Faith, Works and The West Wing--and yes, spoilers

What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him?
If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and be filled," and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.
But someone may well say, "You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works."
You believe that God is one? You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder. But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless?
Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected; and the Scripture was fulfilled which says, "AND
ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS RECKONED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS," and he was called the friend of God.
You see that a man is justified by works and not by
faith alone.

--James 2:14-24

The last episode of season two of The West Wing has a rather provocative title for anyone who holds a Christian theological bent: "Two Cathedrals." Better yet, keeping in line with The West Wing's tendency to deal idealistically with rather complex and seemingly answerless issues, it actually had something to say worth listening to.

The story centers around Bartlet, the embattled president who lied about his medical history of Multiple Sclerosis in order to increase his chances of becoming president. In the previous episode, his kindhearted and elderly secretary was killed by a drunk driver on the way home from a car lot where she bought her first new car. Despite all the tension and fear about a pending Grand Jury investigation, he seems preoccupied and more focused on his secretary's death than any affairs of state.

Throughout the episode, glimpses are seen of a young Bartlet aspiring to be a priest at Notre Dame. He is obviously idealistic and passionate about the plight of the powerless. He is also chided for leaving a cigarette on the floor of a chapel. At one point, he objects to a "non-denominational" prayer because it wasn't Catholic--the preacher claimed that man was saved by faith alone, and not faith and works. And, of course, he meets the reason he chose not to become a priest, his future wife.

The two threads converge after the funeral service at the National Cathedral. Bartlet stays after everyone leaves, having the Secret Service clear the building so that he can be alone with God. He then launches into a great tirade against God, starting with his secretary's death the moment she could enjoy her car and working his way up to his son's untimely death, quipping that all he'd offered God's son was praise and adoration. He quotes Grahm Greene: "You can't conceive, nor can I, the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God." Then he lights a cigarette, takes a single drag, grinds it out with his foot and leaves it on the floor of the cathedral.

As a Christian watching this show, it was impossible not to see this moment as anything but a moment of moral and spiritual decision. He had the choice, in a cathedral that echoed from its floor to its vaulted arches the beauty of God, to remember that God's son was sent to embrace the pain and wretchedness that results from sin, and by that embrasure to provide us a way back to His sinless paradise. He can choose to follow the example of Job, who endured suffering innumerable and yet in the end affirmed his love for God, even if that God were to take Job's life from him. Instead, in that moment, he chose an arrogant hatred for God, a pride that would rather spend itself marring a small segment of the floor of a cathedral than listen to what it had to say. Like Milton's Satan, he decided that it was "better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven." When he walked from the room, his face seemed to reflect the tortured soul of a demon.

But the interesting thought I had wasn't about the sadness of Bartlet's very human response (though it was a very moving moment.) The thought, as someone raised in a DTS-influenced Evangelical Bible Church, was "this is the decision people talk about in Sunday School, the decision as to rather you're going to put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ or put your faith and trust in yourself." The problem with this conception is that, at this point, Bartlet already is a Christian.

In point of fact, Bartlet's struggles seem far closer to my own than the ideal Christian touted by Evangelicals who has his life fixed suddenly by "faith in Christ." There seems an organic wholeness to the fact that we aren't saved in one moment only, but through a lifelong process. Evangelical theologians know this, that's why they talk about the three ways of being saved--I am saved through faith I put in Jesus Christ at a historical moment, I am being saved by the continuous work of the Holy Spirit in my life, and I will be saved and made perfect and holy when I reach Heaven.

But I'm not sure anyone ever believed that before the last few hundred years. Luther certainly didn't believe that when he talked about salvation as being the continuous work of God in the believer's life as he calls the believer to join him in the life of Christ. The poet who wrote the Medieval poem Pearl certainly didn't believe that when he wrote of a Christian man in rebellion against God for taking his daughter, his "pearl," from him through the black plague who is brought back to slow repentance through a heavenly vision. Neither Calvin nor Arminius believed that--Calvin believed that Christians were saved through the continuous work of God from their birth to their death, and Arminius believed that Christians wouldn't be eternally saved unless they continued to choose God over the world.

Bartlet got a second chance to think through his position before the end of the episode. He reversed his decision, on the cruelty of God as well as on other issues. But that doesn't mean he won't have another chance to make the same decision, facing the same questions and doubts and struggles. And even if I am assured of salvation by my first profession of faith, is it not true that all Christians are called to a continuous life of "accepting Jesus into their soul," a continuous struggle against the forces of darkness whose end may be certain, but whose means are often so confusing that we can only "see dimly" and must wait until the time when all our doubts, fears and tears will be washed away in the glory of God's presence.