The Catholic trouble with justification: comments on Scott Hahn’s Romans

Standard Catholic soteriology – and the trouble with it

In order to understand why Catholicism leaves so little room for ‘justification by faith’, we need to be clear on standard Catholic soteriology. The topic is obviously vast, and I can only briefly outline what I think are the central elements and problems. As it turns out, they are not quite the ones on which the ecumenical discussion usually concentrates.

The most solemn and comprehensive official Catholic treatment of the doctrine of justification is found in the Council of Trent’s Decretum de iustificatione. ⁶ In Chapter 7, this conciliar decree from 1547 lists the five ‘causes of justification’, none of which is faith. Faith is connected, though, to the instrumental cause of justification, or, to be more exact, the justification of the impious, the so-called first or initial justification. The instrumental cause is said to be baptism, which the decree calls the ‘sacrament of faith’. This can be interpreted as saying that faith leads to baptism or that faith is presupposed and expressed in baptism; or that faith is given in baptism, or, as Vatican II says when talking about Protestants, that a man is justified by faith in baptism. ⁷ In any case, justification takes place in and through the sacrament of baptism. This is the first point.

The second point is that after baptismal justification, the Christian is said to be confronted with Christ’s words ‘if Thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments’. Knowingly and wilfully breaking one of the ten commandments in a serious way – i.e. committing a grave or mortal sin – leads to the loss of the grace of justification, or, as Catholics more commonly say, ‘sanctifying grace’. ⁸ Crucially, Chapter 15 of the Decree on Justification teaches that the grace of justification is lost by every mortal sin, though faith is not, appealing to Paul’s words to the believers in Corinth and Galatia, according to which fornicators, adulterers, drunkards and so on will not inherit eternal life. Furthermore, Chapter 14 teaches that those who have fallen from grace may be restored to it through the sacrament of penance or confession – or at least through the desire thereof, provided that the confession is made when the opportunity arises. In other words, after serious post-baptismal sins, the instrumental cause of (re-)justification is the sacrament of penance/confession (or the desire to confess).

In my estimation, these issues regarding the instrumental cause of justification, as well as the conditions of losing and regaining justification, are really the central problems – exegetically, dogmatically, ecumenically and spiritually (since Catholics face them on a daily basis) – and yet they are frequently overlooked in the literature, which most often focuses on general and theoretical issues such as ‘faith and works’, ‘justification and sanctification’, ‘infusion or imputation’, ‘forensic or effective’, and ‘cooperation and free will’. This also applies to Hahn’s Romans to the extent that the dynamic of mortal sin and confession, so central to everyday Catholic soteriology, goes unmentioned. In a sense, this is understandable (and convenient), given the epistle’s silence on these matters, but if the idea is to present Paul’s teaching in harmony with Catholic doctrine, pretending that the tension does not exist is a serious omission.

It is worth noting two points about Trent’s teaching on justification and good works. First, works do not merit the justification of the impious, but they contribute to the increase of justification, or righteousness (Chapter 10), understood as infused grace and virtue. Second, they are rewarded by God at the last judgment and thus are said to ‘merit’ eternal life (Chapter 16), but only thanks to the merit and grace of Christ and only if the person in question ‘depart in grace’. In other words, getting to heaven ultimately depends on whether one has died in God’s grace, not on anything like the number of good works performed.

In sum, the truly decisive element in standard Catholic soteriology is the dynamic of mortal sin and confession. What really determines one’s standing before God and one’s eternal destiny is whether one lives and dies in ‘the state of (sanctifying) grace’ – the term that Catholics normally use instead of ‘justification’ or ‘righteousness’. Being in the state of grace depends on whether one has committed a mortal sin and on whether one has gone to confession (or at least desired it) after committing one. Simply being a believer makes no difference: you can believe in Jesus all you want, but if you have one unconfessed/unrepented mortal sin on your conscience at death, you’re going to hell.

At this point, I hope it is clear why Catholics almost never talk or teach about ‘justification by faith’, unless pressed by Paul or Protestantism. The main reason is that, in Catholic doctrine, faith is generally not recognized as an instrumental cause of justification, as it is in the Lutheran tradition, taking its cue from Paul’s teaching in Romans 3—4. The central soteriological term for Catholics is not justification but ‘the state of grace’, or ‘sanctifying grace’, and there is no doctrine about ‘entering/being in/staying in/re-entering the state of grace by faith’, for faith can exist in the soul even without sanctifying grace. Entering the state of grace happens by baptism and confession, not by faith.

Now, to understand the exegetical challenge Paul’s letter to the Romans poses to Roman Catholics, imagine it said, over and over again, that a man enters the state of grace by faith, or that a man is reckoned to be in the state of grace by faith. I always remember how the first time I read Romans 3—4 I asked myself in anguish: ‘How are the Lutherans not right?’ The text did not fit my Catholic soteriology at all. Paul says that God justifies the one who believes in Jesus (3.26), that man is justified diá písteos (3.22, 25) or pístei (3.28), through faith, by faith, by means of faith, by the instrumentality of faith, apart from the works of the law; or, as in Romans 4, righteousness is credited or reckoned to the one who believes, apart from works. This seemed to me quite far removed from a system based on keeping the ten commandments in order to stay in the state of grace and going to confession in order to re-enter it when necessary.

Of course, ever since Trent, Catholics have developed all kinds of ways to explain Paul’s teaching, and I soon learned many of them. In Hahn’s Romans, I counted at least four different strategies, some of which do not seem entirely compatible with each other. In what follows, I examine these strategies to illustrate how difficult it is for Catholic theology to appropriate Paul’s teaching on ‘justification by faith’, and how attempts to get around it serve to further trivialize and minimize the role of this doctrine for Catholics.

Four strategies to explain (away) Romans 3—4

To begin on the positive side, Hahn rightly understands and explains Paul’s teaching on justification by faith on two vital points. First, he admits that Romans 3.28 teaches that faith is ‘the means of justification’, that ‘which reaches out to God and accepts the gift of righteousness that is offered in Jesus’. ⁹ In other words, faith is an instrument by which man receives justification. Second, on the nature of justifying faith, Hahn observes how Abraham’s example shows that justifying faith is ‘trustful belief in the Lord and the Lord’s promise, not dutiful observance of a covenant requirement’. ¹⁰ Now, this is precisely what the Lutheran tradition has discovered and treasured in Paul: justification is a gift, and it is received by means of faith, which is not understood simply as assent to truths but as trust in the promise. Ecumenically speaking, we might add that trust also includes the concepts of hope and love. But the important point is that if and when faith is recognized as an instrument of justification, then justification by faith is always a relevant doctrine for the believer, as long as he believes. It is a constant source of consolation to the Christian struggling with sin and doubt. Iustitia Dei is always there to be received in faith.

The problem with Hahn’s commentary is that, instead of building a positive case on these exegetical observations (which he could have done with the help of the Joint Declaration and some of the teachings of Popes Benedict XVI and Francis), he resorts to polemical strategies that in fact undermine them. As a result, the doctrine of justification by faith is emptied of its meaning and consigned to irrelevance.

Hahn’s first strategy is to make a distinction between ‘initial’ or ‘first’ justification and ‘final’ justification, ¹¹ so that the former is by faith apart from works (Romans 3.28), whereas the latter is by good works and faithful obedience to the divine law (Romans 2.13): in short, salvation by faith and works. There are several problems with this common solution. First, Hahn himself recognizes in his exegesis of Romans 4 that Abraham’s justification by faith in Genesis 15.6 does not refer to his initial justification but to a later point in his journey of faith. ¹² This favours the view that justification by faith apart from works applies to the entire Christian life, not merely its beginning. Second, in official Catholic teaching, final justification is not really based on ‘whether we have lived a life of faithful obedience’ ¹³ but rather on whether we have died in the state of grace. Here, Hahn makes too much of the role of works in final justification. In standard Catholic teaching, a bad Catholic who repents and goes to confession at the last minute is saved despite his lifelong disobedience, whereas a good Catholic who has committed one mortal sin will not be saved, no matter how many good works they have performed. So even final justification depends ultimately on grace, and the real issue to be discussed is whether the state of grace – i.e. the state of being justified – can be accessed by faith in Christ. The third problem is that, according to the Council of Trent, even initial justification does not really happen by faith in an instrumental sense but by baptism.

This leads us to Hahn’s second problematic strategy. On the one hand, he tries to affirm, with Paul, that faith is an instrumental cause of justification, but on the other, because of Trent, he ends up reducing its relevance to the liturgical event of baptism, the ‘sacrament of faith’. Hahn does speak of faith and baptism as the ‘twin instruments of salvation’, ¹⁴ but, for Hahn, all this seems to come down to is that both faith and baptism are necessary for initial justification, and that faith becomes salvific only in baptism. ¹⁵ Additional frustration is caused by the fact that Hahn uses this strategy to argue against Luther’s sola fide, which was in no way directed against baptism. Moreover, Hahn refers here to James 2.24’s denial of sola fide, but this is unfair in the context of initial justification, for it does not apply there; even Trent places the verse in the context of progressive justification, or what some Lutherans would call second justification. The question is whether Catholic theology could affirm that both baptism and faith are instrumental causes of justification. Catholics often pride themselves on their both/and approach in contrast to Protestantism’s either/or approach, but here it seems to be the opposite. Lutherans are usually willing to admit that faith and baptism confer the same gift of justification, namely union with Christ. By contrast, Catholics tend to reduce Paul’s ‘justification by faith’ to ‘justification by baptism’. But, in Romans, there is already a real justification by faith in Chapters 3—5, long before baptism is introduced in Chapter 6.

The third Catholic strategy to explain ‘justification by faith’, employed both by Hahn and by Trent, is to say that faith is the ‘foundation and root of all justification’ (this is how Trent explains ‘justified by faith’ in Romans 3), that it is the ‘essential condition’, ‘the structural foundation’ or an ‘indispensable element in all matters pertaining to salvation’: ¹⁶ in other words, an important prerequisite, a vital and necessary condition. But this is very different from an instrumental cause. A mere necessary condition, however essential and foundational, does not really accomplish anything. To illustrate, existence is also an essential condition for justification, absolutely necessary and foundational, but it does not follow that we are ‘justified by existence’. Conversely, imagine that Paul had written that ‘a man is justified by existence’ and that ‘God justifies him who exists’. What would that mean? Would it not mean that an existing man is a justified man, and not that existence is simply a necessary condition, to which this or that needed to be added?

The fourth strategy is to refer to ‘faith working in love’ and ‘the obedience of faith’ and to say that Paul ‘has a very broad concept of saving faith’, ¹⁷ so that faith now by definition includes works and obedience as well. Hahn refers here to the teachings of Vatican I and Vatican II about faith, saying that it is ‘nothing less’ than the ‘total response’ of the human person to God, including assenting to the truth God reveals and consenting to live as God requires. This strategy opens the door for all sorts of elements to be smuggled into Paul’s concept of faith, which Hahn elsewhere understands simply as ‘trustful belief in God’s promise’. In other words, I may believe and trust in God and Jesus and the gospel of his death and resurrection all I want, but if I disbelieve even one of the ‘revealed truths of faith’ defined centuries later (such as Vatican I’s dogma of papal infallibility, which all other Christians deny), or perhaps even dissent on a particular moral teaching (who knows where the line runs?), I do not really have saving faith. This strategy paves the way for an exegetical, ecumenical and spiritual suicide, and I say this as someone who was once on the edge precisely due to this sort of reasoning. Thankfully, I decided to believe that Paul’s simple gospel (see, for example, 1 Corinthians 15.1–5) was still valid, even for desperate, struggling Catholics.

Conclusion

Twenty years ago, Catholics and Lutherans together solemnly confessed that ‘By grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work … we are accepted by God’ and that ‘through Christ alone are we justified, when we receive this salvation in faith’. ¹⁸ In a catechesis on the Apostle Paul, Pope Benedict XVI famously said the following: ‘Being just [or righteous] simply means being with Christ and in Christ. And this suffices. Further observances are no longer necessary. For this reason Luther’s phrase: “faith alone” is true, if faith is not opposed to charity, to love.’ ¹⁹ I and most of my Lutheran friends are happy to agree. The problem is that, unlike Lutherans, Catholics are still officially burdened with all sorts of observances, such as attending Mass on ‘days of obligation’, under pain of mortal sin, ²⁰ no matter how much they otherwise believe and love Christ. To me and many of my Lutheran friends, this makes a mockery of Paul and the Joint Declaration.

Of course, the Joint Declaration claims consensus only on ‘basic truths of the doctrine of justification’, while allowing for ‘differences of language, theological elaboration, and emphasis’, as explicated in paragraphs 18–39. But is it only a difference of language if Catholics believe that they can lose their salvation by missing one Sunday Mass? Is it only a difference of emphasis if Lutherans can at any moment believe that in Christ their sins are fully forgiven, whereas Catholics need to wonder after each sin if it was mortal and if they need to go and see a priest? No, there are still major differences, both within the Churches and between them, on issues concerning the instrument of justification, mortal sin and confession.

What then? I would be the last person to advocate going back to the old condemnations. Rather, ‘Our consensus in basic truths of the doctrine of justification must come to influence the life and teachings of our churches. Here it must prove itself. In this respect, there are still questions of varying importance which need further clarification.’ ²¹

My analysis is that there are two different lines of thought operative in the Catholic Church at the same time, deriving from different sources. There is a Pauline, ecumenical, Catholic–Lutheran line of thought, (re)discovered thanks to modern biblical studies and ecumenism. On the other hand, there is the classical catechism-based model, with a rather (neo-)scholastic view of faith, sin, grace and obedience to rules, which is still quite commonly taught to Catholics on the grass-roots level. This paradigm still dominates public discussion in the Church, whereas justification by faith is almost never invoked in intra-Catholic debates. Take the current issue of communion for the civilly married. Are they in the state of grave sin and therefore to be excluded from the sacraments, or might they be justified because of ‘reduced subjective culpability’? Few, indeed, consider the possibility that some of them might be justified (‘in the state of grace’) because of faith in Christ.