Robert Barron - Faith Without Works Is Dead
Peace be with you. Friends, I guess, "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread". I'm going to go once more into this great issue that has been a dividing Western Christianity since the Reformation: the issue of faith and works. I do it not just because I'm a glutton for punishment, but because it's in our second reading from the Letter of James, which is a key text for Catholics on this issue. Let me just read you a couple lines from the Letter of James. "What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead".
So, pretty strong stuff, huh? That faith and works seem both necessary for salvation. Now, you know where this issue emerged. It emerged out of the very powerful experience of a young Martin Luther, this intense Augustinian monk. So, we're at the beginning, now, of the 16th century. Luther, brilliant, a teacher of theology, expert in scripture, but wrestling with this problem of, "Do I know I'm saved"? Luther was a monk, he was a friar, and so he had all kinds of works at his disposal, if you want. He had the sacraments and sacramentals and disciplines and ascetic practices and all these things. And he said, famously, "If a monk were ever saved by monkishness, I was that monk".
So, he tried, in all these ways, to convince himself that he was saved. But it didn't work, he still had this inner turmoil. And then it's somewhere probably around the year 1516 or 1515, Luther has, what's called in the technical literature, his Turmerlebnis, German for his tower experience. So, in the tower of the monastery, Luther comes to this great insight, and he gets the text from the beginning of Romans. "The just shall live by faith". It struck him as the solution to his problem. It's not by all these works, all these monkish exercises, that he's saved, but by the great act of faith by which he laid claim to the grace of Christ. The blood of Christ, now covering him. It's in that great act of faith that he found salvation.
As I say, for Luther, this was like a liberation. And even though there's all kinds of different expressions of the Protestant religion, I think at least the vast majority would have this great principle in common; justification by grace alone, seized through faith alone. Work's not necessary for salvation. Now, just to be fair and to be clear, Luther himself and everyone that's followed him, has always been insistent that good works follow from justification. So, once you've accepted the Lord in faith and you know you're saved, now, in Luther's language, you want to bring the outer person in line with the inner person. So, of course you want this faith of yours to express itself in works. However, the works are not ingredient in salvation. Okay, that's a quick summary of the basic Protestant position, if you want.
Now, Martin Luther himself knew the text I just read, and remember, he was a scripture man, sola scriptura, by the Bible alone. Bible was the clear, infallible source of authority. So, Luther knew this text was a problem, which is why he even suggested perhaps it doesn't belong in the canon of scripture. Now, how did Catholics deal with this problem? Can I urge, especially my Catholic listeners, go online, it's a great thing about the internet, now we can find anything we want, go online and look up the decretals of the Council of Trent So, the Council of Trent, that happened now after the Reformation, was the Catholic Church's great response to Luther and to Calvin.
Now, there were very powerful people at Trent, I mean Ecclesiastics and theologians who didn't dismiss the Protestant Reformers, by no means. They read them with great care, and they nodded, even vigorously, in their direction. So, if you read the decretals of Trent, you'll see we're not justified by our works. It is really only through grace, the grace of Christ, that we will come to salvation. What's the difference, then? The Catholic view is faith indeed is, and this is the language of Trent, is the "the initium et raix omnis justificationis". It's "the origin and root of all justification". But then, through works, the works of love, through the sacraments, through the life of the church, there is an increase in justification. It's not a one-and-done deal.
The root and origin of all justification is indeed faith, when I opened my life to the power of Christ. But now Christ, working in me, in my cooperation with His grace, I grow in justification. Okay, so as I say, this debate's been going on for now over 500 years, and I'm not going to settle it, I'm quite sure, in this sermon. But I want to draw attention to something. Notice, please, how this whole discussion is drawn from the world of the courtroom. The prime metaphor here is a forensic metaphor, the declaration of righteousness. Think of someone now in a courtroom, they're before a judge. The judge declares them guilty or innocent. So, Luther's insight was, "Even though I am guilty, I'm covered in my own sins, through the grace of Christ, I've been declared, nevertheless, righteous".
Now, in a juridical framework, it is kind of a all or nothing, isn't it? You're not a little bit innocent, a little bit guilty. You're either innocent or you're guilty. And so Luther saw that as a key moment, "When, through the grace of Christ, I'm declared righteous". Okay, but can I suggest something now? That's one set of metaphors, drawn from that forensic world of the courtroom. I think this language of the Letter of James is drawn from a different context. Listen again. "If someone says he has faith but does not have works"? "What good is that"? "Can that faith save him"? Can that faith save him?
So, one metaphor is this legal one, this forensic one, of the declared righteousness. But now we have a different metaphorical context. What does it mean to be saved? The word, think of our word, English, our English word, "save", from salus in Latin. That's why Jesus is called the Salvator. He's the one who brings salus. What's salus? Health. Healing. I find it very interesting that our word salve, S-A-L-V-E, is maybe the closest relative of that. In ancient Roman times, if you said "salve" to someone, that's the way of saying hello. "How are you"? salve meant, "Good health to you".
How are we saved? How are we cured? How are we healed? I think what you see in James, and the Catholic Church has expressed in its own teaching, is indeed that process has to begin with faith. Where we accept the grace of Christ into our lives, yes, indeed. But now, through our cooperation with that grace, we come increasingly to salvation, to health. Go back to that first metaphor. Yes, justification, being set right, begins with faith, but then there's an increase in justification.
Let me give you another comparison. A lot of us today would be familiar with this now, from the various 12-step programs. Suppose somebody is caught in an addiction, addiction to alcohol, or to drugs, or to pornography, or whatever it is. What's a fundamental move, if you want to find healing? You have to admit that you can't solve this problem on your own. Talk to anyone that's been in the grip of an addiction. If you think, "Oh no, I'll solve it myself. Don't worry, I can do this. I can kind of pull myself up by the bootstraps, and I can solve this problem". Uh-uh.
What's step one in 12-step processes, but to turn your life over to a higher power? Indispensable, indispensable, in the 12-step programs. You can't save yourself, you have to surrender to a higher power, which can now work in you and through you. Okay, but now stay with the 12-step process. Does it end with that? Mm-mm. It is indeed the indispensable root and origin of the process of healing. But what does someone now who's wrestling with an alcohol addiction, for example, have to do? All right, you've surrendered to the higher power. Now you have to see your sponsor on a regular basis. Now you have to go to AA meetings. You got to be faithful to it. And above all, you have to stop drinking.
So, what if someone were to say, "You know what? I'm an alcohol addict. And I've turned my life over to a higher power". And let's say you really have. There was a key moment when you said, "I can't do this. Lord, you come and help me". Okay, good, good. But after that, "You know what? I never call my sponsor. I never go to meetings. And you know what? I still drink from time to time". What's the reaction? The reaction is, you're not going to be cured. You're not going to be healed. You're not going to be saved. Listen, "if someone says he has faith but does not have works, can that faith save him"?
See, according to the metaphor I've been developing, the answer is clearly no, it won't heal him. There's an old adage in the Catholic tradition that God created us without our cooperation. That's true, because we're created from nothing. But He won't recreate us without our cooperation. He won't save us without our cooperation. God's not in competition with us. He wants us now, through our works of love, to grow in salvation, in spiritual healing. Okay, one more step in the couple minutes I have. So, Christ wants to save us, to heal us, from the effects of sin, yes indeed.
Pope Francis said, "The church is like a field hospital," same metaphor, right? "Where deeply wounded people come to be saved". But what's our version of seeing your sponsor and not drinking and going to meetings? It's like the sacraments and Mass and the Eucharist and the works of love. Those are all the things that we do now to work that grace more deeply into our lives. But here's the next step, or the last step I want to emphasize. Christ doesn't simply want to heal us of our sin. He wants to deify us. The great text here is in 1 Peter, that we become "partakers of the divine nature". He's not satisfied that we're just healed of our sin. That's a necessary prerequisite. But what He wants above all is that we become sharers in His own nature. He doesn't want to leave us in our sin, as though we're simply declared righteous, but remain sinners. No, no. He wants, really, to save us and then to elevate us.
Read the ancient Greek fathers, long before Martin Luther. They spoke of theosis, deification. Look at the Western fathers, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas; both speak of deificatio, deification. How's that happen? Yes, through grace, of course, you can't do it on your own. You have to open yourself to Christ in faith. But then, through our cooperation with that grace, through the works of love, through the sacraments, we are saved, we're cured. But then, in the great plan of God, we are deified. So, here's James. "So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead". Right, we begin with faith, it's the beginning and root of all justification. But then, through our cooperation, justification increases, salvation, healing comes, and indeed, deification comes. And God bless you.