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Course 10 · Lesson 3.3

The Catholic teaching and the Council of Trent

12 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 10 outline

Module 1: Sin and Human Nature

  1. Human beings in the image of God
  2. The fall in Scripture: Genesis 3 and Romans 5
  3. Original sin in Augustine and the Western tradition
  4. Ancestral sin and mortality in the Eastern tradition

Module 2: Grace and Free Will

  1. Pelagius and Augustine
  2. The church responds: semi-Pelagianism and the Council of Orange
  3. Luther and Erasmus on the bondage of the will
  4. Monergism and synergism across the traditions

Module 3: Justification and Sanctification

  1. Justification in Paul and James
  2. Justification by faith alone in the Lutheran and Reformed traditions
  3. The Catholic teaching and the Council of Trent
  4. Sanctification, holiness and theosis
  5. Recent ecumenical discussion of justification

Module 4: Predestination and Election

  1. Election and predestination in Scripture
  2. Augustine, Aquinas and Calvin on predestination
  3. Arminius, Wesley and conditional election
  4. Eastern and Catholic views on election and foreknowledge

Module 5: Atonement, Redemption and Adoption

  1. Atonement and its extent: for whom did Christ die?
  2. Redemption: the images of ransom, freedom and return
  3. Adoption: sons and daughters of God
  4. The order of salvation across the traditions

Module 6: Death, Resurrection and Judgment

  1. Death and the intermediate state
  2. The resurrection of the dead in Scripture and the creeds
  3. The final judgment: Christ the judge
  4. Purgatory, the Orthodox practice of praying for the dead, and the Protestant objection

Module 7: Heaven, Hell and the New Creation

  1. Heaven and the vision of God
  2. Hell: eternal torment, annihilationism and universal hope
  3. The fate of those who have not heard the gospel
  4. The new heavens and the new earth

Module 8: The Millennium and Christian Eschatological Traditions

  1. Revelation and apocalyptic literature
  2. Premillennial views, historic and dispensational
  3. Amillennial and postmillennial views
  4. Preterist, historicist and futurist approaches
  5. What the traditions hold in common about the end

All courses

Program / Course 10: Salvation and Eschatology / Lesson 3.3

What you will learn

  • State the Catholic teaching on justification as the Council of Trent and the Catechism present it.
  • Explain infused grace, faith formed by charity, merit and the loss and recovery of justification.
  • Describe what Trent condemned and why, in its own terms.
  • Recognize where Catholic and Protestant teaching truly differ and where the difference is one of vocabulary.

The big idea

The Council of Trent, in its decree on justification of January 1547, taught that justification is not only the forgiveness of sins but also the sanctification and renewal of the inner person through the free gift of grace. Faith is the beginning, but it is a faith that works through love. Good works done in grace are not a cause of justification but are fruits of it and, by God’s promise, are rewarded. The Council rejected the Reformers’ teaching that faith alone, in the sense of nothing else being needed, justifies.

Key terms

Sanctifying grace
A lasting gift of God’s life in the soul that makes a person holy and pleasing to God. Catholic teaching says it is poured into the soul at baptism.
Infused righteousness
Righteousness truly given to and inhering in the person by God, as opposed to a righteousness only counted as his.
Faith formed by charity
Aquinas’s phrase for a faith completed and given life by love. Trent speaks of faith that works through love.
Merit
In Catholic teaching, a reward God freely promises to good works done in grace. The Catechism says that merit is itself a gift.
Mortal sin
A grave sin, done with knowledge and consent, which according to Catholic teaching destroys charity in the heart and so loses sanctifying grace.
Sacrament of penance
The sacrament of confession, through which the Catholic Church teaches that a person who has lost grace by mortal sin is restored.
Presumption
Confident trust in one’s salvation that goes beyond what God has promised. Trent warned against it.

Background

The Council of Trent met in three periods between 1545 and 1563 in response to the Reformation. Its sixth session, in 1547, produced a long decree on justification with sixteen chapters and thirty-three canons. The chapters state the positive teaching, and the canons condemn specific errors. The canons often target positions that the Reformers did not hold in the form stated, and some Protestants have argued that Trent misread them. Catholic scholars today often add that the Council aimed to protect real truths, such as the necessity of grace and the reality of inner renewal.

Behind Trent stands the medieval teaching of Augustine and Aquinas. Aquinas taught that justification is the infusion of grace into the soul, which heals it and orders the will toward God. This lesson presents the Catholic view in its own terms, drawing mainly on Trent and the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Justification as renewal

Trent, in chapter 7, teaches that justification is not merely the remission of sins but also the sanctification and renewal of the inner man through the voluntary reception of grace. The one justified is not only forgiven but made just. Through Christ’s merit, the Holy Spirit pours love into the heart.

Trent names several causes. The final cause is the glory of God and eternal life. The efficient cause is God’s mercy. The meritorious cause is Christ. The instrumental cause is the sacrament of baptism. The formal cause is the justice of God, not by which he himself is just, but by which he makes us just. The vocabulary is Aristotelian, and the main idea is that God truly changes the sinner.

Step 2: Preparation and the beginning

Trent teaches that the beginning of justification comes from God’s prevenient grace, without any merit of the person. Adults are called and disposed to justification when they freely assent to and cooperate with this grace. They believe, hope, begin to love God, repent and resolve to receive baptism. The Council states that nothing which precedes justification, whether faith or works, merits the grace of justification itself.

In this way Trent affirms that salvation begins as a gift, in agreement with the Reformers, and also says that the human person truly assents. Canon 9 condemns anyone who says that the sinner is justified by faith alone in such a way as to mean that nothing else is required to cooperate in obtaining the grace of justification.

Step 3: Growth, works and merit

The justified, Trent says, grow in justice by keeping the commandments of God and the church, with faith cooperating with good works (chapter 10). The Council says that good works done in grace are the fruit of Christ’s own life in the believer, and that eternal life is both a grace promised and a reward for good works. It adds that no one should glory in himself, for the Lord’s goodness is such that he makes his gifts the merits of his people.

The Catechism restates this: merit is a gift. No one can have a claim of strict right against God, and the merit of good works is to be attributed first to God’s grace and then to the free will of the believer.

Step 4: Losing and regaining justification, and assurance

Catholic teaching holds that the justified person can lose grace by mortal sin and recover it through the sacrament of penance. Trent rejects the claim that a justified person cannot fall. It also teaches that no one can know with the certainty of faith, which admits no error, that he has obtained the grace of God (chapter 9, canons 13 to 16). Catholics can have a firm hope, based on God’s promises and the sacraments, but not the absolute certainty that Reformation teaching often describes.

Trent wished to guard against presumption on one side and despair on the other. The Reformers replied that this left believers in anxiety, and that Scripture invites confidence. Catholics answer that confidence rests on God’s promise, while uncertainty concerns oneself.

Step 5: How different are the positions?

Real differences remain: Catholics teach infused righteousness, the possibility of falling from grace, merit and the role of the sacraments, while Lutheran and Reformed churches teach imputed righteousness and the perseverance of the saints (Reformed) or the assurance of present forgiveness (Lutheran). But many theologians on both sides think that the sixteenth-century quarrels were sharpened by misunderstanding. When the Reformers said faith alone, they meant a faith that lives and works. When Trent said faith is formed by charity, it was not teaching that people earn the first grace. The next lessons ask how far the churches have found common ground.

  1. What difference does it make to say that grace is infused and not only imputed?
  2. Why does Trent say nothing before justification can merit it?
  3. How can a reward be both deserved and a gift?
  4. Is the loss of justification a frightening or a sober doctrine? What does it protect?
  5. What is Trent worried about when it refuses to allow absolute certainty of salvation?
  6. Which of Trent’s canons would a Protestant find hardest to accept, and why?

Examples

Aquinas on faith and love

Aquinas taught that a person might have faith without love, as when a person believes the creed but is living in grave sin. That faith is real, but it is unformed. Love gives faith its form, so that it becomes a living bond with God. A reader can see that when Catholic writers say that faith justifies, they mean this formed faith.

A Catholic teacher answers a question

A catechist is asked whether Catholics think they earn heaven. She answers that the Church teaches that grace is first and last, that even the ability to do good is God’s gift, and that Christ’s merit is the basis of every merit. She adds that Catholics do believe their actions matter, because love is real. (A constructed example.)

Different perspectives

Catholic

Justification is the work of God’s grace that both forgives sin and makes a person holy. Faith, hope and charity are poured into the soul. Good works in grace increase justice and are meritorious by God’s promise. The justified can fall by mortal sin and be restored by penance. Assurance is the confident hope that rests on God’s promise.

Orthodox

Orthodox theologians find much to approve in the Catholic emphasis on renewal, since it resembles the Eastern idea of healing. They do not use the Western scholastic vocabulary of merit and created grace, and they generally prefer to speak of uncreated grace, the divine energies by which God shares his life.

Lutheran

Lutherans hold that Trent confuses justification with sanctification, and so makes a person’s standing depend on the state of his love. They are concerned that this leaves the conscience without rest. The Lutheran confessions affirm renewal and good works while holding that justification is the verdict of forgiveness received by faith.

Reformed

Reformed writers argue that Trent denies imputation and thus the sufficiency of Christ’s righteousness. They teach that the believer’s righteousness before God is Christ’s alone, and that sanctification follows from it. Reformed confessions also reject any merit before God.

Arminian and Wesleyan

Wesleyan teachers often feel closer to Catholic teaching on the importance of holiness and the possibility of falling from grace. They differ in holding that justification is received by faith alone as pardon, and that merit has no place.

Why it matters

Trent still shapes Catholic teaching on grace, the sacraments and the Christian life. Understanding it helps non-Catholics see that Catholic doctrine does not teach salvation by human achievement, and it helps Catholics see why Protestants hear certain phrases with alarm. It also prepares the ground for the ecumenical work covered in the last lesson of this module.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Catholics believe they earn salvation by good works.

Correction: Trent teaches that nothing before justification merits it and that all merit is rooted in grace. The Catechism says that merit is God’s gift.

Misunderstanding: Trent rejected the idea of salvation by grace.

Correction: Trent affirmed that justification is by grace and that faith is its beginning. It rejected the claim that faith alone, with nothing else, is the whole of justification.

Misunderstanding: Catholics think they can never be sure of anything about salvation.

Correction: Catholic teaching holds a firm hope based on God’s promise. What it denies is infallible certainty of one’s own final state, apart from special revelation.

Misunderstanding: The Reformers and Trent were arguing about the same words.

Correction: Often they used key words differently, such as justify, faith and righteousness. Some of the differences are real, and some were made sharper by this.

Knowledge check

What does Trent teach justification is?

It teaches that justification is not only the remission of sins but also the sanctification and renewal of the inner person through the free reception of grace. God does not only declare the sinner just but makes him just. The cause of this is Christ’s merit, and its instrument is baptism.

What does Trent say about the beginning of justification?

It says that the beginning comes from God’s prevenient grace without any merit on the part of the person. Adults are disposed to justification by freely assenting to and cooperating with this grace. Nothing before justification, whether faith or works, earns the grace of justification itself.

How does Trent describe merit?

Good works done in grace are the fruit of Christ’s life in the believer, and eternal life is both a grace promised and a reward for such works. The Council adds that the goodness of God makes his own gifts the merits of his people, and that no one should glory in himself.

Why does Trent reject absolute certainty of salvation?

Trent teaches that no one can know with the certainty of faith, which admits no error, that he has obtained God’s grace. The justified can fall by mortal sin, and a person can be mistaken about himself. Catholics are encouraged to hope firmly in God’s promise, but the council warns against presumption.

Think it through

  1. Which feels closer to your own understanding of salvation, a courtroom verdict, a healing, or something else?
  2. Where might words like faith, justify and righteousness mean different things to a Catholic and a Protestant?
  3. How would you explain the doctrine of merit to a person who is hearing about it for the first time?

Independent assignment

Reading chapters of the decree

In your notebook, write 500 to 700 words. Read chapters 5 to 10 of Trent’s decree on justification. Summarize in your own words what each chapter teaches. Then choose two canons from among 9, 11 and 12 and explain what each condemns, and whether the position condemned matches what you read in a Lutheran or Reformed confession. Do not decide who is right. Note which words seem to carry different meanings.

Further study