For Catholics, being
challenged by our Protestant brethren with questions about our salvation can be
unsettling, and even embarrassing. Why
is it that Protestants seem so sure of their salvation, while Catholics are
left uncertain as to their eternal destiny?
The answer to this question, and ultimately the answer to our Protestant
brethren, is that Catholic theology and Protestant theology diverge on this most
important issue, forming the foundation for all further protests against
Catholic teaching. Ultimately, if this
issue of man’s salvation is resolved, all other problems that exist between
Catholic and Protestant theology will fall away. Over the next couple weeks, we will consider
this topic in some detail, working toward a Biblically-based, authentic
Christian concept of salvation.
The first step in our journey must be the consideration
of terms. What do we mean by the terms
salvation, justification, and sanctification?
Being saved by God, or salvation, obviously includes the reality of
being saved from something or
someone. This something is the devil and
his dominion. When we speak of man’s
salvation, we mean “the freeing of the soul from the bonds of sin and its
consequences and the attainment of the everlasting vision of God in Heaven” (Attwater, Catholic Dictionary). Thus,
salvation is, at the same time, our separation from the dominion of the devil
and our union with our creator, by which we receive that which God planned for
mankind before the fall. To a certain
extent, Catholic and Protestant theology is in agreement on this point.
In defining our second term, justification, we come to
our first problem. What is
justification? For Catholics,
justification is the process by which the soul is transferred and transformed
from its former state of separation from God, to its proper state of union with
its Creator. This process of
justification enlivens man’s soul with the life of God—sanctifying grace—thus
refashioning man in the image and likeness of God. In Catholic theology, justification can be considered
from two perspectives: active and passive.
“In its active sense, Justification is the act of God declaring and making a person just; in its passive
sense, it is the change in a soul which passes from the state of sin to that of
sanctifying grace or justice” (Attwater). It is from
this distinction that we can properly consider the Protestant position. For Protestants, justification is simply
considered from the “active” position, and even then only partially. Justification, from a Protestant perspective,
considers only the reality of God’s declaration; a declaration which has no
real power of transformation, but only that of juridical judgment. To understand this position more clearly,
consider a judge in a courtroom who declares a defendant to be guilty or
innocent of all charges. In this
situation, the declaration of the judge does not change the actual culpability
of the person on trial, but simply declares a judgment to be recognized by
all. Please notice that if the person on
trial is guilty of a crime but declared innocent, the person remains guilty,
but without the consequences of his illicit action. For Protestants, justification is simply
God’s declaration of man’s freedom from sin and death, and does not effect the
actual transformation of the soul of man, or infuse it with divine life. Justification, then, leaves man in his sin,
while declaring him free of all the consequences thereof.
Our third term, sanctification, is closely related to
justification. For Catholics,
justification and sanctification are inseparable, since each includes the
definition of the other. To be justified
in God’s sight is to be declared, as well as made holy, and sanctification is this process of receiving, and
being transformed by sanctifying grace, i.e. the life of God in our souls. For Protestants, there is a real separation
between justification and sanctification.
Justification, as we have said, is God’s juridical declaration. Sanctification, from this perspective, is the
reason for God’s judgment, and is simply “a cloaking of sin and an extrinsic
imputation of the merits of Christ” (Attwater). Although,
from both perspectives, our sanctification relies upon Christ, note the key
difference between the Catholic and the Protestant understanding. For
Catholics, the saving work of Christ effects a real transformation in the heart
of man by making him sharer in divine life, while the Protestant position sees
only a covering of our sin, without any real intrinsic change taking place.
In
concluding our initial thoughts on this topic, let us keep in mind the
conceptual problem that divides Catholics and Protestants on the issue of
salvation. For Catholics, salvation
consists in God actually making us sharers in his own blessed life (cf. CCC,
1). On the other hand, for Protestants,
God saves mankind by divine fiat,
declaring man to be justified in his sight, while ignoring the actual state of
his soul.
