Gospel Guidebook: Getting and Keeping It Right 
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Answer to Objection to My Article on the Heidelberg Catechism
by Robert P. TerryPublished April 10, 2025
Objection: In your article Problems with the Heidelberg Catechism's Description of Faith, you argued that faith is not an appropriating instrument and that "the only thing faith can receive are propositions that it regards as being true," but the Apostle Paul says that the Galatians received the Spirit by the hearing of faith in Galatians 3:2. Doesn't this prove that faith is an appropriating instrument?
Answer: No, this is not proof that faith is an appropriating instrument. The Apostle Paul is simply telling the Galatians that the gifts of the Spirit, by which miracles were worked among them, were provided to them on account of them believing what they heard (Galatians 3:5). In other words, the Spirit was given to them to attest to the justification they had in Christ, which they beheld by faith (Galatians 3:1, 6-14). And this is exactly how the Apostle Peter explained Cornelius' reception of the gifts of the Spirit upon believing the Gospel. In Acts 15:8 he said, "And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He also did to us;" Therefore, we see that faith didn't appropriate or receive the Spirit, but was received subsequent to their believing in order to attest to what was revealed to them in the Gospel by faith.