Talk #6 REBUTTING THE MATERIAL PRINCIPLES OF PROTESTANTISM: SAVED BY “FAITH ALONE”
Introduction
Our first parents turned their backs on God. In that original sin, they lost for themselves and for all their descendants, God’s grace. The fall was caused by man’s declaration of independence from God. Having lost God’s grace, they were rendered incapable of living as God wants us to live. They could never share eternal happiness. We are thus born in a “state of original sin”; we have our “fallen nature”. Peter Kreeft, a great Catholic theologian puts it this way – “Man is like a caged dog in a railroad station who has chewed-off his tag, so that he does not know his true name or the name of his master. He does not know where he has come from or where he is supposed to be going. Divine revelation gives us back our name tag. It is crucial information. Our master is our Creator, our name is “beloved child of God’” and our destiny is Heaven. It is crucial to keep this tag, to cherish it, to read and remember it, and to live by it.” We need to be saved.
“Called to beatitude but wounded by sin, man stands in need of salvation from God.” (CCC 1949) Without the knowledge that human nature in its present state is “fallen” from the true norm, and thus not “normal” but “abnormal,” all our judgments of man are upside down. We then see sin as “normal” and “human.” “Ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature inclined to evil gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social action, and morals.” (CCC 407). Salvation is the deliverance of human beings from evil: physical, moral, political, etc. It is deliverance from our slavery to the passions and greed and pride that are at the root of evils in this world. It is salvation from ourselves and our fallen tendencies. Salvation denotes victory and the restoration to wholeness and integrity. Salvation brings about restoration to a sound relationship with God and rescue from sin. God’s never-ending love for us, which existed before we did, offers us salvation through Jesus Christ. Christianity is salvation religion.
Man, without God’s grace, will surely “self-destruct.” We need to be saved from this certain destruction because of our fallen nature. We need to be justified, that is, to be restored in God’s grace. It is only by being restored in God’s grace that we can overcome our “flesh”, our fallen nature. “Now the works of the flesh are plain: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like.” (Gal. 5:19-21)
I Protestant vs. Catholic Understanding of Justification
Catholic and most Protestant theologies accept as the starting tenet of soteriology (the study of Christian salvation) that we are saved by grace. We both agree that none of us would have a chance at salvation but for the grace of God. Grace is present throughout the working out of one's salvation: It is grace that first moves us to accept God’s offer of salvation; it is grace that supports a loving response, renewed daily; it is grace which guarantees fruitfulness and final perseverance. Man depends totally on Christ for his salvation which, also by divine will, engages the cooperation and participation of the human person, or, as St. Augustine put it so well: “The God Who created us without our participation has not willed to save us without our participation.” We need always to remind ourselves that as Catholics we are in total agreement that we are saved by God’s grace alone.
But if we agree that we are saved “by” grace, “through” what are we saved? How does the grace of God become an active part of our life? That is the point at which most Catholics and most Protestants differ. We both call that part of the salvation process by its biblical term, “justification”. Thus, we phrase the question another way – “By” what are we justified?
The material principle or the meat of the Protestant reformation is “Sola fide” or that we are saved by grace through “faith alone”. They hold that by God’s grace, we can come to a point when we repent of our sins, declare our complete trust in Jesus, and have faith that He has died and risen to save us from our sins. Then we are justified; this means that, although we deserve condemnation and punishment as sinners, God the judge passes down a “not guilty” verdict and forgives our sins. This verdict is given not because we are righteous, but because the perfect righteousness of Christ is imputed (applied externally) to us and accepted by God on our behalf. Thus, justification to them means “to declare righteous”. As Martin Luther puts it, a person justified is “still a pile of cow dung covered over with snow”. Underneath, they remain the manure. To them, this declaratory act is distinct from any ethical quality within us. Thus, “works” is excluded. We contribute nothing to our own salvation.
Catholics also believe in having a “conversion experience” wherein one comes to a major turning point in his commitment to God. Francis of Assisi had a major conversion at the beginning of his adulthood and he continued to have daily conversions throughout the rest of his life. From the Catholic perspective, a conversion occurs any time we choose God over self. This must be a regular event, but occasionally it is an event that changes the entire direction of our lives. Our “conversion experience” however, is not complete in and of itself. We must live our conversion all our life and we can still fail and yet recover from our failure. Catholics teach that justification starts at a moment in time but does not end at that time. It continues throughout a Christian’s life. For Catholics, justification is not complete without complete sanctification: “Justification entails the sanctification of man’s whole being.” (CCC 1995)
Catholics believe that justification is by faith but not by faith alone. Justification is made operative in one’s life by both faith and works. While we concede without question that only God’s grace can bring about our justification, we do control whether or not we receive such grace of God in vain, either by not acting on it or by directly rejecting it.
Catholics believe that justification is not just declaring us to be God’s children; He actually makes us his children. It means “made righteous”, not just declared righteous. When God declares the soul to be just, it really becomes inwardly just. We are called to holiness and to seek righteousness. A person is thus justified only after he is sanctified. This means a change of life to holiness, purity, and righteousness. This means true repentance from sins that entails "turning away" from them. As the Catechism puts it - “Justification is not only remission of sins, but also sanctification and renewal of the interior man”. (CCC 1989) “Justification detaches man from sin which contradicts the love of God, and purifies his heart of sin . . . It reconciles man with God. It frees the enslavement to sin, and it heals”. (CCC 1990)
II Two Stages of Justification
According to Catholic teaching, justification comes in two (2) stages:
1. One first receives justification through Baptism. “Justification is conferred in Baptism, the sacrament of faith. It conforms us to the righteousness of God, who makes us inwardly just by the power of his mercy.” (CCC 1992) Through baptism, we are “born again” in that our original sin is removed and we are restored to original grace. This grace is called “sanctifying grace”. (CCC 1999) “the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.” (CCC 1996) “Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself.” (2 Cor. 5:17-18)
2. After we are “born again” in Christ, we are expected to grow in maturity because there does remain in the person an inclination (concupiscence) which comes from sin and presses toward sin even after sin is “washed away” in baptism. Concupiscence manifests in our disordered desire that subjugates us to the pleasures of the senses (lust), covetousness for earthly goods (greed), and self-assertion (pride), contrary to the dictates of reason. (CCC 377) In scriptures, St. Paul describes this quite well in his epistle to the Romans 7:21-24. He says that the evil he wants to avoid seems to be the very thing he does, while the good that he wants to do, he seems to be incapable of doing. This is what theologians called the “loss of integrity”. It means that our emotions and our bodies are not always under complete control of our will and intellect. Our will is weak; our intellect finds difficulty in coming to absolute conclusions about right and wrong. Every honest human being will admit this “inner conflict” in him. God’s help is always available but we need to ask for it and when we obtain it, we need to act upon it. God grants us grace to overcome temptations and avoid falling into sin if we remain close to Him and frequent the Holy Sacraments He gave us. We obtain actual graces through prayers and the sacraments that are outward signs of God’s grace.
This sustaining grace is called “actual grace”, a supernatural aid. This is the Catholic idea of progressive justification or sanctification. It is the life of the child of God maturing in God’s grace.
III Can we be sure that we are saved?
Most Protestants claim that they can be absolutely sure that they are saved. Thus, when they evangelize, the first question that they almost always ask is – “Are you saved?” They base their certainty in 1 John 5:13 that reads – “I write you, then, all these things that you may know that you have eternal life, all you who believe in the Name of the Son of God”. In the next verse, however, (v.14), it is very clear that the knowledge referred to in the preceding verse actually means a confident assurance. For instance, when we prepare really hard for an examination, we sometimes say “Since I studied really hard, I know I’ll get an A in this exam.” Verse 14 states – “Through him we are fully confident that whatever we ask, according to his will, he will grant us”.
To some Protestants, once they are saved, they are always saved! This is because they believe that when one is forgiven of his sins, it includes all past, present and future sins. They can never lose their salvation. This, of course, is heresy. It is a false doctrine that poisons and kills souls for it can lead one to the deception that no matter how he lives, even if he lives like a devil, he is already saved and he knows it for sure. He can say “I can have all the fun I want to have, however I do it, and I’ll see you in heaven”. The devil loves this doctrine because he is the author of it. He is the father of all lies and deception! Through false teachings, the devil has convinced many people today that they have a “free ticket” to heaven. Those who believe in this theology are in jeopardy of losing their salvation.
The idea that we are forgiven of all past, present and future sin is unbiblical. In Mt. 6:14-15, Jesus teaches – “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you, but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” This verse makes it clear that our future sins are not forgiven until we forgive. The future action that is implied shows that we are not always saved once we are saved. To be forgiven from our sins, we must be repentant and confess to the priest whom Jesus has empowered to forgive sins. (Jn. 20:21-23)
Scripture teaches us to persevere to the end. In Mt. 24:13 – scripture declares that “he who endures to the end will be saved” and in Phil. 2:12, we are exhorted to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling”. Why “work”. Why “fear”, and why “trembling”, if faith is all that is necessary?
Catholics believe that they are “saved at baptism, they are being saved, and they still hope to be saved”. In 1 Cor. 4:3, St. Paul himself declares clearly that he, himself, is not sure he is saved. He said – “But I do not mind if you or any human court judges me. I do not even judge myself”. In 1 Cor 9:27, he declares – “I pommel my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified”.
Our “free will” remains despite our initial justification. God is a respecter of no man but He is a respecter of man’s free will. Our initial justification does not transform us into robots such that we would be incapable of exercising our ‘will.’ That is why we are reminded that we will always have “spiritual battles” not against mere flesh and blood but against principalities. Why bother fighting evil forces when we are already assured of our salvation? Why do we need to persevere to enter heaven as the Scriptures tell us? We must run the race to the finish line. There is no winning by default or forfeit.
IV Epistles on Justification
Many Protestants labor under the false assumption that Catholics believe in justification by works as opposed to faith. (That assumption of course is incorrect since Catholics also believe that we are saved by grace through “faith” but not “faith alone” but also by obedience of faith evidenced by “good works.”) From such an assumption, they point out Paul’s epistles to refute “good works” and support their principle of justification by “faith alone”. Their favorite rebuttal is Romans 3:28.
Romans 3:28 reads - “For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of law.” (Martin Luther added the word “alone” to his translation of Rom. 3:28 and admitted to doing it deliberately insisting that that was the sense of the text.)