#952 Can Catholics and Protestants Come Together on Justification?

Dr. craig’s response

Thank you so much for your question, Taylor! Until recently I have tried to avoid such potentially divisive issues, but my remarks to Trent were prompted by the conviction that there is no longer any reason for Catholics and Protestants to be divided on the important issue of the nature of justification. The gist of my remarks was that what the Council of Trent called “justification” Protestants call “sanctification,” and once we get our terminology consistent, the disagreement can be ironed out. We can agree that God issues a forensic declaration or pardon of our sin which removes our guilt and gives us a new legal standing and simultaneously infuses into us His grace through the Holy Spirit, beginning a lifelong process of renewal and transformation.

It's important to understand that this is not just a matter of “word studies,” as you suggest. Rather, this is about the doctrine of justification taught by Paul in Romans and Galatians. (A small corrective: despite many Protestant theologians’ careless statements, God’s forensic declaration is not a “legal acquittal.” On the contrary, we stand guilty and condemned before His bar. Rather what He issues is a legal pardon that removes our guilt.)

You are right that the doctrine of justification “tells us nothing about what is going on within the person nor about what God does to the person.” That is precisely because justification is a legal declaration! When a condemned criminal receives an executive pardon, his guilt is removed and he is given a new legal status, but nothing happens within him to make him into a good and virtuous person. Similarly, if we are to be spiritually transformed, we must be not merely justified, but spiritually regenerated by the Holy Spirit and sanctified by Him. So “declaring just and infusing justice” are not just “conceptually distinct”; they are ontologically distinct! They are two different operations of God that occur simultaneously.

You’re absolutely right that justification “depends upon the existence of (prevenient) grace and faith within the person.” Sinful persons would never come to God in faith and repentance apart from the convicting and drawing work of the Holy Spirit. But as a good Catholic, you know that prevenient grace is not saving grace. It prepares the human will to make a free decision to accept or reject God’s saving grace.

So where you and I appear to differ is not on the nature of justification/sanctification, but on the nature of faith. You want to make saving faith dependent upon justification (really, upon sanctification!), whereas I do not. I think that faith formed by love can be the result of a person’s yielding to prevenient grace alone. If he does so yield, then he will be declared righteous and receive an infusion of grace (be born again). But notice that it is impossible to have “an acquittal which depends on and brings about an infusion of grace.” If it brings it about, then it does not depend on it; whereas if it depends on it, then it does not bring it about. Besides, the declaration of righteousness and the infusion of God’s grace belong to entirely different orders, one forensic and one moral.

Your last paragraph is very revealing. You’re right that Lutherans and Calvinists don’t deny that justifying faith involves infused faith/virtue. But that’s because Lutherans and Calvinists are determinists! Calvinists actually believe that regeneration (explanatorily) precedes faith! But I am an Arminian, who affirms libertarian free will. I reject universal, divine, causal determinism of who is saved and who is lost. God gives sufficient grace for salvation to all human persons, who are free to decide whether to receive or reject that proffered grace.

To come back to my main point: Catholics and Protestants can unite on the nature of justification and sanctification. That doesn’t mean that all disputes will be resolved.