One thing I've never been able fully to understand is the typical Protestant (especially Reformed and Lutheran) antipathy to the Catholic doctrine of justification. The big question between these two views is whether or not we are justified by Christ's righteousness merely imputed to us (legally counted ours), or whether we are justified by its being infused within us (actually changing us inwardly and making us righteous). (I am assuming, here, an anti-Augustinian understanding of the Protestant view.)
Even granting that these two views are really different from each other, and that if one is right the other must be wrong, and that the Catholic view is wrong, I still don't see why Protestants think that this error Catholics supposedly make is so great that it overturns the very gospel itself. Many Protestants historically have seen the Catholic error on this subject as so fundamental that they say it means that Catholics don't have the gospel at all. They say that the very gospel of salvation by grace through Christ and his merits requires the imputation view, and that without the Protestant view of imputation there is no gospel at all, but merely a damning substitute that puts man's righteousness in place of God's. But why see this difference in so extreme a manner? Even if Catholics are wrong that we are justified by Christ's righteousness infused and not merely imputed, they are still saying that we are justified not by our own native righteousness but by the righteousness of Christ given to us as a free gift. It is still salvation by grace through the righteousness of Christ. How does the mere fact that it is infused righteousness rather than merely imputed righteousness mean that we've switched entirely from salvation by grace through Christ's righteousness to a system of salvation by personal merit through one's own righteousness?
I am concerned that Protestants are operating here under a prejudice that doesn't even make sense granting their own view of justification. Is this something that modern Protestants have simply inherited from the past and keep up without any real, substantial reason? If so, perhaps it's time to reconsider it in the interest of truth and justice.
To see some of my own views on the Catholic doctrine when I was a Protestant, see here. (I always thought that if there was any fundamental or soul-endangering doctrine in Catholicism relative to justification, it was related to the issue of free will rather than to the infusion doctrine of justification. But I've come to see that Catholicism doesn't have a free will problem. Of course, I should add that I've never held to an anti-Augustinian reading of the Protestant doctrine of justification, as can be seen by a sermon on justification I wrote up and preached while a Presbyterian elder. But even if I did hold to an anti-Augustinian interpretation of justification, I don't see why that would have entailed the kind of extreme antipathy to the Catholic view that a lot of Protestants hold.)
Could it be that the Protestant antipathy to the Catholic view of justification comes from the antinomian roots of the Protestant view, flowing from Luther's views? Luther seems to have been very concerned about any doctrine that would make internal righteousness and good works to have any bearing on one's standing before God, or even any view that would say that internal righteousness and good works are required by God of us. He wanted to say that God requires nothing of us but faith alone (not even faith plus charity, or love of God, but faith alone). Could the Protestant antipathy to the Catholic view be flowing from a distaste for any idea that smacks of righteousness actually being required of us in order for us to be in favor with God? (Even though the Reformed, in particular, have tried to distance themselves from antinomianism.)
Perhaps the Protestant antipathy to the Catholic view flows from the genuine and right feeling that no matter how righteous God's grace makes us, even when we are perfected in heaven, we will never have a foundation to boast before God as if we deserved his favor. All our righteousness is a free gift to sinners and not something we have produced on our own, and so we will always stand before God with the consciousness that we are there by grace rather than by our own personal deserving. Are Protestants concerned that the Catholic view is that we should be boastful before God, demanding of him by right that he accept us because of our internal righteousness? If that is their concern, they can lay it to rest, for Catholics agree with them completely that all our salvation is nothing but a free gift which we cannot boast of. When we stand before God, we will be fully aware that, although Christ blood applied to us by the Holy Spirit has truly made us morally pleasing to God, yet all this is a gift of grace, and that we can stand before God only by his mercy in Christ and have no basis to demand or boast of anything. If God gave us what we personally deserve and have a right to, we would deserve hell and not eternal life. We are sinners saved by grace. And yet God's grace in us does truly make us pleasing to God. Christ's merits have a powerful efficacy when applied within us by the Holy Spirit. Catholics are concerned that the Protestant doctrine loses sight of that. The Council of Trent put these two ideas together beautifully in this sentence:
Neither is this to be omitted,-that although, in the sacred writings, so much is attributed to good works, that Christ promises, that even he that shall give a drink of cold water to one of his least ones, shall not lose his reward; and the Apostle testifies that, That which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation, worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory; nevertheless God forbid that a Christian should either trust or glory in himself, and not in the Lord, whose bounty towards all men is so great, that He will have the things which are His own gifts be their merits. (Council of Trent, Sixth Session, Hanover College website, page number removed)
In general, you can see the Catholic view spelled out in the Sixth Session of the Council of Trent, as well as in the Catechism of the Catholic Church #1987-2029.
For a critique of the Protestant doctrine of justification (understood in an anti-Augustinian way) and a defense of the Augustinian view (which is the doctrine of the Catholic Church), see here. For another good statement of how Catholics find the extreme Protestant reaction to the Catholic view baffling, see here. For a fictional dialogue between a Catholic and a Protestant on the doctrine of justification, see here.
Published on the feast of St. Eusebius of Vercelli and St. Peter Julian Eymard
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