JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH

Dr. William Marshner The Catholic Church holds that faith in Jesus Christ is not saving faith unless it bears fruit in good works. Vice-versa, the Church holds that such works are so intimately joined to faith, that, without them, it is impossible for the believer to grow or persevere in his faith.(1) In this way, good works are necessary for salvation. Most Protestants are uncomfortable with such a statement. Without denying the importance of good works, Protestants tend to see them as symptoms of the one thing necessary rather than as necessities in their own right. For Luther, good works were merely symptoms of confident faith; for Calvin, they were symptoms of irresistible grace. Few Protestants today are familiar with the details of Luther's or Calvin's personal thought; what they have inherited from these great forebearers is rather a general orientation, whose core is the conviction that according to St. Paul, we are justified (by faith alone) or (by grace alone), either formula being understood to exclude any essential role of good works.

Now, in order to see how this general orientation may clash with Catholicism, it is necessary to introduce two further points.

First, Catholic and Protestant views on the respective roles of grace, faith and works cannot be compared meaningfully, unless one specifies what stage of the justificational process one is talking about. In the preparatory stage, for instance, in which prevenient graces first stir a person towards an interest in religious truth, towards repentance, and towards faith, Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists are at one in saying "."(2) A second stage is the very transition from death to life, which is the first stage of justification proper. Here the parties are at one in saying "sola fide," though they seem to mean different things by it. Protestants tend to mean that, at this stage, by the grace of God, man's act of faith is the sole act required of him; Catholics mean that faith is the beginning, foundation and root of all justification, since only faith makes possible the acts of hope and charity (i.e. love-for-God) which are also required.(3) However, since most Protestants have a broad notion of the act of faith, whereby it includes elements of hope and love, it is often hard to tell how far the difference on this point is real and how far it is a matter of words. Finally, however, there comes a third stage, that of actual Christian life, with its problems of growth and perseverance. The man justified by faith is called to "walk" with God, to progress in holiness. It is at this stage that the parties sharply diverge. Catholics affirm, and Protestants strenuously deny, that the born-again Christian's good works merit for him the increase of grace and of the Christian virtues. As a result, Protestant piety has no obvious place for the self-sacrifices, fasts, and states of perfection which are prominent features of Catholic piety.

Now this divergence over works in the third stage is partially due to a Protestant allergy to the word 'merit', but only partially. The real reasons are much deeper, which brings me to my second point.

At each stage, neither the apparent agreements nor the apparent disagreements can be understood without looking at certain metaphysical quarrels, the chief of which is over the very existence of what Catholics call "grace."

In the natural order, a doctor ministers to a moribund patient and restores him to life; he does so by really changing the condition of the patient's body; he restores to it a quality called health. Can something analogous happen in the supernatural order? If so, what Catholics call "grace" exists. It is the quality thanks to which the soul is made alive and enabled to function as God intended it to function, just as health is such a quality to the body.

Of course, as is the case with all analogies, there are points at which this one breaks down. The human doctor is a finite physician; he can heal the sick but not the dead; God, on the other hand, restores spiritual health to those dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:5), so that God's act is not so much a cure of the sick as it is a down-payment on the Resurrection (Ephesians 2:6). So the analogy limps. It fails to reflect the fact that grace is not only like health but also like brand-new life. Still, between life and health there is a deep connection, so that this limp is not fatal to the analogy. However, there is another problem with it.

Thanks to his instruments, chemical and surgical, the doctor is the principal cause of the patient's restored health; but it would seem odd to say that the man's health is wholly the doctor's gift, even if the doctor collected no fee. After all, it is the patient's own natural powers, his own natural capacity for health, which allows the doctor's work to be successful. So there is a cooperation here between the doctor's art and the patient's nature, thanks to which the restored health is not wholly the doctor's gift but partially also the patient's own achievement. Such things cannot be said of the initial, justifying grace. As Catholics understand it, this grace is a quality for which man has no natural capacity, to which he has no natural right, and towards which he has no natural inclination. It is a pure surprise, a pure gift, an elevation of our nature rather than a part of it; and this was true even before the Fall.(4) Now, to be sure, Catholics believe that once we have been elevated to grace, we become capable of cooperating with God's further graces, since He has now given us the capacity and the inclination for such things. But this does not cancel the original picture; it only means that our very capacity to cooperate is a gift to us, something not natively ours; as a result, every God-pleasing act of ours remains so rooted in God's initial gift that it is simply an actuation of that gift. So the analogy between health and grace limps in this second way: it fails to reflect the fact that grace is so totally a gift that it exceeds our natural capacities and hence never becomes simply "our property," even after it has been given.

Thanks to these difficulties, what Catholics call "sanctifying grace" or "habitual grace" turns out to be a deeply mysterious entity: a quality of man which is a property of God. In order to cope with such an entity, one needs a sophisticated metaphysics of participation. The Church Fathers and their successors, the Scholastic Doctors, took the trouble to work out such a metaphysics because the existence of grace as a real entity in man—ontic grace—was and is the foundation, without which the whole Catholic understanding of justification makes no sense.

The Protestant Reformers, however, impatient with metaphysics, preferred not to cope with such an entity and denied its existence.(5) To them it seemed simpler to say that grace is something wholly in God, namely, His favor towards us. But then, if grace is not something real in man, our "justification" can no longer be conceived as a real change in us; it will have to become a sheer declaration on God's part, e.g. a declaration that, thanks to the work of Christ, He will henceforth consider us as just, even though we remain inwardly the sinners we always were. Hence, the Protestant doctrine of "forensic" or "extrinsic" justification. Now watch what happens to our own act of faith: it ceases to be the foundational act of an interior renewal and becomes a mere requirement, devoid of any salvific power in its own right, which God arbitrarily sets as the condition on which He will declare us just. Whereupon, watch what happens to our good works: they cease to be the vital acts wherein an ontologically real "new life" consists and manifests itself; they become mere human responses to divine mercy—nice, but totally irrelevant to our justification—or else they become zombie-like motions produced in us by irresistible divine impulses, whereby God exhibits His glory in His elect.

Now, again, few Protestants have thought these matters through. Most do not realize that the theology they have inherited derives historically from nominalistic assumptions, which led Luther and Calvin to deny the existence of sanctifying grace. Rather, they feel that they are simply reading St. Paul. "By grace are ye saved, through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast" (Ephesians 2:8f). They feel that an extrinsic, purely declaratory justification is the obvious meaning of such passages. Catholic apologetics, therefore, must show the opposite. It is no use arguing metaphysics until we break down that lively conviction by which the Protestant feels that St. Paul is his home turf. We must show that St. Paul's real position is far closer to that of Trent than to that of Luther.

Here, then is apologetics at work in a different way—the way of exact and objective exegesis.(6)

The place to begin is with the fact that St. Paul expounds and contrasts two economies of justification or two orders of righteousness. Thus, Philippians 3:9 says: "(I counted all things loss) that I might be found in Him, not having my own justice, which is from the Law, but the justice which is from the faith of Jesus Christ, the justice that comes from God through faith." Here the main contrast is between justice from the Law and justice , whereupon a second contrast emerges between justice and justice God.

This second contrast reappears in Romans 10:3, "(The Jews) not knowing the justice of God and seeking to establish their own justice, did not submit to God's justice."

We learn the result of this Jewish conduct in Romans 9:30-32, "What shall we say then? The gentiles, who were not pursuing justice, laid hold of justice, but the justice which is from faith. Israel, however, pursuing the law of justice, did not attain the law" (i.e. did not accomplish or fulfill it). The exact interpretation of this text has been debated,(7) but for our purposes it suffices to see that Paul was speaking of a justice pursued by way of works and that such justice was the great ambition of the Jews in connection with the Law of Moses.

The point that Mosaic legal justice was a matter of works reappears in Romans 10:5 ("Moses wrote of the justice which is from the law that the man who keeps it shall live by it," quoting from Leviticus 18:5) in contrast with the justice from faith. The same is said in Galatians 3:12 ("But the law is not from faith; rather the one who does those things will live in them") and in Romans 2:13 ("It is not the hearers of the Law who have been justified before God but the doers of the Law will be justified," i.e. will be declared just at the last judgment), and this is expounded at length in Romans 2: 23-27: "You who glory in the Law, you dishonor God by transgression of the Law....To be sure, circumcision is profitable if you observe the Law; but if you transgress the Law, you are returned to a state of uncircumcision. So, if the uncircumcised man keeps the just precepts of the Law, shouldn't he be regarded as circumcised? In fact, the man who remains in his natural state of uncircumcision and who has accomplished the Law will judge you, who with letter and circumcision have broken the Law."

So, over against the justice of God, which is the justice of faith, there is a self-justice which is of the Law and which is a justice of works. This latter would give men a basis for boasting (Romans 4:2, Ephesians 2:8-9), since works give one a strict right to be considered just: "To the man who has works, his salary is not counted as a favor but as something due," (Romans 4:4).

Now, as a matter of practical fact, does anyone really have this self-justice of Law and works? Over and over again Paul answers in the negative: "for from the works of the Law no flesh is justified before Him" (Romans 3:20); "Israel, pursuing a law of justice, did not attain to the Law; why? because Israel did not seek to attain it through faith but through works" (Romans 9:31-32); "For all who proceed by the works of the Law are under the curse; for it is written, 'Cursed be anyone who does not persevere in practicing all that is written in the Book of the Law'"(Galatians 3:10, quoting Deuteronomy 27: 26 and the context indicates that the curse has indeed gone into effect).

How does St. Paul back up this startling thesis? How does he explain the failure of anyone to be justified before God by the works of the Law? Here are the steps of his answer.

1. "For through the law comes knowledge of sin" (Romans 3:20). The law makes sin better known. What else?

2. "The law works (God's) wrath. For where there is no law, there is no transgression" (Romans 4:15), meaning, of course, no transgression of positive law.

3. Such transgression is deadly. "For while we were in the flesh, the passions of sins, which were through the law, worked in our members so as to bring forth death" (Romans 7:5). The passions or causes of sins were stirred up by the law. "While we were in the flesh" describes the situation of Christians before their baptism. So the law is clearly being given some part of the responsibility for the existence or activity of the passions which lead to various sins. What is this responsibility?

4. The answer is given in Romans 7:7-25, a text which falls into two parts, verses 7-12 and 13-25. Here is the first part. "What shall we say? Is the law sin? Far from it! But I would not have known sin except through the law. For indeed I would not have known covetousness, if the law had not said, 'Thou shalt not covet.' But sin, taking occasion of the commandment, produced in me all covetousness; for without law sin is dead. So long as there is no law, I was alive; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died, and the commandment which was for the sake of life turned out to be for death. For sin, taking occasion of the commandment, seduced me and, through it, killed me. So then the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, just and good."

There is a human story here, but whose story is it? St. Paul's "me" is certainly not meant to refer exclusively to himself. Some interpreters have thought he meant the young Jew in general and then, perhaps, by analogy, any young person. For just as the young Jew gains awareness of sin through learning the revealed Law, so also the young Gentile learns sin through the emergence of his conscience at the age of reason. On this interpretation, the time when I was alive without the law was the time of my non-responsible childhood. Thus Origen and St. Jerome.(8) Other interpreters have thought that Paul's "me" is the subject of human history. Man knew sin before Moses but not with the same killing exactitude. It is one thing to have nature or conscience as one's accuser and quite another to have God Himself. Hence the time when I was alive without the Law was the time before Moses. Thus Chrysostom(9) and Aquinas(10). Still others have thought that Paul was speaking of universal human experience as prototyped in Adam. Our first parent "lived" until God gave him a commandment, of which sin was able to take advantage. Thus Theodore of Mopsuestia.(11)

It may be the case that St. Paul had something of each of these possibilities in mind. Only Adam and Eve were fully innocent before they learned God's positive law. But each of us is somewhat like Adam in this: whenever we become fully aware of a divine commandment, the experience marks a crucial transition both (a) from whatever vague sense of unease we may have felt beforehand to the conscious guilt we must feel afterward, and (b) from the lesser malice of just "doing as we please" to the infinitely greater malice of pleasing ourselves in defiance of God. And this experience of transition which each of us has (perhaps in one way upon reaching the age of reason, and in other ways later in life) in turn parallels the collective experience of our race in history, as the "age of ignorance" yielded to the epoch of Sinai.

In any case, we are now ready for the second part of this text (Romans 7:13-25), which clearly depicts the state of life under the Law of Moses. "Did what is good then become death for me? Far from it! But sin, in order to appear as sin, gave me death by means of a good thing, so that sin might be held the more guilty through the fact of the commandment. For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am corporeal [Paul's word here is not his usual which means dominated by the flesh, but which means made of the flesh.], sold into the service of sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I should like to do, I do not do; but what I hate, I do. So if I do what I don't want to, I recognize that the law is good. But then it is no longer I who do it but the sin which dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. In effect, the desire for good is within my power but not the practice of it....For in my inner self I take pleasure in the Law of God, but I perceive another law in my members, which struggles against the law of my reason, and which enslaves me to the law of sin which is in my members....Thus it is one and the same me who serve the Law of God through my reason but the law of sin through my flesh."

Here the "me" is no longer considered in its state of relative innocence. Sin has emerged, and an inner conflict is unfolding under the most unfavorable conditions. Sin is no longer an agent external to man, as in the case of innocent Adam, nor an interior but latent principle, as in the case of a small child. Sin has become a "law" of the flesh.(12) Given this new power of sin, there emerges a new "me," whom Paul says has fallen into the power of sin.

Nearly every ancient commentator, plus a virtual unanimity of modern exegetes, Catholic and Protestant alike, has understood this new "me" to be the Jew existing under the Mosaic Law. What makes this exegesis inevitable is the fact that Paul, in the verses which follow immediately, makes this sorry state of inner defeat, this impotency of one's better self, a foil for the totally different experience now available in Christ. Through Him we are able to behave "not as our corporeal nature dictates but as the spirit dictates" (Romans 8:4).

Such was also St. Augustine's exegesis, until, at the end of his life and in further reaction to Pelagianism, he changed his mind and extended the "me" of Romans 7 to the Christian.(13) (St. Augustine's example on this point was followed by St. Gregory the Great, Peter Lombard, and Thomas Aquinas.) Needless to say, Luther, Melanchthon, and the Calvinists were delighted to adopt such an idea. To this day, the sad doctrine that our justification must be something merely declaratory has one of its most powerful roots in this fateful mistake: what St. Paul considered the paradigm experience of the Jew under the Law is confused with the paradigm experience of the Christian under the power of grave! And it is interesting to note that the revivalist wing of Protestantism tends to escape this mistake. Encountering Christ in deep experiences of conversion, they taste the power of His victory over sin in their own lives; having tasted it, they have not a doubt in the world that they have been changed inwardly, that God has given them new hearts, and that the nightmare experience of Romans 7 is over for them. Of course, the Christian can fall back into that nightmare. This is the grain of truth in St. Augustine's later exegesis. The Christian can cease to live in the power of Christ; he can neglect prayer, grow cold, and find himself thrown back on his own resources; when he does so, inevitably, he will repeat within himself the experience of the Jew under the Law. For St. Paul's essential point is valid under either covenant: the moral information of the commandment, no matter how sublime, is powerless of itself to secure our practice of the good. Being nothing of itself but an external norm and not an active force, the Law boxes the unconverted or half-converted human heart into an unbearable situation, from which there is no escape but a new and totally different kind of law: "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:2). To this latter St. Augustine also gave full weight elsewhere in his theology, and in that regard the Reformers did not follow him.

In summary, then, what was wrong with the Jewish project to achieve righteousness from the Law is this: the project prescinded from God's grace. Taken in abstraction from grace, the Law was powerless; destined to be disobeyed at least inwardly,(14) the Law served to provoke and deepen sin.

Though it may seem odd to summarize our discussion in that way, introducing suddenly the mention of grace, there is a reason for doing so. Romans 7, with its abstract dialectic of Law and sin, better self and concupiscence, has to be understood consistently with what St. Paul has already said in Romans 2. There he seems to treat the keeping of the commandments as a real possibility: "for when the gentiles, who do not have the Law, naturally do the things of the Law..."(Romans 2:14). In fact, he says, "God will render to each man according to his works: eternal life to those who, dedicating themselves with perseverance to good works, seek glory, honor and immortality...glory honor and peace to all who do good, to the Jew first and to the Greek" (Romans 2:7) and this in a context in which the revelation of Christ is not even under discussion yet.

These words certainly show that St. Paul did not regard good works as impossible, misguided, or pernicious, as some Protestant exegetes have tried to hold. Quite the contrary. But if St. Paul seems to admit justifying works in Romans 2 and to exclude them in Romans 7, the most plausible explanation is that he is speaking of the total human condition in chapter 2, where grace is at work among Jew and gentile alike, whereas in chapter 7 he is showing what happens when the Law is isolated from grace. Such isolation is exactly what is sought, when man seeks his own righteousness on the basis of law.

Moreover, what we have been saying squares with St. Paul's remarks on the function of the Law in God's overall plan of salvation. "The Law intervened so that sin might abound" (Romans 5:20), that is, so that men might become more convinced of their sins and learn humility from their moral failures. For such humility would dispose them toward the ultimate end of the Law: "for the end of the Law is Christ" (Romans 10:4). As Paul explains: "Before faith came, we were placed under the guardianship of the Law, sealed up in expectation of the faith which was to be revealed. Thus the Law was our teacher until Christ" (Galatians 3:23f).

St. Paul's conviction that God intended the Law to be provisional has its roots in the earliest preaching of the Church. Stunned by the death and resurrection of Jesus, whom they had thought to be the Messiah, the first disciples were compelled to search the Scriptures for a clue to the meaning of these shattering events. By combining Psalm 18 (alluded to in Acts 2:23) with Psalms 16 and 110, Peter and the others were able to see that death and resurrection had been part of the script, so to speak, for the Messiah. God had all along intended that His Christ should suffer (Acts 2:23; 3:18) and that he should not receive his sovereignty on earth but in Heaven, after a resurrection (compare Acts 2:25-35 with the vision of the Son of Man in heaven in Daniel 7). These points had to be preached, because otherwise the Jews could not be persuaded that the facts about Jesus, however true, "filled the bill" of messianic prophecy. But merely to preach these points of correspondence was not enough. The question remained, why? Why should the Messiah have to go through all that! It made no sense, given Judaism's picture of what was wrong with the world. According to that picture, what was wrong was Israel's failure to enjoy the exaltation among the nations which was her due as God's people. What needed fixing was the geo-political situation. For once the Messiah had made Zion the visible center of divine and human power, the nations would flow up to her, forsaking their idols, and the blessing of the knowledge of the Law would flow out to all people. But if the Messiah was supposed to suffer and die, mankind's religious problem had to be quite different from what the Jewish picture contemplated. What was needed was a clue to a whole new picture. This clue was found in the Servant Songs of Isaiah (especially Isaiah 52:13 -53:12), where the suffering and death of the Servant are presented as a vicarious atonement for sin. "By his suffering shall my servant justify many, taking their faults upon himself" (Isaiah 53:11). If the servant and the Messiah were one and the same figure, that would explain everything, including certain dark sayings of Jesus (Mark 10:45; 14:24). But it would also explode the Jewish world-view. If the Messiah's central mission was to deal with sin, then the problem to which the Messiah was the answer went back beyond the Davidic Monarchy and even beyond Moses; it went clear back to Adam. And if mankind's central religious problem was not ignorance of the Law but bondage to sin, then faith in the Redeemer-from-sin would have to be the guiding thread of God's plan for man, from the beginning. Was it not written: "The just man shall live by faith" (Habakuk 2:4)?

This is the thought that led Paul to Abraham, the man whose faith was reckoned to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:6; Romans 4:1-11; Galatians 3:15ff). At the very origin of Israel, Paul found in Abraham's faith the thread resumed in Christ; whereupon the entire Mosaic sub-plot could be read as a parenthesis ordained to Christ.

The Jewish project to seek one's own justice from the Law, then, was not only psychologically impossible (Romans 7) but also contrary to the plan of the ages, in which the Law had no function but this: in leading us to Christ, to render itself obsolete. Now we can understand why Paul cried out in frustration at the obtuse Galatians: "If the Law can justify us, there is no point in the death of Christ" (Galatians 2:21).

And the time has come to examine that other kind of justice mentioned by Paul: the justice which comes from God through faith.

"For in it (the Gospel) the justice of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, 'The just shall live from faith"' (Romans 1:17). What is this justice "of God" (dikaiosune theou)? If the genitive is one of attribution, then what has been revealed is God's own attribute rather than something He gives to men. Thus Origen(15) and Pseudo-Ambrose.(16) But if the genitive is one of source, then what is revealed is a justice conferred on men by God. Thus Chrysostom,(17) Augustine,(18) and most modern exegetes.(19) What lends weight to the second interpretation is the fact that God's own justice gets revealed precisely in His conferring justice on men, as Paul himself suggests: "so that He Himself might be just and render just the man who has faith in Jesus Christ" (Romans 3:26). By contrast, Luther's notion that "the justice of God" here refers to His vindictive action against sinners is totally unsupported either by the Fathers or by the modern scholars.

The thought of Romans 1:17 is picked up again in Romans 3:21-22: "Now the justice of God, to which the Law and the prophets bear witness, has been manifested apart from the Law, the very justice which, through faith in Jesus Christ, comes to all those who believe, without distinction." Here there is no doubt that God's justice is something which comes to men, is communicated to men.

In this light, look again at a text we saw before: "(The Jews) not knowing the justice of God and seeking to establish their own justice, did not submit to God's justice" (Romans 10:3) We can now see that the contrast is not between God's attribute and man's achievement, but rather between something God communicates to man and something man tries to achieve on his own. Both pertain to man, and so, they are rivals, Now, we can begin to understand this "non-submission." It was not the attitude of the true heroes of the Old Testament. Besides the example of Abraham, we have a whole catalogue of Jews who lived "by faith" in Hebrews 11, a document which, if not by Paul himself, was certainly written by someone intimately concurrent with his thought. "There is not time for me to give an account of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, or of David, Samuel and the prophets. These men who through faith conquered kingdoms, did what is right and earned the promises." (Hebrews 11:32f) Now the key to these men, by virtue of which they are said to have lived "by faith", is not that they did not do any works of the Law! Obviously. Rather, the key is that they lived in total dependence upon God's promises, in total openness to what God would yet reveal. That is why there is no contradiction between their attitude and the surprising turn which revelation took in Jesus Christ. But the other and later Jews had so reduced faith to the keeping of the Law, that the Law could not be provisional; as a result, their whole attitude toward God was not one of expectant faith but one of satisfied accomplishment. So, when the justice that God had all along intended to confer upon man was revealed in Jesus the Servant-Messiah, they did not submit to it. Not so obtuse as Luther, they could see that this "justice of God" was meant for them and so was a rival to the justice they already thought they had. And not so obtuse as the Galatians, they could see that if the Messiah's death had a point to it, then the Law could not justify them.

Now, if what Paul means by is not something to remain in God but something meant to be conferred on us, then we must reckon with that mysterious possibility: a quality of man which is the property of God! Does St. Paul say anything to indicate a knowledge of this possibility? Indeed he does: "God has made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that we in him might become justice of God" (II Cor. 5:21). This verse is the pattern on which Athanasius would learn to say, "God became man, so that man might become divine." It is not a question of replacement but of participation, and the participation is real in both directions. First in Jesus: just as really as the Word took our humanity, just that really his humanity became God. And then in us: just as really as Christ-God took our sins (so really that even the Father forsook Him—Mark 15:34), just that really we receive God's justice. For if we dare to believe that in the Incarnation our nature, without ceasing to be a human nature, received God's subsistence, then we may easily believe that we, in Christ, receive God's justice as our quality. In fact, St. Paul even has a name for this quality. In the very next verse (II Cor. 6:1) he says: "As God's co-workers, we beg you once again not to have received God's grace in vain." What we should not "receive in vain" is exactly what Paul has just said we have "become" in Christ. God's justice is His grace, a gift to men. That is why the justice of God is identically "the justice which God through faith" (Philippians 3:9).

What emerges from these texts, then, is the existence in man of a justice conferred by God. But this justice is tied into faith, whether before Christ's coming, as in the case of Abraham, or afterwards, as in our case. What we must explore next is the nature of this tie-in between justice and faith.

St. Paul's most important text on faith is Romans 10:13-17: "Whoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. But how shall they call upon one in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how shall they hear if no one preaches? And how shall anyone preach unless he has been sent...But not everyone has obeyed () the Gospel. As Isaiah said, 'Lord, who has believed our report?' So faith depends upon preaching and preaching upon the word of Christ" We have here an order of necessary conditions, which inverts to yield the following order of precedence: (1) The word or teaching of Christ, i.e. the Gospel; (2) the mission to preach given to the Apostles; (3) their preaching; (4) our hearing, and finally (5) an act which may be described equally well as () and as obedience ().(20)

The point that faith is based on hearing is made also in Galatians 3:2 and 5: "Did you receive the spirit on the basis of the works of the Law or on the basis of the hearing of faith?" And the point that faith is receiving the words of the Apostles in a spirit of obedience to God is found again in I Thessalonians 2:13 "We thank God for the fact that, as soon as you received through us the word of God which you heard from our mouth, you heard it as God's word." This is why Paul twice speaks of "the obedience of faith" (Romans 1:5 and 16:26, the genitive being appositional) and also why II Cor. 10:5 says that every thought (or every intellect) is to be brought into a captivity which is "obedience of Christ."

These texts indicate that what St. Paul called "faith" certainly included the scholastic sense of the term (assent or submission of the intellect to the truths taught by Christ to His Apostles, and by them to us, on the authority of God) but also included more. The reader should remember that the scholastic definition of 'faith' was designed to do a technical job, namely, to designate the common content of 'living faith' () and 'dead faith' (). It does this job very well; the common content is intellectual assent to the revealed message. But St. Paul's term 'faith' was used by him to designate man's rightful response to Christ's message. Now, where this message consists of truths of fact (e.g. "Before Abraham was, I am"; "I and the Father are one," etc.) intellectual assent is all there is to the rightful response; but where the message contains imperatives ("Repent and be baptized"), consolations ("Fear not, I have overcome the world"), promises ("But I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice"), examples ("When you pray, pray like this: Our Father...") etc., there the rightful response is to do as one is commanded, take the consolation, trust the promise, heed the example and so forth. Indeed, to believe in a command intellectually and then not do it, to accept a consolation intellectually and then not feel it, to acknowledge a promise and then not trust it—these are even unnatural responses. "Dead faith" is an ugly thing—not just "unformed" but deformed by sin and shot-through with the self-contradiction which lies at the heart of every sin.

So, a rightful response to Christ's total message must not only include faith in the narrow sense but must be what St. Paul calls "obedience of faith," which is just what Catholic theology calls the acts of faith, hope and love.(21)

We are now in a position to see the tie-in between faith and justice. Observe first of all how St. Paul expresses the connection in prepositions. He speaks of God's "justice which is () faith" (Romans 9:30; 10:6); he says we are "justified faith" (Gal. 2:16; 3:24). So justice is distinct from faith; it proceeds from it. Justice has its source and point of departure in faith. However, lest we should get the idea that justice is a direct "output" of faith, or a natural derivative, it is vital to see that a divine action intervenes between faith and justice: "God justifies the Gentiles from faith" (Gal. 3:8,30; cf. Romans 3:24). This divine action is highlighted by Paul's other favorite preposition, the instrumental , through. "God's justice is through faith" (Romans 3:22; Phil. 3:9) "he justifies the gentiles through faith" (Romans 3:30). So man gets justified, but God does the justifying, and He does it by means of faith, using faith as an instrument. Elsewhere we have it (Phil. 3:10) that "the justice from God is on the basis of faith ()" and (Hebrews 11:7) "according to faith ()

These prepositions instruct us on how to take Paul's meaning when he dispenses with prepositions in favor of a simple instrumental dative: "For we think that man is justified by faith" (Romans 3:28); "through Him (Christ) we have access by faith" (Romans 5:1). The meaning is the same as before. Faith remains God's instrument in justifying, and not (as Luther supposed) man's instrument in getting justified.

But how does God use this instrument? We have an indication from Romans 4:3f. "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him () for justice." In the Hebrew of Genesis 15:6, the verb is active: "God counted it as justice." So the mystery is being described as an accounting procedure. God credits to Abraham's account as having the value of Now the question is what kind of accounting this is. Luther supposed that God took a thing of no real value (our faith) and made it stand for something of value. God doctored the Book of Life! Such an idea has no foundation in the text. The key verb here () is used throughout the Septuagint (Psalm 106:31; Isa. 40:17), and even in Koine Greek, and in the New Testament (Acts 19:17), and even in St. Paul's epistle to the Romans (2:26; 9:8), to mean an honest reckoning, based on a real equivalence of value between the two things. Nowhere does the crediting presuppose a disproportion between the thing furnished (e.g. faith) and the value put on it (e.g. justice). No, indeed; what Abraham's faith is said to count for in Gen. 15:6 is the very thing which the keeping of the Law is said to count for in Deuteronomy 6:25 and 24:13. Living faith is worth righteousness. Yes, but not in the way that works are worth it. Hear how Paul continues the passage which he started about Abraham (Romans 4:4f): "To the one who works, his wages are not credited to him according to grace but according to what is owed. But to the one who does not work but believes in Him who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited to him for righteousness. " So, if faith is really worth righteousness, it is not worth it in the way that works are. The latter have their value in the order of strict justice, whereas faith has its value in the order of grace ().

Does it follow, then, that the order of grace is arbitrary, unreal, an order in which the worthless is accorded fictitious worth? Not at all! We have seen what living faith really is. It is that rightful response to the Gospel, whereby man assents to the truths, heeds the commands, feels the consolations, trusts the promises—in short, it is that total attitude toward God which (as from a source) or through which (as by a means) God can draw forth every good work with the further help of His actual graces. Between such faith as a basis and the "measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" as an apex, there is a real continuity and proportion. is why God can use faith to justify us, and why He can, without dishonesty, credit that faith to our account as the root and foundation of all justice.

For as St. Paul himself says, in a verse which ought to have stopped the mouth of Luther forever, "We are God's handiwork, having been created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them" (Ephesians 2:10). Our new creaturehood in Christ Jesus is our reception, through grace, of the "obedience of faith." Through that faith, as through an instrument, God has refashioned us, making us now prompt to obey. Our new estate is thus ordered to good works as to its intrinsic and God-intended finality. With what joy, therefore, do we walk in them, we who believe! And woe to us if we do not walk in them, for then we betray our faith and frustrate God's handiwork.

So we have, and are intended to have, works. Does it follow that we may boast? Not at all! For our works, unlike the works attempted by the Jew under the Law, are not us but God. Rooted in God's gift, brought forth by living faith, God's instrument in us, these works are grace-works. They are our justice faith, and therefore they are justice in the order of grace (), not in the order of self-achievement where boasting arises.

Living faith: our quality but God's instrument; good works: out deeds but God's handiwork; our deeds as men living in Christ, not the motions of "graced" zombies still dead in sin—these are the possibilities overlooked by Luther and Calvin but preached by Paul and defined by Trent.

1 Council of Trent, Canons on Justification, especially canon 24; Denzinger-Schoenmetzer # 1574. The Church considers herself bound to this position by James 2:14-26.

2 The teaching of the Second Council of Orange is given in Denzinger ## 374ff. and that of Trent in #1553. To say that, prior to a person's conversion (or baptism), his or her "good deeds" may merit God's grace is Pelagianism or worse; even to say that man has the initiative in this preparatory stage, or that his first response of faith is his own free motion, his own step the grace of God and not already an effect of the grace of God, is a heresy (Semi-Pelagianism).

3 Trent, Decree on Justification, chapter 8 (Denz. # 1532), and canon 9 (Denz. 1559).

5 See the magnificent discussion in Louis Bouyer, (Westminster: Newman Press) 1956.

6 In what follows, I borrow substantially from the classic exposition by Lemonnyer in the , vol VIII/2, col. 2050ff.

7 Compare the view of St. John Chrysostom, (hereafter=PG) 60, col. 563, with that of Aquinas, In epistolam ad Romanos>, c. 9, lect 5

12 When discussing this passage with a Protestant, most especially a Protestant male, one must keep in mind that one is talking to a person who went through the travails of adolescence without the help of the Sacraments. To such a person, it seems the most obvious thing in the world (too obvious, indeed, to be mentioned that what St. Paul is talking about is erection, sexual lust, and other aspects of arousal. This idea is abetted by the King James Version, which uses 'lust' and 'concupiscence' throughout this passage, where I have used 'covetousness'—words which had a broader meaning in the 17th Century, of course, than they have today. The fact of the matter is that Paul is not speaking exclusively nor even primarily of sexual matter. By the "law in our members" he means the whole phenomenon of over-inclination towards visible, tangible, worldly goods and values—an overinclination to which man's bodily nature () makes him naturally liable, and to which Adam's fall has made man not only liable but actually subject (). Thus man's sinfulness, for Paul is a broad-based as man's very secularity. In light, it is intelligible why even the very first and most basic commandment of the Law, the commandment to have God alone as one's ultimate concern, should prove to be so difficult, cross-grained, and frustrating to us.

Catholic children, thanks to the early and regular practice of Confession, tend to grow up with a better grasp of this broad character of "sin." But in Protestant countries, few factors have been more ruinous to Christianity than the tendency to almost identify sin with sex and thereby to shift the center of "sin" away from deliberate acts and towards the uncontrollable motions of the "id" or the genitals.

14 I say "at least inwardly" because, as far as public and merely external observations are concerned, Paul concedes that he himself was blameless: Philippians 3:6. See Aquinas's comment, c. 3, lect. 2.

20 For the same indifference between 'faith' and 'obedience', compare Rom. 10:16 with II Thess. 3:2.

21 See how the acts called hope and love are founded on intellectual assent (otherwise I wouldn't even acknowledge the command or the promise, etc.) but add to it in such a way that the assent the loving assent of the whole man. This is why Trent, using 'faith' in the narrow sense, was right to say that faith is the root and foundation of all justification that faith is made living by hope and love.

(Appendix 4 from "Reasons for Hope" published by Christendom Press, 2101 Shenandoah Shores Road, Front Royal, VA 22630, (800) 877-5456.)

I found this analysis of Gnosticism vis-a-vis faith alone interesting.

nosis

First off, what does “Gnostic” mean? The term Gnostic refers to someone seeking “Gnosis”. Gnosis is the Greek word for Knowledge. It refers to direct experiential knowledge of divinity. While Gnosticism is not strictly Christian, the manner in which it will be discussed on this site lends itself quite well to Christian symbolism. Also, the form of religious ceremonial which the author has received training and ordination in is similar in many ways to the Catholic Eucharist (aka Mass.) The Roman Catholic Church is the religion in which the author was raised and it has had quite an impact on his spirituality. Therefore, it is useful to make a brief note comparing the Gnostic tradition with the two most prominent forms of Christianity. In Protestant theology, salvation comes to those with Faith. All you have to do is accept Jesus as your Lord and Master and have Faith that he died for your sins and you are guaranteed a place in Heaven. In Roman Catholicism, Faith is important, but you must back it up with Action if you are to have any chance of entering the Kingdom of God. In Gnosticism, Faith and Good Works are only stepping stones to Gnosis. Gnostics, in general, feel that “salvation” is gained through directly Knowing God. This relates to the Merkava tradition in mystical Judaism. The goal of the Merkava practice was to ascend through the various heavens (giving certain passwords and signs to gain entrance) until you reached the Throne of God and looked directly at the Face of God. Ezekiel is believed to have been a mystic from this tradition. The apocryphal books attributed to Enoch also appear to belong to this style of mysticism.

The Demi-Urge

The typical Gnostic cosmologies include an entity they call the “Demi-Urge,” who is the creator and ruler of the physical world. The term Archon (pronounced AR-kon) means “Ruler” and refer to the helpers of the Demi-Urge (who is the Chief Archon.) Although the Demi-Urge is the creator and ruler of the physical plane, he is not the God Most High (GMH). Sometimes he is named Samael, which means “Blinded of God” because he thinks himself to be the highest god. Included in these Gnostic cosmologies is a being who is a reflection or image (which implies Light) of the GMH. The Demi-Urge sees this image of a God higher them himself and gets scared. He binds this reflection (which is an entity unto itself, often called “Adam Kadmon” in Qabalistic literature) into his physical creation in an attempt to gain control over it. This was all part of the big plan (which involves a feminine character called Sophia, which I won’t go into detail about in this introductory article.) The image of GMH was shown to the Demi-Urge with the knowledge of what would happen. The reasoning behind this plan was that this image of GMH had power over the Demi-Urge. When this image remembered itself, it would overthrow the Demi-Urge from below and establish the Kingdom of God in the physical plane as it was above the realm of the Demi-Urge. According to this cosmology, the Demi-Urge either created the physical universe in a flawed manner, or that he damaged the physical plane when he uttered, “There is no God before me!” In all versions, the Demi-Urge endeavors to keep us ignorant in order to maintain control over us.

Prison Planet?

One notable version of this Gnostic cosmology states that we are to escape this prison. It states that when we die, our spirit rises through the planes in an attempt to reunite with GMH. On the way there it gets trapped by the Demi-Urge and Archons, stripped of it’s memories and sent back down into matter. The way out of this is to attain Gnosis, which will endow the Gnostic with the Knowledge that she or he has the power to overcome these Archons and how to do it. This is similar to popular Buddhist thought, where the object is to escape the physical plane of existence. In Tibetan Buddhism, they call this Liberation Through Clear Seeing in the Bardo (Bardo is the “in-between” state after physical death.) However, in Buddhism we can also see a parallel to the earlier mentioned Gnostic goal of overcoming the Demi-Urge not to escape the physical world, but to perfect/repair it. This comes in the form of the Bodhisattva ideal and in the perfect city of Shambhala.

The Bodhisattva vows to continue to reincarnate in a physical vehicle until every sentient being has been enlightened. Shambhala is a perfect city hidden somewhere in the Himalayan mountains. If you work at it, some day you will be reincarnated there. The story of Shambala is also apocalyptic. At some future time, a malevolent warlord will gain knowledge enough to find and invade Shambalah. A true black-magic practitioner and incarnation of an Archon, if not the Chief Archon. This figure also calls to mind the “Anti-Christ.” All hell breaks loose and a full world war occurs. Eventually, the powers of Good win out and Shambhala is established in the world as a whole. This should sound familiar in many ways to those who have read the book of Revelations in the Christian New Testament. Shambalah to me, represents the same thing as the New Jerusalem in that book. The whole cosmology can be summarized in four stages: Unconscious Unity (”when all was formless and void”), Unconscious Separation (after creation and still in the “Garden of Eden”), Conscious Separation (After “The Fall”) and finally Conscious Unity (”The New Jerusalem.”)

All that being said, what must be realized is that none of these complex cosmologies are true in a literal sense. They are simply allegories. Such colourful words and elaborate stories were created to express something which we do not have the words to express directly. They are the finger pointing at the moon, not the moon itself. In reality, all of these stages exist simultaneously. If the reader is familiar with the Qabalistic Tree of Life, they will understand that the primal state of Unconscious Unity represented by Kether and more especially the three veils of Negative Existence didn’t cease to “exist” once the other spheres of existence came into being. If everything in existence ultimately resolves into one, then we can see how the rest of the states of being are represented at all times. For example, rocks and trees exist in the world of duality, however they do not have the same kind of self-consciousness that humans and other animals do. This is the Unconscious Separation “stage.” Humans and most animals are aware that that they are individuals (a word stemming from the same root as “divide.”) This is the Conscious Separation stage. There are also those who are fully conscious of the fact that everything is One. That everything they experience is simply an aspect and manifestation of the one “God Most High” including themselves. Their entire existence has been transformed. The world is perfect and in unity. It is the New Jerusalem/Shambalah. This is Conscious Unity. The path that took them to that point would have been filled with difficulty, anguish and much destruction which would have appeared in their lives internally as well as externally (all is one anyways.) The story of Christ depicts one such individual who overcame division and entered that fourth stage.

Lucifer

Now for Lucifer. How does he tie into this? Well, Lucifer is that image of God Most High (GMH) that was imprisoned in matter in order to perfect it. Some of you may be thinking, “How can that be? Satan is the image of God?” In the earlier articles on this site, Lucifer and Satan are often considered separate entities. The author’s opinions and use of terminology has changed and evolved along the way but the articles are typcially shown in their original form, sometimes with minor editing. In this article, Satan is another title for the Archons and Demi-Urge. The word “satan” actually means “adversary,” so the connection with the Archons is obvious. A title of Lucifer is “The Morning Star” which is the last luminary visible in the sky before sunrise. It isn’t actually a star, but is the planet Venus. The word “lucifer” actually means “light bearer,” which gives a good general description of how the Gnostic Lucifer is viewed. This title connects Lucifer with figures in several other traditions, most notably Prometheus.

Prometheus

Prometheus stole the fire of the “gods” and brought it to mankind. As a result, he was chained to a mountain and every day, an eagle would come and eat his liver. Every night it would grow back. Eventually, Hercules came along, killed the Eagle and released Prometheus from his chains. This story, looked at from a Gnostic Luciferian viewpoint, would represent the image of GMH being imprisoned in matter for the purpose of bringing enlightenment to it. The Eagle eating the liver is symbolic of the sexual force (scorpio) being used to keep us trapped. Once the Eagle has been overcome, liberation is inevitable. This does not mean that one must destroy the sexual force or remain celibate. The verb “to know” in the bible is often used to denote sexual union. It is no coincidence that Gnosis also means Knowledge. In many Gnostic texts, Christ mentions the internal union of male and female aspects as being a key to salvation. Many esoteric traditions around the world include the physical representation of this union as an aid in attaining the internal state of union. One of these traditions which is most people have heard about is called Tantra and can be found in Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism (the Taoist Tantra is more commonly called “Internal Alchemy.”)

In Tantra, the reproductive force is conceived of in the form of a fiery serpent they call Kundalini. In the Western Mysteries, Lucifer is also conceived of as a serpent; sometimes a fire-breathing, winged serpent or a dragon. The path of directly working with the sexual force in the pursuit of Gnosis is a very difficult and rocky path. For most people, working indirectly or less directly with the sexual force tends to be the less perilous path. One could compare it to the fable of the tortoise and the hare. The hare (a symbol of vigorous sexuality, to be sure!) is able to tread the path quite quickly, but falls asleep halfway through. The tortoise takes it slow, but remains determined and progresses steadily without incident. The tortoise even reaches the goal before the hare! However, the real issue to keep in mind here is that they both reach the goal, and in real life, this isn’t a race.

The Cosmic and Indwelling Christ

So where does Jesus come into the picture? Gnostics tend not to talk a lot about Jesus, preferring rather to speak about the Christ. The difference is that Jesus was an historical figure from 2000 years ago, whereas the Christ is ever present. We can never truly Know Jesus, but we can Know the Christ. Most Gnostics will receive illumination from studying the written accounts (gospels) of the life of Jesus because this figure was closely associated with the Christ. To what extent, it is hard to know for sure. If the accounts are correct, it would appear that Jesus fully manifested the Christ. Now, what is the Christ? The Christ is identical with Lucifer, except for the fact that it has become fully Conscious. It has “remembered itself” and can now overthrow the Archons. The Christ is no longer bound by the limitations of matter (Hercules removing the chains binding Prometheus to the mountain), is no longer subject to death (”Death is swallowed up in Victory”) and can help others achieve this state. The connection between Christ and Lucifer is alluded to in the book of Revelations (which is written in the style of the books of Enoch.) In chapter 22, Christ says, “I am the root and offspring of David and the Bright and Morning Star.” The word Bright added to the beginning of the title denotes full consciousness (aka enlightenment or lucidity, both terms which have their root meaning “light.”)

Also connected with the resurrected Christ is the phrase: Death is swallowed up in Victory. This is an amazingly deep phrase. On the Qabalistic Tree of Life, Victory is the primary title of the sphere which rules the energies represented by the planet Venus. Lucifer is the title the Romans gave to Venus in it’s aspect as the Morning Star. Through the full “awakening” of the Lucifer within, even Death can be overcome and the Christ can be embodied. It may seem that this is a long ways off, but all through the writings of Adepts and Masters we are told that this can be accomplished in one lifetime. The key to this is to recognize the illusion of time and separation. All of these “stages” are present at all times and we are already one with those who are living in that stage. We just have to attune ourselves to it. That being said, becoming fully conscious of the illusion of time and separation takes place while still caught up in those illusions! Therefore, we must work in increments to increase this consciousness.

Jesus discusses what he expects of those who believe in him: The Judgment

Reading the scripture not for what you want it to say..but for what it does say is important

This like other parables makes much of the separation of the saved and the unsaved.... Like the wheat and the tares , the corn and the chaff on the floor, the good fish and the bad fish at the shore, Notice the sheep were rewarded for their ministry to the BRETHREN..

Mat 25:40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done [it] unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done [it] unto me.

Kindness to the other of the children of God (the sheep) .. taking care of their physical needs..

Mat 25:34 — Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

Notice that the sheep INHERIT the Kingdom.. ..an inheritance is not an earned wage.. no one EARNS an inheritance ..it is a freely given love gift..

Children inherit from their Fathers..

The Goats were without rewards for not doing works.. Does that mean they never did a good deed in their existence? Even avid avowed atheists do kindnesses to other men.. give to charities and so on ...was this just an especially unkind group?

Well note this..

Mat 25:45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did [it] not to one of the least of these, ye did [it] not to me.

Notice.. the word brethren is not there.. because they were never the brethren of God or the sheep, they did not have a freely given love gift from God, because they were not His children. They were not the brethren of Christ or the children of God.. The unsaved can never do a "good work" in the eyes of God (heb 11:16) ... notice they are dismissed with a curse.. no reward due them for any kindness they may have done in this life..

Also note that the sheep DID NOT DO WORKS TO BE SAVED.. they had not even considered the rewards of their good works

Mat 25:37-39 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed [thee]? or thirsty, and gave [thee] drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took [thee] in? or naked, and clothed [thee]? 39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

Mat 25:40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done [it] unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done [it] unto me.

No where in scripture does it tell you good works save you..it does say that our good works are the FRUIT of our salvation..they are the work of God IN US AND THROUGH US

The Goats are condemned , not because they did not work, but because that work was not done to the glory of God.. They did the works of the natural man..... they had never repented and believed..and scripture tells us that what is not of Faith IS SIN, so this was a sin judgement for the goats and a reward judgement for the sheep

The God pleasing works were not self serving works to earn or secure their salvation or for the approval of men ..They flowed out of the heart of Christ as works HE HAD ORDAINED for them before the foundation of the world

Romans 4:5 But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.

They were not sheep because they did the work that God had ordained for them, they did the work because they were the sheep.

Gal. 2:16: "[T]hat we may be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified

Hear Jesus teaching on salvation by works

but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.

The goats brought forth fruit..but it was not God pleasing work..

Mat 7:18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither [can] a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

The goats could never do works pleasing to God no matter what they did

Mat 7:19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

A judgement of works..... but that judgemen actually happened before the works, because they were not good "trees" to begin with (sheep)

Mat 7:20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

So the works do not make one good..but they tell us the condition of the the relationship with God

Mat 7:21

Mat 7:22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?

Mat 7:23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

Christ NEVER knew them, they were never saved then lost.. HE NEVER knew them , They pleaded their case on works.. BUT their fruit was rotten to the core, because its roots were not in Christ

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