Robert Barron - Are We Saved by Faith Alone?
Peace be with you. They say, "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread". Well, I'm going to rush in today to some stormy waters by looking at what really was the central issue of the Protestant Reformation, the divide between Protestants and Catholics around this issue of faith and works, or faith and the law. And it's prompted by our second reading. I've not been focusing on Romans. We've been reading from it the last several weeks, but it's Paul's greatest statement of his theology. It's the first theologian of the Church, Paul, in his greatest statement of the Christian faith.
And it's toward the end of the letter, we're in Romans 13, and here's what he says: "Brothers and sisters: Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law". Hmm. "The one who loves another has fulfilled the law". Now let's go back to the beginning of the Protestant Reformation when Martin Luther famously says what he discovered in Paul and in texts like Romans and Galatians and Ephesians and others, is it seems that we're justified or saved, set right, not by works of the law but by faith.
So Luther says, "By grace through faith," and he intensifies it by saying, "Gratia sola, fide sola". By grace alone, by faith alone we're saved and not by the works of the law. So how come at the end of Romans, the same Paul who said that toward the beginning of Romans here talks about love as the fulfillment of the law? Well, again, I'm wading into these stormy waters. We've been debating this for five hundred years. I'm under no illusion that in twelve minutes I'm going to solve this problem. But let me say this now, speaking as a Catholic theologian. Yes, we can find those texts in Paul indeed that seem to indicate we're justified by faith and by grace alone, not by works.
However, in the same St. Paul we find texts such as this one today. We find a text such as, "If you have faith enough to move the mountains but have not love, you are nothing". I don't know about you, but to me that doesn't sound like I'm justified by faith alone. Paul sings the praises of faith, but if I have faith enough to move the mountains but have not love, I am nothing. The same Paul talks about "working out our salvation with fear and trembling".
Well, you'd wonder on purely Protestant grounds, if you've been justified by grace through faith, you've accepted the Lord as your Savior, what do you have to work out, and why would you do so with fear and trembling? Wouldn't you have complete, utter confidence that you're saved? Think too of a text like Matthew 25. Go outside of St.Paul. When the Judge at the end of time separates the sheep from the goats, the basis of the separation is not, "Oh well, some had faith and others didn't," rather, "whatsoever you did to the least of my brothers, you did to me". It seems as though something like love is the criterion rather than faith.
Now my point here is not to undermine those texts where Paul talks about the primacy of faith, but it is to complicate the matter, is to say the witness of the New Testament is richly complex. How would I get at it? I think something like this. "We're justified apart from the works of the law". What does Paul mean by the law? Well now, Paul's a Jew. He's trained in the great Israelite tradition. He was trained at the feet of Gamaliel. He would've known all about the complexities of Jewish law. He would've known all about temple worship, what Aquinas calls the ceremonial and juridical precepts of the law.
Think here of, again, temple sacrifice, of priests, and of dietary laws and all of the particularities by which Israelite life is defined in terms of clothing and diet and worship and so on. None of that saves us. How come? Not because it's bad in itself, but because now it's been caught up into Christ. All of that is now seen as an anticipation of what happened through the cross of Jesus. So we're not saved by those works of the law because Christ in his dying and rising has taken all that up into himself.
Read now the letter to the Hebrews for all the details on that point. So it seems to me that's clear in Paul, that he means we're not saved by those works. But how about the moral law of Israel? Well, Aquinas would speak for the mainstream of the Catholic tradition in saying even though those other laws have been taken up into a higher synthesis, the moral law taught to Israel remains, and it is indeed relevant to our salvation. Now look at Paul again here in 13 as he goes on: "The commandments, 'You shall not commit adultery; you shall not kill; you shall not steal; you shall not covet,' and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this saying, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'"
Notice please, he's not talking about the ceremonial, dietary, juridical precepts of ancient Israel. We know that those are not relevant now to our salvation. But he's talking indeed about the moral law, the moral law which remains. It remains in place. What he's saying here is all of that moral law is summed up in the great commandment to love.
Now let's go back to another Pauline text that Catholic theology has insisted upon. Paul in fact never says that we are justified by faith alone. In fact, you want to find the only time that's mentioned in the New Testament is the letter of James, and it's explicitly condemned. What does Paul in fact say? What matters, he says, is faith expressing itself in love. What matters is faith expressing itself in love. It seems to me that's the best summary of the complexity of Paul's position.
Now let me put some more meat on the bones. A Protestant might say, "Well look, aren't you defending some kind of Pelagianism here, that we're justified by our works, that it's because of our heroic works that we're saved"? No, no. No, no. There's no salvation apart from Christ. There's no salvation apart from his grace. I can't earn my way into the love of Christ. Rather, that love expressed in the cross and the Resurrection, that grace is offered to me as a free gift. It's only by moving into the space of that grace that I can be saved. So no Catholic defends that I can be justified apart from faith. No, no. The Council of Trent says that "faith is the beginning and root of all justification".
I can't be justified apart from Christ. But now, once drawn into the power of Christ, I have through faith opened the door, invited Christ into my life. Now his life is not extrinsic to me. And this again would be a Catholic critique of some forms of Protestantism, that justification remains extrinsic to me. It's a mere forensic declaration of righteousness, not a real righteousness, an imputed righteousness. It's as though I'm saved. The Catholic tradition, following I think the complexity of Paul, has insisted, "No, no, justification now through my cooperation works its way into the whole of my life".
Again, the Council of Trent says justification that begins through faith increases through one's cooperation with grace. Paul says, "It is no longer I who live, it is Christ who lives in me". Now see, that's the whole picture right there, everybody. That's the whole picture. It's no longer I, this old self predicated upon self-protection and upon hatred and upon violence. That old self has been put away by grace accepted in faith. It's no longer I who live but Christ who truly lives in me. What does that look like? Love. It looks like love. It expresses itself as love. The commandments: don't commit adultery, don't kill, don't steal, don't covet. All of it is summed up by saying, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself". Okay.
You say, "Well, all right, aren't we back to Pelagianism? It's by love that we're saved". Love. You know, if you follow me, and I've taught this for years, love is not a feeling. It's not just a benevolence, not just a sentiment. To love is to will the good of the other as other. Can you do that apart from grace? I think the answer is no. Go back to the ancient moral philosophers. They talk about decency and magnanimity and generosity, that sort of thing. But willing the good of the other as other, this ecstatic moving outside of the confines of one's ego, yes, even to the point of death? You don't find that in the ancient moral philosophers. What makes real love possible? Grace. It's only when I, through faith, open the door to Christ and allow him to begin living in me that I begin to live according to his mind.
Remember Paul says, "May that same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus". I begin to will with his will, I begin to move and act and react according to him. This is not just Christ as moral exemplar, it's Christ living in me. This has happened not by my accomplishment but by grace accepted in faith. To that degree, Luther's right. But this is not a mere imputed or forensic righteousness, a merely declared righteousness, but rather it has taken root in me and through my cooperation expresses itself as something entirely new and strange. It expresses itself as love.
I often go back to the great example of Maximilian Kolbe when I think about this. Kolbe, as you know, who gave his life for a man he barely knew. He was a fellow inmate in the prison at Auschwitz. But at the moment of truth, Kolbe said, "Take me in his place". How do you explain that? "Oh, he's being very generous". It doesn't come close to explaining it. I would say you explain it by saying it was no longer Kolbe who lived but Christ who was living in him. Kolbe had accepted Christ and his grace through faith. Yep. That's the door to the spiritual life, as Aquinas says. But then allowing that Christ to come to full flower in him, it looked like love, willing the good of the other.
So how are we saved? By faith? Yeah. Accepting the grace of Christ? Absolutely. Without that, we can't be saved. But that's the door, that's the beginning, that's the root. This faith now having taken root expresses itself in this startling love. It seems to me, everybody, that's the Catholic position, and as far as I can tell, honors the richness and complexity of the teaching we find in Paul. Take a look during these summer weeks, read through Paul to the Romans, and perhaps with this very issue in mind, and notice the rich complexity of his thought. And God bless you.