catholic considerations: 2 views on Justification: Protestant and Catholic

"Our earthly liturgies must be celebrations full of beauty and power: Feasts of the Father who created us—that is why the gifts of the earth play such a great part: the bread, the wine, oil and light, incense, sacred music, and splendid colors. Feasts of the Son who redeemed us—that is why we rejoice in our liberation, breathe deeply in listening to the Word, and are strengthened in eating the Eucharistic Gifts. Feasts of the Holy Spirit who lives in us—that is why there is a wealth of consolation, knowledge, courage, strength, and blessing that flows from these sacred assemblies." unknown source possibly YOUCAT Mal.1.11 For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for my name shall be great among the heathen, saith theLord of hosts.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

2 views on Justification: Protestant and Catholic

a good DEBATE WRITTEN OUT between Horton and Sungenesis on faith alone http://www.faithfulanswers.com/is-justification-by-faith-alone/

another good article which explains is found here http://www.cfpeople.org/Apologetics/page51a037.html and following below is another one

and here too; http://www.ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/JUSTIF.HTM

2 views on Justification: Protestant and Catholic

found here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/07/st-augustine-on-law-and-grace/

Protestant View:

“According to Reformed theology, justification is by an extra nos (i.e. outside of us) imputation of the obedience of Christ. In other words, God justifies us by counting us as righteous not because of any righteousness infused into us, but by crediting Christ’s righteousness to our account, and crediting Him with our sins. God counts Christ’s suffering and death as punishment for our sins, and God counts Christ’s perfect obedience as our obedience. By this double imputation, nothing we do can bring us into condemnation.¹ That iswhat it means, in Reformed theology, to be no longer under law, but under grace. The law remains normative and binding on believers as a guide to living correctly, but no one who has been justified by grace through faith can be condemned by the law, nor justified by law-keeping. Believers are not under the law for justification or condemnation; they are under grace. Grace and law are, in that respect, mutually exclusive.”

Catholic View

“According to Catholic doctrine, justification is by an infusion of sanctifying grace and agape.by infusing grace and agape into our hearts at the moment ofregeneration He instantly makes us righteous. God does not count (or impute) our sins against us (Rom 4:8), not by leaving us with a wicked sinful heart and merely overlooking our sins, but by mercifully transforming our heart through the infusion of sanctifying grace and agape such that there is no mortal sin to overlook. The person with agape in his heart is infriendship with God, and thus is righteous before God. When Abraham chose to believe God’s promise (Rom 4:3), this act not only showed that Abraham had a faith working through agape and thus was in friendship with God, but it also deepened that friendship, and so God counted it to him as righteousness. Agape fulfills the law (Rom 10:8-10), because agape is the spirit of the law. Without agape, no one is righteous in His sight. But through Christ agape is poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5). By this agape in our hearts, we walk in newness of life; this infused grace and agape produces the “obedience of faith” of which St. Paul speaks (Rom 1:5, 16:26). This infused grace andagape is the gift of righteousness (Rom 5:17) by which we have been “freed from sin and made slaves of righteousness” (Rom 6:18,22). By this gift we are made “doers of the Law” (Rom 2:13), such that the requirement of the Law is “fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit,” (Rom 8:4). By this gift we subject ourselves to the law of God (Rom 8:7). By this gift of infused sanctifying grace and agape, our spirit is made alive (Rom 8:10) and the law is written on our hearts (cf. Rom 2:28-29), truly inour hearts (Rom 10:8, 10), as the prophet Jeremiah prophesied long ago concerning the New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:33-34). So according to the Catholic doctrine regarding law and grace, by the infusion of sanctifying grace we receive the gift of agape by which we truly fulfill the law. Here, grace and law are not mutually exclusive; grace orients us to God in divine love such that we fulfill the law, and are truly justified in our hearts.…”

also Bryan states the Catholic view here: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/12/justification-catholic-church-and-the-judaizers/#comment-48097 quoting him in comment 160--In this regard below the Prot and Catholic view would be similar--

The person who thinks that by following the law he can be translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light, or that by following the law he can be made actually righteous, has fallen from grace. He doesn’t understand that no one can be made actually righteous by law-keeping, because without grace man is infinitely removed from God, no matter how many good works man does. Apart from grace, man cannot acquire the life and righteousness of God, or have fellowship with God.

end of quote

In this next quote Bryan discusses something Piper has said. It starts with quotes from Piper and then Bryan more fully discusses The question to start is given and answered by Piper. It is found in comment 416 here:http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/08/imputation-and-paradigms-a-reply-to-nicholas-batzig/#comment-48230

Question: If you had two minutes to talk with the pope, what would you say to him?

Answer: O my, I have never asked myself that question at all.

I would say, “Could you just, in one minute, explain your view of justification?” And then on the basis of his one minute, I would give my view of justification.

I think Rome and Protestantism are not yet ready — I don’t think the Reformation is over. I don’t think that enough change has happened in Roman understanding of justification, and a bunch of other things.

I’m just picking justification because it’s so close to the center. You could pick papal authority or the nature of the mass or the role of sacraments or the place of Mary.

But those seem to be maybe a little more marginal than going right to the heart of the issue of, “Do you teach that we should rely entirely on the righteousness of Christ imputed to us by faith alone as the ground of God being 100% for us, after which necessary sanctification comes? Do you teach that?”

And if he said, “No, we don’t,” then I’d say, “I think that right at the core of Roman Catholic theology is a heresy,” or something like that.

Today, he clarified:

“Heresy” is a strong word. The problem with it is that its meaning and implications are not clear. Dictionary.com defines heresy, for example, as:

opinion or doctrine at variance with the orthodox or accepted doctrine, especially of a church or religious system.

any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs, customs, etc.

You can see how fluid such definitions are.

So what did I mean in the video?

I meant that the rejection of 1) the doctrine of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ as an essential part of the basis of our justification, and 2) the doctrine that good works necessarily follow justification but are not part of its ground — the rejection of those truths is a biblical error so close to the heart of the gospel that, when consistently worked out, will undermine saving faith in the gospel.

The reason for saying, “when consistently worked out,” is because I think it is possible to inconsistently deny the truth of imputation while embracing other aspects of the gospel (blood bought forgiveness, and propitiation, for example), through which God mercifully saves.

I am thankful that God is willing to save us even when our grasp of the gospel may be partial or defective. None of us has a comprehensive or perfect grasp of it.

Nevertheless, God’s mercy is not a warrant to neglect or deny precious truths, especially those that are at the heart of how we get right with God. And the teachers of the church (notably the Pope) will be held more responsible than others for teaching what is fully biblical.

Thus, any church whose teaching rejects the imputation of the righteousness of Christ as an essential ground for our justification would be a church whose error is so close to the heart of the gospel as to be involved in undermining the faith of its members.

If I had an hour with John Piper to respond to what he has said above, I would ask him the following six questions.

(1) Are we speaking of justification-as-translation, justification-as-increase, or of final justification on Judgment Day? The Reformed concept of justification does not exactly map on to any of these; perhaps the closest way of relating the Reformed and Catholic conceptions of justification would be to see the Reformed conception of justification as corresponding to a kind of combination of the Catholic concepts of justification-as-translation and final justification. Because of this, it would be very easy to talk past each other, because the respective concepts in the two paradigms are not only non-identical; they do not even directly correspond. But let’s assume, speaking somewhat abstractly, that the justification to which Piper is referring is the justification that takes place in a single moment in this present life, in which the person is brought alive in Christ. I’ll refer to that as ‘justification-as-translation.’

(2) Is the formal cause of justification-as-translation an extra nos imputation of an alien righteousness, or the instant infusion of sanctifying grace and agape merited for us by Christ’s Passion and Death? Piper holds that imputation of righteousness is an extra nos imputation, whereas the Catholic conception of imputation of righteousness (not to be confused with the non-imputation of past sins), is by infusion, as I explained regarding Romans 4:5 in comment #140 above. In order to answer this question, we would first have to step back and discuss how we ought to determine the meaning of particular terms (e.g. ‘imputation’) and passages of Scripture, whether these are to be determined primarily by way of a lexicon compiled by the ordinary use of such terms in times contemporary to their Scriptural use, or primarily by way of Tradition, as I discussed in “The Tradition and the Lexicon.” To presume one or the other is already to presuppose one paradigm over the other.

(3) When Piper claims that “good works necessarily follow justification but are not part of its ground,” Catholics can agree on this point, if we are talking about justification-as-translation, as I pointed out in “Justification: The Catholic Church and the Judaizers in St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians.” No one can merit justification-as-translation, and no one who is not already justified (in the justification-as-translation sense) can merit an increase in justification. (See “The Doctrine of Merit: Feingold, Calvin, and the Church Fathers.”) The difficulty, of course, is that while the Catholic Church teaches that good works done in a state of grace effect justification-as-increase, Piper does not recognize justification-as-increase. So the points of disagreement here concern (a) whether there is a non-meritorious cooperation in justification-as-translation, and (b) whether there is such a thing as justification-as-increase, and (c) how we are to determine the answers to (a) and (b).

(4) Is the faith by which we are justified notitia, assensus and fiducia, or is it fides [as assensus]caritate formata. I have argued that the NT passages of Scripture concerning justification and faith can be understood as the latter. And I have shown there as well that the Catholic can affirm justification by faith if ‘faith’ is understood in that latter sense, as living faith made alive by the presence of agapepoured into the soul by the Holy Spirit. So again, this pushes us back to the “The Tradition and the Lexicon” question regarding how the meaning of the terms in Scripture are to be determined.

(5) Does trust in Christ require believing that [non-meritorious] human cooperation is not necessary for justification-as-translation, and that human actions done in a state of grace do not contribute to justification-as-increase? Piper implies that the choice is only between trust in Christ alone for salvation, or in trusting in Christ + something other than Christ, i.e. one’s faith, works, love, sanctification, baptism, etc. In Piper’s opinion, to trust in anything in addition to Christ for salvation is to deny the sufficiency of Christ’s work, make the real (i.e. ultimate) object of trust that other thing one is trusting, and thus imperil one’s salvation. But in the Catholic paradigm, trust is expressed by believing what Christ has revealed, as taught by the Church. So if the Church teaches that our [non-meritorious] cooperation is necessary in justification-as-translation, and that our good deeds done in a state of grace increase our justification [from perfect justification to more perfect justification – see comment #5 above], then perfectly trusting Christ includes believing what He teaches through His Church concerning the relation of our actions to our justification, as I explained in comment #375 above.

(6) What is the standard by which a doctrine is to be deemed heretical or orthodox? Of course Piper will claim that it is Scripture. But Scripture must be interpreted, including Scriptural terms such as ‘justification,’ ‘faith’ and ‘imputation.’ A mistake one should avoid is treating one’s own interpretations of Scripture as though they are Scripture itself, by failing to realize that one is bringing question-begging theological, philosophical or hermeneutical assumptions to the text, as I showed in comments #1009 and #1061 of “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority.” Every claim regarding the meaning of any passage of Scripture presupposes some means or criteria for determining the meaning of terms and passages of Scripture. So Piper’s claim that the Catholic doctrine is heretical is based on the Catholic doctrine being contrary, in some respect, to Piper’s interpretation of Scripture, according to the criteria Piper uses for determining the meaning of terms and passages in Scripture. So that pushes us back to preliminary questions concerning how Scripture is to be rightly interpreted, who has the authority to determine for the Church how Scripture is to be rightly interpreted, who has the authority to provide or determine which interpretation is authoritative, and finally which interpretation of Scripture is truly authoritative.

see also: http://principiumunitatis.blogspot.com/2008/11/on-imitations-and-gospel.html

Concerning this question below that is found at comment 425 here
http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/08/imputation-and-paradigms-a-reply-to-nicholas-batzig/#comment-50678

” justification-as-translation requires repentance, baptism (or the sacrament of penance), and the infused virtue of agape, not faith alone.”

I thought a Catholic could affirm faith alone if that faith that is alone is accompanied by the virtue of agape?

The answer to this is in the following comment 426

You might have in mind Pope Benedict’s 2008 statement that we discussed in “Does the Bible TeachSola Fide?” and that I had discussed earlier in “Justification: Divided Over Charity.”

Repentance is necessary for justification-as-translation because repentance is the turning of the will away from sin and toward God in love. Thus for those who have already reached the age of reason, repentance is necessary for justification precisely because agape is necessary for justification. See the quotation from St. Thomas in comment #76 of the “Holy Church” article.

Baptism is the sacrament through which we receive faith as a supernatural virtue, as we discussed in the comments under “Justification: The Catholic Church and the Judaizers in St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians.” This sacrament is in this way the “instrumental cause” of justification, as Trent 6 puts it.

So repentance and baptism are necessary for justification-as-translation in that both are necessarily involved (in different respects) in coming to have the fides caritate formata that is living faith.

from comment 177 herehttp://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/12/justification-catholic-church-and-the-judaizers/
answering a question that is posed:

“Rome’s most obvious error, implicit in her false doctrine of justification, is the position of the works before and not after justification. There is no “minus” before works; that is good. But there are works before justification, and that is fatally bad. Works have become the foundation of justification. How so? Justification is by faith, says Rome, attempting to be loyal to Scripture. Faith is the radix or root of justification according to her Council of Trent. That means that true faith leads to good works (which is a correction of the antinomian error); but, alas, the good works become the title to etemal life.

In other words, through Christ the believer is enabled to achieve his own justification. That teaching is absolutely false in two ways. First, it depreciates the perfection of the atonement. By insisting on our works as the title to justification, it denies it to Christ’s work alone.

It is not the case that our works prior to baptism are the “title” to justification. Repentance is a prerequisite for baptism, not a title to baptism. And baptism is the divinely established sacrament of regeneration and incorporation into the Church. Baptism is not a “title” to justification, but the very means by which the grace merited by Christ’s Passion is applied to us. So his “title” language sets up a straw man of Catholic teaching, because in no place does the Church teach that justification is owed to or merited by any man on account of his repentance and baptism; justification always remains a free gift.

Moreover, notice that Gerstner here uses philosophical reasoning to support monergism. If we cooperate in any way, claims Gerstner, it “depecreciates the perfection of atonement.” But then either we don’t believe, and we don’t repent, and we don’t “work out our salvation in fear and trembling,” or Gertner’s position is ad hoc, arbitrarily allowing some works not to “depreciate the perfection of the atonement” but insisting that others do. I have addressed this *philosophical* argument in “The Gospel and the Paradox of Glory.” The rest of the excerpt from Gerstner is built on these two mistakes.

Next, the Sproul quotation:

“Theologians say Roman Catholicism has an analytic view of justification because Rome teaches that we must have some kind of inherent righteousness in order to be justified. In this view, righteousness may be rooted in the grace of God, but the good works that flow from this grace are taken into account in the pronouncement of a righteous status. When discussing justification, a Roman Catholic basically says that “the righteous person is a righteous person.” God only declares people righteous when they have their own righteous deeds to show for it.”

It is not the case that “God only declares people righteous when they have their own righteous deeds to show for it,” because otherwise, baptized infants could not be righteous. But baptized infants are righteous, by the infusion of sanctifying grace and agape into their hearts through baptism. Moreover, God doesn’t have to “take into account” good works that flow from grace in order to determine the condition of a person’s heart. He sees the heart directly. So He knows, without taking into consideration a person’s works, whether that person is in a state of grace (i.e. justified), or in a state of mortal sin. The person who, in a state of grace, acts in love for God receives in reward a greater measure of love for God, and thus grows in justification. But again, God does not need to look at external deeds to see the measure of agape within a man’s heart. As for his statement, “a Roman Catholic basically says that the righteous person is a righteous person,” that is correct, as is his statement, “Rome teaches that we must have some kind of inherent righteousness in order to be justified.” A person who has no internal righteousness is not justified, because he does not have the infused gifts of sanctifying grace and agape, by which Christ makes us righteous.

see also http://www.saintaquinas.com/Justification_by_Grace.html

a summary of this article is given at the end --here is a quote:

Conclusion

Since this article was quite long and thorough let us recap:

Justification is a term that means the cleansing of sin in a person, and the communication by grace of "the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ (Romans 3:22) " through Baptism.

Christ has redeemed the whole world, but we must freely choose to cooperate in the redemption.

Justification includes the forgiveness of original and personal sin, restoration of the interior man and sanctification of the soul through grace. Thus justification and sanctification occur together and are not exclusive of each other.

Grace is a free gift of God that imputes divine life into the soul as well as the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity.

Sanctifying grace of the soul must normatively be received through the sacrament of Baptism. Through baptism, God adopts us as his sons and daughters. This is why Catholics baptize infants.

Jesus Christ alone can merit our initial justification and sanctification through his Passion and Resurrection.

Once grace is imputed in the soul, faith, hope and charity can merit the increase of justification and sanctification.

Faith without good works is dead faith (James 2:17).

The seven Sacraments of the Church increase grace and thus justification in the believer.

Prayer for those of the Body of Christ and ourselves can merit increasing grace for others and ourselves.

Christian suffering has a redemptive role by allowing us to cooperate with Christ’s Passion and suffering.

Rejecting God’s love and grace through mortal sin results in lost justification.

Venial sin weakens charity, but does not cut us off from Christ because venial sin (although offensive to God) is not a rejection of the heavenly Father.

No person can have an assurance of their salvation unless they receive an extraordinary revelation from God.

The Blessed Virgin Mary, full of grace, is the perfect model of Christian faith, hope and charity in God’s created creatures.

ME--Notice Romans 2--28 For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. 29 But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.

It is an inward thing.

4 Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience,not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? 5 But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed.

6 He will render to each one according to his works: 7 to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; 8 but for those who are self-seeking[a] anddo not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. 9 There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, 10 but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. 11 For God shows no partiality.

God's Judgment and the Law

12 For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. 14 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them 16 on that day when,according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

17 But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God 18 and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law; 19 and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, 20 an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— 21 you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? 22 You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? 23 You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. 24 For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”

25 For circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. 26 So, if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded[b] as circumcision? 27 Then he who is physically[c] uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code[d] and circumcision but break the law.28 For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. 29 But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.

from 156 here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2014/05/the-witness-of-the-lost-christianities/

just some additional footnotes you might consider on the Reformed Protestant vs. Catholic view of Justification…

This understanding of justification being part of the TOTAL life of a person lived in Christ (through the power of the Holy Spirit) — and it is not strictly a Roman Catholic view. The Eastern Orthodox view is quite similar. And there are several Protestant scholars today (N.T. Wright, Alister McGrath, E. P. Sanders, etc.) who have questioned the long-held Reformed view of Justification by one-time, forensic “imputation”

You raised the question about our “assurance of salvation”. Our assurance comes down to God’s faithfulness and his holiness, which is poured into our hearts as we open ourselves to him. Justification is not a “cover up” job – it’s an “inside job” — in which God is literally transforming us and saving us. He will bring us to completion — IF we remain in him (John 17). And yet — there remains that possibility that someone can cut themselves off from God’s grace through continual, persistent and unrepentant sin.

Some notable quotes:

Alister Mcgrath:
“The essential feature of the Reformation doctrines of justification is that a deliberate and systematic distinction is made between justification and regeneration. Although it must be emphasized that this distinction is purely notional, in that it is impossible to separate the two within the context of the ordo salutis, the essential point is that a notional distinction is made where none had been acknowledged before in the history of Christian doctrine. A fundamental discontinuity was introduced into western theological tradition where none had ever existed, or ever been contemplated, before. The Reformation understanding of the nature of justification—as opposed to its mode—must therefore be regarded as a genuine theological novum.”
– (Alister Mcgrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, the Beginnings to the Reformation (Cambridge University Press, 1993), Vol. 1, p. 184-5).

Interview with N.T. Wright (and see his book: “God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision”), whose understanding of Justification is strikingly similar to the Catholic view (as Wright even admits in his book)
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevinwax/2009/01/13/interview-with-nt-wright-responding-to-piper-on-justification/

“for Piper justification through Christ alone is the same in the future (on the last day) as in the present, whereas for Paul, whom I am following very closely at this point, the future justification is given on the basis of the Spirit-generated life that the justified-by-faith-in-the-present person then lives. In fact, the omission of the Spirit from many contemporary Reformed statements of justification is one of their major weaknesses.”

—————-

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

2 views on Justification: Protestant and Catholic

God's Judgment and the Law

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