Pope says “FAITH ALONE is TRUE if…”

often when one thinks about the differences between Protestants and Catholics on justification your average Protestant and Catholic will both think of the difference like this the Protestant believes in solid which means faith alone whereas the Catholic believes in accordance with St James that we are justified by works not by faith alone yet we ought to recognize that this description is criminally simplistic and not at all sufficient for determining the differences that exist between Protestants and Catholics in this video I will compare sh the teachings of the majority among reformed Christians focusing on confessional documentation and

the various acceptable positions among Catholic authors especially focusing on the Toms in order to fully treat this topic there are four questions that need to be treated one what is Faith two what does faith do three where is our Justice four how is guilt [Music] remitted the first question we need to ask is what is Faith for the idea that we are justified by faith alone is not intrinsically repugnant to Catholic theology as was clearly outlined by Pope Benedict the 16th in his General audience on the 19th of November 2008 where he writes quote Luther's

phrase faith alone is true if it is not opposed to Faith in charity and love Faith is looking at Christ entrusting oneself to Christ being united to Christ conformed to Christ to his life in the form the Life of Christ is love hence to believe is to conform to Christ and to enter into his love end quote yet this comment is something that Catholic theologians have always said for example in the 1530 conut of the Roman theologians against the oxburg confession written by Lutheran theologians the Roman theologians write this quote the mention however that they

he make a faith is approved so far as not faith alone which some incorrectly teach but Faith which worketh by love is understood as the Apostle teaches a right in Galatians 5:3 end quote thus if and when a Catholic Theologian states that we are justified by faith alone they mean what is called FES formata that is formed Faith or simply Faith working by love yet we need to be careful the properly designate what we mean by faith for when we speak of faith and charity we mean something very particular Faith here refers to the ascent

of the intellect to Revelation on the basis of God revealing just as we may state that we have faith in the fact that Rome exists since many have witnessed to this fact this of course is distinct from the ordinary poine usage of the term which encapsulates many different virtues including love repentance Etc yet it is helpful for distinguishing the various parts of the virtue that justifies us on the other by love or charity we mean the motion of the will impelling US towards God under the aspect of good which also includes our love of the

goodness of things as well especially the human person on the Protestant side rather than FES formata they often affirm something called fiduciary Faith here is how the Westminster Confession describes this type of faith quote by this Faith a Christian believeth to be true whatsoever is revealed in the word for the authority of God himself speaking in and acteth differently upon that which each particular passage thereof containeth yielding obedience to the commands trembling and threatenings and embracing the promises of God for this life and for that which is to come end quote at this point one

may positively accept this definition as basically the same as the Catholic one for it contains the ascent of the intellect that we call Faith the virtue of Charity that impels us to obedience and repentance for our sins yet this passage doesn't really get to the part of the chief character of the idea of fiduciary Faith which is fiducia or trust for this we have to go to the Westminster larger catechism where it states quote justifying faith is a Saving Grace wrought in the heart of a sinner by the spirit and word of God whereby he

being convicted of his sin and misery and of the disability in himself and all of the creatures to recover him out of his lost condition not only ascendeth to the truth of the promises of the Gospel but receive ceth and resteth upon Christ and his righteousness therein held forth for pardon of sin and for the accepting and accounting of his person righteous in the sight of God for salvation end quote it is the aspect of personal trust that most exactly indicates the particular distinctive of the Protestants in their definition of faith for it is that

fedua that combines with notizia or knowledge and ensus or Ascent in order to distinguish fiduciary Faith from other faiths such as merely historical faith historically Catholic theologians since the time of the Reformation have pointed to this character of fedua as demonstrating the distinction between Protestant and Catholic conceptions Cardinal catanus for example responds to Meenan thus faith means one thing when Holy Scripture refers to that which justifies men it means something else when it refers to that conviction by which one believes he is justified by Christ in the sacraments taken in the first sense faith is

one of the three theological virtues by which we are saved and without which it is impossible to please God by such faith we believe all the articles of faith and whatever is to be believed as necessary to salvation but Faith taken as the conviction by which a person believes he is Justified as Here and Now receives this Sacrament by the Merit of Christ is much different from the faith taken in the first way this conviction arises in part from the faith that is necessary for salvation and inart from Human conjecture it is a matter of

Christian faith that anyone trusting in the Merit of Christ and inwardly and outwardly receiving the sacrament correctly is justified by Divine Grace but Christian faith does not extend to the belief that I am at this moment inwardly and outwardly receiving the sacrament correctly and quote yet it is important to note that we ought not to be too hasty to declare a difference on this point for While most Protestants classically will anathematize the idea that charity is the form of faith and justification it seems from their definition of a quote Living Faith that is at least

entailed on the other hand while most Catholic authors classically will anathematize fedua in its individual aspect it seems that the idea of the virtue of Hope as ordered towards God able to help us towards a future good difficult to acquire seems to be quite close to their conception of fedua which has Christ powerful to acquire the gifts of salvation for me as its object in the end a deeper study of this topic is necessary in order to more exactly determine the distinction between the two ideas but it is important to note despite the air time

that this particular debate gets that it is the least important of the differences between Protestants and Catholics second what does faith do yet rather than fixating on what faith is it is important to ask what faith does here the difference becomes Stark in the Protestant Conant mind faith is an instrument of grasping something that is foreign in the next section we will go into more detail on the two-fold effect that follows upon this grasping but for now we must note that instrumental role of Faith chapter 11 of the Westminster Confession notes well two aspects of

this first quote Faith thus receiving and resting on Christ in his righteousness is the alone instrument of justification end qu and seconde God justifies not by infusing righteousness into them but by by pardoning their sins by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous not for anything wrought in them or done by them but for Christ's sake alone nor by imputing faith itself the act of believing or any other Evangelical obedience to them as their righteousness end quote here we see that faith is not a meritorious cause but simply an instrument for receiving something that is

outside of us thus we can State more properly that it is not Faith as faith that justifies us but Faith as grasping Christ that justifies Us in the reformed view throughout their works there is a sharp distinction between describing Christ's justice as imputed to us and Faith as receiving this Justice this becomes more evident when we look at the larger catechism quote Faith justifies a sinner in the sight of God not because of those other Graces which do always accompany it or of good works that are the fruits of it nor as if the grace

of Faith or any act thereof were imput Ed to him for his justification but only as it is an instrument by which he receiveth and appthis in his righteousness end quote thus when the reforms say that we are justified by faith they do not unlike Roman Catholics Place Faith as our justice but simply view as what is called a medany johannas wus who wrote one of the most important Companions of reformed Doctrine writes th quote the expression we are justified by faith is a metonym and has the same meaning as we are justified by the

Merit of Christ which is apprehended by faith end quote this is quite distinct from the teaching of Catholic theologians on the sense that we affirm justification by faith alone this is actually recognized by wus when he writes as follows quote Faith justifies not as a work or because of its worthiness but simply as the instrument that apprehends Christ the papist can see that we are justified by faith but for this purpose they regard Faith as a work but in truth whatever scripture attributes to Faith it attributes on account of that which Faith apprehends just as

a gold ring is valued highly on account of the jewel which it holds end quote according to Catholic theologians faith does not justify as instrument but as formal cause that is Faith formed by charity is true and proper Justice which truly and properly fulfills the law lastly we must discuss the twofold effect of justification when we think of justification there is going to be a positive and negative aspect for when you go to something you are always going to be leaving something else thus when you go to Justice you go away from guilt thus when

we think about justification and the effects of faith we need to ask one what is our Justice and two what happens to our guilt the synopsis puror a traditional reformed Scholastic manual theology describes it thus quote there are two parts of justification the imputation of passive righteousness or the Absolution of sins and the imputation of active righteousness by the former we are set free from guilt and condemnation and delivered from Eternal death by the latter we are deemed worthy even of a reward we receive the right to life eternal which is awarded to us end

quote johannus wbus mentioned above will go as far to say that quote that justification is incomplete in which only Christ's suffering is imputed and which is said to consist merely of the remission of sins it is important to quickly note that there is some minor disagreement on this point but I am representing the vast majority of authors thus on the one hand there is the imputation of Christ's righteousness that happens by the instrumentality of faith in virtue of the act of obedience of Christ and on the other hand there's the non-imputation of the guilt of

our sins that happens by the instrumentality of faith in virtue of the passive obedience that is sufferings of Christ on the other hand Catholic theologians teach differently on this matter they teach that the faith that is given to us the faith that works by love is itself Justice it is something that is the justice of Christ following St Augustine from the fact that it is given to us by Christ and from this fulfills the law true Justice is true order of soul in relation to God and since there is true order of our faculties by

faith and love we thus have TR Justice if you want this point expanded upon and to see where St Augustine teaches this check out the videos linked below further than this Catholic theologians also teach that this Justice is that which drives out the guilt of Sin from the soul Jean Baptist G in his Manu Tomar explains this well quote finally what they assert that the remission of sins is nothing but the Forgiveness of them which means nothing else than the act of divine will by which he Wills to remit sins and apply Christ satisfaction for

our sins is utterly alien from the truth for the Forgiveness of offense and God does not imply a sterile and ineffective Act of divine will but a fertile and efficacious one producing an intrinsic form that expels sin hence this difference exists between God and Men forgiving offenses that man forgives offense by a sterile and in effective act but God by an effective and fruitful ACT first because God in forgiving offense must render the one to whom the offense is remitted a suitable object of his love or forgiveness which man cannot do since human love does

does not create but presupposes goodness in its object but Divine love does create and Infuse goodness in things second because offense is not remitted to anyone unless he retracts it man however has sufficient strength of himself to retract offenses committed against another man but not to retract offense committed against God thus the act of God for giving offense to man must confer on him that by which he can retract it and in some measure satisfy for it which man's act for giving offense to another man need not do end quote more succinctly he States quote

the justifying form expels sin as the formal cause just as universally any form giving its formal effect to a subject expels the opposite form or privation as a formal cause for example heat which is the formal cause of heating formally expels cold from water light which is the formal cause of Illumination formally expels Darkness from the air from this we see that there are four main places of discussion between Catholics and Protestants on the issue of justification although there are related issues such as the nature of sin Merit the sacraments and acts that prepare for

justification that could also be fruitfully discussed first whether the virtue of faith when we say that we are justified by faith is fiduciary Faith or faith formed by love further what is the relationship between fiducia and the virtue of Hope second whether this Faith present within us acts as an instrumental cause or as a formal cause third whether the AC of obedience of Christ is imputed to us or do we have an inherent form of justice that justifies fourth whether the passive Obedience of Christ causes the non-imputation of the guilt of sin or is the

guilt of sin removed immediately by means of the form of justice that is within us [Music]