I recently stumbled across a post by author Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry on his Patheos blog. In it he not only tears apart the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone, or “sola fide”, but the very distinction between the Catholic and Protestant views on the subject of salvation:
Yes, we are justified by faith in Jesus Christ, apart from the works of the law. Yes, salvation is by sheer grace of the All-Incarnate God who condescends and reaches down to the innermost of our fallenness and lifts us up.
But faith, true faith in Jesus Christ, the Man-God of the Cross, is not assent to a doctrine or agreement that historical facts occurred. True faith in Jesus Christ is a sword, one that slashes through our very being and crucifies the old self on the Cross of Love and issues in a new life through the Spirit, so that, indeed, “faith without works is dead”, indeed “faith without works” is no faith at all.
Gobry’s piece is particularly impactful because it cuts to the absolute heart of one of the deepest divides between Catholics and our separated brethren, and exposes the the barrier between us as superficial at most. Lost in the polemic of the Protestant Revolution is the fact that at bottom, there isn’t a difference between the Catholic and Protestant views of justification. There isn’t even a distinction.
The Catholic Church’s position has never been justification by works. There is no good deed you can do, no box you can check, to punch your ticket to heaven. There is, however, undeniably a Christian life which every person who professes Jesus Christ as his or her savior should live in. Catholic Apologists like Trent Horn and Tim Staples, among others, have dedicated hours upon hours explaining this principle, that Catholic doctrine of justification is quite simply: “[if] you love me, keep my commandments (John 14:15).”
So really, at bottom, both Catholics and Protestants agree: genuine Faith in Christ comes with obedience to His precepts and the precepts of His Apostles and His Church. When we stray from the path, from the Christian life we are called to, through the commission of sin, we repent and we are forgiven by God. What else is there to call that but works? Call them deeds, actions, labors, a lifestyle. A rose by any other name. But it doesn’t deny the fact that there are a set of things we ought to do if we truly believe in Christ and wish to follow Him. In order to be counted among the just, we have to do just, be just. Believing anything else can only logically conclude in the “once saved, always saved” type of Anti-nomianism that everyone from Paul and Peter, to the Fathers of the Council of Trent, to the Reformers like Luther and Calvin, fought vociferously against (though it still exists today, in the stereotypes of Evangelical and Reformed Churches, as well as many liberal Protestant denominations).
It’s an easy conclusion. The second chapter of the Epistle of St. James tells us three times that “faith without works is dead.” Every Christian acknowledges this, and that is all that needs to be acknowledged. The rest is dross, a fiction of division built up by 500 years of polemic without understanding. When you really, truly dig down to the absolute rock bottom, there simply isn’t an argument to be made for faith alone. Real, genuine, living faith, by the decree of our Savior Himself, demands of us that we know Him, love Him, and serve Him. Every Christian knows this truth in his heart, and he should acknowledge this much: the correct understanding, nay, the only understanding, of justification, is the Catholic one.
Sola Fide: The Argument That Never Was
There is indeed an argument for justification by faith alone, and that reason is entailed in the distinction Protestants make between justification and sanctification, a distinction not shared by Catholics, which although they do distinguish the two, nevertheless include sanctification as part of, not simply distinguished from, justification. There is, then, a significant difference between Protestants and Catholics on justification. So, looking at justification, distinguished from sanctification in the way that Protestants do, there is an argument for justification alone - perhaps one might say, for purposes of clarity that justification alone is by faith alone; discussions of works in relation to our salvation being held within the category of sanctification. But there are other theological doctrines which make the difference, such as, for one important example, the role of grace in the believer's justification, as well as his sanctification, as it points to another important difference between Catholics and Protestants on justification: that, because justification is not sanctification, the believer does not grow in justification.
One thing with which I do have some small agreement with Groby is that, at times at least, there is a bit too much talk about justification (alone). It often comes as a shock when people read Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion that his discussion of justification, out of hundreds of pages, comes to about ten of them.
Finally, while it may be possible, today, to talk about THE Catholic doctrine of justification, this was not possible when the Council of Trent met, as Thomists (emphasizing God's action), Scotists (emphasizing feeling) and Augustinians (emphasizing faith, though possibly not *alone*) did not agree with each other on the proper understanding. I suppose we can be thankful to Luther and the Reformers for at least this much: they forced Rome to get their story straight on justification, even though the 95 Theses didn't address justification.