Grace, salvation and the saints
Grace, faith and justification
How a sinner is put right with God - the argument that split the West, and how much of it still stands.
You are reading the brief version. Switch the depth control to Complete for the full treatment.
Grace is God's favour freely given - unearned, unearnable, and prior to anything we do. All four traditions insist on this. None teaches that a person can earn salvation, and the charge that any of them does is either ignorance or polemic.
Justification is being put right with God. The argument of the sixteenth century was about what that phrase means and how it happens.
The Reformation position: justification is a declaration. God, for Christ's sake, pronounces the sinner righteous - not because he has become righteous but because Christ's righteousness is credited to him. It is received by faith alone, and it is complete at once. Sanctification - actually becoming holy - follows necessarily, but is not part of what justifies.
The Catholic position: justification is not merely declared but makes the sinner righteous, by infusing grace that genuinely changes him. Faith is where it begins, but faith formed by love - and the grace received can grow, be lost through grave sin, and be restored.
The Orthodox position largely declines the question as posed, treating salvation as healing and deification rather than as a legal transaction, and finding the whole Western argument framed around the wrong metaphor.
In 1999, Catholics and Lutherans signed a Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, stating a common understanding: by grace alone, in faith in Christ's saving work, we are accepted by God and receive the Spirit, and not because of any merit on our part. Real differences of emphasis remain. But the sixteenth century's mutual condemnations were declared no longer to apply to the other's teaching as now stated - which is a large thing to have happened, and it is not widely known.
Grace first
Start where everyone agrees, because the agreement is larger than the argument.
The Second Council of Orange in 529 settled this for the whole West, against the semi-Pelagians who held that a person could take the first step towards God on his own and grace would then assist. Orange said no. Even the beginning of faith is God's gift. Even the desire to be cleansed is produced by the Holy Spirit. Nothing we do precedes grace.
That council is worth knowing about, because it is Catholic teaching, it predates the Reformation by a thousand years, and it says everything the Reformers most wanted said about the priority of grace.
- By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast (Ephesians 2:8-9).
- Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us (Titus 3:5).
- Without me ye can do nothing (John 15:5).
Pause and thinkPause: if all four traditions deny that we earn salvation, what exactly was the sixteenth century arguing about?
Three things, none of which is whether grace comes first.
What the word justify means. In Greek, dikaioo - is it to declare righteous, as a judge acquits, or to make righteous, as a doctor heals? The Reformers said declare; Trent said make. Both senses exist in the ancient usage, which is why the argument was possible.
Whether it happens at once or over time. If justification is a declaration, it is complete the moment it is made. If it is a transformation, it has stages, can grow, and can be lost.
What faith alone excludes. The Reformers meant it to exclude any human contribution to the verdict. Trent heard it as excluding the necessity of love and obedience, and condemned that. Later scholarship suggests each was largely condemning something the other did not hold - which is what the 1999 Joint Declaration formalised.
And underneath all three sat a practical question that mattered more than any of them: can a Christian know he is forgiven? That is treated in the next section.
The two accounts
Justification as declaration
Paul's vocabulary is legal. A man stands before God's judgement seat guilty. God declares him righteous - not because the charge is false but because Christ has borne it. He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21).
The word for what happens is imputation: Christ's righteousness is reckoned to the believer's account. Luther's image is marriage - a king marries a debt-ridden woman, and by the marriage her debts become his and his wealth becomes hers, before she has done anything at all.
The consequence is the phrase simul iustus et peccator - at the same time righteous and a sinner. Righteous in God's verdict; still a sinner in fact; and the verdict does not wait for the fact to catch up.
Justification as transformation
Trent's account is that God does not merely say we are righteous; He makes us so. Grace is infused - poured into the soul - so that the person is genuinely changed. Faith, hope and love are given together, and the faith that justifies is fides caritate formata, faith formed by love.
On this account justification can increase through the sacraments and good works, can be lost by mortal sin, and can be restored through penance. And the good works of a justified person genuinely merit further grace - though Trent is careful to say that this merit is itself God's gift, since He crowns His own gifts in us.
Both sides read James 2:24 - ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only - and each has to do work with it. Catholics take it at face value. Lutherans argue James uses justified in the sense of demonstrated, since he cites Abraham's offering of Isaac, which occurred decades after Genesis 15 declared him righteous.
Where the four traditions stand
Catholic
The Council of Trent (Session 6, 1547) gave the definitive Catholic account. Justification is the translation from the state in which a person is born a child of Adam to the state of grace and adoption as a child of God. It is not merely the remission of sins but sanctification and renewal of the inner man, through the voluntary reception of grace. Its instrumental cause is the sacrament of baptism. Trent affirms unambiguously that nothing preceding justification, whether faith or works, merits it - the initiative is wholly God's. It denies that justification is by faith alone if that means without the necessity of preparation and cooperation, and it denies that a person can be certain with the certainty of faith that he is in a state of grace. Grace can be increased and can be lost through mortal sin. The Catechism teaches that merit is possible only because God has freely chosen to associate us with His work, so that our merits are His gifts. The 1999 Joint Declaration with the Lutheran World Federation states a differentiated consensus: together we confess that by grace alone, in faith in Christ's saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God.
Orthodox
Orthodoxy did not take part in the Western argument and is generally unwilling to adopt its terms. The forensic framing - a courtroom, a verdict, imputed righteousness - strikes Eastern theology as a Latin legalism traceable to Tertullian and Anselm rather than to the Fathers. The governing categories are healing and theosis: humanity is sick unto death, Christ is the physician, and salvation is the restoration of communion and the progressive transfiguration of the person by God's uncreated energies. Justification language appears in Orthodox writing, but as one image among several rather than as the organising principle. On grace and freedom, Orthodoxy teaches synergy - a genuine cooperation in which grace is always first and always decisive, but the human will really participates. Western readers often hear this as semi-Pelagianism; Orthodox theologians reply that the East never had the Augustine-Pelagius controversy in the form the West had it, and should not be read as answering questions it never asked. Maximus the Confessor is the key witness: the human will is healed and freed, not overridden.
Lutheran
Justification by grace through faith alone is, in Lutheran terms, the article by which the Church stands or falls. Article 4 of the Augsburg Confession states that we cannot obtain forgiveness of sins and righteousness before God by our own merits, works or satisfactions, but receive forgiveness and are accounted righteous before God by grace, for Christ's sake, through faith - when we believe that Christ suffered for us and that for His sake our sin is forgiven. Justification is forensic: a declaration, not a transformation, though transformation follows infallibly. What is imputed is Christ's alien righteousness - alien because it is His and not ours - covering the believer entirely and at once. The Formula of Concord insists that good works follow justification necessarily but contribute nothing to it, and warns sharply against any formulation that makes works a condition. The Lutheran anxiety throughout is pastoral: any doctrine allowing that justification depends partly on me will send the sensitive conscience back to measuring itself, which is the condition Luther was rescued from and which he spent his life trying to prevent others falling into.
Anglican
Article 11 is close to verbatim Lutheran: we are accounted righteous before God only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by faith, and not for our own works or deservings; wherefore, that we are justified by faith only is a most wholesome doctrine, and very full of comfort. The Article then refers the reader to the Homily of Justification - Cranmer's Homily of Salvation - for the fuller statement. Article 12 adds the necessary balance: good works are the fruits of faith and follow after justification, and cannot put away our sins, yet they are pleasing to God and spring out necessarily of a true and lively faith. Article 13 denies that works done before grace are pleasing to God. Richard Hooker's sermon on justification is the classic Anglican treatment and is notably irenic, distinguishing the righteousness of justification, which is Christ's and imputed, from the righteousness of sanctification, which is ours and inherent - and insisting that neither may be collapsed into the other. In practice the evangelical wing preaches imputation in Lutheran terms; the Anglo-Catholic wing emphasises transformation and is closer to Trent; both cite Article 11.
Work with it
Check yourself
What did the Second Council of Orange (529) settle, and why does it matter to this argument?
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Correct. Orange condemned semi-Pelagianism and is Catholic teaching. It grants everything the Reformers most wanted said about the priority of grace, which is why the sixteenth-century argument was not about whether grace comes first.
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The council condemned exactly this kind of view.
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Orange addressed the priority of grace, not the forensic question, which was framed later.
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Unrelated, and defined in 1870.
Check yourself
What does Luther's phrase simul iustus et peccator claim?
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Yes. The verdict does not wait for the transformation to catch up, which is the pastoral heart of the Lutheran position.
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Not alternation - both at once, in different respects.
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The Formula of Concord insists good works follow justification necessarily. The phrase describes the believer's condition, not a licence.
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The opposite: the declaration is complete and not dependent on progress.
Check yourself
What did the 1999 Joint Declaration between Catholics and Lutherans establish?
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Correct. Real differences of emphasis remain, but this is a substantial and under-reported development.
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The Declaration concerns justification only and makes no such claim.
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Trent stands; the Declaration argues that its condemnations did not target the Lutheran doctrine as the Declaration states it.
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They did not, and remain distinct.
Objection drill
The Reformation was right and your churches have never really accepted it. Rome still teaches that you can merit grace, still sells indulgences in spirit if not in cash, and still leaves people anxious about whether they have done enough. "Faith alone" is in the text - Romans 3:28 - and Rome anathematised it.
A model answer
There is a lot packed in here, and the honest reply concedes something, corrects something, and then complicates the picture on purpose.
On "faith alone" being in the text. It is not, quite. Romans 3:28 says a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. Luther added allein in his German translation and defended the addition as necessary to render Paul's sense in German - a defensible translator's choice, and he said openly that he had made it. The only place the exact phrase faith only appears in Scripture is James 2:24, where it is negated: by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.
That is not a knockdown against the Reformation position, which has a serious answer about James using justified in the sense of demonstrated before men. But it means the argument has to be made rather than quoted.
On merit. Here the caricature needs correcting with Trent's own words. Trent teaches that nothing preceding justification - neither faith nor works - merits it, and that the whole initiative is God's. What it teaches about merit afterwards is that the good works of a justified person, done in grace, are genuinely meritorious - and then immediately adds that this merit is itself God's gift, because God crowns His own gifts in us. The phrase is Augustine's. It is a stranger and more circular doctrine than the caricature, and it is not the claim that a man can put God in his debt.
On indulgences. The sixteenth-century abuse was real, and Rome eventually agreed: the sale of indulgences was prohibited by Pius V in 1567, half a century after Luther's theses. What the doctrine now concerns is the remission of temporal punishment for sin already forgiven, and it has no monetary dimension. Whether the underlying distinction between guilt and temporal punishment is sound is a fair theological question. Whether anyone is selling anything is not.
On leaving people anxious. This is the strongest part of the objection and it should not be brushed aside, because it names a real pastoral difference. Trent does teach that no one can be certain with the certainty of faith that he is in a state of grace, and the Lutheran objection - that this sends the sensitive conscience back to inspecting itself, which was precisely Luther's torment - has genuine force. The next section takes this up at length; it is the most practically important difference on this subject, more than the definition of a word.
And now the complication. In 1999 the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church signed a Joint Declaration stating a common understanding: that by grace alone, in faith in Christ's saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit. Both sides concluded that the sixteenth-century condemnations do not apply to the other's teaching as now stated. The World Methodist Council associated itself with it in 2006, and the Anglican Communion in 2016.
That does not dissolve every difference, and it was criticised from both directions for that reason. But it makes one thing very hard to maintain: that this is a dispute between people who believe in grace and people who believe in earning. Both sides have now said, in a signed document, that they do not believe in earning.
A closing observation. Notice where the East stands in this. Orthodoxy watched the whole argument from outside and declined to join, on the grounds that a courtroom is the wrong picture. Its question is not how is the verdict reached but how is a dying man healed - and it would say that a debate conducted entirely in legal terms was always going to run into difficulty, because Scripture's largest image for salvation is not acquittal but new life.
Memory work
Turn each card over, then say honestly whether you knew it. Cards you miss come back sooner.