Truth Unites - Justification: Catholic vs. Protestant

Episode Date: January 20, 2022

In this video I offer an overview of a Protestant perspective on  justification, with a goal of providing conceptual clarity on where it  differs from a Roman Catholic view. And in case you are wondering, YES  AT 55:33 IT WAS AN EARTHQUAKE!!! Truth Unites is a mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

This video is going to offer a Protestant perspective on the doctrine of justification. A lot of people have asked me about doing this. It's one of the final videos on my own personal study of working through issues in ecumenical differences in dialogue and debate and all those things. I might do a shorter video on indulgences. I might do a shorter video on the seven sacraments and how many sacraments there are, things like that. A few things on the Lord's Supper maybe. There's a few things that might trickle out a little bit in 2022. I'm filming the in January of 2022. But, and then I'll do dialogues and debates and so forth.

But I think in terms of a matter of emphasis, going to be shifting a little bit more to apologetics and other topics, cultural issues and other things. But I'll still do things on occasion. But so this is a big one that a lot of people have asked about and an important one, but I want to emphasize at the front that this is not going to be like a comprehensive treatment of this. There's so much to this issue.

The goal is very modest and limited, and that is simply to provide. conceptual clarity about what a Protestant view of justification is and where it differs from a Catholic position so that someone could, by the end of the video, say, hopefully, not everyone wants to say this, but hopefully if someone is looking to understand, they could say, okay, I can see how someone could believe that. Like, I could see how someone who is sincere and intelligent and not just completely stupid could think like that. Because a lot of, that's actually a, a, a win. A lot of people, times people don't even think like that. The reason for this having a more

modest goal like that, partly this isn't my thing. This isn't really my area. Partly because I think this is an area where there just continues to be a lot of misunderstandings on both sides. It's a little bit ironic because justification historically was such an important spark for the Reformation. But today it's one of those areas where I would say we've made some progress and we could to make more progress, which is not to say we've made total progress or we will make total progress, but we've definitely made progress. There are some people who act as though the 1999 joint declaration between Lutherans and Catholics solved everything, and I'm not persuaded of that. There are others who act as though it did nothing, and I also don't agree with that. I'm going to

take a more middle of the road view where I think we've made a lot of progress. We've got common ground on some things, but we've also got important remaining differences. Now, one thing we could say too is that even if we resolved all of our differences on justification, there's sometimes this language that comes in about the reformation being over. And the problem is even if we fixed, even if we totally were together on justification, unfortunately, the reformation would not be over because there's other issues that divide us. And while maybe we've made some progress on justification, other areas, the divide has been furthered. Uh, particularly you think of questions pertaining to the authority of the church.

So from a Protestant standpoint, the bodily assumption of Mary, the immaculate conception of Mary, papal infallibility, these recent dogmas, these are major walls, major barriers to reunion. And I won't go into that because I don't want to annoy people right off the bat, but just to flag that. So in other words, I just don't want people to think like, okay, if we solve justification, then we're all good, because sometimes you hear people talk like that. But I really want to state my optimism, though, about this, too, and not be so pessimistic.

I do think we have made some progress, and I think that a lot of the remaining differences, I'll put it like this. I think a lot of the perceived differences do result from misunderstandings. I think Protestants often misunderstand Catholics and think if it is just like, for example, we just totally miss the initial versus final justification distinction sometimes. You hear Protestants talk like this all the time, as though, and this is why we're going to talk about, the Roman Catholic position is not the same kind of legalism as the Judaizers. It does not fall under the condemnation of the book of Galatians. That's what I'm going to argue in this.

So we do have a common core of agreement. And I would just appeal to my Protestant friends who see that as a compromise. I don't think that's a compromise. I don't think patient dialogue and looking for where we have common ground where we're using terminology different is compromise. Timothy George talks about an acumenism of conviction rather than an acumenism of accommodation. We're not just boiling everything down to the lowest possible common denominator. We're just trying to recognize, well, what do we agree on? And in my opinion, there's a not insignificant core that we do agree on.

And my appeal to Protestants would be if you are too rigid on this, you will end up rejecting not only contemporary Roman Catholics, but many, gosh, throughout church history, and even Protestants, you know, you'll end up projecting Richard Baxter, who, you know, if Protestants say, if you don't have justification, or if you don't have imputation, you don't have justification, you don't have justification, you don't have the gospel. I've heard people follow that chain of reasoning. No imputation, no justification, no justification, no gospel. The problem with that is it means Richard Baxter is not a Christian, and it means St. Augustine is not a Christian.

And I just want to encourage Protestants to be more cautious about that. In the other direction, Catholics often misunderstand the Protestant view. The caricatures of Sola Fide are really bad. They are just so common. It's almost as bad as the caricatures of Sola Scriptura. So we're going to talk about that, and we're going to talk about how there is absolutely, if people could get anything else out of this, there is no problem with James II for a problem. You still hear people making this argument over and over that just because James says were justified by faith plus works that this is at odds with a Protestant position.

You also see Eastern Orthodox Christians setting theosis over and against Sola Fide, which is a category confusion. There's no reason why you can't affirm both of those things. They're not mutually exclusive. So those are the kinds of things that I'm going to be getting into here. And I just believe that we need to be so careful here. And the reason is differences of phraseology and slogan and language are not always substantive differences. Sometimes, just as agreements of language are not always substantial agreements. And so we have to patiently dialogue with the other side.

We have to listen and try to inhabit the concerns of the other side. And, you know, try to look at the other side at its best. It's easy to see the flaws on the other side. Try to look at the other side at its best. try to inhabit their concerns. Think what are they worried about? What, you know, what's motivating them on this at their best? And I think if we try to disarm our own prejudice and really listen, we, I don't think it will resolve all the problems, but I just, or disagreement, certainly not, but I just think we can see, we've got overlap. We do have agreement on some important things. So, to that end, it'll be a little

longer video. I want to make two very brief initial comments about how to approach this doctrine of justification from a Protestant standpoint that are really important to me. And then I want to tackle the main issue. Where do we agree? Where do we disagree? That'll be the third comment and the main one. And then I also have probably what will be a lengthy section on church history and in particular John Chrysostom. And I want to talk a little bit about the historical record because that's really important on this issue as well and more of a challenge for the Protestant side. my side. So first, my first comment is just about approaching justification, because one of the ways that we can try to understand another position is see where they're coming from. You know, what keeps them up

at night when they're worrying about this? If you want to try to understand what is animating Sola Fidei, try to, you know, interpret it in context. And interpreting something in context means you see the angle of approach. You see where they're coming from. What are the concerns? Just as so, Like, for example, the way you approach something determines to some extent what you find. If you're hungry, then you're going to relate to food a lot differently. If you're lonely, you relate to people a lot differently. If you're tired, you relate to sleep a lot differently. Similarly, for a Protestant, we approach justification, this whole topic,

with a recognition of the holiness of God and the desperation of our sinful status in that light. So justification has to do with the legal dimension of our relationship with God and our salvation. It refers to God's acceptance of us as righteous through Christ. And ultimately, it points ahead to our final acquittal on the day of judgment. One of the ways you can understand, we're wondering what is justification? You can see it more clearly if you pit it against its alternative or its contrast or its opposite, which is condemnation. justification, think of the judge banging down the gavel and saying righteous. That's a Protestant understanding of justification.

And what I think people must understand if they're trying to sympathetically understand where the Protestant is coming from is the absolute sense of our desperate need in light of God's holiness and a way to envision it, even if you don't agree with this, it actually is a good exercise to humble yourself before the task, is to imagine on the day of judgment, standing before God. Calvin puts it like this in the institutes when he's talking about when you anticipate that reality, it leads to a different approach. He says in the shady cloisters of the schools, anyone can easily and readily prattle about the value of works and justifying men, but when we come before the presence of God, we must put away such amusements. For there we deal with

a serious matter and do not engage in frivolous word battles. To this question, I insist, we must apply our mind if we would profitably inquire concerning true righteousness. How shall we reply to the heavenly judge when he calls us to account? Now, I know that lots of people will disagree with Calvin's language there, but even if you do, it might help you understand where the Protestant is coming from, because they take very seriously the struggle of Luther, of how can I be accepted to a holy God. And I think approaching this with that awareness in our minds will, with just this kind of lively sense of the holiness of God, if you've ever had a really guilty conscience and you've just like, that's been just like eating away at you, you know, and then you

truly experience of forgiveness, keeping in mind that experience and then anticipating what it'll be like on the day of judgment is a way to appreciate where the Protestant is coming from and to some extent where we're all coming from. Second introductory comment that can help us kind of getting into this is just to see how profoundly important the doctrine of justification is for basic human psychology, for just getting by each day. I think a lot of people have the idea of justification is kind of more of a pre-modern concern, not something that secular people are as concerned about, maybe people who are more

introspective, but most people aren't really thinking about Luther's struggle. how can I find a gracious God? Most people today are thinking about questions of meaning, question, you know, fulfillment, other things like this. And I just, as I've reflected on justification, and this will help people understand also where a Protestant perspective is coming from, we see this as like at the core of human psychology, this deep need. And in fact, even in a secular context, one of the things Tim Keller always talks about in his

sermons is that justification by works is a profoundly operative category, even in secular context. You don't have to believe in God to be trying to justify yourself by works, because we're all trying to build our identity on something, and we all tend. Fallen human nature has a tendency to build our identity on our achievements, our resume, so to speak. Everyone's looking for this deep sense of okayness and identity. A few years ago, I did a study on justification in Paul's writings, and one of the things I noticed is how almost like clockwork at the crucial juncture of most, though not all, of his epistles, when he's talking about justification, he will get to boasting. And it's really interesting, and, you know, this would be an interesting area of further

research for somebody out there. Because boasting in Paul's writings, the Greek word there, has more to do, it's more than just bragging. It has to do with where you find your identity. And the idea here is that justification by faith alone in Christ is like the inversion of human boasting. It's, it confronts the basic instinct of the fallen human heart. Like Adam and Eve clothing themselves with fig leaves, we've all got this sense of need, of alienation, and justification touches that. And the idea is that the gospel is saying it's not your accomplishments, whether moral or anything else that make you okay or give you identity. It's purely on terms of grace what Christ has done for you.

My favorite image of justification in the Bible is Zechariah 3 of all passages. I've preached on this many times. I love it. It's the high priest and the imagery is the removal. of filthy garments and being clothed in clean garments and clothing is often imagery for righteousness in the Bible. So the point here is just to try to appreciate that this is not just some technical aspect of our salvation like what we'll say on Judgment Day. This has to, this touches on the very nerve of what makes life bearable, you know, and it will play out in all kinds of ways. It has to do

with how we're made right in the sight of God. But if you're made right in the sight of God, that's going to affect everything else in your life. And so it's just helpful to kind of see that as we get into it. All right, let me talk about now thirdly, what are the differences between Catholic and Protestant? Where do we agree? Where do we disagree? And what I want to basically argue here is that this is usually, especially at the street level, though sometimes even in the academic literature at times still, mis-framed, as though the Protestants believe in justification by faith alone, and the Catholics believe in justification by faith plus works. Period. End of discussion. incisible contradiction, and we don't agree. And I think that the difficulty here is that we're using

the term justification in different ways, and we're also using the word faith differently, actually. So to imagine how important this is to understand the meaning of our terms, imagine that an American and a Brit are debating about which sport is best, and if they don't understand that they are using the word football in different ways, obviously that's going to plague the discussion. And they might have an agreement that's actually a disagreement, or they might have a disagreement that's actually an agreement because the vocabulary is not the same. So what we need to understand is that the Roman Catholic Church defines justification as including what Protestants typically think of as sanctification. For the Catholic, justification means you're actually made righteous. It includes the moral

transformation. Paragraph 1989 of the catechism, justification is not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man. So Roman Catholic theology distinguishes then between initial justification and ongoing justification. And so for a Catholic, you know, I think legalism is an inherent tendency. You know, so I'm not saying we can't find legalism all over the place, including in many Protestant churches. So I'm sure legalism is a problem everywhere. But in terms of official Catholic theology, Protestants need to understand that you do not have to do good works to come into a state of salvation and friendship with God. And so let this point be clearly understood by Protestants out there. You don't have,

you don't merit that initial translation from enmity with God. Now I'm a friend of God. I don't have to do any good works. Rather, that comes about through baptism. Now, if you say, well, baptism is a good work, then you're going to have the same problems with Martin Luther himself, because a lot of Protestants have a high view of the sacraments too. You're not meriting. and you're not, you're not doing, it's not faith plus works to get into that state. Now, on the other side, Protestants define the word justification as a forensic declaration of righteousness, and they distinguish justification and sanctification. One is that initial declaration, the other is the ongoing process. However, Protestants do not separate them.

It's a distinction, not a separation. For a Protestant, justification is simply one aspect of salvation among others. The legal aspect. For most Protestants, what we'd say, and what I'd say is the hub is union with Christ. The spokes coming out are justification, sanctification, glorification, adoption, regeneration, etc. So the centerpiece is union with Christ. Protestants also don't deny a future justification for believers. We would say all aspects of Christian salvation are both already and not, not yet, including glorification in Romans 830. Past tense, that's my view. My brother wrote an article on that. But anyway, that's not getting into that. So we would understand the final, the process from initial to final differently, but it's not true that we wouldn't have any sense

we speak of final justification or future justification. But here's the key point. For the historic Protestant position consistently, good works are necessary as the fruit and outflow of justification. If you don't have good works, you are not a Christian. Calvin put it like this, it is therefore faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone. Just as it is the heat alone of the sun which warms the earth, and yet in the sun, it is not alone because it is constantly conjoined with light. Luther has many statements to this effect. It would not be difficult to prove. In my previous video on the four biggest caricatures of Protestantism, I address this point more briefly, and I quote him as saying, works are

necessary for salvation, but they do not cause salvation. That's Martin Luther. So they're not causal, but they are necessary. Richard Hooker put it like this, we are justified by faith alone, and yet hold truly that without good works, we are not justified. We could stack up quote after quote, after quote, after quote, and yet the Protestant position is just continually caricatured along these lines. The idea is that faith alone is the instrumental means by which you are actually made righteous in the sight of God. But that's not, doesn't mean that's the only thing that's required. If that happens, you will change.

The Holy Spirit will come into your life and you will be transformed and good works will happen and so forth. And that's an inexorable law. If you don't have the good works, you are not justified. And so what this results in, hopefully we can see that there's a lot more common ground than is often realized because both systems are actually saying something kind of similar in the broad form. they're both saying initially you come in on terms of grace and then subsequently you must change.

Now, I'm not saying that the differences in how that is understood are unimportant and I'll cover those in a second. They're going to be really important. But I'm just saying the core agreement there is considerable and that should be appreciated because too often both sides, just lampoon and caricature the other. the Protestants say, ah, you know, the Catholics believe in works righteousness. They're just like what the Apostle Paul opposed in the epistle to the Galatians and Romans and elsewhere throughout his writings. And that's not true. The Judaizers and Roman Catholic theology have important differences. One of them is this distinction between an initial and final justification.

There's others as well. So even if you disagree with the Catholic view, as I do, we can recognize it's not the exact same. Not every possible option here, and even possible errors, are the exact same. Catholics look at Protestants and do the same thing. They say many times, ah, faith alone. This is exactly what James was talking about in James 2. And this is just, you know, let me address James 2 for a second. One of, there's two reasons why there's zero tension for the Protestant with James 2.

One is, we'll talk about the meaning of the word justification. I'll come back to that, but also the meaning of the word faith. Routinely, Catholics assume that Protestants mean the same thing that they do with faith, and then Protestants do the same. We use that word differently. For the Protestant, faith does not mean mere assent. It means a whole disposition of yielding trust and surrender and consecration to God. It's like falling in love, okay?

It's not just something happens in your mind. A good image of faith for the Protestant is the tax collector in Luke 18 beating his breast and saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. That's not mere intellectual assent. Historically, the Protestant reformers spoke of faith as expressing itself through love, following the language of Galatians 5-6. Calvin said, we confess with Paul. No other faith justifies, but faith working through love. And as we've seen, good works are necessary as the fruit of that justification. So this is why, this is one reason. There's no problem, which ain't. James 2, because James is not talking about faith like that.

He's talking about it as something even the demons can do. demons do not, demons believe in James 219. That's intellectual assent. That's not a wholehearted yielding trust. The other problem is the word justification in James 2. It's referring to how you actually know who a true Christian is. That's the whole context that James is addressing. And the Protestant would agree with James that you know who the true Christian

is by who has good works. Paul is answering a different question and he's using the terms faith and justification in a different way. We've mentioned Galatians 5-6, faith expressing itself through love. It's not mere intellectual assent, but also justification for Paul has to do with how you're actually made right in the sight of God. And all over through Paul's writings, especially Romans and Galatians, I'm often surprised that even, you know, people won't even recognize that there's a tension here sometimes that needs to be resolved, let alone think through how to resolve it. But there are statements that are pretty unabashedly, Sola Fide, in Paul's writings, in fact, it's one of the themes of Galatians and Romans. Romans chapter four, verses five and six, Paul says, but to the one who

does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly. His faith is reckoned as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing upon the man to whom God reckons righteousness apart from works. So we note the one who does not work, and then the phrase, apart from works. We note the language of crediting and later on in Romans 4, the language of, or crediting and reckoning is the term here, later on in Romans for its crediting. We note that this is an action that's happening for the ungodly. The ungodly is justified. I'm not trying to argue against a Catholic position right now. I'm trying to clarify the sense in which Paul is using the word justification. Galatians 216, a man is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in

Christ Jesus. And he goes on to say, no one will be justified by the works of the law. Now, you know, one of the things people do is they appeal to the new perspective as though that just completely takes the Lutheran reading off the table. But my, and I won't get too into this, but my take is the new perspective offers a valuable corrective that helps us appreciate kind of the corporate and first century context in which Paul is functioning. But I think it often goes too far and when it's used to that end to completely overturn the Lutheran reading. And the reason is, and actually a lot of the proponents of the new perspective on Paul would admit this, that the phrase works of the law doesn't only refer to corporate national boundary

markers like circumcision. Think of Galatians 310. It says, for all who rely on works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, and curse it be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law and do them. And I think a lot of people have recognized this now. I think the way that here's the reality. It's a little tricky because the first century Jewish context for Paul's criticism of legalism is the occasion for addressing a broader human reality.

So yeah, we need to see that first century context, but it's not confined to that context. Here's how Doug Mew puts it. I think this is helpful. He says, my quarrel with new prospective advocates is often not so much over what they say, but about what they do not say, or perhaps better, the overall balance that they give to certain issues. Romans, for instance, is without doubt deeply concerned with the people or national question, how God's grace in Christ embraces both Israel and the Gentiles. As Paul announces the theme in Chapter 1, verse 16, first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. But this national breakdown follows and explocates the immediate recipient of the salvation which Paul's gospel both proclaims and affects, everyone who believes. Individual human beings here, and I would assert in Romans generally, are the immediate concern of Paul. New prospective advocates, I think, exchange background and foreground in their overall reading of Romans. A lot of Roman Catholic scholars today admit that Paul does use the word justification in a forensic sense, and I do think there really has been progress here. One of the ways you can see this is in the various reactions to Hans Kuhn's doctoral dissertation on Karl Barts' doctrine of justification.

Now, I know that Kung is a very controversial figure, so some people are going to freak out. Some people really do not like it when I quote Catholic scholars. But, I mean, number one, I'm going to talk about the reactions to him, so not just him, but also he's an important person in this whole discussion. I'll put up a picture of him meeting with Carl Bart, which would have been a fascinating discussion to listen to, you know. But his view, I mean, Kuhn could go as far as to make statements like this. Justification occurs through faith alone in as much as no kind of work, not even a work of love, justifies man, but simply faith, trust, abandoning oneself to God. Now, some people are going to say, oh, Kuhn was really out there.

But in the reactions to his work in engaging Karl Barts' doctrine of justification, he was arguing that there's for important harmony between a Protestant and Catholic perspective in important ways. And even in the 1999 joint declaration between Lutheran and Catholic, there's agreement in the annex on justification by grace alone, by faith alone, apart from works. So by grace alone and then the language of apart from works is used. And so that's a very significant. People are not aware of this sometimes, but there really has been progress in both sides understanding one another and finding ways to come together on kind of the basic core. Another example of this would be from the Protestant side, the language of reward or merit. And this gets incredibly tricky because as soon as you think you see a problem with the Catholic

system on these questions, you bump into another distinction. It's like, oh, but there's this kind of merit, and then there's that kind of merit. And between that latter category, there's three more subdivisions of, you know, it's like so, but the thing to see here is that historically, many Protestants have been fine with language of reward for eternal life as a reward for good works. Okay. And they'll appeal to biblical language like this. Calvin speaks like this. Melangthen speaks like this. So I'm not saying there's no differences there. But again, it's that thing of we have to pay patient attention to how the other side is using language and we can see, oh, sometimes we're not as far off as we thought. Now, that's not to say that there are no

differences. So let me cover two areas where we do differ. The first concerns what we call the formal cause of justification. So Aristotle distinguishes between four different kinds of causes. One of them is a formal cause. So sometimes this language is used for this difference, that Protestants speak of Christ's righteousness being credited or imputed to the believer. And this is a forensic declaration. The Roman Catholic position is infused righteousness. The catechism talks about, and again, Protestants need to be very careful here. They're not saying it's not from Christ's work or from grace. Okay, so it's from Christ's merited work through baptism,

and it consists of the Holy Spirit pouring sanctifying grace into our hearts, and then we cooperate with that grace. And the key to understand is that this is a process of being actually made righteous. This area is one where I think everyone would acknowledge, well, that's not true, not everyone would acknowledge, where I think most people would acknowledge, and I think it's unavoidable to recognize that there's just, disagreement in how we think like this. So in the spirit of this video, which is kind of

explaining conceptual clarity, trying to lay out a Protestant view in a way that someone could understand it, it might help people understand the idea of imputation. That's probably as foreign to some people as the idea of infused righteousness is to many Protestants. We see this as not this kind of later category that's imposed back on the Bible. We see this as springing organically out of the way the scripture speaks of the nature of righteousness with its active and passive components. And we also see this flowing out of union with Christ in which all that is of Christ is the believers in this kind of marital union. So biblically, righteousness consists of two aspects. One is negative. One is positive. Negatively, it means the cancellation of guilt. Positively,

it means the establishment of righteousness. And this is why the language of credit and counting in Romans 4, 23 and 24, we look to and we see this is fulfilling this kind of more full-orbed biblical understanding of righteousness that you see in the Old Testament law, for example. And the idea basically is justification means we're not just innocent. It means we're righteous. It means we're not just not bad. It means we're good.

It's like you have a massive debt. Christ not only pays off the debt, he then puts all of his money in the bank in your account. And I'm just trying to say that's a way that if you're trying to understand where does this idea of imputation come from, it coheres with a, I would say, a biblical way of thinking about righteousness. But this whole area of the formal cause of justification, this is a huge area of difference. And I would say, now again, some people will say, well, therefore we don't have the gospel in common. And I don't agree with that. Imputation is important, but, golly, again, if you say

that someone who doesn't get imputation right doesn't have the gospel, then you have to anathematize not just Richard Baxter, but a lot of people throughout the Pre-Reformation Church, as we'll talk about in a second, a lot. So consider that, for my contemporary Protestant viewers, consider the generosity of previous Protestant generations, even those who were not hesitant about polemics. John Owen, for example, said men may be really saved by that grace, which doctrinally they do deny, and they may be justified by the imputation of that righteousness, which, in opinion, they denied to be imputed. Jonathan Edwards and many others said something very similar, so I think we need to be careful

to see that there's a difference between this aspect of justification and justification wholesale. Okay. So that's one area of difference. Let me mention the second area where we remain remaining difference, and that's the whole soterological context of justification. Roman Catholic teaching on justification comes in a context that includes other things like indulgences, penance, purgatory, the sacraments. This is a huge area. So the necessity of baptism, the necessity of confession after a mortal sin, there's all kinds of ways where On paper, we can arrive at lots of agreement on lots of things, but in practice for how people are actually getting justified out there in the world, we have important differences, and it's

just important to flag those, to notice those, to not minimize those, to be aware of those, and so forth. So I think Coon goes too far when he says this. Protestants speak of a declaration of justice and Catholics of a making just, but Protestants speak of a declaring just, which includes a making just, and Catholics of a making just which supposes a declaring just, is it not time to stop arguing about imaginary differences? I appreciate what he's getting at there in the conceptual clarity for where we do agree, but I don't think the remaining outstanding differences are imaginary. I think those two that I have mentioned are real differences. At the same time, we can recognize we do have common ground here. We do have a core that is. It's a core that is

is in common, and hopefully this video has made that a little more conceptually clear for some. And here's my final comment on this, and then we'll finish with church history. Here's a thought experiment you can do. If you're Catholic, try to imagine the best Protestant you know. You know, maybe, hopefully there's somebody you could think of. If you're Protestant, try to imagine the best Catholic. Try to imagine, it's never been hard for me to do this. Not one of my videos is coming out of any sort of personal, animus.

against non-Protestant traditions. The only thing that is motivating me in these conversations is the fact that there's not as much Protestant stuff out there. And so people are just honestly, a lot of people are not giving Protestantism a fair shake because they're kind of caricaturing it and treating it as just based upon street-level practices. They're not familiar with the historic Protestants,

Martin Keminets in the Lutheran tradition. They've never read. They've never heard of Martin Keminets. Richard Hooker in the Anglican tradition. They've never read him. all these wonderful stalwart second-generation Protestants, Francis Turriton in the reformed tradition, they're not familiar with kind of classical Protestant argumentation. And so I've just kind of seen a need to fill a gap there and try to supply that on YouTube. But none of it's coming from an

anti-Catholic or anti-Orthodox bias or feeling in my heart. I have the deepest love and respect for Catholic people, Orthodox people. I learn from them. And so it's not hard for me to do this. maybe based upon the comments I get, I imagine maybe it is for others. But try to imagine someone, and then that you really respect on the other side, and then try to imagine, okay, what are their concerns at their most valid point? And it might help you. Like a Protestant, for example, is going to be concerned about the lack of assurance in the late medieval era. For example, among other things.

Catholic is going to look at the evangelical megachurch world and be concerned about the easy believism. Okay, start from there and start conversations by acknowledging that and recognizing that and then build from there. That's a way we can maybe move forward as we talk about a remaining disagreements and is just not forgetting to try to see the other side at its best. All right, final comment. Let's talk about church history. The reason I want to talk about this is I'm firmly persuaded that a Protestant notion of justification is Pauline. I think that it's what the Apostle taught. I don't think that Paul restricted his sola-fide affirmations to initial justification. I don't think the new perspective overturns a classical Protestant reading of Paul.

And I would encourage, if Catholic viewers, if you're willing to do this, read through Galatians, read through Romans, and read through them as sympathetically as you can, trying to see, well, where is a Protestant getting this from? Not reading them defensive. And I'm just really persuaded of that, and I could talk more about that some other time if that's helpful. But I want to talk about church history because I think if there's an area that is a strong challenge to the Protestant side, it would come from church history. And I think Protestants need to, because the charge against us is often that a novelty was introduced in the 16th century. So if we say, if we distinguish between what I'll call the meaning of justification, what it is, and the means of justification, how we get it.

So the meaning of justification is, is it a transformative process or is it a forensic declaration? The means is Solafide? Is it faith alone that you get it or faith plus works? If we distinguish those two things, most thoughtful Catholics won't say Solafide, the means question, has no historical precedent. That's a really hard case to make. There you can find a lot of people talking about justified by faith alone throughout church history. The question of meaning, however, has a lot of sting to it,

this historical appeal. And the idea here is, and Protestants need to feel the weight of this, that throughout church history, it does, particularly following Augustine, who spoke of justification as a making righteous, it really does become the dominant way of thinking about justification categorically that the meaning is the transformative process. That's what justification means. At the same time, I think this historical criticism can be overstated. So I'd like to make a few points of defense for the Protestant position. One is that we have to appreciate that for the Church fathers, for example, on questions of justification, they were not thinking as systematically as will later come in, like at the Council of Trent or with the reformers. The issues of justification

really come to a head. They're discussed more in the medieval period. They're discussed less in the patristic, they really come to a head in the 16th century. And so one of the dangers here is kind of taking language that wasn't intended as a kind of systematic statement. Maybe it's being expressed more rhetorically or hyperbolicly, but treating it as if it were this systematic statement. And people are going to say, oh, you're being overly nuanced. I don't think so because it really is tricky because you can find in the same church father, different statements that are given in a pastoral context. And so they're really emphasized. something strongly, but it'll sound like two contradictory positions. So there's a danger here,

number one, of how we interpret the language. A lot of the similarities between the Council of Trent and the earlier tradition have to do with language. But the earlier tradition, remember when Hans Kung talked about Catholic speak of a making just, which presupposes a declaring just? A lot of the language in the earlier tradition is like that. It's the The language is talking about a making just, but it's presupposing a declaration of justice. And so it's not at odds with how a Protestant thinks. And this is where, you know, people often talk about Alastair McGrath's book on justification and talk about how he sort of points out that on this question, the meaning of justification,

the Council of Trent has much better precedent historically. But he also says in that book, on page 38 here, I won't read the quote. he's talking about how works righteousness was very common in ways that sound like works righteousness in our church history but he says but it's quite innocent of the overtones that are later associated with that language and he's talking about how basically though you have a lot of precedent for the language in the catholic system earlier on it was not set self-consciously against the alternative there was room for both there was broad There are multiple ways of thinking.

Let me read an expression of this perspective from Yaroslav Pelican in his older book. I've been reading through it right now. It's called The Rital of Roman Catholicism. It's really interesting because it gives you kind of a Protestant perspective on Catholicism prior to Vatican II. And I don't know if I wouldn't put it as strong as he does here. I don't even know if he would. I doubt he would. Later on in his life, of course, he became Orthodox.

But just hear what he's saying is a kind of pushback against this more simplistic way of thinking as though there's just sort of this straight line of continuity throughout church history leading to the Council of Trent, where in reality what you have is a lot more variation and wiggle room and width that then becomes narrowed at Trent. Here's what he says. Every major tenet of the Reformation had considerable support in the Catholic tradition. That was eminently true of the central Reformation teaching of justification by faith alone. The Council of Trent selected and elevated to official status the notion of justification by faith plus works. which was only one of the doctrines of justification in the medieval theologians and ancient fathers.

When the reformers attacked this notion in the name of the doctrine of justification by faith alone, a doctrine also attested to by some medieval theologians and ancient fathers, Rome reacted by canonizing one trend in preference to all the others. What had previously been permitted also, justification by faith alone, now became forbidden. In condemning the Protestant Reformation, the Council of Trent condemned part of its own Catholic tradition. Now let me ask, is that right? Is there any precedent at all? Granted that Augustine's way of thinking generally becomes predominant, can you find any precedent for it? Because people often overstate their case and they say, you know, the Protestant conception of justification is totally novel to the 16th century.

Again, thoughtful people won't say that about Sola Fide per se, but they'll say that about the meaning of justification. But the answer is yes, you can find precedent certainly. In fact, early on on wherever Paul, because Solofide is so clear and sparkling in Galatians and Romans and Paul's writings, you can find it wherever his writings are commented on. I've been looking into this a bit, and I've decided rather than talk about, I was going to talk about Hillary and his comment on Matthew and then Ambrose a bit, decided to focus on just one figure because what happens a lot is I'll start quoting from the fathers and so forth. And very quickly, people, will accuse you of quote mining and taking out of context. And I think those criticism are often

very much off the mark. I really do. So I'm just going to focus on one figure. And, you know, I've been reading through John's homilies on Romans and I just want to like walk you through them for where he talks about justification in terms of Sola Fide, but not just for initial justification. So my case is going to be, John seems to affirm justified by faith alone, and he doesn't restrict that to initial justification. Rather, he regularly speaks of justification as just the initial act of being made righteous in God's sight. He doesn't use all the language, but that basic concept is there. Let me ward off some of the potential criticisms in advance, because what I have learned, what I have discovered is people get very aggressive when you quote, when you show points of

continuity between a Protestant way of thinking about something and the pre-Reformation tradition, especially the church fathers. It is so interesting. So here's a metaphor for this. Suppose you're sitting down to lunch with a friend who is a deist, and he advances the idea that all of the founding fathers of the United States were deists. And you say, well, not all. I mean, it's not that neat and tidies. Many were, but some were more like a practicing Christian or close to that. Some were kind of in between, you know, they're kind of like a Christian influenced by deism or a deist influenced by Christianity, something like that.

And you give some quotes from Patrick Henry and John Jay and Samuel Adams that sound like they believe in miracles, they believe God intervenes in the universe, and they don't sound like deists. And the response you get from your, your friend gets very angry with you, and the response is you're saying, first of all, they misportray your position and say, oh, so you're saying all the founding fathers were Christians. And you're like, no, I'm just saying that somewhere and that it's messy. So then they say, so you're saying that the founding fathers are just hopelessly incoherent. And you're like, no, I'm not saying they're not all in agreement on everything.

And I'm trying to be historically accurate here. And then they say, so you're just picking and choosing which fathers you like. You're like, no, I'm not, I've never claimed to be in agreement with every father on everything. I'm just trying to be historically accurate about what founding father believed what. Come back to that charge of picking and choosing in a second. And then they say, well, then you're just, they say you're just taking the founding fathers out of context. And you're like, I've got a prayer here from John Jay. It sounds like he believes that something other than D is, and it sounds like he believes that God can intervene and does intervene.

What's the context that militates against that, you know? And this is the kind of feeling I have when I'm trying to point out that the fathers are not so neat and tidy. The church fathers don't always fit for our contemporary church divisions to always support one side. And thoughtful Catholics can totally just admit that. It's not a problem. Like it's not a defeater for Catholicism. But I have this feeling people get very aggressive. They like, even when what I'm saying is sort of standard fair in the scholarship, people come after it like, you know, this picking and choosing,

charge is the one I've been thinking about recently. People, I get this regularly in the comments, and I think people really, they really see this as though this were a problem. The problem with this picking and choosing charge, like because I'm a Protestant, I'm just picking and choosing the fathers, is that it's absurd to think that you can only cite historical figures for their beliefs if you agree with them on everything else they taught, or everyone else from their time period. Nobody does that. it's entirely legitimate to try to aim for historical accuracy to just show what the church fathers thought and I'm not ever claiming that I agree with every father on everything and I don't think any person on planet earth Catholic, atheist, Orthodox, Protestant, anything agrees with every father on everything.

And of course, no one need justify that. Like, it's not the Catholic or Orthodox position that every father was right on everything. And so I just think where the, hopefully the mature discussion, will get to is to recognize that kind of let the fathers be the fathers, let the church fathers make us uncomfortable, puncture our expectations and our paradigm. That's part of the whole fun of engaging historical theology. And so I think the problem, I think, is that people have bought into this more simplistic paradigm that like all of the fathers are proto-Roman Catholics or proto-Eastern Orthodox and they're all going to speak just to support and the

that system of theology. And it's just not true. It is not true. So I'm not taking the fathers out of context. People say the same thing with Augustine on Soloscriptura. They'll point to other things that Augustine said that are not at odds with Soloscriptura. And then reference them as a way to say, ah, see, this is why Augustine can't have affirmed Soliscriptura. They also just respond with this over the top. It's so weird. I don't get it. It's like what I'm arguing for is pretty standard. I don't know why people haven't heard this before. It's common. But they act like they've got to go after you. And like the mentality is like the church fathers are ours.

If you try to show anything in them that doesn't align with our theology, we are going to go after it and tear it limb from limb and show not just that you're wrong, but that you're stupid. And that's the aggressiveness of the other side. And I mean, quite honestly, it's just not warranted by the evidence. So let me talk about John Chrysostom as an example of a clear affirmation of Solafide that I will say is very difficult to fit into the, categories of Trent. As an entry point, the counsel of Trent, that is, consider his sermon on 2nd Corinthians 521. He's talking about how Christ was righteousness itself, but he was condemned to die as a sinner so that we might become the righteousness of God. And then he's extending the meaning of this phrase, the righteousness of God. He says, for this is the righteousness of God and we are

justified not by works, in which case it would be necessary that not even a spot should be found, but by grace, in which case all sin is done away. And this, at the time, that it is, does not allow us to be lifted up, for it is entirely the free gift of God, teaches us also the greatness of what is given. Now, with each of these quotes I'm going to introduce, you can find ways to try to qualify it to try to fit it into a Catholic paradigm. You know, you can find ways to say, well, here's the sense in which we affirm Sola Fide and John could be meaning it in that way.

The problem each time is going to be, John doesn't do that. John doesn't qualify his statements in that way. And if you just read through his sermons on Romans, you see that. Another way people are going to respond, I'm sure, is because they do the same thing with my Augustine Solar Scriptura videos, they're going to say, oh, but John believes in the necessity of good works. And they'll quote other passages where he does. He totally believe.

Or they'll quote some other thing in John's theology that accords with Catholic theology, which is not hard to do. And then they'll set that against my point, but it's not at odds with my point to say, John believes in the necessity of good works. As I've said, Protestants believe in the necessity of good works. of good works. So that's not a contradiction, but again, people caricature Sola Fide as though it were at odds with the necessity of good works, just like they caricature Soliscriptura. So then people

with Augustine will quote passages about the authority of the church, the authority of traditions, other things, and as though that were at odds with my case for Sola Scripura, which it is nothing to do with Sola Sculptura. Sola Scipatura is only about infallibility, per se. So people are going to do that probably, but try to hear these quotes. You know, if I could make this appeal, it might not be a bad idea. Try to hear them in a non-defensive spirit. And as I say, one of the funnest things in theology is when you get corrected or challenged by something. And it happens to us all all the time. Here's John on Ephesians 2 8 through 10. Faith's workings themselves are a gift of God lest anyone should boast. What then is Paul saying? Not that God has forbidden works, but he has forbidden us to be justified by

works. No one, Paul says, is justified by works precisely in order that the grace and benevolence of God may become apparent. So now let's push a little deeper as we go through back to the homilies on Romans and ask, how does John understand Sola Fide? Is this righteousness something that can be harmonized with the Catholic system that comes out of the Council of Trent? Well, keep reading in his homilies on Romans and ask whether it fits with this initial justification versus final justification paradigm, which John himself doesn't cash out justification in that way. So on Romans 117, he speaks of a justification as a righteousness, not thine own, but that of God for you do not achieve it by toilings and labors, but you receive it as a gift from above, contributing only one thing from your own

store believing. What we're going to see over and over again is that the way that a Catholic would affirm Solofi day. You can, like, if you're determined to find a way to kind of jam Chrysostom's statements into that, you can do it. But John himself never thinks like that. He never restricts. For example, I'm not aware, I've not read everything in John. I'm not an expert on John.

I've not published a lot on John. I've spent a lot of time reading him. I love John Chrysostom. I feel he's in my head, you know, he's like an old uncle of mine or something like that. I feel like that toward him. I spend a lot of time reading him. but so maybe there's stuff I'm not aware of. Maybe there's stuff out there people will point to.

He wrote a lot because he preached a lot. You know, we've got a lot of sermons. But I'm not aware of John speaking of justification, generally speaking, as a process. He seems to think of it as the initial status of righteousness at the moment of faith. And he would, and so another thing people are probably going to do is talk about John on the sacraments. Yes, John is a high view of the sacraments. sacraments, he believes in the necessity of baptism, fine. That's not at odds with this. So did Martin Luther. Romans, so let me just give a few more examples where it becomes clear that he's not thinking of

justification as a transformative process. Romans 324 to 25. On the declaring of righteousness in these verses, John says, he's basically saying in the context that it means that God is both righteous himself and making others righteous. And then he says, the declaring of his righteousness is not only that he is himself righteous, but that he does also make them that are filled with the putrifying sores of sin suddenly righteous. And it is to explain this, that is what is declaring that he is added, that he might be just and the justifier of him who believes in Jesus. Doubt not then, for it is not of works, but of faith, and shun not the righteousness of God, for it is a blessing in two ways, because it is easy and because it is open to all things. Now, if you note the adverb suddenly there,

that raises the question, especially because he's pairing the making righteous and the declaring righteous, which speaks to the question of what, in what sense is justification making righteous for John? And then as you move forward to Romans, you'll find this language of suddenly be used all the time. You know, just a little bit further in Romans 331, he says, for when a man is once a believer, he is straightway justified. But since after this grace, whereby we are justified, there is need also of a life suited to it. Something huge just smashed into the building. I'm going to keep recording this video, but I'm really curious what that was. I hope it was not an earthquake. Wow. Probably not. Probably something else. At least I've got your attention back if you were nodding off.

All right. So he says, after this grace whereby we were justified, there is need also of a life suited to it. let us show an earnestness worthy for the gift. Now I'm going to leave that quote up for a second. Look at the language there. This is like how a Protestant will think. Again, it's not the same. John doesn't use all the Protestant terminology, but it's the same idea.

You're justified first, then in response to justification, you live a life worthy of that. But you're straight away justified. I'm not aware that I could be wrong. There could be other things outside of his homilies on Romans. Again, I found this with other fathers. In one place it looks like one thing

in another place looks at another thing. I'm not aware of John ever speaking of justification is this transformative process. He believes in the transformative process, but he doesn't call that justification to my awareness. I'm putting this out there. I'm open to someone proving me wrong. Preaching on Romans 4.5, a little bit later, John says, God is able, on a sudden, not to free a man who has lived in impiety from punishment only, but even to make him just and to count him worthy of those immortal honors. The adverbs, the adverbs, the adverbs, on a sudden there seems to suggest the declaration of status that you could fit that into a Catholic view. You could say, oh, but here's what that means. But the way you'd have to do that

would be something that John himself never does. John consistently seems to think its justification is the one-time declaration of status, and then from there you live and are transformed in response to that. Gosh, I've got other passages here. I've got other quotes there from other fathers as well, but I'm just going to stop it there. I have read through how Catholic apologists respond to John, and I don't find their responses convincing. They do the same thing that people did in response to me on Augustine and Sola Scriptura. A lot of times they're setting things at odds with the stated claim that are not intrinsically at odds with it.

A lot of times also they're saying, oh, here's how you could read John, but it isn't necessarily giving you any compelling reason for why you should read him that way and so on and so forth. And then the biggest thing that they rely upon the caricature that Protestants don't believe in the necessity of good works. So they quote John on the necessity of good works as though that were at odds with the claim here. It's not at odds. Just the same way people will quote Augustine's statements about the church as though and the authority of church traditions and so forth as though that were at odds with Soliscriptura when it's not, and just shows the actual Protestant claim is not yet been understood. So, all right, but let me end it there

and I'll simply say that, you know, in terms of where all this leaves us, I would say the basic place it leaves us is we have agreement on some things, we have disagreement on other things, so we need to keep talking. The canons of the Council of Trent and the anathema, the anathemas in them are still on the table. That's a problem from my vantage point. I read through those canons very carefully, and some of them, there's matters of interpretation and how you take them. But some of the, you know, it's pretty clear that Protestant positions as such are being targeted and anathematized. And so that's still on the table, and that's a problem. on the other hand when I read through the prayers

of Anselm, even though he's operating with more of a what would be a Catholic understanding of justification Ghali. I'll close with this quote from Anselm. You know, he starts, in my point with this, is there's this sort of

baseline core that we have in common and the way salvation is actually being experienced by people, despite the different categories and technical understandings of it. But yeah, because in his meditations, this is one of my favorite passages in Anselm

in his meditations where, I mean, it almost sounds like something out of existentialist literature or something like this. It's very, he's really, it has a dreadful sort of tone. He starts off saying, I am afraid of my life. For when I examine myself carefully,

it seems that my whole life is either sinful or sterile. And he goes on and on talking about himself as a creeping thing. And if I remember the Latin, word there is for an insect. He talks about him as a foul-smelling sinner, worse than a corpse. I mean, he's going on about his sinful state and his need of righteousness, but then he talks about his salvation in Christ. He says, but it is he himself. He himself is Jesus. The same is my judge. Between whose hands I tremble. Take heart, sinner, and do not despair. Hope in him whom you fear.

Flee to him from whom you have fled. Jesus, Jesus, forget the pride which provoked you. see only the wretchedness that invokes you. Dear name, name of delight, name of comfort to the sinner, name of blessed hope, for what is Jesus except to say, Savior? So Jesus, for your own sake, be to me Jesus. It's wonderful to think that I believe either a Catholic or a Protestant could pray that prayer. We've got this sort of comment at the bottom. We've got this common ground.

On the other hand, we've also got remaining important differences that we need to keep working at. All right, hope this video has been helpful. It's a longer video, somewhat rambling, but I know that people are really interested in this topic, and I hope that this video, despite its very modest purpose of simply trying to bring conceptual clarity to how a Protestant thinks so someone can understand a Protestant perspective. Someone's saying, why would you believe in imputation? Someone is saying, how can you deal with the fact that no one thought like this until the 16th century? All these kind of typical objections, hopefully this brings conceptual clarity for how a Protestant

thinks about those things. All right, let me know what you think in the comments, and God bless. Thanks for watching.