On the "Catholic Question"
S. Joel Garver
revised October 1999
Recent years have seen the publication of several documents concerning the relationship between Evangelicals and Roman Catholics. These documents have been issued from various quarters of evangelicalism and have expressed a variety of hopes and worries. For example, Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT) has produced both a self-titled founding document ("ECT") and a subsequent document ("The Gift of Salvation") that have been a source of inspiration and of deep concern to many. Likewise, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals (ACE) has responded to ECT's "The Gift of Salvation," with a letter of pastoral concern entitled, "An Appeal to Fellow Evangelicals."
In the following essay, I do not attempt to determine all the possible motivations and intentions that lie behind such documents, though I will briefly express what seem to me to be some of the dangers inherent in producing documents like these and some of my general impressions about the possible effects of such documents. What I primarily attempt to do, however, is to explain what I see as the current state of relations between evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics. My primary focus here is not upon social or political issues or inter-confessional cooperation per se. Instead, my focus is upon the possibility that 20th century Roman Catholicism, at least in certain quarters of it, has reconfigured itself so that it is more open to the genuine concerns of the Protestant Reformation and is more able to incorporate important Protestant distinctives concerning justification into its own theological interests and traditions. Furthermore, I believe that, among the various Protestant confessional traditions, Reformed theology has a unique ability and responsibility to engage Catholicism on these matters.
The following is merely a summary of my thoughts on this matter, rather than an attempt to delve into the relevant issues in a more comprehensive way, which would, in the nature of the case, require a book-length study. Nevertheless, I present such a summary with some hesitation since the attempt to be brief is, in fact, at least part of the difficulty in recent years. The various statements which have been produced, it seems to me, do not engage the relevant doctrinal and theological issues at a level that is sufficiently deep, at least not deep enough to allay my fears of too hasty of a unity or too harsh of a polemics.
In the case of ECT my fears arise because their primary focus is a political/social agenda for which a unity--even if too quickly supplied--would be a significant aid. Along with ACE, I question the advisability of an ecumenical process that is premised upon less centrally doctrinal concerns and the danger, therein, of relativizing the truth-claims of the Christian Gospel as those have been understood within classical Protestantism. Furthermore, such dangers are heightened, it seems to me, when such ecumenical projects are pursued outside of the framework of established ecclesiastical organizations, among para-church ministries. It is not clear to me that such public declarations of unity are necessary or salutary for continued cooperation between Christians from a variety of churches. Still, the goal of unity in truth, among all Christians, is praiseworthy.
In the case of ACE, I do not doubt that their response is motivated by a zeal for maintaining our Reformation distinctives which we all should rightly see as important and central to the message of the Gospel. The efforts of ECT are, evidently, a great worry to ACE, in that ECT can appear to compromise that Gospel message in the ways I have outlined already. Insofar as that is ACE's concern, I can heartily agree, though I sometimes worry about the tone with which I hear their polemics and how our Catholic brethren might perceive the intra-evangelical debate. I also have misgivings about ACE's role as a para-church organization, especially the possibly divisive effects their activities might have within the American religious climate. Still, the goal of proclaiming the Gospel clearly and without error is laudable.
Introductory Remarks
In the following remarks I make use of two documents in particular, ECT's "The Gift of Salvation" (hereafter "Gift") and ACE's "An Appeal to Fellow Evangelicals" (hereafter "Appeal"). My baisc thesis is the following. Whatever the peculiar motivations of the ECT statement and no matter how problematic those motivations may or may not be, I cannot see that "The Gift of Salvation" affirms anything in regard to Catholic and Protestant unity that is not true as far as it goes. In fact, it seems to me that due to developments within Roman Catholic theology, there has been a significant convergence between some Evangelicals and some Catholics regarding the sufficiency of faith for justification. To the degree that ACE's "Appeal" fails to recognize this convergence, it can be seen as misleading. In what follows I will also suggest, regarding the historic debates over the imputation and infusion of righteousness, that Reformed theology can have a singular role in addressing Catholicism's traditional charge that Protestants reduce justification to a "legal fiction."
Before looking at these issue in detail, we should note that ECT's "Gift" statement in no way holds that all Evangelicals and all Catholics are able to express the common faith that they go on to outline. As the opening of "Gift" states:
We give thanks to God that in recent years many Evangelicals and Catholics, ourselves among them, have been able to express a common faith in Christ and so to acknowledge one another as bothers and sisters in Christ. (emphasis mine)
Neither the Roman Catholic communion, nor the myriad of Evangelical denominations, represent a monolithic expression of the Christian faith. Still, within these communities, "Gift" suggests, there exist a significant number of believers who are able to "express a common faith in Christ" among them. And the claim is that they do so without abandoning their own respective theological distinctives. The Evangelical signatories of "Gift" claim to "affirm with conviction [the Reformation’s] classical confessions." Likewise, the Catholic signatories claim to be "conscientiously faithful to the teaching of the Catholic Church."
Nonetheless, as faithful members of their various communions, the co-signers of "Gift" do not claim to speak "for" their communities in any official capacity, but "from" and "to" those communities (indeed, the unofficial character of the document is, to my mind, a serious defect; are such pronouncements necessary for private, voluntary cooperation between Christians?). And, as ACE notes in its "Appeal," in this speaking "from" and "to" their communities, the co-signers of "Gift" also speak "about" their communities.
Even so, this does not mean that they speak "about" every valid expression of the theologies of their respective communities. There are, for example, ways of expressing the Baptist doctrines at issue in relation to justification, consistent with the Baptist tradition, which would be unacceptable to any faithful Catholic (e.g., the antinomian and reductionistic character of saving faith implied in the theology and sociology of the slogan "once saved, always saved"). Likewise, there are ways of expressing the Catholic doctrines at issue in relation to justification, consistent with the Catholic tradition, which would be unacceptable to any faithful Protestant (e.g., Robert Sungenis' Not by Faith Alone [Santa Barbara, CA: Queenship, 1997] represents some of the worst of what Catholic theology has to offer on justification, ignoring the Catholic biblical and theological scholarship of the last century or so and giving the Council of Trent one of the most anti-protestant, anti-evangelical readings possible).
Nevertheless, whatever the motives of any individual signers, "Gift" does not claim to speak for these kinds of expressions within their respective traditions. Rather, the co-signers claim that each of their traditions may be understood in such a way so that they may jointly affirm a modest commonality in faith between Catholics and Evangelicals, one that is, on the part of the various signatories, fully consistent with, convinced by, and faithful to their respective traditions. Whether or not "Gift" succeeds in expressing this commonality is the issue, since, if they have not, it is possible that important doctrinal distinctives have been compromised. Whether such a compromise has occured is precisely the worry of ACE's "Appeal."
In this regard it is important to note that nowhere does "Gift" imply that no traditional differences remain on how the full implications of the Gospel are to be understood. Some of those differences are even said to be "persistent" and "serious," thereby requiring "further and urgent exploration." Thus, "Gift" evinces a willingness to admit that there are areas in which Catholics and Evangelicals cannot yet agree.
The fundamental claim that we find in "Gift" states that "what we affirm here is in agreement with what the Reformation traditions have meant by justification by faith alone (sola fide)." This is the document's most serious assertion and the one, doctrinally speaking, that deserves the most serious scrutiny. ACE's "Appeal" suggests several areas in which ECT's "Gift" might well fall short of the unity that they seem to claim:
These are all important and difficult questions to which, unfortunately, ECT's "Gift" does not always provide the clearest answers. In the following sections of this essay, then, I will attempt to lay out some ways in which those questions may be answered. In doing so, I hope to provide a basis on which the doctrinal assertions of "Gift" may be seen as truthful and may importantly represent some, however small, degree of ecumenical progress between Evangelicals and Catholics.
The Scope of "Sola Fide"
While it is clear that the affirmations of "Gift" indeed are in some minimal sense in agreement with sola fide, it is a question whether or not they fall short of a positive affirmation of what is meant by sola fide. Before pursuing this question, however, it is important to determine what "Gift" means by "justification sola fide." Ought we to take references in "Gift" to the doctrine of sola fide to include, for instance, the issues of imputation or infusion? Or is the language of "sola fide" a narrower expression that focuses on the peculiar role of faith in justification, quite apart from any further issues of imputation and the like?
It seems clear to me that "Gift" is taking the notion of sola fide in this narrower sense and, in doing so, is following the pattern of the American and international Lutheran-Catholic dialogues (to which Timothy George makes explicit reference in his introduction to "Gift" in Christianity Today, December 8, 1997, and to which the earlier ECT statement alludes). It is in this narrower sense alone, then, that "Gift" affirms some agreement in reference to the Reformation doctrine of sola fide and the sufficiency of faith for justification. In some sense, then, the participants agree that only faith justifies. In exactly what sense there is an agreement I will address below, when discussing the relationship of faith to works. The fact that disagreements may remain regarding infusion of righteousness and the like, or how best to formulate the nature of justifying faith, should not obscure the possibility that there is some kind of agreement on sola fide in the narrower sense.
The fact that "Gift" does not affirm the doctrine of "sola fide" in its precise Reformational formula is really no surprise. First, the document never claims to do so. Second, so long as they wish to remain faithful to Catholic teaching, it is not possible for the Catholic participants to affirm the sola fide formulation (though a number of Catholic scholars maintain that it is not in error per se; e.g., Hans Küng, Karl Rahner, Otto Pesch, and others). The Council of Trent closed the door on the option of affirming the sola fide formula in Canon 9 of its Sixth Session. Even as Protestants, we wish to maintain that while only faith justifies, faith alone does not. The "sola" of sola fide is adverbial, not adjectival. As the post-reformation Reformed theologian Francis Turretin writes, "faith alone does not justify, but only faith justifies; the coexistence of love with faith in him who is justified is not denied, but its co-efficiency or cooperation in justification" (Institutes of Elenctic Theology).
While Catholics may or may not accept Turretin’s doctrine, we can at least concur with them that the formulation of sola fide can be misleading. From the Catholic perspective, even if the content of Turretin’s doctrine were correct, it would not be biblical to formulate it in terms of sola fide. Nowhere does Scripture ever explicitly formulate the doctrine of justification precisely in terms of "faith alone" and thus the Catholic church does not see that particular way of sloganizing biblical doctrine as edifying to the faithful. On the contrary, James explicitly states, "You see a man is justified by works, and not by faith alone" (James 2:24). Catholics claim to follow Scriptural example in this regard and that Protestants, despite our affirmation of sola scriptura, do not.
We, as Protestants, may claim that there is sufficient Scriptural warrant for using the formula, as there is for the use of many extra-biblical theological formulations used by Protestants and Catholics alike. Nevertheless, I think in dialoguing with Catholics on these issues, our goal ought not to be to get them merely to parrot the Reformation formulas, especially since their tradition makes that goal all but impossible. Instead, we need to work towards an agreement on the content of Scriptural teaching, however that may be accurately expressed. It seems to me that this is precisely what "Gift" is attempting to do by saying that it understands that "what we here affirm is in agreement with the Reformation traditions have meant by faith alone" (emphasis mine). It is the content, not the formulation, on which they are claiming agreement and it is in regard to the content of faith alone (i.e., the sufficiency of faith, in some sense, for justification) that this agreement has been reached. If this indeed the case, then that is a positive step, even if matters could and should go further.
Imputation and Infusion
Now we must make a digression into the issue of how justification is accomplished for us, even if we all can agree that faith is, in some sense, sufficient for that justification. In the way "Gift" approaches these things, the issue of whether justification is sola fide or not (how justification is received) and whether justification is by infusion or imputation (how justification is accomplished for us) are kept distinct. While it is true that, as a matter of historical contingency, most advocates of imputation have also held to sola fide and most advocates of infusion have rejected sola fide, there is no necessary connection. One might well hold that Christ's righteousness is infused into us for our justification by grace alone, through faith alone (cf., e.g., Hilary of Poitiers, Comm. In Matt. 8:6; Thomas Aquinas, Expos. In I ad Tim. 1:3).
Moreover, the immediate background to the "Gift" statement, and to ECT, are the various dialogues between Catholics and Protestants on justification. In all of these dialogues, the issues of "forensic justification"/"imputation" have been distinguished from and treated distinctly from the issues of "faith alone." As the Lutheran-Catholic dialogue states:
It must be emphasized that our common affirmation that it is God in Christ alone whom believers ultimately trust does not necessitate any one particular way of conceptualizing or picturing God’s saving work. That work can be expressed in the imagery of God as judge who pronounces sinners innocent and righteous…, and also in a transformist view which emphasizes the change wrought in sinners by grace. (paragraph 158)
Furthermore, the issue of imputation/infusion was one of those areas about which "Gift" does not assert an agreement and is stated to require "further and urgent exploration" and on which there are continuing "differences" which, at the beginning of "Gift," are described as "persistent" and "serious." Still, the substantive question remains. Are the ideas of infusion and imputation contradictory, are they complementary, or can they be qualified in any way? If it is the case that one cannot assert the Catholic infusionary doctrine without simultaneously undermining the goodness of the Gospel message, then the unity acheived by "Gift" rings hollow, at best. This is the suspicion voiced in ACE's "Appeal" and, given historic Protestant polemics, we can be tempted to see things in this way. It seems to me, however, that matters are not so clear as that.
First, I doubt that the denial of imputation necessarily amounts to a denial of the Gospel itself, at least so long as one maintains that salvation is by grace alone, because of Christ alone, and that faith is sufficient for receiving it. Experience and history suggest that such a doctrine can lead to saving knowledge of Christ. And the "Gift" statement appears to be affirming at least this much in regard to justification.
Second, it seems to me that the important, central, and biblical doctrines of forensic justification and imputation can be expressed in such a way that the concerns they raise for Roman Catholics are met. I will explain some of these Catholic concerns below. For now, allow me to suggest that Reformed theology, with its emphasis on union with Christ, has unique resources within it that are able, I believe, to meet the Catholic challenge and to accomodate their legitimate concerns. Moreover, it may be possible for Reformed theology to do this without compromising its own commitment to justification conceived forensically and imputatively (indeed, in the Handbook of Catholic Theology, Georg Kraus writes that there is a "broad consensus" between the Catholic and Reformed views of justification; ed. by W. Beinart and F. Schüssler Fiorenza [New York: Crossroad, 1995] 418).
Before turning to the resources of Reformed theology, it will be helpful to outline precisely what a Catholic who is faithful to his church's teaching may or may not affirm in regard to imputation. The main difficulty here is, naturally, the Council of Trent. It spoke of inherent righteousness worked in us by Christ through the Holy Spirit flowing from the merits of Christ. It is by this righteousness that we are justified (i.e., made just; Trent never talks of being declared just). While, in some sense, this righteousness is truly ours and created in us, it is also God’s justice "for that justice which is called ours, because we are justified by its inherence in us, that same is of God" (Decree of the Sixth Session, Chapter 16).
Now, in itself, this does not eliminate an affirmation of "double justification" as proposed by the Colloquy and Diet of Regensburg in 1541 (also known as the Diet of Ratisbon; the "Regensburg Book" or "Liber Ratisbonensis" can be found in Melanthonis Opera, Corpus Reformatorum 4:190-238). According to the doctrine of duplex iustificare we are declared just in virtue of the imputation of Christ's justice and are made just in virtue of the infusion of Christ's justice (on the Protestant side Melanchthon, Bucer, Pistorius, and probably Calvin seemed willing to accept this; on the Catholic side it was Cardinal Contarini, Eck, Gropper, and Pflug). Thus "justification" is used in a dual sense, to cover what is affirmed in the Protestant doctrines of forensic justification and sanctification. The difficulty is that Trent, in an apparent reference to Regensburg, asserts that the infused, inherent righteousness of which it speaks is the "single [unica] formal cause of justification" (Chapter 7). The use of "unica" here (solitary, unique of a kind, one and one alone), seems to close the door on any theories of "duplex iustitia" or "duplex iustificare."
Nevertheless, Trent never explicitly condemns double justification in any of the anathemas of its Canons, though it had opportunity to do so (and we know that some of the members of the Council of Trent were amenable to the doctrine). Moreover, Trent leaves the door open to a doctrine of double justification when it only condemns those who insist that we are justified,
by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ or by the sole remission of sins, to the exclusion of the grace and "the charity which is poured forth in their hearts by the Holy Spirit" (Rom 5:5) and remains in them... (Canon 11, Sixth Session; emphasis mine).
This seems to open the door to the inclusion of the imputation of the justice of Christ within justification (not distinguishing, at present, two kinds of justification), so long as infusion is not denied.
Also note that a doctrine of "double justification" would be using the term "justification" in a broader sense than simply being "made just," also including being "declared just." Even if Trent binds Catholics to reject any role for imputation in being made just (and I’m not sure it does), it need not follow that it rejects a role for imputation if we broaden the sense of "justification" to include declarative, forensic aspects. Such a sense for the term "justification" arguably falls outside the purview of any of Trent's affirmations or denials. The difficulty in applying Trent's Canons to Protestant doctrines (which mean something quite different by terms like "justification" or "righteousness") has been recognized in various Catholic-Protestant dialogues (see, e.g., the appendix to the Lutheran-Catholic Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification).
Furthermore, even in "double justification" while infusion is a formal cause (causa formalis) of being made just, the other side of the duplex—being declared just—technically speaking, has no formal cause because it does not have reference to any subjective (i.e., formal) change in the individual. Imputation is not the "formal cause" of the forensic declaration and so the assertion of imputation does not contradict the idea that justification, qua being made righteous, has a single (unica) formal cause.
This is, in fact, the direction in which 20th century Catholic biblical, historical, and theological studies have moved. Justification in general has not always been a central concern for Catholic theologians or biblical scholars. Since the middle of this century, however, there has been a growing awareness on the part of Catholic scholars that Martin Luther's explication of justification had highlighted important aspects of that New Testament theme. Thus, Louis Bouyer's The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism (Westminster, MD: Newman, 1956), while not completely uncritical of Luther, went far to rehabilitate the Reformer's thought as a "renewal of apostolic Christianity and of its traditional interpretation" (58). Likewise, in regard to even the imputed righteousness asserted by Luther's doctrine, Catholic scholar George Tavard appreciatively wrote,
When [the Reformers] asserted imputed justification, they wished simply to deny a justice pertaining to man; they wished to make the Pelagian distortions of sanctification impossible, to kill at the roots the idolatrous desire to sanctify oneself through an accumulation of merits...We have nothing of our own: all comes from Christ. (Protestantism [New York, 1959] 27)
Although the fully forensic and imputative senses of justification are not asserted here by these authors, these quotations do underscore the importance of recognizing that even before the Second Vatican Council, Catholic theologians were growing in their positive assessment of Luther's acheivement and his concern for vital biblical truths.
In Catholic biblical studies similar developments have occured. For instance, in 1967 the Jesuit biblical scholar, Joseph Fitzmyer, had written that justification is definitely "not the key" to Paul's theology, but rather is, in the words of Schweitzer, a "subsidiary crater" (Pauline Theology: A Brief Statement, [Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall]). Less than ten years later, however, we find Fitzmyer admitting that among that various effects of Christ's work, Paul gives "pride of place" to justification ("Reconciliation in Pauline Theology" in No Famine in the Land, ed. by Flanagan and Robinson, [Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1975] 156; elsewhere he admits to wrongly "downplaying justification in the past").
Not only has justification received renewed attention within Catholic biblical studies, but the forensic or juridical aspects of justification have also been a focus. The Greek verb for "justification" ("dikaioun") would seem at first glance, to fit the Catholic interpretation of "making righteous." After all, other Greek verbs ending in -oo have a causative force (e.g., douloun, to enslave; nekroun, to mortify; deloun, to make clear; etc.). Nevertheless, Catholic scholars, such as Fitzmyer, have come to recognize that in the LXX dikaioun seems to have a declarative, forensic sense (see Fitzmeyer's summary of Pauline theology in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary; see also Michael Schmaus' Dogma, volume 6: Justification and the Last Things [Kansas City: Sheed and Ward, 1977]).
Likewise, J.P. Kenny, writing in the Catholic Dictionary of Theology (London: Nelson, 1971), says regarding "justification,"
...[Paul] interchanges it at times with the phrase "to reckon as just" (Rom 4:3; Gal 3:6). When used of the end-events and set in opposition to condemnation (Rom 8:33; 1 Cor 4:4) it is clearly used in a forensic sense, and sometimes it has associated with it the Jewish law-court term: "in His sight" or "before Him" (Rom 3:20; Gal 3:11). Nouns describing the act or state of justification (Rom 5:16-18) are likewise forensic. The immediate sense of the term would thus be rather a declaring just and not a making just. (175)
Other Catholic theologians, such as Ricardo Franco, see the biblical term "justification" as refering primarily to God's judicial verdict of pardon and right-standing, whereby a new relationship is initiated between the person and God, and it therefore cannot be interpreted merely as a synonym for the infusion of grace (see his "Justification" in Sacramentum Mundi, volume 3 [New York: Herder and Herder, 1969], 239-241). Franco goes on explain this verdict as the forensic application of eschatological judgment to us now, in Christ, a judgment that is not based upon us already being inherently righteous, but that is antecedent to and creative of any growth in actual righteousness.
It is in the light of these developments in Catholic theology that ECT's "Gift" statment must be read. The fact that "Gift" speaks of God’s"declaration" of our righteousness at several points indicates that it is taking this forensic and declarative notion of justification to be an important and indispensible part of the biblical sense of "justification," a sense which Trent wholly neglected. And this recognition of the forensic focus of justification is not merely the private opinion of a few unusual Catholic theologians. The various official dialogues have also included the forensically declarative in their use of the term "justification" (e.g., the Lutheran-Catholic and Anglican-Catholic dialogues). Nevertheless, Catholic scholars do not wish to eliminate entirely the causative sense of justification. They will point out that it does seem to have this force in some New Testament passages (e.g., Romans 5:18-19) and in Scripture (e.g., Isaiah 55:10-11), God’s declaring Word is always pictured as effective in bringing about what it declares.
If the declarative, forensic sense of "justification" is being admitted by Catholic scholars, then this also opens the door to imputation being included in the notion of justification. The Catholic Hermann Volk, for example, sees imputation as an essential aspect of justification since Christ's righteousness is "reckoned" to us (see his "Imputationsgerechtigkeit" in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche [Freiburg: Herder, 1960]). In discussing the legal character of the biblical term "justification," Hans Küng writes that this "legal character is of fundamental signification for justification." Furthermore, as a forensic statement of the divine Judge, it involves "a declaration of justice, a court judgment, a nonreckoning of sins, and a reckoning of Christ's justice (imputation: Rom 4; Gal 3:6) through God" ("Justification and Sanctification According to the New Testament" in Christianity Divided: Protestant and Roman Catholic Theological Issues, ed. by D. Callahan, et al [New York: Sheed and Ward, 1961] 315).
More recently, The Lutheran-Catholic Geneva Joint Declaration (1995) spoke of the fact that in justification our sins are "not imputed" to us though we be sinful. Beyond that, the 1987 Anglican-Catholic dialogue positively affirmed "imputation" along with "infusion" since "God’s creative word imparts what it imputes" (Salvation and the Church). Finally, various Catholic Scripture commentaries and articles have been quite willing to see the idea of forensic imputation in passages such as 1 Corinthians 1:30, Philippians 3:9, and so on.
Thus Catholic doctrine cannot be said to exclude imputation from having a role in justification. A faithful Catholic, therefore, may affirm that the imputation of Christ’s righteousness has a role—even a central and indispensable role—in the justification of the believer. And quite generally we should keep in mind that Catholics use the term "justification" in a broader sense than to which Protestants are accustomed. As Charles Hodge notes, "If a man defines justification so as to include sanctification, and says that justification is by works as well as faith, we must understand him accordingly" ( "Is the Church of Rome, a Part of the Visible Church?" in Princeton Review, April 1846; it is notable that Hodge answers the question in the affirmative). In any case, it is not true that Catholics must deny a role for the imputation of Christ's righteousness in justification.
Nevertheless, we should be aware of the reasons for the Catholic discomfort with a one-sided emphasis on a iustitia aliena that is conceived of as purely extra nos. They see it as proposing that our justification is based upon a legal fiction that exists only in the mind of God. How can God impute something to us (righteousness), which is not something to which we actually have title by any real relation between us and Christ's righteousness? If God only makes judgments in accord with truth, what is the truth upon which his judgment of our right-standing before him is based? Furthermore, Catholics worry that a one-sided emphasis on an alien righteousness in justification, apart from an infusion of grace, tends to ignore the personally transformative function of faith. If God declares us righteous by means of the gift of faith, how can his declaration not produce the effects of grace within us by means of that same faith? Still, given the possibility within Catholic theology of a broader use of the term "justification," a Catholic may well reject as a false antithesis that the controversy is one over imputed versus infused righteousness.
It seems to me that perhaps those of us who are Reformed rather than Lutheran would have hope that some kind of rapprochement between Protestants and Catholics is possible on this issue, especially in light of the modern developments within Catholic biblical and theological studies. After all, the central motif of Calvinian theology is not merely "imputation" (especially as that is understood in some sectors of confessional Lutheranism), but union with Christ. As Calvin himself writes:
Therefore, that joining together of Head and members, that indwelling of Christ in our heart—in short, that mystical union—are accorded by us the highest degree of importance, so that Christ, having been made ours, makes us sharers with him in the gifts with which he has been endowed. We do not, therefore, contemplate him outside ourselves from afar in order that his righteousness may be imputed to us but because we put on Christ and are engrafted into his body—-in short, because he deigns to make us one with him. For this reason, we glory that we have fellowship of righteousness with him. (Institutes 3.11.10; emphasis mine)
Calvin is not denying that justification (now being thought of in the narrower Protestant sense) is based on the imputation of Christ's righteousness to us, nor that justification in the primary biblical sense, is a forensic declaration. But what he is denying, is that the divine action of the Father, through the Spirit, uniting us to Christ, is an action to be conceived of wholly imputatively. The very same action by which we are united to Christ, unites us with all his benefits. And so, Calvin might well affirm that, in this sense, justification is not by means of (as Trent would say) "a sole imputation" that excludes the "pouring forth of grace and charity," even if the purely forensic aspect of God's one action is not identical with the pouring forth of other graces. For Calvin, by receiving Christ himself (the grace of God), all that is his, is also ours--whether his legal title to righteousness and vindication before God or his own divine charity--and in the application of redemption one is not prior to another. Thus one of Calvin's favorite phrases to describe justification is "fellowship of righteousness," emphasizing that we are in Christ and he is in us.
A similar line of thinking may be found in more contemporary Reformed theologies. For instance, Richard B. Gaffin (of Westminster Seminary) likewise writes:
...Paul does not view the justification of the sinner (the imputation of Christ’s righteousness) as an act having a discrete structure of its own. Rather, as with Christ’s resurrection, the act of being raised with Christ in its constitutive, transforming character is at the same time judicially declarative; that is, the act of being joined to Christ is conceived of imputatively. In this sense the enlivening action of resurrection (incorporation) is itself a forensically constitutive declaration. (Resurrection and Redemption [Philipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1978] 132)
Again, it is clear here that Gaffin is not denying the forensically declarative and imputative nature of justification (taken in the more specific, Protestant sense). What he is saying that the forensic and subjectively transformative elements of salvation are inseparable aspects of the single act of union with Christ, who is himself the grace and love of God poured into our hearts. For an individual to be raised with Christ (regeneration, in some sense) is, at the same time and in the same act, for her to be declared to be in judicial right-standing before God and, moreover, thereby to have Christ's own righteousness imputed (reckoned) to her. That is why Paul can summarize the Gospel as "Christ in us, the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27).
According to Trent, in justification (now to be taken in the causative sense of being "made righteous"), adoption, remission of sins, sanctification, and inner renewal (i.e., the infusion of grace), are simultaneous in the justified, all aspects of the one action of God (see Chapters 5 and 7 of the Decree of the Sixth Session). If, however, we are correct to see Catholics as now willing to broaden their notion of justification, to include the specifically forensic and even imputative aspects, then those elements will likewise have to be included within the one action of God in Christ of which Trent speaks. This development, it seems to me, begins to allow for much of what many of us, as Reformed Protestants, take to be the biblical picture.
Only with distinctively Reformed emphases, I think, can we meet the Catholic objections to the Protestant focus on imputation. Not all Protestants, however, may be entirely happy with these emphases, and they have, in reality, been historically the focus of anti-Reformed Lutheran polemics and even a matter of some dispute within the Reformed tradition itself (on the Lutheran objection see, e.g., M. Schneckenburger, Vergleichende Darstellung des lutherischen und reformirten Lehrsbegriffs [Stuttgart: Metzler, 1855]; some of the Reformed debates are well documented by William Borden Evans, Imputation and Impartation: The Problem of Union with Christ in 19th Century American Reformed Theology [Ann Arbor, MI: UMI, 1996]).
Nevertheless, the distinctively Reformed focus on union with Christ can answer some of the Catholic objections to imputation. On the Reformed view justification need not be a mere "legal fiction" nor is the imputation of Christ’s righteousness something that occurs alone, apart from union with all of Christ’s other benefits. While Christ’s righteousness is a iustitia aliena in that it is not accomplished by us or in us, it is also a iustitia inhaerens in that Christ himself, with his forensically declared righteousness, is truly in us by his Spirit. While Christ’s righteousness is extra nos in that it finds its origin and is accomplished apart from us, it is also in nobis in that we ourselves, in the transformative and enlivening action of being raised in union with Christ, have fellowship with his righteousness. While differences between Catholics and Protestants do very much remain on this particular issue, we cannot continue to say that there is a complete impasse between the Catholic doctrine of infusion and Reformed doctrine of imputation. To do so would be to close a door on any further conversation.
Related Issues
What I have said so far certainly does not exhaust the issues regarding the traditonal Catholic emphasis on the infusion of grace into the person justified. Nor have I yet addressed the central issue of the sufficiency of faith for justification. A number of potentially problematic issues still remain unresolved, such as the cooperation of the individual with grace, which often has been a matter of dispute between Reformed Protestants and Catholics. Let us explore this point briefly.
While Catholics do emphasize the cooperation of the believer with divine grace, Catholics also may teach that the grace of cooperation is a divine gift and, within the Thomistic tradition, God is seen as acting in the sinner in a way that could well be described, in Reformed terms, as monergistic. Catholics can quite honestly state, in the words of the Lutheran-Catholic dialogue, "Justification, as a transition from disfavor and unrighteousness to favor and righteousness in God’s sight, is totally God’s work" (paragraph 156.5; emphasis mine). This is because "as sinners...[people] are incapable of turning themselves to God to seek deliverance." Therefore, it must be the case that, "Justification takes place solely by God's grace." Thus whenever persons consent to God's justifying actions, "such personal consent [is] itself an effect of grace, not...an action arising from innate human abilities" (Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, paragraphs 19 and 20). Since this is case, we are never to place our trust in our own accomplishments, whether faith or works, but wholly in the mercy of Christ. It is of the very nature of faith to turn from self and apprehend Another.
To make room for "cooperation" or "assent" is not necessarily to replace Reformed monergism with a semi-Pelagian synergism. Rather, it is to place the human response of faith, which is truly an act of the person, within the framework of faith as an absolute gift. As Gaffin notes, "there is a correlation between Christ as life-giving and the sinner as life-receiving which carries back to the very point of inception of salvation" (Resurrection and Redemption, 142). He goes on to quote B.B. Warfield in connection with the biblical notion of renewal:
There is certainly synergism here; but it is a synergism of such character that not only is the initiative taken by God, but the Divine action is in the exceeding greatness of God’s power, according to the working of the strength of His might which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead…
Likewise, Geerhardus Vos writes concerning the spiritual resurrection to life in Philippians:
…that it is not impossible for Paul to hold up the resurrection as goal to be striven after, appears from the fact that he here plainly so represents the spiritual resurrection, which elsewhere he views quite as much as the bodily resurrection under the aspect of an absolute act or gift of God… (The Pauline Eschatology [Philipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1994] 257).
This image of resurrection is also a fit description of the gracious work of God in an individual, bringing him into saving union with Christ by faith (e.g., Eph 2:4-9). The Catholic position is not in contradiction with describing the reception of salvation in these terms. They too share with us the emphasis of Augustine and the Council of Orange that salvation is by grace alone (sola gratia). We should also keep in mind that if the Catholic picture of justification is willing to incorporate forensic and imputative elements within it, that this, too, may somewhat change what Catholic teaching means by "cooperation."
Another difficulty is that the view of justification we find in Trent presents justification not as a singular, one-time act, but also as process or growth which culiminates in the eschatological judgment through which God's elect are found blameless. The Protestant position focuses instead on the initial act of justification in which a sinner is declared righteous in virtue of the imputed righteousness of Christ. How can ECT's "Gift" statement propose justification sola fide as an area of agreement if these two pictures of justification remain fundamentally opposed?
In reply, two observations are immediately important. First, even on a Catholic view which conceives of justification in wholly infusionary and transformist categories, it is not clear that the concept of a progress and growth in justification necessarily implies that anything besides faith is sufficient for that progress and growth. We shall have opportunity below to consider this point further, in connection with the relationship between faith and works.
Second, we must again remember that Catholicism is more open to including forensic categories within its approach to justification. With the incorporation of those categories, however, it is not clear that the progress and growth of justification will be exposited only in terms of what Trent proposed. Adjustments and qualifications would certainly need to be made.
Setting these observations aside, however, several other points are still necessary to keep in mind. On the Catholic view, righteousness is immediately accomplished upon receiving Christ’s righteousness in (and for) us by faith (and remember, the Catholic view need not exclude imputation from this righteousness). We don’t have to "wait" to be justified in this initial sense. The question for Catholics is whether we shall remain justified. But the question of perseverance ought not to be confused with that of initial justification. Indeed, the question of perseverence in justification is matter of some debate even among Evangelicals, e.g., among Reformed, Lutherans, and Methodists. Indeed on the Reformed view, perseverence is necessary to remain justified, even though that perseverence is not the ground of justification. Justification, after all, is not merely a one-time act of God, but also a continuing "state of justification" (Westminster Confession of Faith XI.v). And as the Confession says later,
They whom God hath accepted in his Beloved, effectually called and sanctified by his Spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace; but shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved. (XVII.i; emphasis mine)
In further explanation, the Westminster Larger Catechism tells us that, in the covenant of grace, God not only grants justification to his elect through the gift of faith, but he also enables that justifying faith to produce "all holy obedience...as the way in which he hath appointed them to salvation" (Question 32; emphasis mine). Likewise, Calvin wrote that the law "will always have grounds for accusing and condemning us unless, on the contrary, God's mercy counters it, and by continual forgiveness of sins repeatedly acquits us" (Institutes 3.14.10; emphasis mine).
Thus, there is a sense in which even Reformed theology must speak of a "continuing" in the state of justification, looking foward to a final justification in which believers will be openly acquitted and accepted by God at the last judgment. And so Paul writes that we all, "through the Spirit, by faith, await the hope of righteousness" (Gal 5:5).
On the Catholic view, however, whether an individual will in fact persevere or not is an open question. Thus, even if Protestants can accept the idea of "remaining justified through a persevering faith, working in love," Catholic theology may be seen as undermining any assurance of salvation since it allows that some who have been justified will not persevere. The historic Catholic view, however, while holding that we can never be sure of our own election ex fide, does not deny the possibility of assurance of present salvation (see the Decrees of Sixth Session of the Council of Trent, Chapter 9). If one were to ask a Catholic whether he could be sure he’d be saved if he were to die this moment, he could answer in the affirmative, with confidence, and completely in accord with Catholic teaching. But since Catholics believe justification can be gained and lost, the difficulty is one of assurance in regard to final perseverance, not present salvation.
But this is not a problem unique to Catholicism. Lutheranism, likewise, allows that those once converted and justified may, through apostasy, fall away in the end (see, e.g., the Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, Article XI "Election"). Still, Catholics may allow that some kind of assurance of final perseverance is possible. As ECT’s "Gift" statement says, "we may therefore have assured hope for the eternal life promised to us in Christ...While we dare not presume upon the grace of God, the promise of God in Christ is utterly reliable, and faith in that promise overcomes anxiety about our eternal future." Similarly, Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar sees faith as giving assurance—not the experience of faith itself, but the function of faith in knowing Christ and the power of his resurrection, pressing on to that goal. It is in the receptive movement of faith towards its object that assurance is possessed, but this is a movement that turns away from the self, towards Christ, and is grasped by him (see Balthasar’s The Glory of the Lord I: Seeing th Form [San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 1985]). In short, a living faith in Christ includes the theological virtue of unswerving hope.
Faith and Works
It is on the specific issue of the sufficiency of faith for justification that "Gift" professes to have come to some kind of agreement and, therefore, it is this issue that deserves the closest and most detailed attention. If at any point actual Catholic or Protestant doctrine is not fully consistent with the affirmations of "Gift," it would likely be at this point.
The affirmation on the sufficiency of faith is the part of "Gift" that bothers me most, since I’m not convinced that the Catholics and Protestants involved have really come to enough agreement for them to affirm together that they agree with what the Reformers meant by "faith alone" (though, as I noted above, Küng, Rahner, and others have said quite similar things). Is what Catholics actually affirm about the sufficiency of faith reasonably expressed as an agreement with "what is meant by ‘faith alone’"? Moreover, the issues involved are rather complex (how are works related to faith, the scholastic distinction between formed and unformed faith, etc.).
"Gift" states that "faith is not merely intellectual assent but an act of the whole person, involving the mind, the will, and the affections, issuing in a changed life." Catholics therefore affirm that, in order to be saved, we cannot put our trust in anything other than Christ and his righteousness alone. As the American Lutheran-Catholic dialogue states, "our entire hope of justification and salvation rests on Christ Jesus and on the Gospel whereby the good news of God’s merciful action in Christ is made known; we do not place our ultimate trust in anything other than God’s promise and saving work in Christ" (paragraph 157). It goes on to state that our trust is not to be placed "in our own goodness, even when this is God-given, or in our religious experience, even when this is the experience of faith" (paragraph 158).
While encouraging, this approach may not be wholly satisfying to evangelical Protestants. After all, it might well make a difference whether or not the righteousness in which we place our faith is imputed or infused. One might argue that if the righteousness in which we place our faith is an infused one, a righteousness that inheres in the believer, then we, in the final analysis, are trusting in our own works. This analysis, however, is not consistent with the Catholic understanding, and this is especially the case if that understanding can allow a larger role for forensic and imputative notions. We shall have occasion to examine this issue in more detail below.
For now, I shall note that so long as we trust Christ alone, I cannot see how it affects our salvation whether or not we put our trust in Christ's righteousness as imputed or as infused. We are saved by faith in Christ, not faith in a particular doctrinal formulation. How Christ’s righteousness becomes ours is perhaps an area of disagreement between Catholics and Protestants, but it doesn’t undermine the saving power of the Gospel. If it did, then surely Augustine was not saved for he explicitly and self-consciously believed that it was infused and inwrought righteousness which justifies since he saw the meaning of the word "justification" as "to make just" (see, e.g., his De Spiritu et Littera 26, 45; cf. Alister McGrath’s Iustitia Dei vol 1[Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986] for more on Augustine's views). In any case, an Evangelical could well argue that, since Protestants are correct and justification is in fact wrought by imputation, then the righteousness of Christ in which Catholics place their faith is, among other things, an imputed one, regardless whether or not they understand it in that sense.
Let us begin examining these matters in more detail by outlining how Catholic doctrine regarding justifying faith has been traditionally understood. The traditional understanding holds that in order to be truly justifying, faith must work itself in loving obedience and that faith’s working in love is effective unto justification. Through the disobedience of mortal sin, the grace of justification is destroyed, even while faith, in some sense, remains intact. In another sense, however, mortal sin affects the very nature of the faith in question. Faith that does not work itself in love and can co-exist with mortal sin, is not a living faith, but a dead one. Such faith cannot save. In a very real sense, then, it has not remained "intact." In order to be saving faith, faith must be accompanied—in fact, intrinsically qualified—by love. In the first sense, however, faith remains intact even when not working in love, since such a dead faith can continue to believe and hope in Christ in some manner.
In evaluating this, we must keep in mind that Trent defined faith merely as the gift whereby we believe the truth of what God has revealed and promised. This kind of faith is either dead or living depending on whether it is accompanied by charity. This notion of "faith," however, seems to be a narrowly intellectualistic one and quite similar to what Lutherans have meant by fides historica, which does not save. Nevertheless, Catholics have traditionally held that this dead faith is still a divine gift of grace, even if the grace of charity is not given with it. It is to this last point that Protestants have typically raised objections. After all, how could the divinely given gift of faith be dead and sterile? Still, even Calvin admits that God may sometimes grant, by the Spirit, an illumination and faith which is only temporary and, in the end, fails (see his Commentary on Hebrews 6; Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists on Matthew 13; and Institutes 3.2.11-12 and 3.24.8). Thus the primary Protestant objection lies elsewhere.
The difficulty stems from the fact that, traditionally for Catholics, faith and love are distinct, extrinsically related operations in which love comes intrinsically to qualify faith. Works of love, at the end of the day, must be added to faith, it seems, suggesting that it is by faith and works that we are saved. As the Scholastics said, the form of saving faith is love (fides caritate formata). On this traditional view, only such a love-qualified faith is sufficient for justification. It would seem then that while such a faith is sufficient for justification, love has some co-efficiency within that sufficiency. Catholics would maintain that such saving love, added to faith, is not a work of the law, but a work of faith. It is not regarded by God under the aspect of perfect obedience according to the law. Even the obedience of faith would not stand under the scrutiny of that tribunal. Rather, as adopted sons, God regards our works out of his mercy, propitiated in regard to their imperfections by the atoning work of Christ, accepting them and rewarding them as a loving Father (how this is supposed to make sense apart from some doctrine of forensic justification, I'm not sure). Still, the works are necessary.
The primary problem for Protestants, then, is this. The Catholic distinction between a dead faith and a living faith is one that centers on whether or not the faith involved is qualified by charity. The implication of this, however, is that believers can move themselves from a dead faith to a living faith through the work of love. Thus, we must in some way trust our own works. This, however, undermines placing our faith in God's grace alone, found in Christ alone. This is indeed a serious objection.
Catholics have typically tried to answer this objection by insisting that the charity which makes faith live is itself totally God’s gift and even our own cooperation in love is itself a gift of grace. Moreover, it is only by faith in God that we can come to love and we look by faith to God, not ourselves, for the gift of charity. As the Lutheran-Catholic Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification states,
...being made righteous by justifying grace...is grounded totally on God's graciousness and remains constantly dependent on the salvific and creative working of this gracious God, who remains true to himself, so that one can rely upon him. Thus justifying grace never becomes a human possession to which one could appeal over against God...renewal in faith, hope, and love is always dependent upon God's unfathomable grace and contributes nothing to justification about which one could boast before God. (Section 27)
It seems to me that these replies are to some degree successful in meeting the Protestant objections to the traditional Catholic way of expressing the relationship between faith and works. Some Protestant concerns are indeed being meet. It also seems to me, however, that the primary difference between Catholic and Protestant theology on the sufficiency of faith has traditionally focused on this issue and that, even with these assurances, so long as love is seen a something added to faith. important differences remain.
Nevertheless, since Catholics hold that the gifts of faith and charity are given along with the gift of salvation as the means by which that salvation is received, they maintain the absolute primacy of grace. Since they maintain that faith and charity are Christ’s work of faith and charity in us, they maintain the absolute primacy of Christ’s work alone. But it is not clear to me that this doctrine, which I have described as a "traditional Catholic position," can be reasonably described, in the words of ECT's "Gift," as an agreement with "what is meant by faith alone." This traditional way of expressing these doctrines, however, is not the last word. There are, in fact, further considerations emerging, not so much from how Catholic theology has traditionally been understood, but from more recent developments in Catholic biblical, historical, and theological studies.
To begin, the Second Vatican Council seems to have broadened the notion of faith beyond the narrowly intellectualistic definition of Trent. Thus it describes faith as that "by which man entrusts his whole self freely to God offering ‘the full submission of intellect and will to God who reveals’ [Vatican I] and freely assenting to the truth revealed by Him" (Dei Verbum 5). Furthermore, the individualistic, abstract, Aristotelian categories of scholasticism (e.g., fides formata or informata) are being revised within Catholic theology by the introduction of more personalist and existentialist ones. Saving faith is not mere assensus, but includes the fiducia emphasized by the Reformers.
Avery Dulles has suggested that it is a misreading of Trent and the Catholic tradition to take them to insist that faith and love are extrinsically related to one another and that faith could, in any sense, be complete apart from love. If that were the case, then it would seem that love is something that we could go on to choose to do on the basis of faith, so that in the final analysis it is not really faith that justifies, but the works of love that are added to it. Dulles suggests that this is a misreading. ("Justification in Contemporary Catholic Theology" in Justification by Faith, ed. by H. George Anderson, et al.)
There are several more considerations that back up Dulles’ contention that this is a misreading. First, it must be maintained that love is no less a gift of grace than faith. As Rahner writes, "...the acceptance of the divine gift of justification [i.e., through faith working in love] is itself part of the gift..." ("The Word and the Eucharist," in Theological Investigations 4:257). Thus love is decidedly not our achievement but God’s absolute gift.
Second, in love, just as much as in faith, we surrender ourselves unconditionally to God and so "theologically speaking, love is no more a work than faith" (Rahner, "Questions of Controversial Theology on Justification," in Theological Investigations 4:202). It does not offer something up to God in self-righteousness, but is a total abandonment of self to Christ and his mercy. Hans Urs von Balthasar also meditates at length on the theme of faith as a surrender which always already includes within itself the response of love. He sees this kind of faith, working in love, especially in Christ’sown faith in God, a faith which he graciously shares with us (see his "Fides Christi" in Spouse of the Word: Explorations in Theology, vol 2 [San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 1991]; also The Glory of the Lord I).
Third, Otto Pesch argues that the Thomistic formulation of fides caritate formata should not be taken to teach that charity is extrinsically related to faith and must be added to it. He argues that the meaning is that charity is the inner movement of faith itself (see his Theologie der Rechtfertigung bei M. Luther und Thomas von Aquin [Mainz: Matthais-Grünewald, 1967]). Faith works itself out in love. Joseph Fitzmeyer echoes this in his explication of the Pauline notion of faith. He writes,
...the faith that one is asked to put in God or Christ...is not a mere intellectual assent to the proposition that "Jesus is Lord." It is a vital, personal commitment, engaging the whole person to Christ in all his or her relations with God, other humans beings, and the world...As hypakoe ["submission" or "commitment" of faith in Romans 5:1; 16:26], it is a full acceptance of Christian dedication..., to the exclusion of all reliance on self or on what Paul calls "boasting"... ("Pauline Theology" in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary [Englewood Cliff, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990] 1407)
It is precisely this kind of faith which is a gift of God and produces the equally grace-given working of faith in love. Hans Küng writes along similar lines,
From the fundamentally legal character of justification a further conclusion naturally follows. It is not works, not moral achievements which count in justification...No on can stand before God in his own strength. We are justified through God's grace, and thereby every human acheivement is excluded when justification is in question...Every human work, every human achievement, is excluded, but not every human act, which does not set itself up as the achievement of some work but rather as renunciation of achievement...This fundamental deed of man, which is supremely active in its extreme passivity, is faith...Thus, no work, not even a work of love, justifies man, but only faith, justified through God himself. This faith as a gracious gift of God is not achievement through works, but rather self-surrender to God, an abandonment by grace to the grace of God as a response to the act of God...And love? There are works of love, but they too are excluded from justification, although the belief of the justified man must be active in love (Gal 5:6). Still, love itself is not a work. Insofar as it too looks away from itself and surrenders itself unconditionally and entirely to God, it is rather to be classified as faith. There is a dead faith of the demons, which yields only knowledge and not self-surrender (Jas 2:19). Yet this is not the genuine, loving faith for which God justifies a sinner. ("Justification and Sanctification According to the New Testament" 322-323)
Finally, it must be remembered that even Trent emphasized that "faith is the beginning [initium] of human salvation, the foundation [fundamentum] and root [radix] of all justification" (emphasis mine). The inclusion of the word "all" (omnis) here is important and, according to the Acta of Trent, its inclusion was due to the intervention of Cardinal Cervini who set up a committee to settle a dispute regarding what kind of cause faith had in justification (see Concilium Tridentiunum [Freiburg: B. Herder, 1911], vol 5, 731ff.). Its inclusion underscores the permanent efficacy of faith as the beginning, foundation, and root of justification, in the whole of justification. Not just initial justification, but the growth of justification are intended here, including, thereby, even the working of faith in love. If even charity itself, in relation to justification, finds its beginning, foundation, and root in faith, then, given the points outlined above, some of the concerns of sola fide are certainly being met.
As Protestants we hold that from the start faith and love intrinsically qualify each other. If we truly put our faith in God’s promises, then we cannot help but love. Likewise, love believes all things since it subsists within faith (1 Co 13:7). In short, faith works itself out in love (Gal 5:6). Abraham did not add works to faith, but because he had an absolute trust in God, he obeyed him. His obedience was the obedience of faith (i.e., faith’s own obedience). Love is what saving faith does, so that while only faith justifies, faith alone (i.e., without love) does not. Only such a faith, working in love, is sufficient for justification. It would seem then that because such a faith is sufficient for justification, love has no true co-efficiency in that sufficiency.
Turretin uses the following analogy:
The question is not whether solitary faith—that is, separated from the other virtues—-justifies, which we grant could not easily be the case since it is not even true and living faith; but whether it alone concurs to the act of justification, which we assert: as the eye alone sees, but not when torn out of the body... (Institutes of Elenctic Theology)
It is the function of the eye alone to see, among all of the organs of the body. Nevertheless, a solitary eye cannot see, that is, an eye torn from the body. Only eyes see, but eyes alone do not. Likewise, the Protestant doctrine is that it is only by faith that we receive and rest upon the righteousness of Christ. That is the peculiar function of faith. Nevertheless, the faith that alone receives justification does not do so as a solitary faith, apart from working itself in love. Only faith receives justification, but faith alone does not.
Saving faith does not look to itself or its own working in love, but to the work of Christ alone, for salvation. The working of faith in love is not something that is added to faith extrinsically, but is precisely the sort of thing that justifying faith does in virtue of receiving Christ and his saving power. As J. Gresham Machen wrote:
The works of which [James] is speaking are works that spring from faith and are the expression of faith. Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice only because he believed God. Such works as that are insisted upon by Paul in every epistle. Without them no man can inherit the kingdom of God (Gal 5:21). Only—and here again James would have been perfectly agreed—such works as that can spring onlyfrom faith. They can be accomplished not by human effort, but only by the reception of the power of God... ("Faith and Works" in Machen's Notes on Galatians, ed. by Skilton [Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1972] 221)
All of this is part of the classical Reformed expression of justification by faith alone (sola fide).
The remaining question, then, is whether this doctrine of sola fide and the Catholic doctrine of justifying faith, especially as that has been developed within the 20th century, can be reasonably said to be in any kind of agreement. The agreement we are speaking of here is not in regard to the terminology of sola fide (which Trent set aside as unbiblical), but in terms of the content of the Protestant doctrine of sola fide in how that is explained, what it is supposed to mean, and what it is designed to safeguard.
I’m not absolutely certain that the agreement fuly exists. Nevertheless, given the writings of Rahner, Pesch, von Balthasar, Dulles, and others, given the Second Vatican Council, and the given the official dialogues of the past 30 years, the ECT "Gift" statement may not be premature. The developments within the last century or so of Catholic theology are indeed significant and important. There is much reason to believe that there is a significant material convergence on this issue of the sufficiency of faith for justification, at least among certain Catholics and certain Evangelicals. And this is a convergence that is entirely consistent with their respective traditions. If the Catholic co-signers of "The Gift of Salvation" are willing to say that what they "affirm here is in agreement with what the Reformation traditions have meant by faith alone," then I think we should take them at their word. At the very least, our reaction should not be to continue in anti-Catholic polemics that claim that Catholicism continues in a clear and persistent denial of sola fide. My fear is that documents such as ACE's "Appeal" too easily slide into precisely that kind of claim and, in doing so, alienate those very Catholic theologians who have begun to listen to our Protestant doctrinal concerns.
Concluding Remarks
This nearly wraps up my remarks on ECT's document, "The Gift of Salvation." The document certainly has its flaws. I am especially concerned about its motivations, unofficial standing, and failure to exhibit the precision, study, and effort of some similar dialogues (though it builds on their work). Still, all in all, from a purely doctrinal perspective, I cannot find anything in the statement that is false or particularly misleading. It is, as far as I can see, an accurate reflection of the current state of Evangelical and Catholic doctrinal development and agreement.
We must indeed pursue unity in truth with all professing Christians, since, as ACE’s "Appeal" reminds us, the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation. Nevertheless, as the "Appeal" goes on to note, "unity apart from the Gospel is not biblical unity." I am hesitant, however, to maintain that our criterion of authenticity in regard to that Gospel is best expressed in the idea that justification by "faith alone" is the sole article by which the church stands or falls.
This is an affirmation more common to Lutheranism than to the Reformed churches, who always saw the blatant abuses of the Roman Catholic church, especially in its worship and government, as of more concern than the complexities of the doctrine of justification (see, e.g., Carlos M. Eire’s War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin). Moreover, the criterion of sola fide can risk becoming reductionistic in regard to the fullness of the biblical Gospel since the sacraments, preaching, the Lordship of Christ, and so on, are not simply dispensable. Such a criterion also focuses, it seems to me, too narrowly upon a particular formulation of the Gospel, one that does not possess a biblical warrant that is wholly beyond dispute. Thus, such a criterion does not address the possibility that the content of that Gospel may be accurately expressed in other terms. Given what we have seen in this essay, it appears that there is, at present, an open willingness within Catholicism (at least in certain of its quarters) to incorporate the concerns of the Reformation into its own theology.
In this light, I do not think that it is helpful to maintain, apart from further considerations, that the Catholic Church continues uniformly to preach a different Gospel or to have no authentic evangelism. To perpetuate that belief apart from careful study, theological precision, and extensive documentation, appears to caricature the best elements in Roman Catholic theology, if not to make an outright fabrication of them. In the past, such carelessness has, I believe, led any number of people to mistrust their Protestant leaders, theologians, and sources, even to the point where, in reaction, they abandoned their own Protestant distinctives to join the Roman Catholic Church. In this regard, Lorraine Boettner's Roman Catholicism stands as a crowning achievement in anti-Catholic pornography, leading more than one person astray with its vicious distortions and half-truths. As evangelical Protestants, we can and must do better than this.
More cautious is the assessment of the Roman Catholic church by Charles Hodge in the 1840's ("Is the Church of Rome, a Part of the Visible Church?"), —well before contemporary theological developments or those introduced by the Second Vatican Council. He asks whether the "Romish church" professes the true religion, by which he means "the essential doctrines of the gospel." He goes on to speak of the scriptures as the Word of God, their interpretation by the early fathers, and the core of the evangelical faith as found in the ecumenical creeds, especially the Nicene. He continues by asking,
Can any man take it upon himself in the sight of God, to assert there is not truth enough in the above summary to save the soul?…since as a society [the Roman church] still retains the profession of saving doctrines, and as in point of fact, by those doctrines men are born unto God and nurtured for heaven, we dare not deny that she is still a part of the visible church. We consider such a denial a direct contradiction of the Bible, and of the facts of God’s providence.
He quite willingly admits that even the canons and decrees of the Council of Trent may be explained in such a way that is "consistent with their saving efficacy" and not at variance with the saving truth of the Gospel.
In saying this, Hodge is only reiterating the traditional position of the Reformed churches in regard to the Roman Catholic church (which they, in turn, inherited from their medieval predecessors such as the Spiritual Franciscans). Considered from the perspective of the Papacy and its abuses at the time of the Reformation, Calvin and others denied that the Catholic church was a true church, let alone the church. Nevertheless, as a society of baptized people, gathered around Word and sacrament, Calvin and others were quite willing to admit that there are real churches within the Catholic communion, though lacking "the lawful form of the church" (Institutes 4.2.12).
Likewise, Turretin writes that, in a sense, the Catholic church is to be "still called a Christian Church" in reference to "the profession of Christianity and of the evangelical truths which she retains" (emphasis mine). It is indeed also the case that Turretin will not admit that the Catholic church is a vera ecclesia (true church), but by "verus" it is clear that he means "pure," not "real." And, he says, by that "purity" he intends freedom from all heresy, superstition, idolatry, tyranny, doubt, gross immorality, and the like. But in this sense, all churches that are part of the catholic, visible church are to one degree or another "more or less pure," for even "the purest churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error" (Westminster Confession of Faith XXV.iv-v). Given the positive developments of the past century and a half, including a far keener appreciation of Protestant theology on the part of Catholic theologians, we would do well to heed our Reformed tradition, as that is expressed, for instance, in Hodge’s assessment of the Catholic church of his day.
ACE's "Appeal" ends by affirming its intention to "stand together" on our Protestant distinctives, since they represent the truth of the Gospel. ECT's "Gift" ends by affirming its intention to pursue "unity in truth" between Catholics and evangelical Protestants. In this essay, I believe that I shown how we can faithfully do both.