“You are heretics, but it might not be your fault.” In decades and centuries past, that posture of exculpatory condescension often represented the most we could achieve in ecumenical reconciliation. We may not be able to agree on anything else, but we might concede that Christians today are not fully responsible for the divisions of the sixteenth century.
The 1999 “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification,” issued by the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church—both later joined by the Methodist World Council—took us a step beyond that minimal exculpation. The Declaration describes itself as achieving “a consensus on basic truths of the doctrine of justification” and a demonstration “that the remaining differences . . . are no longer the occasion for doctrinal condemnations.” Note the two principal achievements: a consensus, and the obviation of the Reformation-era condemnations.
I emphasize these two because the Catholic Church immediately in 1999 saw fit to qualify the Declaration’s self-understanding: The Church, represented by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, explained consensus as “a high degree of agreement,” but not the elimination of all divergences. The Church also reduced the obviation of the condemnations to a virtual tautology, saying that the condemnations no longer apply to matters of agreement, but they may yet “touch” points of divergence, especially the Lutheran formula simul iustus et peccator. If some Lutherans felt betrayed by the Church’s response to the Declaration, they may be forgiven.
But I do not want to engage in the treacherous ecumenism of those who denounce their own communions for the sake of dialogical agreement. The Church’s partial retraction is on its face true: We are not in full agreement, and disagreements over even tertiary elements of the doctrine of justification are at least potentially divisive.
It is said that no matter how many ecumenical documents we produce, if we lay them end to end, still they will never reach a conclusion, and the Catholic Church might seem to have confirmed this claim, but I’m optimistic: I think there is a way through the impasse—a way that does not require either communion to reject the virtues of its tradition. What we have here may be “a failure to communicate,” but it’s a failure that can be remedied.
The Declaration, perhaps succumbing to ecumenical dialogue’s characteristic vice of self-congratulation, credits its success to “our common way of listening to the word of God in Scripture,” and claims that such common listening led to new insights and developments that made the Declaration possible.
Maybe, but the reverse is equally plausible: that new insights and developments in our communions and among global cultures have led to a common appreciation for the meaning and import of Scripture, and therefore led also to the Declaration. Recent advances in hermeneutics, especially new insights into the way history and community shape our cognitive frameworks, helped both Lutherans and Catholics to approach their creedal and confessional trajectories with greater circumspection.
To put it crudely: The advent of postmodernism made this Declaration possible. Like a predator that consumes its own young, modernism—with its endless criticism upon criticism—has been cannibalizing the sophomoric rationalism of its own adherents.
In the English translation of his book on Christology, Cardinal Walter Kasper described historical-criticism, left to itself, as “an endless screw”—I imagine he was unaware of the double entendre in English—a endless screw that keeps threading deeper without changing anything, until the drillers recognize their futility. In just this way have many rationalists despaired of the Enlightenment. The decline of the modernist hegemony in academic and popular culture reduced the degree to which modernism threatened the Catholic Church, still somewhat shy about its pre-modern roots, and facilitated the Second Vatican Council’s new esteem for other expressions of the Christian faith.
At the same time, postmodern awareness of the limitations of reason have quieted the more virulent expressions of Lutheranism, born in a facile eagerness to overturn developed authority and discipline, and reaching pubescent frenzy in the wildly rationalistic biblical criticism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Christians of many communions manifest new interest in the pre-modern origins of the Christian faith, and we find new common ground in the tempered rationalism of the postmodern era. Postmodernism has sparked a new romance between estranged partners.
I’ve been painting with a very broad brush, so permit me to give two specific examples. One: In its response, the Catholic Church complained that the Declaration too easily conceded to the doctrine of justification a special status as the criterion of orthodoxy, whereas a genuinely Catholic approach requires integration of the doctrine of justification with the entire regula fidei—with Christology, Trinitarian theology, ecclesiology, and sacramental practice, among others.
While such a response served a purpose—it precluded certain misunderstandings within the Catholic communion—it missed the theological potential of the Declaration, which clearly sees all the truths of the faith as internally related to each other. All the divine mysteries implicitly embed each other—in fact, some representatives of the Eastern Churches rather frequently insist that all the faults of the Latin Church are easily attributable to the snowball effect of some small but ancient error in, say, Trinitarian theology.
If we Catholics recognize the circumincession of all the truths of faith, so that each one contains all the rest, we should warmly welcome those Lutherans who insist on the doctrine of justification as a synecdoche of the Gospel—for so it is, and to the extent we can reach agreement in matters of justification, we will also have reached agreement on the remainder of Christian doctrine. Thus an advance in epistemology—a recognition of the circumincession of divine truths—renders unnecessary any serious dispute about the doctrine of justification as the criterion for Christian teaching and practice.
Two: The Declaration takes up the question of human powerlessness, passivity, and cooperation in relation to justification, and observes that Catholics typically speak of graced co-operation with God’s grace, while Lutherans insist on human passivity and inability to merit justification. The Declaration invites speculation as to how Catholic and Lutheran anthropologies need not strictly contradict each other.
What Lutherans call “full personal involvement” in faith may perhaps embed what Catholics identify as active co-operation with grace—co-operation which is itself constituted by grace. When Catholics acknowledge that apart from grace, humans cannot move even ad iustitiam, which may be translated “toward justification,” they may concede that man, considered as an independent agent, is necessarily passive with respect to justification. These are not decisively reconciled teachings, but they may yet be reconcilable if we allow ourselves to think in terms of multiple layers of causality and effect. Once again, an allowance for nonparallel linguistic and philosophical frameworks may open up possibilities foreclosed by syllogistic, univocal readings of our theological formulae.
Those were my two examples, in evidence that the Declaration really did achieve a creditable degree of mutual recognition and agreement, aided by postmodern advances in epistemology. And therein lies the threat: If a new awareness of differentiated epistemologies makes it possible for us to accommodate serious differences between communions, that same awareness seems to invite all manner of dissent and relativism, in the name of postmodernism.
Because divisions internal to our communions are now as threatening as divisions between our communions, we dare not too glibly admit the legitimacy of other theological approaches. Such admissions may easily be exploited by relativists in a way that would further fragment our communions. I suspect that just such a fear lies behind many of the cautionary notes of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which does not want an accommodation of Lutheran doctrine to be invoked to justify a tidal wave of dissent within the Catholic Church. Yet, I think the skeleton of a genuine reconciliation has been assembled.
It remains to put flesh on that skeleton—to elaborate the implications of our “consensus” on the doctrine of justification for other elements of Christian faith and practice. I propose to you that the next logical step from justification is toward the atonement, a logical link between justification and the remaining elements of soteriology.
We share a common plight as Christians in a carelessly Pelagian world, where religion is routinely reduced to morality. Those of a secular mindset speak of the evolutionary utility of religion in taming man’s bestial appetites; those of a moralist bent telescope the Christian faith into the orthopraxis of social justice or sex. We desperately need to be reminded of the priority of grace offered through the Lord’s death and resurrection, and I hope that to cast ancient Christian doctrine of the atonement into contemporary and especially phenomenological terms may yet fuel just such a new evangelization.
Phenomenological considerations have shown potential to translate elements of pre-modern Christianity—such as metaphysical or natural law theory—into effective terms. In the Catholic Church, Pope John Paul’s Wednesday catecheses, from which what is now called the “Theology of the Body” emerged, achieved just such a translation. Our people and even our clergy might have much to gain from exploring our human experience of the proclamation of the Lord’s atoning death.
From my own stance as a Roman Catholic, I hope that ecumenical consensus on justification may lead to articulate agreement concerning the atonement, and hence also the priesthood and sacrifice of Christ, and thus at last to what for Catholics is the Holy Grail of ecumenism—literally, the Holy Grail, the Eucharist—the fullest and most visible expression of the life and unity of the Church. Cardinal Walter Kasper, speaking on Christian unity, recently remarked that “our goal must be full communion within the communion of communions that is the Church.”
This requires shared Eucharist. May God bring to speedy fruition the good work he has begun in the Joint Declaration.
Rev. David Poecking is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh. “The Skeleton of Genuine Reconciliation” was given as one of three papers delivered at a retrospective observance of the 1999 Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification sponsored by Bishop Kurt Kusserow of the Lutheran Synod of Southwestern Pennsylvania and Bishop Lawrence Brandt of the Catholic Diocese of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, held yesterday (Reformation Sunday). The Joint Declaration can be found here.
Comments:
The JDDJ was not, in spite of all the PR spin put on it by the liberal Lutheran church bodies, any sort of genuine "break through" on this issue between Rome and Wittenberg. The Vatican remained honest throughout the process and went out of its way to make sure nobody would interpret the JDDJ to mean that Rome had, in any way, fundamentally changed its core confession on Justification, going out of its way to affirm that the Council of Trent's Canons still very much hold, as also verified and proven in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which very carefully footnotes Trent in its discussion on Justification.
What the JDDJ truly represents is, from an orthodox Lutheran point of view, nothing less than a betrayal of the Gospel itself, a sell-out by liberal Lutheran theologians and church bodies, a compromise of core Lutheran doctrine, which is a natural result of the embrace of the liberal theology that has produced not only this compromise of the doctrine of Justification, but the ordination of women, and now homosexuals, and the embrace of abortion on demand.
I would respectfully refer those interested in reading documentation for this reality to my blog site where I share the documentation and response that was prepared by the Office of the President of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, when the JDDJ was announced. I served at that time as Senior Assistant to the President of The Lutheran—Missouri Synod and coordinated our response.
Here is the documentation:
http://cyberbrethren.com/2010/04/21/a-betrayal-of-the-gospel-the-joint-declaration-on-the-doctrine-of-justification/?preview=true&preview_id=5656&preview_nonce=4336b702fe
i don't claim to speak on behalf of the church or of orthodoxy per se, but i do think the following is orthodox and catholic.
when i explain the relationship of works to salvation, i turn to aristotle, c. s. lewis, and john henry newman. the framework i use is as follows:
1. christ is central to soteriology, the beginning and the end.
2. the roman catholic church -- her catechism -- distinguishes between initial v. final justification.
3. initial justification is never merited.
4. final justification = glory, participation in the divine life of God, heaven.
5. between initial justification and final justification, we are sanctified through the holy spirit but in cooperation with God. this cooperation can be understood as follows.
6. aristotle: every moral choice we make changes who we are, changes the part of us that chooses, so as to affect us the next time we choose (part of "virtue ethics").
7. c. s. lewis: every moral choice we make changes who we are, and with every choice we are either turning ourselves into something diabolical or something angelic, moving toward either the miserific or the beatific vision.
8. newman: "heaven is an acquired taste" meaning that to the degree we've cooperated with God and been moral agents in our own transformation through the choices we make, is the degree to which we'll have acquired a taste for heaven.
9. interestingly, it follows that for those who don't bother cooperating with God and therefore leave their souls in a diseased twisted state between initial and final justification (they remain "homo curvatus" to recall augustine) the presence of God in heaven would feel like hell. lewis' "the great divorce" is helpful on this point. imagine someone without an acquired taste for scotch taking a sip of laphroaig....
10. despite this framework, salvation is still not "merited" because our works do not "earn" God's love; our works do, however, prepare us for heaven.
11. one analogy we can use is to think of initial sanctification as "bethothal," sanctification as the time between "betrothal" and "marriage," and final justification as "marriage to christ." while we were dead in our transgressions, christ died for us, betrothed himself to us just as God asked hosea to betrothe gomer. but suppose between now and marriage gomer remains addicted to pornography, prostitution, and drugs and does nothing about her addiction in preparation for her marriage.... how "heavenly" will that marriage be in view of her addictions no matter how holy a man hosea might be?
12. per c.s. lewis: there is no power that can separate us from the love of God "except ourselves." he also states that "we are being saved" -- he avoids stating that "we are saved." finally, he writes that "God is easy to please but hard to satisfy" and that his aim for us is perfection; God knows that heaven would feel like hell for those short of perfection.
13. this framework also supports the belief in purgatory, for suppose i die today, betrothed but not perfect. what happens?
the amazing fact is that c. s. lewis was protestant.... yet he believed all of the above. finally, perhaps one day we'll look back and realize that it was God all along. until that day, i believe we are called to act as responsible moral agents and cooperate with God in the process of sanctification.
i hope this is an orthodox position and welcome any corrections/refutations.
Thank you, that is very helpful.
Two things:
I don't think of Lewis as a Protestant, but an Anglo-Catholic. Like Newman before hecrossed to Rome.
Your point 10. Our works do not earn God's love, so we do not merit salvation. I think I see what you mean, yet Newman seems to say that God's pleasure is 'increased' by our works. I leave you with his words:
Again, justification, as all allow, and as has been here assumed throughout, is a state in which we are acceptable and pleasing to God; as then is the mode in which we please God, so is the mode of our justification. Now it is plain, from St. Paul, that the regenerate please God, not merely by the imputation of Christ's obedience, but by their own obedience: by their obedience therefore are they justified. If they were justified only by imputation of Christ's obedience, they could only please him by virtue of that obedience; but so far as they are enabled to please Him by what they are and what they do, so far may they be said, through His secret grace, to justify themselves. For instance, St. Paul says, "The God of grace ... make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working in you that which is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ;" he does not say, "imputing to you what is pleasing." Christ then does not keep the power of justification solely in His own hands, but by His Spirit dispenses it to us in due measure, through the medium of our own doings. He has imparted to us the capacity of pleasing Him; and to please Him is that in part, which justification is in fulness, and tends towards justification as its limit. That this power is the characteristic of the Gospel is evident from St. Paul's words elsewhere, "They that are in the flesh cannot please God; but ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit." [Heb. xiii. 21; Rom. viii. 8, 9.]
Parallel with such texts is that in the Epistle to the Philippians, on which much might be said: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure." Salvation is here described, as justification elsewhere, not as coming direct from God upon us, but as coming to us through ourselves, through our sanctified wills and our religious doings; as wrought out for us by the power of God actively employed within us.
Texts which speak of our receiving a reward for our obedience enforce the same conclusion still more strongly. For what is the reward of a religious action, but God's favour, accorded to us in consequence of good things wrought in us by the Holy Spirit?
BOP gives a very typical response when confronted with $10 words. Its grace through Jesus, and then I should try and live it. Andrew answers BOP, filling in some of the space with authoritative quotes which lend weight to the simple belief. If the church left it there, it would be pretty easy.
But in between we get Rev. McCain. (Full disclosure, we would theoretically be on the same team, but my guess is that he would be hard pressed to acknowledge that.) Rev. McCain crams everything into very tired left-right arguments, jumps up and down about betraying the reformation, makes sure that we know he's had very big jobs and then says over here is a better pope.
Of the three methods: 1) excruciating expert complexity, 2) a working out of salvation with fear and trembling (reference BOPs questions at the end) or 3) bombastic dogmatism, in which do you think there might be more truth?
thanks for your thoughts. here are a few more:
1. many protestant friends of mine read lewis and claim him as protestant. in reality, he was far closer to rome than my friends realize.... that was my only point.
2. i believe God's pleasure is increased by our obedience. he is our father in heaven. but in no way does our increasing God's pleasure put him in debt to us, as if he owes us salvation in return. the paradigm of "contract" is utterly foreign to the gospel, methinks.
3. regarding the newman quotation, i wonder if he was addressing the calvinistic/reformed doctrine of "imputation of righteousness," which is today held and defended well by someone like r. c. sproul. in any case, i think it is true that we please God, even -- or especially? -- by our smallests acts of obedience.
4. as for the philippians text, i'd agree with lewis' thoughts on this very passage in "mere christianity." i still don't think our works "earn" salvation....
5. the passages on "rewards" have always struck me as strange.... for what other reward could we possibly desire other than the beatific vision?
I wonder if there might not be room for each side coming closer together on simul iustus et peccator. To be sure, it would be helpful to set aside the hyperbole in Luther's famed letter to Melancthon. Would it be possible to suggest that in the Cross of Christ all have been redeemed with respect to God's disposition towards us. What remains is our disposition towards Him. Then we might note that it is possible for to observe that there are many who believe and who are sincerely trying to follow Christ who nevertheless struggle--perhaps with the same sins and perhaps with great frequency. C. S. Lewis notes in one of his letters how a life characterized by such a struggle (where the struggle is real) bears witness not to the absence of grace but, rather to its presence. Grace is operative in the person who might have plunged heedless into some sin (or set of sins) but who now, though with frequent failure, is struggling to do right. In fact, Lewis thinks an extraordinary grace might be operative in such a life. For it takes something like supernatural, divine aid to strive towards the good in some respect, to fail, and instead of resigning oneself to failure (and instead of rejecting the good in view) to pick oneself up again (perhaps for the thousandth time) and struggle forward. The sin Lewis had in view when he wrote the letter in question was sexual in nature.
So what I'm suggesting is that we might all agree that simul iustus et peccator is wrong when we are talking about hard heartedly plunging into sin--sinning with reckless abandon. In that case, though God has in once sense been reconciled to us (through the Cross of Christ) we are not reconciled to Him. But perhaps there is the possibility of a life characterized by struggle--repeated failure with subsequent repentance, striving, failure again, etc.--in which a life so described is nevertheless, by virtue of the struggle, evidences divine grace. Lewis says just this. But Karl Barth and Jean Calvin say something akin to it. And there are passages of the New Testament (and a story in the Fathers) that would seem to fit this model. I'm suggesting that perhaps we can agree to the following: one may, animated by grace, be moving towards God and yet still struggling not merely with wrongful desires but even with those wrongful desires manifesting in behavior. Or, put another way, to be a Christian doesn't mean one's behavior gets all cleaned up right a way. It remains a long and arduous process.
Thoughts? Perhaps neither my Lutheran nor my Catholic friends will like this way of viewing things.
If the June 1998 response had been the last word, the LWF would not have signed the JDDJ. At a meeting of the General Secretary of the LWF, the assistant general secretary for ecumenical affairs, and me with Cardinal Cassidy later that summer, this was made clear. Further discussions were held, leading to the Annex to the JDDJ. As the Official Common Statement that was signed in Augsburg in Oct 1999 states, the Annex “further substantiates the consensus” so that both sides could affirm that the mutual condemnations do not apply to the Catholic and Lutheran understandings as put forward in the JDDJ (the Annex and the Official Common Statement are also on the Vatican website). The questions and objections raised by June 1998 Vatican response were thus resolved by the Annex and Cardinal Cassidy, for the Vatican, signed the Statement affirming the JDDJ.
In his second and third paragraphs, Fr. Poecking seems to be appealing to the June 1998 statement as the Vatican’s last word on the JDDJ, when in fact it is superseded by the Annex and Official Common Statement, which affirms the JDDJ in its entirely and without exception.
The JDDJ itself (para. 5) states that, in relation to the doctrine of justification, “the remaining differences in its explication are no longer the occasion for doctrinal condemnations.”
You rightly mention the Annex, of which I am aware. We discussed it at the gathering last night, but I didn't have the opportunity to address it at great length.
I fear there's some equivocation in the Annex. Note the qualification: "the mutual condemnations do not apply to the Catholic and Lutheran understandings as put forward in the JDDJ." That is not to say they don't apply to the Catholic and Lutheran understandings more generally. To my reading, the Annex assuages but does not really resolve the tension that, at least from the Catholic side, appears to remain.
When you put it like you have in 2, then I must agree we do not “earn” salvation; nothing we can do can put God under obligation to us. Nevertheless, what if we choose not to strive to be obedient? Would this not be displeasing to God? And given that God may choose to act as he pleases, would it not be reasonable to suppose that God might freely choose to extend the beatific vision to those who strive in obedience while denying it to those who choose not to strive? The former do not earn salvation but, unlike the latter, they find acceptance with God. And, as the labourers in the field learned, God’s reward for finding acceptance with one is not commensurate with one’s labour, but with God’s grace.
Paul,
If I understand you correctly, then I totally agree with you. I do not know how it is with Evangelical Protestants, but Catholics makes distinction between venial and mortal sin. I doubt if anyone is often free of venial sin, yet our hope is that even when we are not free of it we are still justified. But we are taught that when we are in a state of mortal sin, then we are no longer justified. Or at least that is what I believe we are taught! The justifying grace that was freely bestowed on us by virtue of Jesus alone is lost when we mortally sin. Our only hope in such a state is to seek again justifying grace through sincere repentance and the sacrament of confession, and to take any steps we can to undo the damage caused by this sin. Of course we cannot be lax about venial sin. We must always seek forgiveness for this sin too and the grace to stop so sinning. And then, who can ever know for sure that a venial sin is not a mortal sin? A lukewarmness or indifference in the spiritual life can be deadly over time. Better to think of all sin as mortal and continue to strive to overcome it with God’s grace and forgiveness. Even when justified we can never be sure we shall be saved. We can only hope and strive.
You are entirely correct about the limitation of the JDDJ; all it says is that the condemnations do not apply to the position there put forward. That is why it is so important that it was affirmed officially by the churches, which then stand behind what is there said. You are right that there is a major question just what that affirmation means, especially on the Lutheran side.
I would note a very important follow-up document is the new Swedish-Finnish Lutheran-Catholic dialogue, "Justification in the Life of the Church," which can be found at: www.svenskakyrkan.se/default.aspx?id=586259
Next, regarding "simul iustus et peccator," yes, from the RC side this is the sharpest thorn. The JDDJ (and, as Mr. Root will attest, the supporting and qualifying documents) already expresses the joint confession that Christians face a lifelong struggle against sin. As I see it, the irreconcilability appears when orthodox RCs insist that one may be righteous only insofar as one is not a sinner, and vice versa, and when Lutherans insist that the Christian lives out his earthly life in a kind of dramatic suspension, at once fully a sinner and fully righteous. There may be biblical and experiential reasons to support both approaches, but the heritage of the Reformation seems to include mutual incompatible affirmations and denials.
Finally, regarding the Annex, it maybe important to note that the RCC tends to regard subsequent documents not as legislative trumps of earlier ecclesiastical documents, but as explanatory developments. Thus the Annex doesn't really retract the Response, nor the Response the JDDJ; instead, all three are intended as refinements and clarifications of abiding doctrine. One must also be attentive to the authority of the signatories, and in this matter the CDF weighs very heavily.
Thus, with all due respect to the Annex as a token of the RCC's good faith in signing the JDDJ, I thought it was worth exploring the reservations of the Response. I expect that if there is to be any further progress---hardly a foregone conclusion!---it will be facilitated by a greater understanding of these reservations, and, by God's grace, some insight as to how they might be satisfied.
You said:
“As I see it, the irreconcilability appears when orthodox RCs insist that one may be righteous only insofar as one is not a sinner, and vice versa, and when Lutherans insist that the Christian lives out his earthly life in a kind of dramatic suspension, at once fully a sinner and fully righteous.”
I wish I understood how you used your terms. What does righteous mean? Does it mean the same as being justified, or sanctified, or possessing the grace to do God’s will? From the way you use the word above it appears that there can be degrees of righteousness. The Roman Catholic, you say, believes that one is righteous “insofar” as one is not a sinner, the Lutheran, you say, believes that one may be “fully” righteous while fully (absolutely? mortally?) a sinner.
If there are degrees of righteousness, then I cannot see how “orthodox RCs” (is there any other type?) cannot but insist that one is righteous only insofar as one is not a sinner. For if I can take it that to be righteous is, in any basic sense, to be pleasing to God, then to the degree that one is a sinner one must fall short of being wholly pleasing to God. This is why we believe that when we die in a state of non-mortal sinfulness we will experience a purgatory precisely to prepare us to be received by God sinlessly, i.e. wholly righteously.
On the other hand, if there are no degrees of righteousness, if one must either be righteous or not righteous, and that solely on the basis of whether one does or does not “put one’s faith in Jesus,” without any regard to doing what Jesus commanded us to do, then we are under no obligation to try to overcome our sinfulness in life because this is of no reckoning with God. And this must be the Lutheran position. For although you use the expression “fully righteous” with respect to his position, it is hard to understand what righteous, but less than fully righteous, could mean for a Lutheran. Either he accepts Jesus as his Saviour, in which case he is rendered fully righteous, or he does not, in which case he is without righteousness.
It seems to me that the real difference hinges on whether there are degrees of righteousness or not. If there are, then God reckons our moral life to be of account. If there are not then God does not reckon our moral life to be of account and it is incoherent that a Lutheran should regard it as any way true that “Christians face a lifelong struggle against sin.”
iustus = justified, made right in god's eyes
peccator = sinner
1. to my understanding, the RC position is that one is a sinner because one sins; sins involve thoughts, words, and actions. this position is in contrast to calvin's where one sins because one is a sinner. to calvin, and presumably to luther as well, one's sinful nature is ontologically prior to thoughts, words, and actions. therefore, to calvin, one sins even when one is sleeping and dreaming of cows jumping over the moon.
2. it follows that the RC position does allow for the possibility of being "sinless." being "sinless" would mean "not sinning and not having sinned." if a person is "sinless," he/she would also be "iustus." when God sees this person, he sees "iustus."
3. it also follows that given the RC position, it is "legal fiction" that one could be a "sinner" and "iustus" at the same time. when God sees a sinner, he sees a sinner.
4. but the RC position also includes "concupiscence," a state of disordered loves that echoes the fall, a kind of "disordered nature." importantly, concupiscence by itself is not sin -- it is the result of original sin and is made worse by actual sin, but it is not sin (not a thought, word, or action).
5. given the above, the RC position is that we're all concupiscent, which does not make us "sinners" necessarily. but concupiscence does place us in a position of needing sanctification of our whole beings in anticipation of final justification. importantly, one may be "sinless" + "concupiscent" at the same time -- this person would still not be ready for participation in the divine life (heaven).
6. crucially, the RC position also holds that christ is indispensable to both remission of sins and the transformation of our concupiscence. it is christ's righteousness and obedience that redeems us, but this righteousness is not applied "forensically" (see below) but "infused" into us to such a degree that his righteousness actually becomes "ours." we can be "sinless" indeed.
7. from calvin's position of "we are sinners because we are sinful, not because we sin," it follows that until our natures are redeemed completely, we shall remain "peccator." in other words, God never sees anything other than "peccator" until final redemption. but what to make of christ's work on the cross?
the classic reformation solution is to posit the concept of christ's "forensic" righteousness that is "imputed" upon sinners with sinful natures. christ's righteousness covers us like "white robes" so that when God sees us, he sees "simul iustus et peccator" -- he sees our sinful nature and he sees christ's righteousness simultaneously. it follows that it is not we who are righteous but christ; we are merely clothed with his righteousness.
the upshot is that how one understands sin, sinful nature, concupiscence, and christ's righteousness as applied to us matters. how to choose between definitions?
I'm using righteousness to mean the state one is in subsequent to justification, i.e., in a right relationship to God. I think you're on to something in your recent post. If one massages this problem in the right way, it starts to look like the equivalent of whether one can have righteousness by degree or simply by decree.
I wouldn't presume to speak for Calvin, but Andrew's 12:22 post seems adequate to a Catholic account.
in my view, those "who choose not to strive" simply don't acquire the taste for heaven, to paraphrase newman.
Thank you for so much food for thought. I have to respond to your points one by one.
-------1. to my understanding, the RC position is that one is a sinner because one sins; sins involve thoughts, words, and actions. this position is in contrast to calvin's where one sins because one is a sinner. to calvin, and presumably to luther as well, one's sinful nature is ontologically prior to thoughts, words, and actions. therefore, to calvin, one sins even when one is sleeping and dreaming of cows jumping over the moon.------
So for Calvin, one has no control over the fact that one sins? Nor does one have control over the degree to which one sins. I commit genocide and you tell an unnecessary fib, yet both of us are equally sinners and equally culpable (or equally without culpability?) for our sins?
When Jesus refuses to condemn the adulterous woman and tells her to go and sin no more, Calvin would say that this is an impossibility for her for, being a sinner even when she sleeps and dreams, she has no option but to sin?
And can a sinner do no good? If I feel and express repentance and I turn to God and plea for mercy, is this just a delusional and sinful act? Or may it be a worthy or at least a neutral act? But if it is worthy or neutral then man is not totally bounded by his sinful nature. He may carve out an increasing area of non-sinful activity and if this is so there will be a difference in degree of sinfulness between one man and another.
------2. it follows that the RC position does allow for the possibility of being "sinless." being "sinless" would mean "not sinning and not having sinned." if a person is "sinless," he/she would also be "iustus." when God sees this person, he sees "iustus." -----
But one could have sinned and been forgiven and so one is now sinless eventhough one has sinned. And one could sin again and be forgiven again and so be sinless again. We Catholics believe we are born into a state of sin (although I do not believe that this means that we are “ontologically” sinners, for our fall into sin is a fall from our true ontological status, which is one that was created good, that is why we seek restoration) and it is through our baptism into Christ that we are made sinless and through the grace imparted in baptism that we can freely express the power of the Holy Spirit in acts that are pleasing to God. Or we may freely choose not to do so. And even if we choose to sin again, God is ever willing to forgive us if we repent.
---------3. it also follows that given the RC position, it is "legal fiction" that one could be a "sinner" and "iustus" at the same time. when God sees a sinner, he sees a sinner.----
I don’t see this. Here is where I think we need to distinguish between being justified and being sanctified (i.e. what you refer to as final justification). To be justified is to be given access (to use Paul’s word) to God’s grace to serve him by doing good. It is to be empowered. I may be in a state of venial sinfulness and yet also have access to this grace. Or I may be in a state of mortal sinfulness, in which case I am sundered from this grace. I need to be forgiven before it can be restored. Certainly when God sees a sinner he sees a sinner. But God is surely discerning enough to also see the difference between a mortal sinner and a venial sinner.
------4. but the RC position also includes "concupiscence," a state of disordered loves that echoes the fall, a kind of "disordered nature." importantly, concupiscence by itself is not sin -- it is the result of original sin and is made worse by actual sin, but it is not sin (not a thought, word, or action).-----
Yes.
-----5. given the above, the RC position is that we're all concupiscent, which does not make us "sinners" necessarily. but concupiscence does place us in a position of needing sanctification of our whole beings in anticipation of final justification. importantly, one may be "sinless" + "concupiscent" at the same time -- this person would still not be ready for participation in the divine life (heaven). ----
Yes.
-----6. crucially, the RC position also holds that christ is indispensable to both remission of sins and the transformation of our concupiscence. it is christ's righteousness and obedience that redeems us, but this righteousness is not applied "forensically" (see below) but "infused" into us to such a degree that his righteousness actually becomes "ours." we can be "sinless" indeed. ----
Yes. Although, instead of saying that the righteousness is ours, I would say that we participate in the righteousness of Christ through his Holy Spirit.
-----7. from calvin's position of "we are sinners because we are sinful, not because we sin," it follows that until our natures are redeemed completely, we shall remain "peccator." in other words, God never sees anything other than "peccator" until final redemption. but what to make of christ's work on the cross?
Well with this I disagree as per responses to points 1, 2 and 3 above. I find your phrase “redeemed completely” telling. Why do you not simply say redeemed? For from Calvin’s point of view our natures are as yet not even partially redeemed. Indeed, for Calvin our natures could never be partially redeemed. They must either be unredeemed or redeemed, for any in-between would mean that there is a degree of righteousness.
--------the classic reformation solution is to posit the concept of christ's "forensic" righteousness that is "imputed" upon sinners with sinful natures. christ's righteousness covers us like "white robes" so that when God sees us, he sees "simul iustus et peccator" -- he sees our sinful nature and he sees christ's righteousness simultaneously. it follows that it is not we who are righteous but christ; we are merely clothed with his righteousness.----
Well again, I cannot accept this. I do not wish to give offense, but this formula not only sounds trite in itself, but it shows a frightful failure of appreciation in just how wonderful, interesting, loving and powerful God can be with respect to us. When God looks at us I like to believe he sees very imperfect, sinful creatures seeking him in a growing participation and sharing of Christ’s righteousness, and not as creatures hiding under a cloak.
------the upshot is that how one understands sin, sinful nature, concupiscence, and christ's righteousness as applied to us matters. how to choose between definitions?
Good question. I think for now though that I’ll seek to be guided by the Church’s definitions.
1. as i understand calvin, he'd agree with you that actions, thoughts, and words can indeed be sinful -- can indeed be sins. one does have control over these. but he'd also add that our natures are sinful. to calvin, to have a sinful nature = to be a sinner. thus, "peccator" applies to us even if we don't sin (thoughts, actions, words). in fact, according to calvin, "peccator" applies to us even while we sleep.
2. what does the gravity of the sins have to do with anything? of course the sinner in his sleep who lied that day is less culpable than hitler. but they both have sinful natures that by themselves make them sinners. at least that would be calvin's position.
3. why can't a person with a sinful nature "do good?" why can't such a person help the old lady across the street? to be clear, calvin would probably say that these works are not salvific in any sense. even so, sinners with sinful natures may "do good," but only through what calvin calls "common grace."
4. perhaps you are forgetting about the sacrament of reconciliation? as i understand it, this sacrament restores us to full communion and grace.
5. to my knowledge, calvin made no distinctions between mortal and venial sins. i would agree that the degree of our sinfulness is known to God, but this issue is not germane to the question of "simul iustus et peccator."
6. to calvin, our natures this side of heaven remain sinful. we will always have sinful natures this side of heaven. yet calvin also believed in sanctification, the process of growing in holiness. why are a sinful nature and the process of sanctification mutually exclusive? why can't a sinful nature gradually become less sinful? as for a "degree of righteousness," calvin would probably say that all the righteousness needed (christ's) is imparted from before time to those who are elect. i'm not sure what luther's position would be regarding the timing of the imputation of righteousness.
7. perhaps you have confused me for a calvinist. i used to be but am no longer. i am catholic and therefore agree with you -- to my mind, forensic / imputed righteousness is simply not true. which means "simul iustus et peccator" is also not true.
8. as a reminder, here are calvin's five points:
a. total depravity
b. unconditional election
c. limited atonement
d. irresistible grace
e. perseverance of the saints
i am simply not sure if luther has a similarly detailed soteriology.
I must wholeheartedly agree with Pastor Poecking and, through him, Cardinal Kasper: “our goal must be full communion within the communion of communions that is the Church.” The mystery of the Word among us demands nothing less of us.
And isn't that what justification should naturally lead to? (I mean the action, not the doctrine.) The social effect of our justification through Jesus Christ is to make us already members of God's community. So how then can we dare to divide it? By what authority do we do this thing?
Is this correct? Or am I just missing the point completely?