A Frog, a Prince, and the Doctrine of Justification

In my attempts to find good analogies for the doctrine of justification, I have sometimes made use of something akin to the classic story of the prince who was turned into a frog and then back into a prince.  The prince being turned into a frog is something analogous to the Fall which turned human beings into sinners.  As sinners, we have no righteousness with which to please God and meet the standards of his moral law, and we have no ability of ourselves to attain to a state of righteousness.  As St. Paul discusses in Romans 1-8, Christ saves us from this state by making a propitiatory sacrifice for our sins, by means of which he procures a righteousness which he gives us as a free gift and which reconciles us to God and his moral law.  This would be analogous to the frog being turned back into a prince.

In the context of trying to compare the classic Protestant doctrine of justification (interpreted in an Anti-Augustinian way) with the Catholic and Augustinian doctrine, I thought it might be useful to paint pictures of each of these doctrines making use of the analogy of the frog-prince story.

Briefly, in the Catholic view, we are justified because Christ has given to us as a free gift his own righteousness in place of our lack of righteousness.  That righteousness is both imputed to us (made ours by God's decree) and infused into us, causing us to be transformed to become truly righteous.  The righteousness which God works in us by his Holy Spirit truly satisfies the demands of God's law and pleases God.  In the Protestant view, it is also true that we receive Christ's righteousness as a free gift in place of our own lack of righteousness, but this righteousness is only imputed to us and is not infused within us.  We thus become righteous solely and completely by imputation and not at all by an infusion of righteousness or any moral transformation.  Protestants believe that we do come to be morally transformed (in a process they usually call sanctification), but they hold that this is a completely different process from justification (being made acceptable to God's moral law), and that, although we are morally transformed and even, in the end, are made perfectly internally holy, yet the holiness of sanctification is and always will be polluted by our past sins so that it never meets the standards of God's law.  From the perspective of true justice, therefore, even the perfectly sanctified are no more satisfactory to God's moral law than the completely unsanctified.

So this would be the Catholic view of the frog-prince story:  The prince, having been turned into a frog, is, of course, in that state, completely unsuited to fulfill the qualifications to function as a prince.  Let's say his two main functions as prince would be to marry the princess and to rule the kingdom.  Obviously, a frog is suited to neither of these tasks.  So, according to the rules of the kingdom, the prince-turned-frog cannot meet the qualifications to be accepted in the role of prince of the kingdom.  However, another prince shows up--say, from a neighboring kingdom--and reveals that he has the power to turn the frog back into a prince.  He has the magical ability to bond with the frog-prince, and, when he does so, he will take upon himself the frog-curse.  But, because of unique properties in his blood, the frog-curse is incapable of gaining a firm hold on him, and so, after temporarily turning into a frog, he will very quickly turn permanently back into a prince.  Because of his bond with the frog-prince, when the neighbor-prince turns back into a prince, the frog-prince will also turn back into a prince and be able to remain in that condition.  The curse will be broken because the neighbor-prince will, in effect, pay the debt of the frog-prince's frog-curse as well as share with the frog-prince his own "princeness".  The neighboring prince makes this offer, and it is accepted.  The king declares the neighbor-prince and the frog-prince bonded, and he declares the curse to belong to the neighbor-prince and the neighbor-prince's "princeness" to belong to the frog-prince.  Once this declaration has been made, the bonding is complete, and, after a very brief time of the neighbor-prince being a frog, both he and the frog-prince turn back into princes.  The frog now being a prince again, he is declared worthy to take upon himself the role of prince by the rules of the kingdom.  He marries the princess, governs the kingdom well for many years, and they all live happily ever after.

This would be the Protestant version of the story:  The first part is the same.  The prince has been turned into a frog and thus cannot meet the kingdom's requirements for fulfilling the role of prince of the kingdom.  The neighboring prince comes over and offers to bond with the frog-prince, thus taking upon himself the curse and sharing with the frog-prince the cure for the curse and his own "princeness".  The offer is accepted, and the king declares the bond and the transaction complete.  But from here on out, things go a bit differently.  The neighbor-prince's magic does not produce any actual transformation that turns the frog back into a prince.  It works on a purely legal and declaratory (or forensic, if you will) level.  The neighbor-prince's "princeness" is declared to belong to the frog-prince and so he is now legally declared to be a prince while remaining a frog in terms of his actual condition.  He is simultaneously both frog and prince from that point on--a frog by actual condition and a prince by legal status.  The magic does have the effect of causing a little transformation on the side.  The frog turns into a slightly bigger frog and prince-clothing and a crown grow onto him.  But, for the most part, he remains just as frog-like as ever.  Looking only at his actual condition, he is still completely incapable of meeting the requirements of the rules of the kingdom for fulfilling the role of prince.  However, this is not a problem, because the legal declaration of his legal prince-ness is held to be completely sufficient.  On the basis of this legal declaration alone, the frog-prince is declared worthy of being the prince of the kingdom.  He marries the princess and rules the kingdom for many years--though whether or not he rules it well, and whether or not he and the princess enjoy a fulfilling married life, I shall leave to your imagination.

If you can see the problems with this second version of the frog-prince story, you will perhaps be in a position to understand some of the things that Catholics find problematic about the Protestant doctrine of justification.

For more, see here and here.

Published on the Fourth Sunday of Easter

Is the Catholic Doctrine of Justification a Form of "Justification by Works"?

Catholics believe that we are justified entirely by the righteousness of Christ and not by our own righteousness, but they believe that we receive this righteousness not only by means of its being imputed to us but also by means of its being infused within us and actually transforming us.  Protestants often complain that this destroys the gracious character of justification and amounts to a form of "justification by works".  Catholics are often baffled by this characterization, for reasons well articulated by Francis Patrick Kenrick, the Bishop of Arath and Coadjutor of the Bishop of Philadelphia, back in 1841, in this selection from his book, The Catholic Doctrine of Justification: Explained and Vindicated:

I cannot persuade myself that those who appear horror-stricken at the idea of inherent justice, have an accurate conception of its meaning.  When they represent it as "a doctrine of merits in opposition to grace, of works in opposition to faith," when they brand it as "the abomination of desolation," they surely mistake altogether its nature and character.  It is loudly proclaimed by us to be the gift of God, not merited by any effort of man: we have nothing which we have not received.  To God essentially belongs the glory of his gift, the excellence whereof serves only to his greater praise.  It is his Spirit that dwelleth in us, and that pours forth his charity into our hearts.  He "hath blessed us with spiritual blessings in Christ, as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and unspotted in charity.  Who hath predestinated us unto the adoption of children through Jesus Christ unto himself; according to the purpose of his will: unto the praise of the glory of his grace, in which he hath graced us (made us grateful and acceptable) in his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the remission of sins, according to the riches of his grace, which hath super-abounded in us."  The soul in the state of grace is invested with a certain celestial beauty and dignity: the virtues which she exercises externally, but faintly reflect the internal splendor with which the sun of justice invests her: she is the spouse of Jesus Christ, whom he has loved, and for whom he has delivered himself: she has been washed from the stains of sin in his blood.  She is in reality, as she is styled, the beloved child of God.  What is there in this conception which detracts in the least degree from the divine glory, and from the merits of Jesus Christ?  Is it more glorious of God to cover sins, than to cancel them; to regard the sinner as just, than to make him so in reality?  Is the merit and efficacy of the price of our ransom less apparent when the stains of sin are washed away by the current of atoning blood, than when they are supposed to be merely passed over in reference to its effusion?  Shall we have a less sublime idea of this mystery of mercy, when we believe it to have merited for us the regeneration and sanctification of our souls, by an intimate operation of grace, a new creation, than in regarding it as leaving us in our original condition, and changing only our external relations?  If those who reject the idea of inherent justice would ponder well the force of the terms as used in the Church, they would, doubtless, find that the divine goodness in the wondrous work of human justification and sanctification is more admirably displayed, when conceived in the communication of actual justice and sanctity, than in any way merely extrinsic. . . .

    The Jews "not knowing the justice of God, and seeking to establish their own, have not submitted themselves to the justice of God; for the end of the law is Christ, unto justice to every one that believeth."  Their own justice is that which they sought to establish on account of their fidelity in ceremonial observances, whilst they rejected Christ, whom all the ancient types prefigured, and who was the end of the law.  Thus they forfeited that justice which is the peculiar privilege of believers.  How unjust is it to apply passages like these, which have an obvious reference to the unbelieving Jews, and to legal justice, to Catholics who believe in Christ, as the Lord and Redeemer of men, who rest on him all hopes of grace and salvation, and who claim no legal or natural justice, but ascribe wholly to the gift of God, and the merits of Christ, that supernatural justice, no otherwise ours, than as the alms belongs to the beggar who has received it from the bounty of a benefactor!  Bishop M'Ilvaine says that faith "holds out the empty hand of a poor, miserable, worthless beggar."  Catholics cannot object to this comparison; but does it not detract from Divine goodness to say, that the poor beggar receives nothing?  We consider the justified man as a beggar clothed with a robe of justice, which divine bounty has bestowed on him.  There is surely no room left for pride, "for who distinguisheth thee?  Or what has thou that thou hast not received?  And if thou has received; why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it!"  (Francis Patrick Kenrick, The Catholic Doctrine of Justification: Explained and Vindicated [Philadelphia: Eugene Cummiskey, 1841], 90-92, footnotes removed.)

For more, see here and here.

Published on the feast of St. Fidelis of Sigmaringen

Why Did I Err in My Earlier Reasoning Regarding Sola Scriptura?

In the various accounts I have written up describing my conversion to Catholicism (see here and here, especially), I mention that I used to believe in Sola Scriptura--the doctrine that Scripture alone is infallible--because I took that doctrine to be the logical default position over and against the Catholic point of view that Scripture must be interpreted in the context of an infallible Tradition and an infallible Magisterium.  I describe here my prior Protestant reasoning as well as my recognition of my error and switchover to a Catholic position:

I came to see that I had some unquestioned assumptions at the foundation of my belief in Sola Scriptura.  Sola Scriptura had seemed like the "default" option to me, because I knew I had good reasons to think the Bible is the Word of God, and the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox agreed with me on that, but I didn't think I had any good reason to trust the claims of the Orthodox or the Catholics to have an infallible tradition or an infallible teaching authority.  Since Scripture alone is all that we need, I thought, there is no good reason to accept such claims for further infallibility.  The fallacy here, of course, is that I was simply assuming that Scripture could function alone, without having the context of an infallible tradition or teaching authority.  But I had no basis for that assumption.  I had simply been used to using the Bible in that way as a Protestant, and it hadn't yet occurred to me that I needed to show that this was not misusing the Bible.  It may seem superficially to be safe to stick with Sola Scriptura, but what if God intends for Scripture to be interpreted and applied in the context of an authoritative and infallible tradition?  In that case, a person using the Bible in a Sola Scriptura fashion is likely to go very wrong.  He would be attempting to use the Bible in a way in which it is not supposed to be used, and ignoring crucial aids given to him for the purpose of enabling him to get it right.  Once I realized that I had been working on the basis of an unquestioned Protestant assumption about the sufficiency of Scripture, it became clear that the "default" is actually not with Sola Scriptura but with the "infallible tradition" paradigm held by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.  Christ founded a church, and he commanded his people to obey its shepherds and preserve its unity.  Therefore, our default should be obedience to the historic church and communion with her.  Not unless we can prove that we have a good reason to defy those leaders or rupture that unity should we do so.  But I saw that Sola Scriptura, and all other Protestant distinctives, could not actually be proved from Scripture or from reason or anything else, and so to embrace the Protestant views at the expense of obedience to and unity within the historic church would be inherently schismatic.

Since this time, I have often pondered the question, Why did I make this error in reasoning?  I go on in the account quoted from (and in most of my other accounts of my conversion) to note that my error stemmed ultimately from a lack of historical awareness.  But how did this work, exactly?  How did a lack of historical awareness lead me to make an error in reasoning regarding the sufficiency of Scripture?

Before 2012, I didn't have a great deal of interest in learning much about Church history.  My focus was more on abstract questions of theology, philosophy, Scriptural interpretation, etc.  In my theological thinking, I consulted Church history only mainly when it became involved in some other topic I was currently considering.  I didn't think of a deeper study of Church history as being terribly important per se in terms of analyzing the truth claims of Christianity or matters of Christian doctrine.  Because of this, I didn't know much about the doctrine of the early Church Fathers on matters regarding Scripture, Tradition, Magisterial authority, and the relationship between these.  The little history I did know had given me the impression that the early Church, at the very least, did not oppose the doctrine that Protestants would later call Sola Scriptura.

Due to this lack of historical awareness, when I came to consider the question of the Protestant position of Sola Scriptura vs. the Catholic or Orthodox position of Scripture/Tradition/Magisterium, I didn't consider this question from a historical point of view but rather more abstractly and logically.  I saw Scripture, Tradition, and Magisterial authority as independent elements that had to be independently evaluated.  Since Christianity is a divine revelation, I knew that it was important to ascertain what the locus of that revelation is.  That is, we must know where we should look to find the Christian revelation.  Protestants proposed Scripture alone.  Catholics and Orthodox proposed Scripture plus Tradition plus an infallible Magisterium to interpret Scripture and Tradition.  I knew enough Church history to see that Scripture had always been affirmed by pretty much all Christians to be at least one primary locus of Christian revelation.  Also, I knew that Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants all agree today that it is such a locus.  So I knew that if there was any locus at all--which there must be, if we are going to be able to follow the Christian revelation--Scripture must be at least one of them.  But I didn't know of any good reason to accept Tradition or the Magisterium as additional loci.  And I thought that, in order to accept these additional loci, I needed additional positive evidence to support them.

To understand my point of view at the time, consider this scenario:  You are a Christian.  You are trying to follow the Christian revelation.  You know you have the Scriptures as the Word of God and therefore as a locus of that revelation.  But then someone knocks on your door.  When you open it, the person at the door introduces himself as Bob and announces that he is an additional locus of divine revelation.  "What you need," he says, "is not just Scripture, but Scripture plus me."  Bob claims to have been given by God the gift of being an infallible interpreter of Scripture.  "You just can't get Scripture right without following my teaching," says Bob.  Now, why should you pay any attention to Bob?  You've never heard of him before.  He has just shown up at your door out of nowhere and made his claim.  What if you find that you can't directly prove Bob's claim wrong?  Bob argues that if you can't prove his claim wrong, you have no basis to reject his claim and rely on Scripture alone.  "After all," he says, "if Scripture really is meant to be interpreted in light of my teaching, as I claim, you are likely to go seriously wrong if you ignore me and try to interpret Scripture without me."

So what are you going to do?  It seems evident, doesn't it, that you will reject Bob's claim?  Sure, you can't directly prove him wrong, but it seems foolish to add Bob in as an additional locus of divine revelation merely because you can't prove him wrong.  You know that Scripture is the Word of God, but Bob has just come out of nowhere.  It makes more sense to stick to Scripture alone until Bob can provide some further positive evidence for his claim.  If you accept Bob's claim, you must do so arbitrarily.  Bob argues that if you reject his claim, you are also acting arbitrarily.  But you must go one way or the other.  At least for the present, until further evidence arises, you have to either accept or reject Bob's claim, for it makes an important difference in terms of how you should use the Scriptures.  But, given your options and the available information, surely it makes more sense to stick to the Scriptures alone, since you know that they are reliable, and not to add Bob on as an additional locus of revelation until he can provide further evidence for his position.

That was basically my reasoning for rejecting the Catholic point of view and embracing Sola Scriptura.  Of course, the analogy is not perfect.  I knew that the claims of Tradition and the Magisterium to be additional loci of divine revelation had a better historical pedigree than Bob's claim has in my imaginary scenario.  But I did not think they had enough of a better pedigree to give them the leverage needed to oust Sola Scriptura.  I knew that Scripture was God's Word.  But I could not verify the claims of Tradition and the Magisterium.  Therefore, it seemed to me to make the most sense to stick to Scripture alone rather than to randomly and arbitrarily admit the claims of Tradition and Magisterium and add them on as additional loci of revelation.  Without additional evidence, I wasn't just going to start trusting the Catholic Church implicitly to tell me how to interpret Scripture.  I would listen to what Catholics had to say, but I would evaluate it myself in light of what I could find in reason and in Scripture.  I would make use of what I knew until I was provided with evidence to add something else.

This position was overturned as I learned more Church history and eventually came to realize that the Catholic view was the view of the historic Church.  Protestants had to break from the Church's earlier established position in order to advocate for Sola Scriptura.  They had to break with the continuity of the faith as handed down through history, and they had to break the unity and defy the established authorities of Christ's Church.  As I've argued elsewhere, since Christianity is a divine revelation handed down to us in history, and since Christ established a community to which he gave leaders and which he commanded to preserve unity, we must default to the continuity, unity, and authority of the Christian faith and the Christian Church.  We cannot break from these without positive and conclusive justification.  So the default is actually on the other side from what I previously thought.  The question is not, "Do I have a justification to add Tradition and the Magisterium as loci of revelation additional to Scripture?"  The question is, "Do I have a justification to take Scripture out of its original context within the threefold package deal of Scripture/Tradition/Magisterium in order to establish Sola Scriptura?"  It wasn't a matter of adding Tradition and the Magisterium.  They were already there.  It was a matter of retaining or rejecting them.  To refer back to my earlier analogy, it is as if Bob did not come out of nowhere, but rather had been the original, official conveyer of the divine Scriptures to me in the first place, and from the beginning the Scriptures had been bound together with Bob's role as official interpreter.

For more, see here, here, and here.

Published on the feast of St. Fidelis of Sigmaringen