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How "Union with Christ" made me a Catholic




It's one of the most popular buzzwords in evangelical theology today, and for good reason. One cannot help but notice how tightly intertwined God's work in redemption is with man's expected response in the life of sanctification. We have to credit the good commentators in the evangelical world with this: not many are explicitly antinomian, or intend to say that the justified sinner has no need to pursue holiness. That would be a strawman.

But the problem with the bifurcation between justification and sanctification is a theological one. There is a reason why the debate in the 16th century turned on imputation versus infusion, and it is not because the reformers restored the priority of grace, as much as evangelical pastors and theologians would like it to be so. The debate turned not on grace, but on the freedom of the will or the lack of it in the life of grace.

The very heart of the Reformation is the contention that by grace alone through faith alone, the righteousness of Christ is imputed to the believer. He is justified not by works he does, but by the freedom that comes from knowing that he is completely acquitted before God because of the righteousness of Christ. As the Westminster Confession of Faith states, "He also freely justifies; not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for any thing wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ's sake alone; nor by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving and resting on Him and His righteousness by faith; which faith they have not of themselves, it is the gift of God.

II. Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and His righteousness..." (WCF, chapter XI, paragraphs I-IIa) The Augsburg Confession, the historic statement of faith for Lutherans, says it this way: "Also they teach that men cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits, or works, but are freely justified for Christ's sake, through faith, when they believe that they are received into favor, and that their sins are forgiven for Christ's sake, who, by His death, has made satisfaction for our sins. This faith God imputes for righteousness in His sight. Rom. 3 and 4." (Article 4) It cannot be made more plain, but in case it is necessary, we will go to the Smalcald Articles, wherein Dr. Luther himself says, "What I have hitherto and constantly taught concerning this I know not how to change in the least, namely, that by faith, as St. Peter says, we acquire a new and clean heart, and God will and does account us entirely righteous and holy for the sake of Christ, our Mediator. And although sin in the flesh has not yet been altogether removed or become dead, yet He will not punish or remember it."

So, it is not the fault of certain un-ecumenical agitators like R. Scott Clark that a certain "hyper-forensic" notion of justification became synonymous with the Reformation; in fact, this notion of justification is the heart of the Reformation. I will readily grant that studies in biblical theology, and reflections on covenant theology in the light of the biblical data is causing many to reformulate their understandings of justification "in Christ" and to soften the edges of the polemical boundaries that emerged in the 16th century between Catholics and Protestants. Frankly, it is causing the children of that Reformation to forget what the dispute is really about. As such, their movement towards a more synergistic and participatory soteriology does not carry the automatic implication of returning to the Catholic Church, but it should. For my part, as I have said before, it was never about denying the goodness of the progressive pursuit of holiness as such; it was rather a question of its necessity, given that we were righteous in God's sight for the sake of Christ. That is, there is no soteriological necessity for the pursuit of holiness, at least as a participatory effort between God and man. Yet the Westminster Confession of Faith states quite plainly, "yet it is of such necessity to all sinners, that none may expect pardon without it" after the necessary noises about it not being a cause of satisfaction for sin. If it is not an occasion for the satisfaction of sin, why is it necessary? If I'm justified in the sight of God by the obedience and satisfaction of Christ, God cannot see my numerous failures, let alone require repentance for them.

But let's tell the truth: "justification by faith alone" has a connotation that has nothing to do with its precise meaning on either side. In practical life for the Christian, it means "God loves me, and I don't have to earn his favor." As such, it remains for the theologians of the Church to emphasize that we cannot in our own power please God. It has never been a teaching of the Catholic Church that man is capable of pleasing God by his own efforts. This is Pelagianism, and if I may, we were anti-Pelagian before it was cool.

The debate between Catholics and Protestants then and now is about the nature of the faith which justifies. It is inappropriate to credit Protestantism in its use of the phrase "faith alone" as obviously referring to living faith, because the Church's rejection of the phrase is based upon the failure to make the distinction between living faith and dead faith in the first place. This love as a theological virtue is an act of the will, the very same will that the reformers took great pains to deny, at least with respect to its agency in justification. We are told over and over that the reformers never meant faith alone to equal the intellectual assent to certain propositions. But, absent the love, unformed faith is exactly that. If true faith is assent to what God has revealed, fired by love, then the Council of Trent was right all along. If it is within the power of a man to recognize the difference between merely assenting to the truth, and being set on fire by the Holy Spirit to live a life worthy of Christ, then he was never so unable as the reformers seem to suggest, and it is long past time to return home.

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