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.
Published on the Fourth Sunday of Easter
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I have begun to take a fresh look at Romans 4 and I think the issue is about Adoption and not so much "righteousness" as we tend to think of it. In Romans 4:1, Paul says let us consider Abraham as "our father according to the flesh," which suggests biological lineage. This fits with the Promise of Genesis 15:5-6 wherein God said a promised Heir will come "from your own loins," to which Abraham believed and it was credited as righteousness. As we know, Abraham had long believed in God, so the only thing unique about Genesis 15 is that a Covenant was made that same day (15:7-18). Paul seems to agre that this Covenant in Genesis 15 is the real issue at hand (Gal 3:18; Rom 4:15). The whole of Genesis 15 is that of offspring/heir/land (and thus "Adoption" in theological categories). But what happened immediately after the Covenant in Genesis 15? It seems Abraham misunderstood the promise of "your own loins" of 15:5 and sought to fulfill the Covenant by human reason and human effort, for Genesis 16 is dedicated to a very significant dilemma, namely Abraham does get a biological offspring, Ishmael, from Hagar. This is obviously not what God had in mind, so as the common theme of Salvation History goes, God has to intervene to get things back on track. This leads to Genesis 17, where circumcision is introduced to 'regenerate' Abraham's private parts as St Augustine notes, making him capable of bringing about Issac despite all biological odds. In this way, Isaac is a truly miraculous birth, not by Abraham's macho abilities alone, but rather assisted by grace. This means that for Paul in Romans 4, Isaac signifies the offspring that are born by miraculous means, namely Jesus and ourselves by grace, not by biology alone. Thus, we can finally understand Romans 4:2 when Paul says "if Abraham was justified by works he would have something to boast about [before men], but not before God". I think only the Ishmael situation can explain this, wherein Abraham could 'boast' that he brought about the Heir by his own natural abilities, to which humans would be impressed by Abraham's macho man status, but this was not what God was impressed by. When a man works, his wages are the natural result, thus natural relations leads to natural childbirth (4:4), but when a person believes, they turn to a different scenario, wherein beyond natural results happen (4:5). I think this approach is important to Romans 4, because we need a fresh presentation for Protestants to think about rather than the same old back and forth that has not made any progress.
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