Dr. Karlo Broussard discusses where Catholics often misstep when debating justification with Protestants—especially by muddying stages, terms, and the grace–works relationship—and how clearer biblical and Tridentine framing leads to more fruitful dialogue.
TRANSCRIPT:
Karlo:
Hey friends, welcome back to the channel. I’m so glad to have you here with me. Today’s episode is another bonus episode where I sit down to chat with Catholic apologist Dr. Steven Boice about where Catholics go wrong when debating the topic of justification. I hope you enjoy the conversation.
Stephen:
Welcome to another episode of Facts. I’m your host, Steven Boyce. We’re doing a special weekday episode where I brought in a special guest to discuss justification. I mean, can you have any more controversy as it relates to Protestant and Catholic? And then you have people that are kind of in between like the Anglicans who come in the middle here and say, “Well, I don’t know what I think about that. ” So we want to have a good discussion about where people go wrong, specifically do Catholics go wrong in this or do they approach it the wrong way? Or do they look at the arguments with kind of a wrong perspective and take angles that are not really healthy for discussion dialogue? Or do they have just a misrepresentation of the churches teaching altogether? So what I did is I brought in a friend who’s been on the channel before.
Dr. Carlo Broussard from Catholic Answers. So glad to have you back on the show again. Dr. Broussard, how are you? Steven, I’m doing all right, Pal. Thanks for having me on, man. It’s a pleasure.
Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of subjects. And I was talking about your episode, maybe I think it was two or three days ago. I was having a conversation with a guy about our discussion on purgatory. And now at the time, I was not in full communion with Rome. I was still an Anglo-Catholic. And it was discussions like that, that I needed to kind of push me in a direction where there were certain things that were hanging me up and keeping me out of Catholicism. Purgatory is one of the big ones. And I remember that discussion being one of the most important to making the jump and saying, “I can consciously accept this concept of purgatory that I think has been left out. ” And it was a big deal. So if you guys missed that-
Karlo:
Oh, bless
Stephen:
You God. Yeah. I mean, people need to go back and watch that. If you miss the one on purgatory, you can find it in the archives. So we’re glad to have you back. So kind of talk about why the subject of justification before we kind of get into some of the dialogue. Why the justification discussion? Because it seems like we’ve exhausted this. There’s been endless debates for really since the reformation and it doesn’t seem like we can ever settle this matter. So why is this so important?
Karlo:
Well, I think the focus that we’re going to take tonight in our conversation is on Catholics and how Catholics approach this topic in conversations with Protestants, especially within the world of apologetics, conversations that are involving apologetical discussions. When Catholics read popular apologetics, they sort of get their Bible passages ready and they go to war quote unquote. And they enter into these discussions and they make arguments for the Catholic position against the Protestant position. And what I’ve discovered in my training as an apologist for Catholic answers is that often we misstep. We present a passage in a way that’s not quite nuanced enough to resonate with a Protestant, or we might say something and use certain lingo that our Protestant friends will interpret and conceive in an entirely different way than what we’re thinking and consequently lead to false conclusions and create barriers intellectually to where we can’t communicate with each other appropriately and we’re talking past each other.
And so that’s why I wanted to focus on this topic. I did something similar recently on Adrian Lawson’s channel, Sips With Sarah on Sola Scripture, where I see Catholics often misstepping in critiquing solo scripture. And I think the same thing happens when it comes to justification. In these sorts of dialogues, sometimes Catholics misstep whenever they’re debating the topic of justification, particularly with a Protestant Christian. And so I thought it would be fun and enlightening to kind of walk through some issues or some missteps by Catholics. And I will say this right up front, several of these missteps I have been guilty of. And I remember vividly one of the issues where I misstepped and old James White called me out on it, and so I’m appreciative of it. So I can speak from personal experience. Whenever I engaged in these sort of missteps, it was just simply due to a lack of proper full formation.
And over time, when receiving that full formation in this issue, I was able to identify some of these missteps that I was guilty of in the past, and then trying to share that knowledge with others so that Catholics can avoid these landmines as well. And it’s all for the sake. It’s not for the sake of pride or anything, like I don’t want to mess up. I mean, obviously I don’t want to mess up, but for the sake of having fruitful conversations, like for an example of yourself, Steven, like the conversations that you had on your journey were fruitful because of the way in which the Catholic faith was articulated for you, which allowed for your reason to give you permission for the will to consent to the fullness of truth and the Catholic faith. And so that’s sort of the ultimate goal for these kinds of conversations.
It’s not meant to say, “Aha, Catholic, you got it wrong and we apologize at Catholic answers no better.” That is not my intention here. My intention is simply for the sake of making conversations more fruitful, especially within this context for our Protestant friends.
Stephen:
Yeah. I think that’s a good point because the problem, and you said it earlier, is that people have talked over each other on these matters
And we’re kind of focusing on the wrong things sometimes. I remember when Samuel Neeson and I were debating Trent and Jimmy on this very issue that I think it was somewhere around the hour and 30 minute mark, I remember looking over on the side and going, “Are we even disagreeing anymore?” I feel like we’ve spent the last 30 minutes agreeing and our terminology is backward and there’s so much to this. And the thing is like justification discussions, especially on the Catholic side of things, there’s the missteps on the Catholic side and then there’s the misunderstandings on the Protestant side.
Karlo:
Exactly.
Stephen:
And so it’s like a razor thin edge and you can go either way.
And so these are some of the discussions we’re going to have. And so what I want to do is for those that are listening and join the live chat, we do want to hear from you. We’ll take some discussions and questions that you may have toward the end of this, but we’re going to walk through each of these issues and we’ll pause at certain points. We’re going to talk about justification by works in a minute. But if this is your first time, thanks for joining the show. Hit the like and subscribe button. Also, I will have available in the description Dr. Carlo Broussard’s new channel, just. So we’ll have that available for you. Also, there’s an article that he wrote that is in the description. Hit that link and read that as well. And it’ll be relevant to what we’re discussing today. So thanks for those that have come in.
If you’re in the live chat, see if some of you have already responded in, check in with us, send some questions you might have about justification or your thoughts. We’ll see if we can get some time in and take those statements and questions. All right, Carlo, let’s get into the first one. We’re justified by works. I mean, you can’t even start anywhere, but James too, because that’s where this conversation always finds out. So this idea of we’re justified by works, no, no, it’s faith alone, so. That whole thing. Let’s start with justification by works from the Catholic’s perspective.
Karlo:
Yeah. So often what happens in apologetics is the Catholic comes into the conversation and says, “Aha, James 2:24, we’re justified by works and not by faith alone. The only time in the Bible where faith alone appears, the word’s not by or in front of it. ” Boom, close book case settle, right? But I think where the misstep is, is the failure to identify at which particular stage of justification do our good works apply because here’s where the problem arises. Catholic comes to the Protestant and says, “We’re justified by works.” In the Protestant mind, the Protestant conceives of that proposition or that statement as applying to the one time event in the past of justification when we were initially justified. And so the Protestant is thinking Ephesians two: eight through nine, when Paul talks about in verses one through seven, how we were dead in our sin, but we are now alive in Christ, transitioning from spiritual death to spiritual life, and that we are saved by grace and not by works.
And so the Protestant is interpreting that Catholic proposition of being justified by works and saying, “Well, wait a minute. No, that can’t be true because Paul’s clear that we are not justified by works when we initially transition from spiritual death to spiritual life.” Now, where the Catholic missteps is misapplying this text, because as the Council of Trent taught, for that initial stage of justification, the good works, the works of love even that we would perform prior to that initial justification, in no way is meritorious of the initial grace.
Stephen:
Now let’s pause right there for a minute because this is something that was discussed post reformation for clarity on the church’s position because what created this really blur was obviously Luther. This is a response to the reformation. Trent is responding to this in the 16th century, the late 16th century in relation to the idea of works, and they have set the record straight that the initial phase, the initial understanding that faith is important here. So pause there and spend a few more seconds on that because I think everybody in the audience needs to hear that, especially I know I have a lot of Protestant listeners, what is the Catholic position on death to life? So I know you said it, but I want to pause there and I want to reemphasize this so that we’re not misunderstanding because a lot of people say, “You guys, you’re depending on all works to save you.
” We don’t. Where is that for those listening in the Protestant crowd?
Karlo:
Yeah. So with regard to that initial stage of justification where we initially transition from spiritual death to spiritual life, which we as Catholics identify as the state of justification. Now that’s a different issue that we can talk about like what constitutes our state of justice or being at peace with God. For us as Catholics, it’s rooted in the interior righteousness, the spiritual aliveness or spiritual life that God brings about within our souls from spiritual death to spiritual life. And that grounds our rightly ordered relationship with God. It is in virtue of that interior righteousness that God brings about initially that I am at peace with God or justified. As Paul talks about in Romans five: one, no longer subject to condemnation because I’m in Christ. Romans eight: one. Now, some of our Protestant friends would disagree with that and say, “No, our justification is rooted solely in the forensic declaration of God by imputing the very own righteousness of Christ to us and crediting it to us.” So that’s a debate there, but at least from the Catholic side, even if we put aside this disagreement as to what constitutes or grounds our justification, we still agree in so far as we affirm any good works that we do prior to being justified.
And even Steven, the faith that we exercise prior to justification does not merit the initial grace of justification. It is purely gratuitous by God. Now, that brings up some other questions. Well, what do you mean faith before justification? Is it possible to have a non-saving faith? And the Catholic church says, yes. Faith preceding the initial grace of justification, which comes the theological, with which comes the theological virtue of faith so that we can say we’re justified by faith. The faith that comes before that is a gift from God. It’s a movement by God of the mind to recognize the truth and moving the will to ascent based upon the recognition of that truth, based upon the testimony of God. That is a gift and it is a … We call it faith, but it’s not a justifying faith yet. It’s a gift of faith order to the initial grace of justification to prepare us for and lead us to it, not to merit justification, but to lead us to it.
A good example of this, Steven, is in Acts chapter 10, before Cornelius and his Gentile friends received the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and are saved, Cornelius exercises legitimate faith. In the beginning of the chapter, whenever his prayer ascends to God as a memorial before God, he was exorcizing legit faith, but it wasn’t justifying faith yet because the Holy Spirit had not come upon him and saving him. And so we … St. Thomas Aquinas has a whole article on this. I can’t remember the exact citation where he talks about non-justifying faith or in non-formata, right? Faith that’s not animated by the virtue of charity yet, the theological virtue of charity. But whenever we receive the initial grace of justification, we call it sanctifying grace as Catholics, ordinarily through baptism, but God can communicate that grace even without baptism and extraordinary circumstances, then comes the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, which order us to God as our supernatural in thereby constituting a rightly ordered relationship, i.e. Justification.
But before that, whatever work we do and even the gift of non-informed gift of faith that we have, in no way is a cause to bring about or merit that initial grace of justification. And that’s the definitive teaching of the council of Trent.
Stephen:
So then that brings us into the discussion, particularly in James. So we do see in James that there is a statement, can that kind of faith save a person? And he gives examples of that. So Catholics will simply jump to that. They’ll say, “Well, see, if faith is not alone, faith that lacks these essentials of charity and love.” If you see a person who has nakedness and you don’t supply the clothes they need when you have that, how can you call that faith? I mean, he gives these examples. Can that kind of faith save somebody? And so therefore they would say, “See, that faith is accompanied by the works of charity and therefore solephide sucks.” I mean, that’s basically mandatories. So that’s where people will go with that. So there is a balance here where we need to start where you did. And maybe Trent is a good place to start because we have definitive teaching there.
Yeah. So start here and then let’s go to James,
Karlo:
Right? Right. And that starting point, Steven, establishes the common ground with our Protestant friend to signal to our Protestant friend that when we talk about our good works, contributing to or bringing about salvation and being involved in our salvation, we are not talking about the initial stage of salvation, we’re talking about once we are already saved in Christ at peace with God, therein, our good works come into play to contribute to our salvation or justification. And that’s where James 2:24 comes in according to the Council of Trent. Whenever the Council of Trent references James 2:24, and it’s one instance, it’s within the context of us already being justified, because you have to have the principle of charity in order for your charitable deeds to contribute anything to your relationship with God or being justified or saved. And the evidence as to why James 2:24 applies to this stage of justification, what we might call the ongoing stage of justification is because when James makes that statement, “We’re justified by faith, we’re justified by works, not by faith alone,” he says that in parallel to the example of Abraham’s justification on account of offering his son Isaac, James draws a parallel just as Abraham was justified by his work of obedience, of offering his son Isaac, we Christians are justified by our works, not by faith alone.
Now what’s interesting, Steven, is that when you examine Abraham’s obedient act of offering Isaac in sacrifice, that’s in Genesis chapter 22, and James is telling us he’s justified on account of that work, but we know, and our Protestant friends know that Abraham was justified, so our Protestant friends will argue, quoting St. Paul in Romans four, “He was justified in Genesis 15: six. When he believed God, and it was accredited to him as righteousness, right?” Well, we can even push that back further. According to Hebrews chapter 11, verses six, I think it’s six through eight, we discover that according to the author of Hebrews, Abraham was justified initially in Genesis 12 when he obeyed God to leave his homeland,
Because the author tells us he exorcized a faith in Genesis 12 that made him pleasing to God, and that’s justifying faith. So my point is this, when James teaches us that Abraham was justified by his work of offering his son, Isaac, he had already been justified. And so it applies to the ongoing stage of justification. And James says, “For us as Christians, we are justified by our works in parallel to that justification of Abraham in offering up his son Isaac on Mount Moriah.” And so our good works contribute to our justification, not initially, as Paul says, and transitioning from spiritual death to spiritual life by grace, not by works, but only after we’re initially saved in this ongoing relationship with the Lord, where our works of love merit or contribute to increasing in love, stabilizing the love, making it stronger in the loving relationship with the Lord, just like in my relationship with my wife, right?
Once we’re married, I perform certain duties within the marriage and a variety of different ways to sustain and increase the love in the relationship, so too in the relationship with our Lord. That’s where the good works come into play. And if we are not aware of that as Catholics and we make this misstep and we don’t help our Protestant friend interpret it correctly, it’s going to lead to false conclusions. Our Protestant friend’s going to be thinking, “Well, we are earning our salvation and our works are earning our salvation, but how in the world could that be when you’re spiritually dead?” Well, we would agree. If you’re spiritually dead, ain’t nothing you do that’s going to merit the grace of justification.
Stephen:
See, and this is the big discussion that comes into play, right? So when you’re looking at it from a Protestant perspective, they seem to, and I grew up in this trend where salvation is broken into three phases. You’re justified, that’s your initial. You’re in. You’re in the kingdom, your ticket is putched, you’re going to heaven, you got your salvation, nothing to worry about. You believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, you said a prayer. Then you start what’s called sanctification. Now that’s more optional. Yeah, you might not cooperate with God and it’ll lead to some discipline and he’ll wield you back to obedience and then you’re going to have this struggle with being detached from sin and so forth. And then when we die and then we experience eternity, we have brought to glorification and the resurrection. That’s what they do is you got justification and sanctification and glorification.
The problem with that from like the Protestant side of things is that they seem to detach the idea of salvation as a salvation is three things. It seems like more in a Catholic theology that they’re inseparable realities that cannot be detached in any way, shape or form. And so a lot of times when a Protestant is talking about sanctification and a Catholic is talking about justification, they’re actually talking about the same thing sometimes. It’s just that one is calling it justification and then the other is calling it sanctification. So can you clarify that because it seems like people are talking over each other when that. It’s like, no, no, your justification is by this and it happens at a moment, at a period of time. And we’re sitting there going, “Well, James two says that you’re not by father.” So what some might call sanctification, others … When I was debating Jimmy and Trent, that’s what I realized really quick is like we’re saying the same thing here.
We’re actually just saying justification and they’re saying justification, we’re saying santification, but we’re actually agreeing with each other at the same time.
Karlo:
Well, so as you put it, it’s a bit of a complicated issue. First of all, glorification is something distinct. As Catholics, we do not equate glorification with justification, at least on this side of the veil. Will our glorification entail justification in heaven? Absolutely. But that’s going to be the perfected state of justification. All right. With regard to justification and sanctification, for many Protestants, it is not, at least according to my discussions that I’ve had in my research and reading, it is not merely a difference in language and a reference being the same in reality. And the reason why I say that, Steven, is because, and this is one of the missteps, right? Initially, when I first started doing apologetics, I was thinking that along those very same lines, well, we’re just kind of using different language, talking about the same thing. However, Protestants of the reformed tradition will counter and say, “Absolutely not.
” Because although we affirm, so they will say sanctification, the interior transformation of regeneration, that is not the ground in virtue of which we are at peace with God, i.e., Justified. The sole reason why we stand in a rightly ordered relationship with God and we are no longer held accountable for our sins and the subject to damnation is on account of the forensic declaration by God imputing the very righteousness of Christ to us. And so on that view, Steven, I don’t think that we’re using the same language for a, excuse me, using different language for a same reference because on that view, that is essentially different than saying- Agreed.
Sanctification or interior righteousness is identical to our justification. And so for the Protestants of the reformed tradition, their common line is although sanctification is not the ground for our justification, they are inseparable and they go hand in hand. So when you’re justified initially, there comes an interior renewal of sanctification as well, but one is not identified with the other, they are essentially distinct. And this is a misstep that I was guilty of in the past where I failed to make these proper distinctions on behalf of our Protestant friends of the reformed tradition. And so once we have that target, Stephen, then as a Catholic in the conversation, we have to be able to critique that view of dividing sanctification and justification. And one way to do that is to appeal to evidence within the New Testament, especially within Paul’s writings, where he identifies a state of sanctification or interior righteousness that God ... Read more on Catholic.com