Volume 6 — The Catholic Doctrine Of Justification.

The remarks we are about to make in this article grow out of the discussion of the philosophy of conversion between this magazine and the New-Englander. Nevertheless, those who expect a continuation of personal controversy on the topics suggested in our last article, and a formal rejoinder to the respected writer in the New-Englander who replied to it, will be disappointed. Our views on the subject matter of discussion were expressed, as we think, clearly enough to be understood, and as fully as our purpose required. We leave them, therefore, to the judgment of those of our readers who are really in earnest, that they may give them whatever weight their intrinsic value may demand in the court of conscience; and as for the opinion of others, we care nothing. Controversy upon minor topics and side issues is of its very nature interminable, as well as of little comparative utility. The controversy between the Catholic Church and Protestants on the great, fundamental principles and doctrines at issue, has been so ably and thoroughly argued out that there is little left to be done in that department of theology. For those who desire information, there are plenty of books to be had treating of every topic in a much more satisfactory manner than it is possible to treat them in the short compass of magazine articles. The great controversy of the day, in our opinion, and the one which interests us most deeply, is the one which is waging between Christianity and infidelity, in its various phases of rationalism, scepticism, and atheism. So far as Protestants of the more orthodox schools are concerned, the aspect of the question we feel most disposed to present to them is that which Guizot and others of their own number have seen with more or less distinctness—namely, that in the great conflict of the age their real interest is at stake in the success of the Catholic side; that, as Christians, they belong to us, and ought to make with us common cause against the enemy. That method of removing the difficulty in the way of their doing so which recommends itself to our judgment and feelings is one which brings into strong relief the grand, fundamental principles of Christianity in which we agree; and with these principles as a point of departure, endeavors to explain and develop the complete Catholic system in such a way as to remove misunderstandings and to show how the several, particular portions of revealed truth, held by our various bodies of separated brethren in a fragmentary state, are integrated in a grand, universal whole in this Catholic system. In this line, as we conceive it, lie the richest and least worked-out fields, where new writers may enter in and follow up the labors of their predecessors. One special need, moreover, is to clothe thought in a language which is familiar to the persons we are addressing, and to translate or explain in their own idiom what may be strange or unintelligible in the forms of other ages, countries, and schools of philosophy and theology. What little the writer of this article is able to do he prefers to do in this line, and thinks it best to restrict himself to single and specific topics in the short essays which are the only suitable ones for a magazine. We have no wish to abjure general controversy in the abstract, or to lay down a rule of conduct in this matter for others. Nor would we seem to slight or treat with indifference what may be written on the other side. We desire to give due attention to all that candid and courteous opponents may have to say, and to keep it in view when we are arguing our own cause. It suits better, however, with the time and strength we have at our command, and our other avocations, to keep ourselves free from the obligations of formal controversy, and to be at liberty to take up such single topics as may be opportune according to circumstances. At present, we propose to touch a little more at length upon the topic of justification, one of those we have before now briefly remarked upon, dropping altogether the attitude and style of personal controversy.

The real objection against the Catholic doctrine of justification by fides formata, or faith informed by charity, as well as the reason for insisting that faith alone justifies, exclusively of the charity which accompanies it, is grounded in a notion that the former doctrine subverts the gratuitous character of salvation by the grace of God through the merits of Jesus Christ. We propose, therefore, to make a brief exposition of the Catholic doctrine, with a view of showing what it really teaches respecting the gratuitousness of grace, and the work of Christ as the meritorious cause of its being conferred.

Catholic theology teaches, what even sound philosophy demonstrates, that all created existence proceeds from a gratuitous act of the Creator. But it teaches, moreover, against the Pelagians, that the original state of supernatural justice and sanctity in which the angels and Adam were constituted was an additional gratuitous boon, or grace conferred by God. It is evident, then, that the Catholic doctrine excludes the possibility of holding that the first principle of the beatification and glorification of a creature is in the nature of the creature itself. This principle, as supernatural, is not due to nature, cannot be merited by any acts proceeding from the principles of nature, and must therefore be a pure, gratuitous grace. That is, the creature is justified by grace, and owes the capacity of attaining beatitude, consequently beatitude itself when attained, radically to a pure act of the divine goodness. It is plain, therefore, that the angels and Adam could not have merited their own justification. They were obliged either to receive it passively, or to accept it, as Billuart holds, by an active concurrence with grace. The grace being given, constituting its subjects in the state of justice and sanctity, what was it? It was not a mere forensic and exterior modification of their relation to God, but an interior, sanctifying grace, making them subjectively, holy, like to God, affiliated to him, united to him in an inchoate union whose final term is beatitude. It is evident that this sanctifying grace, which in act was the love of God, made them fit and worthy to be the friends of God, and to be admitted to the fellowship of his glory. It is also certain that they were placed in probation. What was that probation? Was it not a trial of obedience, in which certain definite acts of free-will were prescribed as the conditions of being confirmed in grace and consummated in glory? Eternal life was therefore proposed to them as the reward of good works, as a premium of voluntary obedience, and as such is actually possessed by the holy angels in heaven. It is, therefore, true that the angels were justified by grace, justified by charity, justified by good works; that their salvation proceeds from the pure goodness of God, and has been obtained by their own good acts: nor is there the least contradiction in any of these statements.

There being no intrinsic, necessary contradiction between the two propositions, the creature is justified and beatified by the gratuitous grace of God; and, the creature is justified and beatified by his personal sanctity—there is no necessary logical deduction derivable from the premise that man in his present state is justified by gratuitous grace to the conclusion that he is not justified by his intrinsic sanctity. The redemption has repaired the fall, has restored the human race to the condition from which it fell by the sin of Adam. There is no reason, therefore, why man should not be justified now, in essentially the same manner as before; no reason why the order of grace, repaired by redemption, should not follow the same essential laws as before the fall. If a change has taken place, it must be proved that it is so. If this change was required by the fact that the restoration of man is due to the merits of Christ, the reason of it must be shown. It must be shown that the recovery of justification through the merits of Christ is incompatible with justification by intrinsic sanctity and glorification as the reward of good works done from the principle of charity. If this cannot be shown, no argument can be derived from the doctrine that the work of Christ is the meritorious cause of the justification of fallen man to prove that the formal cause of his justification is any other than the formal cause of the justification of the angels and of man in his original state.

The Catholic doctrine teaches that the sacrifice of himself which Jesus Christ offered up on the cross is the meritorious cause of justification through the expiation which it made of original and actual sin, and the new title which it obtained to the lost inheritance of everlasting life. This includes in itself the grant of all those graces which are necessary in order to the remission of sins, the sanctification of the soul, and its complete preparation for the state of beatitude and glory. Consequently, all Catholic theologians teach that the initial movement of the sinner to return to God, the faith which disposes him for justification, the sanctifying grace which makes him really just and the friend of God, the actual graces which enable him to perform salutary acts, the special aid which enables him to persevere, all proceed from the grace of God, which is gratuitous in reference to the original provision of a plan of redemption, gratuitous toward each individual who receives it so far as he is personally concerned, and due as a reward, under the title of justice, solely to Jesus Christ himself on account of his own personal merits. It is, therefore, through the merits of Christ that a sinner receives the grace which justifies and sanctifies him in the first instance. Through the same merits he receives the remission of his sins, if he falls into any afterward. Through the same merits he receives all the actual graces which he obtains by prayer. And, finally, it is through the same merits that the kingdom of heaven has been prepared for him, as the ultimate term to which he is permitted to aspire. The effect of the merits of the death of Christ upon the cross is therefore to put fallen man back again, essentially, where he was before the trial in Paradise, and where the angels were when they were created. It does not affect the case at all whether the angels and Adam were placed in that state in view of the Incarnation, or by the mere goodness of God, without any reference to the Incarnation. If they were created and elevated to the divine filiation, intuitu Christi, they received a boon motived upon the extrinsic glory which God would receive from his deific humanity. If not, they received the same boon motived upon the glory which God would receive from their elevation to beatitude. The boon was equally gratuitous in either case, for the decree of the Incarnation, whether included in the decree of creation or in that of redemption—whether antecedent or subsequent to the foresight of redemption—was perfectly gratuitous. Nay, more: because it was gratuitous it was fitting and just that God should condition it with any terms that were possible and reasonable. He did actually condition it upon obedience to certain precepts, unknown to us as regards the angels, but known as regards Adam. The original grace conceded to them, therefore, merely placed them in a condition to obtain everlasting beatitude by corresponding to this grace with their free, voluntary acts, or by fidelity to the obligations of their probation. They were justified, that is, placed in the state of justification, by the act of God which gave them sanctifying grace. They were constituted just in act by this personal quality of sanctifying grace, which made them fit and worthy to be the sons of God; and they were commanded to retain the state of justice, to augment it, and to obtain confirmation in it, with the consummation of it in glory, as a premium of obedience to the divine precepts. The holy angels are now in heaven actually the object of the divine love of complacency on account of their inherent sanctity and in proportion to the degree of it which each one possesses. They enjoy heaven as a reward gained by the right exercise of their free-will; and yet, it is no less true that their state of glory is due to the gratuitous grace of God, nor is there any contradiction in supposing that the grace was given to them intuitu Christi.

The fact that man is now placed under an order of grace, based on the merits of Christ, cannot therefore be shown to be incompatible with the position that he is also placed in a state of probation essentially similar to that of angels and of Adam. He may be constituted just by sanctifying grace, as well as they; obliged, as well as they, to remain just, and to attain perpetual justice and its complement of glory by the right exercise of his free-will in producing acts which proceed from the principle of sanctity within him.

The Catholic doctrine teaches that man is actually placed in this state of probation under the law of grace established in Christ. This probation implies that the initial, inchoate principle of the divine everlasting life to which he is destined should be implanted within him, as the centre of the supernatural force giving him a movement toward his prefixed end. It implies, also, that a series of acts impelling him forward should proceed from this principle by the effort of his free-will. This principle can be nothing else than sanctifying grace, and sanctifying grace, in its essence, can be nothing else than the love of God. Love is the only principle capable of uniting the soul with God. Faith alone cannot do it. It is further evident that faith cannot be the essential principle which makes the soul just, for two reasons: First. That infants are capable of justification, which, we suppose, no one will deny, but are not capable of an act of faith. Second. That faith is a temporary virtue, ceasing in the beatified state, whereas the principle of justification is permanent and eternal.

Moreover, the sphere of probation is necessarily identical with the sphere of free-will, and the sphere of free-will is coextensive with all the precepts which God has given as the matter for free-will to exercise its choice upon, by selecting the good and rejecting the evil. The acts which must proceed from the principle of love, in order to bring the soul to God as its ultimate term, must, therefore, cover the whole ground of the divine law, and include the fulfilment of all its commandments. It is impossible, therefore, that faith alone should justify, unless probation, free-will, and the law of God are strictly confined to the sphere of faith. No one will pretend that they are. If they are not, it is impossible that a mere habit of faith, or the mere exercise of faith in act, should alone constitute a man just before God. God is not bound to place a creature on probation. He can justify, sanctify, and glorify him immediately, without leaving him any liberty of choice between good and evil. But he cannot elevate him to the high state of personal union and friendship with himself without giving him that love which fixes the will immovably in God as the supreme good, and includes in itself all virtue and sanctity. Union between the soul and God requires likeness. The soul must be made like to God in order that it may love God, and that God may love the soul. Although, therefore, God is not bound to place a creature on probation—that is, to require of him the particular exercise of love which consists in a voluntary obedience to certain precepts—yet he cannot dispense with love itself, which is the sole and indispensable requisite to a state of perfect justification; and although he is not bound to place a creature in a state of probation, yet if he does so, he cannot dispense with those acts of love which are suitable to such a state. The very notion of a state of probation requires that certain precepts should be given to a rational creature, who is free to keep them or violate them as he may choose, and who is to receive the favor of God during his probation and an eternal reward at the end of it if he keeps them, forfeiting both if he fails to do so. On any other supposition, the state of probation is entirely illusory and unreal. The attributes of God require him to carry out the terms of the probation to which he has subjected man. When he imposes precepts, he must from his very nature withdraw his friendship from the transgressor. He may still regard him with the love of benevolence, and offer him forgiveness; but he cannot actually forgive him and look upon him again with the love of complacency until he has regained his lost sanctity and returned to the love of God. Sin of its own nature turns the soul away from God as its supreme good to some created object. It is, therefore, a contradiction in terms to say that a man can be in the state of sin and the state of justification at the same time; for it is equivalent to saying that he can at the same instant be turned toward God as his supreme good, and away from him. Love is therefore the conditio sine quâ non, at least, of justification. Faith alone cannot, therefore, formally justify. If it did, there would be no need of love in order to constitute a man just before God. A man might be completely justified while in the very act of the most grievous sin, as, for instance, blasphemy, murder, or suicide, and might die without having changed his will to commit those sins, yet pass immediately to heaven. These sins are not incompatible with faith, though they are with charity. If they are incompatible with faith, all mortal sins—that is, all those which, in the strict and proper sense, alienate the soul from God, and destroy charity—must be incompatible with faith. Why is this? Does faith, of its own nature, produce charity? If it does, it must contain within itself the radical principle of charity, and while it exists in the soul it must exclude all sins which are directly contrary to charity and incompatible with it. Then, one who has faith cannot commit a mortal sin. If faith is inamissible, and a man once justified can no more lose his justification, then, as soon as one has obtained faith, he has obtained also exemption from all mortal sins for the future. If faith is not inamissible, then every sin against charity, or every mortal sin, destroys faith and justification. Such a definition of faith, however, including love and sanctifying grace, makes faith to be the fides formata of Catholic theology.

If it is said that faith does not, of itself, produce charity, yet is always accompanied by charity, it must be, then, that faith gives one a title to sanctifying grace and charity, so that, whoever makes an act of faith, receives an additional gift which makes him holy. In that case, every one who was once justified would be exempt from mortal sin while his faith lasts. If the first act of faith justifies once for all, then the believer can never again commit a mortal sin. If it justifies only for the time being, then while it lasts it preserves the soul from sin, and whoever sins proves that he has already lost faith. This is contrary to reason and experience. It is certain that men who have had faith and grace have afterwards sinned mortally. Therefore, faith does not, by its first act, bring with it an inamissible gift of charity. It is also certain that men do not always lose faith when they sin, or sin against faith first before they sin against charity. Many a man who believes firmly in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Saviour of men, and who hopes for salvation through his merits, commits mortal sin, and even lives for years in the habitual state of sin. It may be said that such persons have no saving faith, never did have it, or have lost it. But what is saving faith? What is the differentia of that faith which really justifies? It is evident enough that a certain kind of habitual belief in Jesus Christ and his doctrines, accompanied by a desire and hope of being saved through his merits and mercy, does frequently exist in persons who are living in habitual sin. If this is not genuine faith, or saving faith, there must be in saving faith some additional quality which distinguishes it from that faith which produces no fruits of sanctity. Is it made saving by its quality of supernaturalness, or as proceeding from the grace of the Holy Spirit? This is the same as saying that supernatural faith, as such, or because it is a grace of the Holy Spirit, necessarily brings with it sanctification. This is not so. The Holy Spirit may and does give men a firm belief in revealed truths, and a hope of obtaining mercy from God through Christ before they are actually forgiven and justified. This remains in them, often, after they have lost sanctifying grace by sin, as a disposition which facilitates their return to God. It does not, however, per se, produce the fruits of sanctity, or implant the principle of love, from which these fruits proceed, which is the very principle of union with God, and, therefore, the formal cause of justification. That quality which faith must have, in order to render it justifying faith, cannot be, therefore, anything else but charity, or the love of God, which makes it fides formata.

We are convinced that a great number of Protestants substantially hold the doctrines we have laid down. They believe that man has free-will; is bound to believe and obey the doctrine and precepts of Jesus Christ; is made the friend of God by sanctifying grace brought into the active exercise of Christian virtue by his own voluntary cooperation; is placed here to work out his own salvation; will receive heaven as a reward if he serves God faithfully, and will be damned if he lives in sin. Even those who hold the Calvinistic tradition either modify its tenets or hold more sound and rational opinions in juxtaposition with them, which really control their sentiments and conduct. It would be easy to show this by a multitude of citations. So far as metaphysical opinions and technical statements are concerned, we judge every work and every formula of doctrine by its obvious, objective sense, and accept every individual writer's statements respecting his own opinions. But in regard to the real, genuine ideas which form the true intellectual and spiritual life of men, we take the liberty of judging them more by the language they use in common life, by their indirect statements, and by the general spirit and scope of what they say and write, when not immediately intent upon stating their technical formulas, than from their technical formulas themselves. We have heard it said of the illustrious President Dwight that his real sentiments and conduct toward his fellow-men indicated a belief in the goodness of all men, whereas he held theoretically that all men were totally depraved. We have no doubt that President Edwards always acted on the belief that his children possessed the self-determining power of the will, against which he wrote so acutely, or that Bishop Berkeley was persuaded of the reality of the external world. Therefore, we still think that a large number of non-Catholics are more Catholic in their belief than they are aware, and that their rejection of what they suppose to be Catholic doctrine is frequently only a rejection of opinions attributed by mistake to the Catholic Church. In regard to this special question of justification, it is our opinion that the objection prevalent among the more orthodox Protestants is based on the supposition that the Catholic doctrine ascribes a justifying and saving efficacy to a mere intellectual submission to church-authority, and a mere external compliance with its precepts, without reference to the interior disposition of the soul toward God, or recognition of the merits of Christ as the source of all the supernatural excellence and value of good works. It is believed that the Catholic substitutes the merits of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the merits of the saints, and his own merits, as an independent ground of justification, in lieu of the merits of Christ. Also, that merit is ascribed to mere external works, such as fasting, hearing mass, and performing ceremonial rites or penitential labors, on account of the mere physical nature and extent of the works done, without reference to the motive from which they proceed. The vague and timorous pastoral of the late Synod of Lambeth is explicit and bold only on this one point, of condemning the substitution of the Virgin Mary as a mediator in the place of Christ. For this reason, we think that the simple statement of the genuine Catholic doctrine is the surest way to remove objections against it, and that most of these objections fall away of themselves as soon as the misapprehensions of the doctrine are removed. This is no private fancy of our own, but the judgment of some of the ablest theologians of the world, Protestant as well as Catholic. Leibnitz, the greatest philosopher among Protestants, found nothing to object to in the doctrines of the Council of Trent respecting justification. Dr. Pusey, one of the most learned men of the age in scriptural and patristic theology, has publicly expressed his adhesion to the same doctrine. It is easy to ridicule that movement in the Anglican church, of which he is the head; but it would be much more sensible for those who do it to study his elaborate and profound writings, and much more difficult to refute them. Protestantism has produced nothing, at least in the English language, which can approach the great works of the High-Church divines of England. These works contain the elements of all the theology of Catholic doctrine respecting the justification of man, in the ascetical, spiritual, and sacramental aspects of the question. All the life of Protestantism in England is centred in the Catholicizing movement. On the continent, that orthodox Protestantism which is derived from Luther and Calvin is a nullity. The real issue of the world, as we have repeatedly said, is about the fundamental principles of Christianity. The question between Catholics and those Protestants who hold with us these fundamental principles is not, as many of them suppose, respecting the first principles of the doctrine of Christ, but respecting the deductions to be derived from them and their due development. That God is revealed in Jesus Christ, as our sovereign teacher, our sovereign Lord, our sovereign redeemer and mediator, the sovereign author of our spiritual and everlasting life; that we are bound to render him the absolute homage of our faith and our obedience, is admitted by all. The only question is, by what method or means can we ascertain with certainty the exact and complete sense of the doctrine he has commanded us to believe and the law he has commanded us to keep. This is a question to be decided by evidence. The sooner the prohibentia in the way of examining carefully and candidly this evidence are removed the better. This is the only point we have been aiming at—the only result we desire to reach. We have endeavored to remove some of the obstacles in the way of a fair hearing of the claims of the Catholic Church, arising from à priori conceptions of her doctrine, which are thought to authorize a foregone conclusion against them. We have also presented some of the reasons specially urgent at present, why the basis for unity which the Catholic Church offers should be carefully and studiously considered by all those who desire the union and welfare of Christendom, its victory over every form of anti-Christianity, and its universal extension in the world. The fides formata, or faith working by love, which we have set forth as the vital principle of spiritual life in the individual, must also be the principle of unity in the Christian society. Whoever has faith implicitly believes all those revealed doctrines which, without his own fault, he does not explicitly know to be revealed. Whoever has love has the principle of obedience to those laws whose existence he does not know. Therefore, we say that whoever has fides formata is justified, and, of course, spiritually united to the true church. But whoever remains culpably in error respecting essential doctrines and precepts, or refuses to believe and obey what is fairly presented to him as the revealed truth and will of Jesus Christ, cannot have fides formata. It is evident, therefore, that we are all bound to strive after as great a certitude as possible respecting the important question at issue between the Catholic Church and Protestants.