Justified Sons

Understanding the Doctrine of Justification: Part 3

by Christopher Cuddy 

Introductory note: this article is the third of a three-part series introducing the Catholic Church’s teaching on the doctrine of justification.  In the first article [Part 1] we examined the Church’s understanding of the doctrine of original sin.  In the second article [Part 2] we examined what the Church says about the doctrine of “justification” itself, and how it relates to our daily walk with God.  In this third and final article, we will examine how the Catholic and Protestant understandings of justification are similar, different, and how they relate. 

#          #          # 

I am a convert to the Catholic Church.  I was born and raised in evangelical Protestantism.  Not just any evangelical Protestantism, however: I was a committed Calvinist.  All throughout junior high and high school I devoured the works of Protestant Reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin.  I poured over the writings of Puritans like John Owen, Richard Baxter, and especially Jonathan Edwards.  I was an avid student of more recent Calvinist scholars and theologians like Charles Hodge, B.B. Warfield, and J. Gresham Machen.  Finally, my role models and heroes growing up were contemporary Reformed theologians like John Gerstner, R.C. Sproul, J.I. Packer, Cornelius Van Til, and Greg Bahnsen.   

By studying the thought and writings of these great Protestant theologians I learned this fundamental truth: Protestants teach that justification is by faith alone.  I learned that Protestants in general – and Calvinists in particular – were adamant about the fact that we are saved by faith in Christ alone, apart from any “good works” whatsoever.  Not only did I learn that this is what Protestants teach and believe, but I came to the personal conviction that Protestants were right.  I really believed that we are saved by “faith alone.” I was deeply committed to this foundational belief of Protestant theology and religion.  I was also vehemently opposed to the Catholic Church and all that (I thought) it taught.  I considered it to be the “whore of Babylon,” and I regarded the Pope as the “anti-Christ.” 

During my first semester at college, however, things began to change.  I met some young people - some Catholic young people - who understood their Faith and were passionately committed to explaining and defending it.  Through many late-night conversations with these Catholic friends, I was challenged to go deeper into the Scriptures and to re-think a lot of the Protestant doctrines that I had grown up believing.  I was very anti-Catholic.  But I was also intrigued by how well these Catholics could defend their beliefs from Scripture.  I decided to check things out for myself.   

I began that first semester of college as an eager theology/philosophy major who was vehemently against the Catholic Church, and I came out of that semester convinced that the Catholic Church was the “true Church” Jesus founded.  Although there were a lot of doctrines that I wrestled with during my conversion process, the issue that I considered to be the most central and important was this issue: are we saved by faith alone?  Protestant Reformer Martin Luther thought that the answer to this question was so important that he called it “the article upon which the Church stands or falls.”  Although I originally sided with Luther and Calvin in saying that we are saved by “faith alone,” I was eventually persuaded through many hours of prayer, thought, and study that the Protestant view of justification was wrong.  I came to see that we are not saved by “faith alone” as Protestants believe, but that we are saved by “faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6).  I came to understand that our justification was not the work of a cosmic judge, legally pardoning guilty criminals; but rather the work of a loving Father, reconciling His fallen sons and daughters back to His divine Family. 

Like most Protestants, I never really understood what the Catholic Church taught. I had tons of misconceptions about the true teaching of the Catholic Church.  The remainder of this article will be an examination of three common objections many Protestants have to the Catholic view of salvation.  We will examine the objections first, and then examine what the Catholic Church teaches about justification. 

Issue #1:

Catholics don’t believe that we are saved by “grace alone,” right? 

As a Protestant, I thought that grace was God’s favor.  One of my favorite theological “slogans” was that salvation is by “grace alone.”  I thought Catholics tended to devalue the grace of God because they said that good works were also necessary for salvation.  I thought that this was ridiculous.  In my mind it was either all God (grace) or all man (works).  I did not believe that a “middle ground” was possible. 

However, as I began studying the Catholic faith, I eventually realized two things: 1) Protestants are right when they say that salvation is by “grace alone,” but 2) Protestants don’t realize just how “amazing” grace really is.   

Protestants believe that grace is God’s favor - how He looks at us.  The Catholic Church teaches that this is right: grace is God’s favor.  But it also maintains that grace is much more than God’s favor: it is nothing less than His own divine Life and Power!  Paragraph 1996 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that grace is first of all God’s “favor” and His “free and undeserved help.”  It doesn’t stop here, however.  Paragraph 1997 goes on to state that beyond God’s favor, grace is also our “participation in the life of God.”  Thus grace is God’s divine favor and God’s own divine life, being, and power.  When God gives us His grace He gives us Himself; making us His divinely adopted sons and daughters. 

I was right when I said that salvation is by “grace alone.”  I just didn’t know “how right” I really was: grace was far more profound and glorious than I ever imagined. 

Issue #2:

Doesn’t the Bible teach that we’re saved by “faith alone” in Romans 3:28? 

Romans 3:28 was one of the verses that I liked to use as a “proof-text” to show Catholics that salvation is by “faith alone.”  Romans 3:28 makes the following statement: “For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of law.”  Upon first glance, this verse does appear to contradict the Catholic Church’s teaching on justification.  It does seem to be saying that we are saved by faith apart from any contribution we make to our salvation.  It is understandable why Martin Luther thought this verse taught that we are saved by faith alone. 

Following Luther and Calvin, I, too, thought that Romans 3:28 taught that we are saved by faith alone.  However, once I began to dig deeper into the book of Romans and study the verse in its context, I came to see how wrong I really was.  Paul doesn’t say that salvation is by “faith alone” in this verse.  He says that justification occurs by faith “apart from works of law.”  Now what are these “works of [the] law?”  Doesn’t St. Paul mean all “good works?”  No he doesn’t.  

The key to understanding “works of the law” is to look at the broader context of Romans.  Immediately after Romans 3:28, St. Paul goes on to makes this statement in verse 29: “Or is God the God of Jews only?  Is he not the God of Gentiles also?”  St. Paul is asking a rhetorical question, and he goes on to provide the obvious answer: “Yes [He is the God] of gentiles also.”  Because God created everything, He is the God of everything.  This is a no- brainer.  Of course God is the God of both Jews and Gentiles. 

The real “kicker” comes in the next verse (v. 30), where Paul says that “since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised [i.e. the Jews] on the ground of their faith and the uncircumcised [i.e. the Gentiles] through their faith.”  Paul’s main concern and focus in the book of Romans is the debate over whether people who are not circumcised can get to heaven and “be saved.”  This is the key to understanding what these “works of the law” are.  “Works of the law” is a phrase that refers to Jewish ceremonial laws and rituals.  These ceremonial rituals and laws refer to things like circumcision and the eating of clean/unclean meat.  This is what Paul means when he says that we are saved by “faith apart from works of law.”  These “works of law” are not just any good works: they are the specific Old Testament ceremonial practices (like circumcision).  Paul is not saying in Romans 3:28 that we are saved by “faith alone” apart from any good works.  He is saying that we are saved by faith apart from Old Testament, Jewish practices that have been retired with the coming of Christ and His Church. 

After Jesus ascended into heaven, some of the Jewish Christians were a little confused about salvation. Many Jewish converts thought that in addition to baptism and repentance, one still had to be circumcised in order to be counted as one of God’s people. Some thought that these Old Testament Jewish ceremonies were still necessary for justification.  We see references to some people who thought this in the book of Acts (see Acts 15:5-12).  Although the Jews had always been referred to as “God’s people” in the Old Testament, in the New Testament Christ came and made salvation possible for all people (whether they be Jew or Gentile).  Baptism now made it possible for people of all nations to be received into God’s divine family.  Circumcision was no longer needed to physically mark the members of God’s family, because baptism spiritually marks God’s people.  Baptism is the means by which we are re-born into God’s divine family and incorporated into the person and work of His Son.  Because of Christ, baptism has spiritual power that circumcision never had.  This is why baptism is now necessary for salvation and circumcision is not. 

Justification is not by “faith alone.”  In fact, the only place where the words “faith alone” occur in the entire Bible are in James 2:24 where St. James clearly states that we are not saved by faith alone.  As Catholics we try to follow the Bible at its word.  The Catholic Church says that salvation is not by faith alone because this is what the Bible says. 

[For those interested in studying “works of the law” as circumcision in other passages of Scripture see Galatians 2 and Romans 2-4.]  

Issue #3:

Don’t Catholics believe that they have to “work”/“earn” their way to heaven? 

As I mentioned earlier, I used to think that Catholics believed that salvation was by “works” rather than by “faith” and “love.”  I thought that Catholics tried to do good works so that they could “earn” their way into heaven and “obligate” God to forgive them.   

I was very wrong. 

The Catholic Church teaches that justification is being both made and declared a son of God.  Justification is divine sonship.  God is our heavenly Father, and we are His divinely adopted sons.  We are not just called God’s children; we actually become His sons and daughters.  This is what justification is. 

Because God is our Father and we are his adopted sons, we don’t obligate/make God give us anything.  Heaven is a pure gift.  We do not “earn” it in the strict sense of the word.  Eternal life is not a boss’ payment for the services of his employees.  It is the pure and loving - gracious! - gift of a Divine Father to His adopted sons and daughters. 

Because we are God’s divine children, our “good works” are not done as employees, but as sons.  We don’t do them because we want our “boss” to pay us; we do them because we love our Heavenly Father and want to please Him.  Likewise, God doesn’t give eternal life to His children because they “bought” it through their good works; He gives eternal life to His adopted children as a divine, family inheritance.  The Bible speaks of heaven as an inheritance (e.g. Ephesians 1:14; Colossians 1:12, 3:24; etc.).  The Catechism states that through God’s love we are made “co-heirs” with Christ and will thus receive a heavenly inheritance from our Father (paragraph 2009).  

Christ didn’t obey so we don’t have to; Christ obeyed so that we now can!  However, we obey not as fearful servants, but as loving sons.  Just as I didn’t earn my sonship status in my natural family, so I don’t earn my divine sonship in God’s divine family.  Being a son is pure gift; it is pure grace.  Heaven is the divine inheritance that God gives to His divinely adopted children.  Justification is divine sonship.  This is what salvation is. 

(See the second article entitled “Adopted Sons” [Part 2] for more information about justification as divine sonship and the glories of heaven as divine inheritance.).   

Conclusion to the Series

This is the third and final article in a three-part series on the Catholic doctrine of justification.  In this series, we have seen that the Catholic understanding of justification is, at its root and core, divine sonship.  Justification is the process by which we are both made and declared to be God’s divinely adopted children.  It is not merely a legal declaration or acquittal; it is an actual fact and reality.  Grace is not merely God’s unmerited favor; it is nothing less than His own divine Life, Power, and Being.  Salvation is by grace alone, because grace is nothing other than God’s own Trinitarian life poured into our souls, enabling us to live the life of a divinely adopted son or daughter.  We are so unworthy to be counted as God’s children, but God is good, and His love and mercy covers a multitude of sins.

#          #          #