Columban's soteriology | He held salvation was by believing and confessing (not professing!)
"A few genuine gospel preachers appear in the early part of the Dark Ages. An obscure Frenchman named Elegeus, 588, who was a goldsmith and a lay preacher, was removed from his imperial job by Louis II for his personal witnessing of the gospel.... Columban, Gall, Willebrod, Winifred, and Boniface all do some amount of preaching" - Dr. Peter S. Ruckman, Church History (audio not book), Track 5
Dr. Peter S. Ruckman says this in Track 5, but let's look at what Columban actually says.
Columban when writing on Christian unity, he bases the unity upon the SAVING faith of believing and confessing.
“So lest, if I were to repeat the same in writing also to yourself, I should rather engender boredom than disclose to you, as I ought to prove it, the true nature of both authorities; with the proper courtesies of greeting I only pour out my prayers to you (by our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit and by the unity of the mutual faith that is between us, by which we believe with the heart and confess with the tongue that our one Father Who is in heaven, of Whom are all things, is one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity, each Person being fully Lord, and all three Persons being one Lord)’’ - Columban, in an argumentative letter to the pope (Letter 2).
The uniting of Christians is dependent on the saving faith of believing and confessing.
He doesn't mean by the unity that we share the same orthodox views on Christianity. He's trying to say by the unity of the saving faith, which we believed and confessed.
That is amazing.
There is no other way to spin that.
Dr. Ruckman was vindicated, and despite what is claimed of him (that he was a bad historian) Columban did actually hold to Dr. Ruckman's salvation views.
“And here it comes: the simplest, clearest presentation of salvation found anywhere in either Testament. Two conditions: If. ‘If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus,’ number two, ‘And shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.’ No ifs, ands, buts about it. And notice the heart is not changed. The heart believes on Christ in its regular condition. There is no overpowering of the sinner by the irresistible grace of God, which transforms him against his will into a new creature so he can receive Christ, and all that Calvinistic baloney. It’s saying that an unsaved man in his natural condition, and he’s told, if you believe something in your heart and confess it with your mouth, God’ll give you the new birth, God’ll save you and impute to you righteousness and justify you.” - Dr. Peter S. Ruckman, Romans 10:9
"Verse 10: ‘For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness...’ Works are not a point at issue. ‘...and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.’ You see how insane some men get when they’re trying to prove a lie? ‘This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.’ That’s God’s work, not yours. You see that business? You don’t classify that with getting baptized and holding out to the end and doing all this junk. Belief is a matter of the heart. Now it’s a work only in the sense that that’s what God wants you to do, in that sense. It’s the work of God. But it’s not like works. Good night, man! All right, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Out of the heart are the issues of life. Out of the heart of man proceeds all these things, Jesus says, and lists 13 evils. Then if you believe something in your heart, it should bear fruit in your mouth. Your heart should confess what your mouth-your mouth should confess what your heart believes. Notice the belief is in the heart, not in the head. And this reinforces the truth of Romans chapter 6, verse 17, that said you have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine delivered unto you. It’s not enough to repent, confess, believe, and be baptized. That’s just one of the different ways you go to hell. There’s all kinds of ways. It’s a matter of something in the heart by faith. Notice the obedience is by faith. 16: ‘They have not all obeyed the gospel. For Esaias saith, Lord, who hath believed our report?’ In plain words, to obey the gospel is to believe the gospel, and you believe from the heart. And we made comment on this earlier when we talked about believing in vain, and you might review those remarks we made, and we made them in connection with Romans chapter 6, verse 17. All right, believe, confess, that’s the long and short of it. ‘With the heart man believeth unto righteousness.’ You can talk all day about a man believing an elevator will take him up, but he needs to get into it. You speak of a man having nerve, or having guts, or having backbone, so you understand perfectly what God means when he says believe in your heart. A man told a friend of mine, he was a skeptic, this man, he told a friend of mine, he said, ‘Your heart’s just an organ. It can’t believe.’ And my friend said, ‘Well, it may be an organ, but every time it hears the name of Jesus, it plays Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.’ You understand what God means when he says heart. Don’t put on airs. ‘For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." - Dr. Peter S. Ruckman, Romans 10:10
He also said this in the Sermons of Columbanus!
"Let each man then who wishes to be saved believe first in God the first and last, one and three, one in substance, three in character; one in power, three in person; one in nature, three in name; one in Godhead, Who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit, one God, wholly invisible, inconceivable, unspeakable, Whose property it is ever to exist,’" - Columban, Sermon I. Concerning the Faith
Why is that important?
“By this double evidence of the two laws, as on some firmest supports, the faith of believers is confirmed. And there you truly have a unity in Trinity and Trinity in unity. Briefly then, considering the greatness of the matter, we have spoken of what we believe, and the heart’s faith [has drawn forth] the confession of the mouth;’’“ - Columban, Sermon I. Concerning the Faith
So, he links believing and confessing for salvation. And, we know due to his letter to the pope that this confession is a condition of salvation, not a byproduct!
Thanks Dr. Peter S. Ruckman!
https://celt.ucc.ie/published/T201054.html
This is the full text.
LETTER III by Columban.
To the holy lord and apostolic Father in Christ, Pope N ..., Columba the sinner sends Greeting in Christ.
1
For long now my spirit desires the consolation of a visit to each occupant of the apostolic chair, prelates most dear to all the faithful and fathers most reverend by the meed of apostolic honour, but up till now, through the various clashes of this age and the turbulent treasons of the tribes that lie between, as though I were shut in upon a vessel of the sea, I have not been able to satisfy my wishes, opposed by the really ungentle and uncrossable swell, which you best know, of a sea that is not so much material as intellectual. Thus once and again Satan hindered the bearers of our letters once written to Pope Gregory of blessed memory and annexed to this, which are forwarded by our poverty to be presented to you and discussed, not so much in a proud, devilish presumption (as
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their words show) as in needful proof of the true calculation of our region’s rite and observance, when the same terms are not measured by the books of our province and the book of your Frankish friends, which is not accepted by our people because of two passages in the master, as in the letters of our littleness to the aforesaid blessed pope, so far as we were able, though arrogantly, we have tried to the best of our ability to show. So lest, if I were to repeat the same in writing also to yourself, I should rather engender boredom than disclose to you, as I ought to prove it, the true nature of both authorities; with the proper courtesies of greeting I only pour out my prayers to you (by our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit and by the unity of the mutual faith that is between us, by which we believe with the heart and confess with the tongue that our one Father Who is in heaven, of Whom are all things’’
(cf. Matt. 6. 9)
, and our one Redeemer, the Son of God, through Whom are all things’’
(cf. Rom. 11. 36)
, and the one Holy Spirit, in Whom are all things’’
(cf. Rom. 11. 36)
, is one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity, each Person being fully Lord, and all three Persons being one Lord) that you would grant to us pilgrims in our travail the godly consolation of your judgement, thus confirming, if it is not contrary to the faith, the tradition of our predecessors, so that by your approval we may in our pilgrimage maintain the rite of Easter as we have received it from generations gone before. For it is admitted that we are in our native land, while we accept no rules of your Frankish friends, but dwelling in seclusion, harming no one, we abide with the rules of our predecessors, to defend which, whether it be to you apostolic fathers, as I have said, or to your brethren our neighbours and our fathers in Christ, we have written those letters which this note commends to you, so that, since we seek in good time the favourable vote of your authority, while we cannot do justice to the merits of the case, as our opponents indulge in more rage than reason, we may with a judgement live amongst your friends in the peace of church unity, even as the holy fathers taught, Polycarp, I mean, and Pope Anicetus, without offence to the faith, nay, abiding in entire charity—each preserving what he had received and abiding in the condition in which he had been called’’
(cf. 1 Cor. 7. 20)
.
2
Farewell, Pope most dear in Christ, mindful of us both in your holy prayers beside the ashes of the saints, and in your most godly decisions following the hundred and fifty authorities of the Council of Constantinople, who decreed that churches of God planted in pagan nations should live by their own laws’’
(cf. Constant. I, can. 2)
, as they had been instructed by their fathers.”
“Columban, Sermon I. Concerning the Faith
1
Since I bear the responsibility for very needful teaching, first of all I may briefly speak of the first thing for all to know. I desire that what is the basis of all men’s salvation should be the foundation of our talk, and that our doctrine should commence from that point whence all that is arises and what has not been begins, and that the heart’s belief should open the gateway of our talk, rightly opening, as it does, the mouths of all Christian believers to a salutary confession. Therefore, concerning the beginning of human salvation, with Christ’s help, let our words rightly take their start.
2
Let each man then who wishes to be saved believe first in God the first and last, one and three, one in substance, three in character; one in power, three in person; one in nature, three in name; one in Godhead, Who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit, one God, wholly invisible, inconceivable, unspeakable, Whose property it is ever to exist,’’
cf. Hil. Pictav. de Trin. ii. 6
since God the Trinity is eternal, for Whom you must not seek a beginning, Who has no end, and Who has ever been that which He is and shall be; since in God there is no repetition, but ever the perfection of the Trinity. That God the Trinity is one, God Himself bears witness of Himself in the law, sayingHear, Israel, the Lord thy God is one.’’
Deut. 6. 4
But that that one God is a Trinity, the Saviour taught in the gospel with the words,Go now and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.’’
Matt. 28. 19
By this double evidence of the two laws, as on some firmest supports, the faith of believers is confirmed. And there you truly have a unity in Trinity and Trinity in unity. Briefly then, considering the greatness of the matter, we have spoken of what we believe, andthe heart’s faith [has drawn forth] the confession of the mouth;’’
cf. Rom. 10. 10
and this must be firmly held against all heresies, that the one God cannot be divided or parted, since that which is all, has always been as it is. Thus let there be an end to the poisonous and mad delirium of all the heretics, because we hear and believe on the witness of God Himself,Hear, Israel, the Lord thy God is one,’’
Deut. 6. 4
since He Who is one, has ever been exactly what He is; but that you may know how many, He spoke in the plural number at the foundation of the world,
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Let us make man in our image and likeness.’’
Gen. 1. 26
Yet lest you should err upon the number, Christ shows you the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, and in the name of this God as one God the whole human race is to be baptized. What more is needed on the joint eternity of the Trinity? That God is one, teaches us enough. But on the reality of the persons of Father and Son and Holy Ghost, Christ’s division, with the authority of a command, has fully informed the hearers. So all the pravity of errors is debarred by means of these evidences, in which the Trinity is proved by being named, and the unity by being witnessed.
3
Since then the greatness of the matter prevents us from discoursing further on subjects which appear to be unspeakable, let us hold what has been said before with a firm faith. For the man to whom these few words on God the Trinity are not sufficient, will not, [according to Scripture,] be profited by more.’’
cf. Sulp. Sev. Dial. I 18
For of Him we have said only that He is one in three and three in one. Yet of His being who shall be able to speak? Of how He is everywhere present and invisible, or of how He fills heaven and earth and every creature, according to that saying,Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord,’’
Ierem. 23. 24
and elsewhere,The Spirit of God, [according to the prophet,] has filled the round earth,’’
Sap. 1. 7
and again,Heaven is my throne, but earth is the footstool of my feet?’’
Isa. 66. 1
Therefore God is everywhere, utterly vast, and everywhere nigh at hand, according to His own witness of Himself;I am, [He says,] a God at hand and not a God afar off.’’
Ierem. 23. 24
Therefore it is no God dwelling far off from us that we seek, Whom if we merit it we have within us. For He resides in us like soul in body, if only we are sound members of Him, if we are not dead in sins, if we are uninfected by the taint of a corrupt will; then truly does He reside in us Who said,And I will reside in them and walk in their midst.’’
2 Cor. 6. 16
Yet if we are worthy that He should be in us, then in truth we are quickened by Him as His living members;for in Him, [as the Apostle says,] we live and move and have our being.’’
Act. 17. 28
Who, I say, shall explore His highest summit to the measure of this unutterable and inconceivable being? Who shall examine the secret depths of God? Who shall dare to treat of the eternal source of the universe? Who shall boast of knowing the infinite God, Who fills all and surrounds all, Who enters into all and passes beyond all, Who occupies all and escapes all?Whom none has ever seen’’
1 Tim. 6. 16
as He is. Therefore let no man venture to seek out the unsearchable things of God, the nature, mode and cause of His existence. These are unspeakable, undiscoverable, unsearchable; only believe in simplicity and yet with firmness, that God is and shall be even as He has been, since God is immutable.
4
Who then is God? He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God.
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Seek no farther concerning God; for those who wish to know the great deep must first review the natural world. For knowledge of the Trinity is properly likened to the depths of the sea, according to that saying of the Sage,And the great deep, who shall find it out?’’
Eccles. 7. 24
If then a man wishes to know the deepest ocean of divine understanding, let him first if he is able scan that visible sea, and the less he finds himself to understand of those creatures which lurk beneath the waves, the more let him realize that he can know less of the depths of its Creator; and as he ought and should, let him venture to treat less of Creator than of creature, since none can be competent in the greater if he has not first explored the less, and when a man is not trusted in the lesser, in the greater how should he be trusted? For why, I ask, does a man ignorant of earthly things examine the heavenly? Oh, those who speak idle words,Not knowing, [according to the Apostle,] either what they speak or whereof they affirm!’’
I Tim. 1. 7
How many indeed, for whom the cry is woe, though striving to fly aloft with feeble wing, and turning their creaturely face towards the sky, at least partly, not to say in every case, without counting the cost beforehand, first venture with unclean heart and impure lips to teach concerning the great deep, not understanding that God the Trinity is known not by words but by faith, Who is understood by the pious faith of a clean heart, and not by the gabble of an impious mouth. Therefore the great Trinity is to be piously believed and not impiously questioned; for the one God, the Trinity, is an ocean that cannot be crossed over or searched out. High is the heaven, broad the earth, deep the sea and long the ages; but higher and broader and deeper and longer is the knowledge of Him Who is not diminished by nature, Who created it of nought.
5
Understand the creation, if you wish to know the Creator; if you will not know the former either, be silent concerning the Creator, but believe in the Creator. For a silent piety is better and knows more than an impious garrulity; for it is unseemly and impious enough to pass over from faith to the empty words of one who treats of the invisible, immeasurable, and unfathomable Lord. For The great deep, [as it is written,] who shall find it out?’’
Eccles. 7. 24
Since, just as the depth of the sea is invisible to human sight, even so the Godhead of the Trinity is found to be unknowable by human senses. And thus if, I say, a man wishes to know what he ought to believe, let him not think thathe understands [better] by speech than by believing;’’
cf. Aug. Serm. xliii. 6, 7
for knowledge of the Godhead will recede farther when he seeks it than it was. Therefore seek the supreme wisdom, not by verbal debate, but by the perfection of a good life, not with the tongue but with the faith which issues from singleness of heart, not with that which is gathered from the guess of a learned
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irreligion. If then you seek the unutterable by discussion,He will fly farther from you’’
Eccles. 7. 24
than He was;if you seek by faith,wisdom shall stand in her accustomed station at the gate,’’
Prov. 1. 21
and where she dwells she shall at least in part be seen. But then is she also truly in some measure attained, when the invisible is believed in a manner that passes understanding; for God must be believed invisible as He is, though He be partly seen by the pure heart. Wherefore, my dearest brethren, let us pray to our God Himself, everywhere present and invisible, that either faith’s fear of Him, orcharity which knows no fall,’’
cf. I Cor. 13. 8
may endure in us; and may this fear joined to charity make us wise in all things, and may piety persuade us to be silent on what is too great for speech, since it is a thing unsearchable and ineffable to know God as He is. Who He is and how great He is, He only knows. But since He is our God, though invisible to us, He must yet be besought by us, often besought; ever must we cling to God, to the deep, vast, hidden, lofty, and almighty God; and we must pray by the merits and intercession of His saints, that He would bestow even some ray of His light upon our darkness, which may shine on us in our dullness and ignorance on the dark roadway of this world, and that He would lead us to Himself, by the favour of our Lord Jesus Christ, to Whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit is the glory unto ages of ages.” - Columban, Sermon 1.
Sources:
First is Letters, second is Sermons.
https://celt.ucc.ie/published/T201054.html
https://celt.ucc.ie/published/T201053.html
