Audio only:
In this episode Trent responds to common Protestant attempts to explain away St. James’s teaching on justification being NOT by faith alone.
How to Be Christian on James 2: www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBw_KCThTUo
Transcription:
Trent:
When Catholics are told they’re justified by faith alone. So Catholicism is unbiblical. The common response usually goes like this, sorry, Protestant, but the phrase faith alone only appears once in the Bible in James 2 24 where it says A man is justified by works and not by faith alone checkmate Protestants or is it? In today’s episode we’re going to show why the common Protestant replies to the teaching in James chapter two Don’t work, but we’ll also see how some Catholic applications of this verse misunderstand church teaching on what makes us righteous before God. But before we do that, I need to address two things. First, if you’re watching this, I know you have faith in the Council of Trent, but in the spirit of James chapter two verses 14 through 16, what good does it do if you say to me, grow and subscribers and reach lots of people, but you don’t actually click the subscribe button or support us@trenthornpodcast.com.
The Council of Trent cannot exist by faith alone. So if you like our content, please support us. The second thing I need to address is that some Catholics say that Martin Luther denied that the letter of James was scripture or that he tried to remove it from the Bible because of its teachings on justification. The truth is that Luther walked really close to that line, but he didn’t cross it. He never tried to have James removed from the Bible, but he was not a fan of this letter. Luther put it this way, that epistle of James gives us much trouble for the papus, embrace it alone and leave out all the rest. Up to this point I have been accustomed just to deal with and interpret it according to the sense of the rest of scriptures. If they will not admit my interpretations, then I shall make rubble also of it.
I almost feel like throwing Jimmy into the stove as the priest and Kalen Berg did. Luther was referring to an incident in the village of Kalen Berg where a priest burned wooden statues of the apostles in order to provide warmth for a visiting Duchess Luther’s temptation to burn. The actual letter of James reveals the conflicted relationship he had with this piece of scripture. His original 1522 preface for James derided it as an epistle of straw, though Luther later admitted that James promulgates the laws of God, so he didn’t try to have it removed from the Bible, but James did frustrate him. Luther even said, we should throw the epistle of James out of this school for it doesn’t amount to much. It contains not a syllable about Christ. Not once does it mention Christ except at the beginning I maintained that some Jew wrote it who probably heard about Christian people but never encountered any since.
He heard that Christians placed great weight on faith in Christ. He thought, wait a moment, I’ll oppose them and urge works alone. This he did for just as the body without the spirit is dead. So faith without works is dead. Oh, merry mother of God. What a terrible comparison that is. So how do Protestants respond to James’s teaching That a man is justified by works and not by faith alone? They usually say that James is talking about a different kind of faith or a different kind of justification than Paul does. Let’s start with the explanation based on a different kind of faith in these clips, you’ll see various Protestant apologists say that James is condemning a false faith or a dead faith that is incapable of producing good works. They say James two 14 criticizes people who say they have saving faith but actually have dead false faith and that kind of false faith they merely say they have doesn’t produce works, and so this faith cannot save them. Here’s some Protestants making this argument.
CLIP:
James contrasts two different types of faith, true faith
That saves and false faith that is dead. James is not talking about the same notion of faith that Paul was talking about. Okay, Paul’s talking about true faith, true faith that unites to Christ is also a faith that is alive and does works.
Obviously this particular guy’s faith. That’s what James is all about. That’s what this passage in James is about, the guy who claims to believe but he shows no evidence of faith. Is that guy saved? That’s the question.
Someone says he has faith but he does not have works. He says, can that faith save him? And what does every Christian say to that? No, no. We’re talking about kinds of faith here. Notice this.
Trent:
In order to see why this approach doesn’t work, we need to zoom out and look at the whole context of the letter of James. The author is addressing fellow Christians and speaks of their faith being tested by trials which will make them perfect and complete. This faith involves a complete trust in God, but James does not say it is the faithful man who will receive the crown of life. Instead, it is the man who has endured life’s tests and trials who will be saved. A person must be a doer of the word and not a mere hearer. James also says true religion is not merely a confession of faith but is evident in those who visit orphans and widows in their affliction and keep oneself unstained from the world. James then makes his only reference to faith in Christ where he warns those who quote, hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ that they should show no partiality especially towards the wealthy.
James says that we fulfill the royal law and do well when we love our neighbors as ourselves. Keep in mind that up to this point and throughout the rest of the letter, James never says faith is a bad thing and he never says there is a kind of faith that is bad. He doesn’t say that. James always says that faith is good and what is bad is when faith is missing something else that’s also good, namely works. So now let’s look at James two 14 which says in the RSV, what does it profit my brethren? If a man says he has faith but has not works, can his faith save him? The Protestant pastor John MacArthur writes, if someone says, or if a man says is the phrase that governs the interpretation of the entire passage, and a lot of Protestant bibles try to smuggle in their interpretation of the passage by translating the last part of James two 14 as trying to distinguish kinds of faith.
For example, the NIV says, can such faith save them? The ESV says, can that faith save him? And the paraphrase of this passage in the extremely loose Bible translation known as the message summarizes what many Protestants think James two 14 is saying, does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it? So this response requires us to translate James two 14, something like this. What does it profit my brethren? If a man says he has true faith but has not works, can his false faith save him? The problem with this approach is that the original Greek of James two 14 never explicitly asks if this faith or if that faith can save a man. While the Greek word haus can be translated as that faith, it literally means the faith or simply faith. That’s why the King James version of James two 14 simply asks Can faith save him?
But according to James White in his book on justification, the point is the same all the way through deed less faith is not saving faith. The idea that the epistle of James is contrasting false faith and true faith or dead faith and living faith falls apart when you replace the word faith in any other verse in the chapter with the terms dead faith or false faith. If you do that, James’s message doesn’t make sense because he always speaks of faith as a good thing. Let’s try this with James two, 17 through 20 it would go like this, so false faith by itself if it has no works is dead, but someone will say, you have dead faith and I have works. Show me your dead faith apart from your works and I by my works will show you my dead faith. You believe that God is one you do well. Even the demons believe and shudder. Do you want to be shown you foolish fellow that dead faith apart from works is barren. Ferris said the channel how to be Christian also breaks down where Lutheran scholar Jordan Cooper is right that James doesn’t mention true faith but wrong about the different senses of faith that James is talking about.
CLIP:
So as Jordan correctly pointed out, James doesn’t actually use the concept of true faith. If you read through James, he’s just talking about faith. He doesn’t say there’s a true faith and a fake faith. He says there’s faith and he talks about faith in two different situations. Faith by itself if it does not have works is dead. Now notice here James said if it does not have works, so that’s one possibility. Another possibility is that the faith could be active along with works and in that situation the faith can be completed by works. So Jordan’s got this correct. James doesn’t actually use the concept of true faith. He doesn’t talk about a true faith and a fake faith. He talks about faith in two different situations. Now if you want to say this is true faith, that’s fine, but that’s not what Jordan b Cooper’s doing.
Jordan’s taking this situation and saying that’s true faith. A true faith will be active along with works and it will be completed by works. Jordan then goes to the other situation that James talked about and he drops that under fake faith and you know how James said faith by itself if it does not have works, if dead, yeah, Jordan doesn’t care about that word. If instead of it being faith if it does not have works is dead, Jordan takes the dead, puts it with the faith, gets rid of the if and just says dead faith does not have works. So now he has a real faith and a fake faith and the fake faith he’s calling dead faith. That’s just a thing. That’s what it is.
Trent:
Check out the link to how to be Christian’s video in the description below if you’d like to see more of his explanation. Now it doesn’t make sense for James to say we need to have dead faith and works to be justified. He could just say we need to have saving faith, which is a phrase by the way that neither he nor any other biblical author uses because what you need is faith, just not faith alone. The same thing also happens if you use phrases like mere intellectual ascent instead of dead faith as if James was just condemning mere acknowledgement of God. James also isn’t saying you need to have works to prove you have a living faith rather than a dead faith. The biblical scholar Scott McKnight says, the issue isn’t about the right kind of faith. McKnight writes, no matter how hard we Protestants might try to work this out.
The bottom line for James is having works. My colleague Jimmy Aiken shows the real issue in James. He writes, the faith isn’t the problem, it’s being alone is the problem. James 2 26 says, for as the body apart from the spirit is dead. So faith apart from works is dead. For James, what makes faith alive is not something in the faith like authenticity. It’s works just as the spirit is distinct from the body and is what gives the body. Life works are distinct from faith and they are what make faith alive. That’s why St. Paul writes in Galatians five, six, for in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any of fail, but faith, working through love, James is not telling people to have a faith that will necessarily produce good works or that will flow necessarily from a genuine faith. James is telling people with genuine faith to bring their genuine faith to life by choosing to do good works.
Works are not as some Protestants allege the automatic consequence of an authentic or genuine faith. We can have true faith but still give into temptation and choose evil works or fail to do good works. That’s why our Lord said, pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak. One popular way of describing this idea about works is found in the phrase We are justified by faith alone, but faith is never alone. The Westminster confession, put it this way, faith thus receiving and resting on Christ in his righteousness is the alone instrument of justification. Yet is it not alone in the person justified but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces and is no dead faith but works by love. In other words, we are justified or made righteous by faith alone according to this Protestant argument, but everyone who is justified by faith alone will of necessity perform good works.
But James does not say he who is justified does good works. Instead, he says A man is justified by works and not by faith alone. The Bible is full of warnings not only to refrain from doing evil deeds but also to refrain from failing to do good deeds. James four 17 says whoever knows what is right to do and fails to do it for him, it is sin to defend the idea that those with genuine faith must also choose to do good works that the works don’t automatically flow from a genuine faith. James presents two examples, Abraham who chose to offer Isaac on the altar and Rahab who chose to protect the spies in Jericho and this brings us to the second way that Protestants try to reconcile James two with justification by faith alone. Protestants will say that when James is saying Abraham or Rahab were justified by their good works, this means that they were vindicated or proven righteous by their good works. Their works did not make them righteous. Their works only showed other people they were already righteous. Abraham was justified before men not God. John Calvin put it this way when he talked about the different meanings of the word justify in Paul versus James. He writes, Paul means by it the gratuitous imputation of righteousness before the tribunal of God and James, the manifestation of righteousness by the conduct and that before men as we may gather from the proceeding, words show to me thy faith, et cetera. The Protestant apologist need god.net makes a similar point.
CLIP:
A verse often cited against faith alone is verse 24. It says this, you see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone justified before whom. The passage doesn’t indicate that it’s before God that we get justified by works. God knows a person believes without having to see works first and he’s just affirmed that Abraham was declared righteous purely on the basis of believing. But from the context of James two, this verse indicates that it’s justification before people,
Trent:
But just as saying James is talking about a different kind of faith doesn’t work saying James is talking about a different kind of justification. One before men rather than God doesn’t work either. That’s because Genesis 22 5 says that Abraham and Isaac went away from their servants to conduct the sacrifice. The text gives no evidence that anyone witnessed this good work or that Abraham was esteemed in other men’s eyes for his good behavior. The Protestant apologist Robert Zis points out that the word shown is not in the passage and concludes that it may be stretching things too far to say that Abraham was shown to have been justified when he offered Isaac the reformed biblical scholar, Thomas Shriner likewise says There is no evidence that justification here relates to justification before people rather than God. When James uses the words save and justify, he has in mind one’s relationship with God.
Another explanation is that James is speaking of justification in the sense of a general vindication of righteousness rather than a divine declaration of righteousness. John Berg and John Weldon write the following. James uses the word justified in the same sense Jesus did in Luke 7 35. In that verse, Jesus said, wisdom is justified by all her children from which the authors conclude Abraham’s works vindicated his faith. So even if there were no other people to witness it, Abraham’s actions proved he had the faith that justifies apart from works, but two things can be true at the same time, Abraham’s works demonstrated he had true faith and those same works increased Abraham’s righteousness before God or they justified Abraham. Also James 2 22 doesn’t say Abraham’s faith was shown or demonstrated by his works. It says if Abraham, you see that faith was active along with his works and faith was completed by works.
James cites Genesis 15, six which said Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness and that this was fulfilled when Abraham offered his son Isaac on the altar. This doesn’t mean Abraham’s faith was revealed only decades later when he offered Isaac on the altar. Instead, it means Abraham’s life was one of continual belief that resulted in him freely choosing to obey God and perform good works that pleased God in accord with the grace that God gave him. Hebrew was chapter 11 even describes how Abraham did many good works by faith. The point of using Abraham as an example is revealed in James 2 24. You see that a man is by works and not by faith alone. James is not talking about how works reveal you have true saving faith and James isn’t talking about how works justify or vindicate your true faith and justify you before men instead of God.
He’s not talking about that. So what is James talking about when he says we are justified by works and not by faith alone? Some people caricature the Catholic view to make it seem like the church teaches that faith and works justify us in the exact same way, but the church agrees with St. Paul’s teaching that we are justified by faith apart from works of the law. The catechism of the Catholic church says that no one can merit the initial grace of justification and the ecumenical council of Trent held in the wake of the Protestant reformation said the following, we are justified freely by faith because that none of those things which proceed justification whether faith or works merit the grace itself of justification for if it be a grace. It is not now by works otherwise. As the same apostle says, grace is no more grace quoting Romans 11, six.
As I noted in my previous episode about Ephesians two, eight through nine, the church teaches that we are initially justified by grace alone. Apart from faith or works we simply receive God’s gift of saving grace. In baptism there is no work like circumcision or even a good deed like feeding the poor that we must do in order to go from being dead in sin to being alive in Christ. The catechism of the Catholic church says the following moved by grace man turns toward God and away from sin, thus accepting forgiveness and righteousness from on high justification is not only the remission of sins but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man. So we are not justified by faith and works in the sense that we must do a good work to go from being spiritually dead to being spiritually alive. No work can do that.
Instead, the church teaches that justification is a process and we can grow in holiness when we cooperate with God’s grace to do the good works he prepared for us. As Ephesians two 10 says, according to Protestant Bible scholar Ben Witherington, James is not dealing with works of the law as a means to become saved or as an entrance requirement. He never speaks of works of the law. Rather, he is dealing with the conduct of those who already believe. He’s talking about the perfection of faith in its working out through good works. If we take James 2 24 as referring to that final verdict of God on one’s deeds and life work, then even Paul can be said to have agreed That’s right because after we are justified, we still grow in holiness what Protestants often call sanctification. When James says we are justified by works and not by faith alone, he is talking about our ongoing justification before God.
Justification is not a one-time event in our lives. Even if our transformation from being a child of wrath to becoming a child of God did happen at a single moment in the past. Namely baptism, Romans six, seven says The following for he who has died is freed from sin, but the word freed is a form of the Greek word deo or justify. Paul literally says in this verse, he who has died is justified from sin. In its discussion of justification, the ecumenical counsel of Trent cites James 2 24 only when it talks about an increase in ongoing justification for those who are saved. The Council of Trent does not use James 2 24 to talk about what initially saves us. The council said Faith cooperating with good works increase in that justice which they have received through the grace of Christ and are still further justified. My colleague Jimmy Aiken compares the initial and ongoing elements of justification with the qualities of a light.
One quality of the light would be purity or the whiteness of a lamps light. At baptism, we are made free from sin and capable of entering into heaven or we receive pure righteousness from God like a pure light. But another quality of a lamp’s light is its intensity. A lamp might radiate pure white light but dimly or it could radiate it brightly. Likewise, a justified person might do good works that increase the radiance of the righteousness he received from God. A believer who does not do good works then would fail to heed Jesus’s command to quote, let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven. We must remember that this increase of righteousness is not something the believer earned through any good works that he performed or that God owes like a wage.
Instead, this increase is freely given to the believer as a promise from God to everyone who cooperates with God’s grace and lovingly obeys him. That’s why Romans chapter two says that God will render to every man according to his works, to those who, by patience and well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life and it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. So when James says we are justified by works and not by faith alone, he means that our good works increase the righteousness we receive from God and they spiritually strengthen us. Some Protestants think that this Catholic view of salvation causes a lack of assurance, but actually the opposite is true. Protestants say that good works will always accompany true faith or always flow from true faith. Here’s John MacArthur making this point in relation to teaching.
CLIP:
God has saved a people who are zealous for good works. God has saved a people who are transformed, born again and they’re marked by good works. They’re marked by both attitudinal fruit, love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control and behavioral fruit. The fruit of their lips is praise. The fruit of their life is service. They use their spiritual gifts gifted by the Holy Spirit. They’re engaged in the one another’s, they seek to do ministry, they seek to proclaim the gospel. So the difference is you can’t count on any of that to save you, but you can be certain that if you have been saved, those works are going to follow and that’s what James is saying. Faith without works is dead.
Trent:
As I note in my previous episode, my big question for defenders of sofie, which good works show that you’re truly saved. What if you’re a mediocre Christian who says your prayers goes to work nine to five and church on Sunday doesn’t commit grave sins but also watches TV instead of volunteering at a soup kitchen or seeking to do a ministry, Protestantism creates a lack of assurance when you need to do a certain amount of good deeds to prove you have true faith. Instead of just doing an honest examination of conscience that shows if you were in a state of grace or not because you could just be mediocre in holiness but not in a state of grave sin and have your relationship with God cut off. Instead, you are always under this view worried if you were truly saved in the first place, as can be seen in what Alan Par says in his discussion of James two.
CLIP:
So basically what James is saying here is that unfortunately a lot of people say they have faith, they claim they have faith, and they may even believe wholeheartedly that they have faith. Only to one day sadly realize that they really never had saving faith at all.
Trent:
Under the Catholic view, we can know that many of the good works that justify us after salvation are not strictly necessary to be saved. IE you will not be damned just because you skipped an opportunity to volunteer at the soup kitchen, but those good works do spiritually strengthen us. They make it easier to resist temptations to sin, including grave sin. Likewise, the more we give into minor sins, the more likely it is that we’re going to cross the line and gravely sin against God. The Catholic view of justification recognizes that God doesn’t merely declare us righteous as a legal fiction, God makes us righteous. He transforms our souls with an infusion of his own righteousness to make us new creations. Through God’s grace, we are then empowered to resist the spiritual forces of evil that exist in a cosmic battle for our very souls. Finally, some Protestants may say they agree with everything I’ve said.
We are justified by faith, but a true faith that produces all the works a Christian must do, and Catholics can agree with this formula in a sense. Pope Bennett the 16th said the following Luther’s phrase, faith alone is true if it is not opposed to faith and charity in love. Faith is looking at Christ and trusting oneself to Christ, being united to Christ, conform to Christ to his life and the form the life of Christ is love, hence, to believe is to conform to Christ and to enter into his love. But the big difference is that we reject the view that all good works, including those that are good but not necessary for salvation, like certain acts of charity will proceed by necessity or automatically from the mere fact that a person has true faith. The Council of Trent condemned the idea that quote works are merely the fruits and signs of justification obtained.
A person must still act on his free will to cooperate with grace to do the non obligatory good works that spiritually strengthen us. He must also freely choose to do the obligatory good works like avoiding mortal sin that are necessary to not forsake the gift of our salvation. This stands in contrast to some Protestants like the late Norm Geisler who claim that not only are we justified apart from works, but we are sanctified or made holy apart from good works. Geisler wrote the following, the message of Galatians is you are not only justified by faith alone, but you are also being sanctified by faith alone. Failure to understand that sanctification and justification are by grace through faith alone is the error of Galatian. Now following this mindset, the most extreme versions of Protestantism end up in an anomie and heresy, which says that our works have no relation whatsoever to our standing before God.
And so a Christian could be in horrible sin and he will still go to heaven, but Catholicism does not teach that works alone affect our standing either. True holiness comes from uniting faith and works. That’s why we take seriously St. Paul’s warning in Philippians chapter two verses 13 through 14. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling for God is at work in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Catholics are simply faithful to scripture which says that while we receive the first moment of salvation apart from any good work, our good works that are done through God’s grace after initial salvation, those works increase the precious gift of righteousness that God gave us. They draw us closer to God and to the perfection that God desires for us. If you want a deeper treatment of the issue of justification by faith, but not by faith alone, check out the chapters on justification in my book, the Case for Catholicism and Jimmy Akins book, the Drama of Salvation. Thank you so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day. I.