In 1532, former Catholic monk Martin Luther made the following claim regarding the Protestant doctrine known as faith alone (sola fide) in commentary on Psalm 130:4:

When it stands by this article, the church stands, when [this article] falls the church falls.

To anyone well versed in the Scriptures, this statement of the Church standing or falling brings up Jesus' promise to His disciples in Matthew 16:18:

And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Clearly, to Luther, if the Church falls, it falls due to losing the article of faith known as faith alone and stands if it retains this article. But why? To Luther, and most modern evangelical Protestants, acceptance of the article of faith know as faith alone means accepting THE Gospel. Conversely, rejection of faith alone equates to rejecting THE Gospel.

In his [Luther's] view, a person being declared righteous - justified - by a holy God on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ, apart from good works, was so important to the Christian faith that, if it was lost, Christianity itself was lost.

If we lose justification by faith alone, we lose the gospel. If we lose the gospel (1 Corinthians 15:1-4), we lose our hope and are to be pitied (verses 16-19).

For clarity's sake, St. Paul nowhere mentions faith alone in 1 Corinthians 15. Hinshelwood imports this understanding into St. Paul in 1 Corinthians.

Moreover, another key factor in Protestants tying faith alone to the Gospel (and by default the Church "falling") occurs in their reading of Galatians. Hinshelwood continues:

While there are many key passages in the Bible that could be cited, one text that states clearly the doctrine of justification by faith alone is found in the Apostle Paul's letter to the Galatian Christians: "Nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified" (Galatians 2:16 NASB).

And let's not forget the warning...

The Apostle Paul condemned such error in the strongest possible terms: "But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!" (Galatians 1:8 NASB).

For the Protestant, faith alone is the Gospel because the Gospel is how a person is saved. Therefore, if the Church ever loses faith alone, the Church loses the Gospel and in turn loses access to salvation.

First off, the article of faith know as faith alone originates in the personal interpretation of certain scripture verses (see above) by the 16 century German monk Martin Luther. No theologian before Luther understood justification by faith in the same vein as the Wittenberg monk. Now, to those belonging to the historically apostolic Church this fact presents a major obstacle. However, to Protestants this obstacle transforms into an opportunity thanks to another sola, sola scriptura (Scripture alone).

The Protestant need not concern themselves with agreeing with Christians that came before them. The Protestant only need worry about whether their beliefs agree with the Bible. As Gerald Bray states in his chapter of the seminal 2019 book on the subject, The Doctrine by Which the Church Stands or Falls:

Luther developed his ideas not by reading the fathers but by examining the New Testament directly, and it was from there that his preaching and teaching derived. (Chapter 18, Reformation Invention or Historic Orthodoxy? Justification in the Fathers)

Luther clearly possessed insights into the New Testament that Christian before him lacked. Furthermore, given foundational beliefs like sola scriptura, it need not matter to Protestants that Luther rediscovered the correct interpretation of St. Paul sixteen hundred years after the apostle's martyrdom.

The reader ought to find this all highly convenient and fortuitous for the Protestant position. Luther's position is St. Paul's position after all. To disagree with Luther means to disagree with St. Paul. Very convenient indeed.

The consensus among theologians agrees that faith alone as understood by Luther did not exist in the Chrisitan record until the 16 century. Some, like Bray and Gavin Ortlund, think an argument for faith alone exists in some early Christians like Clement of Rome and Irenaeus. However, they also think the matter appears cloudy enough to allow for the Catholic view of justification to ultimately prevail in the West. In the same chapter, Bray states:

...the fathers left loose ends that would later have to be tied up and incorporated into a fuller and more obviously consistent system.

In his recent book What It Means to be Protestant, Gavin Ortlund goes a bit further than Bray in his assessment of the early Church and faith alone. Appealing to the highly respected nineteenth century Protestant historian Philip Schaff, Ortlund claims:

Schaff calls justification by faith alone the "life principle" of the Reformation. He denied that this doctrine was new to the Reformation; rather, he argued that it came into greater clarity and apprehension within the church as a result of the Reformation.

Unfortunately, Ortlund overstates his case in appealing to Schaff. Schaff stated that:

If anyone expects to find in this period, or in any of the church fathers, Augustine himself not excepted, the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone, as the "articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesiae" will be greatly disappointed.

Paul's doctrine of justification, except perhaps in Clement of Rome, who jointed it with the doctrine of James, it was left very much out of view, and awaits the age of the Reformation to be more thoroughly established and understood. (History of the Christian Church, Volume 1, paragraph 154)

For those unfamiliar with Latin, articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesiae translates to the article by which the Church stand or falls. Clearly, Schaff nowhere makes the claim Ortlund attributes to him. Faith alone simply did not exist in the way expressed by Luther in the early Church.

In case I get labeled anti-Protestant in my assessment of the historical evidence for faith alone, allow me to share my findings when I entered the following prompt into three AI programs (Chat GPT, Perplexity AI, and Gemini).

The early Christian Church did not teach "justification by faith alone" as it's understood in some modern Protestant contexts, especially as formulated by Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation

Perplexity AI

The doctrine of justification by faith alone was not a major focus or clearly articulated teaching in the first few centuries of Christianity.

Many early church fathers emphasized both faith and works in relation to salvation, rather than faith alone.

The doctrine of "justification by faith alone" is a complex theological concept with roots in the writings of the Apostle Paul and subsequent Christian thought. While the early Christian Church did not explicitly articulate this doctrine in the same way it was later formulated during the Protestant Reformation, there is evidence of its underlying principles in the writings of early Church Fathers.

So, the most sympathetic AI to Protestantism only grants a "did not explicitly articulate" and "underlying principles..." Not a ringing affirmation of the doctrine's existence in the early Church.

Which brings us to our final problem. It is here above all other points where the doctrine of faith alone falls, and according to Luther, the Church.

In my article, Confession in the Early Church: Fact or Fiction? I demonstrated the fact of penance in the early Church. I also quote Luther and his ardent disdain for this sacrament. Luther called penance "exercises of men" that leave Christians "more wretched than before." He stands against the sacrament due to its implications for the doctrine of faith alone. If the early Church participated in the sacrament of penance, faith alone as understood by Luther did not exist.

Below, I cite the following examples from the early Church. Furthermore, in no defense of faith alone in the early Church has the reality of penance been addressed. Bray and Ortlund also failed to address it. (If one exists, please post it in the comments section).

The Didache (AD 50 - 70)

But every Lord's day gather yourselves together, and break bread, and give thanksgiving after having confessed your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure. But let no one that is at variance with his fellow come together with you, until they be reconciled, that your sacrifice may not be profaned.

The Letter of Barnabas (AD 74)

You shall confess your sins. You shall not go to prayer with an evil conscience. This is the way of light.

The Shepherd of Hermas (AD 80)

And therefore, I say to you, that if any one is tempted by the devil, and sins after that great and holy calling in which the Lord has called His people to everlasting life, he has opportunity to repent but once.

Ignatius of Antioch (AD 110)

For as many as are of God and of Jesus Christ are also with the bishop. And as many as shall, in the exercise of penance, return into the unity of the Church, these, too, shall belong to God, that they may live according to Jesus Christ.

Origen (AD 248)

[A final method of forgiveness], albeit hard and laborious [is] the remission of sins through penance, when the sinner . . . does not shrink from declaring his sin to a priest of the Lord and from seeking medicine, after the manner of him who say, 'I said, "To the Lord I will accuse myself of my iniquity"

Cyprian (AD 251)

... before they have made a confession of their crime, before their conscience has been purged in the ceremony and at the hand of the priest...

Clearly, given the evidence presented in this article, faith alone is not the Gospel. First, the doctrine relies solely on the personal interpretation of certain scriptural verses primarily by one man -- Martin Luther. Next, the doctrine lacked historical support in the early Church. This means that if Luther somehow reclaimed St. Paul's true doctrine of justification by faith alone, all Christians before him (except St. Paul) lost it. The implication for this view is that the Church fell soon after St. Paul died. Finally, the early Church practice of penance shows a total lack of understanding of faith alone.

So, either all Christians misunderstood St. Paul from the beginning or Luther got it wrong.