A doctrine according to the flesh
The complex and biblically selective Roman Catholic doctrine of salvation often results in Catholic apologists giving with one hand what they take back with the other. ‘You can’t win heaven, it’s a free gift. But not so fast…meritorious works are required.’ What? If it’s a gift then no payment is necessary nor would be accepted, and isn’t a payment what a “meritorious work” would be? A “free gift” is redundant, but a merited gift is an oxymoron.
The confusion this doctrinal doublespeak tends to engender in the mind of the average Catholic typically begets a resignation to futility. It’s too difficult to comprehend so why try? I’ll just trust that the clergy and apologists know what they’re talking about and keep plugging along obeying as best I can.
If you ask a dozen Catholics, clergy or laity, how one gets to Heaven, you’re likely to get a few answers that actually sound more evangelical than Catholic. But some will struggle for an answer and others will credit good works or dying in a state of grace. You’ll definitely get a variety of responses because the official teaching is ambiguous enough so that even if the average Catholic is familiar with the most current Catholic catechism, how the teaching is fleshed out in real life is left open to interpretation.
I believe the best source for a “fleshing out” that is faithful to the actual dogma of the Catholic Church is her team of professional apologists. Karl Keating is one with whom I became familiar very early after I left the Church when my parents cited his 1988 book Catholicism and Fundamentalism and implored me to read it, which I did. Keating is the founder of Catholic Answers, an apologetics ministry which produces the daily radio program and podcast Catholic Answers Live, to which he is a regular contributor as a featured apologist, and on which I recently heard him give the Church’s position on salvation. What follows is Part One of my amateur apologist’s evaluation of Keating’s professional defense.
Mr. Keating was asked to address the position many Protestants hold that salvation is a supernatural transaction which places one securely in God’s kingdom, never to be cast out. “Once saved, always saved,” is how it’s often expressed. Here’s how he begins his response:
This is the way that what’s known as the absolute assurance of salvation usually is argued…this is the way I normally hear it. They begin with Romans 10:9, and by the way, the translation I’m using here is the one by Msgr. Ronald Knox, that was made about 70 years ago. Romans 10:9 – “If you declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and if you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, then you will be saved.” That sounds pretty definitive.
It sure does. As do all the other “believe and you will be saved” verses I highlighted here. One might hope and assume that Keating is about to reconcile this definitive inspired text with the Catholic teaching that simply believing is insufficient. Unfortunately, he completely sidesteps it with a plea to considering context and “contrary” verses, never reconciling the contrariness into a coherent teaching.
If you believe that Jesus is the Lord and if you believe in the resurrection then you will be saved. So if we take it just that way and don’t go beyond that it looks as though we can talk about something like the assurance of salvation. But we need to take all the verses of the Bible in context and in the light of other verses. For example, there are contrary verses. Let me mention three of them.
Keating will go on to reference more than three, all which he interprets to teach salvation by works, without ever explaining how we are then to understand what Jesus and his apostles meant by “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.” (John 6:47), “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved,” (Acts 16:31), and ”For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” (Romans 3:28), among many other verses that seem to clearly indicate we are saved by faith alone.
I’ll address next time Mr. Keating’s contention that the apostle Paul’s use of the concept of “hope” is evidence that he believed in salvation by faith plus works.
Pingback: A doctrine according to the flesh, part 2 | a reasonable faith
Hi. I stumbled upon your blog browsing the “Catholicism” tag. It appears that our stories may be similar, in reverse: After being raised and spending 30+ years as an Evangelical Christian, I now have a blog about “making a defense for the hope” that I’ve found in the Catholic Church.
I have not looked very deeply at your articles, but after reading this one and its continuation, I think you may be being a bit unfair, both to Keating and to the Catholic formulation of this doctrine. Yes, Catholic attempts to explain the role of faith and works in salvation are not as simplistic as the Protestant “believe and be saved.” But then again, neither is Scripture. Protestants seize on a few “isolated gobbets of Paul” (to quote Alister McGrath) for such a formulation, while Catholics make an earnest attempt to do justice to the whole context of Scripture. It is a fact that in addition to the Pauline passages you have quoted, Scripture, even Paul himself, says — to quote just a few problematic passages for this view:
1. [God] 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).
2. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the body (2 Cor 5:10).
3. Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead (James 2:17).
4. “Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me … / Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me.” (Matthew 25:34-35, 41-43, etc.)
And this is just the beginning: I could cite a dozen or more such passages having to do with our works playing a role in our final judgment, earning us a reward, being necessary fruit, etc. But I’m pressed for time and I don’t think a lengthy response would be appreciated anyway.
Yes, it’s true: Protestants have ways of explaining these passages. But then, it’s not just “believe and be saved,” is it? So don’t fault the Catholic Church or Catholic apologists for attempting to do justice to all of Scripture, to explain these passages rather than wave them away.
The way I explain the Catholic view of the role of faith and works to my Protestant brethren is to say, that yes, salvation — both the forgiveness of sins and salvation to eternal life, and the will to believe in the first place — are wholly, absolutely the gift of God’s unmerited grace, not a thing we could ever deserve or earn.; but yes, our good works are a necessary part of the process also. This is not “doublespeak”: Scripture states both things clearly and unambiguously. So how can both things be true? This is what a catechist and an apologist must explain.
I would say that our works are necessary in two regards: one, they are the necessary fruit of living and abiding in Christ: if we walk in His Spirit, we will bear His fruit; if we reject His fruit, we are not abiding in Him (John 15, Galatians 5). Two, it is by our works that we will merit heaven. This latter proposition is deeply troubling to Protestants, but again, it is stated clearly in Scripture. How can this be true? How can salvation be both a free gift and merited by our works? Whole books have been written on the subject, which you do great injustice to by treating it so dismissively. (I would highly recommend this one for a handy and brief summary of both Catholic and Protestant views: Four Views on the Role of Works at the Final Judgment). I would say, in summary and at risk of oversimplification: (1) We have no power to do good works in ourselves apart from Christ (John 15:5). (2) God gives us — as a further gift of His grace — “good works, prepared beforehand, that we may walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). (3) God enables us by His grace “both to will [to do good works] and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13). (4) It is for these works, by walking in them and abiding them, that we will be rewarded: all steps of the process, from believing, to willing, to working, a gift of God’s grace (Rom 2:6-8, etc.). This is not “doublespeak”: this is the teaching of Scripture.
God bless you, and the peace of God be with you.
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Hi, Joseph. Thank you for reading and for your genial comment. I will be addressing some of what you bring up in my next post, and intend to respond directly to your comment soon.
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Okay. As I see you’ve left me a few more comments, I’ll assure you a response to each of them and begin with this one.
Since you’ve read my Part 3, you know I addressed 2 Cor. 5:10. Romans 2:6-8 and the parable of the sheep and the goats I plan to address next week. James 2:17 I reference here, here, and here.
“Yes, it’s true: Protestants have ways of explaining these passages. But then, it’s not just ‘believe and be saved,’ is it?”
Yes, it is…if you have a true understanding of “believe” as an active trust in. This kind of belief will be exhibited in the “necessary fruit” of good works, as you say. The fruit, the works, are an outward manifestation of the inward trusting faith.
You claim that Catholic apologists attempt “to do justice to all of Scripture,” but I have yet to hear or read from one a satisfactory reconciliation of any of the “believe and be saved” verses, some of which I highlight here, with the doctrine of salvation by faith plus works. In fact, I don’t recall any of them even trying. That’s not to say that none have, but since the matter and manner of salvation is such a crucial element of any worldview, and the Catholic Church is known for rejecting sola fide, one would expect them to be well-prepared in reconciling the faith alone verses with their doctrine. I’ve been listening to Catholic Answers for over a year now, I think, and still don’t know how they’d interpret them because they either avoid referencing them or gloss over them on their way to the verses that talk about works. Keating didn’t address them in this answer except to say that there are “contrary verses.”
How do you reconcile your claim that “it is by our works that we will merit heaven” with what Paul says in Ephesians 2:8-9 “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast”? And Romans 4:5, “And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness”? Titus 3:5, “he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit”? Or what Jesus said in John 3:16, ”For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”? And John 6:40, “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”? Or John 6:47, to name just a few, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.”?
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I do have a response to all these verses. But I think this is really going to cascade for both of us if we don’t slow down and not do this all at once. You have several other posts from me to reply to already so I won’t keep leaving them. I have some homework I need to do today, and you probably have things to do as well. I’ll try to give a thorough response to all of your questions in the next few days. Would you rather I respond to all the verses you name here, to the “Eye-Opening Verses” post? Or to one of the others? Or to all of them?
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I’m all for taking one issue at a time. I would say post that response here.
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