I saw an appearance on Parker's Pensées by the Calvinist philosopher Guillaume Bignon that was intended to clarify the discussion on justification between Protestants and Catholics. At the end of the discussion, he asked for feedback, and that is the spirit in which I offer this article.
I do think that Bignon helped to explain the difference between initial justification and progressive justification. But in my view, it still missed some fundamental differences in unshared assumptions. First, Bignon's discussion did raise a critical point: that when Catholics speak of works being a part of justification, this refers to progressive justification, where the interesting question is about how justification is obtained and retained, which is what Protestants mean by justification. The real question is "what must I do to obtain eternal life?" While the discussion was quite helpful to bring some of those unshared assumptions forward, especially the distinction between possession of justification (saving grace) and growth in justification, I believe that he did not give enough attention to the underlying concept that distinguishes the views, namely, that justification/righteousness is a quality in Catholic theology and a legal declaration in Protestant theology. That unshared assumption strikes me as the most significant reason for Catholics and Protestants talking past each other.
I. The Analogy to Physical Strength
To illustrate what I mean, I will use another quality: physical strength. Let's say that we define "strong" as being able to bench press the bar with no added weight. If you are capable of that, you are qualitatively "strong," which is to say, you have the quality of strength. Otherwise, you are not qualitatively strong. There are no qualitative degrees in terms of having the quality or not, but there are quantitative degrees of strength. One person can be stronger than another, in terms of being able to bench far more weight, but that quantative difference does not deprive even the weakest person meeting the qualifications from having the quality "strong."
In Catholic theology, sanctifying grace, with its aspects of righteousness and eternal life, is called a supernatural quality of the soul. This can be understood by analogy to the quality of physical strength that I described above. It can quantitatively increase, so that one has more grace, becomes more righteous, and is more alive. But qualitatively, one either has it or doesn't. We refer to that as a "state of grace," but the state in this case is not something other than possession of the quality.
This is fundamentally different from the Reformed view, which understands justification and eternal life as achieved legal states, as opposed to possession of qualities. From the Reformed perspective, to the extent there is an increase, it could only be toward perfection of the state, as opposed to an increase in a quality. To put it another way, a state is either instantaneous or the end of a process of perfection. In Reformed theology, for example, this is an instantaneous process -- the regeneration of the sinner by the Holy Spirit the produces faith. From that perspective, any kind of process in becoming justified (regenerated), especially a contribution of works to that process, must be a Judaizing or Pelagian view. But, of course, believing that about Catholics would be a mischaracterization of the Catholic view based on confusing progressive justification with the possession of justification. Bignon points out that this misconception on the part of Reformed Christians is part of why the dialogue becomes confused, since Catholics do not believe that works contribute to the possession of justification, only to its increase. (One might legitimately query whether the Reformed idea that perfect obedience is pleasing to God is itself a version of Pelagianism, but we will leave that aside in this discussion.)
To articulate the explanation in terms of quality further, the Catholic view likewise distinguishes bare possession of the quality with the degree of the quality. This is the sense in which possession of the quality is described as "initial" justification, not in the sense of "the first time" but in the sense of simple possession being the initial condition. It is the zero point on the scale of justification from which increase in justification is measured; in my analogy to physical strength, it is being able to lift the bar with no added weight. In terms of the possession of the quality, both the Catholic and the Reformed views hold that it is given purely by grace and the sovereign election of God. For the Catholic, the ordinary course of grace will be by receipt of the Sacraments of baptism and penance, but because it is by grace, nothing prevents God from providing the same grace outside of the ordinary course. The grace-inspired works that we perform while in possession of that quality are in no sense a completion of that possession. Possession of the quality alone, by grace alone, suffices for salvation.
To restate this, the works performed by the justified person and the graces subsequently received to quantitatively increase righteousness and eternal life do not relate to the qualitative possession of righteousness and eternal life, which is either present or not. Pelagianism is the belief that the qualitative possession of righteousness and eternal life is by works and not grace. Pelagius believed that it was the faith demonstrated in the request for grace and not the grace itself that was justifying. The Judaizing belief condemned in Scripture was that performing the works of the Law was this basis for obtaining the quality. Neither is acceptable in Catholicism; both are condemned.
In analogy to physical strength, the Catholic understanding of sin is based on the durability of this quality as against injuries. A venial sin is the equivalent of some minor injury that temporarily impairs the ability to exercise the quality but does not permanently disable the quality. It is reparable by the spiritual equivalent of physical therapy in a variety of ways. Purgatory is essentially the afterlife rehab to allow the quality to return to its proper function. Mortal sins are those that permanently disable the quality, like injuries that remove the ability even to lift the bar. In that case, the Sacrament of Penance is like spiritual surgery to restore the quality, which can also serve a rehabilitative purpose in the same way any grace can.
II. Justification as Declaration
It's helpful at this point to skip ahead to the end of Bignon's presentation [around 1:20:00] to illustrate why something has been missed. Bignon offers the interpretation of the question of justification by faith alone as follows: "are we legally acquitted [Protestant view of justification, P-justification] by faith alone [Protestant view of faith as notitia + assensus + fiducia, P-faith]?" This is, in Bignon's view, restating the question "what must I do to obtain eternal life?" But it also obscures a distinction about what we mean by legal acquittal, and that seems to be the core difference.
Let's then turn back to what we mean when we say that the Reformed view views justification as a legal state. Bignon talks about forensic justification [at 8:00] as a legal acquittal before "the tribunal," but given the context of the discussion, what is meant here is the judgment at death. So now we've got another distinction within P-justification based on whether it's possible for faith to be lost. The standard Calvinist position is that the justification received by faith, the legal status, is irrevocable: once saved, always saved. Lutherans (and most other Protestants) believe that apostasy is possible, so the legal status is revocable. That creates a distinction between PR (Protestant-Reformed)-justification and PL (Protestant-Lutheran)-justification.
What this distinction highlights is that the question is even more complicated, because there is a difference between the legal declaration associated with possession of faith (which could itself be P-faith or C-faith) and the postmortem judgment. There may be a tendency at this point for people to just throw up their hands, because slogans like "works-salvation" against Catholics or "antinomianism" against Protestants are much easier to learn and to cast thoughtlessly at one's enemies. But Bignon and I are both opposed to that sort of lazy thinking, so in that spirit, I will not throw up my hands but instead firmly grasp the distinctions that need to be made.
So before we get into what the declaration is, let's start with what we mean by "possession of faith" in this context. We actually all agree on this, and what Bignon calls C-faith (intellectual assent) is not what Catholics mean when we discuss our own possession of faith. That is instead a Catholic caricature of what Protestants mean by faith, and we should all agree that this is just wrong. What we all mean by faith in terms of "saving faith" is faith situated in a complex of mental dispositions that naturally leads to obedience to God and love of neighbor. Protestants call that overall disposition fiducia; Catholics call it fides caritate formata (faith formed in charity).
We can quibble about the exact metaphysical nature of saving faith and whether it can be sustained in the absence of charity later, but for our purposes, it doesn't matter. The Protestant definition certainly doesn't exclude the presence of charity in the Catholic sense; Calvin even interprets James 2 as requiring that good works will be present (I'll discuss this in greater detail below). So let's just use what Bignon calls P-faith as the common term, since this is the kind of faith that we all consider saving faith. The declaration, whatever that means, is associated with the possession of P-faith. And in that since we all can say that we are justified, in the sense of receiving the declaration, by P-faith alone. That is to say that no works are required for the possession of P-faith and the associated declaration.
That seems like it would simplify things, yet it turns out we immediately diverge on how P-faith is associated with a legal declaration and what the legal declaration is. We can start with the declarations, and I will use the same lettering C-, PR-, and PL- lettering here. (I am using "Reformed" here to mean Calvinist; Arminians are in the Reformed tradition, but they follow the PL- approach.)
C-declaration: A permanent declaration that one has been adopted as Son and moved from the kingdom of Satan to the Kingdom of Christ, that all sins committed before this declaration will never again be counted under the law (acquittal of prior sins), and that one will thereafter be judged by the law of the Kingdom of Christ (the law of love)
PR-declaration: A permanent declaration that one has been adopted as Son and moved from the kingdom of Satan to the Kingdom of Christ, so that one's legal status is thereafter that of Christ and no sins, whether past or future, will ever be counted against the person
PL-declaration: A revocable declaration that the person has faith and therefore will not have sins counted against the person, which declaration is revoked if the person loses faith.
Then each system has a corresponding understanding of judgment:
C-judgment: Does the person possess the quality of righteousness?
PR-judgment: Has this person been declared to have the legal status of Christ? (Everyone who does not have this legal status fails the judgment, because that person is descended from Adam and/or has committed at least one sin.)
PL-judgment: Does this person have saving faith at the time of death?
What this has illuminated is that the PR- and C- views have more in common that the Protestant PL- view. So what Bignon has identified is a way that the Reformed tradition is in a specific sense "more Catholic" than the rest of Protestantism, and that proximity specifically consists in the permanent quality of the first such declaration. That means we can focus on the difference between the PR- and C- views, which are the closest, but we should also keep in mind what we have learned from the PL- view: that there might in principle be multiple such declarations.
III. PR-Declaration, C-Declaration, and Double Justification
Perhaps the most instructive lesson on the difference in PR-declaration and C-declaration is the failure of the Regensburg Colloquy in 1541 to obtain agreement between the two camps. Given that this was the immediately prior context for the Council of Trent, which unequivocally committed Catholics to denying imputed justification as a matter of dogma, there is little doubt that this was an important milestone in the realization of the difference between the two. Bignon correctly identifies Anthony N.S. Lane as one of the clearest expositors of Calvin's doctrine of justification, and his summary of that doctrine, titled "The Role of Scripture in Calvin's Doctrine of Justification," is to be highly commended for its clear explanation of the Regensburg concept of double justice (duplex iustitia). Understanding this concept is essential for understanding the difference between PR-declaration and C-declaration.
What Lane's explanation highlights is that the question "what must I do to obtain eternal life?" is actually a question of "what must I do to be pleasing to God?" The answer to that question in Reformed theology is "to render perfect obedience to His commands," referring to having perfectly obeyed those commands at every moment of one's life. Sin refers to any failure to do so at any time. Imputed justification is what is necessary to make up the gap between perfect obedience and the obedience that one has rendered, which is injustice. Since it is clear in Reformed theology that Christ's passive obedience in sufficient to cover that gap for us, we need not consider whether there is also an active component in terms of Christ's having done what we failed to do.
Reward, viewed strictly in terms of whether or not we receive it, is then based on the degree of our actual conformity to the perfect standard. In terms of the degree of reward, our degree of conformity is used as proxy for the degree of actual unity with Christ's own perfect righteousness. Given the regeneration by the Holy Spirit and faith itself is the means by which one is united to Christ and receives the declaration of righteousness, it is impossible that one has no degree of resemblance to Christ, so there will always be some degree of reward for the regenerate, which includes eternal life. This inevitability is established by the fact that the declaration itself is received only by grace based on the decree of election, so one's possession of the declaration in no way depends on the subsequent works performed. Those can change the degree of reward, but not whether one receives a reward.
The similarities between the Catholic and Reformed views on this point should be apparent, which was the basis for the agreement at Regensburg. Unfortunately, this papered over a real disagreement, which is the reason that Protestantism ends up being condemned at Trent. The relevant Tridentine teaching is that "the alone formal cause [of justification] is the justice of God, not that whereby He Himself is just, but that whereby He maketh us just, that, to wit, with which we being endowed by Him, are renewed in the spirit of our mind, and we are not only reputed, but are truly called, and are, just, receiving justice within us, each one according to his own measure, which the Holy Ghost distributes to every one as He wills, and according to each one's proper disposition and co-operation." That last statement "according to each one's proper disposition and co-operation" is the one that is routinely misinterpreted to suggest that works are somehow part of justification, but Bignon has correctly concluded that this is a mistake. What it shows instead is that the formal basis for both imputation and infusion is identical, and while that is expressed in Aristotelian terms, it is fundamentally just a description of what is pleasing to God.
In that respect, what the PR-declaration contemplates is that obedience to God's commands is pleasing. The C-declaration considers the quality of righteousness pleasing. The PR-declaration has in view extensive perfection, having always done everything perfectly. The C-declaration considers intensive perfection, whether one is capable of displaying supernatural virtue in individual acts and to what degree. These have corresponding accounts of why sin is displeasing; the PR-declaration contemplates that it spoils perfect obedience in an irreparable way, while the C-declaration considers it deleterious to retaining the fundamental quality (in the way that injuries are incompatible with the quality of physical strength). They have corresponding accounts of the fallen human nature; the PR-declaration considers all fallen humans to have failed in perfect obedience by association with Adam and to lack the capacity to render pleasing obedience, while the C-declaration contemplates humanity to be unable to develop the quality of righteousness without God's gracious intervention.
This difference in turn leads to a difference on imputation, i.e., what it means for sins "not to be counted against" someone. As the double justice approach at Regensburg illustrates, both the PR-declaration and the C-declaration involve imputation in terms of non-imputation of sins. So in the PR-declaration, this must be non-imputation of every failure to render perfect obedience. This means that Christ's own perfect obedience (justification before God) must be imputed to us, since He is the only man who has ever done what God commanded perfectly in order to achieve that legal status. Yet our regeneration means that we can do some things that are pleasing to God. This means that we are not completely vitiated (as is the case in total depravity) but that we will have rendered pleasing obedience in some partial way by being sanctified in union with Christ, by faith alone if nothing else. As per N.T. Wright, that partial obedience is what acts as the proxy for reward, including the reward of eternal life, following the legal acquittal for imperfect obedience. In other words, once we withstand the acquittal and negative judgment, the positive reward is based on what partial obedience we have rendered as the real-but-partial manifestation of our legal status.
Following Regensburg, we've now identified real similarities. Both the PR-declaration and the C-declaration involve imputation by God in order that past sins are not counted. Both involve a permanent and irrevocable legal declaration at the moment one is first justified by faith. But the Catholic view maintains that this is all based on possession of the quality of sanctifying grace, while the Reformed view is that faith is the mechanism by which one is incorporated into the mystical Body of Christ through which the declaration is made.
IV. Legal Fiction
With that as background, we can clarify an issue that is frequently confused in discussions on this point: the accusation that the Protestant doctrine of justification is a "legal fiction." In the first place, all that a legal fiction means is that the legal status is made by a legal declaration. Legal fiction is not narrative fiction in the sense of a made-up story contrary to the facts. When one is adopted, for example, one is truly the child of one's adopted parents under the law. To say that an adopted child is not "really" (or "ontologically") the child of his new parents is to deny the natural role of law and society in humanity. There are good reasons grounded in human nature for why one's normative legal and social obligations would be transferred to another parent, similar to the way one's legal and social obligations might be transferred to a new sovereign when one becomes a citizen of a different country than the country in which one was born. The legal fiction, the status created by the law, is a very real aspect of the society.
What is really at the heart of the criticism is not that imputation is a legal fiction but that it is an unjust legal fiction. The grounding of law in human nature is based on justice. There are plenty of reasons why it is just to move one's obligations to new parents or a new sovereign. Indeed, the entire idea of Christianity is to restore the good order that prevailed in Eden, in which human nature was rightly ordered to God and to creation. But there can also be unjust legal fictions, such as when one has the ability and obligation to make restitution to the victim of one's wrongdoing but the obligation is dispensed. So the question is how to address the obligations to God, which are clearly singular, in a just manner.
So the real criticism of the PR-declaration is not that it is a legal fiction but that it is an arbitrary legal fiction. This ties into my previous article on the Calvinist view of God as an earthly sovereign. God's commands would in that case be demands about what He wants from creatures, as opposed to inherent expressions of His eudokia (good will) for creatures. If the natural purpose of man is to live in relation to God, then both the commandments and their dispensation can be understood in the context of man achieving his end in God.
So the real distinction is in the retributive justice of God. Although retribution is commonly understood as punishment, depriving the criminal of something he possesses (such as freedom or life) in satisfaction of an obligation to the sovereign's justice, this cannot be applied identically in the case of God, because earthly sovereigns are not immanent in all of creation. It does apply metaphorically, and it is the misinterpretation of this metaphorical sense in an anthropomorphic way that creates the problem.
The principle of retribution is literally just giving back to someone what is the person's due. In ordinary retributive justice, the idea is that the offender has done something to disturb the peace of society and is obliged to yield something back toward that end. This giving back is traditionally called propitiation. The related idea is expiation -- removal of the evil from the society. The person's act of giving back also entails a rejection of the evil he has done, although this is frequently a compelled sufferance (punishment). These concepts are applicable in the divine context, but not univocally. For one thing, everything we have belongs to God, so we have nothing to offer to Him in satisfaction.
Thus, the modification of the concept specifically relates to the purpose of the created order, and this is an area where Reformed and Catholic theology has specific differences. Although both sides agree that God created for His own glory and to demonstrate His own divine attributes, they could not be farther apart in terms of how they interpret those concepts. In Reformed theology, this is a revelatory display to us and in us, very much akin to the revelatory purpose of Israel writ large for all of humanity. This is likewise related to a nominalist understanding of divine attributes in terms of the names put onto God based on human experience. In Catholic theology, it is a demonstration of God's absolutely unique relationship to creation as Creator, one of complete independence characterized solely by love and eudokia towards creation. The divine attributes are understood in the context of this fundamental ontological relationship, which makes them distinguishable according to either virtual (Dominican) or formal (Franciscan) distinctions. (The Palamite school of Eastern Orthodoxy would say that this is based on the essence/energies distinction, such that these divine attributes are associated with the divine energies.) Hence, the idea of satisfaction and atonement is based on Christ's unique offering, since He alone could freely give Himself as a sacrifice, and our real participation in His saving work.
To illustrate the contrast, I explained in a previous article why Reformed theology is nominalist and voluntarist, so the divine unity is resolved exclusively into the harmony and self-consistency of the divine will as an explanatory principle. Even the unity of the Persons in God is reduced to harmony of will (koinonia) among them. Likewise, union with Christ is harmony of will with Him. God's relationship with creation is reduced to one of divine command, which is why perfect obedience becomes the exclusive category for legal standing. One has either obeyed all of the divine commands at every point in his life, so as to have perfect harmony with the will of God, or one has not. Even categories of divine attributes, such as wrath or mercy, are grounded in divine command theory; they reflect decrees of the divine will toward creation. And because natures are explained only in terms of divine will, the legal category of the federal head becomes the basis of our unity in Adam or Christ, so that our legal status is primarily a question of our federal membership.
By contrast, the Catholic view of all of these matters is grounded in natural law, which is to say that everything legal is an expression of the more fundamental Creator-creature relationship in nature (the eternal law, in scholastic terminology). Since the purpose of man is union with God, the real presence of that union, sanctifying grace, is the basis of the law. The point of divine commands is not to establish that relationship by acts of divine will but only to demonstrate it in a certain way. And it is this demonstration that makes obedience not an end in itself but an instrumentality. One way to play music intentionally is to play specific notes and specific chord progressions, but it is also possible to play intentionally by knowing how to play the instrument and the sounds that it makes. The former is like the Mosaic Law, which includes learning an extensive "music theory" about the relation to God, while the latter is the natural law accessible to Gentiles. In either case, the goal of learning to play is to make the skill of playing connatural to the person, and this is how faith is understood in Catholicism, as the habitus of the soul like virtues or skills.
This means that the C-declaration is not simply arbitrary but that it is grounded in the quality of righteousness that the person has simultaneously been given. This is likewise grace, but the two forms of grace (the legal declaration and the infusion of supernatural virtues) are not separated. But it is possible for someone to act inconsistently with this state of grace and thus to lose it, meaning that the declared legal status then stands as a judgment against the reality of the person's manner of life. In that case, the original declaration that one is a citizen of God has remained irrevocable; God has never repented of the C-declaration admitting the Christian to the Kingdom. But under the new standard of the law of Christ, that citizen would be judged a criminal.
So it is not the question of "legal fiction" that separates Reformed and Catholic views of justification; both admit that the citizenship in the new Kingdom is a legal status, a creation of law. The question that separates the views is "what is divine law?" Reformed theology views conformity with the law as perfect obedience to every command directed to the person by God, which is a voluntarist account of the law that contradicts natural law. With respect to the Mosaic Law, the purpose of those commands was to uniquely illustrate Christ as the only one capable of performing divine commands perfectly, so that they have not been abrogated so much as fulfilled after having served their purpose. But with respect to the moral law, those commands are eternal and unchanging, so they continue to require perfect obedience, although the lesson of Christ shows that no human being will be able to attain them. We even agree that there is a retributive aspect of sacrifice in the sense that something must be given back to God to atone for what was done with His gifts that man has no capacity to give.
Despite all of this agreement, the fundamental difference is that Reformed theology has no metaphysical category to account for how the sacrifice of Christ is imputed to us. Lacking any robust account of theosis outside of union of will, what Reformed theology asserts as being "in Christ" lacks any account for why Christ having assumed the human nature can have an effect with respect to individual sin. This does not allow any distinction between the legal declaration that one is a citizen of the Kingdom and ontological participation in Christ, since the mode of union with Christ just is the legal declaration of being in the Kingdom of Christ. The nominalism of the Reformed view thus excludes the category of theological virtue and the account of justification as a metaphysical quality of the person. Yet this ontological basis is required for the justice of the imputational account. So Reformed theology uses the same terms as Aquinas and Bonaventure, but their conceptual structure is entirely alien. There can be no no real sacrifice, no real atonement, and no real salvation in such a model, since there is no theosis based on our consubstantiality with Christ.
Lutheran theology, by contrast, does not involve this fundamental denial of the unity in the basis of salvation in Christ. This is why, unlike the failure at Regenburg, the Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church were able to achieve a Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification that highlights a fundamental agreement between the two sides on this subject. In both Catholic and Lutheran theology, the real participation in Christ (albeit articulated in nominalist terms in Lutheran theology) is the single basis for justification. As the Joint Declaration 4.2 maintains, "[w]hen persons come by faith to share in Christ, God no longer imputes to them their sin and through the Holy Spirit effects in them an active love. These two aspects of God's gracious action are not to be separated, for persons are by faith united with Christ, who in his person is our righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30): both the forgiveness of sin and the saving presence of God himself." This is not to say that Catholics and Lutherans agree on the means of participation; there, Luther's nominalism continues to be an obstacle, which leads to philosophical errors like (purely) imputed righteousness and the genus majestaticum in Christology. But that philosophical error does not amount to an outright denial of essential soteriology as it does in Reformed theology. So even though the PR-declaration and the C-declaration have more in common in terms of the legal declaration itself, this similarity between Catholic and Reformed theology masks a fatal disagreement on the legal basis of salvation itself (possession of the quality of righteousness vs. perfect obedience). So even though the apparent similarity with Calvinism on justification may appear greater, the PL-declaration view is far more similar to the Catholic account of union with Christ.
V. Conclusion
Ultimately, Protestants do not agree with Catholics (or the Fathers, for that matter) on the nature of union with Christ in Christ's saving work; this is the point that I made in my debate with Fr. James at William Albrecht's Patristic Pillars. In that respect, pertaining specifically to justification as quality, Reformed theology is farther off the mark than Lutheran theology. But if we look specifically at the legal declaration and the concept of legal fiction involved in justification, we do find that this aspect of Reformed theology is more similar to the Catholic view than the Lutheran view.
