Trent Does Not Contradict Orange

I recently stumbled across a page on a Protestant website that purports to demonstrate contradictions between the Council of Trent and the second Council of Orange. It attempts this by comparing the canons of Trent on Justification to those of Orange. My purpose here is to show that the demonstration fails, and that Trent does not contradict Orange.

Before we go too far, though, a few things should be said. First and foremost, the Second Council of Orange was not an ecumenical council. Trent was. Consequently it is possible in principle for two such councils to actually contradict, but if that happens it is the non-ecumenical council which is in error. The Church does not claim that non-ecumenical councils as such have any charism for infallibility as may be exercised by the ecumenical councils. Now, we’ll find (as I intend to show) that Trent doesn’t actually contradict Orange, but the point I wish to affirm from the beginning is that such a contradiction—if it actually existed—would not stand as ipso facto proof that the Church’s claims are false. In this case, though, Orange’s acts were formally approved by the Pope, and consequently “enjoy ecumenical authority” (source).

Secondly, it should be pointed out that the comparison ignores the actual teaching of Trent on justification, focusing instead upon the canons. This is a mistake because canons do not in themselves have dogmatic force. Rather, they are a disciplinary measure that are founded upon the dogmas of the Council, and constitute a disciplinary expression of the dogmas. The point is that if you really want to know what Trent taught about justification, you need to look at the Decree on Justification rather than at the canons. It is disappointing that the author of the comparison did not do this. Certainly it is not because he was unable to find them; the very page he used as a source for his comparison for the canons also contains the Decree on Justification, and he had to scroll past the Decree in order to find the canons.
Thirdly, it’s interesting to me that there are thirty-three canons on justification, but the Protestant critic of Trent alleges contradictions with Orange related to just three of those canons. So I’m inclined to wonder: is this the worst that you can come up with?

Lastly, for the sake of stifling completeness, I’ve already written quite a few posts on the subject of Trent’s teaching on justification. It is abundantly clear that Trent taught nothing like what is charged by our Protestant accuser.
The three canons we’ll be looking at are 4, 5, and 11.
Canon 4:

If any one saith, that man’s free will moved and excited by God, by assenting to God exciting and calling, nowise co-operates towards disposing and preparing itself for obtaining the grace of Justification; that it cannot refuse its consent, if it would, but that, as something inanimate, it does nothing whatever and is merely passive; let him be anathema.

The text from Orange that canon 4 is alleged to contradict, including the emphasis that was added by our Protestant critic:

If anyone says that not only the increase of faith but also its beginning and the very desire for faith, by which we believe in Him who justifies the ungodly … belongs to us by nature and not by a gift of grace, that is, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit amending our will and turning it from unbelief to faith and from godlessness to godliness, it is proof that he is opposed to the teaching of the Apostles, for blessed Paul says, “And I am sure that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6). And again, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8)

It seems that the emphasized portions are intended to show us where the contradiction is, so that we are to infer that canon 4 (and consequently Trent) denies that the beginning of faith, the desire for it, and the increase of faith are all a gift of grace. The problem with this alleged contradiction is that it doesn’t exist. Look at the second clause of Canon 4: “that man’s free will moved and excited by God…” The canon’s not saying that we don’t need grace; on the contrary, it’s saying that we absolutely need it, because it’s talking about a man whose free will has been moved by God first. How did our Protestant accuser miss this? I don’t know. If I had to guess, I’d say that he missed it because he holds to a false view of free will: namely, I’d guess that he probably supposes that unbelievers (at the least) don’t have free will. This view is an error, because (as St Augustine rightly taught) “punishment would be unjust if man did not have free will.” But free will doesn’t imply the ability to do just anything, and among other things it must be moved by God (as canon 4 says) before it can assent to God’s call.

So much for the criticisms of canon 4. Here is canon 5:

If any one saith, that, since Adam’s sin, the free will of man is lost and extinguished; or, that it is a thing with only a name, yea a name without a reality, a figment, in fine, introduced into the Church by Satan; let him be anathema.

And the corresponding criticism from the Protestant page, with its original emphasis:

If anyone maintains that some are able to come to the grace of baptism by mercy but others through free will, which has manifestly been corrupted in all those who have been born after the transgression of the first man, it is proof that he has no place in the true faith. For he denies that the free will of all men has been weakened through the sin of the first man, or at least holds that it has been affected in such a way that they have still the ability to seek the mystery of eternal salvation by themselves without the revelation of God. The Lord himself shows how contradictory this is by declaring that no one is able to come to him “unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44), as he also says to Peter, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 16:17), and as the Apostle says, “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3).

Once again, there is no contradiction here. Canon 5 of Trent condemns those who deny that man has free will, and Orange says not that free will has been lost, but that it has been corrupted. Our critic further claims (from what he has emphasized from Orange) that canon 5 contradicts Orange’s insistence that grace is necessary. But this too is absurd, as my series of posts about Trent make inescapably clear (but we’re going to briefly review some of these facts here anyway, in a little while).

Here is canon 11 from Trent:

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.

Our Protestant critic doesn’t quote Orange here; instead, he offers this commentary:

[Note: this says if the “the grace, whereby we are justified, is ONLY the favour of God; let him be anathema.” In Other her words, RCC outright rejects SOLA GRATIA - salvation by grace alone in Christ alone, thereby anathematizing both Augustine and their own early church council.]

It appears that our Critic has unfortunately misunderstood the canon, and has arrived at preposterous conclusions as a result. With respect to what grace is, canon 11 is denying the Protestant error that grace is neither more nor less than God’s favor. The point of the canon is that there is more to God’s grace than His mere favor, and that those who say otherwise have in this respect departed from the Catholic Faith. It is certainly not saying there is anything non-divine in grace. I hope that I’m misunderstanding this gentleman, but based upon what he writes here, it seems as though he really thinks that canon 11 is endorsing a view of grace that includes something from outside of God. This is egregiously mistaken. For starters, the first half of the canon is explicitly insisting upon the fact that “the grace and charity poured forth in their hearts by the Holy Ghost” are essential constituents of justification, and obviously (since they are poured forth by the Holy Spirit) they are solely and exclusively from God, as I have already pointed out in a previous post on canon 11. So how this can in any way be described as a denial of salvation by grace alone is beyond my powers to comprehend. It’s just crazy talk.

At this point it’s probably a good idea to review the Decree on Justification on a few points related to these canons, because the Decree is the essential context for properly understanding what the Fathers of Trent meant by the canons. But before we do that it might be a good idea to have the Decree on Original Sin firmly in the back of our minds, not least because they explicitly refer to it themselves. Here’s my post on the subject. Among other things, they say:

If any one asserts, that this sin of Adam,--which in its origin is one, and being transfused into all by propagation, not by imitation, is in each one as his own, --is taken away either by the powers of human nature, or by any other remedy than the merit of the one mediator, our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath reconciled us to God in his own blood, made unto us justice, sanctification, and redemption; or if he denies that the said merit of Jesus Christ is applied, both to adults and to infants, by the sacrament of baptism rightly administered in the form of the church; let him be anathema [Decree on Original Sin, §3; emphasis added].

Back to the Decree on Justification. In Chapter I, they declare:

not the Gentiles only by the force of nature, but not even the Jews by the very letter itself of the law of Moses, were able to be liberated, or to arise, [from sin]; although free will, attenuated as it was in its powers, and bent down, was by no means extinguished in them.

See my post on this chapter here.

Chapter II describes what God did on our behalf in view of the circumstances adumbrated in Chapter I: that is, because we cannot justify ourselves, He sent His Son to save us. My post on this is here.

Chapter V is the next chapter relevant for the present discussion. It declares that justification begins with the grace of God, “without any merits existing [on the part of man].” My post on this is here.

In my opinion the heart of the Decree is chapter VII, because in it the Fathers declare what the causes of our justification are. Here is my post on the subject. Executive summary: none of the causes of our justification enumerated by Trent is something that man does, as though he can justify himself.

Trent doesn’t contradict Second Orange.

St. Augustine and Merely Forensic Justification

It does not appear that St. Augustine’s conception of justification is merely forensic. In Book III of On Free Choice of the Will, he writes:

If…we should see the noble man changed so as to be fit for a heavenly dwelling and then raised to the stars, we would rejoice. But if we should see the depraved criminal, either before or after punishment, raised to a seat of honor in heaven even though he is still as evil as ever, who would not be indignant?

…Unlike the just man…the wicked man, as long as he is wicked, cannot reach the immortality of saints, that is, sublime and angelic immortality…[Book III, chapter IX (pp. 109-110)]

Mere forensic justification does not make the sinner just or holy, as even the Protestant concedes; the claim is that on the basis of what amounts to a legal fiction the sinner is declared “not guilty,” despite the fact that he is still actually a sinner. But St. Augustine here appears to agree with Psalm 14: Such a man isn’t fit for a heavenly dwelling.

Synergy

“And greater works than these shall he do.” Than what, pray? Shall we say that one is doing greater works than all that Christ did who is working out his own salvation with fear and trembling? A work which Christ is certainly working in him, but not without him; and one which I might, without hesitation, call greater than the heavens and the earth, and all in both within the compass of our vision.

And it is assuredly something less to preach the words of righteousness, which He did apart from us, than to justify the ungodly, which He does in such a way in us that we also are doing it ourselves.

[St. Augustine, Tractate on John 72.3]

Infused virtue is caused in us by God without any action on our part, but not without our consent. This is the sense of the words, "which God works in us without us." As to those things which are done by us, God causes them in us, yet not without action on our part, for He works in every will and in every nature. [St. Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II Q55 A4 ad 6]

And speaking of justification

Francis Beckwith has a fine summary post on the subject over here. I commend it to you for its clarity.

By the means of Baptism God’s unmerited grace is infused for the remission of sins. Then the Christian’s sanctification continues throughout his lifetime, entirely the work of the infusion of grace with which the Christian cooperates, for the Christian “does nothing good for which God is not responsible, so as to let him do it."

St. Augustine - God does not save a man against his will

I've seen this quotation in various places, and have tried to find it sometimes to no avail. Today I finally stumbled upon it again and so I'm blogging it before I forget!

"He Who created thee without thee, will not justify thee without thee." [Sermon 169; quoted here]

The point, of course, is that God does no violence to the human will when he saves us. We must consent, and it must be a real consent. Amusingly, I've seen some Protestants say silly things like this: "This notion of free will is clearly quite different from that of Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas." I say it's amusing and silly, since a) Augustine said it, and b) Aquinas appealed to this quotation as an authority in defense of his views on justification and baptism (see above link to the Summa)!

In point of fact the Catholic Church affirms the fact that our wills are free (§1711) and the fact that God has an eternal plan of predestination (§600), and her faithful sons do the same notwithstanding the difficulty (impossibility, in my case!) of comprehending this mystery.

Of course, we've seen in various posts in my series on Aquinas' view of justification that God's grace precedes any movement of our wills towards himself, so that we cannot pretend (a la the Pelagians) that by our natural powers alone we can attain justification: we can't. Nevertheless, no one is going to go to hell in spite of himself; no one is going to go to heaven against his will, either. God respects the fact that he has made us with a nature possessing a free will, and he does not violate it even when he moves us by grace to love him and hate sin.

Justification and Supererogation

In a previous post I said that sola fide was erroneous because it does not do justice to the biblical data.

Among other things, I pointed out that in the parable of the sheep and the goats, the distinction between them was based upon their deeds - not upon faith.

Interlocutor has raised the issue of the relation of works of supererogation with regards to the matter:

I guess it would boil down to why are the 2 Great Commandments not binding commandments, or how could one possibly meet them in a "minimally required" sense so as to exceed their demand?

Aside from other remarks in that same thread, I would add the following:

In the parable of the sheep and the goats, Jesus calls the sheep into glory based upon their deeds. He doesn't say that they failed to fulfill the second great commandment; he basically says that in fact they did fulfill it. This seems to me to contradict what Interlocutor suggests above ("how could one possibly meet them in a 'minimally required' sense"), as well as what he says later:

Why would it be crazy [to require more of us than we could do, even with God's help] if it was intended to show how much higher and holy His perfect ways and standards are, to drive us to continual repentance?

But Jesus effectively says that the sheep did fulfill the second great command, like I just pointed out. So it's plain to me that what Interlocutor suggests here is mistaken, and what the Church teaches is correct:

But no one, how much soever justified, ought to think himself exempt from the observance of the commandments; no one ought to make use of that rash saying, one prohibited by the Fathers under an anathema,-that the observance of the commandments of God is impossible for one that is justified. For God commands not impossibilities, but, by commanding, both admonishes thee to do what thou are able, and to pray for what thou art not able (to do), and aids thee that thou mayest be able; whose commandments are not heavy; whose yoke is sweet and whose burthen light.

[Council of Trent, Sixth Session (Decree on Justification), Chapter XI]

With respect to works of supererogation, I referred Interlocutor to (among other things) the story of the Widow's Mite (Mark 12:41-44):

And Jesus sitting over against the treasury, beheld how the people cast money into the treasury. And many that were rich cast in much. And there came a certain poor widow: and she cast in two mites, which make a farthing. And calling his disciples together, he saith to them: Amen I say to you, this poor widow hath cast in more than all they who have cast into the treasury. For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want cast in all she had, even her whole living.

No one would say that this widow was in any way obliged to give "all she had, even her whole living" - but she did, and Jesus praised her for it. This is a work of supererogation. So we see that it is in fact possible to do more than God requires of us.

This of course does not mean that we have done something exclusive of God's grace by which we could hope to be saved. As Trent (see the entire page previously linked) makes clear, we are saved by grace. St. Augustine sums it up well:

what else but His gifts does God crown when He crowns our merits?

Nothing whatsoever.

Theology of St. Thomas - No sola fide

"It would seem that the New Law should not prescribe or prohibit any external acts." That's the first issue St. Thomas addresses on the topic of the contents of the New Law (ST I-II Q108). He rejects this idea:

Through the New Law, men are made "children of light": wherefore it is written (John 12:36): "Believe in the light that you may be the children of light." Now it is becoming that children of the light should do deeds of light and cast aside deeds of darkness, according to Eph. 5:8: "You were heretofore darkness, but now light in the Lord. Walk . . . as children of the light." Therefore the New Law had to forbid certain external acts and prescribe others.

That seems pretty obvious: Christ would have us be children of light; St. Paul commands us to walk as children of light; ergo there must be some rule by which we know what it means to walk as children of light.

...the New Law consists chiefly in the grace of the Holy Ghost, which is shown forth by faith that worketh through love. Now men become receivers of this grace through God's Son made man, Whose humanity grace filled first, and thence flowed forth to us. Hence it is written (John 1:14): "The Word was made flesh," and afterwards: "full of grace and truth"; and further on: "Of His fulness we all have received, and grace for grace." Hence it is added that "grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." Consequently it was becoming that the grace flows from the incarnate Word should be given to us by means of certain external sensible objects; and that from this inward grace, whereby the flesh is subjected to the Spirit, certain external works should ensue.

Accordingly external acts may have a twofold connection with grace. In the first place, as leading in some way to grace. Such are the sacramental acts which are instituted in the New Law, e.g. Baptism, the Eucharist, and the like.

In the second place there are those external acts which ensue from the promptings of grace: and herein we must observe a difference. For there are some which are necessarily in keeping with, or in opposition to inward grace consisting in faith that worketh through love. Such external works are prescribed or forbidden in the New Law; thus confession of faith is prescribed, and denial of faith is forbidden; for it is written (Matthew 10:32,33) "(Every one) that shall confess Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father . . . But he that shall deny Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father."

This is not to say that the New Law is as extensive as the old one.

On the other hand, there are works which are not necessarily opposed to, or in keeping with faith that worketh through love. Such works are not prescribed or forbidden in the New Law, by virtue of its primitive institution; but have been left by the Lawgiver, i.e. Christ, to the discretion of each individual. And so to each one it is free to decide what he should do or avoid; and to each superior, to direct his subjects in such matters as regards what they must do or avoid. Wherefore also in this respect the Gospel is called the "law of liberty."

Nevertheless, we cannot expect to see the Lord's face if we ignore what he commands: "If you love me, keep my commandments" (John 14:15). It is not enough simply to believe.

On Grace and Merit

Some people (see especially the comments there) seem to think that they understand Catholic doctrine better than even knowledgeable Catholics. I don't pretend to be a knowledgeable Catholic, but to pretend that the Church teaches legalism is absurd.

If it's not already obvious from the fact the Church condemned Pelagianism, and from the fact that The Angelic Doctor explicitly affirms that we cannot do any good without grace, and that we cannot keep the law without grace, and that we cannot merit eternal life without grace, and that we cannot prepare ourselves for grace without grace, and that we cannot stop sinning without grace, and that we cannot avoid sin without grace, and that we cannot persevere in doing good without grace, the Council of Trent doesn't leave it up to a mere question of theological opinion (although they thought quite highly of St. Thomas): "...it is necessary to believe that sins neither are remitted, nor ever were remitted save gratuitously by the mercy of God for Christ's sake" (Decree on Justification, Chapter IX).

And it's not like this is only dusty old theology, either. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says the same thing: "Our justification comes from the grace of God. Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God" (#1996). And: "Faith is a gift of God, a supernatural virtue infused by him" (#153). And: "Believing is possible only by grace and the interior helps of the Holy Spirit" (#154).

Does anything more really need to be said?

Of course, the Catholic denies sola fide. But denying this and professing legalism are really two separate things. Without question one can acknowledge the necessity of obeying God because we are Christians, not because we suppose that our obedience by itself earns us anything: "He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing" (Jn. 15:5). "When you have done all that is commanded you, say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty'" (Lk. 17:10).

On top of all this, it seems to me that legalism is irrational: if someone supposedly merits something from God, it means that God owes it to him. But how can such an absurd position arise? God didn't need to make us; how on earth then would it be possible that we could be in a position to demand salvation from him? The very idea is silly, even assuming that we didn't deserve the exact opposite on account of our sins.

The long and short of it is that the Catholic Church has never condoned legalism, and those Protestants who pretend otherwise simply do not understand what we believe.