Talking to my evangelical friends about salvation – Part 2

Chapter 7 of the book Talking with My Evangelical Friends by José Miguel Arráiz

Michael: Joseph, I have been reflecting on our conversation but I’m not convinced yet, because if we have to believe, obey and keep the commandments to be saved, the salvation wouldn’t be an undeserved grace and the Bible clearly says: “For by grace you are saved through faith: and that not of yourselves, for it is the gift of God.”(Eph 2,8)

Joseph: We also believe that the salvation is an undeserved grace of God that we receive through the faith, but we don’t think that this excludes that fact that we have to fulfill God’s will and the commandments in order to be saved¹.

Pauline: The faithfulness is only a consequence of faith, but not a cause of salvation. The apostle Paul is very clear when he says, “And if by grace, it is not now by works: otherwise grace is no more grace.” (Rom 11,6). St. Paul also says: “Being justified therefore by faith, let us have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ”(Romans 5,1); “The just man liveth by faith”(Rom 1,17); “For if thou confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in thy heart that God hath raised him up from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”(Rom 10,9)

Joseph: We agree that the salvation is a grace of God that we receive through the faith. Christ, our Lord, gave his life for us, just by love, without any cost, even when we didn’t do anything to deserve it, nor could we do anything to pay for his sacrifice. There is nothing that we can do to pay him, neither in this life nor the other life.

But that doesn’t mean that the one who has been justified by the faith shouldn’t cooperate with the grace received as a requirement, and not as payment, to be saved. Jesus talks about this in the parable of the marriage feast. Let’s read it:

“The kingdom of heaven is likened to a king who made a marriage for his son. And he sent his servants to call them that were invited to the marriage: and they would not come. Again he sent other servants, saying: Tell them that were invited, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my beeves and fatlings are killed, and all things are ready. Come ye to the marriage. But they neglected and went their ways, one to his farm and another to his merchandise. And the rest laid hands on his servants and, having treated them contumeliously, put them to death. But when the king had heard of it, he was angry: and sending his armies, he destroyed those murderers and burnt their city. Then he saith to his servants: The marriage indeed is ready; but they that were invited were not worthy. Go ye therefore into the highways; and as many as you shall find, call to the marriage. And his servants going forth into the ways, gathered together all that they found, both bad and good: and the marriage was filled with guests. And the king went in to see the guests: and he saw there a man who had not on a wedding garment. And he saith to him: Friend, how camest thou in hither not having on a wedding garment? But he was silent. Then the king said to the waiters: Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the exterior darkness. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen.” (Matt 22,2-14)                                                                 

Notice that in the parable, there are several groups of people mentioned: first are those who didn’t want to go to the banquet, a group that represents the non-believers, including the Jews who didn’t believe in the Messiah. On the other hand, there are also the last minute guests, a group that represents the ones who became believers and went to the banquet. Among these, there was one who was thrown out because he didn’t wear the right outfit. What do you think that this outfit symbolizes?

Pauline: Those who weren’t true believers.

Joseph: Or those who became believers but didn’t live according to the gospel. They didn’t wear the “new man’s” outfit so their life didn’t agree with their faith. Regarding this topic, there are so many indications in the gospel, and because of this, when a young man asks Jesus what he has to do be saved, Jesus tells him to fulfill the commandments²: “But if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.” (Matt 19,17). The way in which this sentence is conjugated indicates that the fulfillment of the commandments is a condition to be saved because it says: “If you want to… fulfill…”. But you have to understand what we really believe: we’re not saying that the fulfillment of the commandments “buys” the salvation, but it is necessary to fulfill them to be saved, just as the one who goes to the banquet has to wear the outfit. The faithfulness in the fulfillment of the commandments must last until the end of the life of each believer: “If any one abide not in me, he shall be cast forth as a branch and shall wither: and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire: and he burneth. If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love: as I also have kept my Father’s commandments and do abide in his love.”(John 15,6.10). The condition to stay with Christ is to keep the commandments.

Pauline: That way of seeing it is very confusing because that would mean that the man who is saved once, could lose this condition every time he sins. Since the righteous sins seven times a day (Proverbs 24,16), that would mean that he is going from being saved to not being saved every day.  I think that those who have true faith will be obedient to the commandments, but if they sin, they won’t stop being saved. Their sins will have consequences and they’ll fall and up over again, but God has given them the faith, so He will also give them perseverance: “For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to his good will.”(Phil 2,13).

Joseph: We don’t believe that every single sin causes you to fall from the grace of God, but only the serious ones that we call “mortal sins”, but we can talk about that later. What really doesn’t make any sense is to think that a man, after believing, can sin seriously without affecting his relation with God just because he made a confession of faith at some point in the past.

Now, it is true that God is the one who gives us the gift of the faith and the gift of the perseverance, but He does it if we are docile to His grace and if we cooperate with it. This lack of understanding that the relation between the grace and the human freedom has caused many errors throughout history.³

Michael: But the ones who have real faith will naturally fulfill God’s will.

Joseph: Not necessarily, because they don’t stop being free. If so, those who have faith would never sin and they still do. And when they do, it’s because even when God drives them to do good, they resist. This is the reason why St. Paul warned of the danger of receiving the grace in vain: “And we helping do exhort you that you receive not the grace of God in vain.”(2 Cor 6,1). He also exhorted “with fear and trembling work out your salvation.”(Phil 2,12) and Jesus gives us another good example in the Parable of the Vine (John 15,1-9), because there He is represented as the trunk of a tree and his believers are the branches. The grace is represented as the sap of the trunk that flows into the branches to produce fruit. But just as there are branches that bear fruit, there are others that won’t do it anymore and are cut off, which represents those who, having begun the path of faith, came back and cease to bear fruit: “For it had been better for them not to have known the way of justice than, after they have known it, to turn back from that holy commandment which was delivered to them. For, that of the true proverb has happened to them: The dog is returned to his vomit; and: The sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.”(2 Pet 2,21-22)

God wants all men to be saved⁴ (1 Timothy 2,4), and for this purpose, he pours out his grace on all of us, to encourage us to believe⁵, and then, acting according to this faith, but being free and individually, we can resist or allow to be moved⁶, and even having already believed, we can resist permanently and irrevocably.

Therefore, faith is the beginning, the first affirmative answer to the call of the grace, but we need that this will continue to cooperate so that faith is manifested in works. Santiago explained it masterfully, maybe because in those times there were people who came to think that to be saved, they needed the faith without the works, and he wrote:

“What shall it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but hath not works? Shall faith be able to save him? And if a brother or sister be naked and want daily food: And one of you say to them: Go in peace, be ye warmed and filled; yet give them not those things that are necessary for the body, what shall it profit? So faith also, if it have not works, is dead in itself. But some man will say: Thou hast faith, and I have works. Shew me thy faith without works; and I will shew thee, by works, my faith. Thou believest that there is one God. Thou dost well: the devils also believe and tremble. But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works, offering up Isaac his son upon the altar? Seest thou that faith did cooperate with his works and by works faith was made perfect? And the scripture was fulfilled, saying: Abraham believed God, and it was reputed to him to justice, and he was called the friend of God. Do you see that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only? And in like manner also Rahab the harlot, was not she justified by works, receiving the messengers and sending them out another way? For even as the body without the spirit is dead: so also faith without works is dead.” (Jas 2,14-26)

The text is very clear and it explains itself⁷, because it talks about someone who has faith but that faith doesn’t show up in works, and he asked: “Shall faith be able to save him?” Later, he even explicitly says: “you see that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only”⁸.

If you look at this in that way you can perfectly understand why every single biblical text that talks about how we will be judged says that it will be by our works (Matt 16,27; 2 Cor 5,10; Rev 20,12; Matt 25,31-46). St. Paul says that we can have the faith to move mountains, but without charity, we are like a resounding metal or a clanging (1 Cor 13,1).

Through history, there have been many heresies and almost all start always from a truth, but when the people see it separated from the rest of the Revelation, they end up deforming it into an aberration. The same thing could happen to us with this topic if we only look at the text that tells us that we will be saved just by faith⁹, or the ones that emphasize the role of human freedom and forget the rest¹⁰.

“Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt 7,21)

Footnotes

1. God doesn’t just ask us to keep the commandments, but He gives us the grace to do it: “This commandment, that I command thee this day is not above thee, nor far off from thee: Nor is it in heaven, that thou shouldst say: Which of us can go up to heaven to bring it unto us, and we may hear and fulfil it in work? Nor is it beyond the sea: that thou mayst excuse thyself, and say: Which of us can cross the sea, and bring it unto us: that we may hear, and do that which is commanded? But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, that thou mayst do it.” (Deut 30,11-14). The Council of Trent in its decrees about the justification defined: “If anyone saith, that the commandments of God are, even for one that is justified and constituted in grace, impossible to keep; let him be anathema.” (The Council of Trent, Session VI, Canon 18)
2. Another text that highlights the relevance of the fulfillment of the commandments is this: “He, therefore, that shall break one of these least commandments, and shall so teach men shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. But he that shall do and teach, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. .” (Matt 5,19)

3. Two of the most widespread errors regarding the relation between the grace and the freedom are Lutheranism and Pelagianism, which are in turn opposite errors between each other. The cardinal Charles Journet in his book The Meaning of Grace explains it like this:

   “First let us look at the structure of the good act. In the course of history, two contrary positions are in constant conflict. In different terms and in various expositions of this question, we continually find this same conflict of two opposed theses, both of them erroneous.

   On the one hand, there is the position of Pelagius, a British monk, a contemporary of St Augustine who attacked him. The Pelagian error consists in saying that the good act is decisively the product of man alone. Of course, Pelagius says, God created the universe, placed me in the world, gave me my human nature with its faculties, and imparts abundant graces of illumination. But it is I alone who assent freely to God, and it is this assent which is decisive. Take an example of two men at the bottom of a well: God holds out his hand to each, and so is ready to help, but it is I alone who take his hand. I am doubtless, saved because God first stretched out his hand, but the decisive factor is that I, by my free will alone, took the hand, whereas my neighbor did not. So the choice is mine alone.

   On the other hand, there is the exactly opposite error, held by Luther, among others, in the Western world: the good act comes from God alone. Man is wholly corrupted. The act that saves him comes from God alone. God alone justifies the sinner, in the way in which we have seen Luther understand justification: God decides to ‘regard this sinner as just’.

   On the one hand, the aim is to exalt the human will, the greatness of man as a free being; on the other, to exalt God’s omnipotence.

   These flatly opposed views arise from a common initial confusion. They are like brothers at enmity, both sharing the same parentage. The error common to both is to think that divine and human action are mutually exclusive: either it is man who does the good act, and then it is not God; or else it is God, and so not man. We are asked to choose between the two, and this is precisely where the error lies. For who, in fact, does the good act? Both God and man together. Notice that I take these two opposing positions of Pelagius and Luther from the Western world; but in La Valle’e, Poussin’s book on Buddhism, I remember coming across the same problem stated in India under a different imagery. Salvation, it was said, comes about either in the way of the kitten or the little monkey. When attacked by a snake, the monkey jumps into its mother’s bosom, and the mother jumps up into the trees; the decisive act is the strength with which the monkey clings to its mother; this represents the Pelagian position. The kitten, on the other hand, when in danger, does nothing at all; the mother takes it by the skin of its neck, and does everything. That is the Lutheran position. There is, too, the figure of two railway engines that face one another on the same line; when one goes forward, the other goes back, each in turn. Divine and human action are held to compete against one another.

   But human action (created) and divine action (uncreated) are not on the same plane. Divine action (in relation to human action) is one of envelopment: it gives rise to it, gives it being and continuance. According to Catholic doctrine, we must say that the good act comes from both God and man, from grace and freedom.”

4. Calvinism denies the universal salvific will of God, so for them, God doesn’t desire with an antecedent will that all men be saved, but only the predestined. The Council of Trent condemned this mistake by saying: “If any one saith, that the grace of Justification is only attained to by those who are predestined unto life; but that all others who are called, are called indeed, but receive not grace, as being, by the divine power, predestined unto evil; let him be anathema.” (The Sixth Session, Canon 17, Dz 827).Jesus shows us through the example of Jerusalem that God desires salvation even for those who rejected him: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered together thy children, as the hen doth gather her chickens under her wings, and thou wouldst not?” (Matt 23,37). “The Lord delayeth not his promise, as some imagine, but dealeth patiently for your sake, not willing that any should perish, but that all should return to penance.” (2 Pet 3,9);“Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? Saith the Lord God: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?” (Ezek 18,23) “For I desire not the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God, return ye and live.” (Ezek 18,32); “Say to them: As I live, saith the Lord God, I desire not the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way, and live. Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways: and why will you die, O house of Israel?”(Ezek 33,11)
5. The first initiative is always the one of God who prompts men to believe by his grace. The canons of the Council of Orange in this regard say: “If anyone says that the grace of God can be conferred as a result of human prayer, but that it is not grace itself which makes us pray to God, he contradicts the prophet Isaiah, or the Apostle who says the same thing, “I have been found by those who did not seek me; I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me” (Canon 3). “If anyone maintains that God awaits our will to be cleansed from sin, but does not confess that even our will to be cleansed comes to us through the infusion and working of the Holy Spirit, he resists the Holy Spirit himself who says through Solomon, “The will is prepared by the Lord” (Prov. 8,35, LXX), and the salutary word of the Apostle, “For God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” (Canon 4)
6. Calvinism also claims that the grace is irresistible. The Council of Trent declared against the reformers: “If any one saith, that man’s free will moved and excited by God, by assenting to God exciting and calling, nowise co-operates towards disposing and preparing itself for obtaining the grace of Justification; that it cannot refuse its consent, if it would, but that, as something inanimate, it does nothing whatever and is merely passive; let him be anathema” (Dz 814). Innocence X condemned as heretical the following proposition of Cornelio Jansenio: “In the state of fallen nature one never resists interior grace” (Dz 1093; cf. Dz 797, 815 s, 1094 s).
7. This text of the Epistle of James is so explicit that Martin Luther recognized that it contradicted his teaching by affirming that the faith without works can’t save a man, and therefore he tried in vain to exclude it from the New Testament along with Hebrews, Jude and Revelation. In this regard he wrote: “We must distinguish between books and books. The best are the gospel of John and the epistles of St. Paul, especially that one of the Romans and the first epistle of St. Peter. These books are far above the three Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In short, the Gospel of St. John and his first epistle, the epistles of St. Paul, especially the Romans, the Galatians, the Ephesians, and the first epistle of St. Peter, these are the books that show you Christ and teach you all that you need for salvation, even if you do not know any other book. For this reason, the Epistle of James, in front of them, is nothing more than straw, since it has no evangelical character.” (Martin Luther, Prologue to the New Testament edition of 1546 (Bibel VI, 10). 1522: “Design Epistel aus der Heuptschrift zu werffen” (VII 386), Translated by Ricardo García-Villoslada, Martin Luther, In Fight against Rome, Vol II, BAC, Madrid, 1976)

8. The only text where the word “faith” appears with the word “alone” is this, and it is used to explicitly deny that a man can be justified just by his faith. In Romans 3,28, on the other hand, it is said that “the man is justified by his faith” but it doesn’t say the word “alone”. Despite this, Martin Luther in his translation of the Bible added the word “alone” in Romans 2,28 and when he was criticized by the Catholics for this inaccuracy hi replied:  “I don’t accept papists to be my judges, because they have ears that are too long for that and their braying is too weak to judge my way of translating…»And returning to the point: if your papist wants to be arrogant with the word alone, tell him this: «The Dr. Martin Luther wants it in that way, and he says that papist and donkey are the same thing»”

   (Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen: WA 30,2 p.632-36.

   Translated by García-Villoslada, Martín Luther, In The Fight against Rome, Vol II, BAC, Madrid 1976, p. 35)

9. In the appendix of the book, I have added a reflection of St. Augustine about this subject.
10. This chapter is a just a very basic summary of the Catholic doctrine. For those who want to know more about this, I recommend reading the book that I already mentioned by the Cardinal Charles Journet: The Meaning of Grace. It’s a gem when it comes to this topic.