Replies

They are detracting from the cross in what they say and from His work in our redemption.

(a) Our Justification Is A Proof Of the Eternity Of The Sacrifice of Christ.
In a striking passage in the Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul says that Christ was delivered up for our sins, and that He rose again for our justification.[282] The Apostle says plainly here that the cause of our justification is the Resurrection of Christ.[283] He further says in the Epist. 1. to the Corinthians (XV. 17) : If Christ be not risen from the dead, your faith is vain (for) you are still in your sins. The meaning of this particular verse of the Epistle is not (like verses 14 and 15) : you are still in your sins, because your faith is vain in the sense of false (as having no foundation) : but, your faith is vain, in the sense of useless and ineffective, because having no one to justify you, you are still in your sins.[284] You are sinners because you have not obtained justification, the sole cause of which would be the resurrection of Christ, who suffered and rose from the dead: remove the cause and you remove the effect; it is of course quite true that we have been saved by the sacrifice of Christ, but this is on the condition that the victim of the sacrifice is the principle of justification for us, in as much as the victim has secured the resurrection to glory.
The Victim of the sacrifice risen to glory from the dead is the source of our justification in two ways. First, He is the principle of our justification by the removal of a hindrance to that justification, because as propitiatory victim, He is the price paid for our debts. Secondly, He is the principle of our justification as efficient cause, for by reason of His sanctifying influence, He communicates to us His own sanctity and grace.
In the first place, considering this victim under the aspect of propitiation.[285] Christ offered to God a gift or a victim in propitiation for our sins: His Body stained with the blood of the Passion unto death.
Hence He gave His own Body to God, so that it should become God's thing. Hence at that time Christ entered into a contract. God on His part sanctioned this contract by accepting the victim and taking it to Himself in the abode of His glory.
True, in so far as acceptance is an act formally immanent to God, it is eternal; and hence it was not deferred until the Resurrection. But we are considering here the acceptance in so far as it virtually passes into the thing actually taken up and laid hold of by God. We are dealing with a sacrificial contract and must consider the matter in this way, because it is in the nature of a symbol or sign. Without this divine subscription and ratification of the contract, the sacrifice would secure no propitiation whatever; because no matter how great the compensation offered, were it even condign, until the consent of each party is expressed no contract would result. Christ Victim therefore will not free us from our sins unless God accepts His Victim in payment for our debts. Christ was of sufficient worth to compensate, even before the divine acceptance, but it was only when acceptance had place that He actively and effectively did compensate. Therefore although the work of Christ Himself as Redeemer was completed by His death, still we were indebted to God; and the Resurrection was a necessary addition as a recognition of God's acceptance of Christ Victim as the price of our salvation. There at lag the contract stood completed. But by the contract we were saved. Therefore before Christ's Resurrection our salvation was not constituted.
Furthermore the price of our salvation must necessarily remain eternally with God. For Christ gave Himself to God forever, in order to be forever a propitiation for us.[286] Now what is given into God's keeping He never alienates or destroys, He keeps it forever just as it is in itself. Hence were Christ at any time (I speak as one less wise) to cease to be in the glory of God, this could only be, were He to withdraw Himself from God; thus He would break the contract and defraud God of what was pledged to Him, and so our sins would remain unatoned for, in the failure of the compensation which the gift presented, for that compensates only so long as it remains as a gift, if withdrawn it has no grace.[287] But our High Priest is faithful, our Victim is faithful, our price is faithful, God will never be defrauded of it, and thus we are secure in the eternal redemption found by Christ.
This is what the Fathers meant when speaking of the price paid by Christ. Once paid, it forever redeemed us in the sight of God; so much so that were it (on an impossible supposition) to disappear from the sight of God, we would not be saved from our sins; failing the victim, the price would be lacking. George Witzel, an acute interpreter of sacred antiquity, used this argument very effectively against Luther: "If therefore the Body and Blood of Christ IS not a Victim, our faith is vain and we are still in our sins" (De Eucharistia, Cologne, 1549, p. 322-323).[288] This is said of the propitiation for us, in which the Victim stands as moral cause.
In the second place, consider the Victim as the efficient cause of our justification, and it is clear that the process of our justification requires the eternity of the sacrifice. For we are sanctified by partaking of the Victim of the Passion which makes us sharers in its sanctity, in so far as, itself all full of truth, it operates in us what it signifies. But if a victim now exists no longer, there is no longer any influxus of the victim and hence no influxus of the sanctity. For our Victim is not only the cause of the imparting of grace to us, but of the maintaining of it. If this cause ceases its active influence, the effect will also cease to be maintained and to exist. But the life of Christ in glory is the source and the fountain of our own spiritual life of grace and glory. Thus St. Paul says we are quickened according to grace by God with Christ raised from the dead unto glory (Coloss., II. 13; Ephes., II. 5-6). For we are quickened or vivified by the Flesh of the eternal sacrifice giving us spiritual life.[289]
St. Thomas (3 S. 62, 5 and 6) is in close agreement: in the order of efficiency the sacraments are compared as instruments to the Passion of Christ, whence they derive their virtue, just as the Passion itself is by way of instrument in respect of the divinity, which is the principal cause (art. 5); and thus previous to the Passion sacramental efficacy was impossible: because "what is not yet in existence does not cause any movement or change" (Art. 6). According to St. Thomas therefore, the Passion "by which Christ initiated the Christian religion, offering himself as an oblation and a victim to God, as St. Paul. Ephes., V says", (art. 5), intervenes by way of cause as movens motum, between the divine efficacy and the sacraments of the New Law. But what is not actually existing cannot put forth any action, or efficiently produce any change or motion. Therefore Christ's sacrifice must continue, as it does by the continuance of Christ Victim of His Passion. Hence St. Thomas already had said opportunely: "the resurrection of Christ has by way of instrument (under God the principal cause), effective power, not only in respect of the resurrection of bodies, but also in respect of the resurrection of souls" (3 S. 56, 2). And again: "Divine justice in itself was not bound to cause our resurrection through the Resurrection of Christ; for God could free us otherwise than by the Passion and Resurrection of Christ. Nevertheless because He decreed to free us in this manner, clearly the Resurrection of Christ is the cause of our own resurrection" (In 3 S. 56, I, 2m).[290]
If Christ therefore did not rise from the dead we are in our sins, lacking both ransom before God and the begetter of divine grace in us. But if Christ did rise again, in the first place, the price paid to God and eternally accepted in the past, that is, the sacrifice enacted by Christ on earth, and received by the Father into the glory of heaven, eternally remains and is our eternal propitiation; and secondly, the Victim is always at hand, by feeding on which we are always sanctified. St. Paul suggests the benefit of the Resurrection under each of these aspects in Coloss. II. 12-14 In whom (Christ) you are risen again by the faith of the operation of God, and you when you were dead in your sins, and the incircumcision of your flesh, He (God) hath quickened together with Him. Here we have the benefit of the Resurrection as establishing a oneness of life between Christ in glory and ourselves made acceptable and destined for glory. The Apostle continues: forgiving you all your offences; blotting out the handwriting of the decree [291] that was against us, which is contrary to us.[292] And here then is the second benefit of the Resurrection: Christ welcomed into the bosom of the Father, or the acceptance of the compensation offered on the Cross, and the blotting-out of the handwriting whereby we were indebted to God. For in the Resurrection God destroyed the bond of our indebtedness, and thereby pardoned our sins: namely when the Victim of the Cross was accepted by God for our Redemption.

Maurice De La Taille, S.J., The Mystery Of Faith, Chapter V.