Catholics vs. Protestants on Justification
The Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone is, in my view, incomplete, yet the Catholic doctrine of justification by grace and works is defended poorly. For example, the Catholic Encyclopedia argues:
In the Protestant system, however, remission of sin is no real forgiveness, no blotting out of guilt. Sin is merely cloaked and concealed by the imputed merits of Christ; God 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 slave of Satan — and this without any prospect of a conciliation between the two. For, God by His merely judicial absolution from sin does not take away sin itself, but spreads over it as an outward mantle His own righteousness.
This fails to grasp the fundamental point of the Protestant explanation: that the offices of the Son (Who forgives sins) and the Holy Spirit (Who bestows grace) are to be kept separate. Your sins can be forgiven you, even if you are not made perfect by grace and works and will likely continue to sin in the future. But nothing apparently stops a justified person from being further, at the same time or later, sanctified and given grace and gifts and whatever else the Holy Spirit deems necessary.
The first problem with this idea is that even on its own terms, faith is an infused theological virtue. And repentance and asking forgiveness are supernaturally meritorious as responses to grace. Repentance, for example, means rejection of evil, and rejection of evil entails a concomitant love for good and God, and that’s charity. Asking forgiveness might obey Rom 8:26: “We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.” These are therefore “works,” requiring proper feelings, thoughts, and actions. So, there is prior sanctification.
And this is consistent with my account of the sequence in which theological virtues arise: charity first, then faith, and then hope. For example, it is not uncommon for a person just starting his journey to God to feel condemned: this is how the Holy Spirit, having implanted charity into a person, drives him towards the Son’s mercy. Now I have likened each one of the theological virtues to an aspect of human action: charity as the desire for the eternal good; faith as knowledge of the means to attaining that good; and hope as the ability or power to actualize your plan. Clearly then, considering faith, the means to eternal happiness is twofold: 1) the avoidance of evil, such that the moral evils you fail to avoid are forgiven by Christ our Lord, which gives you assurance that you will not be condemned to hell for sins, and 2) the doing of good. How this is to be cashed out depends on many things, such as one’s ethical theory. Thus, on the one hand, faith brings peace of mind that total failure is impossible; and on the other, it remains a plan of action, as there are works of differing merits, different degrees of success, and different degrees of glory.
The reason why faith is so important is that if you don’t believe that Jesus forgives sins, then since actual sin is practically inevitable, and the standard according to which you are judged is perfection, then you don’t, in fact, know how to get to heaven and are therefore in despair which is a mortal sin, etc. But important as it is, it does not exhaust the duties we must perform in order to be saved. Not sinning and not doing good is equivalent to being in a coma or to being an infant. And you won’t get any glory that way. Innocence will not cut it.
Both 1) and 2) then are individually necessary and joinly sufficient for justification.
Furthermore, actual instances of forgiveness of sins require penance. In the final analysis, how can God know if you are sincere in your faith? How can even you know? You have to prove your faith through action. You have to reject evil and show it, and do something good. It is beside the point that God is omniscient and knows all possible worlds, including how any creature will act in any set of circumstances, through middle knowledge. First, precisely because you will indeed act this way. Second, an action consummates the previous desiring and planning. Acts stamp your inner resolve and craftiness onto the world. They make your inner feelings and thoughts a solid reality. As such, they are essential for God to know your mettle and to decide whether to forgive or not. For example, it is useless to try to find out people’s preferences by giving them questionnaires. Only when push comes to shove, when you are forced to choose, then your essence is revealed. I agree that justification and remission of sins are, since the Incarnation, ours by justice, by right. But there are conditions for when it is given. A person is justified through (1) charity, (2) penance or baptism which I will discuss later, (3) knowledge of Christ’s mercy which forgives sins given (1) and (2), and (4) good works which earn glory.
There is an additional complication. The debt of punishment is just one of the effects of sin. There are also, according to Aquinas, corruption of nature and a stain on the soul. (ST, II-I, 85; 86) Even if the debt is forgiven, a person must be freed from these two evils. Corruption of nature corresponds to diminished power to persevere in goodness. You are softened up and weakened for future spiritual illness. This can be neutralized by the Father. And a stain on the soul can be cleansed by the Holy Spirit. So, just as evil requires all three persons of the Trinity to be fixed, so doing such good as credits merit to you requires all three persons to assist you in the form of infused love, knowledge, and power. Thus, justification and sanctification may be inseparable.
Then there is the idea that “We do nothing unless God says so. We do not even breathe. This is what we must realise. This takes away any self reliance. This helps the believer understand that he is ‘in Christ’ and without that there is nothing.” I’ve always thought that I had to minimize my contact with Jesus by not sinning and therefore not needing to ask Him for forgiveness. God is self-reliant, and if we are to imitate Him, then so must we be. It is true that there is no merit without grace, but now we have left the subject of justification.
Conclusion. A person is justified through an infusion of charity and faith, secure knowledge that he is not hell-bound, and good works.