GRACE
702
GRACE
mantle of grace, cover our sins (which still continue to
exist interiorly) in the infallible, certain belief (fiducia)
that God, for the sake of Christ, will no longer hold our
sins against us. Hereby the seat of justifying faith is
transferred from the intellect to the will; and faith
itself, in as far as it still abides in the intellect, is con-
verted into a certain belief in one's own justification.
The main question is: "Is this conception Biblical?"
Murray (De gratia, disp. x, n. 18, Dublin, 1877) states
in his statistics that the word fides (irlcmt) occurs
eighty times in the Epistle to the Romans and in the
synoptic Gospels, and in only sLs of these can it be
construed to mean fiducia. But neither here nor
anywhere else does it ever mean the conviction of, or
belief in, one's own justification, or the Lutheran fidu-
ciary faith. Even in the leading text (Rom., iv, 5) the
justifying faith of St. Paul is identical with the men-
tal act of faith or belief in Divine truth; for Abraham
was justified not by faith in his own justification, but by
faith in the truth of the Divine promise that he would
he the " father of many nations" (cf. Rom., iv, 9 sqq.).
In strict accord with this is the Pauline teaching that
the faith of justification, which we must profess
" with heart and mouth", is identical with the mental
act of faith in the Resurrection of Christ, the central
dogma of Christianity (Rom., x, 9 sq.), and that the
minimum expressly necessary for justification is con-
tained in the two dogmas: the existence of God, and
the doctrine of eternal reward (Heb., xi, 6).
The Redeemer Himself made belief in the teacliing of the Gospel a necessary condition for salvation, when he solemnly commanded the Apostles to preach the Gospel to the whole world (Mark, xvi, 15). St. John the Evangelist declares his Gospel has been writ- ten for the purpose of exciting belief in the Divine Sonship of Christ, and links to this faith the possession of eternal life (John, xx, 31). Such was the mind of the Christian Church from the beginning. To say nothing of the testimony of the Fathers (cf. Bellar- mine, ]3e justific, I, 9), Saint Fulgentius, a disciple of St. Augustine, in his precious booklet, "De vera fide ad Petrum", does not understand by true faith a fiduciary faith, but the firm belief in all the truths contained in the Apostles' Creed, and he calls this faith the " Foundation of all good things", and the" Be- ginning of human salvation" (loc. cit., Prolog.). The practice of the Church in the earliest ages, as shown by the ancient custom, going back to Apostolic times, of giving the catechumens {KaTtfxovii^voi from KoTTjxf'", vii'A voce instruere) a verbal instruction in the articles of faith and of directing them, shortly before baptism, to make a public recitation of the Apostles' Creed, strengthens this view. After this they were called not fiduciales but fidcles, in contra-distinction to infi- deles and lucretici (from aipeia^ai, to select, to proceed eclectically) who rejected Revelation as a whole or in part.
In answer to the theological question: How many truths of faith must one expressly {fide explicitd) be- lieve under command (necessitale -pTcccepii) ? theolo- gians say that an ordinary Catholic must expressly know and believe the most important dogmas and the truths of the moral law, for instance, the Apostles' Creed, the Decalogue, the six precepts of the Church, the Seven Sacraments, the Our Father. Greater things are, of course, expected from the educated, especially from catechists, confessors, preachers, wherefore upon these the study of theology rests as an obligation. If the question be put: In how many truths as a means {necessitate medii) must one believe to be saved? many catechists answer Six things: God's existence; an eternal reward ; the Trinity; the Incarnation; the immortality of the soul; the neces- sity of Grace. But according to St. Paul (Heb., xi, 6) we can only be certain of the necessity of the first two dogmas, while the belief in the Trinity and the Incar- nation could not of course be exacted from ante-
Christian Judaism or from Paganism. Then, too,
belief in the Trinity may be impUcitly included in the
dogma of God's existence, and belief in the Incarna-
tion in the dogma of the Divine providence, just as
the immortality of the soul is impHcitlj' included in
the dogma of an eternal reward. However, there
arises for any one baptized in the name of the Holy
Trinity, and entering thus the Church of Christ, the
necessity of making an act of explicit faith (fides ex-
plicita). This necessity {necessitas medii) arises per
accidens, and is suspended only by a Divine dispensa-
tion in cases of extreme necessity, where such an act
of faith is either physically or morally impossible, as in
the case of pagans or those dying in a state of uncon-
sciousness. For further matter on this point see
Pohle, "Lehrbuch der Dogmatik", 4th ed., II, 488
sqq. (Paderborn, 1909).
(b) The Sola-fides doctrine of the Protestants. — The Council of Trent (Sess. VI, can. ix) decrees that over and above the faith which formally dwells in the intellect, other acts of predisposition, arising from the will, such as fear, hope, love, contrition, and good reso- lution (loc. cit., cap. \'i), are necessary for the recep- tion of the grace of justification. This definition was made by the council as against the second fundamen- tal error of Protestantism, namely that "faith alone justifies" {sola fides justificat).
Martin Luther stands as the originator of the doc- trine of justification by faith alone, for he hoped that in this wise he might be able to calm his omi con- science, which was in a state of great perturbation, and consequently he took refuge behind the assertion that the necessity of good works over and above mere faith was altogether a pharisaical supposition. Mani- festly this did not bring him the peace and comfort for which he had hoped, and at least it brought no convec- tion to his mind ; for many times, in a spirit of honesty and sheer good nature, he applauded good works, but recognized them only as necessary concomitants, not as efficient dispositions, for justification. This was also the tenor of Calvin's interpretation (Institutes, III, 11, 19). Luther was surprised to find himself by his unprecedented doctrine in direct contradiction to the Bible, therefore he rejected the Epistle of St. James as "one of straw" and into the text of St. Paul to the Romans (iii, 28) he boldly inserted the word alone. This falsification of the Bible was certainly not done in the spirit of the Apostle's teaching, for no- where does St. Paul teach that faith alone (without charity) will bring justification, even though we should accept as also Pauline the text given in a dif- ferent context, that supernatural faith alone justifies, but the fruitless works of the Jewish Law do not.
In this statement St. Paul emphasizes the fact that grace is purely gratuitous; that no merely natural good works can merit grace ; but he does not state that no other acts in their nature and purport predisposing are necessary for justification over and above the re- quisite faith. Any other construction of the above passage would be violent and incorrect. If Luther's interpretation were allowed to stand, then St. Paul would come into direct contradiction not only with St. James (ii, 24 sqq.). but also with himself; for, except St. John, the favourite Apostle, he is the most out- spoken of all .\postles in proclaiming the necessity and excellence of charity over faith in the matter of justi- fication (cf.I Cor., xiii, l,sqq.). Wheneverfaith justifies it is not faith alone, but faith made operative and re- plenished by charity (cf. Gal., v, 6, "fides, qua? per caritatem operatur'"'). In the plainest language the Apostle St. James says this: "ex operibus justificatur homo, et non ex fide tantum" (James, ii, 24); and here, by w-orks, he does not understand the pagan good works to which St. Paul refers in the Epistle to the Romans, or the works done in fulfilment of the Jewish Law, but the works of salvation ni.ide possible by the operation of supernatural grace, which was
