That characterization is still found today in a lot of Protestant literature on the subject.īut if you read what Trent says, you find it actually denies much of what is attributed to it. In the heat of the times, Protestant leaders painted the Council of Trent as a great villain that simply reiterated the Church’s false teachings and its false gospel. The Council of Trent issued the Decree on Justification (DJ), which set forth the Catholic position on the subject. The Council of Trent on Justificationįollowing the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Church held an ecumenical council in the Italian city of Trent to deal with the theological questions that were being debated. But the Catholic Church does not teach this. This will confirm his biases against the Church and play into all those stereotypes left over from the Reformation-the ones where Catholics are depicted as holding a false gospel according to which we need to earn our place before God by our own efforts. As a result, a Protestant will think that the Catholic is saying that we need to do works in order to come to God and be forgiven. Remember: Protestants use the term justification to refer to an event at the beginning of the Christian life where God forgives us and declares us righteous. If a Catholic tells a Protestant, “We believe in justification by faith and works,” it will cause the Protestant to believe something about Catholic doctrine that is not true. Some understand it even more broadly to mean anything that you do.īoth groups commonly envision works as somehow earning our place before God. It will do for our purposes to note that most Evangelicals understand the term to mean “good works” (feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, etc.). Much can be said about what “works” are in the Bible, but, for reasons of space, we won’t be going into that here.
“Works”-whatever they may be-are precisely the thing that the “faith alone” formula is meant to exclude. Regardless of how they interpret the “faith alone” formula, there is one thing that Protestants agree would violate this formula: works. This is the most common position in American Evangelicalism. They thus understand this formula in a way that excludes baptism. Some-particularly Baptists-claim that if baptism were to play a role in salvation it would violate the “faith alone” formula. Various Protestants-including some Calvinists, Anglicans, Methodists, and others-believe baptism plays a role in salvation, but others sharply disagree. In his Small Catechism, Martin Luther asks, “What does baptism give? What good is it?” His answer: “It gives the forgiveness of sins, redeems from death and the devil, gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, just as God’s words and promises declare.” Lutherans, for example, don’t see the idea that baptism grants salvation as conflicting with this.
In practice, Protestants give different meanings to the “faith alone” formula. The idea is that in order to come to God, be forgiven, and be declared righteous, you don’t need to do anything to earn your place before God except have faith in Jesus Christ. When Protestants use the phrase “faith alone,” they are describing how we are justified. Catholic theology would say that there is more to justification than that, but it is true that at the beginning of the Christian life God forgives a person’s sins and declares him righteous. This is occurs at the beginning of the Christian life, when a person first turns to God.Īs far as it goes, this description is accurate. The way typical American Evangelicals use the term, when God justifies someone, he declares that person’s sins forgiven and proclaims the person righteous. Unfortunately, there is considerable disagreement about what justification involves. The New Testament uses the word justification to refer to one of the things that God does for us by his grace. It occurs in a specific context-the doctrine of justification. The discussion of faith and works doesn’t take place in a vacuum.
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