Martin Luther and Calvin taught very logically that a sinner is justified by fiduciary faith, in such a way, however, that sin is not absolutely removed or wiped out, but merely covered up or not held against the sinner. According to the teaching of the Catholic Church, however, in active justification an actual and real forgiveness of sins takes place so that the sin is really removed from the soul, not only original sin by baptism but also mortal sin by the sacrament of penance. This view is entirely consonant with the teaching of Holy Scripture, for the Biblical expressions: “blotting out” as applied to sin (Ps 1:3; Isaiah 43:25; 44:22; Acts 3:19), “exhausting” (Hebrews 9:28), “taking away” [2 Samuel 12:13; 1 Chronicles 21:8; Mich., vii, 18; Ps 10:15 and 102:12], cannot be reconciled with the idea of a mere covering up of sin which is supposed to continue its existence in a covert manner. Other Biblical expressions are just as irreconcilable with this Lutheran idea, for instance, the expression of “cleansing” and “washing away” the mire of sin (Ps 1:4, 9; Isaiah 1:18; Ezekiel 36:25; 1 Cor 6:11; Revelation 1:5), that of coming “from death to life” (Col. ii., 13; 1 John 3:14); the removal from darkness to light (Eph 5:9).
In the Protestant system, however, remission of sin is no real forgiveness, no blotting out of guilt. The person to be justified seizes by means of the fiduciary faith the exterior justice of Christ, and therewith covers his sins; this exterior justice is imputed to him as if it were his own, and he stands before God as having an outward justification, but in his inner self he remains the same sinner as of old. Sin is merely cloaked and concealed by the imputed merits of Christ; God no longer imputes it, whilst in reality it continues under cover its miserable existence till the hour of death. Thus there exist in man side by side two hostile brothers as it were — the one just and the other unjust; the one a saint, the other a sinner. In a man who is at once sinful and just, half holy and half unholy, we cannot possibly recognize a masterpiece of God’s omnipotence, but only a wretched caricature, the deformity of which is exaggerated all the more by the violent introduction of the justice of Christ.
The logical consequences which follow from this system, and which have been deduced by the Reformers themselves, are indeed appalling to Catholics: it would follow that, since the justice of Christ is always and ever the same, every person justified, from the ordinary everyday person to the apostles to the Blessed Virgin, would possess precisely the same justification and would have, in degree and kind, the same holiness and justice.
The Catholic idea maintains that the formal cause of justification does not consist in an exterior imputation of the justice of Christ, but in a real, interior sanctification effected by grace, which abounds in the soul and makes it permanently holy before God.
Although the sinner is justified by the justice of Christ, inasmuch as the Redeemer has merited for him the grace of justification (causa meritoria), nevertheless he is formally justified and made holy by his own personal justice and holiness (causa formalis).
Only this inner, immanent sanctification of the sinner can be intended where there is mention of passing to a new life (Eph 2:5; Col 2:13; 1 John 3:14); renovation in spirit (Eph 4:23 sq.); supernatural likeness to God (Romans 8:29; 2 Cor 3:18; 2 Peter 1:4) a new creation (2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15); rebirth in God (John 3:5; Titus 3:5; James 1:18), etc., all of which designations not only imply a setting aside of sin, but express as well a permanent state of holiness. All of these terms express not an aid to action, but rather a form of being; and this appears also from the fact that the grace of justification is described as being “poured forth in our hearts” (Romans 5:5); as “the spirit of adoption of sons” of God (Romans 8:15); as the “spirit, born of the spirit” (John 3:6); making us “conformable to the image of the Son” (Romans 8:28); as a participation in the Divine nature (2 Peter 1:4); the abiding seed in us (1 John 3:9), and so on.
The ideas on which the Reformers built their system of justification, except perhaps fiduciary faith, were by no means original. They had been conceived long before either by heretics of the earlier centuries or by isolated Catholic theologians. It was especially the representatives of Antinomianism during the Apostolic times who welcomed the idea that faith alone suffices for justification. For this reason St. Augustine (De fide et operibus, xiv) was of the opinion that the Apostles James, Peter, John, and Jude had directed their Epistles against the Antinomians of that time, who claimed to have taken their doctrines — so dangerous to morality — from the writings of St. Paul.
It cannot be denied that in the Middle Ages there were a few Catholic theologians among the Nominalists (Occam, Durandus, Gabriel Biel), who went so far in exaggerating the value of good works in the matter of justification that the efficiency and dignity of Divine grace was unduly relegated to the background. Denifle and Weiss have shown that Martin Luther was acquainted almost exclusively with the theology of these Nominalists, which he naturally and justly found repugnant, and that the “Summa” of Aquinas and the works of other great theologians were practically unknown to him.
We have an authentic explanation of the Catholic doctrine in the “Decretum de justificatione” of the Sixth Session (13 Jan., 1547) of the Council of Trent, which in sixteen chapters and thirty-three canons gives in the clearest manner all necessary information about the process, causes, effects, and qualities of justification.
Sources:
Justification
Sanctifying Grace