I just listened to a debate between a team of Roman Catholics and Reformed Protestants on the issue of justification by faith. The Reformers argued that it is justification by faith alone that saves a person while the Catholics argued that one is justified by faith and works. I think alot of the time the two parties talk past each other since they use the same words but mean something different from each other. Here I will try to construct a visual model for the two views:
Reformed Protestant view:
—Pre-Christian Life—Regeneration–Justification/Salvation–Sanctification–Death-Glorification
Here a person is Regenerated by God before he/she has faith that enables them to have faith. Then on the basis of that faith, that person is justified before God and saved. So naturally this view is justification/salvation by faith alone. Sola Fide. Now in this view, Justification necessitates Sanctification, you cannot have one without the other, but Sanctification has no role is Salvation, it is a product of it.
Roman Catholic View:
—Pre-Christian Life—Regeneration–Justification/Sanctification–Death-Purgatory–Salvation/Glorification
In this view, the person is regenerated and that person then is able to exercise faith in God. Now that person initially becomes Justified on the basis of that faith alone, or perhaps baptism. But since that initial justification only covers past sins, one must continually be justified throughout one’s life if one commits more sins. One is not actually saved until one dies in a state of grace or justification. So in the Catholic view, justification and sanctification are the same thing, once one becomes a Christian, that person must grow in holiness through works. So since justification lasts till one dies, we can say that a person is justified by faith and works.
Now one might notice some similarities in the two above accounts that I think often overlooked. First, both believe that works are necessary in some sense, although not in the same sense. For the Reformed Christian, works are necessary products of a genuine faith and justification. For the Roman Catholic, works are necessary for final salvation. However, both agree that the initial justification is by faith (or baptism) alone.
Notice that the Roman Catholic account also allows one to fall away from the faith while the Reformed account does not.
Now where does this leave the Arminian? Well the Reformed Arminian view would be closest to the Reformed view, except that they allow that one can lose that faith and thus fall away. But good works are still necessitated by justification. Wesleyan Arminians would be closer to the Roman Catholic view since they believe that one can fall away either by faith or by continual intentional sin, however I’m sure they might differ more but not sure how.
I hope I have accurately portrayed both views and I hope this clears some things up.
P.S. Dr. Robert Koons has an excellent and much more in depth discussion of this here.
Edit: I may messed up on the term ‘Regeneration’, i’m not sure how to interpret it now where to put it in both systems, however I have used it to signify that God gives us sufficient grace before we are saved in order to enable us to make the choice to accept or reject Christ, e.g. to restore our free choice in that decision; or as in the Calvinist position, God’s grace necessitates us making that choice for faith.
Another note, Protestants frequently accuse Catholics of believing that we can merit or earn our own salvation by works. This is simply untrue as can be seen from the outline of the views above. Both sides agree that nothing merits our initial justification. We cannot earn it, period. However, after that point, the views diverge from agreement. Since Catholics take justification to be simultaneous with sanctification, from that initial point on to death we are constantly being justified/sanctified and this we do by works. So our final salvation is dependent upon faith and works but we initially become justified by faith alone, not by works of the law.
Another Edit: Evidently Lutherans do not fit under the Reformed view, they believe that one can lose one’s salvation so perhaps they are similar to the Reformed Arminian view, except that one can also commit apostasy by losing one’s faith and/or by grace sin.
