Sola Fide

[grandfather]

We do agree mostly we just use some words differently.

The major point of departure is the “infusion of grace”, which may again be a language problem more than a doctrinal one.

If I have understood Catholic Doctrine correctly, I think that infusion is the means by which God inheres actual righteousness into our souls, that righteousness which we must cooperate with producing charity, penance etc, leading to salvation.

Infusion is a word I used. I don’t know if it is the right word to describe how grace comes into the soul. There is a dispute over the word righteousness and I am not sure the word inheres is a the right word to use with righteousness to describe how the soul becomes righteous before God, but it may be.

The Catholic teaching is that the soul is transformed by grace, made holy. Luther said the soul remains corrupt, but is cloaked or covered. This is seen in his famous analogy that the soul is like a lump of dung covered by snow, comparing that to the soul in sin covered by Christ’s blood. He said God sees only the holy blood of Christ as we see only the snow covering a lump.

The Catholic objection to this is dung is still dung, corruption is still corruption. The sin remains. It is lipstick on a pig. It is a holy thing covering a profane. God sees us in our nakedness, for what we are. Adam and Eve tried to hide from God, because they were naked and ashamed. We try to hide from God, because we are sinful and ashamed. We try to cover our sin. It is when we expose it that God can heal us, remove it, change us.

Then we become righteous, or holy. The sin is removed and replaced with God’s own righteousness, but then it becomes ours. When something is given to you and it is in your possession, it is no longer the giver’s. It is of the giver, but it is yours.

Our response to this is to glorify God, to give Him thanks and praise. We do not give the love, mercy, holiness, rightousness, the gifts of grace back to God. We do give thanks and praise, which is not from Him, but from us. These are the only things we can give to God that He did not give us first. He loved us first. Our lives come from Him. Thanks comes from you. This is your response to His mercy. It is part of the transformation, not the covering up, of your soul from corrupt to incorrupt.

A bride would not work in a pig sty for a month and put on her wedding dress and go to her wedding. She would still be filthy and stink. She takes a bath. The sin is removed from your soul by grace. It makes you something new and beautiful for God. The guilt and shame and stain is gone.

I would say that the washing of baptism effects the removal of original sin, attaches us to Christ’s Body and enables us to live a new life through Him working in us. But that righteousness is always alien to us. The works that it produces are ours and they are pleasing to God by His mercy, but the righteousness that God will accept is not found in our works. God condescends to accept our works out of mercy, and it is grace to us that He does so, but those works are never condign they are always congruous.

Our salvation is a work of God. We cooperate with it. The cooperation is our work. This is difficult to grasp, because in our experience we can see two things can cause the same result. So it seems that God and we are responsible for our salvation. It is something we do together with Him and in a sense we do, but He does it all, causes it all.

Say I have a fever, a headache, and a runny nose. I have both a virus and a bacterial infection. The runny nose, fever and headache could be caused by both. Maybe the bacteria is causing 90% of my misery and the virus 10%.

God is 100% responsible, 100% the cause of our salvation. Our cooperation does not contribute to any of it. It is entirely grace. Our cooperation is grace. At the same time it is of me. I do it and I do it freely, but it is God’s work in me. It is God in me. Jesus says He knocks at the doors of our hearts and if we open He and His father enter in. This is transformative, not outside covering, and it is more than faith.

Faith gives me the courage to open the door, to not be afraid and hide, because I know I am sinful, guilty and ashamed and trying to cover my guilt by justifying myself, making excuses. This courage overcomes fear. It comes from belief, knowledge that comes from believing God loves me and will not condemn me, but heal me, and you also.

Faith is the begining of this process of salvation and at the same time it is not something that happens and you move on from it to the next thing. It remains alive and growing throughout the whole process, but it does not remain alone.

We tend to compartmentalize. Here is faith. This is what it is and how it works. This is hope, mercy, love. This is prudence, temperance, etc. It helps us understand things when we look at them one at a time, but in reality they all work together. Someone could say, since they all work together, and are necessary, that it is impossible to have one without the others, or that if you have faith it is impossible to not respond to it and embrace the other graces.

Jesus gives a parable. He says a man owes a big debt and it is forgiven. He receives mercy and refuses to show mercy. He did not respond properly to the gift He received.

We can not take faith or mercy for granted. We continue to call out to God in neediness, to increase His grace in us, to complete His work in us. At the same time I am confident in Him and trust Him, I do not trust myself. I could return to my vomit like a dog.

 

[grandfather]

Peter had faith to walk on the water and then he sunk. He realized what he was doing and got scared. That is all of us in the walk of faith. He cried out save me I am sinking. So we do not cry to God once, save me, and it is over with, we are saved. We persist in this dependence and He keeps us from sinking.

Salvation is a greater miracle than walking on water. Peter walked across water to Jesus. He said, lord, if it is you bid me to come to you. That is Jesus bidding you to come to Him and you have to do a whole lot more than walk across a patch of water. You have to leap out of the safe boat you are in and cross a stormy spiritual sea full of demons into eternity. Every time you get scared and sink on the perilous journey you call out to Him to save you, again and again and again.

I would also say that our penitence is always imperfect. Our contrition is never pure. I would also say that the person who is sorry that he is caught has a form of contrition, but that contrition may be selfish and contains no actual sorrow for sin and thus is not penitent in nature and so not part of saving faith.

There are two kinds of contrition, perfect and imperfect. Imperfect contrition happens when we know we are in deep trouble and to get out of it we are sorry we did what we did. Perfect contrition is when you repent of offeding God, because of who He is, and out of love for Him. Both kinds work, but the latter is an amazing experience.

Think about how contrition works. I hurt you. I say I am sorry. You pardon me. I do not pardon myself. I want to hear you tell me you forgive me. Absolving myself does not work. Saying internally I am sorry so I am forgiven leaves out the party I hurt who has the power to forgive me. Telling myself you forgive me leaves me with a feeling that something is missing.

I believe this because St Paul says our righteousness is filthy rags.

If I understand that right then it means that the best thing I ever did deserved nothing but condemnation, but God who is rich in mercy accepts on my behalf the actual merit of Christ accounting my feeble contrition, penitence and charity as righteousness for His sake even if they do not deserve it.

Yes, Jesus says we can do nothing without Him. We do not deserve grace or it would not be grace. You are not the judge of the quality of your contrition. God is and those He appoints and gives the power to forgive sins.

Does contrition make you deserve mercy? Let’s say I told you, promised you that if I gave you a barrel of water and some soap, if you washed your clothes in my water and soap, I would pay you a million dollars. Even better, If you let me wash your clothes, I will give you a million dollars. If you let me wash your feet… Think again of Peter. You say yes, go for it. Did you merit a million dollars? Is washing clothes worth a million dollars? Not really, but if I set the terms and by your consent you meet them, then you deserve the thing I promised, the million dollars and clean clothes as well. Your consent merits the promised reward. Like Peter we resist. It is not a fair deal. We do not deserve what we get. God says, if you do not let me do this you will seperate yourself from me forever.

God says, let me save you. You say you have done nothing to merit salvation. He says, but you do not determine what you must do to merit what I want to give you. He is the one who tells you His terms. Take it or leave it. He sets us free and we say we do not want to be free. We want to belong to Him. We want Him to be our king and lord and rule over our souls. I want to belong to Him and His mother and all His family.

Therefore, while we should strive to cooperate with grace and live in penitence and charity and perseverance, we must always do so in the light of the knowledge that everything we do toward our salvation is nevertheless all of the grace of God.

Amen