Or
Sola Fide as Catholic Truth
We are in Allhallowtide,
the period long ago set aside by the Church for the remembrance of those who
have passed on before us. It begins on
the 31 October, All Hallows’ Eve, so called because on sacred calendars days
are counted from evening to evening, not from midnight to midnight as in
secular calendars, and 1 November is All Saints Day. All Hallows’ Eve is also the anniversary of
the beginning of the Reformation for it is on that day in 1517 that Dr. Martin
Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg. This was a great trick on the corrupt Roman
Patriarch and those who accepted his usurped supreme jurisdiction over the
Church because the Ninety-Five Theses were a devastating critique of corrupt
practices, like the sale of indulgences, that the Roman Patriarch – at the time
it was Leo X – was using to raise funds.
Soon thereafter, Dr. Luther would provide a wonderful treat for
Christian souls by hosing down the doctrine of justification, as taught by St. Paul
in the New Testament, and washing away all the mud that had accumulated to
obscure it so that it could be viewed in all its peace-and-assurance bringing
clarity.
Dr. Luther is often quoted as having said that
justification is the article on which the Church stands or falls. If you go looking through the corpus of Dr.
Luther’s works for the exact phrase you will not find it, although you will
find the idea stated in different words in multiple places, and the earliest
attribution of the saying to him is close enough to his own time that there is
no good reason to question its authenticity.
Justification, in the quotation, means the doctrine of justification by
faith alone.
The Roman Church
took a rather different view of the doctrine.
In the Council of Trent, which met from 1545 to 1563 to address the
Reformation, the Roman Church pronounced an anathema upon justification by
faith alone in the fourteenth canon of the Council’s sixth session in 1547,
although the doctrine condemned in the canon is worded in such a way as to be
unrecognizable as that which Dr. Luther and the other Reformers taught. Here are the words of the canon:
If any one saith, that
man is truly absolved from his sins and justified, because that he assuredly
believed himself absolved and justified; or, that no one is truly justified but
he who believes himself justified; and that, by this faith alone, absolution
and justification are effected; let him be anathema.
In the doctrine condemned by this canon, the only content
identified for this faith is that one is absolved and justified. If this were the only content of one’s
faith, the Roman Church would indeed be right in condemning the idea that such
faith by itself absolved and justified one, for that idea would amount to the
claim that one can make something be true by believing it. You find that sort of idea in a lot of
fuzzy, pop, New Age, thinking today, but you will look in vain to find it in
the writings of Dr. Luther or Zwingle or Calvin or Archbishop Cranmer.
The Reformation article is quite otherwise than the caricature
that is condemned in the Roman canon.
In the Reformation article, the Gospel is the content of saving
faith. The Gospel is the Good News
about everything God has done for us in Jesus Christ. We needed a Saviour because of our sins and
God gave us a Saviour, the Saviour He had promised from the Fall. This Saviour is God’s Only-Begotten Son,
that is to say, the Son Who is eternally begotten of God the Father, shares the
Father’s nature, and so, like the Father and the Holy Ghost, is the One True
God. God gave Him to us in the
Incarnation, in which the Son of God came down to Earth from Heaven, and took
on our nature through a miracle wrought by the Holy Ghost in which He was
conceived and born to the Virgin Mary and so became fully Man while remaining
fully God. Through this miracle, His
human nature was not tainted with sin like ours and so He lived out the
righteousness God requires of us all but which we are unable to produce because
of our sin. Then, rejected by the
leadership of the people into which He had been born, He was condemned in a
mock trial, and crucified at the order of a Roman governor who knew Him to be
innocent but wished to appease the mob.
He submitted to this meekly in order that He Who had committed no sin, much less
a crime, might die the death of a criminal.
Dying that death, He did what only One Who was both God and sinless Man
could do, which was take the burden of all the guilt of the sins of the entire
world upon Himself and pay for them once and for all. Having so expiated the sins of the world and remaining sinless in Himself Death had no claim on Him. He entered Death’s
Kingdom as Conqueror and rose triumphantly from the Grave before Ascending
back to the right hand of the Father.
By doing all of this Jesus effected the salvation of the world on our
behalf and the benefits of that salvation are promised in the Gospel to
whosoever believes in Him.
Note how I worded that last sentence. If you compare that with what the Roman canon
condemns another way in which the canon misrepresents the Reformation doctrine
should become clear. Faith’s role is
not to effect our absolution and justification. That is what Jesus did in the events of the
Gospel. Our faith’s role is to receive
absolution, justification, and indeed, all of the salvation that has been given
to us freely in our Saviour Jesus.
This is where the stress needs to be when talking about
faith in respect to salvation – that its role is that of the hand that receives
the free gift which God has given us in Jesus Christ. Unless we are clear that the role of faith
in God’s plan of salvation is instrumental, and instrumental on our part – how we
receive the gift God has given – as opposed to instrumental on God’s part – how
He brings, confers, and bestows the gift of Jesus Christ and His salvation upon
us – justification by faith alone does not make sense. Sola fide is in the ablative case. It does not mean just “faith alone” but “by
faith alone” and what this expression means is that it is by faith alone that
we receive the gift of salvation. It
does not mean that faith, by itself, so pleases God that on the intrinsic
merits of faith He accepts us despite our plentiful bad works and deficiency in
good ones. It does not mean that the
only thing Christianity asks of people is faith or, to put it another way, that
Christianity consists only of believing.
It means that the task of faith in the order of salvation – the
receiving, on our part, of the free gift of salvation in Jesus Christ – belongs
to faith alone, and that nothing else can either substitute for faith or add to
faith in the reception of salvation.
That this is what Dr. Luther’s article of justification by faith
alone means cannot be emphasized enough.
For while the Church of Rome, in whose eyes Dr. Luther had been poking
his fingers, was the only ancient Church to pronounce a formal condemnation of
the article, none of the other ancient Churches, except our English Church
which joined the Reformation, embraced it.
They regarded it as a novelty because the Fathers, doctors, and
theologians of the ancient Churches had not been in the habit of using the word
“alone” in conjunction with “faith”.
Neither did St. Paul in the Bible.
What was meant by Sola Fide, however, that faith is the only hand we
have with which to receive the gift of salvation, was clearly taught in other
words by St. Paul. We shall have more
to say about that shortly. First I
wish to observe that just as the Roman Church’s formal condemnation of Sola
Fide at the Council of Trent did not condemn Sola Fide as Dr. Luther taught it,
that faith is the sole means by which we appropriate to ourselves the gift of
salvation, but a weird caricature of it in which belief creates its own
reality, so none of the reasons that the other ancient Churches gave for not
affirming it speak to what the article actually says.
Consider the objection based upon the role of baptism. At the end of St. Peter’s sermon on the
first Whitsunday (the Christian Pentecost) in the second chapter of Acts, the
crowd, under heavy conviction of sin, asked the Apostles “Men and brethren,
what shall we do?” and received the answer from St. Peter “Repent, and be
baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of
sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” Other passages can be pointed to that stress
the role of baptism (1 Peter 3:21, Rom. 6:3-6, Mk. 16:16). These verses, however, do not say that the
role of baptism is the same as that of faith, that of a hand receiving a
gift. Nor is that the Catholic – held
by all Christians, everywhere, at all times – understanding of the role of
baptism. Baptism is linked by the
Scriptures to three distinct aspects of salvation – regeneration or the new
birth, our sins being washed away, and our being joined in union with Jesus
Christ. Baptism is not how we receive these salvific
blessings, however, but the ordinary means by which God bestows them upon
us.
I will try to make the distinction clearer. God has given us salvation in our Saviour
Jesus Christ. This took place in the
events of the Gospel, from the Incarnation to the Ascension, two millennia ago. For that salvation to be ours, however, two
things must happen. 1. God must bring the salvation He has given us
in Jesus to us. 2. We must appropriate it to ourselves. Both of these things involve the use of
means or instruments. God uses means to
bring the salvation He has given us to us.
We use means to receive it to ourselves. The means God uses to bring Jesus Christ and
His salvation to us are the Church and her ministries of Word and Sacrament. The means we use to appropriate Jesus Christ
and His salvation to us is faith.
Baptism is the Sacrament that God ordinarily uses as His
means, along with the Ministry of the Word, in bringing the salvation of Jesus
Christ to us for the first time. This
is why it is connected specifically to regeneration, cleansing from sin, and
union with Christ. These are the aspects
of salvation that are most prominent as the beginning of the Christian
life. Faith is the means by which we appropriate
this salvation to ourselves and make it truly ours. Baptism is the means God ordinarily uses to
confer, faith is the means we always use to receive.
A few words are in order here about what is meant by “ordinarily”
and “always”. It should not be
surprising that we speak of the means God uses as ordinary but the means we use
as absolute. This merely means that God
does not limit Himself to His appointed means, the way He limits us to
ours. What this means in practice with
regards to baptism is that someone who hears the Gospel and believes in Jesus
Christ will not be damned for lack of baptism.
This is why Jesus in Mark 16:16 promises salvation to those who believe
and are baptized, but pronounces damnation only on those who do not
believe. It also means, however, that
those who think this an excuse for neglecting baptism, ought to consider the
account of Naaman in 2 Kings 5, and particularly verses 10-13.
It is also important to note that while God always brings
salvation, and more specifically regeneration, cleansing from sin, and union
with Christ, to us in baptism, they are not ours unless we receive them by
faith in Jesus Christ. In the early
Church controversies arose about the efficacy of baptism administered by those
who had failed to be faithful witnesses in periods of persecution. The orthodox Fathers, in answering the
Novatians and later the Donatists, maintained soundly that the efficacy of the
sacrament does not depend on the worthiness of the minister who administers it. By the time of the Reformation, many in the
Roman Church had twisted these arguments into arguments for the mechanical
efficacy of the sacrament, that the salvation conferred through it is ours
regardless of faith on our part. The
Reformers, rightly, upheld the original intent of the arguments of St.
Augustine et al., that the efficacy of the Sacraments as channels of Grace was
not overthrown by the sin of the minister, but, also rightly, rejected the
mechanical view, and emphasized that Grace conferred is not received, except by
faith. The only benefit that one
receives mechanically upon baptism is external, formal, membership in the
Church. To truly be united to her and
her Saviour internally and spiritually requires that the Grace conferred in the
Sacrament be received by faith in Jesus Christ.
Everything just said about baptism also applies to the other
Gospel Sacrament, the Lord’s Supper.
Baptism is the Sacrament through which God bestows on us the initial
Grace of regeneration, washing of sin, and union with Jesus Christ, the Lord’s
Supper is the Sacrament through which God confers the Grace that sustains the
new life in Jesus Christ, by feeding the believer with the spiritual food of
the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ as broken and shed for us on the Cross in
His One True Sacrifice. As with
baptism, so with the Lord’s Supper, God uses the Sacrament as a channel to
bestow Grace apart from the worthiness of the minister, but we only receive it
by faith in Jesus Christ.
The orthodox understanding of the Sacraments as the ordinary
means of Grace along with the ministry of the Word, therefore, does not
conflict with Sola Fide. The
Sacraments and faith are both instrumental means by which the gift of salvation
given to us in Jesus Christ becomes ours, but the Sacraments, or more properly
the Church in both of her ministries, is the means God has appointed for
Himself to bestow the gift upon us, and faith is the means, the only means, God
has appointed for us to receive it.
Another objection to Sola Fide is on the grounds of the
necessity of repentance. While some
answer this objection by pointing out that in the New Testament, at least, the
word translated by repent literally means to change your mind, something that
must necessarily occur whenever someone believes for the first time, this does
not, I think, do justice to the Scriptural teaching on repentance. Repentance is not just any change of mind but
the kind illustrated by the Prodigal Son’s coming to himself and returning to
his father. The right answer to the
objection is to say that while the necessity of repentance is certainly taught
and emphasized in the Bible this does not mean that repentance does the same
thing as faith, that it shares faith’s place in the Order of Salvation. Note that in the preaching of John the
Baptist, as well as St. Peter’s response to the crowd under conviction in Acts
2, repentance is linked with baptism, whereas in the passages that talk about
the beginning of Jesus’ preaching ministry repentance is linked with
faith. Just as repentance does not
perform the same function as baptism, neither does it perform the same role as
faith. It is linked to both because it
performs the essential auxiliary function of breaking down the pride and
self-righteousness which otherwise keep sinful human beings from recognizing
their need for the salvation given in Christ, conferred in baptism, and
received by faith. Repentance, therefore, is not another hand
with which to receive Grace alongside faith. It can be likened to the act of emptying the
hand that it might receive the gift.
This brings us back to the most common objection to Sola
Fide, the claim that it was novel, invented in the sixteenth century by Dr.
Luther. This is, on the surface, the
most plausible of these objections.
Those who make it appeal to both Scripture and tradition. The appeal to Scripture consists of the
argument that the expression “faith alone” appears only once in the Holy
Scriptures and that one occurrence is St. James’ denial in the twenty-fourth
verse of the second chapter of his Epistle.
The appeal to tradition is basically that the Church Fathers and those
who succeeded them down to the sixteenth century did not speak of “faith alone”. The first point I wish to make in response to
this objection is that the important matter is not whether the Scriptures and
Church tradition used the expression “faith alone” but whether or not the idea
behind those words is contained in the Scriptures and tradition. Once again, the idea behind Sola Fide, is
that salvation is a gift that we have been given in our Saviour Jesus Christ,
and that it is only by believing in Him that we receive this gift. It does not deny to anything else its place
in the Order of Salvation, it merely insists that the place assigned to faith
is not shared by anything else, and especially not by human works. When it is clearly understood that this is
what the expression means, this seemingly plausible objection becomes nonsense,
for this is clearly taught in the Scriptures, and is implicit in the doctrine
that salvation is a gift that God has freely given us in Jesus Christ that is very
much a part of the tradition of the Church.
Nobody thinks Sola Gratia was a novelty invented in the sixteenth
century.
That salvation is a gift means that it cannot be by works
and works are what Sola Fide explicitly excludes. This is common sense. Something that you get by working for it is
not a gift. It is a wage, a payment, a
reward. You are owed it not given it. Not only is it common sense, it is
Scripture. St. Paul spelled it out for
us explicitly in the fourth chapter of his epistle to the Romans:
Now to him that
worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that
worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is
counted for righteousness. (Rom. 4:4-5)
These words make nonsense out of the claim that the only
time the Scriptures mention “faith alone” is the denial in James 2;24. Indeed, since the “alone” in “faith alone”
means “and not by works”, Sola Fide is affirmed throughout the New
Testament. Here are a few examples:
Knowing that a man is
not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus
Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by
the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by
the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. (Gal. 2:16)
For by grace are ye
saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of
God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. (Eph. 2:8-9)
Who hath saved us, and
called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according
to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the
world began. (2 Tim. 1:9)
Not
by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his
mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy
Ghost; (Tit. 3:5)
Consider that last example.
Some try to explain St. Paul away by claiming that when he denied that
we are saved by works he was talking only about ceremonial works and not moral
works. In 2 Timothy 1:9, however, it is clearly
“works of righteousness” that St. Paul says we are not saved by. His entire reasoning in Romans 4 that it
cannot be by works because otherwise it would be of debt rather than Grace
would collapse if it were only ceremonial and rather than moral works that were
in view.
Once again we need to remember that Sola Fide means that
faith does not share its place in the Order of Salvation, the place of the hand
that receives the gift, with anything else.
It does not deny to anything else its proper place. This is true of works as well. St. Paul identifies for us what the proper
place of works is in regards to salvation in the verse that follows immediately
after those in the above verses from Ephesians:
For we are his
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath
before ordained that we should walk in them.
The place of works in the Order of Salvation, is not prior
to salvation as a cause, but after salvation as an effect. I recently watched a video in which a
clergyman claimed that Sola Fide was the weakest of the Reformation
doctrines. I won’t embarrass him by
naming him since he is usually much sounder than this but he spent some time
criticizing the idea that works are the evidence of faith, which he seemed to
think to be the only role available for works in the Protestant scheme. Evidence for whom, he asked? For us?
For God? Neither is very satisfactory. Evidence
of faith, however, is not the role assigned to works, but fruit of salvation. As has
been pointed out many times in the past it is a matter of getting things in
their proper order, identifying the cause and effect. We do not do good works in order to be
saved. We are saved in order that we
might do good works. (1)
Aristotle in the third chapter of the second book of his Physics identified four different types
of “causes”. He explained the difference
between them with the illustration of a statue. Its material
cause is that from which it is made, bronze, stone, whatever. Its efficient
cause is the sculptor who makes the statue from the material. Its formal
cause is the idea of the statue in the sculptor’s head to which he makes the
material conform. Its final cause is the purpose for which the
sculptor makes the statue. John Calvin
in section 17 of Chapter XIV of the third book of his Institutes of Christian Religion borrows these terms and applies
them to salvation saying that the efficient cause is “the mercy and free love
of the heavenly Father towards us”, that the material cause is “Christ, with
the obedience by which he purchased righteousness for us”, and the formal cause
as “faith”. Calvin erred slightly on
this last point because he identified the formal cause with the instrumental
cause. Aristotle did not identify the
instrumental cause in his Physics but
if he had it would have been the hammer and chisel employed by the sculptor in
his illustration. As we have seen,
since salvation is a gift, there are two kinds of instrumental causes, the
instrument God uses to put the gift of salvation into our hands, the Church and
her ministries, and the hand which receives it and is therefore instrumental on
the part of the receiver, which is our faith.
What actually corresponds to Aristotle’s formal cause with regards to
salvation is God’s eternal design. It
is rather amusing that John Calvin of all people got that wrong.
Where do works fit into this?
Works share the same final cause as salvation. Of the final cause of salvation, John Calvin
says “The Apostle, moreover, declares that the final cause is the demonstration
of the divine righteousness and the praise of his goodness.” A simpler way of putting that would be “the
glory of God”. Numerous verses could be
cited in support of the glory of God being the final cause, the end or telos,
of salvation, but since this is not really a controversial point, I will
reference only 1 Tim. 1:15-17. Jesus in
the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:16) and St. Peter in his first epistle
(chapter 2, verse 12) instruct their hearers/readers to do good works that
thereby men would glorify God. This
tells us that the good works of the believer have the same telos as our
salvation. Works are not any kind of
cause of our salvation, but our salvation is the material cause of our good
works, the final cause of both being the glory of God.
St. James does not contradict this. Earlier in the epistle, long before the
controversial passage, he asserts that salvation is a gift:
Every good gift and
every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights,
with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Of his own will
begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of
his creatures. (Jas. 1:17-18)
It is significant that he does not say this of the salvation
and justification of which he writes in the controversial passage in his second
chapter. Nor does the word Grace appear
in that passage, unlike the other key terms shared by the passage and the
fourth chapter of Romans. This, and the
argument of St. Paul in Romans 4:4-5, indicates that whatever the salvation and
justification St. James was talking about is it is not salvation/justification
by Grace, justification/salvation as a gift of God. St. James points further to that conclusion
in the very verse that has caused so much difficulty:
Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and
not by faith only.
The word “only” there is an
adverb in Greek, modifying “justified”, not an adjective modifying “faith.” St. James is saying there are two
justifications, one by faith, one by works, not that faith and works are two
causes of the same justification. St.
Paul himself seals that interpretation as the correct one when he writes:
For if Abraham were
justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God. (Rom.
4:2)
That is St. Paul interpreting St. James. Whatever St. James was talking about when he
said Abraham was justified by works it was not justification before God which
is a gift by Grace and therefore cannot be of works.
The only novelty in Dr. Luther’s article of justification by
faith alone, was the wording. That salvation
is a gift that God gives us in Jesus Christ and not something we earn by our
works is the plain teaching of the New Testament and it is the teaching of
Catholic – belonging to the entire Church everywhere, at all times – tradition as
well. Sola Fide, that we receive this
gift to ourselves only by the hand of faith in Jesus Christ, while not usually
expressed in Dr. Luther’s wording prior the sixteenth century, is implicit in
this Catholic doctrine of Sola Fide. It
is also required by the Catholic concept of good works as the fruit of a faith
that works by love. If the works of
love are necessary, it is not the necessity of an imposed condition – do these
or salvation is invalidated – because that kind of necessity would eliminate
the distinction between the works of love and the works of the law. Works of love are works of love, because the
one who does them does them not in order to obtain God’s favour or out of the
fear that he will lose God’s favour if he does not, but because he loves
God. Love cannot be produced by the
compulsion of the Law. That is the
entire point of the Law. Jesus summed
up the Law in the commandments to love God and love our neighbour. That should be regarded as the most sobering
and terrifying words that Jesus ever spoke.
They were not words of comfort.
If love of God and love of our neighbour is what the Law demands, and
these loves come with qualifications –we are to love God with all that we are,
and to love our neighbour as ourselves – then we are in constant violation of
the two greatest commandments. Not one
of us has lived up to either of these for a second of our lives. The works of love that are the fruit of
salvation are the fruit of a love that God works in our hearts by His Grace,
through the means of the Gospel, which assures us that God in His love has met
the demands of the Law for us, both its demands for perfect righteousness and
its demands for just punishment of our sin, in Jesus Christ, freeing us to love
God, not because the Law demands it, but because he first loved us (1 Jn.
4:19). Ironically, that which the Roman
Council of Trent feared most in Dr. Luther’s doctrine, which, as is obvious from
their straw man caricature, was its assuring nature, is precisely what makes
Sola Fide so essential to this Catholic truth of faith working by love. It is only when one is assured through faith
that he is secure in the freely given Grace of God in Jesus Christ that one is
free to love God because God is so worthy of our love rather than to try and
love God under the compulsion of the threats of the Law.
All of this was clearly lost on the Church of Rome at the
Council of Tent. A recent Roman
Patriarch, the late Benedict XVI, wrote:
For this reason
Luther's phrase: "faith alone" is true, if it is not opposed to faith
in charity, in love. Faith is looking at Christ, entrusting oneself to Christ,
being united to Christ, conformed to Christ, to his life. And the form, the
life of Christ, is love; hence to believe is to conform to Christ and to enter
into his love. So it is that in the Letter to the Galatians in which he
primarily developed his teaching on justification St Paul speaks of faith that
works through love (cf. Gal 5: 14).
This displayed far more understanding than his predecessors
in the sixteenth century. Such a pity
that he was forced from St. Peter’s throne and replaced with the Clown
Pretender that currently occupies it.
Happy All Hallowtide
(1) It is
sometimes said in response to this that salvation is a process not just an
event. More elaborately put, there are
three tenses to salvation. There is
salvation past, our being brought into God’s family, united with Jesus Christ,
cleansed of past sins, justified, regenerated.
There is salvation present, in which we are progressively conformed into
the image of Christ by the sanctifying work of God and in which we are cleansed
and forgiven of our ongoing sins. There
is salvation future, in which we are perfected, and brought into the presence
of God. Sometimes this is put more
simply as salvation from the guilt of sin (past), power of sin (present), and
presence of sin (future). Or they are
just called justification, sanctification, and glorification. The more simpler the version the more
precision is sacrificed. Justification
and sanctification, at least, have past, present, and future aspects to each of
them, just as they have both positional and practical aspects, corresponding to
the two aspects of our union with Christ (positional = us in Christ, practical =
Christ in us). All of this is valid,
but what we have stressed in the main body of this essay, is true of all of
it. Salvation in all of its tenses and
aspects, is the gift of God. All of it
was accomplished for us by Jesus Christ in the events of the Gospel. It is all given to us on the basis of
Grace. The means God has appointed to bring
all of it to us is His Church and her ministries of Word and Sacrament. Faith is always the hand by which we receive
it. None of this changes from salvation
past, to salvation present, to salvation future, although the specific Sacramental
ministry God uses to bring it to us changes from the not-to-be-repeated baptism
of salvation past to the perpetual Lord’s Supper of salvation present. Those things that have auxiliary roles, like
repentance, may vary over the course of the progress of salvation present (the
specifics of what repentance calls for depend on the situation). The basics – salvation is a gift, it was
accomplished by Jesus Christ in the events of the Gospel, it is brought to us
through the ministry of the Church, we receive it by faith – never change, nor
does the fact that our good works are always the fruit of salvation – in all of
its aspects and tenses – and never the cause of it in any of its aspects or tenses.
