There are several terms in the mix. Salvation. Election. Justification. Sanctification. Eternal life. We don’t have to completely agree right away on how these are all related, but I at least want to clarify how I understand some of this.
That bit in Romans 9 is addressing *election* in particular, not every aspect of salvation. You write that “God chooses us and then we have eternal life.” But that is not the whole story. Salvation also includes things like justification and sanctification, and the obedience of faith.
In particular, as we have seen (Romans 6 and Galatians 6), sanctification is a condition for receiving eternal life. Even if one maintains that justification and sanctification are seperate gifts, one still has to account for the biblical data concerning the telos of sanctification / good works, and that data indicates that these are not only evidence of salvation (i.e. justification and eternal life), nor only expressions of gratitude for these other gifts, but stand in a cause-effect relation to the gifts of eternal life and justification.”He who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.”
Part of the disconnect in the conversation might be due to different ways of thinking about salvation. When you use the word, you seem to refer to a once-for-all event, either a timeless decree of individual election, or a moment of faith, or both. Thus, receiving eternal life, being justified, can only refer to a past event in a Christian’s life. I am referring to salvation as a process. Salvation has a past, a present, and a future. We can see, for example, that Paul refers to both “eternal life” and “justification” as rewards to be received in the future, as the culmination of sanctification, as well as conditions that obtain in the present, for those who are united to Christ by living faith.
We seem to have agreed that sanctification involves the will of man, cooperating with divine grace. But since Sacred Scripture also teaches that sanctification is an integral aspect of salvation upon which future salvific gifts are conditioned, it is incorrect to say that salvation is not somehow dependent on man. I know that it sounds strange to Reformed ears, but synergism in salvation seems to be the biblical perspective. This is fully compatible with Romans 9:14-18, since the antecedent of “it” in that passage is not “the whole of salvation” but God’s election of Jacob / Israel.
and comment 72
There is no way we can save ourselves. We are completely incapable. It is Christ “in us” the hope of glory. However, this hope doesn’t deprive us of the unique requisite for a relationship of love; namely free response. We must respond to the gift of Christ. In doing so, we must do good works, “work out our own salvation with fear in trembling”–not to save ourselves or anything even close–but rather to participate in a real way in the work of Christ in us.
When God rewards our merits, He crowns His own merit. Why? Because He purchased you and I, not to simply add us to the roll but to incorporate us into himself that we might become sons and daughters of God. This incorporation, divination, deification is the point of salvation. Our responding to the the gift of Christ in good works is “faith” in Christ in us. How can we demonstrate that we believe that He is in us and that one day “we shall be like Him because we will see Him as He is”? We show God that we believe by acting on our faith–faith working through agape. This is living and saving faith (versus dead and lifeless faith) and God takes those agape animated works (the cause of which is His Spirit) and rewards those with eternal life.
That is why in the parable of the talents, the man who does not use what he is given (grace) will have what he has taken from him and be thrown “into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”.
And, by the way, this is what Trent says too.
from http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2014/08/to-enter-the-sanctuary-by-the-blood-of-jesus-a-literal-account-of-becoming-catholic/
from http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2014/08/to-enter-the-sanctuary-by-the-blood-of-jesus-a-literal-account-of-becoming-catholic/
The pivotal moment for my understanding of salvation came just before I left seminary when I began to think carefully about the teaching of St. John the Beloved Apostle to the effect that eternal life is knowing God (John 17:3) and knowing God consists not only of having faith, but also of abiding in love through keeping the commandments of Christ (1 John 3:10-24). For St. John, abiding in eternal life is incompatible with abiding in death, but this does not entail that everyone who abides in eternal life is sinless; there is sin unto death (“mortal sin”) and sin not unto death (1 John 5:16-17). Only the former extinguishes spiritual life. Even in cases where a baptized Christian commits sin unto death, the free gift of forgiveness, cleansing, and reconciliation is available through confession (1 John 1:9). Following St. John from his Gospel to First Epistle and back again, it seemed to me that abiding in eternal life and abiding in death by committing and refusing to repent of mortal sin are mutually exclusive because eternal life itself is not merely an infinite duration of conscious existence (even the damned have that), nor is it merely a promise about the future; rather, eternal life is a particular kind of life given and received as a free gift here and now. It is a participation in the very life of God, who is love; hence, to have eternal life is to abide in love, which both fulfills the law (1 John 4:7-21; Romans 13:8-10) and triumphs over death and darkness (1 John 1:1-7; 2:1-11; 4:4-21).
Understanding eternal life as a free gift the nature of which is to know God by abiding in love caused me to reassess several of the assumptions that had always informed my doctrine of salvation, including the sharp contrasts that I had drawn between a free gift and a way of life, justification and sanctification, forgiveness and cleansing, and God’s grace and man’s participation in that grace. Now, I began to understand these things as being involved one in the other, as various facets of the same gift. Understanding eternal life as a way of life also helped me better appreciate those parts of the Gospel of John, such as the “bread of life” discourse in John 6 and the “fruit and vine” analogy in John 15, in which our life in Christ is portrayed in sacramental and participatory terms rather than something abstract and static. Thus, several years before I entered the Catholic Church, I came to embrace in a general way an understanding of salvation which has been held by Catholic and Orthodox believers throughout the Christian centuries, which understanding has sometimes been described as “covenantal and sacramental realism.”
From the standpoint of covenantal and sacramental realism, the gift of salvation is not characterized by or based upon a purely legal arrangement in which “the righteousness of God” is an extrinsic and alien quality that is merely imputed to those who believe; rather, the gift of salvation is fundamentally a familial covenant relationship in which those who are by nature sinners and strangers to the covenant of promise are by grace through faith forgiven, cleansed, and made sons of God who really participate in their Father’s righteousness. Through faith in Christ, by the grace of God given in the sacraments, sinners truly become what God declares them to be. This great salvation flows directly from and is realized in union with Christ himself, the only-begotten Son and divine Word of God, who was born and lived among us, self-sacrificially died on the Cross for our sins, was raised from the dead for our justification, ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father. Those who believe in Christ are delivered from the dominion of death and darkness into the realm of life and light (John 3:16-21); having the love of God poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5), we are made partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), living members of Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:1-10), and fellow citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven (Ephesians 2:11-22).
from comment 13 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/12/justification-catholic-church-and-the-judaizers/
If you read the Greek, the word in Romans 6:23 is χάρισμα, which means gift. There is no word which means ‘free’ in the Greek text of Romans 6:23. Eternal life is the gift of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. And union with Christ requires saying yes to Christ and no to self and to the world. Living faith is not mere internal trust; it includes agape, which is love for God above all other things. The one who claims to have living faith, but does not love God above all things, is deceived. Agape, by its very nature, includes denial of self, flesh and the world. So the person who does not deny himself, flesh and the world, does not have agape, and hence does not have living faith, and hence is not justified and does not have eternal life. The denial of self, flesh, and world is in this way an intrinsic part of the cost of attaining eternal life. This is why there is no justification without repentance, for those who have attained the age of reason. Your notion that eternal life is absolutely free would make repentance entirely optional.
salvation by faith
“. This was at the very heart of Paul’s debate with the Pharisees: the issue of whether salvation is attained by faith or by the works of the law. Paul rejects the attitude of those who would consider themselves justified before God on the basis of their own works. Such people, even when they obey the commandments and do good works, are centred on themselves; they fail to realize that goodness comes from God. Those who live this way, who want to be the source of their own righteousness, find that the latter is soon depleted and that they are unable even to keep the law. They become closed in on themselves and isolated from the Lord and from others; their lives become futile and their works barren, like a tree far from water. "
Encylical Letter Lumen Fidei http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20130629_enciclica-lumen-fidei_en.html
this is from Catholic clips
Then from an article here: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/06/did-trent-teach-that-christs-merits-are-not-sufficient-for-salvation/:
".... that the Catholic Church condemned the opinion that justification consists in the sole imputation of Christ’s merits. This is true. Trent taught that justification is by infusion of grace and charity and that once received, the increase in justification includes the believer’s actual participation in the merits of Christ. But this does not entail that Christ’s merits are not sufficient for salvation (quite the opposite). It appears that Horton is assuming a “zero-sum” understanding of merits, such that the works done by persons in a state of grace are “added to” the merits of Christ, thus “equaling” enough merits to be saved. But Catholic soteriology does not employee a zero-sum model of merit; rather, our merits spring from our participation in the life of Christ, even as the fruit of the branches depends upon their union with the vine. [1]"
and from the footnote here is a partial quote:
Justification, for St. Augustine and the Fathers is not by extra nos imputation, but by the infusion of grace and agape, which infusion is the writing of the law on the heart. God, who is the Truth, counts us righteous only if we are, by this supernatural gift of grace and agape poured out into our hearts, truly righteous within, and thus have “real righteousness.” This understanding of justification as the infusion of grace and agape into the heart is what we find throughout the Fathers. It is also what we find in Scripture; see “Does the Bible Teach Sola Fide?“
and from here
and found here http://pontifications.wordpress.com/justification/ found in the Sept 13 section
“The grace of Christ,” the Catholic Catechism tells us, “is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it. It is thes anctifying or deifying grace received in Baptism. It is in us the source of the work of sanctification.” At no point, according to the Catholic Church, can justification be understood as sinful man pulling himself up by his bootstraps; nor can it be understood as man earning his way into heaven by his good works; nor can it even be understood as a team effort, with God doing his part (perhaps a big part) and man doing his part (perhaps just a little bitty part). The work of justification is God’s work. God justifies man by graciously incorporating him through Baptism into his Trinitarian life and making him a new creation by the Holy Spirit.
and
“Nothing could bring out more clearly,” comments Louis Bouyer on the above passage, “that Catholic doctrine itself, as defined at Trent, does not admit salvation by faith andworks, if by that is meant works that are not themselves the product of saving grace received by faith” (The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism [1956], p. 71). Thus the Council of Trent reaffirmed the sola gratia as the very heart of Catholic soteriology.
and from here http://pontifications.wordpress.com/justification-ii/
In 1986 the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission released a common statement on justification: Salvation and the Church. The document witnesses to the conviction of the commission members that an authentic convergence of belief between Anglicans and Catholics is indeed possible on the question of justification. They key to this convergence is the mutual recognition of the effective and recreative power of the justifying word:
Justification and sanctification are two aspects of the same divine act (1 Cor 6:11). This does not mean that justification is a reward for faith or works: rather, when God promises the removal of our condemnation and gives us a new standing before him, this justification is indissolubly linked with his sanctifying recreation of us in grace. This transformation is being worked out in the course of our pilgrimage, despite the imperfections and ambiguities of our lives. God’s grace effects what he declares: his creative word imparts what it imputes. By pronouncing us righteous, God also makes us righteous. He imparts a righteousness which is his and becomes ours. (par 15)
from comment 18 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2014/05/trent-and-the-gospel-a-reply-to-tim-challies/#comment-88967
Ah, but is Paul speaking about a faith that includes the believer in the work of Christ and therefore brings justification at some point? Or is Paul telling those in the Body that they were already saved through faith alone by grace alone?
If you think think that the Catholic doctrine is that justification is at some later point in the process of sanctification, and subsequent to our baptism, then you have misunderstood the Catholic doctrine. According to Catholic doctrine, we are justified at baptism, through which we received the gift of living faith. That’s the gift St. Paul is speaking of in Eph 2:8.
Not to get pedantic but the tense of τοῦτο or ‘this’ in v. 8 does not allow for it to indicate just the word ‘faith’ but speaks to the entire clause of being saved by grace through faith.
Demonstrative pronouns have no tense. But we agree that this grace and faith are not from ourselves, but are a gift of God.
It would not be ad hoc at all. Several verses plainly speak to man being unable to co-work in his own salvation.
Such as?
Spreading the Gospel does not result in the evangelist bringing salvific justification. He is delivering news about a work already completed.
If the gospel were merely news of actions already completed, there would be no need to bring the news. Faith would not even be necessary for salvation. What Christ has done on earth is already completed. But the justification He merited for us is applied to us in baptism. The claim that the gospel is mere information is gnostic, because the good news is not merely information, but is real union with Christ, the grace by which we share in His divine life, and hence have the hope of heaven. And this grace, this participation in the divine nature of which St. Peter speaks (2 Pet 1:4), by which we are justified, is neither a past event nor mere information.
The author then cites Phil. 2:12. Well, this is a verse about sanctification. The saved is to exercise what he already has…not work to earn it.
Of course one cannot earn what one already has received as a gift. No one has claimed otherwise. I agree that St. Paul is speaking about sanctification, but the word he uses is σωτηρίαν, i.e. salvation, because sanctification is part of salvation. There is no incompatibility between receiving salvation as a gift, and then also, subsequently, working out our salvation in fear and trembling, knowing that we can either squander and reject the gift we have received, or be a faithful steward of what we have received and so grow in that grace and agape we received at baptism.
So what exactly is the author’s issue then?
You can address your comments directly to me Matthew, rather than referring to me in the third person, as if I’m not present.
The point is that any work added to what Christ has done in order to effect forensic justification results in a false Gospel.
Setting aside the disagreement regarding the “forensic” nature of justification, if we are focused on the sense of justification as translation from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light (see Chapter IV of the Sixth Session of Trent), the Catholic Church likewise teaches that this is not something that we can merit in any way. We receive this justification through baptism, as I mentioned above.
Anyone who preached any Gospel different than that from the apostles was to be accursed (Gal. 1:8).
Agreed.
That would certainly include any that required works to be saved…not to be sanctified or work with Christ in His ongoing ministry…but to be saved.
If by ‘saved’ you are referring to justification-as-translation, then the Catholic Church agrees that we cannot merit that. But salvation is not merely justification-as-translation, but includes growing in conformity to Christ, and also dying in a state of grace. And these require walking in agape, and persevering unto death.
Though this is a lesser point in the article, it nevertheless speaks to the eisegesis used in other instances. The context and the very grammar of Galatians 6:16 indicates that the Israel of God is in addition to (AND) those who walk by this rule (i.e. the Church as a whole). The Israel of God consists of those Jews in the Church who know Jesus as Lord and Savior.
I would agree, if by ‘know’ you mean not merely dead faith, but living faith. But this is fully compatible with what I said, nor is it ‘eisegesis.’
I agree with the author where at the end he explains that much of this is based on a given paradigm. I don’t think he is entirely fair in his assessment of the other side’s but that’s not terribly important.
In your opinion, what did I say that was not fair?
The author’s article is really anachronistic. The authors of Trent knew what the reformers believed by sola fide and sola gratia. And they declared such beliefs as anathema. That’s the historical context of what was written and where we need to start.
How does that indicate or entail that the article is “anachronistic”?
To get to the heart of the issue, let me ask the author this: at what moment do you believe a person is forensically justified? In other words, when does the final declaration come down as to the fate of one’s soul for eternity? Is is when that person believes on Jesus as Lord and Savior or after some process? Thank you.
As I explained earlier, we are justified at baptism (see “The Church Fathers on Baptismal Regeneration.”) But that’s not the “final declaration,” because it is possible to fall into mortal sin, or commit apostasy, and fall away from the faith altogether, and die in that condition. (See comment #15 above.)
from comment 22 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2014/05/trent-and-the-gospel-a-reply-to-tim-challies/#comment-95615
- A public exchange on FB under Tim Challies’s FB post of his article:Hence the dilemma for monergists: either our sanctification is not part of our salvation, since Christ did not fully accomplish it Himself alone, and therefore sanctification is not by grace, but entirely by mere human effort, and entirely optional because it in no way contributes to our salvation, orsanctification is part of our salvation, is not optional for salvation, is by grace, not by human effort alone, but was not fully accomplished by Christ Himself on the cross, because we participate in our sanctification by our present choices and deeds, in which case it necessarily follows that salvation by grace does not entail monergistic salvation.
By Fr. Ray Ryland
I recently received an e-mail in which the author spoke about the issue of justification and salvation. He said he understands Catholic doctrine, but has some difficulty in accepting it on an emotional level.
“In Protestant theology,” he wrote, “or at least that of evangelical Protestants, the conversion experience of accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior suffices for salvation. As you know, this is sometimes expressed as ‘eternal security,’ and indeed it does provide lasting comfort to believers to be assured of their salvation.”
Limitations of space, of course, preclude discussing a vital issue raised by relying on one’s conversion experience for assurance of salvation, but the issue is this: How can I know whether I have given my life to Jesus Christ on His terms or on my terms? How do I determine the truth in this all-important matter?
The belief that one has assurance of salvation — absolute assurance — mistakenly identifies what we may call “objective redemption” and “subjective salvation.” “Objective redemption” denotes the fact that in His life, death, Resurrection, Ascension, and sending of the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ has redeemed the whole universe. Period. Our Christian Faith demands that we be absolutely assured of this fact.
Whether I personally benefit from this objective redemption, however, depends on my response. The merits of Christ have to be received and acted on in my life. That is the process of “subjective salvation.” Unless by God’s grace I appropriate the objective redemption wrought by Jesus Christ, it can have no effect on my life. If I simply take comfort in the fact that Christ has redeemed the world, and do not work continually at receiving that redemption more and more fully into my life, I am living in a serious delusion.
A number of years ago a book was written about an incident in New York City involving two elderly men, the Collier brothers. Neither had married, and they had always lived on upper Park Avenue in the large home where they were born. One day neighbors realized they had not seen the old men for quite a long time. The called the police, who broke into the house and found the old men dead. The coroner determined they starved to death. Neither has been disabled. They simply sat in their home and starved.
The police also found a fortune in cash and negotiable securities, all of it in plain sight. Those old men had starved with a fortune at their fingertips, simply because for some strange reason they refused to buy food.
In the tragedy of the Collier brothers we can see a parable of the Christian life. Because we belong to Jesus Christ through Baptism, we are surrounded by all the riches of heaven. They belong to us. But unless we use them, apply them to our lives, we too will starve spiritually, and forever!
Each of us Christians has the comfort of assurance that Jesus Christ has redeemed us and destined us for everlasting union with Him in glory. But none of us can see the whole future course of his life on earth. Only God can see there. Not one of us, therefore, can have absolute assurance that till his dying day he will always persevere in appropriating Christ’s redemption in his life.
The correspondent I referred to at the beginning expressed his feelings with regard to the Catholic doctrine which I have just summarized. He said, “my reaction to the Catholic doctrine is one of walking on a tightrope and in constant fear of falling to one’s eternal death.”
My response is this. Suppose you really were walking on a tightrope from which you could fall to your destruction. Which would you prefer? Would you want to know the danger you were in, so you could guard against it? Or would you prefer not to know the danger and blithely assume you were walking on solid ground?
My correspondent further expressed his misgivings this way. He said that according to Catholic doctrine, “notwithstanding a lifetime of generally successful and sincere attempts to walk the straight and narrow, if I were to stumble and fall into mortal sin and then suddenly and unexpectedly die, I would lose everything and be cast into darkness.” He asked, how does one “live in confidence and faith, rather than in fear of stumbling?”
The fact is, no one ever “stumbled” into mortal sin. By definition, mortal sin involves serious matter which is freely chosen and to which full consent is given. One has to choose to commit mortal sin; one cannot simply “stumble” into it. Moreover, while we can and must judge that certain actions constitute mortal sin, objectively speaking, only God knows whether in a given instance all the conditions for mortal sin were met.
The whole point in living the Christian life is to keep one’s eyes on Jesus, not on fear of falling into sin. Remember what happened to Peter when he asked to be allowed to walk to Jesus on the water. At Jesus’ invitation he was actually miraculously walking on water, until he took his eyes off Jesus and began looking fearfully at the waves. Then he began to sink. And so do we all when we take our eyes off Jesus.
The scriptural command to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” means striving to let the objective redemption of Jesus Christ unfold in our lives, by His grace. It means to let that objective redemption become more and more fully our subjective salvation. Our confidence, our serenity, and our joy come from knowing that “God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12f.).
God’s “good pleasure” is to bring us home to Him. We have the ticket. Jesus Christ paid for it. God forbid that we should ever throw that ticket away.
This article was originally published in the CHNetwork’s Salvation and Justification journal.
see also on the views of the early church concerning salvation: https://chnetwork.org/2010/03/16/salvation-from-the-perspective-of-the-early-church-fathers/
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