The Formal Cause of Justification
The question of what is
the “formal cause” of justification is often said to be the real,
fundamental difference between the soteriologies of the Roman
Catholic Church (RCC) and Protestants by theologians on both sides.
We can find this assertion made by theologians such as the Anglican
Richard Hooker in the 16th Century, all the way down to
the Anglican C. Fitzsimons Allison and the Jesuit Robert W. Gleason
in the 20th, among many others.
A number of theologians
on both sides have noted that the Protestant principles of sola
gratia (salvation “by grace alone”) and sola fide (“by
faith alone”) are not the real difference, since both are
effectively asserted in traditional Roman Catholic (RC) doctrinal
sources. The Council of Trent affirms that both the forgiveness of
sin and the gift of new life (which together make up “initial
justification” in Tridentine terms, but justification plus initial
sanctification in Protestant terms) cannot be earned, but are
gratuitously given in response to living faith, that is, faith
informed by love. Both sides agree that forgiveness and renewal are
distinct but cannot be separated, and are given simultaneously by
God.
The difference of
terminology abovementioned rests upon the apparent disagreement over
the “formal cause”, not merely upon how broadly one takes the
connotations of the word “justification”, nor how one
differentiates it from “sanctification”. There is a logomachy
here, but that is not the only problem. That is shown by the fact
that Protestants such as Hooker have been quite willing to call
sanctification “second justification” sometimes, and so have
Roman Catholic theologians in the past.
No, the essential problem
is indeed the understanding of what exactly constitutes the
“just-ness” of the justified, that is, the “formal cause” of
justification. To better comprehend what we mean by this, we need to
remind ourselves of the Aristotelian-Scholastic philosophical
categories of causality being used. A “substance”, a real entity,
has to be actually produced by something or someone. We would simply
call that the “cause” these days. Scholastically, it is the
Efficient Cause. The substance normally has to be made from something
pre-existing which is changed as to its nature. That is the Material
Cause (where the “matter” is not limited to what scientists call
matter). The reason it is produced, the purpose for which it exists,
is the Final Cause. The “plan” or “shape” or “set of
qualities” that make it what it is, that render the matter “such”,
are the Formal Cause. Other causes can be listed, but these will do
for now.
So, the Formal Cause of
something is that which inheres in it to make it what it is. For a
building, the formal cause might be roughly equivalent to the set of
architectural plans used to build it. The material cause will be the
bricks, mortar, wood and other sources used to build it. The
efficient cause will be the builders themselves. If the building is a
Fire Station, for example, the final cause will be the need to house
firefighters and their equipment.
For justification, the
RCC said in the Council of Trent that the sole formal cause is
sanctifying grace imparted to and thus inhering in the Christian,
that is, the objectively cleansed and renewed state of the human
nature within that Christian. Protestants like Hooker, on the other
hand, have claimed that the sole formal cause of justification (or at
least of “first justification”) is the righteousness of Christ
imputed to us as an external “covering” of our sin and guilt.
The Protestant criticism
of the RC position is that it makes our acceptance with God dependent
on our degree of goodness or works, thus denying the Gospel of grace
and the bold access to God provided for us through the Cross alone
(Galatians 6:14, Ephesians 2:8-9, Hebrews 10:19-22). The RC criticism
the other way is that the imputational definition reduces salvation
to a legal fiction, a mere whitewashing of sepulchres (cp. Matthew
23:17). One purpose in this essay is to show that both criticisms are
unfair and based on misunderstandings. The other is to show how both
perspectives can be integrated without either side denying its
doctrine.
The first obstacle that
must be overcome is a category error. The problem with the Protestant
insistence upon extrinsic imputation of Christ's merits or
righteousness as the formal cause of justification is that it cannot
be so according to Scholastic definitions, and “formal cause” is
after all a Scholastic term borrowed from Aristotelian analysis.
Forms inhere in matter (unless we are referring to purely spiritual
beings) and subsist substantially. Sanctifying grace, insofar as it
involves a change in the nature of the redeemed person, inheres in
that person. (As an aside, sanctifying grace could be said to be an
“accidental form” to the person as
a human being, but a “substantial form” to the person as
a Christian in a state of grace.)
Imputational
justification does not have, therefore, properly speaking, a formal
cause because it is not in the Aristotelian categories of Substance
or Quality but that of Relation. Aristotle recognised 10 categories,
which can be reduced to 4: Substance, Quality, Quantity, Relation.
Going back to our Fire Station as an example, the Station itself is a
substance. Whether or not it is north or south of the nearest Police
Station does not affect it intrinsically, and so is a matter of
Relation. If one of its resident fire-fighters comes to view it with
great affection as a second home, that is also a relational attribute
of the Fire Station. Standing/status/position, the very words
commonly used by Protestants to describe what imputational
justification involves instead of “state”, are to do with how
something or someone is “located” with respect to, or “viewed”
by, another entity. Imputational justification is extrinsic to us in
itself, hence the other Protestant term, “justitia aliena”. While
this term was a novum at the Reformation, the concept can be
found in the Fathers. (For example, the anonymous letter to Diognetus
says, “For what other thing was
capable of covering our sins than His righteousness? By what other
one was it possible that we, the wicked and ungodly, could be
justified, than by the only Son of God? O sweet exchange ! O
unsearchable operation! O benefits surpassing all expectation! that
the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous One, and
that the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors!”
Similarly, St Ignatius of Antioch in his letter to the Philadelphians
says, “His cross, and his death, and his resurrection,
and the faith which is through him, are my unpolluted muniments; and
in these, through your prayers, I am willing to be justified.”
And St Ambrose, “I have nothing,
therefore, whereby I may glory in my works; I have nothing to boast
of, and, therefore, I will glory in Christ. I will not glory because
I am righteous, but because I am redeemed. I will not glory because I
am free from sin, but because my sins are pardoned. I will not glory
because I have done good to any one, or any one has done good to me,
but because Christ is my advocate with the Father, and because
Christ’s blood was shed for me.”)
This claim of a category
error has effectively been put before by the Jesuit theologian Joseph
Devine. Anglican Martin Foord objected to it on the basis that
justification is “the action of God acquitting a person”, so that
imputation can be internal in that act as a formal cause. But even if
we grant that this term can be applied to an act as well as a
substance or a quality of it, Foord's objection (which he roots in
Hooker) misses the point. The word translated “justification”
from the Council of Trent is, as far as I can see, always the noun
and never the gerund or infinitive form in the Latin. In other words,
it most naturally refers to justification as the resulting
“justified-ness” of the Christian not as the “justify-ing”
process applied to the Christian. The same can be said of all the
related words in chapter VII of the Sixth Session: e.g., renovatio
(renewal), remissio (remission). This subtle point is important
because it means that there was no way the Tridentine fathers could
have made imputation a formal cause of justification without
affirming the impossible: that an extrinsic relation to a person was
an inherent characteristic of them.
I suggest that
Protestants accept that imputed justice is not strictly a formal
cause of justification qua “justified-ness”, but what can
be rightly called a “relational cause”. There is no reason why
they cannot stretch the term “formal cause” to cover imputation
within justification qua “justify-ing”. They can proclaim
Christ's merits “covering” our sin (and God declaring and
treating us as not-guilty) as a formal cause sensu lato within
salvation-as-relation-and-divine-act without contradicting Trent at
all, which was addressing something different.
It is worth noting that
putting imputation into the category of relation does not belittle
it. Let us not forget that St Augustine elevated the Aristotelian
concept of relation to something like equality with substance when he
used it to “describe” the Trinity. Each member of the Trinity he
sees as “subsistent relation” within the Divine “Substance”.
As imperfect as this conception may be, it allows us to speculate
that the relational aspect of our salvation is ontologically richer
than purely forensic metaphors might suggest at first.
The second obstacle to
overcome is the nominal difference in the use of the word
justification. The RCC defines justification as God not only calling
but also making us righteous or just. Protestants define
justification as God declaring us righteous or “not guilty”, and
so treating us as innocent of sin. Both say this is all done on
account of Christ's work on the Cross. More to the point, both are
utilising definitions consistent with biblical usage.
The reference to men
having “justified” God in Luke 7:29, Jesus' Parable of the
Publican and the Pharisee (Luke 18:9-14) and Romans 4:5-8 fit best
with the “Protestant” declarative, imputational definition, for
example.
But the same dikaio-
family of words as used in Romans 5 cannot be limited this way. For
example, verses 16 to 19 connect the whole family of these words
together and assert that the end result is to be “made righteous”
(v. 19). That this is not merely imputational is shown by the
deliberate parallelism between “made sinners” and “made
righteous”. Nobody claims that Adam's sin only made his descendants
sinners nominally or by judicial declaration without the reality
behind it. No, as Adam's sin really constituted mankind as sinful by
affecting our nature, so Christ's saving act really re-constituted
man's nature. Even part of Romans 4 points in this direction when it
refers to God calling into existence the things that do not exist (v.
17), which would make his declaration simultaneously an impartation
of righteousness anyway. That this verse is relevant to justification
is clear from its associated mention of God bringing life from the
dead when compared to verse 25, which associates resurrection and
justification. Similarly, Ephesians 4:24 makes righteousness a
quality of the new creation in us. So, both definitions or
connotations are permissible.
The problem, then, is
that when the formal cause is being discussed RC and Protestant
theologians are trying to answer different questions. The RCC is
asking: “What is the nature of the righteousness that is imparted
to and inheres in us, i.e., what is it that 'informs', in the
technical sense, the nature of the saved person?” Protestants are
asking instead: “What renders us as innocent or not guilty of sin
in God's sight and therefore in a right (legal) relationship with
him?” The irony is that, bracketing the word justification, the RC
and Protestant answers to each of these questions are the same:
sanctifying grace and free forgiveness, respectively. Protestants
(like Hooker) accept that there is an imparted righteousness in the
sanctification (sanctifying grace) of the Christian. RCs say the
remission of sins occurs “gratuitously by divine mercy for Christ's
sake” (Chapter IX, Sixth Session), with no mention of a meritorious
basis in sanctifying grace. Indeed, remission and
renewal/sanctification are clearly distinguished at the beginning of
chapter VII of the same Session, but all are considered parts of
justification.
If, as I claim, RC
justification = imputation + impartation, remission + renewal, the
Tridentine bishops still had to give the (sole) formal cause as they
did (see above). If we exclusively and strictly limit justification
to imputation, on the other hand, the only thing approaching a formal
cause is what quality is imputed or what God chooses to “see”
instead of our sin, so to speak. Then the Protestant answer is almost
inevitable, as is its dogmatic rejection of the Roman position,
partly on the assumption that the Roman position denies imputation
and bases our acceptance into God's favour on “how good he makes
us”, so to speak.
The third obstacle
therefore is the belief, shared among many Protestant and Catholic
theologians, that Trent does not allow for any imputational aspect to
justification. This belief is false. What Trent denies, in its own
words, is “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” (Canon 11 on
Justification, emphasis added).
Nevertheless, despite the
absence of substantial dogmatic incompatibility in this area, there
remain practical difficulties. The RC doctrine of salvation as
enunciated at the Council of Trent exhibits three deficiencies (as
distinct from errors).
First, as seen above,
while it allows for imputational and relational aspects to
justification, it does so apparently only implicitly, grudgingly and
in passing.
Second, it gives the
impression that salvation is earned by saying that Christians can
merit Heaven. This tends to be misleading even when all the
traditional RC qualifications of the word “merit” are taken into
account. Briefly, these qualifications are: That there is no strict
right in equity for humans to any reward based on their good deeds,
since these deeds are imperfect, finite, and assume a prior
unmerited forgiveness of sins. That what reward is owed human beings
is owed because of gratuitous divine promise rather than natural
equity. That the only element of human action truly worthy of such
reward (and thus able to be attributed with “condign merit”) is
the inspiration by the Holy Spirit that caused the action. (These
traditional qualifications may be found in Aquinas and other
authoritative sources, such as the Catechism of the Catholic
Church.) So, when the RCC says a Christian merits heaven, they
mean no more than what St Paul means in Galatians 6:7-10 and 2
Timothy 4:7-8. That is, good works done in the power of the Holy
Spirit lead to eternal life because God is faithful to his gracious
promise. That promise includes both an acquittal from the Divine
Judge for Christ's true disciples, and a reward for them also based
on their works. (Apart from the misleading nature of the word merit
in this context, we also find that there is another problem related
to the first part of the promise being ignored in the key part of the
Tridentine decrees, as discussed next.)
Third, in the same
section dealing with the reward of eternal life (Chapter XVI, Sixth
Session) there is no direct mention of our reliance on Christ's blood
covering our sins for entry into Heaven. Yes, there is mention on the
reliance on Christ to do the good works, and there is a general
mention of eternal life being “a grace mercifully promised”, but
nothing about the fact that bad deeds, that is, sins, have to be
remitted and not imputed as a fundamental condition of entry into
Life, before good deeds performed by living faith are even
considered. Now, a RC might note that the fact that entry into heaven
depends on forgiveness is treated as “assumed knowledge” by this
Chapter, having been discussed in Chapters VII, VIII and XI. But it
is hard to deny that a complete omission of it when it comes to the
specific teaching about entering eternal life gives a dangerous
impression. That impression is that we really can simply earn
heaven, and, worse still, that we cannot enter it unless we do.
This does undermine the Gospel. And there is plenty of evidence that
the sola gratia core of the Gospel is also often missed in
popular RC teaching as well, as recorded by not only the Reformers
within and outside of the RCC in the Sixteenth Century, but by RCs
even
today,
as I have quoted before.
One way for the RCC to
deal with these deficiencies would be to release a doctrinal
clarification that brought together the necessary qualifications,
which are already found anyway in various parts of their theological
tradition, into one soteriological decree. This would include strong
affirmation of the imputational and relational aspects of
justification, the analogical and limited use of the word
merit, and the necessary and perpetual dependence of final salvation
on imputational justification. It would also note that when
considering “justification” as the process of justifying in the
act of forgiveness, rather than as the result of justifying, it is
legitimate to speak of Christ's righteousness covering our sins as a
“formal cause” in some sense. It would be beneficial if such a
clarification admitted the fact that “justification” is used at
times in Scripture with a basically imputational emphasis, as
authoritative modern RC exegetes admit. Finally, an official
enunciation of the common RC theological opinion that Christians can
and should acquire “moral certainty” regarding their salvation
(even though they cannot have absolute certainty without private
revelation) would counterbalance the solely negative statement at
Trent, and would, along with the features above, increase the
benefits of healthy Christian “assurance” and peace for its
flock.
Bibliography
Armstrong, D. (2010) “Do
Catholics Believe in Imputed Justification, External Righteousness,
and Justification by Faith Alone? Yes (!), With Proper Biblical
Qualifications”, Web Address:
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2010/09/do-catholics-believe-in-imputed.html
Foord, M. (2000) “Richard Hooker's
Doctrine of Justification” Churchman
114(4). Web Address:
Kirby, T., ed. (2008) A Companion to
Hooker, Leiden: Brill. Web
Address:
http://books.google.com/books?id=HB0UMC2m8nwC&printsec=frontcover&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
As well as the Council of Trent and
Aquinas' Summa Theologica, of course.
posted by Fr Matthew Kirby at 7:14 AM
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