The chart below reflects the responses to four items in our 2023 survey concerning the degree of belief necessary for salvation. The four blue bars are based on, from left to right, the average credences for items #1, #13, #55, and #56.
The “proper” percentage targets for the definitions of each of the four items:
✶ These targets carry some subjective flex, but, conventionally, few would argue that the logical order of their descending percentages is not as follows:
Note-worthy conclusions:
- The split between whether redemptive faith must be an absolute 100% or a merely “high” degree of faith reveals a fundamental disagreement concerning the nature of redemptive faith. As faith is fundamental to redemption, it is no small matter that there is this amount of disagreement over the degree of faith necessary to accomplish redemption.
- A second conclusion is also a bit surprising given the biblical context* of “the faith of a mustard seed” in which it is quite clear that the degree of such faith is very small. We might have expected the height of the light blue bar near the bottom of the chart or, at minimum, lower than the height of the bars for #13 and #55. That it doesn’t is a rather surprising result.
* In Matthew 17:20, Jesus is explaining to His disciples why they could not cast out a demon as He could.- And He said to them, “Because of the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.”
These results seem to strongly indicate that there is significant confusion over how much faith is necessary or sufficient for redemption.
Possible reasons for the anomalies:
- The order in which participants encounter the items may be a factor. Many survey participants are not accustomed to providing credences, and since #1 is the first item they encounter, they may be more inclined to answer with a more dogmatic “100” than the more nuanced credences they may assign to items #13, #55, and #56 that appear later in the survey.
- The phrase “faith of a mustard seed” may have become ennobled through its ecclesiastical usage. While the original context (shown in red above) was not one of redemption, the beauty and familiarity of the notion make it easy to (illegitimately?) apply to redemption.
Participants who have completed the 200-item CTS survey are invited to contribute to the “Salvific Belief” mini-survey we are offering: https://christianthoughtsurvey.wordpress.com/mini-surveys/
Christian Thought Survey 