Rome believes that justification is by faith, it's by grace, and it's by Christ. What Rome doesn't believe is that justification is by faith alone, or by grace alone, or by Christ alone. When it comes to the gospel, one word can make all the difference between eternal life and eternal death. Eloan, thank you for joining us for this Saturday edition of Renewing Your Mind. At the heart of the gospel is the doctrine of justification. Throughout church history, there have been disagreements as to how we define it, and one word really does make all the difference. To begin a series on the solas of the Reformation, here's R.C. Sproul on Faith Alone. We're going to start our study of the solas by looking at the first one, Sola Fide. I'd like to address that subject under the subtitle of What Was the Matter with the Protestant Reformation? When I ask the question, what was the matter with the Protestant Reformation? I'm not using the word matter in the normal way when we say, what's the matter with something? We mean, what's wrong with it, or what was the fault of it? But I mean something quite different when I say, what was the matter with the Protestant Reformation? What I mean by that is, what was the essence, the substance, the stuff, or what we call in philosophy the material cause of the Protestant Reformation? What was the chief issue that provoked such massive consequences as this split that occurred in the 16th century? And when historians of theology and of church history look back to the 16th century, they'll often use distinctions originally set forth by the philosopher Aristotle when he distinguished between different types of causes and they will distinguish between what's called the formal cause and the material cause. And when the church historians distinguish between the formal and material causes of the 16th century Reformation, they will say the formal cause, the intellectual background to the issue was a dispute over the seat of final authority that binds the Christian conscience, and we'll look at that separately under the title of Sola Scriptura. But what is called the material cause? Again, the substantive issue that was the core point of dispute was the doctrine of justification and the Protestant view is expressed in the shorthand of the Latin Sola Fide. And the phrase Sola Fide means by face alone, without any mixture of good works or merit on our part. Now, to understand Sola Fide in its historical context, we have to understand something about the theological dispute based on the Roman Catholic understanding of justification, but first a word about justification itself and its relevance to the 16th century, to the 1st century, and to the 21st century. At the heart of this dispute was not a tangential debate over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, or a needless controversy over pedantic points of theology and doctrine that professors disagreed about. But this issue touched the very heart of the Christian faith because the question of justification is designed to answer the deeper question, how can an unjust person possibly survive the judgment of a just and holy God? Now, in our day, I find that people really don't care that much about the doctrine of justification. It has been reduced pretty much to a non-issue. Just as the differences among churches historically over the substance and the meaning of the gospel itself, that those differences have now been minimized as being no significant matter. But if you're going to understand the upheaval that came about in the 16th century, you have to understand that the church in the 16th century believed in a last judgment. The church in the 16th century believed in the wrath of God. The church in the 16th century believed in the justice of God. And the church in the 16th century believed in hell. That's why at center stage was the question, how can I be saved? Now, at the time of the Reformation in the 16th century, something may come as a surprise to many Protestants. The Roman Catholic Church then, as now, believed that justification is by faith, by grace, and by Christ. Three of the issues that are captured in the essence of Protestant thinking are, as I've already mentioned, solifidae by faith alone, solagrazia by grace alone, solus christus through Christ alone. And because of that, many Protestants believe that the Roman Catholic Church did not believe in justification by faith, or in justification by grace, or in justification by Christ. That's simply not true. The Roman Catholic Church emphatically does not believe that people can be saved by their own righteousness without any help from God. But what did they teach in the 16th century, and what do they continue to teach today? Well, they teach that faith is a prerequisite. Faith does three things for justification. Faith is what they call the anitzium, that is, the initiation, or the beginning of justification. They also say that faith is the fundamentum, or the foundation of justification. And they also say that faith is the rhodax, or the root of justification. So you see that faith is of critical importance according to the Roman Catholic Church in three ways with respect to justification. It's important to start the process of justification. It's the initiation. It's the foundation upon which justification is established. And third, it's the very core or root of our justification. So to say that the Roman Catholic Church doesn't believe that faith is necessary, or that you can be justified apart from faith, is simply to seriously slander and misrepresent the Roman Catholic Church. Secondly, the Roman Catholic Church has always taught that grace is necessary, a necessary prerequisite for justification. And without the grace of God that is infused into the soul sacramentally, which we'll look at more closely in a moment, without that grace, we'd be left back in the hopeless condition of palagianism, of having to try to earn our way into heaven simply on the ground and basis of our own righteousness and our own merit. And Rome rejects that. And of course, the Roman Catholic Church affirms the necessity of the atonement of Christ and of the work of Christ to help us in our justification. And so just in brief recapitulation, Rome believes that justification is by faith, it's by grace, and it's by Christ. What Rome doesn't believe is that justification is by faith alone, or by grace alone, or by Christ alone. But rather, it combines other elements. For example, in the Roman Catholic view, it is faith plus works that gives us justification. It is grace plus merit that gives us justification. It is Christ plus me and my inherent righteousness that gives me justification. That's the formula in a nutshell. The Reformers objected strenuously to this and said, no, we have no merit of our own of any kind that we bring before God, as the hymn writer Augustus Toplady wrote in Rock of Ages, it's nothing in my hand I bring simply to the cross I cling. So this is crossed out by the Reformers, this is crossed out by the Reformers, and my inherent righteousness is crossed out so that you have faith alone, grace alone, Christ alone. Well, briefly for the Roman Catholic Church, justification begins with baptism. And baptism is called by Rome the instrumental cause of justification. Now, what that means very simply is this, back in Aristotle's day, when Aristotle divided different types of causes, he used an illustration of building a statue. And the material cause of the statue is the stone out of which the statue is made. The efficient cause is the sculptor who uses his instruments to bring about the shaping of the statue. But the instrumental cause would be the chisel and the hammer, the instrument he used to bring about the effect. And so according to the Roman Catholic Church, the instrument that God uses to bring justification to the needy person is in the first instance, the instrument of baptism. In baptism, the person who is baptized receives an inpouring or an infusion of what is called justifying grace, or what is called the grace of the righteousness of Christ. That is, when the person is baptized, something happens inwardly. The soul is infused with divine grace. And if that person cooperates with that infused or poured in grace in baptism, and not only cooperates with it, but a sense to it, the Latin is cooperare at asantare. If you cooperate with that infused grace and ascent to that grace, then you are in a state of justification. Wherein you remain until or unless you commit mortal sin. And if you commit a mortal sin, the reason why mortal sin is called mortal sin is because it kills the inhabiting grace that is poured into your soul at baptism. So you have this infusion of grace, and that's good until you commit a mortal sin. When you commit a mortal sin, that grace is killed, it's destroyed. And so you are now no longer in a state of justification, and you have to be re-justified. Well, that doesn't mean you go back to baptism, but there's a second sacrament that's crucial to this process in the Roman Catholic system, and that's the sacrament of penance. And the sacrament of penance is defined by the Roman Catholic Church as the second plank of justification for those who've made shipwreck of their souls. And I think most of you are aware of the historical circumstances of Luther posting his 95th Theses on the church door at Bittenberg. And what provoked Luther to ask for a disputation among the faculty members of the university was something that he considered an abuse of one of the church's practices, and that had to do with the granting of indulgences. And what the sacrament of penance required is that the sinner come to the priest and enter into the confessional and confess his sins. And with that confession, then came a prayer of contrition and priestly absolution. Then in the sacrament of penance came the imposition of what's called works of satisfaction. And these works of satisfaction are the performing of the practice of penance. You notice historically, then when Protestants speak about repentance, they say be repentant or simply repent, whereas the normal language of Roman Catholicism historically is that the sinner is called to do penance. Penance is not something you feel or express, but rather it is something that you do. It is an activity. It is a kind of work that is required. And so the works of penance may be very small. They may mean that all that you have to do is to say so many Hail Marys, so many Our Fathers, or whatever. Or in severe cases, more strenuous labors may be required of the penitent to show the fruits of their genuine contrition. And what the effect of these works of penance, doing of penances, is to provide works of satisfaction. Now, how does the church define that? These are works performed to satisfy the demands of God and of His law. Which works of satisfaction earn for the penitent merit? So in this case, not only is grace required, but in addition to grace, merit is required. Not only is faith required, but in addition to faith, works are required. And these works must be done before a person can be justified. Now, one of the works of satisfaction that the church defined was the giving of alms. If a person, out of a spirit of genuine heartfelt contrition for their sin, in an attempt to be restored to the state of grace, goes through the sacrament of penance, if they are sincere and they give alms to the poor or gifts to the working of the church out of sincere repentance, then those alms would count towards completing the works of satisfaction and could lead the church graciously to count these alms as the basis for the granting of indulgences. But when the church for the building of St. Peter's granted indulgences in the 16th century, the church at least tried to make it clear to its people that these indulgences would only actually take place if the giving of alms was done out of a sincere heart. However, if you die in mortal sin, you go to hell. That's why the last sacrament, the sacrament of extreme action is so important. You've all seen the scene of somebody dying in an accident scene, calling for the priests, rushing the priests there to give them the last rites, which began as a healing ministry, but now is given as sort of an extension of the sacrament of penance to make sure they don't die with mortal sin on their soul lest they go to hell. Now, the vast majority of people, according to the church in the church, die not in mortal sin if they've been going to the sacraments of confession and so on, but if they die with any impurity on their souls, they go to purgatory, which is so-called because it is the place of purging where the dross is removed and a person is purified because you can't get into heaven until you are perfected, until you're purified. Now, when in the course of church history there have been extraordinary exceptions, there have been those few saints who lived righteously enough that they didn't have to go to purgatory, but when they died, they went directly to heaven because they had enough merit to go to heaven, and some of them not only had enough merit to go to heaven, but they had excess merit. Now, that gets me to the absolute ultimate issue of the Reformation, which had to do with the grounds of justification. The question was this, on what basis will God or does God ever declare a person to be just? On what grounds? Ramicatholic Church says, the only way God will ever declare a person just is on the basis of inherent righteousness. We call this analytical justification, that is, when God puts his eye upon you and examines your soul and submits you to his divine analysis, if he sees inherent righteousness there, then he will declare you righteous, but not until or unless you are actually righteous, will God declare you righteous. Now, again, you can't be righteous without the help of Christ, without the help of faith, and without the help of grace, but given those helps, you still have to reach this level because the only grounds by which God will declare you to be righteous is if righteousness inheres in you, and this is accomplished through infused righteousness. That is, that's what helps you become inherently righteous, righteousness that comes in the sacrament that is poured into your soul, Christ poured into you, you cooperate and assent to that righteousness to such an extent that that righteousness then becomes your own. Do you understand that? Now, the Reformation view was this, that the only grounds by which God ever declares anyone just is the imputation of the righteousness of Christ. The New Testament speaks about Christ as being our righteousness. The idea here is that the ground of our justification is not simply the atonement of Christ by which he bears the burden of our guilt by taking the punishment of God for our sin, but also by the life of Christ, by which he lives a life of perfect obedience to every mandate of the divine law, and he is perfect and sinless. And Christ alone merits salvation in front of a just and holy God because he's the only one who is sinless. He's the only one who is perfectly righteous and perfectly just. And I am an unjust person, and if I look at my own attempts, I am an unprobable servant. I'm not only imperfect, but once I'm imperfect, there's nothing I can ever do to get rid of an imperfect life. You sin once, you'll never be perfect because you have that imperfection against your name. Now, the basis of justification according to the New Testament, according to Luther, is, by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified, but we are justified by faith alone in this sense that faith is the instrument by which we embrace Christ. We put our trust in him and in him alone as the grounds for our salvation. And when we put our faith in trust in Christ, the moment we trust in Christ, God in illegal action transfers or imputes or counts or reckons the righteousness of Jesus to our account so that at the end of my life, I stand before the judgment seat of God and I am clothed, not in my own inherent righteousness, but I am covered by the righteousness of Christ. And God declares me just in the beloved, in Christ, by the imputation of his righteousness, which Luther insisted was a righteousness that is an alien righteousness, that is a righteousness not performed by me, but it's a righteousness performed by somebody else. It's not performed by me with the help of somebody else, but it's a righteousness that is performed by somebody else apart from me. It is a righteousness that Luther insisted was extra nose, apart from us, outside of us. It's Jesus' performance that is transferred to my account when I receive him by faith. That's why Paul labors the point that our justification is given to us freely as a gift of the Father, that God calls me just before he makes me just, where in the Roman Catholic scheme, he won't call me just until I've been first made just. That's the difference. And the one word over which the whole controversy is involved is this word imputation. You take away the concept of imputation from Protestant doctrine of justification, but you take away Solifidae. You take away Solifidae, you take away the gospel. That's why with this doctrine of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to the helpless believer, is it the very heart and soul of the gospel itself? You reject that, you're rejecting the gospel. That's why the debate was so fierce because nothing less than the gospel of Christ was at stake and it's still at stake today. Such a crucial reminder there from R.C. Sproul. Thank you for joining us for this Saturday edition of Renewing Your Mind. As Christians, not only do we want to believe the gospel, we want to be able to share it with others. And this series was designed to help you understand the depth of the gospel and respond to those who would distort it. 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