Scriptural teaching
Sir: Piers Paul Read in his Notebook (9 September) has a strange misconception of Protestant doctrine. Justification by Faith was not 'Calvin's notion', but the Scriptural teaching of the Apostle Paul, see Romans 5, 1-2, and other N.T. writers. This was the doctrinal basis of the Protestant Reformation under Luther. Nor does it mean that 'the Elect . can do no wrong, so whatever they do must be right.' What a travesty of established truth!
Justification by faith alone means that one is accepted and pardoned by God on the grounds of the merits of Christ, and not on the basis of human merit or religious rites. It emphasises the helpless condition of the sinner and magnifies the grace of God in Christ, the sinner's substitute.
To say that true believers 'can do no wrong' is quite untrue to Protestant teaching based on Holy Scripture. John says: 'If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us', 1 John 1, 8. Protestants believe that sin can be forgiven, and the believer made more Christ-like, not by confession to a priest, but by trust in Christ as Saviour and reliance on the power of the Holy Spirit. There is no evidence that Mary the Mother of our Lord was sinless — indeed in the Magnificat she said, 'my spirit has rejoiced in God my Saviour', Luke 1, 47. It is only sinners who need a Saviour. And there is no evidence whatsoever that Peter was 'the first Pope' in any sense whatever, apart from very unreliable tradition. Ernest W. Bacon 2 The Homes, Langford Road, Bristol
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