Of Saving Faith
The grace of faith, whereby the elect are enabled to believe to the saving of their souls, is the work of the Spirit of Christ in their hearts.
Catholics and Protestants alike affirm three of the five “solas” of the Reformation, i.e., our salvation is by (and results in):
Sola Gratia – grace alone
Solus Christus – Christ alone
Soli Deo Gloria – (glory to God alone)
Catholics and Protestants are divided, however, concerning the two central affirmations of the Reformation, i.e., Sola Fide (faith alone) and Sola Scriptura (scripture alone). Especially with respect to Sola Fide, I wonder whether the division is not more semantical than substantive.
Certainly the plain reading of Canon 9 of the Council of Trent is suspect. (Trent was the Counter-Reformation council held by the Roman Catholic Church between 1545 and 1563): “If anyone says that the sinner is justified by faith alone, so as to understand that nothing else is required to cooperate in the attainment of the grace of justification…let him be anathema.”
Jimmy Akin, noted Catholic apologist, asserts that what is meant in Canon 9 by “faith alone” is the sense of mere intellectual assent. If that is so, then substituting the words “intellectual assent” for “faith alone”, we get: “If anyone says that the sinner is justified by intellectual assent alone, so as to understand that nothing else is required to cooperate in the attainment of the grace of justification…let him be anathema.”
Protestants would have much less trouble with this revision, except for the phrase “to cooperate in the attainment of the grace of justification”. And yet what the Catholic Church means by “[our cooperation] in the attainment of the grace of justification” is very much what the Westminster Confession means when it refers to “the principal acts of saving faith”: “But the principal acts of saving faith are accepting, receiving, and resting upon Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life.” Thus it appears that, when carefully articulated, Catholics as well as Protestants affirm the doctrine of Sola Fide, although Catholics prefer the term Sola Fide Formata, or “formed” faith alone. A formed faith is a living faith, a true faith, a faith that “works through love” (Galatians 5:6). This love of God “has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us”. (Romans 5:5)
So then, the Protestant idea of faith = the Catholic idea of (faith + hope + charity). The two sides of the equation are equal because a faith devoid of hope and which is not expressed through actions is no faith at all. It is rather a dead faith. (James 2:17)
In October of 1999, the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation signed a document known as the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification which stressed that good works are a consequence of entering a state of justification and can never be the cause of entering it:
We confess together that good works—a Christian life lived in faith, hope, and love—follow justification and are its fruits. When the justified live in Christ and act in the grace they receive, they bring forth, in biblical terms, good fruit. . . .When Catholics affirm the “meritorious” character of good works, they wish to say that, according to the biblical witness, a reward in heaven is promised to these works. Their intention is to emphasize the responsibility of persons for their actions, not to contest the character of those works as gifts, or far less to deny that justification always remains the unmerited gift of grace.
Quoting Richard Hooker, noted Anglican theologian of the sixteenth century: “[We see how] the faith of true believers cannot be divorced from hope and love, how faith is a part of sanctification, and yet unto sanctification necessary; how faith is perfected by good works, and yet no works of ours are good without faith; finally, how our fathers might hold, that we are justified by faith alone, and yet hold truly that without good works we are not justified.”
Here it is important to emphasize that both faith and good works are gifts of grace, and that each implies the other.
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:8-10)
