Catholic apologist Dr. Karlo Broussard joins Cy Kellett to respond to a thoughtful caller who sees surprising similarities between Catholic and Lutheran views on salvation. But is “faith alone” really enough? Karlo unpacks the key difference.
Transcript:
Caller: I’m a convert from about 18 years ago.
Karlo: Oh, wow.
Caller: When you first get into the faith and apologetics, it really seems like the Protestant view and the Catholic view of justification are like miles away. I feel like they’re actually a lot closer together in their beliefs of justification. Maybe some misconceptions on both ends, but especially when it comes to a modern, like conservative Lutheran and a Catholic kind of seeing justification as just basically being united to the righteousness of Christ. You know, so the Catholic view of we’re justified by faith that’s made alive by charity or faith formed by charity, compared to the Lutheran view of justification by a living faith. I think that maybe I’m missing something, but I think that I see them as being closer than I guess I thought years ago.
Karlo: Yeah. Well, Nick, you could start with, if you haven’t already read the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, which was by the Catholic Church’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Lutheran World Federation in 1999. You have that joint declaration to at least start.
In this study of the commonalities and still remaining differences between the Catholic and Lutheran positions on justification, what you’re going to find is that there are some degrees of agreement to where we can talk about faith informed by love, et cetera. However, at the same time, there is still this remaining essential difference between the Catholic and Lutheran view as to what is the reason why we are justified.
The Council of Trent called it the formal cause. And that’s just basically highfalutin philosophical terminology for what is the ground, what is the basis, what is the reason and virtue of which we as Christians are at peace with God, as Paul puts it in Romans 5:1, or no longer subject to condemnation, as he puts it in Romans 8:1.
In the Lutheran view, as it was with Martin Luther himself and Calvin, the answer to that question still is the forensic declaration of God that we are just on account of the imputed righteousness of Christ that’s credited to our account, such that the reason we are at peace with God is not on this view on account of some interior righteousness that God brings about, but rather solely on account of the imputed righteousness of Christ.
That is still, as I understand it, the Lutheran view of justification, which is identical to the Reformers’ view of the nature of justification, in contrast to the Catholic understanding of the nature of justification, being that the reason, the basis for which we are at peace with God as Christians and no longer subject to condemnation, that is justified, is on account of the interior state of righteousness that God brings about via sanctifying grace.
On this view, you have sanctification, the inner sanctification of the soul being the very ground and the reason in virtue of which we are justified. And that is essentially different than the Reformers’ view and the now current Lutheran view, as I understand it, of where sanctification is not the reason why we are justified, but they are two separate things.
Now for the Lutherans, a faith informed by love is not going to be the ground of that justification. The faith is going to be the instrument through which we have the imputed righteousness of Christ applied to us. In the Catholic view, the instrument of our justification, like in the Reformers’ view, is faith. For the Catholics, it’s baptism being the ordinary instrument of that justification and the faith informed by love, as you put it, Nick, you know, Galatians 5:6, faith working through love, or even in Paul, the faith that justifies, that faith informed by love is indeed the state of the soul and the intellect and will being rightly ordered to God as its supernatural end, that sanctification.
That’s what we believe to be the ground, the reason, or the basis of our justification. So in light of that articulation, you can see that the two views are essentially different. And as I understand it, the Lutherans to this day still hold to that view of the nature of justification as opposed to the Catholic view.
And of course, where works are going to be involved, on the Lutheran view, it’s not going to be with regard to any sort of final justification, as it is on the Catholic view; it’s only going to contribute to one’s sanctification, given the prior belief that sanctification is utterly divorced from and independent from justification, whereas on the Catholic view, our works of love are going to contribute to our ongoing and final justification, precisely because the nature of our justification is indeed the interior state of the soul which our works do indeed affect.
Nick, I know that’s a lot, but what do you think of that? Is that helpful?
Caller: Well, yeah, I guess so. When you go over, and I know what you’re speaking of, I think that’s in chapter seven of Trent when it talks about the five causes of our justification.
And I know that the fifth cause, the formal cause, is described as the righteousness of God, that that’s the grounding of our justification, you know, not in the justice in which he himself is just.
But I guess that when I’m still, I think what gets, why I see them as more similar is it seems that there is an interior justification and then there is some shared merit of Christ. So even in the…
Karlo: That’s right.
Karlo: You know, view, the third cause is the meritorious cause.
Just what Jesus did on the cross. But it seems like, so if, like if we’re saying that when God justifies, like, it’s… I think that the Catholic says that when God justifies, it’s like when God says let there be light, he doesn’t declare the darkness to be light and it’s still dark. He declares the darkness to be light when it becomes light.
So, and I understand it’s an interior union with that infused righteousness or habitual grace.
Caller: Well, it’s… So it seems that, like, if you get, like you brought up Romans 8, and Romans 8 seems to be that legal, no condemnation. But also that shows that more in a… Not because I think about God, but because I’m in a relationship with God. And now that just decree of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk according to the Spirit.
So it seems that if a Lutheran describes that, ultimately it’s Christ that justifies us in our union with Christ in that.
And we can agree on that.
And there is an ontological change. And that’s where it seems like sometimes Luther was just inconsistent..
Yeah, well, here’s the distinction. Here’s the distinction. The Reformers did not deny an ontological change, an interior renewal of sanctification. They did not deny that. They affirmed that.
But what they taught was that the inner renewal, or as you put it, ontological change happens alongside and with the justification. But the ontological change or inner renewal is not the ground or the basis in virtue of which we are justified. For justification is on account solely of the direct declaration by God, on account of the imputed righteousness of Christ.
Now contrast that with what you were trying to articulate with the Council of Trent, that the basis, the formal cause, that in virtue of which we are at peace with God is indeed, as you put it, the justice of God, but not his own justice, but the justice that comes from God that he brings about within us in virtue of, as you put it, habitual or sanctifying grace.
But as you were articulating correctly, Nick, the Council of Trent does acknowledge that God calls us just. But as it states, he doesn’t merely call us just; he who calls us just makes us just.
So you have a correspondence, you could say, where he reckons us justified, but there’s an objective reality that maps on with that recognition, but that only comes about because of the righteousness of Christ manifest on the cross.
And that gets to what you said, Nick. Jesus’ death on the cross being the meritorious cause. So we affirm that in virtue of the righteousness of Christ, we are justified. But precisely the way in which we’re justified on account of the righteousness of Christ is essentially different from how the Reformers viewed our justification on account of the righteousness of Christ.
And so that’s what I would say to that. I know we’re coming up on a break here, but I really appreciate your call.
Cy: Thanks, Nick. Thanks very much.
Karlo is correct. We are coming up on a break. I just want to straighten one thing out because it didn’t sound right to me when I said it. So I looked at… It’s not Bread of Life Radio in Youngstown; it’s Living Bread Radio in Youngstown, Ohio. But I don’t want you to think I made a mistake, Karlo. That only happens once a show. We never get to mistake number two. So I wouldn’t want you to think that.
But, yeah, I apologize for that. It’s Living Bread Radio. Of course, in Youngstown, you presumed.
Karlo: Upon the grace of God to preserve you in the good, and that presumption has been falsified.
Cy: Right? When you presume that makes a pre out of “u” and me. Is that how that works?