I asked Jimmy Stephens a question regarding our friend’s involvement in a documentary against Christianity:

TheSire:

I want your thought on this:

Cooper:

Paul says we are justified apart from works of the law, and Paul also says that love fulfills the law. So if love is the fulfillment of the law, then justification cannot be conditioned on our love.

Pooda’s response to Cooper:

First, saying that love “fulfills the law” does not automatically make love a “work of the law” in the Pauline sense relevant to justification. Otherwise, since Christ also fulfills the law, one could absurdly argue that justification is apart from Christ. So Cooper’s syllogism is said to confuse categories.

Second, Pooda argues that faith is also commanded, not just love. Therefore, if being “commanded” or even being “in the law” is enough to make something a “work of the law,” then faith would also be a work of the law. Since Paul clearly distinguishes faith from law, your opponent concludes that love can likewise be distinguished from “works of the law” in the justificatory sense.

Third, he adds that the Catholic requirement of love is not meant as autonomous merit, but as grace-enabled love belonging to the covenant of grace rather than the legal covenant. So, on his telling, Catholics are not making justification depend on self-generated law-performance, but on Spirit-produced charity

Jimmy Stephens:


1.) Love is an act (and state). Christ is not an act, but a person who acts to fulfill the law. So Poodah has confused what “fulfill” means in both cases. Love fulfills the law in the sense that every subject of the law must provide it. Christ doesn’t fulfill the law simply by being a man named Jesus. He fulfills the law by providing what it demands, by carrying out its exigencies. So Poodah, not Cooper, has confused categories.

2.) Poodah also equivocates on faith. The law demands a generic trust in God, not specifically trust in the Son for atonement. Jesus fulfilled the law, but he did not trust in his sacrifice to atone for his sins.

That’s absurd. Faith is supralegal, not part of the law.

3.) Poodah is conceptually confused about the nature of love. In Cooper’s argument, “love” denotes obedience. It is the heart state or commitment of the soul enacted. In other words, “love” can refer to a relational commitment/state or the works that follow from it. He misses that Cooper (because Paul in that text) is referring to the latter, not the former, at least not specifically.

With this distinction, Poodah now faces a dilemma. Is his view that justification requires the heart state or successful obedience produced by it? If the latter, that’s works contra Paul. If the former, that’s not disambiguated from either regeneration or faith.

In other words, at best, Poodah’s “love” is just referring to a person’s new regenerate nature or faith, which is the principle instance of Christian love (for God), or both. Thank you for conceding sola fide.

Put in reverse: Poodah keeps assuming that faith and love are categorically distinct in Paul. That’s absurd just upon consideration of what faith is. Is faith an instance of love? Can one love without faith or have faith without love? No, obviously, love cannot exist without concrete content, a real state and content of the mind that controls all else; it cannot exist in pure abstract. Neither can faith exist as mere particular: faith in what, for what, motivated by what? Faith is love, the first and principle instance of love.

To love God at all is, first of all, to trust in His Son for atonement.

To have faith in God, first of all, is to love His Son as Savior who justifies.

They’re just two different sides of the same coin. Perhaps if they would read Jonathan Edwards on charity, all of this nonsense would have been disambiguated for them by a few hundred years.

And to put it polemically, Poodah is suggesting, tacitly, that a child can run into his father’s arms for protection and care without affection for him, or that one can genuinely love his father without so going to him for care.

Now, if your opponent is clever, he will appeal to Adam or Christ to say otherwise. He will say, “Ah, but Adam loved God before he needed a savior in Chirst, before he sinned,” or, “Ah, but Jimmy, you just got done saying Jesus didn’t need that sort of faith, and yet Jesus loved, God especially!”

Right, but that’s because love is relational. Love is a relationship between two or more parties and therefore must always take into a account the nature and status of the related individuals.

Christ is not a sinner. He is God as well as man. His love, therefore, is of one who is the fount of love. Jesus loves as God and savior of mankind. A sinner is just that: the one who needs God’s saving love. A sinner cannot love God as God’s savior, nor can he love as mankind’s savior. Sinners love by resting in God’s salvific provision. So what I said about faith and love is true. It is true, not because love cannot exist without faith per se. It is true because the love of sinners cannot exist without faith (in Christ). The love of God for sinners is not faith in Christ; but the love of sinners for God is, at its core, faith in Christ.