Anglicans, Trent, Newman and Justification

Dear N.

I too wish we had had more time to explore the Anglican approach to justification in relation to Article of Religion XVII and the Decrees of the Council of Trent, and I am sure we shall have more time to discuss it in time to come. You are absolutely right about the Anglican insistence, and the Article's affirmation, that we are justified solely for the sake of the merits of Christ, sola Christus, sola gratia, by Christ alone through grace alone. Anglicanism in the sixteenth century was right to make that re-affirmation of Pauline and Augustinian doctrine, and remains correct in that position today, as all the ancient Fathers of the Church would attest. The term 'sola fide', 'faith alone' is more complex, as it is never used in the New Testamant except by Saint James in 2.24, where he writes, 'we are not saved by faith alone!' Our doctrine of justification may indeed be described as a via media, the King's Highway going neither to the right or the left on this issue, as in so many others; the via media, historically understood, is simply the mainstream of ancient Christian orthodoxy, what the conciliar tradition of the Seven Ecumenical Councils has ever held on any given theological teaching, more of an ecumenical catholic consensus than a halfway house between Rome and Geneva. On the matter of justification, Anglicans from Hooker to Newman have agreed that justification is simultaneously declarative and imperative, both what God declares and what God does in the soul at Baptism and after. All of the Articles of Religion are interpreted through the lens of the Book of Common Prayer, our doctrinal magisterial or teaching office, and so in its proper context, while understanding justification as being formally and instrumentally caused by Baptism, Article XVII is certainly orthodox as it seeks to affirm that it is God's grace apprehended by faith, the supernatural virtue of faith infused in Baptism, that justifies man before God. In this sense, one could even carefully describe faith's apprehension and comprehension of baptismal grace as 'faith alone,' a term used by Saint Thomas Aquinas, 'faith alone shows true hearts the mystery.'

I perhaps exaggerate when I make the audacious claim that we may agree more with Trent than with Calvin or Luther, but at its heart, the Anglican position does accord very closely with the official Roman view in opposition to the exclusive 'legal' forensic perspective of the magisterial reformers of the sixteenth century. Trent does not, contrary to much protestant caricature, teach any form of works-righteousness or justification based on man's good works apart from grace: it holds essentially on the matter of initial justification itself what the whole Catholic Church holds, that through Baptism God declares and does what He desires for the soul, and in making us the children of God, members of Christ and heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven, he imparts to us theological virtues which in turn must be lived through faith and good works in order for them to become fruitful and bring us to salvation. That said, Rome clearly departs from Catholic consensus on the matter of its peculiar doctrines of condign merit and temporal retributive punishment due for sins.

Justification is God's Act for us, on us and to us, sanctification is our co-operation through faith and good works with the grace we have received as we are transformed more and more into the Likeness of Christ. Again, justification and sanctification can be distinguished in the mind intellectually but in reality they are never separated, for they are two dimensions of the same mystery. Regenerated man does not earn his salvation and cannot engender meritorious favour before God on his own strength: he is saved by faith working by love (Galatians 5.6), as the gift of faith, freely given by the God Who is Grace and Who graciously acts in us, lives and bears spiritual fruit through its activation in the life one made the temple of the Holy Trinity.

Below I share with you JH Newman's Tract XC on justification, which says substantially what I am saying in a much more profound way.

REMARKS ON CERTAIN PASSAGES IN THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES.
[Number 90]

§ 2.—Justification by Faith only.

Article xi.—"That we are justified by Faith only, is a most wholesome doctrine."

The Homilies add that Faith is the sole means, he sole instrument of justification. Now, to show briefly what such statements imply, and what they do not.

They do not imply a denial of Baptism as a means an instrument of justification; which the Homilies elsewhere affirm, as will be shown incidentally in a later section.

"The instrumental power of Faith cannot interfere with the instrumental power of Baptism; because Faith is the sole justifier, not in contrast to all means and agencies whatever, (for, it is not surely in contrast to our Lord's merits, or God's mercy,) but to all other graces. When, then, Faith is called the sole instrument, this means the sole internal instrument, not the sole instrument of any kind.

"There is nothing inconsistent, then, in Faith being the sole instrument of justification, and yet Baptism also the sole instrument, and that at the same time, because in distinct senses; an inward instrument in no way interfering with an outward instrument, Baptism may be the hand of the giver, and Faith the hand of the receiver."

Nor does the sole instrumentality of Faith interfere with the doctrine of Works as a mean also. And that it is a mean, the Homily of Alms-deeds declares in the strongest language, as will also be quoted in Section 11.

"An assent to the doctrine that Faith alone justifies, does not at all preclude the doctrine of Works justifying also. If, indeed, it were said that Works justify in the same sense as Faith only justifies, this would be a contradiction in terms; but Faith only may justify in one sense—Good Works in another:--and this is all that is here maintained. After all does not Christ only justify? How is it that the doctrine of Faith justifying does not interfere with our Lord's being the sole Justifier? It will, of course, be replied, that our Lord is the meritorious cause, and the Faith the means; that Faith justifies in a different and subordinate sense. As, then, Christ justifies in the sense in which He justifies alone, yet Faith also justifies in its own sense; so Works, whether moral or ritual, may justify us in their own respective senses, though in the sense in which Faith justifies, it only justifies.

The only question is, What is that sense in which Works justify, so as not to interfere with Faith only justifying? It may, indeed, turn out on inquiry, that the sense alleged will not hold, either as being unscriptural, or for any other reason; but, whether so or not, at any rate the apparent inconsistency of language should not startle persons; nor should they so promptly condemn those who, though they do not use their language, use St. James's. Indeed, is not this argument the very weapon of the Arians, in their warfare against the Son of God? They said, Christ is not God, because the Father is called the 'Only God.'"

Next we have to inquire in what sense Faith only does justify. In a number of ways, of which here two only shall be mentioned.

First, it is the pleading or impetrating principle, or constitutes our title to justification; being analogous among the graces to Moses' lifting up his hands on the Mount, or the Israelites eyeing the Brazen Serpent,--actions which did not merit God's mercy, but asked for it. A number of means go to effect our justification. We are justified by Christ alone, in that He has purchased the gift; by Faith alone, in that Faith asks for it; by Baptism alone, for Baptism conveys it; and by newness of heart alone, for newness of heart is the life of it.

And, secondly, Faith, as being the beginning of perfect or justifying righteousness, is taken for what it tends towards, or ultimately will be. It is said by anticipation to be that which it promises; just as one might pay a labourer his hire before he began his work. Faith working by love is the seed of divine graces, which in due time will be brought forth and flourish—partly in this world, fully in the next.