Introduction

Much Reformation Day propaganda revolves around the unstated idea that the gates of hell prevailed against the church for 1500 years (Matthew 16:18). The question is often asked "Where was the Gospel before Luther?", but this question confuses justification by grace alone through faith alone by Christ alone with justification by the further theological precision brought by the Reformation¹.

While the church had an increasingly complex set of rituals, God remained sovereign, thus, justification was still received through the Word, applied by the Spirit. In our appreciation of the Reformation, we need to be careful not to contradict this by stating that justification requires active study and doctrinal purity -- that's not "by faith alone". The faith the grabs ahold of Christ is a gift from the Spirit, not a reward for passing a theological exam².

Though it would be foolish and sinful to avoid seeking to know God and understand your justification, or salvation as a whole, better, study is a result of justification, and has never been a requirement for justification in any form of Protestantism. Making explicit the distinction between "justification" and "rightly understanding justification" should correct a deeply flawed understanding in the minds of many.

The question of the "gospel before Luther" is sometimes answered by the "trail of blood" theory which supposedly helps us identify true Christians by looking for those persecuted by the institutional church. However, aside from having the feel of a conspiracy theory, it engages in gross revisionism and, again, seeks to define the gospel in terms of doctrinal purity.

That way of answering the question is also not new: the 1542 Chronicle of Caspar Braitmichel "placed the fall of the church at A.D. 150. In this view, the entire church, including the first three centuries after the apostles, fared very ill"³. This is also the fundamental idea behind the "restored Gospel" of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day saints (i.e. Mormonism) and all resulting offshoots.

It's easier to understand the "before Luther" question when we step back and correct a few ecclesiological errors explicit in Roman Catholicism and implicit in the minds of many in contemporary evangelicalism. As in every aspect of theology, a lack of distinctions bleeds concepts together leading to category confusion which make questions needlessly complex. Clarity emerges through better distinctions. For the question at hand, we need a clearer view of the Church. We'll get this by distinguishing three concentric circles with Christ at the center, catholicity outside, and theological guardrails in the local church that enable fellowship and promote Christian growth.

However, even prior to these distinctions, we need to estalish a distinction that's reguarly missing in evangelical discussions: the all-important distinction between something that's merely widely accepted and something that's officially codified⁴. Indeed, general evangelicalism doesn't even have a concept of "officially codified". So, it's no wonder that much of evangelicalism asks where the Gospel was before Luther: there's no real agreement on what were even talking about. This idea of official codification is vital to the life of the Church, both local and more broadly.

Part I: Christ and Catholicity

Christ and the Gospel

One of the most fundamental distinctions in the Christian life is between theological understanding and salvation itself. Justification is by Christ alone through faith alone, not by assenting to particular articles of faith. Put simply, we're saved by Christ, not by getting theology right.

The idea that there are "core doctrines" is a Roman Catholic concept. Canon Law 751 (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, or CCC 2089) states that heresy "is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same". While they allow for ignorance "obstinate" denial of a doctrine upon learning about it puts one in a state of mortal sin (see CCC 1857-1859).

Rome's arrogance in this matter is far surpassed by fundamentalist baptists who entirely lack any concept of concept of iron-sharpening-iron through councils and typically no have little exegetical support for their wholesale condemnations of others. For example, Luther is regularly said to be in hell because he baptized infants, and Steven Anderson relegated John MacArthur to hell because of a few theological points he held⁶.

We see the hear idea in arguments where individuals are damning each other to hell because of their preference of explaining the Gospel. One person may simplify it down to "believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved..." (Acts 16:31)⁷ while another may say " if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved" (Romans 10:9). Focusing more on Acts 2:38 with its inclusion of repentence and baptism is another option, and so is simply quoting John 3:16. The New Testament itself doesn't have a single high-level summary of the Gospel message. Yet the one choose to focus on in a particular situation may get you damned to hell on social media.

The only path forward is establishing that there are no essential doctrines (Latin: doctrina, teachings), just an essential Person⁸. If we were to ask the penitent thief on the cross how he was allowed into Christ's kingdom, he would simply respond "because the man on the middle cross said I could come"⁹. The risen person of Christ in his completed work is the objective content of the salvation.

Christ is Prophet, Priest, Lord, and Savior¹⁰ regardless of our subjective acceptance. Accepting Christ means accept Christ for who he is not merely for access to his benefits (e.g. salvation). The penitent thief was truly justified, but those who claim to trust Christ yet structure their lives by active disobedience to the Word may be found, through formal Church discipline procedures (Matthew 18:15-20), to be committing fraud by seeking Christ's gift of redemption without Christ himself. Similarly, confessing the wrong "christ" (not Divine, therefore a demon) provides no salvation (2 Corinthians 11:3-4, 1 John 2:22-23; 4:1-3).

Some may object to this saying that these are in fact articles of faith, but this objection only stands in a reality where Christ isn't the object of our faith, or where we're simply dealing with philosophical games. This is the fundamental distinction at this point is between the reality of infused theology of Christ living in us by his Spirit and the more academic acquired theology that we gain in our growth in this life¹¹ (see also Duby¹²). Articles of faith remain squarely in the area of acquired, not infused theology. Acquired theology is the Word examined, infused theology is the Word indwelling.

Fundamentalist baptists such as Anderson are condemning individuals to hell for accepting the acquired theology that correctly describes how one can be justified. In the case of Anderson condemning MacArthur, it's due to MacArthur's "works-based salvation" as seen in his "lordship salvation heresy". This particular error stems from either classifying good works, such as repentance, as something we do in and of ourselves or as attempting to accept a subset of Christ's roles or gifts (e.g. savior, not Lord) instead of accepting his person. The former errs in failing to see good works as gifts from God (just like faith!) the latter fails to see Christ as a true person who has roles regardless of your subjective acceptance. That is, while one may speak of a personal savior (due to personal appropriation), there's no such thing as a personal Lord. Lords are over domains, not only certain individuals.

Anderson's Christological or soteriological error condemns others for incorrect theology (infused and acquired!); nonetheless, it would be entirely inappropriate to condemn Anderson based on his error in acquired theology. If Anderson's error is Christological, it's a more serious error, but we need not doubt Anderson's infused theology, we need only question his fitness to teach acquired theology. Being unqualified to teach has absolutely no bearing on one's access to the kingdom. Steven Anderson, Joyce Meyer, and Steven Furtick have no business being anywhere near a pulpit, but they're nonetheless justified by Christ through faith alone.

Being justified by Christ, thus being able to confess "I believe that Christ alone justified me", isn't an objective article of faith, but an objective statement of a subjective (i.e. personal) reality. Those who are justified by Christ must have their faith nourished by the ordinary means of grace: word, both read and preached, the sacraments, and prayer. These individuals must be given the sign of the community of faith (Baptism) and they must eat and drink the elements of the Lord's Supper. Withholding any of these pending agreeement to articles of faith is spiritual abuse¹³. We can debate acquired theology, but actively contradicting someone's infused theology because of denial of "essential doctrines" is foolish and deadly.

The infused-acquired distinction is always vital to keep in mind. We can use this to reorient our gospel verbiage to increase our precision: Christ himself is the heart of the Gospel. Not having the Gospel is not having Christ. Not having Christ is not having the Gospel. Apprehension of Christ is infused theology. It relates to our reality, not our declarations. Christ is the core of everything in our own lives and at the core of the "before Luther". Just as Steven Anderson condemned MacArthur for his acquired theology, the western church before the reformation condemned Jan Hus for his. The inability to find the Gospel before Luther typically comes from insufficiently distinguishing infused and acquired theology.

However, often the question is less about the Gospel, and more about the Church: where was the Church before Luther? This is a question of catholicity.

Catholicity

The primary means God uses to organize his people and acquired theology is the Church. That statement typically prompts up the broken question "which Church?" While this is sometimes an honest question, it's often used as a red-herring. Typical answers to the question are based on extreme oversimplications based on surface-level imperical observations or naive philosophical ideas.

Christ founded the one, holy, apostolic, Catholic Church. These four adjectives establish the four tenents of catholicity: there's only one Church, which is separate from the world, is based on the ministry of the apostles, and is Catholic. The oneness of this Church is neither the Roman Catholic Church nor any other individual institution, yet encompasses them all. It's also not the modern evangelical idea that "the people are the Church". This is also not merely the "invisible Church", a concept often used as a way to avoid engaging ecclesiological issues.

While the Roman Catholics are a result of hardening orthopraxy into orthodoxy, the Reformers sought Church reformation, and the sought a full reboot. Thus, on nearly any theological topic, Roman Catholicism typically comes structurally closer to the truth than do the descendeants of the radicals we call evangelicals; yet, Rome corrupts a vital aspect turn H2O (Water) into H2O2 (Hydrogen Peroxide).

The controversy over the "rock" of the Church is a solid example of exactly this, and is the classic way to start discussions of catholicity. Rome claims that Peter is the rock while American evangelicalism finds Christ to be a better candidiate. The Reformation Study Bible wonderfully clarifies the issue:

If it had not been for the abuse of this passage by the Roman Catholic Church, it is unlikely that any doubt would have arisen that the reference is to Peter. But the foundational rock is Peter as a representative apostle (v. 15 note), whose confession of Christ has been revealed to him by the Father. As Peter himself later declares (1 Pet. 2:4–8), all believers have become “living stones” by virtue of their association with Christ, with the apostles as the foundation because they receive and relay new covenant revelation (Eph. 2:20, 21; 3:5; Rev. 21:14). When Peter says that Jesus must not go to the cross, he is not called a foundation rock but a stumbling block.¹⁴

Peter is the rock, but not Peter-as-Peter, but Peter-in-his-confession. When Peter loses his confession, he's a stumbling block or snare. We see the same idea in the Psalms where the Lord is said to be our rock (Psalm 18:2, Psalm 62:6, Psalm 95:1). Isaiah 8:14 refers to the Lord as a sanctuary to the faithful, but a stone of offense to those who reject him. God doesn't change; we change based on how we confess him and trust him. We disqualify ourselves when we're unfaithful to the word of the Lord.

The Church is built on the foundation apostles and prophets (Eph 2:20), not in and of themselves, but as they do the work of ministry in confessing Christ to be Lord. The Church is founded the rock (Peter-in-his-confession), which establishes the foundation of the Apostles, and grows organically over time. It's united by the spirit and the word, not by a centralized hierarchy. The Church is an entity which logically exists prior to membership. The whole is prior to the parts¹⁵. The unity precedes the plurality¹⁶,

The Roman Catholic idea that the Church created the word confuses and collapses various ways to speak of the "word". We distinguish "word" into the eternal Word, the unwritten word, and the written word. The word is the revelation of God. The Son reveals the father, and Christ is his premeninent revelation. Core to the unwritten word is the confession that Christ is the Son of God. The written word was completed at the end of the apostolic age, thus closing the need for additional unwritten word.

After the word took on flesh, lived the person life, died, was burried, rose, and ascended, the word returned to be with his Church at Pentecost. Guy Waters writes,

"On the day of Pentecost, Peter preaches the first new covenant sermon, proclaiming the death and resurrection of Christ and calling upon his hearers to repent and believe in Christ (Acts 2:14-41). Multitudes “received his word,” “were baptized,” and, Luke adds, “there were added that day about three thousand souls” (2:41)....The word of God would no less define the people of God in their corporate existence. The church is brought into being in connection with the word and is defined and identified by that same word."¹⁷

As the word goes out into the world in the unwritten form by the Apostles and as that same message goes out once written, the bounds of the Church spreads. Because the mark of the Church is a ministry of protected word and sacrament, the sacraments (the visible word) always accompany the written word. It's in this context we speak of catholicity.

We need to keep in mind two important points regarding the word: scope and meaning. Regarding scope, just as begetting is different than creating (e.g. the Son is eternally begotten, not created), codification is different than creation. The Church recognized and codified the Scripture given by God. It didn't create the Bible, it formally recognized it. This codification was done by the one, holy, apostolic, Catholic Church prior to and outside of any named sects (i.e. Rome, the East, Lutheran). Having an incorrect Biblical table of contents isn't a bar to being united to Christ, but not everything important to the vitality of the Christian life is a fundamental component of it. In that light, having a correct Biblical table of content is important. The initial one the baseline for future iron-sharpening-iron which can test, retest, and refine the codified table of contents.

Regarding meaning, unless we're going to separate the word from its meaning, leaving us with a word that's merely a meaningless text, we need to emphasize that the boundaries of the church isn't merely the Scriptural text, but the intent in Scripture itself. That is, we need to recognize that the letters and phonetic sounds are the delivery mechanism for divine revelation. The purposes isn't merely the written symbolic or phonetic sounds, but their meaning. Because the meaning of Scripture is Christ and his Gospel, all other aspects of Scripture either leading up to or flowing from it, what's increasing the bounds of the Church is the Gospel. This means that theologizing, or developing theology, is a core part of the spread of the faith. This established a mandate for the creation of statements of faith.

Just as the health of the church is diminised when each individual has their own differing Biblical table of contents, its health is eqully diminished when each person has their own differing statement of faith. You need to know the boundaries of Scripture and you need statement of faith, but if yours are different than the majority of the church, not just further analysis of Scripture is in order, serious self-examination is in order.

While it's common today to use the term "statement of faith", historically the term is "creed" (from latin "Credo": I believe) or the more anglicized term "confession of faith". Your statement of faith, or creed or confession, should extend beyond yourself. Starting with the creeds of the Biblical table of contents, we should extend our common statement of faith through the Apostles' Creed, which gives a very high-level overview of the object of our Trinitarian faith. This creates a shared statement of faith with other Christians across the global and across time. This is also not a post-Apostolic activity. Fesko writes:

When God told the Israelites to tell future generations the meaning of the Passover, he commanded parents to catechize their children in Israel’s faith. They had a divinely given traditio that they were supposed to pass down from generation to generation. God also gave to Israel a basic confession of faith in the Shema, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deut. 6:4). This confession was a guardrail against heterodoxy, a statement of doctrinal truth upon which Israel was supposed to meditate, a confessional truth that inspired love and devotion to God.

There is only one Chuch, and this one Church, from Scripture through the guidance of the Spirit, codified our high-level overview of the object of our faith in the foundational statements of faith (the Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds). These statements of faith, or creeds, establish a foundational codified theological architecture on top of the codified source of revelation. This creates a set of boundaries for catholic fellowship for the entire church.

This foundational fellowship is defined by a common understanding of the word expressed by a common statement of faith. Wolves aren't merely those who are causing physical violence, but are teaching contrary to a declared statement of faith. Written statements of faith we see in the creeds and confessions are guardrails that provide measurable definition for orthodoxy enabling the possibility of identifiying heterodoxy, therefore the ability to identify wolves who violate the unity of the faith. Without this these guardrails, all manner of deviations in the object of our faith may flow in, potentially without even knowing it. James Bradley and Richard Muller write:

It has sometimes times been said that the modern church, usually because of its ignorance of the patristic period, has tended to duplicate in its theology most of the errors and problems of the first five centuries of Christian thought. When approached in a balanced and objective manner, history provides insight into the limitation of our powers, if only by preserving the reasons for the failures of the past and, in the case of the theological tradition, showing the boundaries within which the community has chosen to formulate its views.¹⁸

Ignoring the statement of faith we call the Nicene creed is a major reason behind the Arian takeover of the early Church. Few revolutions in history are as quick as a full, immediate upheaval (e.g. French Revolution), they're typically slow and subtle. Slowly reinterpreting and denying core tenets of the Nicene creed led to Arians taking over Church leadership. This is analagous to the American Presbyreian Chuch subtling misunderstanding hte Westminster Standards to the point of unable to see the Holy Spirit's chapters in the Wesminster Confession (chapters 9-18), and today's constan denial of core Reformed tenents (e.g. Sabbath, good works and rewards) the same.

Tightly connected with this is the issue of Apostolic succession. Roman Catholicism extends the concept of the Rock to Apostolic succession by means of office bearers connected to the descendents of the Peter (the Pope). Evangelicalism has no unified voice on this, but historically ignorant American evangelicalism sometimes gives the impression that it thinks that the Church started in the 1800s. A better approach is to define Apostolic succession by connection to the word. Guy Waters writes that "The Reformation affirmed apostolic succession, but it was defined strictly in terms of succesio Verbi aut doctrinae (succession of the word or of doctrine)."¹⁹.

Contrast this to Roman Catholic Apostolic succession which is defined by the passing down of an ordained ministry. Ironically, the evangelical idea that "the church is the people" tends in this direction as well. But, the Church is defined by the word. The church is an organism manifested by institutions, not an instution itself, and never by any individuals per se; yet, as mentioned, the church exists prior to church membership.

In modern evangelicalism, it's popular to speak of the "three" marks of the Church: the Word, sacraments, and Church discipline. However, this confuses what we're talking about with a way to describe it²⁰. There's only one mark: the Word. This already includes the sacraments since the sacraments are the visible word. Discipline is also already included since the Word needs to be protected. The one mark of the Church is the protected ministry of Word and sacrament²¹.

This is the essence of Apostolic succession and the core of how catholicity is to be conceived. Where was the church before Luther? It was already right there. Ther Westminster Confession of Faith ("WCF") in 25.4 states that "This catholic church hath been sometimes more, sometimes less visible. And particular churches, which are members thereof, are more or less pure, according as the doctrine of the gospel is taught and embraced, ordinances administered, and public worship performed more or less purely in them."

In practice, directly defining "catholic" or "catholicity" isn't helpful. It may best to think of catholic as the opposite of "schismatic" or "separationist". An early example of this is the 4th-century Donatist controversy: if ministers fall away from the faith, are the baptisms that ministered still valid? Those who responded negatively are schismatic: they're ignoring the infallible foundation of the church by confusing it with those fallibile individuals corrupting it -- but the infallible can't be corrupted. In the Donatist controversy, the Church held to a catholic understanding of baptism that tied the effectual nature and ultimate atuhority of baptism to Christ, not to he one who administered the rite. Today we do see some churches, even non-Baptists ones, go the opposite way by letting Church elders to decide to force "rebaptism" of a potential member.

As another example, or perhaps analogy, of the fallible foundation of the word, consider the schismatic practice of removing younger children from the preaching of the word to have a "Jesus learning time" in "Children's Church". Aside from doubting the Spirit's ability to save their children, these parents think that the children won't learn anything from the sermons, as if the goal of a sermon was education or the Spirit is limited by the preacher's ability. Even if it were about education, every parent at some point understands that children learn without paying attention. This is often expemplified by a child repeating profanity they passively picked up from their surroundings. If a Child can learn profanity passively, they can learn to worship Christ through the Spirit's work of your example. The church, at a minimum, can't split itself from the inside. This idea of keeping it together is at the heart of catholicity and why the Donatist controversy was decided the way it was.

In bridging from the concept of catholicity to the term catholic, we need to set in stone a vital principle: never translate the word "catholic". Gospel is no more merely "good news" and more than "catholic" is merely "universal". This rendering loses vital connotation and moves the question, arguably making things more confusing: universal in what sense? Are we not particularists, not universalists?

The word catholic should bring to mind the concept of wholeness. By contrast, a schismatic sect is one separates or split from that wholeness. CCC 830 gives a solid description: "The word "catholic" means "universal," in the sense of "according to the totality" or "in keeping with the whole."

For Protestants, when speaking of this "wholeness" of the Church, we often speak of it from two perspectives. First, the invisible catholic church. This is the collection of all those truly united to Christ. Second, the visible catholic church. WCF 25.3 states:

Unto this catholic visible church Christ hath given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God, for the gathering and perfecting of the saints, in this life, to the end of the world: and doth, by his own presence and Spirit, according to his promise, make them effectual thereunto.

The two perspectives of the church means there are a total of three concepts involved when defining the church: the catholic church proper, those in true, invisible union with Christ, and those public united to each other in foundational visible communion. There's one coin with two sides. The Reformed conception of baptism can act as an analogy here: as Baptism (visible) is the sign of union with Christ (invisible), the visible catholic church is the visible embodiment of the invisible body of Christ.

The break between the invisible and visible is as broken as separating two sides of a coin is meaningless. The separation only exists because of sin. Those born into the church aren't born united to Christ presciecely because of original sin. On this side of the return of Christ, there will always be a chasm, but it's the local church elders to do their best to faithfully guard membership and call true believes into visible communion.

Compare the previous descriptions with the Roman Catholic concept which states that that Christ founded a specific institution with a specific name. Where as the Reformed define the catholic church in a way analagous to baptism, the Roman Catholic conception follows a model that follows the hypostatic union of Christ: Christ established a church with a permanent hypostatic union between the oganism and institution as if the Church exists perfectly with two inseparable natures²².

Recall the opposite of catholic is schismatic. CCC 2089 states that "schism is the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him". For Protestantism, catholicity is defined by the word of God, once unwritten, not written. Deviation from the word is schism. A person isn't schismatic when they move from one congregation to another, they're schismatic when they disconnect from the visible church entirely or deviate from the from the object of faith (the whole Christ). In fact, someone should be encouraged to move to where they're more in line with a congregation's formally declared interpretation of Scripture²³ (maintaining healthy fellowship in the word is discussed later).

Catholicity means that we can't even ask the question "which church is the true church?" Some churches will be closer to scripture than others. However, a question we can ask is: which church is more catholic? Justification is by trusting in the whole Christ alone, but do some theological groups put a barrier between the justified and the sacraments? This isn't a question about theological identity or requirements for being a teacher, this is simply the question of the salvation of a person's soul.

The famous saying extra Ecclesiam nulla salus translates to "outside the Church there is no salvation", but, Protestants need to admit that even in Roman Catholicism, the word "ordinary" is slipped in: "ordinarily, outside the Church there is no salvation". Rome considers all who believe and are baptized to be joined to the church. This includes Protestants:

"The Church knows that she is joined in many ways to the baptized who are honored by the name of Christian, but do not profess the Catholic faith in its entirety or have not preserved unity or communion under the successor of Peter." Those "who believe in Christ and have been properly baptized are put in a certain, although imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church."

Even the requirement of Baptism is sometimes overstated. CCC 1257 states:

The Lord himself affirms that Baptism is necessary for salvation. He also commands his disciples to proclaim the Gospel to all nations and to baptize them. Baptism is necessary for salvation for those to whom the Gospel has been proclaimed and who have had the possibility of asking for this sacrament. The Church does not know of any means other than Baptism that assures entry into eternal beatitude; this is why she takes care not to neglect the mission she has received from the Lord to see that all who can be baptized are "reborn of water and the Spirit." God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments.

God "himself is not bound by his sacraments". This is no different than Protestantism. If you cant be baptized, that's another matter, but you must be be faithful. Crying "but the thief on the cross" is no defense. Persistent disobedience is a sin that Christ isn't the object of your faith. If you love Christ, you will keep his commandments (John 14:15). Misunderstanding the commandments is an entirely different issue, while a lack of desire to understand the commandments shows an apathy to Christ's statement.

Roman Catholicism puts the Church as the true authority for interpreting Scripture, thus making them the objective gate-geekers of doctrinal requirements. That is, because they contain an magisterial (vs. ministerial) office and a leader who can speak infallibly at times, Roman Catholicism has a list of doctrinal items that one may not knowingly deny without being in a state of mortal sin. We see this by starting with CCC 88 which defines "dogma":

The Church's Magisterium exercises the authority it holds from Christ to the fullest extent when it defines dogmas, that is, when it proposes, in a form obliging the Christian people to an irrevocable adherence of faith, truths contained in divine Revelation or also when it proposes, in a definitive way, truths having a necessary connection with these.

When we look at CCC 491, we see that that the immaculate conception (sinlessness of Mary) is a dogma:

Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, "full of grace" through God, was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses, as Pope Pius IX proclaimed in 1854: The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.

Because the immaculate conception is a dogma, it's required for the knowing Christian. For those with "full knowledge and complete consent", it's denial of the immaculate conception is a mortal sin (CCC 1859) Those ignorant of the faith entirely aren't condemned, as are those ignorant of the theological topics under discussion, but this makes that the path of salvation quite difficult for students of religion convinced by some core of Roman Catholicism.

While it's vital to the health of the church to have an extensive theological description uniting the visible body, Roman Catholicism's inappropriate self-definition as the official interpreters of God's voice has the domino affect raising the bar in such a way that an easier path to schism is enabled, thus demonstrating a lower committment to catholicity in Rome than in Protestantism. In other words, because has continual revelation and strong magisterium, Roman Catholicism engages in severe systemic schism through the internal wax nose. It's not every individual coming to a different conclusion; rather, it's the church imagining revelation and molding their theological structure to it. A classic case of this is the Marian dogmas.

This is only news to those who only know Church history from pop-culture. Even the briefest look the Reformers themselves shows that the Reformation was truly about reformation, never about any type of ecclesiastical reboot. The entire point of the Reformation was the removal unbiblical barriers to entry and correcting the abuses the crept in over time. At the heart of this was the correction of the Church structure.

Per WCF 25.4, the visibility of the church is somewhat proportional to purity and level to which "the doctrine of the gospel is taught and embraced, ordinances administered, and public worship performed". 25.5 summarizes this saying that the "purest churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error"; yet, there is a core essence that may be eliminated, entirely invalidating the visibility of a particular congregation to the point where they "become no churches of Christ, but synagogues of Satan". The question remains: has Roman Catholicism deterorated to that point?

While Rome does its best to put boundaries to fellowship and communion at every turn, excluding Rome from the catholic church must be done with care. We share a baptism. We share the creeds. Despite their blasphemous understanding of the Supper, they still have it. Due to a ban on unauthorized (e.g. Protestant) vernacular (non-Latin) Bibles, Roman Catholics were effectively cut off from the private reading of the word, but in the 20th century these walls were removed. Furthermore, preaching wasn't a Reformation invention. In fact, the official name of the "Dominicans" is the "Order of Preachers". The search isn't for absolute purity, but for the remnant of the word. Rome retains the word.

However, despite their insistence that Vatican II didn't change the theology of Trent, it's evident that the contrast in emphases between the 16th and 20th centuries shows a dramatically practical change. 16th century priests, bishops, cardinals, and popes who obstinately sought to "protect" the common man from Scripture were condemning the message of the Gospel itself.

Though they claim to speak for their organization, it remains to the opinion of the reader if the institution of the day formally landed in WCF 25.4 or 25.5 territory. What we may not do is wholesale exclude them without taking into account baptism. Maintaining continuity with the anti-Donatists, even the Reformers accepted the baptism God gave through through the organization that maintained grave errors. Baptism is always and only an ecclesiastical gift; it's not done by private individuals, but by God through the Church.

Creedal Definition

Core to the ecclesiastical idea of wholeness is the concept of the creed. When the collective church speaks in a unified voice of personal heart-felt belief, unity is proclaimed to the world. Catholicity implies this unity at the most foundational level.

For all the attacks between evangelicals, fundamentalists, Roman Catholics, and Protestants, the word remains the common core traceable back to Pentecost. As such, all Christians everywhere should be able to faithful confess the Apostles' Creed:

God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to hell. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty. From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

The Apostles no more wrote this than Newton created all of Newtonian mechanics or modern methods of Pasteurization has anything to do with what Louis Pasteur discovered. The Apostles' Creed faithfully distills an outline of the catholic faith taught in the Word. Denial of this creed is schismatic, faithfully confessing it is catholic.

As such, all Christians everywhere have the opportuntity for foundational unity with Christians of all other backgrounds by faithfully confessing this creed, especially at times when the sacraments are dispensed. The sacraments and the creeds are the two visible symbols of church catholicity.

The word "creed" simply means "I believe", thus may be used to indicate an individual's own belief. You read Scripture through the lens of this creed. If you think Jesus was merely a man, then you'll read the Scriptures vastly differently than someone who takes the words on the page more authoritatively. The lens is always there and will often act as tool for confirmation bias. There's no such thing as "simply reading Scripture" or as neutrality.

Church Historian Carl Trueman gets to the point:

I do want to make the point here that Christians are not divided between those who have creeds and confessions and those who do not; rather, they are divided between those who have public creeds and confessions that are written down and exist as public documents, subject to public scrutiny, evaluation, and critique, and those who have private creeds and confessions that are often improvised, unwritten, and thus not open to public scrutiny, not susceptible to evaluation and, crucially and ironically, not, therefore, subject to testing by Scripture to see whether they are true.²⁴

In short, either you're consciously adhereing to a creed that's uniting you to the catholic faith or you're a schismatic enslaved by the invisible chains of a private creed. Those living on an island may not know the difference, but the moment you step into a Bible study or even get on social media, your private creed will be offended and you're on your own to defend it. This should highlight the vitality of the Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian creeds as well as the Chalcedonian Definition.

Creeds aren't inspired by the Spirit; rather, they're codified statements of faith based on rigorous corporate study and prayer. They're not from the Spirit's inspiration, but the Spirit's corporate illumination. Each of the creeds is developed in the same manner, including the creed that even the most ardent "anti-creedalists" still maintain: the Bible's table of contents.

The list of the 66 books published in every Protestant and evangelical Bible doesn't come from each individual or each publishing house doing their own rigorous study, rather, it's accepted as a creed from the church. This idea of Scriptural canonicity is directly related to church catholicity. Using this as an example may help to understand the vitality of publicly verifyable creeds.

Michael Kruger identifies the three elements of canonicity: providential exposure, attributes of canonicity (divine qualities, corporate reception, apostolic origins), and the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit:

Providential exposure. In order for the church to be able to recognize the books of the canon, it must first be providentially exposed to these books. The church cannot recognize a book that it does not have.

Attributes of canonicity. These attributes are basically characteristics that distinguish canonical books from all other books. There are three attributes of canonicity: (1) divine qualities (canonical books bear the “marks” of divinity), (2) corporate reception (canonical books are recognized by the church as a whole), and (3) apostolic origins (canonical books are the result of the redemptive-historical activity of the apostles).

Internal testimony of the Holy Spirit. In order for believers to rightly recognize these attributes of canonicity, the Holy Spirit works to overcome the noetic effects of sin and produces belief that these books are from God.²⁵

The internal testimony of the Spirit is a vital component. Without the Spirit's continued work in the Church, there simply can't be a Biblical canon. Similarly, without the Spirit's continued work in the Church, there simply can't be church catholicity. Thus, while the Spirit no longer gives new content, he does still speak through the existing content to apply it to our lives However, this isn't merely done in a personal manner. Kruger writes of the priority of the corporate testimonium.

If the testimonium can reliably lead an individual to belief in the canon, there seems little reason why we should not affirm such reliability for the church as a whole. On the contrary, one might even argue that there are biblical reasons to be more confident in the role of the testimonium on a corporate level. After all, we have additional biblical testimony that we should heed “an abundance of counselors” (Prov. 11:14) and run the same path as the “great cloud of witnesses” (Heb. 12:1) that have gone before us. Moreover, it is the church, and not just the individual, that is given the Spirit: the church is God’s house (1 Tim. 3:15), also called a “spiritual house” (1 Pet. 2:5), and is a body with one Spirit (1 Cor. 12:13). All of this suggests that if we doubt the testimonium on a corporate level, we would be compelled to doubt it equally on an individual level.²⁶

This isn't describing the Roman Catholic magisterial (teacher/master) office, this the church's ministerial (servant) office. Kruger is describing the Protestant, not the Roman Catholic view of the canon, and everything he write can directly apply to the creeds. This corporate work is how the church faithfully handles the word received from the Apostles.

The creeds, such as the Apostle's, Nicene, and Athanasian creeds as well as the Chalcedonian Definition, not flags, are the symbols and standards of the faith. These unite Christians across the centuries. Proclaiming a rejection of these creeds in favor of holding to the Bible-alone is schism, not catholic unity.

Theologizing

Many hundreds of years before the formal development of modern literary analysis hermeneutical tools, the church was able to mine the depths of scripture and come up with some of the best expressions of Christology the church has ever had; see, for example in the Nicene and Athanasian creeds.

While it's important to approach any text with the basic literary tools required to survive in life, looking at Scripture as merely a book with myriad authors with God as an editor isn't enough. Scripture is without error because God is the primary author across the board. This enables us to have different priorities in reading the written word. These higher priorities are detailed in the Westminster Confession of Faith.

First, in WCF 1.9 we read that "the infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself". This is the analogy of faith (analogia fidei)²⁷. However, in our modern context we need to be reminded that, because we're typically working with translations, and the chapter and verse separations are entirely man-made, we need to correlate the meanings of texts, not merely the literal words themselves. As always, context is in the drivers seat.

We don't want to lose the forest for the trees; we need to look at the forest of Scripture from the top down as a whole to see the entirety of the redemptive message in its full expression. In other words, the analogy of faith an be simply understood as the fact that we read the local texts in light of the previously established global understanding across the whole of Scripture.

This enables us to read Moses' words in Genesis 2-3 as God actually intends: by reading it through the lense of Paul's account of the same events in Rom. 5 and 1 Cor. 15. This Pauline interpretation isn't an Apostolic rewriting of history, but a true explanation of the original Genesis events. The same can be said any time a New Testament author writes about Old Testament events. They're not changing the meaning, but clarifying their inherent meaning²⁸.

Second, WCF 1.6 states "the whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good [legitimate] and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture". Because God is the author, both his wording and his implications are binding. Anything that's legitimately deduced from Scripture is just as much Scripture as the exact words on the page²⁹.

This concept is referred to as good and necessary consequence, and is so vital to the New Testament, that readers have little chance at understanding Old Testament references without it³⁰. One of the simplest examples of this process is still fairly complex: the Trinity³¹. In fact, without the concept of good and necessary consequence, we only have a set of independent verses, not anything resembling a developed Trinitarian theology³².

Though there are myriad excellent examples in the New Testament, perhaps a popular example of good and necessary consequence is Matthew 22:23-34 where Sadducees confronted Christ about a woman who had seven husbands who died³³. They ask "in the resurrection... of the seven, whose wife will she be? For they all had her?" His answer to their question was to refer to Exodus 3:6 and point out an implication already in the text: Christ stated that God said "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob" and that God "is not God of the dead, but of the living". This silenced the Sadducees (v34).

The reason this entirely closed the case was because resurrection is always either for both body and soul or neither, so if there is a resurrection inwardly ("soul") there is one outwardly ("body"). The idea of living disembodied spirits is an idea best left to Greek mythology and cartoons. The fact that God is the God of the living directly implies that there's a bodily resurrection. The Sadducees were put to shame because they completely missed such an obvious point³⁴.

Instead of giving an exegetical argument on the resurrection from the Psalms³⁵ , Christ told these Bible scholars that they don't know the Scriptures. Though they knew the entirety of the Scriptural text from a life-time of study, without seeing the implications of the text, their knowledge was merely surface level³⁶. According to Christ's standard, that doesn't qualify as knowing the Scriptures. That which is obtained by good and necessary consequence from a text is indepensible to the meaning of a text. This concept is vital, not just in directly understanding Scripture, but applications in day-to-day life, including health and politics³⁷.

Far from being a way of allegorizing the text, good and necessary consequence is a protection against it. Without the ability and mandate to legitimately infer true implications of a passage, we may be tempted to infuse unlegitimate or unnecessary meaning. Additionally, without good and necessary consequence extra-biblical authority often swoops in to fill a theological void³⁸. This later issue is very much to our overall point: while Roman Catholicism expands revelation outward to sources outside of Scripture, the Reformed, and frankly the church catholic going back to the early creeds, acknowledges a dept of revelation that enables a downward spelunking into what's already given.

These two principles make up the foundational exegetical tools we need to understand Scripture, but the third core principle is just as indepensible. WCF 1.7 states that "all things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all: yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation, are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them."

This the WCF's statement on Scriptural perspecuity³⁹, or clarity. This is often paraphrased as "the main thing as the plain things". Thus, while John 3:16 is an excellent summation of the Biblical message, the clarity of Scripture (perspicuity) enables and obliges us to say more. What the Spirit placed into our hands is profoundly vast and deep.

The primary message of Scripture is plain, but even as God accommodated himself⁴⁰ to our creaturely, finite limitations⁴¹, the deeper structures of the faith can be as complex as astrophysics or mathematics⁴². The clarity of Scripture implies that humanity as a whole can understand Scripture; perceived obscurity, Petrus van Mastricht writes, "is surely not due so much to Scripture as to the feebleness of our intellect".⁴³ Therefore, Scriptural clarity does not do away with the need for humble diligence⁴⁴.

Because Scripture has a strong clarity, the early church was able to gain a tremendous amount of insight by reading and exegeting the text; however, Scripture can also be mined to intense levels of detail. Eeach generation builds on the previous in a continal process of iron-sharpening-iron. In other words, as Gregory says, "Scripture is like a river-broad and deep-shallow enough for the lamb to wade, but deep enough for the elephant to swim."⁴⁵

Altogether, it should be clear why those who hold to these fundamental exegetical principles are so often accused of holding to tradition and eisegesis by those who only have the basic literary skills such as "who wrote the book?", "to whom was it written?", etc. We need to look deeper than the surface.

Take for example, the Trinity. There is no single text that demonstrates the Trinty. You need to establish the deity of each person via ductions then correlate that with the established concept of monotheism. Using this same pattern, we arrive at infant baptism, the continued application of Sabbath, the eternal generation of the Son, the procession of the Spirit, Divine simplicity, the Covenant of Works, and others⁴⁶. We're always citing Scripture, but never without extensive explanation of the deductions and correlations.

On this point, Scott Swain writes:

Proof texting demonstrates the Reformed catholic nature of sound theology, in that it ties scriptural exegesis (attention to our final authority) to its context in the ongoing interpretative conversation of the communion of the saints as found in the exegetical tradition (our lesser authorities).⁴⁷

While this discussion of exegesis may seem like an arbitrary excursus, because the word "tradition" has a different meaning in Protestantism than it does in Roman Catholicism, it's vital to understand the components of Protestant exegesis before looking at the Protestant conception of tradition.

Tradition

Roman Catholicism rejects sola Scripture exactly because they have more than Scripture as an ultimate source of truth. This second ultimate source of truth is Church tradition. That is, Roman Catholic tradition is a parallel stream of revelation next to and not ultimately rooted in Scripture.

The Protestant concept of sola Scriptura merely denies that other source of ultimate truth. It doesn't erase the past or deny creedal or confessional authority; it simply states that Scripture is the only ultimate source of truth. It has no other meaning. The fact that so many Biblical concepts come from a deep analysis and correlation of Biblical data, it would be nothing less than irresponsible to disregard tradition entirely. The Church isn't just the Church now, but back through history, and we're building theology ultimately from Scripture alone over time.

Because Protestantism accepts this form of tradition as a Scripturally-subordinated stream of theology, not an ultimate source of truth, and because we correlate the meaning of Scripture with Scripture, not merely the explicit words with other explicit words, the concept of the analogy of faith, transcends the individual theologian. Put simply, the analogy of faith cross the centuries, not merely the pages of Scripture. The profound, vastness of God's revelation makes any individualistic endeavor foolish at best⁴⁸. Ryan McGraw summarizes:

Reformed Protestants interpreted Scripture in terms of the analogy of faith (analogia fidei). The analogy of faith referred to the fact that the Bible must be interpreted in terms of an already-established body of doctrine. Initially this referred to the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Decalogue (as it had in the Middle Ages), but it eventually included the later catechisms and confessions of the church.⁴⁹

It's not feasible for each person to develop the entirety of all, or even most, of the complex concepts in Christianity. We have to write it down and agree on it. We should avoid an evangelicalism that seeks to be a "sort of iconoclasm that destroys the doctrinal and exegetical traditions of previous eras"⁵⁰. Truly, "he who ignores the creeds under the slogan of going to the Bible does despite to the Spirit who has led the church into all truth."⁵¹. This doesn't just mean the appreciation and use of great commentaries, but also standing on foundational confessional codification.

When we talk about "Scripture alone" without anything external, we're talking about nuda Scriptura, not sola Scriptura. This is, frankly, completely delusional, since we ourselves always bring our own baggage to everything we read. Nuda Scriptura that the "Bible is our only standard" is a schismatic idea that's the essence of the wax nose problem (i.e. molding Scripture to fit a specified shape). This is sometimes called solo Scriptura (with an o)⁵². This has no home in the Church⁵³ as it's somewhat also a rejection of the Church itself: individuals seek direct illumination from the Spirit through Scripture directly without any guardrails established by the Church.

This idea, also called biblicism, is a reification of a Roman Catholic caricature of sola Scriptura. That which separates nuda Scriptura from sola Scripture is that the latter includes healthy church tradition and standards as true, yet Scripturally-subordinated authorities⁵⁴. Like Roman Catholic tradition, nuda Scriptura is another way to reject sola Scriptura.

In addition to continual revelation equal with Scripture and the denial of tradition entirely, another position that rejects sola Scriptura is prima Scriptura. Though it's often found in recent expressions of Anglicanism, it's perhaps most popular in some charismatic groups. To be clear, not all who utter the words "God told me" are literally claiming that God spoke to them, rather they're just colloqually relaying that God used their intuition, disposition, and existing understanding of Scripture to guide them to a decision. This is a normal way the Spirit works and is entirely in line with sola Scriptura. However, claims of hearing audible voices or seeing visions, especially visions of Christ (which Scripture forbids anyway) are statements relating to continual revelation (though unknowingly of a demonic form).

Though one common defense is that these voices or visions are good as long as they don't contradict Scripture, this is exactly the Roman Catholic understanding of continual revelation per the Dei Verbum statement of Vatican II, but the charismatic model is worse in that it's not up for ecclesiastical review⁵⁵. If the defense is that Scripture remains the ultimate authority and other continual sources of revelation continue, the person in question is rejecting sola Scriptura in favor of prima Scriptura.

In sola Scriptura, the issue isn't whether theology is consistent with Scripture, but if it's extrapolated from Scripture as the one and only source of theology. Something may be found not to be in conflict with Scripture, but if it didn't come from Scripture, we're not dealing with sola Scriptura. Equal sources of theology (Roman Catholicism), additional revelation subordinated to Scripture (prima Scriptura), and true "Scripture alone" without a received tradition (nuda Scriptura) are rejections of sola Scriptura.

Though they're not taken as seriously as they should be in contemporary evangelicalism, the Reformer's adamant position on sola Scripture demanded that they took those who came before them, especially the Church Fathers, very seriously; David Fink writes that "the task of interpreting scripture was inextricable from the task of interpreting the Church Fathers, as even a cursory glance through the exegetical writings of the reformers will show."⁵⁶

We can gain a better appreciation for the Protestant conception of tradition by looking to the Lutheran counterpart to John Calvin: Martin Chemnitz. He made helpful distinctions between various types of tradition, accepting seven, rejecting only one. Though we've covered much of this already, let's summarize using Chemnitz' categories:

First, what the Apostles taught and wrote down. We call this Scripture. The fact that this exists and is maintained down to this day is tradition. Protestants typically refer to this as "providential", but if nothing else, you can think of tradition as something providentially passed on in the church.

Second, the canon of Scripture. None of us came up with this on our own. This isn't developed and re-tested by each and every publishing house either. We accepted this as a creed that's so important that we're OK with it being printed as a table of contents in the front of Bibles. We don't really claim some type of archeological evidence to support the canon as none of us really do that work before accepting it. We accepted it on faith and we teach our kids to accept it on faith as well.

Third, the theology expressed in the ecumenical creeds. Those in the west probably picked this up by osmosis just by listening to people talk about Easter and Christmas. Then we read Scripture and read the words within that context. You're not reading Scripture in a vacuum. Through those holidays alone, we receive the traditional understanding the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement, and the Resurrection.

Fourth, the natural reading of the text of Scripture. The fact that you read the Bible in your own language is tradition. The fact that you use the clearer parts of Scripture to interpret that more difficult parts is tradition.

Fifth, good and necessary consequence. The fact that we can't find explicit Bible passages about the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the equality of the Spirit with the Father and Son, and many other things, proves that we accept them by good and necessary consequence from Scripture, but the heavy lifting is typically done by those who came before us. We trust, but verify. The trust is tradition.

Sixth, consensus of the Church Fathers. This might seem like a stretch, but consider the alternative: we dare not say the early church fell into wholesale theological apostasy. Ultimately, the consensus of the Fathers is basically the same thing as saying that we hold to the incarnation, perfect life of Christ, death, burial, resurrection, and that Christ will return. We don't typically learn this on our own. For the most part, we all got it passed down to us by the Church fathers. What's handed down is the interpretation, which helps us even to this day.

Seventh, customs of the Fathers. The sacraments of the early church passed to us. We didn't come up with this on our own. Even the Reformers didn't simply go to Scripture without looking to the fathers, but they looked at the traditional definition of sacrament and saw exactly what you'd expect. Yes, if you're trying to find 7 sacraments, you can find things to call sacraments, but it's just 2 sacraments and things that guide the Christian life (ordination, marriage). Not Even Roman Catholicism calls fasting a sacrament. A sacrament has a sign component that points to a reality component, and it has an attached promise.

These healthy types of tradition, like historical theology in general, are ways to do peer review with a great cloud of witnesses. We're foolish to disregard this. In fact, wisdom mandates that we take seriously the contexts, debates, and outcomes of the times various issues were discussed in the past. On this point, Davenant writes:

For as in order to the cure of diseases it is of primary importance to be well acquainted with their origin and causes; so likewise in order to settle controversies, it is an essential advantage thoroughly to understand on what occasion they arose, by whom they were contested, in what manner and how far they were agitated by the antients. Let us therefore apply ourselves to a concise elucidation of this business.⁵⁷

The eighth type is the one to be rejected. Roman Catholicism claims to have a continual line of revelation as a authority in parallel to Scripture; in fact, Scripture is a mode of tradition. In contrast to this eighth category of tradition, Protestantism has sola Scriptura, which simply means: we neither have nor need any further unwritten teaching from the Apostles or continued revelation. Scripture is sufficient; it's not only our final authority, but we have no further revelation. All our tradition comes from Scripture, nowhere else.

Heretics use the idea of an unwritten tradition to try to control people. This isn't always in the form of supernatural revelation. For example, in the early church, the claims were that the Apostles handed down more than what's been inscripturated. Today, Pastors throughout evangelicalism maintain an understanding of Scripture through the lens of themselves. In this model, it's common to see situations where deviating from the written rules is acceptable, while deviating from the unwritten leads to serious consequences.

Furthermore, we see this in contemporary evangelicalism as well, though not in the sense of an unwritten inspired tradition passed from the Apostles, nor from continuing revelation, but in the "genius theologian" problem. Where pastors claim that they're guided by the Spirit in illumination to the one and only truth of the text, even though, their conclusions aren't at all defensible from the text itself.

One of the harshest, unmovable traditions today that can, at a minimum, be classified in this category, is King James-onlyism. The level of binding by an unbiblical and unhealthy tradition in King James-onlyism either equals or surpasses Roman Catholicism.

Beyond the fundamentalist Baptists, you see this in Churches all over where a Pastor is coming to a conclusion with the "Bible alone", then is teaching his own conclusion to the congregation. What's truly catastrophic is that American Christians think that is not only normal, but right: isn't the Pastor supposed to exegete the text and teach his understanding of the text? Yes, but not through the lens of his own personal tradition. This is the problem of the wax nose.

Exegesis must always and only be done in communication to both the church catholic through history and in a manner unites individuals beyond a local congregation. Thus, this model of a single teacher with his own lens, too, is something that rivals Roman Catholicism. The concept of a senior pastor in a "Bible alone" church is the concept of a mini Pope. This is one of the first steps in spiritual abuse of a local congregation.

Our primary purpose in this life is to glorify God an enjoy him forever (WSC 1). Later we will do this by sight, but now we do so by faith by seeking God in his word (2 Cor. 5:7) by his Spirit. Yet, this word isn't merely the expressed words, but also the implications and concepts synthesized across the whole of the wider Scriptural corpus. We are to use and reuse the Spirit's illuminations deposited into the church to this end. Recreating the whole of theology in each generation isn't the goal of the church⁵⁸.

The Westminster Confession of Faith is the preeminent example of a healthy reliance on good and necessary consequence and the analogy of faith. It's explicit expression of the Covenant of Works, the Sabbath, and sacramentology are not based on a surface-level understanding of statements or crass proof-texting, but based on a faithful trust in God's word: in the direct text, in his control of implications, and in his authorship of the whole of Scripture.

To put it differently, we never want to hold to unwritten scriptures, but to the written scriptures. And we always want to read all tradition through the light of scripture, not just at the surface, but in the depths through the logical deductions of Scripture, and we want to not hold to unwritten tradition, but to written tradition, something that can be falsified by the depths of scripture.

The principle difference is this: healthy tradition is the passing down of an interpretation of Scripture, unhealthy tradition is the passing down of things outside of Scripture. Healthy tradition is acts as the bond of unity in the local church. This is the spirit of the Protestant confession and the Protestant conception of tradition.

Part II: Historical-Theological Survey

From Movements to Confessional Reformation

With the Protestant conception of the catholic church and the Protestant and Roman Catholic understandings of tradition differentiated, we can finally discuss the Reformation in its own context. The overwhelming majority of pop-culture works on church history jump from Luther in 1517 to Calvin in the 1540s, which is historically and pegagogically indefensible. The twin errors of discussing the Reformation are: first, anacrhonistically separating the ecclesastical from the civil and painting the Reformation as relating to updating doctrine, and second, speaking of the reformation in terms of updating ad hoc doctrinal points.

In the providence of God, the year we mark for the Reformation (1517) was the same year that the Fifth Lateran Council (1512-1517) ended⁵⁹. A major outcome of this council was the reassertion of Papal supremacy against a conciliarism that claimed that the councils have more authority than the Pope. This deepened the schism with the East and further exposed the need for reformation. Despite this grave error, there was still hope for reformation of the existing western institution. Hope doesn't fade into darkness until the Council of Trent. Because they didn't yet have a separate identity, it's entirely anachronistic to speak of "Roman Catholic Church" or "Roman Catholicism"⁶⁰ during the events of the reformation. At this point, we're only speaking of the western medieval church.

When speaking of the ecclesiological context of 1517, there are myriad factors to consider; let's simply list three: First, though there were existing attempts at reform before Luther, these were focused on morality and spirituality. In fact, some of the grassroots outcomes of these endeavors intensified the need for correction by the Reformation that we know today⁶¹. Second, faithful church members in previous centuries very much noticed eccelesiastical corruption. Luther's epistilary rival, Erasmus, is considered a catholic reformer and Dante placed three popes (Nicholas III, Boniface VIII, and Celestine V) in hell in his Inferno. Third, the competing theologial schools of the via antiqua and via moderna (both to be discussed later), were bound to prompt a council at some point.

These three factors tell us that some type of Trent-like reform of the western church would have happened even without Luther. It's dishonest to consider every aspect of western reformation as part of a "counter reformation" that exists to combat Protestantism. Lindberg writes:

The Catholic renewal movement was not merely a reaction - a Counter-Reformation - to the Reformation. Before Luther, there was already sharp criticism of the church that may be illustrated by the Italian proverb that the person who goes to Rome will lose his or her faith, and by the acrostic for Rome, R[adix] O[mnium] M[alorum] A[varitia]: “love of money is the root of all evil.”⁶²

Broadly speaking, Protestant reformation is an ark of truth that protects Biblical fidelity during a time that demanded theological clarity and moral cleansing. Zooming into the latter 1510s and early 1520, just as Roman Catholicism doesn't exist with a separate identity until Trent, none of the groups that emerged from the Protestant reformation gained their identity until ecclesiastical identifies are formalized via confessions of faith. In this time period we're talking about local movements as represented by various "genius theologians" including Luther, Bucer, Oecolampadius, and Zwingli.

Stepping back from the ecclesiological context to look at the general historical landscape, we see that both before and during the Reformation as a whole there was a "universal consensus that society, including politics, was defined by the Christian religion" called the corpus Christianum⁶³. To our modern ears, this corpus Christianum represents an over-realized eschatology that, from an amillennial perspective, bleeds visible elements of the eschaton into the current millennial kingdom. Additionally, this medieval arrangement often assumed civil jurisdictions that would lead in ecclesiastical manners through the cura religionis (the care/jurisdiction of religion)⁶⁴. For our purposes, this means that Europe was Christian, which means under the headship of the Papacy.

Furthermore, the emperor, Charles V, was a dedicated servant of the Pope, meaning, at a macro-level, the communal movement of Luther (called the Gemeindereformation), and others later to be known as reformers, faced an uphill battle. Just after the "Here I stand" Diet of Worms in 1521, Charles issued the Edict of Worms, declaring Luther an outlaw⁶⁵. This mirrored the Exsurge Domine papal bull from a year earlier that the Pope used to condemn Luther as a heretic.

However, despite both the emperor and France being sided with the Pope against Luther, political tension between the Hapsburg family, of which the emperor was a part, and the Valois family, who ruled France, took precedence over any possible unified front against Luther's movement. Additionally, France made an alliance with the Islamic Ottoman empire against the Hapsburg family, intensifying the scale of the war for the Emperor. Additionally, as an electoral capitulation of the election of the Emperor, Charles was unable to wholesale enforce his will over Germanic lands and respect some of the freedoms of the imperial princes⁶⁶. The emperor who grew up in the Netherlands was at war with a French family, was fighting a Spanish rebellion (Comuneros Revolt) as the King of Spain, and was dealing with a Germanic movement over which he had limited control. As a result, the seedling movement had a path forward to grow into the Reformation we know today.

Because national identity, family allegiances, and financial influence are typically more powerful than religious identity⁶⁷, in addition to the "Catholic" France siding with the Muslims, the imperial princes loosened their grip on their own theological commitments in pursuit of their own liberties⁶⁸. This led the movement to turn into the "Princes' Reformation"⁶⁴. Thus, while the Edict of Worms outlawed Luther and his sympathizers, Luther had to rely on special protection from a prince, if he chose to provide it⁷⁰. Lindberg writes:

Deprived of help by the great medieval authorities, Luther now relied upon his prince and also appealed directly to the people. The latter move had already been noted by the Catholic controversialists as a rebellious stance that could only lead to insurrection. In short, Luther was now the leader of a religious movement that in effect had become a revolution.⁷¹

The edict remained in force until the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. However, due to the emperor's preoccupation with the war, and Luther's protection, the 1521 edict of worms was not enforced, thus the 1526 Diet of Spyer was called to agree on a path forward. The result of this diet was the ius reformandi (the right to reform) which allowed each territory to choose their own religion. While it may be that some princes were genuinely interested in establishing the reformation, this also gave them a better ability to control reformation, helping control the revolutionary elements⁷².

A few years after the 1529 Diet of Spyer, Charles's representative and younger brother Ferdinand tried to reverse the 1526 diet to enforce the 1521 edict of worms and regain imperial control. Lindberg writes that:

[Ferdinand] categorically demanded the nullification of the 1526 article that had led to such shocking growth of new doctrines and sects. The edict of Worms must be enforced and the old faith protected. All religious innovation must be halted and the jurisdiction of bishops restored. Supported by a majority of Catholic princes and bishops, and buoyed by the emperor’s victory over the pope in Italy, Ferdinand led the way to the reinstatement of the edict of Worms.

Like many movements of persecution against Christians, what was intended by humans as evil, God intended for good (cf Genesis 50:20). The move against the various reform movements was supported by the Papal princes and bishops, which led to the follows of Luther presenting a formal appeal of the minority against an unjust majority and called a protestatio, the origin of the word "Protestant", originally a perjorative, much like "Christian" from the book of Acts.

While the Luther movement was spreading, Ulrich Zwingli was seeking reform in his own land. As early as 1519, Zwingli was deviating from the church calendar to preach through books of the Bible. Zwingli too had a run-in with indulgence abusers⁷³, but the action of Zwingli that got him on the Church's radar his the 1522 defense of eating meat during lent. However, unlike Luther, Zwingli had a city of refuge where he could publicly teach⁷⁴. Additional, Oecolampadius was doing reform in Basil, preaching on justification by faith as early as 1512, five years before Luther⁷⁵. Similarly, Bucer was preaching the gospel in Strasbourg in 1521⁷⁶, which got him excommunicated, forcing him to take refuse in Stasbourg.

The year 1529 is special in Reformation history, and its absense from many church history books is worthy of lament. It's the year that connects various reform movements across the land. Four reformation-friendly states and fourteen free imperial cities, of which these refomers were theological representatives, were the signers of the 1529 protestatio. Lindberg writes:

The signatories to this protestatio included Lutheran (e.g. Electoral Saxony), and Zwinglian (e.g. Strasbourg) areas; hence the German Lutheran prince, Philip of Hesse (1504–67), was convinced that the time was ripe to create an international political and military alliance between the Lutherans and the Zwinglians for their mutual protection against the emperor, and for the spread of the Reformation.⁷⁷

For alliances between the various local reform movements to be possible, Hesse needed to get Luther and Zwingli on the same theological page. Muller writes:

From the earliest stages of the Reformation, therefore, the confessions provide a source of more objectively stated doctrinal principles and a source of churchly, standardized norms (norma normata) within the bounds and under the guidance of which orthodox theological system could develop.⁷⁸

Getting on the same theological page meant having an established confession of faith to unify the groups. Thus, in October 1529, Hesse invited Luther, Zwingli and others to his Marburg castle. They agreed on 14 of the 15 articles, falling out on the Supper⁷⁹. Because the Reformed conception of the Supper, which is far closer to the Lutheran conception than the Zwinglian, wouldn't be recovered from Scripture for another decade, the choices at Marburg were the Lutheran Supper with its novel Christology and Zwingli's novel model of Christless memorialism.

Though modern evangelicals mock Luther's strict insistince on his understanding of the Supper, these evangelicals are the historic minority. To this day, Roman Catholicism, the East, Lutheranism, and the Reformed treat the Supper as the height of corporate worship. This isn't an issue that can be mocked as tertiary.

Public theological alignment ("fellowship") with those holding to a Christless sacrament must be done with extreme care and nuance. Indeed, even though no confessional or military alliance was possible between Luther and Zwingli⁸⁰, Luther was right to hold this as a clear dividing line.

We see the importance of this two decades after Marburg: even though Calvin's Biblically-recovered model of the Supper was closer to Luther than Zwingli, in Calvin's desire for political unity, he "realized that union of the Reformed and Lutheran churches was unrealizable unless the stumbling block of the Marburg colloquy (1529) could be overcome"⁸¹. This led Calvin to work with Zwingli's successor Heinrich Bullinger, to reach a consensus called the Consensus Tigurinus.

Calvin's signature on a document with the memorialists raised immediate eyebrows. Mark Garcia writes:

Calvin's most fateful act was his simple signature on the Consensus Tigerenus. For the rest of his days Calvin would live in the shadow of the Consensus. From its publication in 1551 Calvin was engaged in explaining, clarifying, and defending his relationship to this document.⁸²

Trueman explains that the Consensus Tigurinus "essentially just touches on those areas where the Calvinists and those of Zwinglians agreed. It doesn't touch on the areas where they disagreed, and it's those areas of the spiritual feeding on christ in the Lord's Supper where one would find disagreement between the Calvinists and the men of Zurich."⁸³.

The chasm between memorialists who hold to Christ's presence "according to the divine nature" and the Calvinistic model of the Supper is so wide, that it's astonishing that anyone can confuse them, but Calvin's own political actions did lend weight toward such confusion. The Calvinistic model of the Eucharist, even to this day, is repeatedly interpreted as being a literary game like the Zwinglians or as being merely ethical or mental; these ideas can only be found in Calvin by confirmation bias.

Calvin's Eucharistic theology, which grew into the confessionally-Reformed faith, effectively moves Luther's "Christ is present in" to "Christ is present to". As such, given the pressures of the day, it may have been compatible with each side at Marburg enough to allow for some form of confessional unity. In fact, this was arguably the intent of Melancthon when he created an altered variant of the Augsburg Confession in 1540 called the variata, to which Calvin himself subscribed.

The variata changed articled 10 to enable subscription to Calvin's understanding, changing "present" to "present to". It also removes the line stating that "the contrary teaching is rejected." It's likely that Melancthon still held to the unaltered Lutheran wording, but "no longer believed that on account of this conviction he ought to exclude from church fellowship those who believed differently."⁸⁴

Though there was no confessional unity in 1529, the year marks the end of the reform movements with 1530 marking the beginning of the Lutheran and the seedling "reformed" confessional Protestant reformation. The Lutherans presented the Augsburg Confession, written primarily by Philipp Melanchthon⁸⁵, to the Emperor and the Bucer proceeded to seek approval for a confession of faith by four cities of Strasbourg, codifying the Tetrapolitan confession⁸⁶.

At the 1555 peace of Augsburg, the concept of cuius regio, eius religio (his region, his religion) ratified confessional divisions along territorial lines, reminding us once again that, during the reformation⁸⁷, there is no church history without "secular" history. This brings us back to one of the twin errors of reformation studies: anacrhonistically separating the ecclesastical from the civil.

In the Lutheran Augsburg Confession, the medieval concept, even championed by Luther, of the prince as an "emergency Bishop"⁸⁹ was not only not confessionally codified, Lutheranism formally moved away from it in Article 28. As such, the Lutherans did a great work in adding some safeguards against the over-realized eschatology of allowing the state to interfere in ecclesiastical matters. The Reformed, on the other hand, continued the medieval error of the corpus Christianum even through the Westminster Assembly.

The original 1646 Westminster Confession of Faith even includes statements giving the state far too much space in the Church, conclicting with the book of Acts. This problem wasn't resolved until American Presbyterians, aligning themselves with the new republic's separation of church and state, substantially revised Chapter 23 of the Westminster Confession at the 1788 Synod of Philadelphia. This confessionally prohibited the return to the corpus Christianum, the premodern predecessor of Christian Nationalism.

Thus, when speaking of the Reformation, we can never speak of church history without also speaking of history in general. Calvin himself sought reform in Geneva, having little success persueding the city council to enforce the confession of faith onto the city population or implementing any actual church discipline⁹⁰. This reminds us that civil interference in the Church was not resolved by the Reformation. It's only in the post-American revolution world that we can speak of a healthy separation of the keys and the sword; even nearly a century after Calvin, the original Westminster Confession of Faith allowed the keys and the sword to dance.

The other major error in Reformation discussion is in thinking of Reformation in terms of ad hoc doctrinal content. Reformation is only done by confessionalization, thus the vitality of the years 1529 and 1530. 1529 marks the failure to acheive confessional unity across local reform movements, while 1530 marks the year of official public statements of confessional identities.

The Reformation was a Catholic reformation of the church that sought to continue listening to the voice of the Spirit through the corporate Church toward a unified confession of the Christian faith as mandated by Scripture itself.

Fesko writes:

Each of these texts [Exod. 13:14–15; Deut. 6:4–6; 1 Tim. 1:15; 3:1; 4:7–9; 2 Tim. 2:11–13; Titus 3:4–8; Jude 3] captures the idea that God expects his people to take his authoritative revelation, reflect on and study it, restate it in their own words, and pass it down to future generations. The Bible mandates the creation and maintenance of a biblically faithful confessional and catechetical tradition.⁹¹

As we'll discuss in a moment, the 1530 confessions of faith created the bond of unity among church members in local congregations; however, the 1529 disagreement over the Supper at Marburg caused divergent branches of the Reformation as a whole. This doesn't forbid the possibility of eccumenical relations; in fact, though ad hoc doctrines don't provide the requisite structure for local fellowship, they do provide exactly what's required for eccumenical relations.

Bucer and Calvin led the way in "international Protestant–Catholic ecumenical efforts to avoid the division of Christendom that finally happened with the council of Trent."⁹² This ultimately created three levels of confessional unity. First, at the local congregational and Presbytery level, a confession of faith provides the bond of unity which enables fellowship. Second, unofficial statements of faith provide some possibility of eccumenical relations which can enable divergent groups to work toward a confession of faith. Third, the creeds provide Catholic unity in the one, holy, Apostolic, Catholic Church between the members of the one and only Chuch across Rome, Lutheranism, the Reformed, etc.

The Reformed branch of the Reformation flourished via the continual flow of migrants and theological works in a triangle with the vertices of England⁹⁴, the Netherlands⁹⁵, and France⁹⁶, culminating in the French Confession, Belgic Confession, Heidelberg Catechism, and Second Helvetic Confession. The Lutherans continued their confessionalization through the The Apology of the Augsburg Confession (1531), the Smalcald Articles (1537), The Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope (1537), Luther’s Small Catechism (1529), Luther’s Large Catechism (1529), and the Formula of Concord (1577), all of which built out the The Book of Concord (1580).

As disent emerges, it must be tested against a proper exegesis of Scripture within the existing theological and confessional infrastructure, not merely shallow proof-texting. Everyone is working with the same text, so hurling passages at each other gets nowhere⁹⁷. Theological precision is required to lock out the subtleties of the devil and generalities which lead to conflict-prone ambiguities.

Ultimately, Lutheranism, the Reformed faith, and Anglicanism each ground themselves in reality by establishing codified confessions of faith which define the legitimate boundaries of the faith as the definitional dividing line between right theology (orthodoxy) and deviation from it (heterodoxy). The confessions "define truth and fence off heterodoxy and heresy while allowing a degree of doctrinal latitude within the boundaries of the confession."⁹⁸

Creeds establish foundational, catholic unity in the faith, while confessions go deeper, creating a space for deeper unity in the word⁹⁹. Creeds provide general agreement with other Christians while confessions enable deeper corporate worship and functional Bible studies. Contrast this to the radical reformation that's defined by the altering of ad hoc doctrines and extremely loose connection to the sacraments. Though the radicals had a confession, the Schleitheim Confession exists now as an actualization of all carictatures Rome has of Protestantism¹⁰⁰.

While doctrine divides by building walls, creeds, and in a much deeper way, confessions, turn these walls into rooms for deeper theological fellowship and add definition to that fellowship. They give each group a solid litmus test by which one may identify imposters who merely "self-identify" as being part of the group (e.g. wolves in sheep's clothing). Because the confession is the DNA of the Reformed faith, "Who is Reformed?" is equally as simple and objective as "What is a woman?"¹⁰¹.

The process of church theologizing can't be by each person coming to private conclusions regarding the foundations or scope of the foundations of the faith, each voicing a different implicit creed. Without a common confession of faith, visible "fellowship" is more foundational than word fellowship, and catholic and confessional truth are disregarded for the sake of a naive peace and unity. This is exactly the type of "love", "peace", and "unity" that defines theological liberalism. Waters notes that "any such peace would be purchased at the expense of the truth, and is far removed from the peace that Scripture joins to pure doctrine (see James 3:17)."¹⁰².

The confession of faith is, in the words of John Murray, "the bond of fellowship, a bulwark against the incursions of errors"¹⁰³. The written confession is a unifying personal, heartfelt confession¹⁰⁴. Without a codified "bond of fellowship", there's an illusion of unity based on general understandings with each individual confessing a different, implicit, private creed.

The correct path to love, peace, and unity isn't in conflict suppression and authoritarian peace, but by deeply defining your common interpretation of the Word as the bond of fellowship. Like "being humble", love isn't something you do, it's how you do something. You can't lovingly force silence, it's inherently degrading. You can, however, present the truth in love, but only if "truth" has a formally codified definition. This nourishes the bond of unity, instead of painting over it with silence. Waters writes:

Unity exists no further than a commitment to the “faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) exists within a particular church or across particular churches. This is not to relegate unity to an invisible sphere of doctrinal concurrence. On the contrary, unity that is built around the truth must come to visible expression. But it is to say that unity must never be pursued at the expense of the truth of Scripture. The church’s holiness is likewise rooted in the church’s commitment to the truth.¹⁰⁵

The confession of faith also protects Christian liberty. Waters writes:

creeds and confessions, accordingly, constitute a necessary safeguard to the liberty of the Christian. They declare what a particular church or denomination will and will not teach, and individuals may decide on the basis of that declaration whether or not to become members of that particular church.¹⁰⁶

Just as one expects in a civil setting, there must be a shared understanding of the law to avoid abuses. Waters continues:

In framing doctrinal declarations or in the exercise of church discipline, church courts must operate within the doctrinal boundaries established by their church's confession. Were an elder or a court of the church, in the course of their official labors, to transgress or to step outside of their church's confession, members of the church would be within their rights to express their disagreement in keeping with the rules and procedures of their church or denomination. Simply the awareness that confessions function in this fashion encourages biblical knowledge and theological vigilance on the part of members, and an encouragement to church officers “not to go beyond what is written” (1 Cor 4:6).¹⁰⁶

It's important to remember that all Christians are trying to be Biblical, so simply citing Scripture isn't enough, and merely accusing someone of not following the Bible is condescending. Subjective Biblical interpretation by an ecclesiastical leader who claims "the Bible is my only standard", makes these leaders themselves the objective standard for Biblical truth. This isn't a focus on the Bible; rather, "apart from a confessional anchor, the individual theologian or pastor be comes the bar of doctrinal orthodoxy."¹⁰⁸. When this comes to church discipline it's disasterous and its the ultimate recipe for spiritual abuse.

Samuel Miller echos this, saying "to give up its own testimony to the truth and order of God's house; to surrender its own comfort, peace, and edification, for the sake of complying with the unreasonable demands of a corrupt individual, would be to subject itself to the worst of slavery."¹⁰⁹ Parents should feel free to report violations of the confession against their own children. They need to feel confident that anyone who exposes their children to Sabbath breaking or images of Christ will be disciplined by church courts according to the confession of faith.

In contrast to this DNA of the faith expressed as confessions of faith, in evangelicalism, Fesko writes "the genius theologian looms large as the one who molds a theological movement"¹¹⁰. Furthermore, this evangelicalism, which includes the 20th century movement we call "Calvinism", also generally describes itself in terms of social contract theology with cherry-picked ad hoc doctrines incorporating zero deference to the minimal-viable complexity required for theological accuracy¹¹¹ For example, not every understanding of grace is compatible with every understanding of God, yet evangelicalism seems to express every permutation of position regardless of consistency. In place of a working system of theology is a set of grinding gears.

Beyond anemic local statements of faith, evangelicalism has no codified confessional boundaries. To overcome this, over the past century evangelicals have been working to informally keep together the "five solas" creed¹¹². However, Fink writes that "the vaunted solas of Reformation theology—sola fide, sola gratia, solus Christus, and even sola scriptura—are all negative assertions; that is, they seek to isolate certain key terms from specific theological contexts in which they had become embedded"¹¹³.

He continues with specifics:

The qualifier alone (allein, in Luther’s (in)famous translation of Rom 3:28) is added to decouple these terms from other concepts with which they had become linked in Catholic thought and practice: faith from works; grace from merit; Christ from Mary (and the saints); scripture from the church’s magisterium. It does not supply the actual content of the terms.¹¹⁴

Attached to the contemporary "five solas" creed is a banner of theological liberalism "semper reformanda", even though this "and its variants... are most probably all twentieth-century inventions, employed for the sake of justifying doctrinal change."¹¹⁵. These isolated ideas are pushed back onto the 16th century to recreate the Reformation in the image of contemporary evangelicalism¹¹⁶. This is no different than the Roman Catholic revisionism that forces the Church Father's into a 16th century Roman Catholic mold.

The process of reformation, specifically as seen in the Reformation, is different. It's done via the wider church gathering (Synods) codifying foundational written conclusions in the forms of creeds that result from the Spirit's sovereign work of iron sharpening iron¹¹⁷. It will always be rooted in the sufficiency of Scripture, and iron will continue to sharpen iron in future theological refinement. Its interpretation will never be molded by the individual or local congregation as there's simply no room for the wax nose¹¹⁸.

On this point, Calvin, himself a faithful collaborator on confessions of faith, wrote:

I acknowledge, indeed, that as Scripture came not by the private will of man, (2 Pet. 1:21,) it is unbecoming to wrest it to the private sense of any man [modernized: "it is inappropriate to force it to fit someone's private interpretation"]. Nay, in the case of an obscure passage, when it is doubtful what sense ought to be adopted, there is no better way of arriving at the true meaning than for pious doctors to make common inquiry, by engaging in religious discussion.¹¹⁹

Alteration of ad hoc theological tenants is the fuel that fed 20th century theological liberalism, while Reformation is corporate, treated as a whole, and seeks to be a faithful continuation of the catholic faith. Reformation is done via confessionalization. Reforming is codifying. Furthermore, this is not something that involves merely a local congregation. You're not reforming anything if your methodology directly leads to 10,000 congregations each confessing a different truth? This is systemic schism. Regardless of our understanding of local church independence or interdependence, our confessional identity must transcend local churches¹²⁰. Trent acted appropriately by updating their self-identity through the council.

When we combine the vital component of Catholicity with the equally essential component of a faithful confessional boundary to create a unity and fellowship and peace and love in the word, we cannot talk about the Reformation as a schismatic event. But is this confessional codification for a theological tradition in conflict with catholicity?

This conflict is what's behind the idea that Protestants are "protesting". Roman Catholics accuse Protestants of this actively negative position and, as odd as it sounds, evangelicals proudly wear "we're still protesting" as a badge of honor. However, this reads the core word "protest" in a manner consistent with modern usage, not according to it's meaning in the Reformation. The Latin word protestari means "to publicly declare". Protestantism is a catholic movement of confessionalization, not anything relating to revolt.

The creed of monotheism in Deuteronomy 6:4-5, Peter's confession in Matthew 16:16, the Trinitarian creed in Ephesians 1:3-14, the confession of God's mercy in Ephesians 2:4-7, and the baptismal confession in Ephesians 4:4-6 are foundations for bonds of unity through the Apostles' Creed, Nicene Creed, Athanasian Creed, and the Chalcedonian Creed which act as the scaffolding for the one, holy, apostolic Catholic Church which unites all believers (though the East takes issue with one word in the Nicene and Athanasian creeds). The word divides, but the Spirit's illumination through the Church unites us through confessions of faith. This, not "protesting" is the basis of Protestantism.

The confession is the bond of unity and peace for a local and broader body of believers. It sets the baseline for unity (agreement) and fellowship outside of which isn't "unity", but liberal kumbaya, and not fellowship, but "hanging out". Disagreements on God, the Decalogue, salvation, the sacraments, the nature of the Church, or the final judgement should lead to repentance and must be left outside where they won't violate the peace.

When the Latin word protestatio is used in the sense of the 1529 Diet of Speyer, where the term "Protestant" originated, the word is used to indicate an appeal. If the word "protest" is to be used at all, it's in protesting the potential loss of protections gained at the 1529 Diet. There's no sense in which the new term "Protestant" could be used to indicate a "protest" against anything going on in the Reformation proper.

Today, both the Lutherans and the Reformed are working within the overall creedal boundaries as well as their own confessional bondaries to develop a local, more specific bond of unity than what's possible with only codification on certain points. Recall the creeds have no statements of salvation, yet this is undoubtably mandatory for deeper visible fellowship.

While the goal of this codification of Scriptural exegesis is never one's own distinctives, indeed distinctives should be lamented, not celebrated, a faithful reading of Scripture interpreting Scripture must be done within the bounds of a group's own Scriptural conclusions. Catholicity binds confessional traditions in fellowship as confessions bind together individuals.

In a fallen world, tribes will always exist, but the only alternatives is either ignoring a vast body of Scripture or making each individual their own tribe. For Bible studies to at all be edifying, they must be done by standing on the previously codified Scriptural exegesis of the confession of faith, lest fundamental disagreements prevent any progress in the text.

For example, when reading Romans 5:12-21 or 1 Corinthians 15:35ff in a Reformed church, the covenant of works as the background of the Gospel should act as a starting point for discussions, not at something at all left open to debate. Core to confessional catholicity is the peace that comes from having a common confession of acquired theology.

This goes to the heart of what's meant by Reformed catholicity, Lutheran catholicity, and Anglical catholicity. We're not talking about merely fellowship within a local congregation, but a continuation of the faith with ties that bo back through history to the foundation of the apostolic message.

Creeping Schism

One way to chip away at catholicity and push toward its opposite (schism) is to discuss something that's overly speculative or pushed in an insensitive manner, regardless of if it's true or not. The Word is not to be used to beat truth into people. It's the ordinary means the Spirit uses to enliven individuals. This isn't merely in reference to justification, but for the entire life of faith. If we're going to speak of Christ as the great Shepherd, then we need to see Scripture as the ultimate book on pastoral care.

To "destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God" (2 Cor 10:5) is what you do, not how you do it. Similarly, "love" isn't what you do, but how you do it. When combined, we don't tear the Paul of 2 Cor 10 from the Paul of 1 Cor 13, and can follow through with the Paul of Ephesians 4:15 where we speak the truth in love. There is no "11th commandment" that says "be loving"; rather, WLC 102 and 122 state that the sum of all the law is the greatest commandment.

Against this endeavor of speaking truth in love and against the confessional bond of unity, however, we can find specific, deeply regrettable areas that have given the Reformed faith a bad name for centuries by either pushing on a Biblical teaching without sensitivity or making non-essentials absolute distinctive badges.

First, in 1905, instead of faithfully teaching the catechism, Cleland McAfee developed the "TULIP" creed to shortcut teaching predestination. However, his acrostic was just his own preferred brand of Protestant predestinarianism which disconnected the Canons of Dort from its context of Pastoral care. Although the sovereignty of God is non-negotiable, especially since its largely a synonym for omnipotence, it can take time for people to understand and accept it. The Spirit will speak through the word at different times in the lives of individuals. These struggles have been around since the beginning. Because original sin stays with us all our lives (WLC 25, WSC 18), discussions of hell and predestination may be difficult to accept for some. WCF 3.8 addresses exactly this:

The doctrine of this high mystery of predestination is to be handled with special prudence and care, that men, attending the will of God revealed in his Word, and yielding obedience thereunto, may, from the certainty of their effectual vocation, be assured of their eternal election. So shall this doctrine afford matter of praise, reverence, and admiration of God; and of humility, diligence, and abundant consolation to all that sincerely obey the gospel.

Similarly, after heavy debates regarding supralapsarianism, article 14 of first point of the Canons of Dort was written to say:

So also today in God's church, for which it was specifically intended, this teaching must be set forth with a spirit of discretion, in a godly and holy manner, at the appropriate time and place, without inquisitive searching into the ways of the Most High. This must be done for the glory of God's most holy name, and for the lively comfort of God's people.

This is far from describing to day's Calvinistic discernment ministries that are entirely devoid of piety which seek to try to beat a specific brand of predestinarianism into people still drinking theological milk.

Second, these "Five Points of Calvinism" seem to exclude Calvin himself. In fact, Calvin's own position is even dismissively referred to as "Moderate Calvinism". While no Reformed person, or frankly anyone else, is denying the limiting of the application of redemption, limiting its accomplishment is not part of the definition of the Reformed faith. Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and many on the Westminster Assembly didn't hold to any limiting of the atonement to any subset of people.

Christ meriting salvation for all on condition of faith and repentance is an entirely separate issue from his application to those who are given the gift of that faith and repentance. The former is the oft-forgotten Reformed concept of universal redemption, while the latter is the sine qua non of the confessional Reformed faith. Likewise, whereas Calvin and Augustine maintained that the death of Christ is sufficient for all¹²¹, but efficient only for the elect, the "L" shrinks the atonement to be always and only for the elect. This says far more than the confessions do¹²².

One may hold a more limited view of the atonement, but that limitation is not required by the historic, confessional Reformed faith, which already includes the concept of effectual calling (WCF 10) and the fact that faith is a gift (14.1). The "L" seems to be included just to cleverly create a word relating to a famous flower of the Netherlands (the location of the Synod of Dort).

The TULIP enables schism (e.g. confessional deviation or outright confessional rejection) by being more stringent than our bond of unity (the confession), thus acts as a stumbling block for fellowship, especially when "limited atonement" is inappropriately announced as a distinctive of the Reformed faith. This alienates many who can't make "world" mean "elect" in John 3:16, 2 Corinthians 5:18-20, or 1 John 2:2 or see "all kinds of people" in 1 Timothy 2:3-6.

The WCF already includes all the components needed to account for both connection to the historic faith after Paul and before Luther as well as the theological diversity one would expect in a congregation consisting of individuals with diverse backgrounds. Pressuring individuals with extra-confessional distinctives is a schismatic tactic that's dangerously close to spiritual abuse.

Justification and Regensburg

Calvin, Luther, and Bucer are great contributors, but, the greatness of the Reformers comes from their efforts in codification in the form of confessions and education in the form of catechisms. To avoid the accusation of schism, we can't elevate an individual over the corporate. You can't have "lode star" theologians¹²³. Having a "classical" position on anything is inappropriate. Our focus must be codified confessions, not individuals or historic trends. Even the theologians as great as Augustine or Cyril must be tempered by iron sharpening iron.

This isn't the same as the "councils". Frankly, protestants shouldn't ever speak of "accepting" a council. We don't need to do extensive analysis to conclude which church councils to accept. When you're not part of the institution in question, you don't "accept" councils, synods, or general assemblies. You accept, affirm, and confess creeds and confessions¹²⁴. You can accept the creeds as creeds just as you can accept the theology of dyothelitism without "accepting" the Third Council of Constantinople or it's judgements (aka canons). When the Reformed accept the Canons (judgements) of Dort, they're not accepting the Synod per se, but the codified judgements on how the Belgic Confession is to be understood¹²⁵.

The distinction between a council and a creed isn't a mere technicality; rather the distinction allows for both a strong foundation for catholic unity with the potential for further theological development. Take, for example, the Councils of Nicea and Constantinople, which created and updated the Nicene Creed. The Council of Chalcedon which established a creed we call the Chalcedonian Definition; yet, its ambiguities left room for much improvement.

Then, there's the Council of Ephesus where the Antiochene and Alexandrian schools debated the two natures in the one person of Christ. Though many think it closed the case on the issue, no creed was established, thus the issue was left open. The issues at Ephesus were picked up again during the Reformation with the Lutherans and Reformed developing their Christologies differently from each other and each differently from Rome¹²⁶.

While the Colloquy of Marburg (1529) was a attempt to unify the local movements, the Colloquy of Regensburg (1541) was more of an eccumenical colloquy that included Papal representatives: Martin Bucer and Philip Melanchthon met with Cardinal Gasparo Contarini, Johann Gropper, and Johann Eck. Melanchthon and Eck were the least likely to compromise on any theological point¹²⁸, and Melanchthon was strictly bound by the Augsburg Confession¹²⁹. Moreover, though there are two people named Johann Eck during the reformation, the Eck present at Regensburg is the same Eck that debated Luther at the Leipzig Disputation in 1519.

With Papal theologians at the table, we may be shocked to observe the incredible amount of agreement was established between the protestants and the existing institutional theologians. Included in the list of agreements were statements with distinctively protestant language relating to imputation, such as:

by this faith that we are justified (i.e. accepted and reconciled to God) inasmuch as it appropriates the mercy and righteousness which is imputed to us on account of Christ and his merit, not on account of the worthiness or perfection of the righteousness communicated to us in Christ.

Later, we read:

...living faith is that which both appropriates mercy in Christ, believing that the righteousness which is in Christ is freely imputed to it, and at the same time receives the promise of the Holy Spirit and love.

In this particular case, the term "imputation" is a solid clue that Regensburg's article 5 is what we'd now call "Protestant". However, wording of eccumencical discussions are rarely that clear, thus extra special care needs to be taken to understand the concepts behind words in these contexts. It's incredibly common for different groups to agree on wording with only a lowest-common denominator of meaning being shared, which rarely says anything of substance and is more misleading than helpful. This is the case in the Consensus Tigurinus and it's the case in every one of the Protestant-Roman Catholic "agreements" and "joint declarations" in the 20th century.

Many theological terms simply don't share the same meanings between theological groups. Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, for example, use the terms justification to mean entirely different concepts. In order to understand Rome's formal separation, we need to look beyond the words used, often entirely ignoring them, and focus directly on the concepts the words are meant to signify. How emphatic a person uses a term is irrelevent in light of the person's contradicory meaning. This practice will help us avoid false areas of agreement and recognize the true dividing lines.

To start off, let's remind ourselves of the strict Protestant distinction between justification and sanctification: Justification is binary and forensic, relates to your declared status, and has to do with you being reckoned righteous via imputation. Sanctification on the other hand is analogue and renovative, relates to your state, and has to do with God making you righteous via infusion. Justification is black and white; sanctification is grey. In the latter, you're made right, in the former, you're made right in the eyes of God¹³⁰. Justification is on a person's account, while sanctification is on the person.

In order to help avoid terminological conflicts, we will, except for quotations, try to maintain the terminology of status for the first concept and state for the second. If something is a change to the person, not the account, it's state. Regardless of chosen terminology, if the concept is renovative, it's state. You can safely ignore an author's chosen terms, such as "justification" and "sanctification", by focusing on the concepts: simply identify the concepts as status or state¹³¹.

Additionally, we need to make explicit a boundary condition that's a logical result of the concept of state in a theological model where a person is born in a state of death in Adam. While state has a gradation like a color wheel, in this model, it also has a concept of zero. The special case in question is where a person's state moves from zero to non-zero. You were dead, you are now alive. This is binary, but it relates to a person, not to an account. Because it's renovative and organically related to further renovation, it's state, not status. This change in binary state is a manifestation of sovereign grace that enables good works such as trust in Christ. Today we typically refer to this as regeneration: Christ's apprehension of us in order for us to apprehend him. This is the only time state is binary, as it's the only time one moves from death to life. With this made explicit, let's move forward equating in our minds state with analogue and status with binary.

With this level-set, we see that the snippets from Article 5 definitely do qualify as Protestant statements regarding status. However, the results of Regensburg were given different assessments by Luther, Calvin, and Rome. Luther, with his typical pessimism, saw it as a patchwork of inconsistency. Calvin, on the other hand, was encouraged. In a letter to Farel, he wrote:

The debate in controversy was more keen upon the doctrine of justification. At length a formula was drawn up, which, on receiving certain corrections, was accepted on both sides. You will be astonished, I am sure, that our opponents have yielded so much, when you read the extracted copy, as it stood when the last correction was made upon it, which you will find enclosed in the letter. Our friends have thus retained also the substance of the true doctrine, so that nothing can be comprehended within it which is not to be found in our writings; you will desire, I know, a more distinct explication and statement of the doctrine, and, in that respect, you shall find me in complete agreement with yourself. However, if you consider with what kind of men we have to agree upon this doctrine, you will acknowledge that much has been accomplished.¹³²

The responses of the reformers acts as a thermometer regarding the theological status quo of the day. However, neither the responses nor anything coming directly out of Regensburg provided any ecclesiastical codification. In fact, Regensburg was the beginning of the end for theoretical compatibility. Despite the localized agreement at Regensburg, Rome was never going to codify it as dogma.

What Regensburg ultimately tells us is that there was no official church position on justification which would have put an end to all debate. Indeed, the church at the time had a vast range of views on justification. The monastic orders and universities of the day represented a wider array of viewpoints acceptable within the walls of potentially ecclesiastical codification.

To reiterate, Regensburg was not a meeting about changing the official theology on the books: there simply was no unified, official theology on the books. The widely accepted seven sacraments and what we think of today as the "Roman Catholic" model of justification weren't formally codified until Trent. Looking back at history and seeing the appearance of a uniform sacramental system is weight of custom and consensus, not faithful obedience to dogma. Put simply, practices were de facto standards, not de jure.

Ultimately, potential confessional and institutional unity at Regensburg fell apart over transubstantiation, which was written in stone in 1215¹³³, and the authority of the church¹³⁴, which was just recently intensified in the Fifth Lateran Council (1512-1517).

Recall that justification (status: imputation) is not the same thing as salvation: no Protestant would dare to say "work out your own justification with fear and trembling" (a play on Philippians 2:12). Equating the two is a place where evangelicals lets Rome inappropriately control the terminological landscape. Furthermore, if someone were to say that justification is the most important concept in the Christian faith, we must quickly respond that Paul himself, like the Reformed Confessions, nowhere places justification as the primary point of the Christian Life or salvation. In fact, thing of first importance is person of Christ in the state of exaltation after having completed his work (1 Cor 15:3-5):

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures...

While, Luther himself said that justification is the doctrine on which the church stands or falls, Calvin was a bit more nuanced, saying that it's main hinge upon which religion turns. The hinge is subordinate to that which the hinge is connected: Christ himself¹³⁵.

Justification (status, imputation) is a component of salvation, but without status via imputation, most theological models become entirely moot. It's a make-or-break component for theological consistency, but it's not the whole of salvation for Reformational theology.

After Regensburg, Rome transitions to Trent, moving the debate "from the realm of exegesis to the realm of ecclesiastical and imperial statesmanship"¹³⁶. However, when Trent started, nobody really knew which of the various theological proposals would become the official teaching of the Church, there simply was no confessional standard for that specific point.

Fink writes:

At the Council of Trent, beginning in 1545, the condemnation of the Protestant schism as a whole may have been a foregone conclusion, but it was still by no means obvious which aspects of the doctrine of justification would be condemned and which might yet be assimilated. In part, the difficulty was caused by the absence of an authoritative katholische Rechtfertigungslehre [catholic statement on justification] against which to measure the reformatische [Reformation].¹³⁷

This wide audience represented a vast array of possibilities on justification. The Dominicans had a different position than the Franciscans, and within the Franciscan order "Bonaventure and Scotus represent very different understandings of the doctrine of justification"¹³⁸.

Because the first generation's reformers wanted this movement to be a reformation of the existing instution, they wanted a fair council that included Protestant views. Sadly, the "soteriological fault-line between Catholic and Protestant would eventually become one of the clearest boundary markers defining confessional identity in early modern Europe."¹³⁹

Reformation Preamble

Even prior to the 16th century, some interpretation of Augustine's concept of grace was accepted by everyone in the west. We might even say that to be western was to be Augustinian in some way. Augustinianism merely relates to a way of thinking about sin, grace, merit, and a few other concepts. It's more of a framework, than a concrete theology. Therefore, claiming to be Augustinian is like a modern evangelical claiming to be "Biblical". Making these claims is merely a weasel tactic to win political points with people who already agree with you.

The Calvinistic claim of being the true retrievers of Augustine's view of predestination and that everyone who isn't true Augustinian is semi-Pelagian is merely based on one interpretation of Augustine. Most retrieval projects are interpretive endeavors. Furthermore, sometimes the Reformed may cite the second council of Orange (529) to show how far the west fell from Augustine, but Orange never actually made any statements about the predestination of the reprobate. Any reading of Orange to be "Reformed" is merely by confirmation bias (in fact, it's closer to being Lutheran).

Orange condemned semi-Pelagianism, while allowing "semi-Augustinianism". For former states that grace is required, but man can make the first step while the later implies that God takes the first step. Even the Council of Trent accepts only the "semi-Augustinianism". Individuals cherry-picking from earlier theologians, incorrectly reading them through an anachronistic lens, and infusing one's own definitions into terms is preceisely one of the things the Confessions help protect against.

Take for example the Synod of Dort where the model of the "genius theologian" is ground into a blender and analyzed with fairness in light of Scripture and redeemed reason. The supralapsarians and infralapsarians worked together against the crass anti-predestinarians. Additionally, those holding to a form of Reformed universal redemption were sometimes supralapsarian and sometimes infralapsarian, adding a further dimension to the process of iron sharpening iron.

Looking for a holistic model of predestinarianism that takes a certain Dort-ine shape of Reformed thought before Dort is reading previous authors in light of later developments. This type of anachronistic interpretive procedure is exactly what we see in much talk of the acceptance of Augustine in the Reformation. You can read Calvin in light of Augustine, but not in light of Dort; you can't read Augustine in light of Calvin or Dort.

Perhaps the most common place we see this is in Protestant sleight of hand around closely aligning the Reformers with Augustine on the topic of grace, then shifting the topic over to justification. Putting aside the fact that Augustine's view of grace is up for debate, the problem with justification is that Augustine's conception relates to state, not status¹⁴⁰. Regarding justification, Protestantism is not in agreement with Augustine. Though it was matured through a millenia of other theologians, the heart of Augustine's understanding was formally codified at Trent against the Reformers. After Trent, it it closer to the Roman Catholic position. The Reformation on justification was a correction of Augustine, not a return to Augustine.

Perhaps the reason its difficult to see Augustine's conception of justification in contemporary Roman Catholicism is because of how its attached to the traditional practices of the church. As it morphed through the tradition, the idea of justification became basically an umbrella term that includes forgiveness of sins, sanctification, adoption, and other things (CCC 2019). Ultimately it boils down to this statement in the Council of Trent, Session VI, Chapter 7: "...Justification itself, which is not remission of sins merely, but also the sanctification and renewal of the inward man...". Note the use of the term sanctification. The distinction between remission of sins and growth in grace was not a Reformation novelty. However, removing renewal from justification was. Augustine himself firmly places renewal in justification.

As Protestants and evangelicals celebrate Reformation Day, they do so apparently not realizing that many of Luther's concerns in 1517 were accounted for by the Council of Trent. For example, it's common to hear that Luther was condemning indulgences in 1517, but thesis 71 clarifies that he still supported them. Luther's later 1520 work The Babylonian Captivity of the Church confirms this¹⁴¹. He was merely condemning their abuse. For example, in thesis 27, he complained that "as the money clinks into the money chest, the soul flies out of purgatory". This particular issue was largely addressed at the Council of Trent, Session 25.

If we rewind a month back from October, we see Luther's Disputation against Scholastic Theology, colloqually known as the 97 theses. While the 95 theses represents the vitality of heartfelt repentance, the 97 represents a larger scope that gets closer to the heart of the Reformation project as a whole, making this potentially a better starting point of the Luther movement that grew into the Reformation¹⁴².

In the early 16th century, there were two major schools of thought or ways (viae) of thinking that shaped theology. The first, and earliest of which is called the via antiqua. Core to this school of thought was Thomas Aquinas. The focus was on realism, true change of things, and reason (which will be less abstract once we compare it to it's opposite).

The other road was called the via moderna. The first major theologian of this school was William of Ockham (as in Ockham's Razor), while the core theologian of the school during Luther's day was Gregory Biel. Where the via antiqua focus on realism and actual change, the via moderna focused on things merely having purpose in name only, worth based on God's declaration, and knowing things by revelation alone. Part of this school was "pactum" theology in which God is said to declaratively grant our good works a type of value.

The slogan of the via moderna was facere quod in se est, Deus non denegat gratiam ("to those who do what is in them, God will not deny grace"). Essentially, without assisting grace, you do your best, trust in God’s grace for the rest¹⁴³. Luther was trained in this school of thought, and it was this school that was the target of Luther's "97 theses" and it's what Luther sought to reform.

One of the core problems for Luther was what "your best "could possibly mean if we're all born sinful and are constantly falling into sin. Ultimately, however, both the Reformers and the Papalists were wrestling with this as well the the whole of via antiqua and via moderna. Trent, for example, rejected the "in se est" theology in Session VI, Canon 1:

If any one saith, that man may be justified before God by his own works, whether done through the teaching of human nature, or that of the law, without the grace of God through Jesus Christ; let him be anathema.

Though we can think of this as being a correction to pelagianism, it also affects the "in se est" theology. Trent, like the Reformers, had to consider the issues surrounding both via antiqua and via moderna. They simply had to: the Dominicans were major via antiqua supporters, but much, though by no means all or even a majority, of the Franscicans and Augustinians supported the via moderna. One of the goals of Trent was to examine these issues left unanswered and codify an official position.

The Reformers too had to deal with these schools. Unlike the radicals who found it all too complex and just wanted to start Christianity from scratch, the Reformers were already through decades of training in these schools. They weren't going to reboot the faith, nor did they need to. Their existing training, shared with the theologians at Trent, made them qualified to examine the issues for Biblical fidelity. Often this meant making tweaks and changing their context.

For example, while you can try to find something like "covenant theology" in the via moderna's "in se est" or "pactum" concepts, the via moderna places it in a post-fall situation. That is, they slipped covenantal law into Gospel (the Protestant conception of the law-Gospel distinction is discussed later). The Reformers moved it before the fall where it belonged. As another example, the Reformers accepted both reason in theology and the fact that many things simply require revelation; in fact, even nature is revelatory. Finally, the via antiqua idea of a true change and infusion was taken in as regeneration and sanctification, while the spirit of the via moderna's focus on declaration was mapped to imputation and justification. A century later, the Westminster Larger Catechism explicitly speaks of both infusion and imputation in Q/A 77.

Council of Trent

Before Trent there were myriad questions relating justification that were left to the "genius theologian" model of theology where the orders and individuals were free to disagree. Trent sought to either reject or formally codify these as official teachings of the newly branded Roman Catholicism; perhaps the most important of these was Augustine's conception of justification as state, not status.

Though they correctly sought theological unity through codification, the manner the council came to its conclusions was entirely inappropriate. When Luther called for a free council, he meant one that was not under the boot of the Pope, but guided by the Scripture as the final source of truth¹⁴⁴. There are actually two clashing issues here: Scripture as the ultimate source of truth and the Pope as the final arbiter of truth above the councils¹⁴⁵.

The latter issue caused problems with the East for half a millenium, has been creating problems in the west for centuries, and was a non-starter for the Reformers. Yet, the Pope continued to double down on his fictional authority. The removal of this man-made tyranny was vital for any progress toward a reformation of the Church¹⁴⁶.

From the perspective of the Reformers and the East, removal of the Pope as the final standard seems obvious as the voice of the Spirit through a plurality of witnesses in councils should take precedence against a centralized point of authority. For the Reformers specifically, against both the East and the Papalists, it's equally obvious that Scripture should act as the only ultimate source source of truth.

This incompatibility was a problem from the beginning. The Reformers want everything ultimately sourced from Scripture while the Papalists lower to bar to include teachings that merely don't contradict Scripture (which, as we'll see later, they definitely failed to do). Thus, from the perspective of the Reformers, the Papalists let confirmation bias handle a lot of the Biblical exegesis¹⁴⁷.

Furthermore, even if the Fifth Lateran Council never occurred, the Pope was removed, and the councils were to run a council, the Reformers still wouldn't be to accept a council in the 16th century. Looking at it in isolation, this may seem like the Reformers are being ungrateful and unable to defend their position, but the precedent set by the previous century was impossible to ignore: when Jan Hus was promised safe conduct to the Council of Constance (1415), they broke that promise and executed him.

Herman Selderhuis writes:

There was no safe conduct for the Bohemian [Jan Hus]. There would be none now and any participation by the Protestants would be dangerous. This comparison with the events of the Council of Constance in 1415 and the opponents of Hus was drawn by Luther, as already mentioned concerning his editions of the letters of Hus...¹⁴⁸

Therefore, when the Council of Trent was finally called, even if the Reformers were called for, they had to be present in writing only. Selderhuis continues:

Although they were willing to discuss the issues, they could still not attend because they feared that the council would do to them what had been done to hus in Constance. If the council is only there to deny heresies, and the Zurichers are branded as heretics from the outset, it is just too dangerous to go there.¹⁴⁹

Calvin reasonably saw the council as merely an instrument of the Pope to fight the reformation¹⁵⁰ Part of the problem was that the the plaintiffs and the judges are the same people, thus preventing any possibility of accepting any Papal invitation. The council has not been "held in the old apostolic tradition" (e.g. like Nicea)¹⁵¹. Bucer was the more ‘ecumenical’ of the Reformers, and he "complained that this was not the council that they had been promised"¹⁵²

Despite Roman Catholic revisionism, that even much of today's evangelicalism seems to buy into, the council of Trent was an incredibly anti-catholic "break with tradition and with the views and decisions of the early church, and on the other, it was seen as a continuation of both an unbiblical theology and an unbiblical practice" ¹⁵³.

Ultimately, the council "exalts tradition above scripture, the Pope above the council, and works above grace"¹⁵⁴ and that the broken council took "place in the wrong place, with the wrong people, under the wrong conditions, thus leading to incorrect results"¹⁵⁵.

If the pope is to be called "father" in any sense it's in the sense of being the father of schism. The pope's role in metastasizing schism is a core reason it's one of the core issue that separate Roman Catholicism from everyone else. This, combined with the fact that "vicar", as in vicar of Christ or vicarius sacrifice, means "in place of", which is exactly what "anti" means in Greek, makes it no surprise that the Reformers referred to the Pope as the AntiChrist. The pope seems quite proud of this title. To this day, Lutherans and most Reformed confessions maintain a confessional position on the Pope's status as AntiChrist.

Furthermore, the council of Trent's break with catholicity led to the common accusation of extreme contradiction. When Trent dug a theological mote around itself while claiming to be "catholic", it engaged in the grossest of linguistic nonsense when it claimed to be "Roman Catholic". It's not catholic if it's cutting off other visible expressions of the catholic church. Their accusations of schism are themselves expressions of it. This is truly schism in the clearest of terms.

However, despite Rome's own insistence, we can't cut them off from the catholic faith. In the midst of the fog of error, Rome still maintains the catholic creeds (the word summarized) and the two sacraments (the word visualized). Yet, defenses Rome as being part of the catholic church should never be confused with defense of their confused message of the Gospel.

Therefore, in what follows we'll adjust our focus from "Where was the Church before Luther?" and "Where was the Gospel before Luther?" to an analysis of the Reformed faith compared with both contemporary Roman Catholicism and contemporary evangelicalism. We'll start by reviewing Rome's conception of grace, doing our best to take Rome at their word when they claim that Vatican II didn't change Trent. Then we'll move to positively stating the Protestant and confessionally Reformed positions on key issues that differentiate the Reformed from both Rome and contemporary evangelicalism.

Ultimately, our goal will be to explain what's meant when individuals claim that Rome comes structurally closer to the truth than does evangelicalism: if the truth is water (H2O), Rome comes is really close with H2O2 (Hydrogen Peroxide), while evangelicalism brings root beer. Evangelicalism isn't deadly per se, but it's also not healthy per se.

Part III: Theological Analysis

Foundational Concepts in Contemporary Roman Catholicism

To see how Roman Catholicism relates to grace, we need to review the Roman Catholic path of salvation end-to-end. In trying to grasp their theology, it's important to shed from our minds any myths relating to Vatican II removing the theology of the Council of Trent. The condemnations are still on the books, but the relationship to those condemned is clarified. Carl Trueman summarizes Vatican II is "the Council of Trent with the rude bits taken out"¹⁵⁶.

To begin, let's summarize faith in Roman Catholicism:

Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God. At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed. As personal adherence to God and assent to his truth, Christian faith differs from our faith in any human person. It is right and just to entrust oneself wholly to God and to believe absolutely what he says. It would be futile and false to place such faith in a creature. (CCC 150)

In this we see that faith has content ("truth") and agreement ("assent"). However, these two by themselves is an unformed faith, it's a dead faith (CCC 1815). It's the faith that even the demons have. Thus, this faith must be moved by love to become a formed faith (fides caritate formata; CCC 1814). This is a faith that is infused virtue of charity from the Spirit. We need a living, not dead, faith.

Baptism is "the sacrament of faith" (CCC 1253). In Baptism "all sins are forgiven, original sin and all personal sins, as well as all punishment for sin "(CCC 1263), yet concupisence remains (CCC 1264), which, in Roman Catholicism, is not considered sin itself¹⁵⁷. This sanctifying grace "is infused by the Holy Spirit into the soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it." (CCC 2023) It makes us "pleasing to God" (CCC 2024). The baptized person is justified and brought into a state of sanctifying grace where they can grow in charity. Charity in this context, doesn't relate to giving to the poor, but to "the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God." (CCC 1822)

For infants, original sin is removed. For those who die before baptism, their explicit intent of being baptized "together with repentance for their sins, and charity" assures them of salvation. This is also the situation for someone who is saved, but died before baptism. For infants who can't make any intention for baptism, the sitation is left to the mercy of God (CCC 1261). This also goes for anyone who never heard of Christ, but desires to seek God ("invincible ignorance"): "It may be supposed that such persons would have desired Baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity" (CCC 1260; see also 27: "the desire for God is written in the human heart").

Mortal sins are sins relating to grave matters committed with full knowledge and complete consent (CCC 1855-1859). Committing these sins reduces causes the "loss of charity and the privation of sanctifying grace" (CCC 1861). The "privation of sanctifying grace" is loss of justification, thus we say that a person is no longer in a state of grace, but is in a state of mortal sin. In this state, taking the Eucharist is forbidden (CCC 1385).

Upon sacrament of reconciliation (penance/confession), justification is restored, returning the person to the state of sanctifying grace. A person may also show perfect contrition "by which God is loved above all else" and has an intention to go to the sacrament of reconciliation as soon as possible (CCC 1452). In this situation, a person with a "grave reason" (e.g. near death, at a wedding) for being unable to go to confession may even take the Eucharist before confession (and the person must go to confession as soon as possible, Canon Law 916).

While in a state of grace, venial sins (non-grave, not with full knowledge, or not with full consent, CCC 1862), "weaken charity", "impedes the soul's progress in the exercise of the virtues and the practice of the moral good", and "merits temporal punishment" (CCC 1863). Note the punishment is "temporal", not "eternal" here. We'll return to that in a moment. Venial sins do not "deprive the sinner of sanctifying grace, friendship with God, charity, and consequently eternal happiness". Basically, it slows spiritual progress, because "sin creates a proclivity to sin" (CCC 1865).

Taking the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, and doing works of charity, increase our charity and are meritorious. CCC 1394 gives a helpful analogy: "as bodily nourishment restores lost strength, so the Eucharist strengthens our charity, which tends to be weakened in daily life; and this living charity wipes away venial sins." Furthermore, charity "upholds and purifies our human ability to love, and raises it to the supernatural perfection of divine love." (CCC 1827)

It's important to note that there's no merit outside of being in a state of sanctifying grace, thus ther is no merit before or in baptism: "Since the initiative belongs to God in the order of grace, no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification, at the beginning of conversion (CCC 2010). While merit is described as a "recompense owed" (CCC 2006), CCC 2007 states that "there is no strict right to any merit on the part of man. Between God and us there is an immeasurable inequality, for we have received everything from him, our Creator". Furthermore, to hammer on the point: "We can have merit in God's sight only because of God's free plan to associate man with the work of his grace. Merit is to be ascribed in the first place to the grace of God, and secondly to man's collaboration. Man's merit is due to God." (CCC 2025) However, merit is also connected to eternal life in a "covenantal" manner per Trent Session VI, Canon 32:

If any one saith, that the good works of one that is justified are in such manner the gifts of God, as that they are not also the good merits of him that is justified; or, that the said justified, by the good works which he performs through the grace of God and the merit of Jesus Christ, whose living member he is, does not truly merit increase of grace, eternal life, and the attainment of that eternal life,-if so be, however, that he depart in grace,-and also an increase of glory; let him be anathema.

At death, your state becomes your justified state effectively becomes a justified status. Your destination is set: a state of moral sin marks your destination as hell (CCC 1033) and a state of grace marks your destination as heaven (CCC 1023). The concept of merit is removed, there are no more chances of salvation, there is no repentance, and there are no sacraments (CCC 1021). However, those destined for heaven may need to continue their purification through purgatory (CCC 1022).

This concept of purification is entirely separate from sanctifying grace. This purification removes the "temporal punishment" of sin (CCC 1472). Committing venial sins also produce a "stain" or consequence of sin. Doing the acts that increase your charity have the additional benefit of cleansing your soul, but there may be more purification required.

This removal of "temporal punishment" relates to "completely the 'old man' and to put on the 'new man.'" (CCC 1473). Indulgences relate to this concept, not to justification (CCC 1471, 1479, 1498). They relate to removing "temporal punishment" and consequences of sins, not forgiving sins themselves. They're not "paying off the judge", but about healing "as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven." (CCC 1030) Because it's so common to read zealous overstatements that Purgatory relates to sin, let's consult the more soberminded Bavinck:

In all fairness, with respect to this Roman Catholic sacrament of penance, one must bear in mind that the “work of satisfaction” (satisfactio operis) and similarly indulgences is not meant to obtain the forgiveness of guilt (in other words, absolution from eternal punishment) for the believer who committed a serious sin. This has already been secured by Christ and is granted the penitent after “the contrition of the heart” (contritio cordis) and “confession of the mouth” (confessio oris). The “work of satisfaction” consists only in bearing the temporal punishment the penitent has merited by his sin and for which he can obtain a reduction or abbreviation by means of an indulgence.¹⁵⁸

Elsewhere he writes:

...one must bear in mind, in all fairness, that Rome attributes this whole splendid benefit solely to the mercy of God, who purifies, sanctifies, and anoints people with the Holy Spirit of promise. Rome also recognizes as the sole meritorious cause the Lord Jesus Christ who, when we were still enemies, according to the greatness of the love with which he loved us, by his holy suffering on the tree of the cross, merited Justification for us and made satisfaction for us to the Father. ¹⁵⁹

The Roman Catholic model of salvation may seem extremely complex, but it boils down to four major heads: 1) state of sanctifying grace, 2) charity (increases or decreased), 3) purification (thus the need for purgatory), and merits (for rewards). Note also that everything in Roman Catholicism is driven by grace and started by God himself. Even the fact that one may merit is by a gracious descision on God's part.

The Council of Trent and the Reformed

One isn't saved by theological precision, thus it's entirely inappropriate to condemn to hell those who hold to the altered gospels of Arminianism, Federal Visionism, and the New Perspective on Paul (NPP). They're justified by faith alone, despite their errors at nearly every level. Even Lutherans, and some Reformed theologians, while inconsistent on state and status, don't actively try to place binary status after analogue state in a manner that turns the salvific plan into a ladder to heaven. Yet, even if they did, individuals aren't saved by getting theology right. Errors are not typically a barrier to entry.

Edward Leigh (1602-1671) describes three levels of error: First, "citra" errors which are within a theological tradition such as disagreements on Church government which don't strike at the theological foundations. Second, "circa" errors which pervert the foundation, such as Lutheran Christology. Third, "contra" errors which are against the foundation like Rome's denial of Christ's once-for-all completed work.¹⁶⁰.

Thus, we can't condemn Roman Catholics based on the previous overly-complex plan of salvation. Yes, if they're trusting in the Church more than Christ, there's an issue, but that's not even the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. Those paying attention will understand that when the Council of Trent handed down its canons, they did so with everything marinating in grace. There's no part of savlation that isn't entirely grace enabled.

Everything at the council of Trent, just like everything in modern Arminianism is 99.9999% grace driven. Sola gratia closes that gap, because it's merely the fancy way of referring to total inability and predestination¹⁶¹. This is true even for Lutheranism, though they allow human rejection of the word. So, it's inappropriate to say the Roman Catholics (or Arminians) are earning their salvation. However, there are major theological errors in Roman Catholicism (and evangelicalism!) that prevent fellowship in most every context.

Protestant and Reformed Understanding

By Faith Alone (sola fide)

Faith is also core to everything in Roman Catholicism. See Council of Trent, Session 6, Chapter 8:

...that we are therefore said to be justified by faith, because faith is the beginning of human salvation, the foundation, and the root of all Justification; without which it is impossible to please God, and to come unto the fellowship of His sons

Trent's theology is gracen-drive and faith-based; they call it the initium (beginning), fundamentum (foundation), and radix (root) of "justification" (salvation). Faith is everywhere, but recall that, for Trent, faith that's merely notitia and assensus is an unformed, dead faith. Notitia is simply knowledge of content, which even all the demons share. Assensus is assent to those facts as truth. This is historical faith. For Trent, a third component is required: love is required to form faith.

Both historic Protestants and modern pop-culture evangelicalism agree with Trent that nototia and assensus alone leave one with a dead faith; but the two disagree with each other as well as with Trent. Evangelicalism tends to create an extremely hard cut between "the head" and the "the heart": "faith" tends to start with "head knowledge", but a "decision" is required to accept Christ. In addition to the man-centered call to "make a decision for Jesus Christ", regular admonitions are typically given to move "head knowledge" to "heart action" in a pursuit of something reminiscent of a "second blessing".

This descisionism movement is dangerously close to Tridentine formed faith: you start out with a dead "head knowledge" faith, then add love to form it. However, the decisionist model of faith is worse than contempoary Roman Catholic faith in that it leaves each potentially unchurched individual with no concrete path of the means of grace.

The Reformers, Tridentine theologians, and contemporary decisionists (e.g. evangelicals) all agree that knowing and assenting to facts provides no salvific value. With this in mind, read Canon 9 of Session 6 of the Council of Trent:

CANON IX.-If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified; in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to co-operate in order to the obtaining the grace of Justification, and that it is not in any way necessary, that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will; let him be anathema.

Trent is effectively condemning "lip service Christianity" or some idea that salvation is merely by notitia and assent¹⁶². This isn't a condemnation of the Protestant conception of justification by faith alone. It's not even mentioned. The Tridentine theologians, like contemporary descisionists, may never have understood it.

For the Reformers, while knowledge and assent are vital components to avoid the non-existent conceptions of "implicit faith"¹⁶³ or "faith of an infant"¹⁶⁴, the third component isn't love or a "decision", but is fiducia¹⁶⁵, or trust. This trust is the all-important apprehension of Christ that separates salvific faith from a mere human faith¹⁶⁶ (see also Owen¹⁶⁷). Indeed, without this personal apprehension of Christ, there's no concept of faith whatsoever.

A "faith" that's merely based on persuasion that leads to some type of profession of "faith" or "decision", without the word of the Spirit, in the words of Owen, is "not divine faith whereby they do believe, but that which is merely human, as being resolved into human testimony only, or an opinion on probable arguments"¹⁶⁸. A foundation of facts won't lead to assurance, but to self-confidence.

However, because trust seems similar to a "decision", we often need to emphasize a fourth, truly salvific component. Mastricht writes:

Because several acts coincide in saving faith—knowledge, assent, consent, trust, and so forth—we must observe that one particular act is predominant among them—the act that when present, salvation is present, and when absent, salvation is absent; thus the act that is called saving. What act is it then? The text answers, “Receiving,” and the apostle gives this his support (Col. 2:5–7; Phil. 3:8–9, 12; Gal. 4:14; cf. Matt. 26:26).¹⁶⁹

This receiving is easily distinguishable from both a decision in that it truly affects the inner man, not merely the outer. While we could think of a decision as being part of neurological and chemical processing, these physical aspects of a person are on the outer man: though your "outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day" (2 Cor. 4:16).

The faith that justifies is a gift given by the Holy Spirit and acts as one of the two bonds of our union with Christ (the other being the Spirit himself)¹⁷⁰. Knowledge doesn't do this. Neither does assent or even "trust", in many senses of the word". This faith is beyond the neurological and chemical processing of the brain; it's is part of the whole person, both "inner" and "outer". When we say that faith receives Christ, we're not saying "belief receives Christ" in an abstract or philosophical manner.

It's difficult to isolate this faith to a synonym for belief. The faith that receives Christ is an infused habit to which we respond with an act of faith. So, Canons of Dort 3/4, Article 14:

...faith is a gift of God, not in the sense that it is offered by God for people to choose, but that it is in actual fact bestowed on them, breathed and infused into them. Nor is it a gift in the sense that God bestows only the potential to believe, but then awaits assent—the act of believing—by human choice; rather, it is a gift in the sense that God who works both willing and acting and, indeed, works all things in all people and produces in them both the will to believe and the belief itself.

In fact, one of the explicit rejections in the Canon of Dort is:

Who teach that in the true conversion of men and women new qualities, dispositions, or gifts cannot be infused or poured into their will by God, and indeed that the faith [or believing] by which we first come to conversion and from which we receive the name “believers” is not a quality or gift infused by God, but only a human act, and that it cannot be called a gift except in respect to the power of attaining faith.

It continues with an explanation:

For these views contradict the Holy Scriptures, which testify that God does infuse or pour into our hearts the new qualities of faith, obedience, and the experiencing of his love: “I will put my law in their minds, and write it on their hearts” (Jer. 31:33); “I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring” (Isa. 44:3); “The love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5). They also conflict with the continuous practice of the Church, which prays with the prophet: “Convert me, Lord, and I shall be converted” (Jer. 31:18).

Notice the God-centered language that prompts man's response. Faith can never be said to precede regeneration, but, because Christ alone brings life, and he brings it by faith, it's also improper to say that regeneration precedes faith in an unqualified manner: the "regeneration precedes faith" language of the canons of Dort may not be read in a way that turns the Spirit into the Trinity's janitor. The habit of faith is a saving work of God that leads to the good work we call the act of faith. Put in more Puritan-like language, Christ first apprehends us through his Spirit in order for us to apprehend him by faith.

Let's consult WLC 72 to see how this is qualitatively different than the the "faith" in "many have said to be Lord Lord, but I never knew you":

Justifying faith is a saving grace, wrought in the heart of a sinner by the Spirit and Word of God, whereby he, being convinced of his sin and misery, and of the disability in himself and all other creatures to recover him out of his lost condition, not only assenteth to the truth of the promise of the gospel, but receiveth and resteth upon Christ and his righteousness, therein held forth, for pardon of sin, and for the accepting and accounting of his person righteous in the sight of God for salvation.

The faith in "justified by faith alone" is "wrought in the heart of a sinner" and "receiveth and resteth upon Christ". WLC 73 doubles down on this idea:

Faith justifies a sinner in the sight of God, not because of those other graces which do always accompany it, or of good works that are the fruits of it, nor as if the grace of faith, or any act thereof, were imputed to him for his justification; but only as it is an instrument by which he receiveth and applieth Christ and his righteousness.

Faith does not justify; rather it's Christ who justifies, faith is the instrument which receives Christ. We see a concrete picture of this in the Lord's Supper. The only Christ that saves in any sense is the one who was crucified and was raised. If bare deity could provide salvation, the cross would be of no value. Furthermore, you can't eat and drink spirit; any no Christian has ever denied the presence of the omnipresent Christ according to the divine nature. The only presence of Christ debated in the Reformation eucharistic controversy is the humanity of Christ. Without this, the sacrament is, by definition, merely a memorial, regardless how piously it's presented or explained.

We do eat and drink the true body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, but we do this by faith. While the outer-man is receiving the signs with our hands, and we even refer to these by the things they represent (WCF 29.5), the inner-man truly receives the Christ those signs represent by faith (WCF 29.7), which the Belgic Confession describes as "the hand and mouth of our souls" (BC 35). We receive Christ in the Supper in the say way we receive him in salvation.

The supper isn't merely a sign and seal. Those who are unified with Christ by faith, truly receive the thing signfied by faith, or it would be of no value. WLC 163 confirms both parts when it asks "What are the parts of a sacrament?", answering:

The parts of a sacrament are two; the one an outward and sensible sign, used according to Christ’s own appointment; the other an inward and spiritual grace thereby signified.

In both our salvation as a whole and in the Supper, the Spirit is the bond of our union with Christ, which is established by God infusing faith into us. The Supper is always and only for believers, because they're the only ones with the faith that can even be nourished by Christ through the Spirit's work. Calvin writes:

The bond of this joining is the Holy Spirit, by whom we are united together, and He is like a canal or channel by which all that Christ is and possesses comes down to us. For if with our eyes we perceive that when the sun shines on the earth it somehow sends its substance by its rays to engender, nourish, and bring to life the earth’s fruits, why would the light and brilliance of the Spirit of Jesus Christ be less able to bring us the communication of His flesh and blood?...In the Supper the Lord testifies to us such a communication of His body and blood. Indeed, He offers it to all who receive this spiritual banquet, even though it is only the faithful who participate in it because they make themselves worthy of such a benefit by true faith.¹⁷¹

Though he, like all the Reformers wrote before our explicit understanding of chemical processes and neurology, Mastricht summarizes the salvific component of faith:

Faith is therefore an act, but of what? Certainly not of the body, although faith is attributed to it in its own way (Rom. 10:10; 1:8), but of the soul, for with the heart one believes (Rom. 10:10), and indeed, of the whole soul: “If you believe with your whole heart…” (Acts 8:37). For it is the first act of life, by which the whole person lives spiritually (Rom. 1:17; Gal. 2:20). Moreover, it is an act of each of the soul’s faculties—the intellect, the will, the affections, and so forth.¹⁷²

Thus, even if Alzheimer's affects you, it's not your faithfulness or "decision" that saves you. Your eternal life isn't erased by a terrible disease that breaks connections between neurons. You're saved by Christ's faithfulness, not yours, and you're united to him by the Spirit and the bond of faith on your inner self (habit of faith), which itself prompts the faith of the outer (act of faith). The faith that receives Christ, continues through the loss of the body. Our inner man will see God with the eyes of our heart (Eph 1:8).

Faith isn't mere "head knowledge", though it's never without true content; it's also not merely an assent or a decision, and it's not merely something that affects the outer man or body. Altogether, this is how we should read WSC 86:

Q. What is faith in Jesus Christ?

A. Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and rest upon him alone for salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel.

Christ raises you to new life, breaks the chains of sin in your life, and presents you to the Father as a son. Life, love, adoption, and everything else are a result of faith receiving Christ. Even repentance is a result, not a cause of receiving Christ¹⁷³. This is all by faith alone as the instrument that unites us to Christ. Gaffin summarizes the importance of "by":

Paul does not teach a “faith alone” position, as I have sometimes heard it put. Rather, his is a “by faith alone” position. This is not just a verbal quibble; the “by” is all-important here. The faith by which sinners are justified, as it unites them to Christ and so secures for them all the benefits of salvation there are in him, that faith perseveres to the end and in persevering is never alone. It is, as Luther is reported to have said, “a busy little thing.”¹⁷⁴

The idea that justification is by faith alone, sola fide, is, just like sola Scriptura, a negative statement against the traditional idea of the established church. The "alone" in this case is a denial of the idea of formed faith. Adding our own love or "decision" to faith erases the idea that faith is a gift.

When James (in 2:24) writes "You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone", we can think of his as condemning "salvation by decision alone". Faith is an infused habit from God himself that prompts the good work we call the act of faith. Your act of faith isn't alone, because it's its the response to a true change in you, and this this internal change also leads to the good work of repentance, and other things, not merely as evidences, but as core aspects of our salvation (as will be discussed later).

When Roman Catholics critique the idea that "justification is by faith alone", they're both misunderstanding the "faith" in question and disagreeing with the Protestant notion of justification. As such, we need to look closer at justification itself.

Covenant of Works

It's difficult to really understand justification without understanding the two-Adam Christology and the covenant of works which provides the framework for the whole of theology. Though it's often seen as a novelty in the Reformation, it has solid roots in the church through Peter Lombard¹⁷⁵, John of Damascus¹⁷⁶, and Augustine¹⁷⁷. The covenant of works is so vital to grasp that Brakel writes:

Acquaintance with this covenant is of the greatest importance, for whoever errs here or denies the existence of the covenant of works, will not understand the covenant of grace, and will readily err concerning the mediatorship of the Lord Jesus.¹⁷⁸

Exegetically speaking, Romans 5:12-21 combined with 1 Cor. 15:34-40 reveals many of the details of Genesis in what's called the two-Adam Christology. Whereas the Romans text contrasts the representative heads Christ and Adam in redemption, 1 Corinthians does so in terms of eschatology (e.g. ultimate destination). Compare Romans 5:15b: "...For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many." (redemption) with 1 Cor 15:45 "Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit." (eschatology)

The significance of this is almost always lost in a quick read. The words "living being" (ψυχὴν ζῶσαν) represents a quotation of the Greek Old Testament (the LXX), specifically Genesis 2:7¹⁷⁹. This is important because the fall doesn't happen until Genesis 3. Therefore, Paul is contrasting Christ, not with Adam as fallen, but as Adam as originally created. Paul, by the inspiration of the Spirit, views the resurrection as such an incredible elevation of humanity that he contrasts it with that which God calls good. The resurrection is better than good: it's eschatological.

Putting this into narrative form and in terms of merit, we say that Adam, as image of God, was created perfect and with inherent original righteousness (Col 3:10, Eph 4:24). Furthermore, again, as image of God, he's was always oriented with a focus toward his creator¹⁸⁰. Yet, being a created being he was mutable. He was also created with the potential of "higher life"¹⁸¹, which was obtainable by perfect obedience (WCF 19.1)

Furthermore, Adam, as the image of God with an inherent original righteousness, had the inherent ability to fulfill the law and merit higher life without any need for additional assistance or "grace" (WCF 4.2, 19.1). Because Adam's ability to fulfill the law was based on his created nature, the covenant is sometimes called the covenant of nature¹⁸² (see also Bavinck¹⁸³).

This obedience is based on law of two types. First, the moral law, which is a reflection of the unchangable character and will of God himself, imprinted on man as his image. This moral law would later be expressed in written form in the 10 commandments, or decalogue. This isn't something merely written on our hearts in our union with Christ; rather, this moral law is a single unbreakable unit that's fundamentally the ethical blueprint of the image of God, thus unchangeable by the fall.

Adam didn't need to be told explicitly to obey the moral law. After all, even fallen humanity "know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die" (Rom. 1:32)¹⁸⁴. Being focused God-ward, Adam would have been in communion with God at all times, while breaking weekly to rest in God from his every day work in the Sabbath¹⁸⁵.

He lived in communion with God in love. As such, perfection is a reasonable requirement. In this scenario, justice is absolute. For us, this would be infeasible, but Adam was created for exactly this environment. Any deviation from the commands of God would be a violation of Adam's own nature, thus cause a break in himself, but, more seriously, would create a misalignment between the image (Adam) and the original (God). The covenant of works is based on perfect obedience to the law in the strictest sense, yet it was still possible for Adam in his own ability.

Second, the positive law prohibiting him from eating one particular tree. This is less of an arbitrary command and more of a specific visible expression of the moral law similar to how we see the moral law visible manifested in the ceremonial (commandments 1-4) and civil laws (5-10) in Israel¹⁸⁶. The "tree of knowledge was a sign of those natural obligations under probation."¹⁸⁷

Tying it all together, Harrison Perkins writes:

The law is simply the ethical thread in the tapestry of bearing God’s likeness. This law comes melded into our image-bearing constitution and still itself served as the covenant of works, merely summed up in sacramental fashion by the tree of knowledge.¹⁸⁸

Because Adam wasn't divine, his obedience could never inherently obtain proper merit based on work. He simply doesn't have infinite inherent value. The probationary command regarding the tree was God's way of adding reward to Adam's existing life¹⁸⁹. God would accept his work, not with inherent value, but it would be disproportionate and be based on a promise and covenantal merit, not a true valuation¹⁹⁰. That is, his reward would be similar to receiving $100 for a candy bar (covenantal merit), and not similar to how a gold bar is inherently worth $100 (strict merit).

Thus, Bavinck writes that "There was a merit ex pacto (arising from a covenant), not ex condigno. The good works of man never merit the glory of heaven; they are never of the same weight and worth (condignity)."¹⁹¹. Upon successful completion of a probationary period, Adam would have received his higher life based on covenantal merit and justice.

The failure of Adam brought a cataclysmic shift in the entirety of creation. The image of God isn't something man has, it's what man is. Thus, man cannot "lose" this image, but the ethical aspects can be and was corrupted. Man is no longer perfectly oriented toward God. Thus, in addition to losing his original righteousness, Adam obtained original sin. All persons under him by natural generation (WSC 26) have original sin covenantally applied to them.

Thus, after the fall the status quo is entirely different. There's simply no concept of earning. "Adam broke the covenant of works, nullifying its works principle’s validity for merit."¹⁹². If justice has any place, it's in the penal judgement of man based on his infinite sin debt incurred by sin against the infinite God; there's only penalty, not rewards or wages. Original sin and concupiscence entirely block the ability to receive merit perfect righteousness and higher life.

However, WCF 7.3 states:

Man, by his fall, having made himself incapable of life by that covenant, the Lord was pleased to make a second, commonly called the covenant of grace; wherein he freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ.

Instead of entirely wiping out humanity due to their inability to continue in the covenant of works, God chose to establish the covenant of grace. Instead of a system of perfect requirements of the law, after the fall, he established a system where individuals receive their righteousness by faith in Christ.

Anyone describing the Moses covenant as a "covenant of works" is accusing God of grading on a curve. The Mosaic law contains innumerable instances of grace at every possible level. Many of the penalties are merely civil fines. Everything after the fall is of grace, which is long before Moses; this is Paul's point in Galatians 3. The Mosaic covenant is an administration of the covenant of grace. The 10 commandments presented under Moses are not a reissuing, a recovering, or a repeating, but a "restatement of the demands of the original covenant of works"¹⁹³ (see also Colquhoun¹⁹⁴).

While the covenant of works with Adam was one of covenantal merit ($100 candy bar), because Christ himself is ontologically perfect, Christ was able to fulfill the covenant of works based on strict merit based on a true valuation of his inherent worth ($100 gold bar)¹⁹⁵. Furthermore, because the eternal person of Christ doesn't procede from Adam via natural generation¹⁹⁶, Christ never had any possibility of receiving original sin (also, he's non posse peccare: not able to sin).

Covenant of Grace and Imputation

With this in place, we can now read the rest of WCF 7.3:

requiring of them faith in him, that they may be saved, and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life his Holy Spirit, to make them willing, and able to believe.

In the two-Adam scheme, where Adam failed in the garden, Christ succeeded in the wasteland (Luke 4:1-13). Christ did exactly what Adam didn't, but he did it for us, not himself since his essence is the source of the gift in the first place. What we receive in covenant of grace isn't greater than what Adam would have received had he not sinned¹⁹⁷. We receive what Adam would have received had he obeyed, but we do so via Christ, by faith alone¹⁹⁸.

Fesko writes that "covenant of grace does not differ from the covenant of works in its eschatological goal, only in the road taken: Adam's obedience versus Christ's."¹⁹⁹ Later he writes: "Adam's justification was by obedience, but now in a fallen world our justification can only be by faith in Christ—by trusting in the obedience of the last Adam. Justification is therefore either by works or by faith alone in Jesus's works."¹⁹⁹

Claiming that salvation is always and only by grace through faith isn't merely a statement based on piety, but it's a consequence of the fact that Adam brought death, entoring cutting off any possibility of any type of merit. Christ brings us what Adam would have brought to us if he obeyed God²⁰¹, and his atonement and death is sufficient for all²⁰² and to be freely offered to all²⁰³. Anyone who comes can receive the full, infinite righteousness of Christ credited to their account, be declared righteous, and be freed from sin to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4).

When we think of the covenant of works, we should think "merit". When we think of the covenant of grace, we should think "imputation". That is, we receive the infinite righteousness of Christ on our account by faith alone. Faith is the alone condition of the covenant; it's the only requirement to receive the infinite righteousness of Christ. This is applied by imputation. As we'll see later, the faith that alone acts as the condition of the covenant is not faith that's alone, it's merely alone in conditional satisfaction.

By contrast, let's look at a more serious condemnation that comes from Trent:

CANON XI.-If any one saith, that men are justified, either by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ, or by the sole remission of sins, to the exclusion of the grace and the charity which is poured forth in their hearts by the Holy Ghost, and is inherent in them; or even that the grace, whereby we are justified, is only the favour of God; let him be anathema.

In this we definitely see a conflation of imputation (status: justification) and renovation (state: sanctification), but if we swap the word "justified" with "saved", it reads a lot better. It's true that we're not saved by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ to the exclusion of charity. However, with that word swap, we end up confusing the reception of the righteousness required to obtain eternal life and our growth in holiness. Thus the importance of the Protestant justification-sanctification distinction. We're justified by imputation, which, as we've seen earlier in the concept of infusion in the canons of Dort, is always accompanies by, though distinguished from, renovation (e.g. sanctification).

The problem is not the requirement of an increase in love and faith and a life of good works as a far of our salvation as a whole, because, despite persistent antinomian claims, good works aren't merely evidences of our faith (discussed later). The issue will always come back to the requirements of the covenant of works. You need Christ's merit imputed to you for you to meet God's minimum requirements. Just as we may never downplay the seriousness of sin, we may never recreate God in our own image by lowering the requirements he set for communion with him. Perfection is the minimum requirement, and this is granted by Christ on the condition of faith alone. The only alternative is some type of impossible return to a covenant of works and a functional denial of the sufficiency of Christ.

While noone is going to explicitly claim that Christ is insufficient for salvation, this is the exact implication set forth when any concept of merit is discussed outside of Christ. Ultimately, the only topic under discussion is the declaration of your righteous status before the eyes of the Father. This simply can't be put off until death. We need his completion credited to our account at the start of our Christian walk.

Furthermore, obedience and growth in holiness can only be done in the context of perfect righteousness in union with Christ. It's only in that perfected context that we can provide anything to the Father. From this context, our good works proceed, your communion with the saints can flourish, and you can eat and drink the body of blood of Christ in the Eucharist to strengthen your faith. "-ation" and "-ology" terminology aside: union with Christ and perfected state must precede progressive growth. We cannot wait till the judgement to receive perfection.

In the beatific vision, we will see God with immediate (e.g. non-mediated) vision, but we need God to see us in this life now. See the Aaronic Blessing (Numbers 6:24-26):

The Lord bless you and keep you;

the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;

the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

While Roman Catholicism is in no way to be equated with the Judaizers, they do nonetheless speak of the law as if it were part of a legal covenant. This is in contrast to how Paul speaks in Galatians. Given the previous explanation of the covenant of works and covenant of grace, read the words of Dunson:

Paul is not arguing that the Mosaic covenant considered as a covenant taught that perfect obedience would actually lead to justification. Rather, in response to the Galatian troublers, Paul insists that if one is going (foolishly) to turn to the law for justification one needs to read what the law actually says. Although the Mosaic covenant's sacrificial system provided forgiveness for transgressors, the legal demands of the law itself can do nothing but curse those who do not obey them perfectly.²⁰⁴

Later, writing on the same text, he correctly points out that "law and faith are absolutely and irreconcilably antithetical when it comes to how a person is justified. One is either justified by faith or by keeping God's law." In fact, this "latter option Paul takes to be an obvious absurdity since all of God's end-time blessings must be received by faith, in line with the example of Abraham, to whom these promises of blessing were originally made."²⁰⁵ Calvin similarly says that "the contradiction between law and faith lies in the matter of justification."²⁰⁶

Because the term "law" can mean "moral law", "covenant of works", "Mosaic law", and other things, context has to drive everything. Much of the complexity in the book of Galatians is that Paul uses the word in multiple senses, and it takes much care to navigate the usages; but, typically, the "law-Gospel distinction" refers to the distinction between the covenant of works with it's concept of merit and the covenant of grace with its emphasis on faith.

Turretin summarizes this well. Let's look at his summary in three parts. First, he reviews the layout of the covenants:

For as there are two covenants which God willed to make with men—the one legal and the other of grace—so also there is a twofold righteousness—legal and evangelical. Accordingly there is also a double justification or a double method of standing before God in judgment—legal and evangelical. The former consists in one’s own obedience or a perfect conformity with the law, which is in him who is to be justified; the latter in another’s obedience or a perfect observance of the law, which is rendered by a surety in the place of him who is to be justified—the former in us, the latter in Christ.²⁰⁷

Second, he reviews the exegetical data relating to the requirements of each:

Concerning the first, Paul says, “Not the hearers, but the doers of the law shall be justified” (Rom. 2:13); and “Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law. That the man which doeth those things shall live by them” (Rom. 10:5). Concerning the other, he says, “The gospel is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth, for therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith” (Rom. 1:16, 17); and “Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24). Concerning both, he says, “That I may be found in Christ, not having my own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ” (Phil. 3:9; cf. also Rom. 9:30, 31).²⁰⁸

In here we see that perfect law keeping is required for the first covenant, while the second is by grace through faith in the one who did perfectly keep the law for us. Finally, he reiterates of the law-Gospel distinction:

Hence a twofold justification flows: one in the legal covenant by one’s own righteousness according to the clause, “Do this and live”; the other in the covenant of grace, by another’s righteousness (Christ’s) imputed to us and apprehended by faith according to the clause, “Believe and thou shalt be saved.” Each demands a perfect righteousness. The former requires it in the man to be justified, but the latter admits the vicarious righteousness of a surety. The former could have place in a state of innocence, if Adam had remained in innocence. But because after sin it became impossible to man, we must fly to the other (i.e, the gospel), which is founded upon the righteousness of Christ.²⁰⁹

This represents a strict boundary blocking any concept of merit after the fall. In contrast to this, Roman Catholicism has a model of merit for individuals after the fall, thus has a collaborative model of "salvation" (or "justification"). See CCC 2008:

The merit of man before God in the Christian life arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of his grace. The fatherly action of God is first on his own initiative, and then follows man's free acting through his collaboration, so that the merit of good works is to be attributed in the first place to the grace of God, then to the faithful. Man's merit, moreover, itself is due to God, for his good actions proceed in Christ, from the predispositions and assistance given by the Holy Spirit.

Though it would be wrong to crassly refer to this as "justification by works", the inclusion of merit demonstrates the impossibility of such a salvific system. Merit is simply not possible by anyone with sin or inclination toward sin in any way²¹⁰; even if there were an absense of sin, the lack of original righteousness also entirely removes the possibility of merit. There is simply no concept of covenantal merit outside of Adam himself.

TODO: can we move this to the good works section? need Isaiah 64:6 over there. The only way to receive righteousness is to rely on Christ's merits alone, which we receive through faith alone. From there, we can grow in Christ and please him with our good works. The only way for these good works to be seen as truly good is for them to be blameless, thus they must be in the context of perfect righteousness. Outside of Christ, even our best works are as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6), but seen in Christ, our works are judged to be good (1 Cor 3:10-15, cf. Matthew 25:23). Because they'll be seen in Christ and his perfect righteousness, our good works will be seen as good at the at we perform them, not retroactively declared good at the judgement.

WLC 70 sums up this Reformed conception of justification quite well, stating that justification is:

an act of God's free grace unto sinners, in which he pardoneth all their sins, accepteth and accounteth their persons righteous in his sight; not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but only for the perfect obedience and full satisfaction of Christ, by God imputed to them, and received by faith alone.

Duplex Gratia Dei

The Tridentine theologians noticed a flaw in the logic of a remote Judge declaring you righteous without any basis for it in reality. Furthermore, if status preceded state, there would be a situation where God rekons the righteousness of Christ to your account (status) without any corresponding righteousness in the person (state). That is, God's proclamation of your righteousness, even though truly on your account, is just an accounting procedure: it's a "legal fiction"²¹¹.

This problem stems from disconnecting justification from Christ, which turns the entire concept into a philosophical accounting procedure. Yet, even today evangelicals attempt to counter the charge by merely repeating the accusation louder. R.C. Sproul, for example, does exactly this when he says that "it is a legal reality precisely because it is based on a real (or true) imputation of real and true righteousness."²¹².

The response to the legal fiction problem is a real connection between the person and Christ, not merely a transfer between accounts; thus, the Reformed response is that when a person is truly connected to Christ, imputation is more than a mere accounting procedure. Outside of an actual link to Christ, even sanctification becomes a fiction²¹³ (e.g. moralism). We might even say that something is only "theology" when it's linked to Christ and rooted in the written word. The antidote to a legal fiction in justification is only Christ himself, who is our treasury of merit²¹⁴.

Calvin famously summarized it, writing:

How do we receive those benefits which the Father bestowed on his only-begotten Son—not for Christ’s own private use, but that he might enrich poor and needy men? First, we must understand that as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us. Therefore, to share with us what he has received from the Father, he had to become ours and to dwell within us.@@footnote|citation:calvin/unionwithchrist

Linking the issue back to Reformation history, Alister McGrath writes:

The Reformed school is able to justify its emphasis upon the iudicium Dei secundum veritatem through the application of the principle of the unio mystica between Christ and the believer, as well as the federal relationship between them, so that the alien righteousness of the former may be imputed to the latter. The absence of a corresponding principle or federal basis within Lutheranism leads to a weakness at this point, with justification tending to be treated as a legal fiction.²¹⁵

One common way to understand the relationship between status (imputed righteousness) and state (infused righteousness) is by a paraphrase of Luther in the Formula of Concord: "Faith and good works well agree and fit together [are inseparably connected]; but it is faith alone, without works, which lays hold of the blessing; and yet it is never and at no time alone." ²¹⁶.

We also see this in Calvin's response to Trent: "it is... faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone". Let's expand to the even larger quote:

Faith alone in this question, we are not thinking of a dead faith, which worketh not by love, but holding faith to be the only cause of justification. (Gal. 5:6; Rom. 3:22.) It is therefore faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone: just as it is the heat alone of the sun which warms the earth, and yet in the sun it is not alone, because it is constantly conjoined with light.²¹⁷

Calvin's metaphor helps us understand how status and state are inseparable and established in reality. In this metaphor, the inseparability of heat and light is an image of the inseparability of status and state, the sun being a symbol of Christ himself²¹⁸. Yet, the righteousness of Christ doesn't "shine" on us automatically as with the rays of the sun; rather, the Spirit applies Christ to believers in his own time.

Calvin referred to the inseparability of status and state as the duplex gratia Dei (twofold, or double, grace of God)²¹⁹. Unless we have Christ, no benefits he has matters for us (see also Turretin²²⁰); we need Christ, not just his gifts²²¹: "we do not, therefore, contemplate him outside ourselves from afar in order that his righteousness may be imputed to us but because we put on Christ and are engrafted into his body"²²². He himself is the greatest gift²²³. In both order and priority, his presence precedes his presents, and everything is inseparaable from everything else.

Mastricht states it as follows:

First, we receive Christ so that we may have him (Ps. 73:25-26), or so that we may be united with him, that he may be in us (Eph. 3:17) and we in him (Eph. 1:13). Second, we receive Christ so that in and with him we may obtain every kind of saving goods (Rom. 8:32), so that from his fullness we may receive grace upon grace (John 1:12; cf. v. 16), to such a degree that we may be perfect in him (Col. 2:9-10), no different than the way that from the conjugal union flows communion of goods. For this reason it is also said that he who has the Son has life (1 John 5:12).

Because we're talking about the real person of Christ, marriage is often a better analogy than bank accounts, but even then, something gets lost in metaphorical translation. The point is that the exalted Christ himself is the source of imputation, infusion, and everything else. He's the basis for status and state. He's the fullness of the treasury of benefits²²⁴. He's the only source of righteousness in any sense²²⁵, and, he himself is truly transformative (cf. Luke 8:43-48). Ultimately, union with Christ is simply this: the presence of the Spirit is the real presence of Christ in the believer, making possible the real transfer of righteouss in both imputation and infusion²²⁶.

Christ, as the endless storehouse of righteousness, transfers his infinite righteousness to believer's account as part of their Spirit-wrought connection with him. Out of our Spirit-forged union with Christ we also obtain a filial status in that we "receive the adoption of sons, and have comfort and access with boldness unto the throne of grace"²²⁷ (cf. WLC 39). Additionally, this is the beginnings of glorification in this life²²⁸ (cf. WLC 83, Bucey²²⁹) and is the basis for the Spirit truly communicating to us the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist.

Though we can find wording to the effect in various private works of Reformed theologians that justification either precedes or causes sanctification or union, this was neither the majority Reformed position, nor was it promoted to confessional status. The Reformed didn't always follow Calvin's teachings, but they did promote his theology of duplex gratia dei that "justification and sanctification are effects of union with Christ"²³⁰ to confessional status as seen in WLC 69.

Infusion, Inherent Righteousness, and Good Works

With the duplex gratia dei established we can look at common confusions that arise in Reformed-Roman Catholic and Reformed-evangelical dsicussions.

The statement that "salvation is by faith alone" is a corruption of the Reformation's "justification is by faith alone". The corrupt variant functionally denies the distinction between status and state. Running to Ephesians 2:8 and isolating it from Paul's imperatives only leads to antinomianism. Sanctification is just simply not by faith alone, therefore it's simply not true that the whole of the life of salvation is merely by faith alone.

Perhaps the clearest statement in the Reformed standards against salvation by faith alone comes from WLC 85:

What doth God require of us that we may escape his wrath and curse due to us for sin?

A. To escape the wrath and curse of God due to us for sin, God requireth of us faith in Jesus Christ, repentance unto life, with the diligent use of all the outward means whereby Christ communicateth to us the benefits of redemption.

Salvation as a whole includes "diligent use of all the outward means". It's not by faith alone. Conflating it with justification is a return to Rome's bleeding of of state into status. We simply must never confuse salvation with justification by incorrectly stating that salvation is by faith alone. Justification is perfected at the started of our Christian life and it's received by faith alone; after the inception of our Christian life from our union with Christ, we then work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12), all the time resting in our status of being at peace with God (Romans 5:1).

Because we need to counter the ideas of imputation-without-infusion, infusion-without-imputation, and various forms of the legal fiction problem, great care is needed to add nuance and guardrails at every turn. Turretin, for example, writes that it's entirely insufficient for us to treat our inherent righteousness as our status because inherent righteousness "can neither remove the offense to God or the guilt springing from it, nor compensate for the injury to the divine majesty." ²³¹. Because of statements like this are often taken in isolation, and because imputation was a distinctly Protestant concept there persisted a myth, as there still does today, that the Reformed accept only imputed righteousness, neither inherent nor infused righteousness. This accusation came so constantly from the Tridentine theologians and their successors, that a tremendous body of literature had to be put forth to combat the accusation.

Turretin further writes as if he's entirely exhausted with it, as such, it's worth quoting in full:

The question is not whether inherent righteousness is infused into us through the grace of Christ, by whose intervention we are made partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4) and obtain a true and real holiness pleasing and acceptable to God, by which we are properly denominated just and holy. For whatever the opponents may calumniously charge upon the orthodox (to wit, that “we allow of no inherent righteousness,”...), it is surely a most foul calumny. Its falsity is proved from the writings of our divines whether public or private, in which everywhere and with common consent they teach that the benefits of justification and sanctification are so indissolubly connected with each other that God justifies no one without equally sanctifying him and giving inherent righteousness by the creating of a new man in true righteousness and holiness.²³²

With this in mind, recall CCC 2023 which states that sanctifying grace "is infused by the Holy Spirit into the soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it." All Protestants deny that this would apply to the justification (status) that's by faith alone, but the Reformed are truly adamant that it's true in our sanctification (state). Thus, it's not accurate to describe Protestant salvation as being via imputation and Roman salvation as being via infusion of grace.

This is explicitly codified in the Reformed faith in both the Canons of Dort and the Westminster Larger Catechism. Dort (CD 3/4.16) even directly rejects the denial of infused grace, citing Jer. 31:33 for support²³³. It's worth reading WLC 77:

Q. 77. Wherein do justification and sanctification differ?

A. Although sanctification be inseparably joined with justification, yet they differ, in that God in justification imputeth the righteousness of Christ; in sanctification his Spirit infuseth grace, and enableth to the exercise thereof; in the former, sin is pardoned; in the other, it is subdued: the one doth equally free all believers from the revenging wrath of God, and that perfectly in this life, that they never fall into condemnation; the other is neither equal in all, nor in this life perfect in any, but growing up to perfection.

Bringing to mind the heat and light analogy from Calvin, Turretin writes:

We hold these two benefits to be inseparable: that no one is justified by Christ who is not also sanctified and gifted with inherent righteousness (from which believers can truly be denominated holy and righteous although not perfectly in this life).²³⁴

Because the TULIP evangelicals often make the claim that Christians are still "evil", we should look at the section immediately before the last where Turretin writes:

Now although we hold that there is nothing in us which can be opposed at the bar of God for justification, still one would improperly conclude from this what our opponents falsely and slanderously charge upon us—that we recognize no inherent righteousness in believers and by reason of which they are truly reckoned righteous and holy with God. Thus that we teach that believers always remain wicked and unjust in themselves, and that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us solely to cover our sins and not to take them away. Hence they take occasion to traduce our doctrine concerning the imputation of Christ's righteousness as impious and execrable.²³⁵

Much of the confusion on this point stems from simply conflating justification with sanctification, collapsing the entirety of salvation into justification, or confusing the TULIP idea of "total depravity", which no Christian can be said to have, with original sin, which never leaves us in this life.

Tightly related to this concept is the role of good works in the Christian life. This topic is shrouded in nothing but a fog of confusion in contemporary evangelicalism. Because much evangelical thought is built on "doctrines", not a single theological architecture, the role of good works retains no inherent connection to salvation. Thus, good works are seen as a man-centered, thus their importance must be diminished. We see exactly this downplaying of the need for good works in the antinomian idea that good works are either merely "thank you" or "love notes" to God, or are merely as evidences of our faith. These were originally Roman Catholic accusations against Protestantism²³⁶, but modern evangelicalism often wears as them badge of false piety.

In responding to the "they're merely evidences" accusation, John Davenant, one of the English delegates at the Synod of Dort, sets out a number of ways in which Tridentine accusations mix truth with what's false²³⁷. He states that it's true that "our Divines determine that that faith is not living which does not produce good works", "our works have not any relation to salvation, as though they were merits, that is, under the aspect of a meritorious cause", and that "we deny that good works are required as conditions of our salvation, if by good works we understand those which are entirely good, and such as fully answer to the demands of the Law".

Furthermore, he states that it's false "that we require the presence of works only in this respect, that they may attest the truth of faith", that "we teach that works have no relation at all to salvation ; for they have that relation which there is, between the way appointed, and the end of the way itself", "that we deny that good works are required as conditions of salvation, if by good works we understand those fruits of inchoate righteousness which follow justification, and precede glorification as the way ordained thereto", and "that we deny good works to be the conditions of salvation, if by conditions nothing else is designed, than that duty which is enjoined upon those justified and to be saved, by means of which they must aim at salvation, not merit the attainment of salvation itself".

In other words, we don't use good works as merit, but also not merely as evidences or testimonies of our faith. Good works are the providential road of our path to salvation. You can think of it as the means that flow from predestination from our perspective. God's perspective is that you are predestined to be going from Paris to Tokyo. He will give you the means for the trip, and you must do the work of those means. We need to buy the tickets, get to the airport, get on the plane, etc.

This focus on means is why WLC 32 ends the way it does:

Q. 32. How is the grace of God manifested in the second covenant? A. The grace of God is manifested in the second covenant, in that he freely provideth and offereth to sinners a mediator, and life and salvation by him; and requiring faith as the condition to interest them in him, promiseth and giveth his Holy Spirit to all his elect, to work in them that faith, with all other saving graces; and to enable them unto all holy obedience, as the evidence of the truth of their faith and thankfulness to God, and as the way which he hath appointed them to salvation.

In this answer, we see God's free provision of grace and a mediator, the conditionality of faith combined with the Spirit working that faith in us "unto all holy obedience", as 1) the evidence of the truth of their faith, 2) thankfulness to God, and 3) the way which he hath appointed them to salvation. Not only are good works evidences and expressions of gratitude, they're explicitly said to be the way to salvation. This shouldn't really be too surprising given the Bibles strong emphasis on the fact that we're to be judged by our works (2 Cor. 5:10; Matt. 16:27; Jn. 5:28-29; Gal. 6:7-9; Rev. 20:13; 22:12).

Mark Jones writes:

Good works, prepared in advance by God (Eph. 2:10) and done in the power of the Spirit (Rom. 8:9–14), are consequent conditions for salvation. In other words, to insist that believers perform good works only as their thankful response to the triune God for all that he has done for them may give the impression that they are not actually necessary for salvation. But as a consequent condition, following from receiving Christ, believers are required to do good works (Rom. 8:13).²³⁸

We find the same theology in the works of theologians across the whole of Reformed space and time such as Calvin²³⁹ (16th century Geneva), Davenant²⁴⁰ (pre-Westminster English), Rutherford²⁴¹, Tuckney, Owen (Westminster English), Witsius²⁴², Mastricht²⁴³ (Dutch), Turretin²⁴⁴, and Pictet (17th century Geneva). Turretin sums it up as follows:

Since good works have the relation of the means to the end (Jn. 3:5, 16; Mt. 5:8); of the “way” to the goal (Eph. 2:10; Phil. 3:14); of the “sowing” to the harvest (Gal. 6:7, 8); of the “firstfruits” to the mass (Rom. 8:23); of labor to the reward (Mt. 20:1); of the “contest” to the crown (2 Tim. 2:5; 4:8), everyone sees that there is the highest and an indispensable necessity of good works for obtaining glory. It is so great that it cannot be reached without them (Heb. 12:14; Rev. 21:27).²⁴⁵

Anthony Tuckney, who contributed to a significant portion of the Westminster Confession of Faith as well as both the Larger and Shorter Catechisms writes that:

we ought freely and fearlessly to assert both the doing of good works and their necessity, not indeed for acquiring or earning salvation by their merit, but by their intervention as God's Royal way, graciously to be approached.²⁴⁶

The thief on the cross (Luke 23:39-43) is a wonderful example of the minimum requirements for justification: by faith alone in Christ alone. Yet, this endlessly abused passage says absolutely nothing about the demands of the gospel on one's life. Why would it? Luke just used many thousands of words to detail the teachings on Christ on the topic. If the thief had been miraculously taken down and healed, a life of repentance would be required of him. This would include the mandates to be baptized, to become a Church member, and all around be required to glorify God and enjoy him forever (WSC 1).

The testimony of the Reformed faith is fairly uniform on good works, but the dividing line is the confessions. We've already seen WLC 32 on this, but see also WCF 16.2 in which their end is established:

These good works, done in obedience to God's commandments, are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith: and by them believers manifest their thankfulness, strengthen their assurance, edify their brethren, adorn the profession of the gospel, stop the mouths of the adversaries, and glorify God, whose workmanship they are, created in Christ Jesus thereunto, that, having their fruit unto holiness, they may have the end, eternal life.

Closely related is the very nearly heretical idea that "God cannot love you any more than he does right now". This idea is perilously close to denying the humanity of Christ. Once we distinguish the immutable love of God in himself (love of benevolence), God's love in time (love of beneficence), and God's love in his inclination toward a holy creature (love of complacency), we have enough flexibility to speak more accurately²⁴⁷.

These nuances translate roughly to God's eternal love, God's redemptive love, and God's rewarding love, which is nothing more than reading WLC 77 in light of a solid theology proper: God is love, his love is static in justification, and dynamic in sanctification. With these distinctions in place, Jones can write:

Christ requires our good works, not simply as thanksgiving, but out of a necessity that has principally in view his glory as the Mediator who comes to see the fullness of his work as the church is conformed to his image. The incarnation allows us to think in this manner. In fact, the incarnation requires that we think in this way, so that we will have a proper perspective on why we do good works.²⁴⁸

Thus, not only are good works required for eternal life, they do truly please the Lord²⁴⁹. See 16.6:

...the persons of believers being accepted through Christ, their good works also are accepted in him; not as though they were in this life wholly unblamable and unreprovable in God's sight; but that he, looking upon them in his Son, is pleased to accept and reward that which is sincere, although accompanied with many weaknesses and imperfections.

The evangelical discomfort of including good works in the path of salvation comes from a misunderstanding and incomplete logic. If we're going to view good works as something we do in and of ourselves, yes, they must be removed from the path of salvation. This means that one of the first good works disappears as well: repentance is no longer a requirement for justification. This is precisely the logic of many fundamentalist Baptists. They're consistently following through the only possible way to think of repentance if it's something we do in and of ourselves. It really would be justification by works.

However, this position declares not only a false gospel, but actively rejects the only Christ that saves. The isn't about distinguisting faith and discipleship, the issue is about the functional denial of the only Christ that saves. We don't mere look at a person's life to assess morality to ensure a good tree has good fruit (Matthew 7:15-20), but we assess what Christ they confess (Matthew 16:13-17). This separates Christianity from a Christianized moralism.

On the other side, those who teach that repentance is required for justification, but deny that good works are part of our salvation engage in double-speak. No amount of fine distinctions can allow one to remove good works from justification, but retain the good work of repentance. It lives in the same group. The "love notes" idea, while itself an attempt at humility and at glorifying God, turns good works into an endeavor that we drive.

It's simply not true that justification is an act of God, but sanctification is a cooperative effort. Both the act of justification and the process of santification are entirely works of grace that manifest a stream of gifts through Christ. The solution is to view good works as gifts from the Father. Repentance is just as much a gift as is faith. These are just as much gifts as are every other Christian good we do. The habit of faith prompts the act of faith, and more broadly speaking, out of a change of heart flows the twin good works of faith and repentance. It's easy to say everything is of grace, but we can be more specific in saying that good works are gratuiously given to us as gifts in Christ. Repentance is not merely an evidence of faith, but a gift that accompanies it²⁵⁰.

Closely bound to the concept of good works is the concept of associated rewards. Speaking on 1 Peter 2:24, Jones writes that,

Christ died so we could and would do good works. His death will not be in vain. For God to reward our good works, then, expresses his pleasure with the work of his Son. If we think about God rewarding our good works in terms of his honoring his Son's work, perhaps we will be less nervous about this topic. It is wonderful to think of God honoring and rewarding his Son by rewarding us for our good works done in Christ's name. This keeps us from being too anthropocentric about rewards and places a more Christ-centered focus on our approach to this important doctrine.²⁵¹

The Belgic Confession article 24 states that "we do not deny that God rewards good works, but it is through His grace that He crowns His gifts", which is a direct reference to Augustine²⁵²(cf. Turretin²⁵³). Immediately after this, BC24 again clarifies that our salvation isn't founded on good works, as our works cannot be the basis for our salvation. Altogether BC 24 is effectively saying to Rome: good works aren't for status in the eyes of God because "still the remembrance of one sin is sufficient to make God reject them"; rather they relate to our state, which can be improved, and, in agreement with Augustine, will lead to rewards. Rewards are not meritorious; rather these good works are, per Turretin, "gratuitous and not a due reward"²⁵⁴.

Against some forms of antinomianism, we must insist that our perfect status does not makes personal obedience and our state unnecessary. Against Roman Catholicism, we must insist that grows in state does at all help or increase our status, and that a perfected status is always and only the only acceptable context for growth in state²⁵⁵.

Rome's accusation of licentiousness in the lives of those justified by faith alone has no basis in the Reformed faith. Their inability to distinguish status from state blinds them to understanding the Reformed position on good works and for heavenly rewards. Yet, in practice, evangelicals share Rome's confusion. Turretin speaks to both when he writes:

Although works may be said to contribute nothing to the acquisition of salvation, still they should be considered necessary to the obtainment of it, so that no one can be saved without them.²⁵⁶

Jones gives us a good way to look at our heavenly rewards for good works:

We rob God of his identity as a gracious Father when we deny ourselves what he clearly and graciously promises. So, it is not wrong to ask, ‘Does God reward Christians for their good works?’ But we would do better to inquire, ‘Does our heavenly Father, out of his abundant grace, reward his children for their good works?’²⁵⁷

Returning to the concept of good works in general, we've been looking at their purpose in the Christian life, but we can also look at them from a perspective of Biblical commands. Good works aren't merely suggestions or a natural outworking of gratuitous piety, they're demanded as imperatives of the Gospel. The law-Gospel distinction doesn't remove imperatives from the Gospel; afterall Christ himself said "If you love me, you will keep my commandments" (John 14:15).

Recall, it's Paul, not James, who says that we must "keep in step with the Spirit" (Gal 5:25) and "walk as children of light" (Eph. 5:8) These imperatives are only possible because they're grounded in our union with Christ which establishes the indicatives. In fact, the full passages of these texts include both he indicative and imperative: "If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit" and "...you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light...". In short, "Become in Christ what you are in Christ."²⁵⁸.

Without the indicative-imperative pattern, Paul's language in Colossians 3 seems inherently confused as he's constantly exhorting us to do what's already been done: "If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God." James can say that a "person is justified by works and not by faith alone" (James 2:24) because "Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God" (James 2:23).

Additionally, imperatives imply some type of threat for disobedience, or else they're merely suggestions. The Reformed faith has long held fast to this idea. Jones explains that the official French and Latin versions of the Canons of Dort (5.14) explicitly refers to the threatenings of the Gospel (see also WCF 19.6). The English translation of the Latin is as follows:

As it has pleased God to begin his work of grace in us by the preaching of the gospel, so he preserves, continues and perfects it through the hearing, reading, meditation, exhortations, threatenings, [and] promises of that same gospel, and also through the use of the sacraments.²⁵⁹

Later Jones writes:

Not only the letters to the seven churches, but also passages in Paul’s epistles, prove this point. For instance, Paul warns believers that “if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Rom. 8:13). This is not a “law threatening,” but rather a “gospel threatening.” In the WCF, believers are those who yield obedience to God’s commands, tremble at his threatenings, and embrace his promises (14.2). God’s commands, threatenings, and promises for believers are all derived from the gospel, largely understood. In fact, the most severe warnings in the Scriptures are made to professing Christians, and for that reason they are gospel warnings (see Heb. 10:26–31).²⁶⁰

The moral law isn't random, but is grounded in the character of God. Our obedience to the permanent moral law is grounded in us mirroring God as his image: we project life because God protects life, we protect truth because he is truth, we rest in God because he rested in himself, etc.

As such, the imperatives of the Gospel are law, but not in a sense relating to justification or in the sense of a covenant of works (WCF 19.2); they exist because we're reasonable creatures that reflect God. As long as you have your humanity, the law exists as a mirror of God himself. Thus, Bavinck writes:

The gospel always presupposes the law and also needs it in its administration. It is brought, after all, to rational, moral human beings, who are responsible for themselves before God and therefore have to be called to faith and repentance...Every person is obligated not first of all by the gospel but by nature, the law, to believe God at his word and by implication to accept the gospel in which he speaks to us humans.²⁶¹

We who have Christ's example in Scripture, because of "the heightened indicative in the new covenant", have a "heightened obligation to love and obey God"²⁶². In the covenant of grace, we don't merit, but we need the law as "the moral shape that salvation takes"²⁶³. Beyond individuals, this is the moral shape for households and the Church: "...as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" (Joshua 24:15). Ultimately, the law of the Lord is to be our delight (Psalm 119) and how we glorify Christ. Jones summarizes:

The more we please Christ, the more he comes to delight in his people and rejoice that his work for us is being realized by his work in us. The sanctification of the church is an important part of Christ’s glory.²⁶⁴

Assurance

Let's turn to reviewing Trent's thoughts on the Protestant idea of fiducia. Recall that the Protestant concept of faith is effectively knowledge, assent, and trust (or confidence). Trent, however, has nothing good to say about fiducia. Lane writes:

The Tridentine Decree on Justification uses the word fiducia only in neg- ative terms. Chapter 9 is headed “Against the Vain Confidence of Heretics” (Contra inanem hæreticorum fiduciam). This states: "Yet it should not be said that sins are forgiven, or ever have been forgiven, to those who boast of their confidence (fiduciam) in and certainty of the remission of their sins and rest on that alone. For this vain and ungodly confidence (fiducia) may exist (and in our day does exist) among heretics and schismatics and is preached with great vehemence in opposition to the Catholic Church."²⁶⁵

Canon 12 states:

If any one saith, that justifying faith is nothing else but confidence (fiduciam) in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ’s sake; or, that this confidence (fiduciam) alone is that whereby we are justified; let him be anathema.

Trent does seem to be condemning an essential aspect of faith; however, if we're consistent with ourselves and charitably seek to understand Tridentine theology as a whole, we'll see that what's being condemned is closer to what we call assurance.

We can see this when we continue reading session 6 chapter 9:

But neither is this to be asserted,-that they who are truly justified must needs, without any doubting whatever, settle within themselves that they are justified, and that no one is absolved from sins and justified, but he that believes for certain that he is absolved and justified; and that absolution and justification are effected by this faith alone: as though whoso has not this belief, doubts of the promises of God, and of the efficacy of the death and resurrection of Christ.²⁶⁶

Roman Catholicism is conflating faith and assurance. When evangelicals chastize each other for a "lack of faith", they're doing the same; when evangelical leaders do this to their congregation, they're engaging in spiritual abuse. Faith is the instrument to apprehend Christ while assurance is most definitely not of the essence of faith, but "a true believer may wait long, and conflict with many difficulties before he be partaker of it" (WCF 18.3). Fesko writes:

The Scriptures record many of God's people who suffer from a lack of assurance. The psalmist regularly questions God. Psalm 88 captures heart-aching cries to God: “For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol.… But I, O LORD, cry to you; in the morning my prayer comes before you. O LORD, why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me?” (Ps 88:3, 13-14). Habakkuk was perplexed and even angry at God because he allowed the Chaldeans to take Israel into exile: “O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you ‘Violence!' and you will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise” (Hab 1:2-3)....These different examples show that God gives the gift of faith to believe in Jesus, but the reception of that gift does not mean there are never struggles with doubt. By faith, we rest on the rock of Christ, but the storm waters may and often rise and lash us.²⁶⁷

Faith itself is the perfect gift based on God's speech. Assurance relates to man as a psychosomatic (body and soul) unity²⁶⁸. It takes into account not merely mental assent, but personal temperment and a lifetime of nervous system abuse. Assurance grows through a lifetime of sanctification through the ordinary means of grace, the blessing of the Sabbath, and medical and therapeutic advancement.

However, because the connotation of "confidence" and "assurance" overlap, both mapping to fiducia, we need to clarify what's established at the start of the Christian life and what a Christian grows into. The simplest distinction to make is between objective assurance which has more focus on the object of our faith (Christ) than the subject (ourselves) and subjective assurance which has no less to do with Christ, but engages in the continual growth of the subject (the Christian). This is, once again, the status-state paradigm that maps to the Protestant concepts of justification and sanctification.

We see objective assurance in WCF 18.2 and subjective assurance in 18.3:

2: This certainty is not a bare conjectural and probable persuasion grounded upon a fallible hope; but an infallible assurance of faith founded upon the divine truth of the promises of salvation, the inward evidence of those graces unto which these promises are made, the testimony of the Spirit of adoption witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God, which Spirit is the earnest of our inheritance, whereby we are sealed to the day of redemption.

3: This infallible assurance doth not so belong to the essence of faith, but that a true believer may wait long, and conflict with many difficulties before he be partaker of it: yet, being enabled by the Spirit to know the things which are freely given him of God, he may, without extraordinary revelation, in the right use of ordinary means, attain thereunto...

Part of the confusion in evangelicalism may come from conflating objective and subjective assurance. Insisting that at the whole person have no anxiety at the start of their Christian walk is dangerous close to spiritual abuse. Salvation is not by the strength of your assurance, but by faith in the strong Christ. Roman Catholicism, like much of evangelicalism today, misunderstood the Gospel at this point: you are not saved by your faithfulness, but Christ's.

The presence of saving faith is binary in the objective sense, but can increase in the subjective sense. Mastricht writes "Faith is said to increase (2 Cor. 10:15), to be established (Col. 2:7), to grow exceedingly (2 Thess. 1:3), all the way to full assurance of faith (Heb. 10:22)."²⁶⁹. Faith apprehends Christ, while Christ leads to assurance through a lifetime of walking with him. See WLC 81 on subjective assurance:

Q. Are all true believers at all times assured of their present being in the estate of grace, and that they shall be saved?

A. Assurance of grace and salvation not being of the essence of faith, true believers may wait long before they obtain it; and, after the enjoyment thereof, may have it weakened and intermitted, through manifold distempers, sins, temptations, and desertions; yet are they never left without such a presence and support of the Spirit of God as keeps them from sinking into utter despair.

However, we may always have objective assurance. This is the beauty of the practical syllogism:

All who trust in the whole Christ (e.g. both natures, all offices) for their salvation are saved.

I trust in the whole Christ

Therefore, I am saved.

Baptism isn't a salvation-reveal party, it's a visible manifestation of objective assurance: "God has promised me that I will be saved if I trust in the whole Christ". By looking to your Baptism, you can see that promise objectively assurance visualized. This is the idea of WLC 167: "How is baptism to be improved by us?" Put into modern vernacular the question is "How can we gain further value from our Baptism?" By looking to our Baptism, we see the symbol of objective assurance and a God-given path to subjective assurance.

By contrast, one error from a corrupted form of covenant theology is covenantal (presumptive) regeneration which confuses the promise with the thing promised. Your children are not united to Christ by conception, but through faith alone; however, even with the heavy focus on the ordinary means of grace in the Reformed faith, the extraordinary means persist. Thus WCF 5.3: "God, in his ordinary providence, maketh use of means, yet is free to work without, above, and against them, at his pleasure" implies WCF 10.3: "Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated, and saved by Christ, through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth: so also are all other elect persons who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word".

We raise our children in the Lord in our mandate to catechize (and our baptismal promises) them as members of a Christian family; however, because true faith comes through the word by the Spirit in his time, catechesis isn't bare Biblical education. Rather it's household "preaching" that includes pointing them to Christ and exhorting them to follow his morality. See WSC 89:

Q. How is the word made effectual to salvation?

A. The Spirit of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching, of the word, an effectual means of convincing and converting sinners, and of building them up in holiness and comfort, through faith, unto salvation.

After faith, for adults and children, education continues through deeper catechesis (e.g. Larger Catechism) and further discipleship. This builds a structure of understanding and moral formation on top of faith. Augustine sums it up when he says "Understand, in order to believe, my word; believe, in order to understand, the word of God."²⁷⁰. While Biblical education is important, extensive mastery of facts doesn't correct a lifetime of damage. Thus, the vitality of diligence as seen in the last part of WCF 18.3:

...and therefore it is the duty of everyone to give all diligence to make his calling and election sure, that thereby his heart may be enlarged in peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, in love and thankfulness to God, and in strength and cheerfulness in the duties of obedience, the proper fruits of this assurance; so far is it from inclining men to looseness.

Furthermore, the WCF, in 33.3, ends with a comment about how we are to trust God's word that there's a judgement, if we can trust his word in that, surely we can trust his word when he says that if we believe in Christ, we will be saved (Acts 13:31). This same article reiterates the inability to rest in any carnal security:

1: As Christ would have us to be certainly persuaded that there shall be a day of judgment, both to deter all men from sin; and for the greater consolation of the godly in their adversity: so will he have that day unknown to men, that they may shake off all carnal security, and be always watchful, because they know not at what hour the Lord will come; and may be ever prepared to say, Come Lord Jesus, come quickly, Amen.

Despite these qualifications, Roman Catholicism still considers assurance to be presumption. There's no point in a "gospel" if it's not actually bringing peace. A person can't wait till the judgement for an objective pronouncement of relief, this needs to be at the start of the Christian life. Thus, Melanchthon's greatest difficulty with the council of Trent was the "condemnation of the assurance of salvation. Trent brings the believer to the point of despair."²⁷¹.

Yet, we need to reiterate that subjective assurance is variable throughout the whole of the Christian life. WCF 17.3 states that:

True believers may have the assurance of their salvation divers ways shaken, diminished, and intermitted; as, by negligence in preserving of it, by falling into some special sin which woundeth the conscience and grieveth the Spirit; by some sudden or vehement temptation, by God’s withdrawing the light of his countenance, and suffering even such as fear him to walk in darkness and to have no light: yet are they never utterly destitute of that seed of God, and life of faith, that love of Christ and the brethren, that sincerity of heart, and conscience of duty, out of which, by the operation of the Spirit, this assurance may, in due time, be revived; and by the which, in the meantime, they are supported from utter despair.

It's not presumption to know you're justified, but it would be arrogant and self-deluding to say that you're immune to Satan's attacks on your assurance.

Righteoussness and Purgatory

After the Papacy, there's no theological concept more repugnant to Protestantism than Purgatory. There's no way to talk about the "Gospel before Luther" without discussing purgatory since it's acceptance was nearly ubiquitous before the Reformation.

The particularly interesting thing about purgatory is how baseless it is. It's a great example of something that's not only absent in the direct text of Scripture, but also not something you can deduce by good and necessary consequence. In fact, the exact opposite seems to be the case (Phil. 1:23; 2 Cor. 5:6, 8) All Biblical data supporting anything close to purgatory is entirely circumstantial. As with the concept of a rapture, you can only see it when you view it with a lens that includes it in your pursuit of a confirmation bias.

Its absence in Protestantism comes from two sources. First, a focus on confessionalization forces one to reasses the grounding of each gear in a theological system, ensuring each is ultimately sourced in Scripture (sola Scriptura). Purgatory eventually falls off naturally. Second, in terms of dogmatics, it's safe to say that the Reformation increased the meaning of "the sufficiency of Christ" term to include the fact that Christ is also sufficient for anything like "temporal punishments".

Purgatory is a concept so disconnected from reality that neither the Westminster Confession of Faith nor the Belgic Confession even bother rejecting it. The closest we get to a rejection are passive aggressive remarks like WCF 32.1, which, after mention stating heaven and hell, simply says "besides these two places, for souls separated from their bodies, the Scripture acknowledgeth none."

Of course, these two confessions weren't written in areas where purgatory was a major issue. In confessions where it was hotly contested, it was definitely addressed, thus the Second Helvetic Confession states:

But as touching that which some teach concerning the fire of purgatory, it is flat contrary to the Christian faith (“I believe the remission of sins, and life everlasting”) and to the absolute purgation of sins made by Christ, and to these sayings of Christ our Lord: “Verily, verily I say unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth in Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but hath passed from death unto life” (John 5:24). Again, “He that is washed, needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean” (John 13:10).²⁷²

Furthermore, the 39 articles states, that "The Romish doctrine concerning pugatory, pardons, worshipping, and adoration, as well of images, as of relics, and also invocation of saints, is a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God."²⁷³.

Finally, the wording of the Irish Articles simply puts it in a list of Papal fictions: "The doctrine of the Church of Rome, concerning limbus patrum, limbus puerorum, purgatory, prayer for the dead, pardons, adoration of images and relics, and also invocation of saints, is vainly invented, without all warrant of Holy Scripture, yea, and is contrary to the same."²⁷⁴

What is the Reformed understanding of our state at death? While we received the perfect righteousness of Christ in this life in our status, at death, in glorification, we receive the same perfect righteousness of Christ in state form, first in our soul, later in the body. Just as the perfection of our bodily resurrection is instant, so is the perfection of our state at death. We no more go through a purification of the soul after death than we go through a purification of the body at the resurrection. See WCF 32.1:

The bodies of men, after death, return to dust, and see corruption: but their souls, which neither die nor sleep, having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them: the souls of the righteous, being then made perfect in holiness, are received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God, in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies....

Note the language of "they behold the face of God, in light and glory": this is the immediate, intellectual vision detailed so well by Aquinas. Without the body we see God, not through the mediation of our senses, but immediately; not by the optics of our eyes but by the eyes of our heart (Ephesians 1:18; see the opposite in the darkening in Roman 1:21). Before the bodily resurrection, this is the peak of the beatific vision; after, we see the risen Christ with our glorified eyes.

Purgatory requires a confused notion of the sources of revelation, a broken conception of salvation, and a view of death that requires the body before the resurrection. The problem isn't the "fire" requires material substances, but that there's simply no room for the means that at all require a time for growing, cleansing,

to entertain the idea of purgatory. Salvation is from anything like purgatory. A person isn't "saved" if he still has to go through purgatory. It's a weak savior that requires it.

Purgatory is one of the unique issues that separates Roman Catholicism from the rest of the Church. Not even the East accepts a purification in the same sense. This issue acts of one of the core issues that permanently separate Roman Catholicism from any form of Protestant catholicity. The other issues being a lack of imputation and the Papacy. These three are simply non-negotiable.

Issues Not In Scope

The distinctives of Roman Catholicism make it entirely incompatible with the rest of the Catholic Church. These issues are of a different kind than what pop-culture evangelical books like to talk about. However, there's strong irony in the fact that many of the issues these book critique, much evangelicalism is susceptible to. Let's review a few examples.

First, though it's the most important topic in our lives as it's one of the only theological topics that come with us into eternity, Protestant attacks on Roman Catholic worship are typically hypocritical: If you're a Protestant who's okay with unauthorized fire at Advent or with the manmade ceremony of baby dedication, you already have a foot in Roman Catholicism. While worship is not a tertiary issue, "nondenominational" Baptists typically can't speak of worship deviation in Roman Catholicism without extreme hypocrisy.

Second, if your understanding of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus is that it's a record of true historical events, not merely a parable, and you take the opportunity to reverse-engineer a geography of the afterlife, you've abandoned exegesis in favor of mythopoetic worldbuilding. Additionally, you're already in a position where the souls in heaven can see down. You have the myth structure in place for asking the departed saints for prayers exactly as you would ask your friends for prayer²⁷⁵. Those who hold to such mythology merely need to take the next logical step in the logic tree rooted in a misidentified genre to acheive their own intercession of the saints. Rather than following a misidentified genre down the wrong path, Rome bases its conception of the intercession of the saints in a intellectual participation in the beatific: the departed saints don't see us, rather God communicates the awareness of our petitions. This makes the Roman Catholic understanding more feasible than any evangelical "holes in the floor of heaven" theory.

Third, the standard Protestant argument against giving dulia (honor, respect, and reverence) to the saints is that this should be reserved for God alone. However, if you're not merely admiring, loving, or dedicating your service to, but pledging your allegiance to a flag and republic, you've entirely lost the ability to make any arguments about dulia, as you're already giving a stronger unbounded dulia to a civil ideology, and potentially stating that there's a domain outside of Christ's absolute Kingship and demand for unified allegiance. This issue is impossible to ignore, and people adhereing so such serious error have no place to attack many Roman Catholic practices surrounding dulia.

Finally, as previously mentioned, those charismatic groups who accept continual revelation, even if subordinating that revelation to Scripture are rejecting sola Scriptura, instead opting for prima Scriptura. This is not far from the Roman Catholic understanding of revelation.

None of these issues remove Roman Catholicism from the Church as a whole nor do they prevent individuals from hearing the Spirit's voice in their local parishes. Just as our personal salvation is defined, not in terms of acquired theology, but in terms of the object of our faith, the boundaries of the one, holy, apostolic, catholic church isn't defined by confessional adherence, but by in terms of that same object of our faith as described in the creeds.

Summary

When we think about the question of the gospel or the Church before Luther, it can be tempting to buy into Papal propaganda about Rome or the East having millennia of theological continuity or into a radical mythology of a pure gospel persecution in the woods.

These naive ideas can be avoided through a corrected view of the one, holy, apostolic, Catholic Church and maintaining distinctions between codified theology and general understandings. The Church is neither a single institution nor is it simply the sum of all its members. The one and only Church is founded on the ministry of word and sacrament and grows through its expansion.

When it comes to justification, the Reformation wasn't correcting orthodoxy, it was establishing it. The western Church simply just didn't have a codified understanding of justification until the 16th century. On the other side, a Christian group without deep theological codification doesn't maintain enough definition for accurate critique. This leads to endless empty arguments on social media by people who maintain no actual codified definition of the Gospel.

By turning to formally codified Church confessions, we have a measurable, verifyable plumb line where local Church fellowship can be further enriched by a common foundation providing a definition of unity. In this context, peace no longer means silence, but adherence to that unity in the word. Wolves are easier to detect due to clearer definitions on each aspect of the Gospel. This provides solid guardrails against nuda Scripture (e.g. Bible-alonism) and varieties of continuation revelation such as prima Scriptura (e.g. Pentecostals) or a full model of continual revelation (e.g. Roman Catholicism). These guardrails protect the Protestant model of Scripture we know as sola Scriptura.

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