Catholics and Evangelicals are not as Far Apart on Salvation as We Used to Think
Our Catholic readers will want a more detailed exposition of the Catholic view of salvation, and especially of its alleged roots in the New Testament. An Evangelical friend actually wrote a very kind and peaceable letter to me, asking if there was some way that the viewpoints of Catholics and Evangelicals about salvation one day could be reconciled. For those who desire to dig deeper into this doctrine, therefore, I have listed his two brief questions below, and my own answers to them.
The bottom line, I think, is that once the Catholic view is fully understood, we are not as far apart from some Evangelicals on this matter as many people used to think, and the ecumenical dialogue process has made some progress in this area as a result. But I doubt that Evangelical and Catholic views ever can be fully harmonized.
So, get out your Bible and your Catechism and follow along!
1. "How does Catholicism define 'Faith'?"
You will find this discussed in depth in entries 26-197 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Perhaps the best "in-a-nutshell" definition is found in entry 143: "By faith man completely submits his intellect and will to God. With his whole being man gives his assent to God the revealer. Sacred Scripture calls this human response to God, the author of revelation, 'the obedience of faith' (Rom 1:5, 16:26)." See also entry 150: "Faith is first of all personal adherence of man to God. At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed. ... It is just and right to entrust oneself wholly to God and to believe absolutely what He says." This seems very close to what many in the Protestant Evangelical tradition generally mean by the word "faith."
2. "If, for the sake of discussion, we were to define 'faith' as meaning an attitude of trust toward Christ that by nature produces good works — by that definition could we then agree that believers are saved by faith alone?"
I think the answer to this question is both "yes" and "no."
Catholics would define "faith," in the full sense of the word, as an act or state (in traditional Catholic terminology, a "virtue" or disposition of soul) of entrustment (or surrender) of our whole self to Jesus Christ, God incarnate, our Savior. As such, it includes the entrustment of our intellect and will to Him (see Catechism, entry 143 above, and 1814) — and as such, it also admits of degrees (e.g., one can have no faith, weak faith, or strong faith) which is why the apostles asked Jesus: "Lord, increase our faith" (Mk 9:24). That is also why "living faith" (a phrase used by both Protestants and Catholics to describe "faith" in its full sense, as defined above) includes at least some measure of love for God and hope in Him (love being primarily a submission of the will to Him, and hope being in part a submission of the intellect to Him). That is why John Wesley, the 18th century founder of Methodism, used to say (in paraphrase): “we are saved by faith alone, but the kind of faith that saves is never alone” (i.e., it includes hope and love in it). On all this, see Catechism 1814-1815, and especially the Joint Declaration on Justification of 1999, in which Catholics and Lutherans tried to come to a common mind about the best use of this terminology. (An interesting aside here: At the time of the Reformation, Catholics generally used the term "faith" to mean the assent merely of the human intellect to all that God has revealed, a meaning that the word sometimes seems to carry in Scripture (e.g., in the book of James, and in Hebrews), whereas Protestants tended to use the word more in the way that St. Paul did, as a complete trustful surrender of our whole self to God. That is one reason why the two sides often misunderstood each other when they used slogans at the time such as "saved by faith alone" (Protestant) or "saved by faith, hope, and love" (Catholic). The word "faith" was being used differently in these two phrases!]
If we can agree on what the word "faith" means in the sense of "living faith," then the next question is: "what do you mean by 'saved' in the phrase 'saved by [living] faith alone'?" This word "saved" is another word that seems to have a variety of nuances of meaning in Scripture, and in various theological traditions. Suppose we avoid getting too technical, and just agree that what "saves" us is what enables us to get to heaven. For Catholicism, the gift of "living faith" is the root of the whole salvation (or getting to heaven) process (see Catechism 163), because it establishes our hearts in a deeply personal, life-giving, and transformative union with Jesus Christ. Given that such "living faith" necessarily includes the gift from the Holy Spirit of the virtues of love and hope as part of it (as explained above), therefore "by nature" it will tend to result in "good works," as my friend said. Of course, for Catholics that result is not automatic, since God's love and grace is never coercive. Thus, the initial gift of "living faith" does not guarantee that one will live out one's life as a true disciple of Jesus Christ. People can receive that free gift of the virtue of "living faith" from the Holy Spirit (in fact, according to Catholics and Lutherans, every Christian does through baptism) and the life-giving relationship with Jesus Christ that it entails, and yet through sheer obstinacy of will fail to consent or cooperate with that gift, and even squander it. But the initial gift of living faith is still a free gift from God that enables us and predisposes us (though it does not compel us) to do good works.
Think of someone who receives a sum of money as an inheritance. The money might be deposited in his or her bank account, but if that person forgets about the money, pays no attention to it, or withdraws it and wastes it, the initial free gift does not guarantee freedom from a life of poverty.
Moreover, anyone who receives the gift of "living faith" from the Holy Spirit is certainly "saved" in the sense that if they were to die in that state, they would not go to hell. A person with "living faith" is spiritually united with Jesus Christ, and therefore united with the merits of Christ's passion. If that person's "living faith" (i.e. his surrender to Christ and personal union with Him) is weakened by sin and half-hearted repentance (Catholics traditionally call this having mere "imperfect contrition" for sin, involving a weak love of God and some remaining "attachment" to sin), then that person's living-faith-union with Jesus Christ is incomplete, the merits of Christ's passion cannot fully apply to him, and therefore after death he may need to spend some time in purgatory where, by God's grace, the person's sanctification process can be completed, so that the he can attain "that holiness without which no one shall see the Lord" (Heb 12:14, cf. Mt 5:20, 5:26, 5:48, Rom 6:22, 1 Cor 3:11-15, 2 Macc 12: 45-46, Rev 21:27). But such a soul, by grace of the Holy Spirit, is still headed for heaven.
Also, if a person who has retained the gift of "living faith" (what Catholics traditionally call being "in a state of grace") commits a "mortal sin" (1 John 5:16-17), he can lose that "saved," "state of grace," "personal-union-with-Jesus Christ-through-living faith" status altogether. He would then need to recover it, by the help of the Holy Spirit, through repentance and faith (here the Catholic teaching seems to be on par with the Wesleyan-Methodist tradition), as well as through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. This sacrament includes an expression of contrition through the act of confession that deepens repentance and faith. Confession also relieves the conscience through the authoritative assurance of divine pardon that this sacrament provides (see Jn 20:21, Jas 5:16, 1 Jn 1: 8-9).
In the Catholic tradition, therefore, to receive the initial gift of living faith is not seen as a lifelong guarantee of salvation. Indeed, serious failure to live out our faith by doing the good works that Jesus Christ may call us to do could result in a falling away from grace (Gal 5:4) and a putting to death of that living faith union with Jesus Christ that we once had, so that our final salvation really can be affected by our works, or lack thereof (cf. Mt 7:21, 10:22, 16:27, 25:14-26, Lk 10:25-28, 18:18-29, Jn 3:36, 15:1-10, Rom 2:5-13, 11:20-22, 1 Cor 9:27, 10:12, 2 Cor 6:1, Gal 5:4, 5:6, 5:19-21, 6:7-9, Eph 5:5, Phil 2:12-13, 3:11-14, Heb 5:9, Jas 2:14-26, 1 Jn 4:12, 16-17, Rev 20:12, 22:12).
Moreover, by living out our faith in works of loving service we can "grow in grace" (2 Peter 3:18), and receive a greater reward in heaven (Mt 16:27, Lk19:11-27, Gal 6:7-9, Rev 20:12, 22:12). That is why St. Paul can write, paradoxically, that on the one hand we are "saved by faith, and not by works" (Eph 2:8-10) in the sense that the initial gift from the Holy Spirit of the "living faith" that unites us in a life-giving way with Jesus Christ is a free gift of God's grace that cannot be earned or merited in any way, and if we die in that state, in possession of that free gift, united to Christ by His merciful love, we shall not be lost. And yet, on the other hand, St. Paul can also say that nothing is "of any avail except faith working in love" (Gal 5:6), and that "if I have all faith so as to move mountains, and have not love I am nothing "(1 Cor. 13:2), in the sense that we need to live out our faith in loving service, with the help of God's grace — in other words, surrendering to, and cooperating with God's grace, as we have opportunity — if we are finally to attain eternal life in heaven (Gal 6:7-9).
I doubt that all of the above is what Calvinists or semi-Calvinists have in mind when they ask if Catholics and Protestants can confess together that we are "saved by [living] faith alone." But in recent years the Catholic Church has admitted that we could, indeed, say we are saved "by faith alone," as long as we meant by that the kind of surrender of faith to Jesus Christ that includes love and hope in it, and as long as we were clear that almost always, to attain the complete and irreversible surrender of our hearts to Jesus is a life-long process of grace-enabled discipleship, rather than something that can be entirely accomplished in a single conversion experience.
Thus, for Catholics we have been saved through the free gift of God's grace to us, especially the gift of living faith in baptism; we are being saved by His grace right now as He strengthens within us the gifts of faith, hope, and love, and enables us to serve Him, and finally, if we surrender to His merciful love more and more and do not run away from Him into the darkness, we will be saved by His grace from eternal loss, and for eternal life with Him in heaven. And for Catholics, that is good news, indeed!
Besides the merits of this position in itself, it should be clear to the reader of the first installment of this series that the Catholic position is also very close to the Evangelical-Wesleyan teaching on salvation. Most Wesleyans would probably not accord as much importance to the sacraments in the process of salvation as Catholics do (for example, many do not teach the doctrine known as “baptismal regeneration”: that the initial gift of saving grace and living faith comes to the soul through baptism). Many Wesleyans also might disagree with the Catholics on what kind of sins constitute “mortal sins” that result in a loss of our saved-by-grace status (is it any grave sin, or just an explicit loss of faith?) and how to recover that lost state of grace (for Catholics this must include the intention, at least, of making a sacramental confession). But the underlying framework of the salvation process seems to be similar, simply because it is understood as a life-long process, and one in which human free will plays a part.
Even the Calvinist traditions can be near to Catholic perspectives when expressed in the form of a paradox. Some Calvinist-Evangelicals (e.g. J.I. Packer), much like St. Thomas Aquinas, teach that only the elect are saved by grace alone, and yet, paradoxically, that irresistible (or in St. Thomas’s lingo, “efficacious”) grace is said infallibly to save the elect without violating the free will of the saved. How this can be is a mystery, but theologians in these streams believe that God can pull it off! If so, then that significantly qualifies one of the main points of difference between Catholics and Calvinists.
Clearly, these are very difficult matters. But the good news is that they are being discussed in ecumenical dialogue with a greater mutual respect and openness than ever before. I said at the start of this article that I did not believe it likely that these different positions ever could be completely reconciled. But then, who am I to say such a thing? C.S. Lewis once wrote that he fancied that our re-union would one day be affected by a powerful act of the Holy Spirit at the very moment when most theologians had thrown up their hands in dismay and said it is impossible. For as Scripture says, with God, all things are possible (Lk 1:37)!
Robert Stackpole, STD
Mere Christian Fellowship
