627. Therefore in the church of today, these three - faith, the concept of assigning, and the merit of Christ - are one. They could be called a triune concept, because if any of the three is taken away, the theology of today becomes nothing. Like a long chain hanging on a carefully fastened hook, the theology of today hangs on those three points taken as a single doctrine. If faith or the concept of assigning or the merit of Christ were taken out of the equation, everything that the church says about how we are made just, how our sins are forgiven, and how we are brought to life, renewed, regenerated, and sanctified, and also everything it says about the gospel, free choice, goodwill and good works, and in fact eternal life - all this would be like an abandoned city, or rubble that was once a church building. That leading faith would be nothing and therefore the entire church would be deserted and uninhabited.
These points clarify what the pillars are that are supporting the house of God today. If these pillars were pulled down, the church would collapse like the house where the satraps of the Philistines and some three thousand other people were enjoying themselves. Samson pulled down the two pillars of that house at the same time, so that the Philistines died or were killed (). I say this because, as has been shown above and will be shown in the appendix below, the faith in question is not Christian - it disagrees with what the Word teaches; and it is meaningless to speak of the concept of assigning in connection with that faith, since Christ's merit is not assignable.