Bullinger's Soteriology, Part 5 - Faith and Assurance

One final reflection on Bullinger, this time on the relationship between faith and assurance in his system. His soteriology relies heavily on covenant categories:

• Christ as both the mediator of the covenant between God and man.
• Christ as the new federal head of humanity.
• The atonement as the (legal) basis for justification of man within the covenant.
• Faith as the apprehension of Christ, and the mechanism of imputation of his benefits.

We have seen that this is not a synergism - faith itself is a gift from God:

"In the beginning of this book the matter itself requires that we entreat in few words of faith whereby we are justified before God: this faith is not of men, but is the mere gift of God, by the Holy Ghost, which does lighten men’s minds with his grace and word, that they may truly and rightly understand GOD with his grace, Christ and his righteousness and salvation." (Common Places of Christian Religion, 118-21.)

This faith, for Bullinger, is also assurance of salvation:

"Also, but without faith it is impossible to please God. For he that comes unto God, must believe that there is a God, and that he is a rewarder of them that seek him... And therefore no doubt the Dutch name of faith, glouben is the word globen. And this word globen signifies to promise and assure: wherefore globen faith is a confidence and trust, whereby a man with all his heart and mind stays and surely trusts and sticks unto those promises and assurances of God, which we know to be true." (Common Places of Christian Religion, 118-21.)

This works out also precisely because of the covenantal categories that Bullinger employs. God is trustworthy because his character has been clearly seen in the economy of the covenant. Both in the atonement and in predestination Bullinger has found cause to rejoice at the evidence of God's good favour towards us using 1 Tim 2:4. This therefore means that predestination itself can become a means of assurance for the believer:

"The simpler sort, verily, are greatly tempted and exceedingly troubled with the question of election. For the devil goeth about to throw into their minds the hate of God... That he may the more easily persuade this unto us, he laboureth tooth and nail wickedly to enfeeble and overthrow our faith as though our salvation were doubtful, which leaneth and is stayed upon the uncertain election of God. Against these fiery weapons the servants of God do arm their hearts with cogitations and comforts of this sort fetched out of the scripture: God's predestination is not stayed or stirred with any worthiness or unworthiness of ours; but of the mere grace and mercy of God the Father, it respecteth Christ alone. And because our salvation doth stay only upon him, it cannot but be most certain." (Decades, 4.iv 187-88.)

The logic of this requires some explanation. Election is not uncertain for Bullinger, because it is manifest in the covenant economy. Those who have faith are elect. The possession of true faith in Christ (as a gift from God), is assurance that you are elect.

For this formulation to work, assurance requires hypothetical universalism. God's goodwill toward all men must be genuinely and clearly seen in the atonement for it to be genuinely and clearly seen also in election. If the atonement were for the elect only then it would be evidence of the goodwill of God towards only the elect. However, if this assertion is made then at once I must fall upon the question: "How do I know if I am elect?" If I approach this question in this stark way, absent of any assurance of God's good will towards me, then by Bullinger's definition I have no faith:

"For he that comes unto God, must believe that there is a God, and that he is a rewarder of them that seek him." (Heb 11:6, Common Places of Christian Religion, 118-21.)

For Bullinger, it is only that God's genuine favour towards all mankind is clearly seen in the atonement which grounds assurance in faith. Apart from knowledge of God's favour towards us there can be no faith.