The Pope, Justification, the New Perspective and Paul

A couple year's back Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom co-authored a book with a spiffy little question for a title: Is the Reformation Over?: An Evangelical Assessment of Contemporary Roman Catholicism . They marshalled evidence to suggest the Reformation had had a powerful impact and the Roman Catholic (evangelical types) and Protestant Evangelicals now had huge connections where there was once massive fissures.

If this sketch is accurate to what the Pope says, two questions: (1) is he old or new perspective? (2) is the Reformation over?

Now the Pope, Benedict XVI, has a book that illustrates this all the more: Saint Paul . I want to illustrate this connection by briefly sketching the Pope's view of justification, and his view reveals dramatic connections to the New Perspective as well as to classic (old perspective) Reformation teaching on justification. Now for the sketch, drawn from chp 13 of this fine introduction to Pauline theology:

1. The issues are framed in terms of individual (if not gender inclusive) salvation, as in the old perspective: "How does man become just in God's eyes?" (78).

2. Paul's conversion, as esp emphasized in the new perspective, reshaped his view of the relationship of an Israelite to the Torah. This Torah, as in new perspective, is the 5 books of Moses (and not the law principle). In light of Christ, there is an opposition of Law and Grace, as in the old perspective.

3. The focus at the time of the Paul, as we find in the new perspective, is on those works -- like Sabbath and circumcision -- that built a wall between Jews and Gentiles. Those works had framed "a social, cultural and religious identity" (81). The wall "consisted precisely in the Judaic observances and prescriptions" (81).

4. With Christ the God of Israel became the God of all people, and this meant the wall had been knocked down. This ecclesial emphasis is decidedly new perspective.

5. Union with Christ, faith in Christ -- and here old and new, Lutheran and Catholic become one -- in fact, Christ himself, "makes us just" (82). "For this reason, Luther's phrase "faith alone" is true, if it is not opposed to faith in charity, in love" (82). Here he shows how Christ is love, union with Christ puts us into the life of love, and all good works are works that flow from this Christ who is love and makes all good works works of love. [There's nothing here about double imputation, a move that connects the Pope more to the new perspective and not at all to the strident voices today who make justification little more than double imputation. Strike that slightly: on p. 84, when introducing the next chp, he speaks of God conferring his justice upon a person, uniting him to Christ -- getting closer to imputation.]

6. So what is faith? "Faith is looking at Christ, entrusting oneself to Christ, being united to Christ, conformed to Christ, to his life" (82). The form of Christ's life is love. Our actions are insignificant; what matters is faith; genuine faith becomes love. Thus, Gal 5:6, where Paul speaks of circumcision not mattering but only faith working through love. On p. 85 he anchors this in the perichoresis. Thus, Paul and James belong together: "faith that is active in love testifies to the freely given gift of justification in Christ" (86).

"We become just by entering into communion with Christ, who is Love" (82).

...the Pope, Benedict XVI, has a book that illustrates this all the more: Saint Paul. I want to illustrate this connection by briefly sketching the Pope's view of justification, and his view reveals dramatic connections to the New Perspective as well as to classic (old perspective) Reformation teaching on justification.

The article asks the question "Is the Reformation over?" Pope Benedict XVI writes in his Saint Paul book that

"For this reason, Luther's phrase "faith alone" is true, if it is not opposed to faith in charity, in love" (page 82).

Has Pope Benedict XVI repealed the anathemas of Trent? By his own words, he would appear to have placed himself under those anamethas, specifically Canon 9 of Session VI of Trent:

CANON IX.-If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified; in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to co-operate in order to the obtaining the grace of Justification, and that it is not in any way necessary, that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will; let him be anathema.

From Wikipedia:

The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification is a document created by and agreed to by clerical representatives of the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation in 1999, as a result of extensive ecumenical dialogue, ostensibly resolving the conflict over the nature of justification which was at the root of the Protestant Reformation. The churches acknowledged that the excommunications relating to the doctrine of justification set forth by the Roman Catholic Council of Trent do not apply to the teachings of the Lutheran churches set forth in the text; likewise, the churches acknowledged that the condemnations set forth in the Lutheran Confessions do not apply to the Catholic teachings on justification set forth in the document.

In other words, after almost 500 years the Catholic church admitted that we are justified by faith alone.

In other words, after almost 500 years the Catholic church admitted that we are justified by faith alone.

It sure reads that way at first glance, doesn't it?

Now I'd like to believe that the Roman Catholic Church of the 16th century believed that preaching sound doctrine was about truth and not about playing politics. I'd like to think that the Magisterium teaches Catholics that doctrinal truth isn't something to be created, enforced, or annulled at the Holy See's whims when it suits some larger political purpose.

Then we get these fateful words from Pope Benedict XVI: "...Luther's phrase "faith alone" is true..."

IMO If the RCC of the 21st century believes that the Council of Trent (especially the "anathemas" proclaimed in the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Sessions) can be selectively applied to one party (Reformers) and not to another (the current Pope), then we either have evidence of:

-- wholesale denominational apostasy on the Lutherans' parts (i.e. they no longer are subject to Trent, since they now reject the very doctrines that earned their forefathers the anathemas of Trent)
-- personal apostasy on the Pope's part (the Pope disagrees with Trent and the Magisterium, and really agrees with Luther), or
-- evidence that Pope Benedict XVI has been caught engaging in false witness about Catholics believing in Sola Fide, i.e. the Pope is playing word-games over Reformation doctrine, seeking to convert unsuspecting Protestants to the Catholic side

Any of which is evidence that the Roman Catholic Church in the 21st century is still engaging in "doctrinal politics" six centuries later, where doctrine can be made or rescinded at the Pope's whims if it suits some political/religious end-game.

It looks like the Catholic Church is still in need of a good Reformation.

Read in context, the Pope's statements on faith are entirely consistent with Trent.

To get an understanding of what Pope Benedict is in fact saying on faith, hope and charity, see his encyclical, Spe Salvi - Saved by Hope

An excerpt:

The Kingdom of God is a gift, and precisely because of this, it is great and beautiful, and constitutes the response to our hope. And we cannot—to use the classical expression—”merit” Heaven through our works. Heaven is always more than we could merit, just as being loved is never something “merited”, but always a gift. However, even when we are fully aware that Heaven far exceeds what we can merit, it will always be true that our behaviour is not indifferent before God and therefore is not indifferent for the unfolding of history. We can open ourselves and the world and allow God to enter: we can open ourselves to truth, to love, to what is good. This is what the saints did, those who, as “God's fellow workers”, contributed to the world's salvation (cf. 1 Cor 3:9; 1 Th 3:2). We can free our life and the world from the poisons and contaminations that could destroy the present and the future. We can uncover the sources of creation and keep them unsullied, and in this way we can make a right use of creation, which comes to us as a gift, according to its intrinsic requirements and ultimate purpose. This makes sense even if outwardly we achieve nothing or seem powerless in the face of overwhelming hostile forces. So on the one hand, our actions engender hope for us and for others; but at the same time, it is the great hope based upon God's promises that gives us courage and directs our action in good times and bad....

Both these things—justice and grace—must be seen in their correct inner relationship. Grace does not cancel out justice. It does not make wrong into right. It is not a sponge which wipes everything away, so that whatever someone has done on earth ends up being of equal value. Dostoevsky, for example, was right to protest against this kind of Heaven and this kind of grace in his novel The Brothers Karamazov. Evildoers, in the end, do not sit at table at the eternal banquet beside their victims without distinction, as though nothing had happened....

The judgement of God is hope, both because it is justice and because it is grace. If it were merely grace, making all earthly things cease to matter, God would still owe us an answer to the question about justice—the crucial question that we ask of history and of God. If it were merely justice, in the end it could bring only fear to us all. The incarnation of God in Christ has so closely linked the two together—judgement and grace—that justice is firmly established: we all work out our salvation “with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12). Nevertheless grace allows us all to hope, and to go trustfully to meet the Judge whom we know as our “advocate”, or parakletos (cf. 1 Jn 2:1).

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