Everything good that we do we can only do by grace. All grace comes from God. God has “accomplished all we have done” because He is the original reason for us being able to do everything good that we do, not only in the measure that He set everything in motion, but that our Lord Jesus Christ, has “justified [us] by his blood” (Is 26:12) (Rom 5:9).
God gives two different types of graces to mankind – sanctifying and actual grace. Sanctifying grace is infused to the soul at baptism, whereby the eternal consequence of Original Sin (Hell) is washed away. Simultaneously, the Holy Spirit infuses into the soul the three theological virtues – faith, hope, and charity. This grace and these virtues cannot be attained on one’s own. One only acquires them through baptism, by infusion – the Lord infuses these graces into the baptized person’s soul. Baptism by water and the formula: “N., I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” is the optimal way of baptism. But someone can be baptized in two other ways: baptism by blood or baptism by desire. Baptism by blood refers to a non-Catholic who dies a martyr’s death for the Faith. Baptism by desire refers to one who ardently desires baptism, but cannot be baptized (e.g. no water, no Catholic around, etc.).
Sanctifying grace, then, is that which “justifies” its recipient, meaning that, barring unique graces from God, for one to be saved he must receive sanctifying grace. Thus, if one commits a mortal sin, he loses sanctifying grace, and so cannot be saved, unless he repents. If he goes to confession and contritely confesses his sins to God through the priest, God will forgive his sins and restore him to sanctifying grace. Being in a State of Grace means possessing sanctifying grace (i.e. not being in a State of Mortal Sin). All grace is unmerited, but sanctifying grace is especially so because of its worth (it infuses Divine Life into the soul).
Actual grace is that grace which God gives to souls to perform specific actions. Graces to convert, to live a saintly life, to persevere to the end, to pray, fast, and give alms, etc. are all examples of actual grace. While sanctifying grace is a means to an end (Heaven), actual grace is a means to a means to this end. It enables us to perform good works and acts of faith, which in turn enable us to “merit” Heaven.
We say “merit” in quotations because no one can truly merit Heaven. Only Jesus Christ, by His Precious Blood, has and ever can truly merit eternal salvation for mankind. The blood, as we said above, has given us all graces. Consequently, all the acts of faith and good works which we execute are nonetheless accomplished by God because He has given us the entire ability to do them. Grace, then, is truly an unmerited gift from God. We deserve Hell, but He has given us the opportunity for Heaven.
Everyone has free will (which is itself a grace from God, given so that we are able to love Him). Having free will means that we must choose to cooperate with God’s grace in order to attain salvation. You might have heard someone say that everyone must “surrender to God’s will.” They’re right, and surrendering to God’s will in practice means cooperating totally with His grace. The problem is that even if we have the intention to follow God, our appetites have been corrupted since the Fall. Even though baptism removes the eternal consequences of Original Sin, it does not remove the temporal consequence – the inclination to sin (concupiscence). Because we have concupiscence, we must keep a perpetual watchfulness over our actions. To “watch and pray,” as our Lord commanded His disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, means to be constantly open to God’s grace (Mt 26:41). Prayer is the primary means by which we can obtain actual grace from God – even graces to cooperate with grace. The saints of the Church cooperated with God’s grace in an excellent manner, every moment of their lives until they died.
Though God’s work through sanctifying grace and actual grace has been functioning since the beginning of the world, the Church only began to distinguish formally between sanctifying and actual grace since the Council of Trent, when the council wanted to specify the way grace functions in people’s lives. The Church did not make up new doctrines about grace; she simply made a distinction which already existed in reality clearer on paper. She made this distinction because she faced major controversies surrounding something fundamental regarding grace and salvation – justification.
Justification is an ongoing process, not a one-and-done action. The Church says that Baptism is the beginning of justification. At Baptism, we receive sanctifying grace, which removes the eternal consequences of Original Sin from our souls. Thus, the baptized person is made holy, or justified. However, that new Christian must remain in a State of Grace until death. If he does not, meaning if he commits a mortal sin, he must go to the Sacrament of Confession and contritely confess his sins to the priest and receive absolution. That will restore him to sanctifying grace, and thus to a position in which if he died, he would be saved. “Blessed is the man who endures trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him” (Js 1:12). Therefore, Catholics believe that justification has two parts. There is the initial justification in baptism, whereby the sinner is made right with God. But then there is the ongoing justification which endures to death, in which the Catholic must persevere in God’s grace, and have recourse to the Sacrament of Confession if and when he does not.
Protestant conceptions of justification differ regarding Reformed (Calvinist) and Lutheran traditions. But essentially all Protestant groups teach the doctrine of the “Imputed Righteousness of Christ.” This doctrine states that Christ imputes His righteousness to us, thus making us righteous. Therefore, we ourselves do not so much become righteous as Christ takes our lack of righteousness’ place. Therefore, since Christ is infinitely righteous, Him making us righteous by imputing His righteousness only happens once, and thus once saved, we are always saved.
Protestants will often turn to scripture passages such as Romans 5:1 to support eternal security, where St. Paul says: “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 5:1), or to Romans 4:3: “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness” (Rom 4:3 (quoting Gen 15:6)). But while St. Paul says that we are justified, and confirms that Abraham was justified when he believed in God, St. Paul does not say that we cannot lose our justification. Elsewhere in Romans, he shows that we can lose our salvation. In Romans 2:13, St. Paul says “it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified” (Rom 2:13). Doers of the law will be justified, implying that they are not justified yet, even while abiding by God’s commandments. (Likewise, this verse demonstrates our need to do God’s work as a factor in our salvation.) In Romans 6:16, St. Paul says that we “are slaves of the one whom [we] obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness” (Rom 6:16). “Leads to” again implies a future attainment of righteousness, but that we are in some way not yet righteous. In the Letter to the Galatians, St. Paul notes that “through the Spirit, by faith, we wait for the hope of righteousness” (Gal 5:5). We are not yet righteous. St. Paul also informs his readers that he “pommel[s] [his] body and subdue[s] it, lest after preaching to others [he him]self should be disqualified” (1 Cor 9:27). The Greek word used for “disqualified” in this verse, adokimos, is used many other times in the bible to refer to sorcerers or those who had committed depraved acts such as adultery and homosexuality (see Rom 1:28, 2 Tim 3:8). If St. Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, could have been adokimos, then so can we. Thus, St. Paul disproves the false doctrine of eternal security.
Consequently, by extension, St. Paul condemns the false doctrine of the imputed righteousness of Christ, because this doctrine implies eternal security. Rather, St. Paul supports the Catholic view of our justification in relationship to Christ. Catholics agree with Protestants that Christ alone justified the sinner by His Precious Blood, shed on the cross for the salvation of mankind. But the Church says that we are made righteous by the power of Christ’s righteousness. While Protestants hold that Christ’ righteousness directly justifies us, Catholics believe that Christ’s righteousness indirectly justifies us. The Church believes that it is solely by the grace of God, wrought in Christ, that we are enabled to become righteous ourselves. Christ gives us all grace to become righteous, but we ourselves truly do become righteous, as opposed to being covered by the righteousness of Christ.
Catholic and Protestant views on justification lead to logical conclusions. Catholics believe that we must have faith and do good works in order to be justified, whereas Protestants believe that we only need faith to be justified, though most will say that good works are a natural consequence of our faith. There is much nuance between different Protestant traditions. Here, we will address the Reformed and the Lutheran positions, and the Catholic response to each position.
The Reformed position is a monergystic position. Monergism states that our salvation comes solely from God apart from our cooperation with Him. Thus, cooperating with God by having faith in Him and doing good works does not save us. Rather, our decision to do good works comes as a result of God’s decision to save us. In other words, God saves us forever apart from anything we do, and then we do good works as evidence of our salvation. By having faith in God, we can have eternal security, the Calvinist says, and although works are important, they do not justify us.
Unfortunately, one of the common misconceptions of those who ascribe to monergism is that Catholics, who are synergists, believe that we get “merit from this saint and from that saint” (The Great Eternal Security Debate, James White). But Catholics believe, as do Protestants, that all grace comes from God alone, and thus that all the merit we can attain comes from God’s grace. However, Catholics disagree with Protestants by asserting that God does not force His grace on those whom He wills to us. Rather, “God wills everyone to be saved” (1 Tim 2:4). God gives all sufficient grace whereby they can attain eternal salvation. However, they must choose to cooperate with that grace, to think, say, and do “yes” to God, in order to be saved. After the initial justification of baptism, the believer does good works as a result of His faith in the Lord, such as go to Holy Mass, go to Confession, fast and do penances, give alms to the poor, and fulfill his daily obligations, etc. While faith encourages the believer to do these good works, the works themselves count toward his continual justification, which will not end until he dies. If works did not justify us, and thus if we only did them as a result of our faith in the Lord or out of our gratitude to Him, they would mean nothing. Why would God care what we did if our works did not count towards salvation? After all, Christ became man for no other reason than to save us, and so His will always pertains to our salvation.
Cooperation with God’s grace in order to attain eternal salvation does not imply that all salvation does not come through Christ – it does. Rather, it implies that if we do not choose God, we cannot be saved. God’s creatures, prompted by His grace but still free, choosing Him gives far greater glory to God than God saving someone apart from his actions to live a holy life. The saints and angels in Heaven intercede for us to help us cooperate with God’s grace to realize our own eternal salvation, but they do nothing on their own. They only serve as mediators of God’s grace, and any glory they receive is glory given through them to God. Why did God will for us to go through the saints to Him? We do not know entirely, but probably for the same reasons He willed for us to go through the Church: to humble us in His sight, emphasizing our serfdom to His Eternal Kingship. Thus, anytime we cooperate with God’s grace, whether given directly by God to us, or through another, we progress on the road to salvation. We have free will and can choose to love or not love God. As we stated earlier, if we did not have free will, we could not love God, for by definition a free act of the will. The lover must will to love the Beloved, and not be forced to love Him.
The Lutheran position on justification is closer to the Catholic position. However, most Lutherans believe in only one justification, and in the doctrine of imputed righteousness. Lutherans believe that justification is ongoing, and that we can fall from grace. They do not believe in eternal security. Both Catholics and Lutherans believe that we are justified by our unification to the “objective justification that Christ accomplished for us” (The Great Justification Debate, Robert C. Koons).
But they differ in their beliefs on how we are united to this objective justification Christ accomplished for us. Lutherans believe that we are justified by faith alone, while Catholics believe that we are justified by faith and works. Both Catholics and Lutherans (and Reformed Christians) believe that all of this of course falls under the umbrella of Christ, meaning that we are ultimately justified by Jesus Christ and Him alone. A major reason for the discrepancy in how we attain to the objective justification Christ accomplishes for us between Catholics and Lutherans relates to the imputed righteousness of Christ, specifically in the Lutheran belief that Christ has effectively taken our place and been declared righteous on our behalf, thus making us righteous in the eyes of the Father. However, the Catholic view, as summarized, earlier, is that the power of Christ’s infinite righteousness before the Father enables us to be made righteous, but it does not take the place of our lack of justification. Christ’s righteousness is like the water and the soil which enable us, the plants, to grow, but the nutrients do not take the place of the plants’ inability to grow without them.
We are justified by our love, and love “ought to show itself in deeds more than in words” (Spiritual Exercises, Contemplation to Gain Love 28). Faith overflows into works and good deeds can increase our faith. Faith and works are so intertwined that in the measure that Christ asks us to “do” in order for us to receive the objective, infinite benefits of His sacrifice, He asks us to have both faith and works.
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Common Objections to the Catholic Position on Justification
“For by one sacrifice he has forever perfected those who are being made holy” (Heb 10:14). When St. Paul says that Christ’s sacrifice has forever perfected those whom it is making holy. Does this verse indicate once saved always saved? In fact, no, because St. Paul here refers to Christ’s sacrifice as being completely sufficient to perfect all. The Precious Blood of Christ is infinitely sufficient to save all souls. But not all souls accept Him, so not all are saved. Objectively, Christ’s sacrifice on the cross has purchased all merit for us, for we have merited nothing. However, even those who now accept Christ are not guaranteed salvation. Likewise, although Christ has forgiven all sins that ever will be committed by His Passion, sins we may commit in the future cannot be forgiven ahead of time, because we cannot choose Christ presently in the future (a clear contradiction time). Rather, souls must persevere to the end in God’s grace. And if this explanation of the first part of the verse seems like a stretch, the second half supports it. The verse says Christ has forever perfected those who “are being made holy” (Heb 10:14). “Being made” indicates an ongoing process. Being made holy, being justified, is an ongoing process until death.
“For he will render to every man according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are factious and do not obey the truth, but obey wickedness, there will be wrath and fury” (Rom 2:6-8). St. Paul is clear in this passage that God will judge us on our works. He does not say, however, that God will judge only based on our works. The heresy of Pelagianism postulated this view in the 4th century, saying that humans could “achieve” salvation by doing enough good works. Catholics disagree, for one cannot justify himself, for Christ (God) alone justifies all. However, in the measure that God has justified us by the Blood of Christ (which is an infinite measure), everyone has to “work out [their] own salvation,” meaning that he or she must cooperate with God’s grace, both in faith and in works (Phil 2:12). We need faith and faith is principal. But works must naturally flow from the faith, lest our faith is inauthentic. Out of any human scriptural author, St. Paul touches most explicitly and most often on faith’s role in justification. Yet, he also makes clear the need to do works as a means of cooperating with grace God wills to bestow on us.
Some may rebut that Romans 4-5 disproves the Catholic view of justification. In Romans 4:4, St. Paul says that “to one who works, his wages are not reckoned as a gift, but as his due” (Rm 4:4). As we know, justification, like all other grace, is a free gift from God. Moreover, we do not merit sanctifying grace because Christ gave it to us by His death “when we were…sinners” (Rom 5:8). Therefore, there is some logic to saying that works which are a man’s due cannot be imputed to him as righteousness, but only his faith in God. St. Paul goes on: “And to one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness” (Rom 4:5). Even the faith of him who does not work, but trusts God, is credited to him as righteousness.
But these apparent supports of sola fide do not hold up. In Romans 4:5, and other texts which discuss works are often a response to a heretical sect of the first century Church, known as the Judaizers. They believed that to be saved, one must abide not only by Christ’s Law, but also by the Mosaic Law. However, Christ’s redemptive sacrifice made the Mosaic Law obsolete. The Mosaic Law served its purpose, but was imperfect because those to whom it had been given had “hardness of heart” (Mt 19:8). St. Paul targeted these groups in emphasizing that works of the Mosaic Law do not justify them. In Romans 4:10, St. Paul details that Abraham’s righteousness was reckoned to him “not after, but before he was circumcised,” emphasizing the fact that God justified Abraham before the Mosaic Law (Rom 4:10). In Romans 4:5, then, St. Paul disregards works apart from the law of Christ, but not works done in Christ.
But what constitutes works done in Christ? Many Protestant groups will say that only those works which are done after Baptism constitute works done in Christ. For the most part, Catholics would agree with them, insofar as one cannot attain eternal salvation without faith in the Lord, or at least a life lived according to natural law which would render one faithful according to the graces he had received, by God’s judgment. But good works done before baptism by those who have not heard the Gospel message yet can count towards their salvation, insofar as they would have been done out of love for God if the doer had known of the Lord (a motive only God can know). For him who has heard the Gospel message, works done in Christ constitute those done after baptism, or the intention to be baptized as soon as possible, after initial justification – indeed, making the decision to be baptized is a work itself – because, in this case, only works done after baptism or in preparation for it would be done out of love for God.