong also to the process itself in the interests of their common evangelicalism in the interests also of the underlying supernaturalism common to all christians neither of which comes to its rights otherwise nay in the interests of religion itself they plead that god deals throughout the whole process of salvation not with men in the mass but with individual men one by one upon each of whom he lays hold with his grace and each of whom he by his grace brings to salvation as it is he who saves men and as he saves them by immediate operations on their hearts and as this saving grace is his almighty power affecting salvation men owe in each and every case their actual salvation and not merely their general opportunity to be saved to him and therefore to him and to him alone belongs in each instance all the glory which none can share with him.

Thus they contend, in order that the right evangelical ascription soli deo gloria may be true and suffer no diminution in meaning or in force, it is necessary to understand that it is of God that each one who is saved has everything that enters into his salvation, and most of all the very fact that it is he who enters into salvation." the precise issue which divides the universalists and the particularists is accordingly just whether the saving grace of god in which alone is salvation actually saves does its presence mean salvation or may it be present and yet salvation fail Fourth, even the particularists, however, have their differences.

The most important of these differences divides between those who hold that God has in view not all but some men, namely those who are actually saved, in all his operations looking towards the salvation of men, and those who wish to discriminate among God's operations in this matter, and to assign only to some of them a particularistic, while they assign to others a universalistic reference.

the latter view is of course an attempt to mediate between the particularistic and the universalistic conceptions preserving particularism in the processes as well as in the issue of salvation sufficiently to hang salvation upon the grace of god alone and to give to him all the glory of the actual salvation while yet yielding to universalism so much of the process of salvation as its adherents think can be made at all consistent with this fundamental particularism the special one of the saving operations which is yielded by them to universalism is the redemption of the sinner by christ this is supposed to have in the plan of god not indeed an absolute but a hypothetical reference to all men all men are redeemed by christ that is if they believe in him their believing in him is however dependent on the working of faith in the hearts by god the holy spirit in his saving operations designed to give effect to the redemption of christ The scheme is therefore known not merely by the name of its author, as Amoraldianism, but also, more descriptively, as hypothetical redemptionism, or, more commonly, as hypothetical universalism.

A grandmother gives her grandson a score, a young man takes it seriously, and generations benefit from what followed.

You see, Bach himself frequently signed his sacred compositions Soli Deo Gloria, as you may well know.

To God alone be the glory is the translation.

The music was never simply about him, the composer.

What we're getting into here is one of the solas of the Reformation.

We've heard a lot of the solas of the Reformation, sola fide, sola scriptura, soli Christus, sola Deo gloria, and so on.

But the sola that we're encountering here is sola gratia, which means by grace alone.

Now, Luther, who was voluminous in his publications, considered his most important work his work on the bondage of the will, in which he answered the diatribe of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam.

You should live like a Christian and you should give like a Christian.

Some of us are like, oh, that's Old Testament, Pastor Matt.

What are you talking about? When you bring up money, it's very quick that someone's like, that's Old Testament, that's Old Covenant.

I'm about this New Covenant.

Mm-hmm.

And then finally, uh, sola Deo gloria, which means glory to God alone instead of ...

And that's Protestant convictions.

That's where William Tyndale picked them up, at Cambridge, as they studied Erasmus, as they studied the writings-

And the fifth one is...

Soli Deo Gloria.

Soli Deo Gloria, for the glory of God alone.

So what I mean when I say I'm a reformed Christian, is that I believe that salvation is in Christ, by grace, through faith, in the Scriptures, for God's glory.

And that the way God brings glory to Himself is not by just going razzle dazzle, aren't I glorious.

Well, actually, I believe that when we come to the concept of storytelling from a Christian point of view, all things come from you, oh God, and of your own have we given you.

Well, what's the point of the story of the universe? Well, it is for participation.

We are supposed to be involved in the story that God is telling, such that it is for the glory of God, Soli Deo Gloria.

That's why we are doing it.

Sola Dei Gloria.

That doesn't mean children can never smile at church.

I don't even know if that's possible, but I've heard stories.

Solus Christus.

And soli Deo gloria.

Soli Deo gloria.

Sola fide means by faith alone.

Yeah.

In Christ alone.

Um-

Like, it is the most Romish reading of this text, and I don't think people realize that that they are wandering from Protestantism into Catholicism when they begin to read the Scripture this way.

First and foremost, I said at the top of the show, yeah, I'm not a Calvinist, but I am Protestant, and I hold to the solas, right? Sola Scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia, sola deo gloria, sola Christus.

The whole point of this is to focus on who Christ is, what he has accomplished, and we begin to read the scriptures about our own work, we become the Messiah.

Our works are what save us.