“Protestants believe in justification by faith alone, and Catholics believe in justification by faith and works.” Right?
Wrong! This is a dramatic and misleading oversimplification.
In this video, Jimmy Akin explains what people on both sides of the debate get wrong on the subject of justification and what the Catholic Church teaches about it.
TRANSCRIPT:
Coming Up
For the last 500 years—since the time of the Protestant Reformation—Christendom has been split by a single phrase.
JORDAN COOPER: By faith alone.
JOHN MACARTHUR: Through faith alone.
- C. SPROUL: Faith alone.
RYAN FROM NEEDGOD.NET: By faith alone.
GAVIN ORTLUND: Faith alone.
JAMES WHITE: By faith and faith alone.
JEFF DURBIN: Through faith alone or by faith alone.
MIKE WINGER: By faith alone.
JOHN PIPER: Though faith alone.
Let’s get into it!
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“By Faith Alone”
During the Reformation, Christians in the Protestant tradition came up with a set of Latin slogans.
One of these was justification sola fide, which means “by faith alone” or “through faith alone.” So the idea is that we receive the grace of justification by or through faith alone.
This formula is near universal among Christians in the Protestant tradition. Almost every group uses it, though they don’t all mean the same thing by it.
For example, Lutherans—going back to Martin Luther himself—did not see the idea that water baptism grants salvation as conflicting with the idea of justification by faith alone.
However, many Baptists and nondenominationals would say that the Lutheran understanding of baptism—which agrees with the Catholic one—violates the idea of faith alone and results in a false gospel.
There are other differences in how the faith alone formula is understood, and we’ll be getting into some of them in this video.
Because of the differences in how the formula is understood by different groups of Protestants, one could say that there is verbal agreement among Protestants on how we are justified by God, since they agree on a common verbal formula.
But there is substantive disagreement, since the substance of this formula is interpreted in different ways.
That’s something worth remembering when you encounter people—whether Catholic or Protestant—speaking of “the Protestant position” on justification, because there isn’t just one.
As on every other issue, there is not a single Protestant position that is shared by all Protestants—even among conservative Protestants.
But the formula “faith alone” did become an identity marker used to distinguish Protestants from Catholics, and so you will find many people—both Catholics and Protestants—saying things like, “Protestants believe in justification by faith alone, while Catholics believe in justification by faith and works.”
This is a serious mistake. It is one of the things about justification that people regularly get wrong.
Understanding Justification
Before we can talk about the faith alone formula, we need to talk about what is supposed to be done by faith alone—or justification itself.
This is because the term justification is used differently in the two communities.
In the relevant sense of the term justify, its basic meaning is to make righteous or to declare righteous. That could get us into another debate, which we can discuss another time.
But here I want to focus on when justification happens in the Christian life.
Both Protestants and Catholics agree that—after we’re born—there is a point in our lives where we come to God and convert—we become Christians.
When this happens, God justifies us—that is, he makes or declares us to be righteous.
Consequently, in the Protestant tradition, this is the point at which justification is said to occur.
It’s also called justification in the Catholic tradition, but Catholics also use the term justification for other moments in the Christian life.
Consequently, this initial point is often referred to today as “initial justification,” though in the past it was commonly called the justification of the impious—that is, those who are not yet pious or godly. God thus takes an ungodly person and justifies them so that they become godly.
As the Christian life continues, we grow in virtue, holiness, or righteousness.
The Protestant tradition often calls this growth sanctification.
While in the Catholic tradition, it is sometimes referred to as ongoing justification. Historically, it has been called the justification of the pious—since God takes someone who is already pious or godly and helps that person grow in holiness or righteousness.
Then there’s the moment—after we have died, at least if we’re not living at the end of the world—where we stand before God at the final judgment.
At the final judgment, God will declare all who have died in his friendship to be just.
Catholics may refer to this moment as final justification.
There isn’t a common word for this in the Protestant community, but some Protestant Bible commentators have begun to talk about it.
Now, I should point out that all of these are theological terms, and how terms like justification and sanctification are used in the Bible doesn’t correspond strictly to these later theological uses.
For example, Protestant theological vocabulary tends to draw a sharp distinction between justification and sanctification, but the New Testament does not draw a sharp distinction between them.
Similarly, Catholic theological vocabulary has introduced modifiers—like “of the impious,” “of the pious,” “initial,” “ongoing,” and “final” to make it clear which type of justification we are talking about. But these modifiers are not used in the New Testament.
All of this is fine, because language changes over time, and different usages emerge in different theological communities.
We just need to keep in mind the difference between how different communities are using the terms and how they differ from the biblical usages.
If we don’t do that, then we’ll end up reading our own communities’ definitions back onto the biblical text when we see the biblical authors using terms and don’t realize that they may be using them in a different way than we do.
If you’d like a deep dive into the biblical usages and how they compare to the way the theological language later developed, check out my book The Drama of Salvation.
Confusion #1: Works
We’re now in a position to clear up one of the greatest confusions that happens in Protestant-Catholic discussions, which is the idea that Catholics think good works play a role in justification.
You hear both Protestants and Catholics say this, and it’s one of the biggest things that people on both sides of the confessional aisle get wrong.
If you hear someone saying that Catholics believe that we are justified by faith and works, they are simply not using the language of the Church.
If you look at the Church’s official documents—like the Decree on Justification from the Council of Trent in the 1500s or the Catechism of the Catholic Church from the late 1900s—you know how many times these documents use the phrase “justified by faith and works”?
None! That’s right, absolutely none!
You won’t find that language in any document of the Catholic Church dealing with justification.
This is not the language of the Church, and it is positively misleading to use it.
In fact, in its Decree on Justification, the Council of Trent stated:
We are therefore said to be justified freely, because none of those things which precede justification, whether faith or works, merit the grace itself of justification. For, “if it be a grace, then is it no more by works, otherwise, as the same Apostle saith, grace is no more grace” (Decree on Justification 8, quoting Romans 11:6).
Got that? “none of those things which precede justification, whether faith or works, merit the grace of justification.”
Here the Council is speaking of initial justification—or justification of the impious—and it says that nothing that the person does before justification merits it—not faith and not works.
So good works do not play any role in getting a person into a state of justification.
In fact, according to the standard Catholic view, it’s not even possible for a person to do good works before justification because an unjustified person does not have the virtue of supernatural love—or charity—in his soul.
It’s when we’re justified that God pours his love into our souls. As Paul says in Romans 5:5:
God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Romans 5:5).
The Holy Spirit is given to us when we convert, become Christians, and are justified, and so that’s when God’s love is poured into our hearts.
Love is the principle that makes truly good works possible, and so on the standard Catholic view, you can’t even do good works before justification.
Catholics and Protestants thus agree that good works do not help put you into a state of justification. Instead, they flow from being in a state of justification.
We do not need to fight about this, and so people on both sides need to stop using language that the Church does not use in characterizing the Catholic understanding.
Stop saying misleading oversimplifications like Protestants believe in justification by faith alone while Catholics believe in justification by faith and works.
This is not to say that good works play no role in the Christian life. Catholics and the great majority of Protestants agree that they do.
For example, if you ask a Protestant, “Does a Christian need to cooperate with God’s grace and do good works to grow in holiness as part of the sanctification process?” the large majority of them will say, “Sure! If you just sat there and never did anything, you wouldn’t be growing in holiness. Good works are thus part of sanctification.”
Catholics agree, only we call sanctification ongoing justification or justification of the pious.
But you will totally mislead a Protestant if—because good works have a role to play in sanctification or ongoing justification—you simply say, “Catholics believe in justification by works.”
The Catholic Church only ever speaks of good works playing a role in what happens in the Christian life after initial justification.
And—since Protestants use the term justification to refer exclusively to initial justification at the beginning of the Christian life—what they will hear if you say “Catholics believe in justification by faith and works” is “Catholics believe that you are initially justified by faith and works.”
In other words, that Catholics believe that you have to do good works to get into a state of justification—which is the very position that the Catholic Church has rejected.
Therefore—people on both sides—stop spreading this confusion! The Church does not use the formula “justified by faith and works,” and it will falsely mislead Protestants into thinking that the Church teaches something that it actually rejects.
Confusion #2: The Nature of Faith
Now let’s turn to a second confusion that we can clear away. The term faith is used in different senses in the New Testament—and in later theology.
But St. Paul clearly says that we are justified by faith in Christ. For example, in Romans 3, he writes:
We hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the Law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one—who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith (Romans 3:28-30).
Now—as the better biblical scholars recognize—the “works of the Law” that Paul is talking about are works demanded by the Mosaic Law or Law of Moses—the first 5 books of the Bible.
That’s why Paul immediately asks, “Or is God the God of the Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also?”
It’s also why he talks about the circumcised and the uncircumcised, since circumcision was one of the key requirements of the Mosaic Law. It is how one became a Jew.
Paul is thus not talking about good works in this passage but those works that one needed to do if one wanted to obey the Mosaic Law.
And Paul says that Gentiles—or uncircumcised—can still be justified, since we are justified by faith apart from works of the Law.
But since the term faith is used in different senses in the New Testament, we need to figure out what kind of faith will justify us. In other words, what is justifying faith?
It’s obvious that—for Paul—it is faith in Christ, but this doesn’t fully settle the question, because we can distinguish at least 3 types of faith.
- Intellectual Faith: Belief in the truths of Christian teaching.
- Fiducial Faith: Belief plus trust in God.
- Formed Faith: Belief plus trust and love of God and neighbor.
The first type of faith is what may be called intellectual faith. It involves believing in the truths of Christian teaching and does not require any more than that.
Some in the Protestant world hold that this is the nature of justifying faith. This is particularly the case among advocates of what is known as Free Grace Theology, which is sometimes referred to by its critics as Easy Believism.
A second type of faith is known as fiducial faith. The Latin word Fiducia means Trust, so fiducial faith incorporates not only belief in the truths of Christian teaching but also trust in God to give one salvation.
Fiducial faith is frequently cited as saving faith in many popular Protestant discussions of salvation.
A third type of faith is sometimes referred to as formed faith. In this context, “formed” means shaped or informed by love of God and neighbor.
This type of faith has been identified as saving or justifying faith by some in the Protestant community. For example, John Calvin stated:
We must refute that worthless distinction between formed and unformed faith which is tossed about the schools. . . .
They [the schoolmen] are accustomed to urge Paul’s words: ‘If anyone has all faith so as to remove mountains, but has not love, he is nothing’ [1 Cor. 13:2]. By this they would de-form faith by depriving it of love (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3:2:8-9).
Calvin thus held that faith that did not include love was not worth calling faith, and so he understood formed faith as the kind of faith needed for salvation.
The same is true of the authors of the 1689 London Baptist Confession, who stated:
Faith . . . is the alone instrument of justification; yet it is not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love (London Baptist Confession 11:2).
So they also understood justifying faith as formed faith.
There is also another way that we can express what these three types of faith involve. In 1 Corinthians 13, St. Paul speaks of the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity—or supernatural love.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains the way these terms came to be understood in later theology. It says:
Faith is the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because he is truth itself (CCC 1814).
So the virtue of faith involves intellectual assent to the truths of Christian teaching.
Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit (CCC 1817).
So the virtue of hope involves trusting in God for salvation.
Charity is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God (CCC 1822).
So the virtue of charity involves the love of God and neighbor.
Bearing that in mind, we can classify the three forms of faith as involving the three theological virtues this way:
- Intellectual Faith: Faith
- Fiducial Faith: Faith + Hope
- Formed Faith: Faith + Hope + Charity
Intellectual faith involves the theological virtue of faith by which we believe what God has revealed.
Fiducial faith involves the theological virtue of faith and also the theological virtue of hope, by which we trust God for salvation.
And formed faith involves the theological virtues of faith and hope as well as the theological virtue of charity or the love of God and neighbor.
It’s important to remember that all 3 of these forms of faith have been identified by different groups of Protestants as justifying or saving faith.
So this is one of the areas where the formula faith alone represents a verbal agreement among Protestants that disguises a substantive disagreement, because some Protestants hold that we are justified by intellectual assent, some hold that we are justified by fiducial faith, and some hold that we are justified by formed faith.
Justifying Faith: Who’s Right?
So who’s right in this discussion? Let’s take a look at the New Testament and find out.
First, on the subject of Type 1 or intellectual faith, we find this passage in James 2:
What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?
You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! (James 2:14, 19).
Here James asks us to envision a faith that is not accompanied by good works. He indicates the person does not have works, which are produced by the theological virtue of love. So this is not formed faith.
More specifically, we know that he’s speaking here of intellectual faith, because he says that even the demons believe, and the demons are not trusting in God to save them—that’s why they shudder at the prospect of God’s wrath—so they don’t have hope.
We’re therefore talking about intellectual faith, which is the only kind of faith that demons have. They know the truth of what God reveals as well as we do—better even—but James indicates that this faith will not save either the demons or us, for he asks what good is it if someone has this kind of faith. And he asks the rhetorical question Can that faith save him? The answer being no.
So it turns out that the advocates of Free Grace Theology who hold that intellectual faith is saving faith are mistaken.
This is no doubt why this viewpoint has been a minority one in the Protestant community, at least among theologians.
Now, what about the second type of faith or fiducial faith?
Here a relevant passage is found in 1 Corinthians 13, where St. Paul writes:
If I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 13:2-3, 7, 13).
Here we’re once again talking about faith that clearly isn’t formed faith, because St. Paul says if I have faith—so the theological virtue of faith is present—but he also says but have not love—so the theological virtue of love or charity is not present.
That means we could be dealing with Type 1 or intellectual faith or Type 2 or fiducial faith.
The context indicates that it’s the second, because Paul describes this faith as able to remove mountains, and you really have a lot of trust in God if your faith is able to move mountains. So the theological virtue of hope is present. We’re thus dealing with Type 2 or fiducial faith.
But St. Paul says this isn’t enough. He says that if this kind of faith is what he has then—since he lacks love—he is nothing.
He also indicates that in any situation where he has not love, “I gain nothing.”
So without love, he would not gain salvation. Fiducial faith thus is not saving or justifying faith.
The many Protestant preachers who identify fiducial faith with saving faith are thus mistaken.
Paul then makes two statements that further clarify the relation between love and the other two theological virtues.
First, he says that love . . . believes all things, so love entails the virtue of faith by which we believe God’s revelation.
He also says that love hopes all things, so love includes trust in God for salvation and all the other benefits God gives us.
St. Paul thus understands the virtue of love as entailing the virtues of faith and hope, but the reverse is not true, because he’s already indicated that you could have faith and hope without love.
That would be mere presumption if you believed in Christian doctrine and trusted that God would save you but you didn’t have love.
Second, St. Paul says that faith, hope, and love remain—meaning they play a role in the Christian life—but that the greatest of these is love.
So Paul understands love to be even more important than faith and hope considered by themselves.
And that’s exactly what you’d expect from what we learn elsewhere in the New Testament. In Matthew 22, when Jesus was asked which is the greatest commandment of the Law, he replied:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.
And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37-38).
So the greatest commandment is love of God and the second greatest commandment is love of neighbor. This tells us that love is God’s highest priority. In fact, as 1 John 4 says:
He who does not love does not know God; for God is love (1 John 4:8).
Since God himself is love and love is God’s highest priority, of course love is greater than faith considered by itself.
And as we’ve seen, Paul understands the virtue of love as entailing the virtues of faith and hope, so if you have the virtue of love, you have everything you need for union with God.
This is a strong indicator that Type 3 or formed faith is the correct understanding of justifying faith, but we can go further, because in Galatians 5:6, Paul says:
In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love (Galatians 5:6).
So—continuing a theme he explores further in Romans—circumcision and uncircumcision will not save you.
What will save you is faith working through love.
It thus turns out that those in the Protestant community who identify Type 3 or formed faith with justifying faith—like John Calvin and the authors of the 1689 London Baptist Confession—are correct.
Confusion #3: “Faith Alone”
Now we’re in a position to clear away a third confusion, which has to do with the formula “by faith alone.”
The first thing to say about this formula is that it is not the language of Scripture.
The phrase “faith alone” occurs exactly one time in Scripture. It’s in Jame... Read more on Catholic.com