Equally, in popular culture, inner feelings and motivations (“discovering who you really are” or “going with your heart”) are regularly invoked as the true personal reality over against mere outward “identities.” Some types of Protestantism have imbibed this deeply, supposing that “the gospel” is all about inner feeling, a disposition of the heart, and not at all about outward reality or actions, whether moral or “religious.” Sometimes people have thought that this is the one and only meaning of Paul’s teaching about “justification by faith not works.” But things were not nearly so simple.
