johnbugay
Puritan Board Freshman
There is an exceptional discussion of justification in the early church over at Triablogue:
Triablogue: Seeds Of The Reformation
This is part of an ongoing discussion with some of the “Called to Communion” gang. As many of you probably know, justification was at the root of the Reformation. But what many people, even Reformed believers, don’t understand is that the Roman Catholic conception of justification does not have its roots in the Scriptures; rather, they have their beginnings in Aquinas’s use of Aristotelian categories – not Scripture – to describe such things as God, reason, and grace.
J.V. Fesko, in his excellent work “Justification,” describes quite accurately where these discrepancies come from, the effect they have on the Roman doctrine, and also some of the consequential outworkings. (I’ve posted selections from Fesko at the Triablogue discussion, but this is something that everyone should understand).
Amazon.com: Justification: Understanding the Classic Reformed Doctrine (9781596380868): J. V. Fesko: Books
(Michael Horton also writes about this in more detail in Covenant and Salvation and also in People and Place).
As a practical out-working then, my understanding is that there are several key differences which don't get mentioned in these types of discussions:
"Grace" actually means different things when Catholics and Protestants talk about it. So when Catholics say that “we both affirm that justification and salvation are by ‘grace alone,’” they fail to acknowledge that there is equivocation on this word “grace.”
This is reflected from the very beginning; in the Protestant schema, man was "very good" when God created him. So Christ's sacrifice, for Protestants, brings man through forensic justification, a declarative act of God, restoring man back to the "very good" that he had "in the beginning."
In the Catholic scheme, man as created wasn't yet "good enough." He was merely neutral. There was this "super-added Grace" that gave him a kind of supernatural character that enabled him to "fellowship with God."
So in Roman Catholics, this begins what I call the “sacramental treadmill” -- beginning with an "infusion" of grace (a little squirt of this good oil that is yours to maintain by staying in "a state of grace") which does "make you righteous," but then it must be maintained through life -- being a "good Catholic," it can be "added to" (through the "increase of merit").
This is required not by God in the Word, but by the Roman Magisterium, which lost the proper understanding of justification because of Augustine’s errors, and which found new life through Rome’s need to affirm that it has “never erred.” Such errors are propped up by the Aristotelian/Thomist necessity to maintain human reason as a principle above and controlling God's Word.
It should be noted, too, that Aquinas made other errors, and incorporated them into his theology. He believed that “Pseudo-Dionysius,” a fifth century neo-Platonist, was actually “Dionysius the Areopagite” from Acts 17. As well, he accepted many of the forgeries of the middle ages as if they were genuine items.
Sorry if this is a bit long, but Fesko explains it very, very clearly. There is much more to it (including longer explanation from Van Til about the outworkings), but the gist of it is that Roman Catholics, with their Aristotelian understanding of God, really do not have the God of the Bible in mind when they, in their very core doctrines, use Aristotle to understand him.
Triablogue: Seeds Of The Reformation
This is part of an ongoing discussion with some of the “Called to Communion” gang. As many of you probably know, justification was at the root of the Reformation. But what many people, even Reformed believers, don’t understand is that the Roman Catholic conception of justification does not have its roots in the Scriptures; rather, they have their beginnings in Aquinas’s use of Aristotelian categories – not Scripture – to describe such things as God, reason, and grace.
J.V. Fesko, in his excellent work “Justification,” describes quite accurately where these discrepancies come from, the effect they have on the Roman doctrine, and also some of the consequential outworkings. (I’ve posted selections from Fesko at the Triablogue discussion, but this is something that everyone should understand).
Amazon.com: Justification: Understanding the Classic Reformed Doctrine (9781596380868): J. V. Fesko: Books
While individual Roman Catholic theologians have acknowledged the forensic nature of justification and hence the foundational nature of imputation, it is the magisterium that must acknowledge the doctrine. The whole debate, however, over the question of imputed versus infused righteousness is not one that will be solved only by exegeting the relevant NT texts (e.g., Rom 4:1-8, 5:12-19, 1 Cor 15:20-28, 2 Cor 5:20-21). The question of Adam's original state in the initial creation must also figure in the debate.
It seems as though much of the debate over infused versus imputed righteousness hinges upon the presuppositions of each party. The typical Reformed understanding is that Adam was created upright, or righteous, and that God justified, or declared righteous, the initial creation as well as man in his declaration that everything was \"very good\" (Gen 1:31). We see the Westminster Larger Catechism echo this point when it states that God created man in \"righteousness, and holiness, having the law of God written in their hearts, and the power to fulfill it\" (q.17). By way of contrast, the typical Roman Catholic understanding of Adam's original state holds to the necessity of infused righteousness. Roman Catholic theologians typically hold to the idea of the donum supperadditum (\"super-added gift\"). Medieval Roman Catholic Theologians, for example, argue that the donum superadditum was a part of the original constitution of man, that it represented his original capacity for righteousness. We see, then, from the outset, that man in his unfallen state required infused righeousness in the form of the donum superadditum. If man requires infused righteousness in the prefall state, then he would most assuredly require it in his sin-fallen but redeemed state. (This is from Aquinas, Summa, Ia q. 95). The original state of man, then, is an issue that must feature in any dialogues over the question of imputation.
We have seen throughout this study that the RCC typically confuses the categories of justification and sanctification. This confusion is due to several factors, such as Augustine's initial formulation of justification, namely that it included both the declarative and transformative, a formulation which was later reiterated in the council of Trent, as we saw above. Once again, the issue does not hinge solely upon the definition of categories of systematic theology and terms in the NT. Yes, some Roman Catholic theologians have acknowledged that when Paul uses the \"dikai-\"word group that he has its forensic or declarative meaning in mind. Hence justification cannot be a transformative process; it cannot include sanctification but is a once-for-all declaration of the sinner's righteousness. However, though individual theologians may affirm this important point, the magisterium will not do so until it exposes one of its fundamental presuppositions as unbiblical.
At the radix of the Roman Catholic understanding of justification is not simply the teaching of the early church, but ultimately, and once again, its conception of man's original created state. Aquinas, for example, begins his discussion on the being and existence of God, not in terms of what Scripture has revealed concerning God, but in terms of ontology, particularly Aristotelian ontology (Summa, Ia IIae q.113a.8.) While the Aristotelian categories as a point of contact with the unbeliever is one issue, debatable at that, the use of Aristotelian ontology as the starting point for unpacking God's being and attributes and one's anthropology is a beast of an entirely different stripe. Recall from the chapter on prolegomena that Francis Turretin rejected Aquinas's ontologically framed discussion of the being and attributes of God and instead opted for the twin foci of covenant and Christology as the means by which God has revealed himself ...
Turretin's point is that theology is not revealed to us in terms of ontology but in the Word of God, which comes to us through Christ and covenant. Turretin is not alone in this criticism.
Van-Til notes in this regard, 'Romanism makes the effort to attach a Christian faith principle to a non-Christian principle of reason. The result is a compromise with the non-Christian principle of the autonomous man.' Inherent in Aquinas's understanding of man's original state, namely the pristine condition of his reason both before and after the fall, is reliance upon Aristotle. For the historic Reformed faith, however, there are only two kinds of people in the world, covenant-breakers and covenant-keepers. Van Til explains that covenant-keepers make man in God's image, whereas covenant-breakers make God in man's image.
According to Roman Catholic theology, then, one does not find man in covenant confronted with the revelation of God, and bound either to obey or disobey. It was Calvin, for example, who taught that man cannot know himself without knowing himself as a creature of God. Instead, Aquinas and Roman Catholic theology begin first with the concept of being and then only later introduce the Creator-creature distinction.\"
Fesko continues with several more citations from Van Til, to the effect that Catholic theology \"virtually asserts that the faith principle (in the Word) must be adjusted to the principle of reason that is already at work...\" As well, \"the meaning of a finished incarnation as an individual fact in history could never be made reasonable. The incarnation is a process continued in the church as the whole human personality is in the process of divinization....There cannot be one finished fact in history by virtue of which men are made righteous and holy in principle.\" (372-375).
(Michael Horton also writes about this in more detail in Covenant and Salvation and also in People and Place).
As a practical out-working then, my understanding is that there are several key differences which don't get mentioned in these types of discussions:
"Grace" actually means different things when Catholics and Protestants talk about it. So when Catholics say that “we both affirm that justification and salvation are by ‘grace alone,’” they fail to acknowledge that there is equivocation on this word “grace.”
This is reflected from the very beginning; in the Protestant schema, man was "very good" when God created him. So Christ's sacrifice, for Protestants, brings man through forensic justification, a declarative act of God, restoring man back to the "very good" that he had "in the beginning."
In the Catholic scheme, man as created wasn't yet "good enough." He was merely neutral. There was this "super-added Grace" that gave him a kind of supernatural character that enabled him to "fellowship with God."
So in Roman Catholics, this begins what I call the “sacramental treadmill” -- beginning with an "infusion" of grace (a little squirt of this good oil that is yours to maintain by staying in "a state of grace") which does "make you righteous," but then it must be maintained through life -- being a "good Catholic," it can be "added to" (through the "increase of merit").
This is required not by God in the Word, but by the Roman Magisterium, which lost the proper understanding of justification because of Augustine’s errors, and which found new life through Rome’s need to affirm that it has “never erred.” Such errors are propped up by the Aristotelian/Thomist necessity to maintain human reason as a principle above and controlling God's Word.
It should be noted, too, that Aquinas made other errors, and incorporated them into his theology. He believed that “Pseudo-Dionysius,” a fifth century neo-Platonist, was actually “Dionysius the Areopagite” from Acts 17. As well, he accepted many of the forgeries of the middle ages as if they were genuine items.
Sorry if this is a bit long, but Fesko explains it very, very clearly. There is much more to it (including longer explanation from Van Til about the outworkings), but the gist of it is that Roman Catholics, with their Aristotelian understanding of God, really do not have the God of the Bible in mind when they, in their very core doctrines, use Aristotle to understand him.