What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is justified from sin. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him: Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace. What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid. Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness. For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death. But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
~ St. Paul (Romans 6)
There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.
St. Paul (Romans 8:1-17)
The Catholic doctrine of salvation lies in between the two extremes of Protestantism on the one hand and Pelagianism on the other. (When I talk about Protestantism here, I am primarily thinking of the classic "magisterial" Protestant traditions, and especially the classic Lutheran and Reformed traditions. And I am interpreting the Protestant position in an Anti-Augustinian way.)
To put it very simply, without getting into the complexities and nuances of the various positions, Pelagianism holds that we don't need Christ and his supernatural grace in order to be righteous. God has given us free will, and so we are able to choose good or evil. To choose good is to be righteous. Therefore, since we have free will and can choose good, we can be righteous. We don't need any more help than this. For the Pelagians, to say that we need extra-added supernatural grace from God to be righteous or to choose the good is to deny the truth of universal human free will. So, at least when it comes to becoming the kind of righteous person we should be, it's all entirely up to us. Christ does nothing (in terms of any added supernatural grace).
The Protestant view is the polar opposite. The historic Protestant (that is, the historic Lutheran and Reformed) view is that, in salvation, we are never made personally righteous--at least not enough to meet the standards of God's law and be declared righteous by that law. But Christ lived a life of righteousness for us, and by his death he paid the penalty for our sin. When we trust in Christ (which trust is itself a gift of God), Christ's payment of our penalty (his satisfaction of justice for our sins) and his positive righteousness that he worked out in his life are imputed to us (legally credited to our account), and on account of that righteousness we are declared by God to be righteous and become acceptable to his moral law. Nothing we actually are or do adds anything to this; it is entirely a matter of imputation. Protestants will go on to add that if we have real faith and are really justified by imputed righteousness we will indeed be inwardly changed, begin to do good works in this life, and be perfected in holiness after this life, but they insist that this inward righteousness, even when it is perfected in heaven, will never add up to enough to warrant a declaration of righteousness by God's law and so can never be the basis of our acceptance before God as righteous. This basis will forever be nothing but the imputation of Christ's righteousness. So, to put it simply, in the Protestant view, we do nothing to be righteous. Christ does everything. We don't have to be righteous and we never will be righteous; Christ is righteous for us.
The Catholic view steers right through the middle of these two extremes, preserving what is good in both. It preserves Protestantism's conviction that our justification is entirely gracious in character, something that is not earned by us or produced by our own natural merits or resources but which comes to us rather as a free gift of grace through the redemption of Christ. But it also preserves Pelagianism's belief that we ourselves must be righteous by choosing what is right with our free will.
How does the Catholic view fit these two strands together harmoniously? The answer is right there in the Bible. You can see it in the two quotations from St. Paul at the beginning of this article. The truth is not that we must be righteous on our own without Christ. Nor is it that Christ is righteous for us so that we don't have to be righteous. The truth is that Christ lived a life of righteousness for us and died for our sins so that, his merits being applied to our lives by the grace of the Holy Spirit, we ourselves might become actually righteous.
We can see this in terms of satisfaction for sin as well as in terms of positive righteousness and good works. Let's look first at satisfaction for sin. In the Pelagian view, at least taken to its logical conclusion (not claiming necessarily that the historic Pelagius had so little room for Christ's death in his system), if we've sinned, only we can fix it. We have to use our unaided free will to repent of our sins, to make satisfaction to God's justice, to repair the damage caused by sin. In the Protestant view, on the other hand, only Christ can make satisfaction for our sins, and everything we can do is entirely worthless in this regard. Christ paid for our sins by his death on the cross. We don't need to do anything at all in terms of satisfying for our sins--repenting, doing penance, etc. (Again, Protestants say we will in fact repent and turn away from our sins if we have true faith in Christ, but they say this has no efficacy whatsoever in satisfying God's justice for those sins or making us any more acceptable to God's moral law.) Christ does it all for us, and we don't have to do anything nor can we do anything.
In the Catholic view, however, Christ made satisfaction for our sins by dying on the cross, but he applies that perfect and sufficient satisfaction to us by working it out within us through the Holy Spirit. Christ suffered and died for us not so that we would not suffer and die but so that we can suffer and die to sin with him and rise to new life in the Holy Spirit. It is not that our suffering and dying to sin adds anything to what Christ has done, as if his satisfaction was insufficient and we must shore it up by adding our own. Rather, our suffering and dying with Christ is the way in which his perfect satisfaction is applied to us and accomplishes its purpose--severing us from sin. Christ faced our sin, took it upon himself, endured its consequences, overcame it and destroyed it. He did this so that, through the application of his Passion to us by the Holy Spirit, we might face our sin, own up to its consequences, definitively reject it and repent of it, endure the healing sufferings that come from being weaned from sin and being restored to a right relationship with God, and rebuild and restore that relationship through our own life of penance. This is why the Catholic Church speaks in terms of penance and satisfaction when she talks about how we turn away from sin and restore our relationship with God. Protestants have historically hated this kind of language and accused Catholics of "works righteousness" and not trusting fully in Christ because of it, but this is because they are looking at the Catholic viewpoint from their own skewed perspective which places Christ's works and our works in competition with each other rather than seeing our works as the application of Christ's work in our lives. If the restoration of our relationship with God that has been broken by sin consists solely in what Christ does for us to the exclusion of what we do in him, then any talk of penances or satisfactions will seem to take away from the work of Christ. But if we see what Christ does in us as an application and fruit of what Christ has done outside of us, then there is no competition. It is precisely because Christ's satisfaction was so perfect that we are able, in our actual lives and experience, to repent of our sins, wean ourselves from them, put them to death, and rebuild a right relationship with God. In the Catholic view, when we truly repent and turn back to true love to God, our relationship with God is fundamentally restored, but the full rebuilding of that relationship is not yet complete, as there are still imperfections that hinder the full realization of that relationship which we must strive against by the grace of the Holy Spirit for the rest of our lives, until God brings to completion in us what he has begun after this life is over.
With regard to positive righteousness, we see the same dynamic. In the Pelagian view, we are righteous because we produce our own righteousness by our own natural efforts and free choices apart from any supernatural grace from God. In the Protestant view, Christ lived a righteous life for us, and that is imputed to us, so we don't need to live a righteous life ourselves in order to be righteous before God (though, again, Protestants will say that we will in fact live righteously if we have true faith, but this righteousness does not meet the standard to be considered "righteous" by God's moral law nor is it necessary to make us right with God, since Christ's imputed righteousness is fully sufficient on that score). In the Catholic view, Christ lived a righteous life for us so that his merits could be applied to our lives by the Holy Spirit, causing us to become righteous and live righteous lives ourselves and thus be pleasing to God and his moral law. At the end of our lives, say the Scriptures, we will be judged according to our works, and rewarded or punished accordingly. And yet justification is a totally free gift which we receive by faith in Christ. How can both of these things be true? Because all our righteousness and good works (and this includes our repentance and getting back up again when we fall into sin--so a righteous life is not necessarily a perfect life, but it is a life lived fundamentally, ultimately, and with final perseverance in honor of God) are not something we've produced from ourselves by our own free will and natural resources without supernatural grace, as the Pelagians say, but they are the fruit of the gracious work of the Holy Spirit in our lives applying the all-sufficient merits of Christ to us. So it is all grace, and yet that grace does not exclude but rather is the ground of our own works.
To put it all simply, when it comes to being freed from sin and becoming righteous before God, for the Pelagians (again, looking at the logical consequences of their position) it is "We can and must do it all and therefore Christ does nothing." For the Protestants, it's "Christ does everything, and so we do nothing." In the Catholic view, it's "Christ does everything, and so we do it too in him." To close with an analogy, imagine a person sick with a fatal illness. Another person comes along who has something special in his blood that can cure the illness. But in order for the cure to be operative, he must take the sickness into himself so that his blood can do the work of curing it. So he joins himself to the sick man, mingling their blood. He gets the sickness from the sick man's blood so that they are both sick, but the the special element in his blood cures the blood of both of them. This would be the Catholic view (though it's not a perfect analogy, of course--for example, Christ doesn't become personally sinful himself when he takes upon himself our sins, though he does suffer under their weight and consequences). The Pelagian view would be as if the sick man needed no help. His own blood has everything he needs. The Protestant view would be as if the healthy man could simply inject himself with the sickness and allow his blood to cure it in himself, and then, without actually doing anything inside the sick man to make the sick man's blood actually clean, he simply declares by legal imputation that his wellness now legally belongs to the sick man. In the Catholic version of the analogy, the fact that the healthy man had to take the sickness upon himself and overcome it in himself does not rule out the need to have that cure applied within the sick man as well. The two men are united together, so that both receive the sickness and the cure is worked out within each of them. And yet the cure of the sick man is entirely an act of grace, for the blood of the healthy man which cures the illness is given to him entirely gratuitously. The sick man has no natural claim on it at all. It is a gift to him. But the fact that it is a gift does not rule out that the path of healing might be long and painful, nor does it exempt the sick man from undergoing those healing pains. But there is a fundamental, night-and-day difference between the pains of a fatal illness leading to death and the healing pains of a person being cured of that illness. And so, as St Paul said, we must "suffer with Christ that we may be also glorified together with him." Or as Jesus himself said, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be" (John 12:24-26).
For more, see here and here. For more examples of the Protestant tendency to come to error by exaggerating true and important things or by holding them in an unbalanced way, see here. See also the sections in the Catechism of the Catholic Church which treat of grace and justification and the sacrament of penance.
Published on the feast of St. Lawrence of Brindisi
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