Is Romans 2 teaching justification by works?

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Porknpie said:
Jon, would you agree that Protestants, at least now, have more than one definition?
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Yes, though with a couple of caveats.
  1. It would be more correct to say different communions may have there own definitions.
  2. Some of the ones I’ve seen I would phrase distortions rather than definitions. 😉
    As examples, even as far back as the 1500’s, the Lutheran confessions condemn the notions that faith alone means good works are not required of the regenerate, or that those once justified cannot lose saving faith.
Jon
 
The idea is that we are justified by obedience to what God commands us to do. But since we failed to observe Father’s Law, Jesus Christ fulfilled it for us and died for our sins, so now we only need to observe Christ’s Commandments given in Gospels in order to bind ourselves with Him and to be accepted together through/with/in Him by the Father. 🙂
 
Erick_Ybarra said:
I just saw an interview with Marcus grodi and Dave Anders that Romans 2:13 taught that believers will be justified by works. Also Scott Hahn said the same thing.
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When Catholics speak of “works” in the context of salvation it always means works moved by Grace. Nothing else and nothing less.

Blessings,
Marduk
 
Erick_Ybarra said:
I was passing through this passage and I pondered whether this passage is really even teaching that we are justified by the works of the law on the day of judgement.

What reasons are there to take it in this way?

The passage says that “all those who have sinned without the law WILL perish without the law” (Rom 2:12)… it seems to me that Paul is not opening the possibility for people who are “under sin” (Rom 3:9) to be justified, for if they have “sinned”, they will perish.
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We aren’t justified by the Law-because the Law is incapable of doing so-but we’re nonetheless judged according to the Law because the Law is holy, spiritual, and good according to scripture and the Catechism. IOW, Gods purpose for man is still to become sinless, but His power, via the New Covenant, rather than on our own steam, trying to fulfill the Law by our own efforts, which is impossible.
 
Bookcat said:
For readers of this thread:

Pope Benedict XVI on the subjects of Faith and Works and thus Justification in St. Paul

vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2008/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20081119_en.html

vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2008/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20081126_en.html (scroll down)

Plus earlier one:

vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2006/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20061108_en.html
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Justified through the gift of faith in Christ, we are called to live in the love of Christ for neighbour, because it is on this criterion that we shall be judged at the end of our lives. In reality Paul only repeats what Jesus himself said and which is proposed to us anew by last Sunday’s Gospel, in the parable of the Last Judgment. In the First Letter to the Corinthians St Paul pours himself out in a famous eulogy of love. It is called the “hymn to love”: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal… Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way” (1 Cor 13: 1, 4-5). Christian love is particularly demanding because it springs from Christ’s total love for us: that love that claims us, welcomes us, embraces us, sustains us, to the point of tormenting us since it forces each one to no longer live for himself, closed into his own selfishness, but for him “who for their sake died and was raised” (2 Cor 5: 15). The love of Christ makes us, in him, that new creation (cf. 2 Cor 5: 17), which comes to belong to his Mystical Body that is the Church.
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Seen in this perspective, the centrality of justification without works, the primary object of Paul’s preaching, does not clash with faith that works through love; indeed, it demands that our faith itself be expressed in a life in accordance with the Spirit. Often there is seen an unfounded opposition between St Paul’s theology and that of St James, who writes in his Letter: “as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead”(2: 26). In reality, while Paul is primarily concerned to show that faith in Christ is necessary and sufficient, James accentuates the consequential relations between faith and works (cf. Jas 2: 24). Therefore, for both Paul and James, faith that is active in love testifies to the freely given gift of justification in Christ. Salvation received in Christ needs to be preserved and witnessed to “with fear and trembling. For God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure… Do all things without grumbling or questioning… holding fast the word of life”, St Paul was to say further, to the Christians of Philippi (cf. Phil 2: 12-14, 16).
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Moving and agreeable words from Pope Benedict.

Jon
 
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