Is Faith a Gift?
There is a famous scene in the Dan Brown novel-turned-into-a-movie where Ewan McGregor (Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca) asks Tom Hanks (Robert Langdon) if he believes in God. Hanks, when pressed, eventually answers, “Faith is a gift that I have yet to receive.” Watch it below, one minute:
That scene really is a good conversation starter about “salvation.”
Is faith something we arrived at at the end of a journey, the tuggings of our heart, an action of the will, an exercise of our own volition, something we laid hold of, or something that laid hold of us?
In Ephesians 2:8-9, the apostle Paul writes, "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast."
This passage raises the question, "Is faith a gift?"
Protestant theologians, including John Calvin, contended that faith is indeed a gift from God. Calvin, in his commentary on Ephesians, claimed that faith is not something we can conjure up on our own intuition or manufacture by our own desire, but rather it is a gift that God graciously bestows upon us. He wrote, "Faith is... the free gift of God, and that it is bestowed on us through his generosity."
Calvin's perspective aligns with the broader Protestant understanding of grace/faith in general and the exegesis of Ephesians 2:8-9 in particular. The emphasis in this Ephesians passage in most Protestant commentaries is on the grace of God as the source of salvation, and faith is the means by which we receive this gift of salvation. This understanding underscores the idea that even the faith we exercise in receiving God's grace is ultimately a gift from God.
Protestant confessions were very big on the notion of faith as a gift, indeed, “a pure gift of God” according to the Second Helvetic Confession. Or else as the Heidelberg Catechism puts it, “true faith” is that which “the Holy Spirit creates in me by the gospel.”
Even Jacob Arminius was not allergic to the idea of faith as a gift, which is why the 1621 Arminian confession stressed the gracious nature of grace in bringing people to faith: “We think therefore that the grace of God is the beginning, progress and completion of all good, so that not even a regenerate man himself can, without this preceding or preventing … and cooperating grace, think, will, or finish any good thing to be saved, much less resist any attractions and temptations to evil. Thus faith, conversion, and all good works, and all godly and saving actions which are able to be thought, are to be ascribed solidly to the grace of God in Christ as their principal and primary cause.”
Of course, that raises the question: why do some people get this gift and not others?
More materially, we have to ask, does Ephesians 2:8-9 really say that “faith” is a gift?
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