Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 8.djvu/651

 JUSTIFICATION

575

JUSTIFICATION

efficient cause (causa efftciens) and merited by Christ as meritorious cause (causa merilorin), become an in- terior sanctifying quality or formal cause (causa for- malis) in the soul itself, wlxich it makes truly just and holy in the sight of God. In the Protestant system, however, remission of sin is no real forgiveness, no blotting out of guilt. Sin is merely cloaked and con- cealed by the imputed merits of Christ; Gotl no longer imputes it, whilst in reality it continues under cover its miserable existence till the hour of death. Thus there exist in man side by side two hostile brothers as it were — the one just and the other unjust; the one a saint, the other a sinner; the one a child of God, the other a sla\'e of Satan — and this without any prospect of a conciliation lietween the two. For, God by His merely judicial absolution from sin does not take away sin itself, but spreads over it as an outer mantle His own righteousness. The Lutheran (and Calvinistic) doctrine on justification reaches its climax in the as- sertion that "fiduciary faith", as described above, is the only requisite for justification (sola fides justi- ficat). As long as the sinner with the "arm of faith " firmly clings to Christ, he is and will ever remain re- generated, pleasing to God, the child of God and heir to heaven. Faith, which alone can justify, is also the only requisite and means of obtaining salvation. Neither repentance nor penance, neither love of God nor gootl works, nor any other virtue is reqm'red, thoiigh in the just they may either attend or follow as a result of juslitication. (Cf. Solid. Declar,§ 23: "Indeed, neither contrition nor love nor any other virtue, but faith alone is the means by which we can reach forth and obtain the grace of God, the merit of Christ and the remission of sin.") It is well known that Luther in his German translation of the Bible falsified Rom., iii, 2S, by interpolating the word "alone" (by faith alone), and to his critics gave the famous answer: "Dr. Martin Luther wants it that way, and says: 'Papist and ass are the same thing: sic volo, sic jubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas '."

Since neither charity nor good works contribute any- thing towards justification — inasmuch as faith alone justifies — their absence subsequently cannot deprive the just man of anything whatever. There is only one thing that might possibly divest him of justification, namely, the loss of fiduciary faith or of faith in gen- eral. From this point of view we get a psychological explanation of numerous objectionable passages in Luther's wiitings, against which even Protestants with deep moral sense, such as Hugo Grotius and George Bull, earnestly protested. Thus we find in one of Luther's letters, written to Melanchthon in 1521, the following sentence: "Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ more strongly, who tri- umphed over sin, death, and the world; as long as we live here, we must sin." Could anyone do more to de- grade St. Paul's concept of justification than Luther did in the following blasphemy: "If adultery could be committed in faith, it would not be a sin"? (Cf. Mohler, "Symbolik", §16.) The doctrine of justifica- tion by faith alone was considered by Luther and his followers as an incontrovertible dogma, as the founda- tion rock of the Reformation, as an "article by which the Church must stand or fall " (articulus stantis et ca- denlis ecclesice), and which of itself would have been a sufficient cause for beginning the Reformation, as the Smalkaldic Articles emphatically declare. Thus we need not wonder when later on we see Lutheran theologians declaring that the Sola-Fides doctrine, as the principium materiale of Protestantism, deserves to be placed side by side with the doctrine of Sola- Scriptura ("Bible alone", with the exclusion of Tra- dition) as its principium formale — two maxims in which the contrast between Protestant and Catholic teaching reaches its highest point. Since, however, neither maxim can be found in the Bible, every Cath- olic is forced to conclude that Protestantism from its

very beginning and foundation is based on self-decep- tion. We assert this of Protestantism in general ; for the doctrine of justification as defended liy the re- formed Churches differs only in non-es.sentials from Lutheranisni. The most important of these differences is to be found in Calvin's system, Avhicli taught that only such as are predestined infallibly to eternal sal- vation obtain justification, whilst in those not pre- destined God produces a mere appearance of faith and righteousness, and this in order to punish them the more severely in hell (Cf. Mohler, "Sjymbolik", §12).

From what has been said it is obvious that justifi- cation as understood by Protestants, jiroscnts tlie fol- lowing qualities: its absolute certainty (criiiludi))^ its equality in all (ccqualilas), and finally tlic impossibility of ever losing it (inamissibititas). For if it be essential to fiduciary faith that it infallibly assures the sinner of his own justification, it cannot mean anything but a firm conviction of the actual possession of grace. If, moreover, the sinner be justified, not by an interior righteousness capable of mcrease or decrease, but through God's sanctity eternally the same, it is evi- dent that all the just from the common mortal to the Apostles and the Blessed Virgin Mary possess one and the same degree of righteousness and sanctity. Fi- nally if, as Luther maintains, only the loss of faith (according to Calvin, not even that) can deprive us of justification, it follows that justification once ob- tained can never be lost. Incidentally, we may here call attention to another significant fact, namely that it was Luther who laid the foundation for the separa- tion of religion and morality. For, by stating that fiduciary faith alone suffices for obtaining both justifi- cation and eternal happiness, he minimized our moral faculties to such an extent that charity and good works no longer affect our relations with God. By this doctrine Luther opened a fundamental breach between religion and morality, between faith and law, and assigned to each its own distinct sphere of action, in which each can attain its end independent of the other. Prof. Paulsen of Berlin was therefore justified in eulogizing Kant, who followed Luther in this matter, as the "Philosopher of Protestantism". (Cf. Mohler, "Sj-mbolik", §2.5.)

The harshness, want of harmony, intrinsic improb- ability, and contradiction of Holy Writ contained in the system soon brought about a reaction in the very midst of Protestantism. Osiander (d. 1552), at once an enthusiastic admirer of Luther and an independent thinker, emphatically stated (in opposition to Luther and Calvin) that the justifying power of faith consists in a real, intrinsic union of Christ with the soul, an opinion for which, as being Catholic, he was censured freely. Butzer (d. 1551) likewise admits, in addition to an " imputed exterior righteousness ", the idea of a n "inherent righteousness " as a partial factor in justifi- cation, thus meeting Catholicism half way. Luther's most dangerous adversary, however, was his friend Melanchthon, who, in his praiseworthy endeavour to smoothe over by conciliatory modifications the inte- rior difficulties of this discordant system, laid the foim- dation for the famous Synergisten-Streit (Synergist Dis- pute), which was so soon to become embittered. In general it was precisely the denial of man's free will in the moral order, and of the impossiliility of his full co-operation with Divine grace that repelled so many followers of Luther. No sooner had Pfeffinger in his book,"Deliberoarbitrio " (Leipzig, 1555) taken up the defence of man's free will than many theologians of Jena (e. g. Strigel) boldly attacked the Lutheran Klotz-Stock-und-Steintheorie (log-stick-and-stone the- ory), and tried to force from their adversaries the concession that man can co-operate with God's grace. The theological quarrel soon proved very annoying to both parties and the desire for peace became uni- versal. ' ' The Half-Melanchtonians " had succeeded in