JUSTIFICATION. — In the active sense, it designates the act by which God transforms a soul, causing it to pass from the state of sin to the state of grace; in the passive sense, it is the transformation of the soul under the justifying action of God, that is, the effect of active justification and the state that follows II.
OUTLINE:
I. Notions
II. Errors
III. Catholic doctrine
IV. Causes of justification
V. Human cooperation in justification.I. Notions
The terms just, justice, and justification recur frequently in the Bible. Justice is the most celebrated attribute of God. But justice is also attributed to man, and a just man often means a man perfect in every kind of virtue.The justice of which we speak here, by which man is said to be justified, is not the special virtue that inclines the mind to give to each his due, but the state and condition of a person who is upright in itself, that is, well oriented toward its supernatural end and in all its relations with God and neighbor.
To justify sometimes means to declare a person just; for example, Prov. 17:15: “He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, both are abominable before God”; Matt. 12:37: “By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” In these texts, as in others (e.g., Isa. 5:23), the so-called forensic sense is evident: to declare one innocent without, however, being the cause of his rectitude.
To justify sometimes also means to make just one who was not such, to cause in him the rectitude of justice. This is the more frequent sense in the New Testament: “This man (the publican) went down to his house justified” (Luke 18:14, and especially Rom. 2:13; 3:24, 26, 28; and Gal. 3:8, 24: “God justifieth the Gentiles by faith”; “The law was our pedagogue in Christ, that we might be justified by faith”). Upon these two senses the whole struggle between Catholic and Protestant theology has been engaged.
II. ERRORS
The Pelagians considered only the first of the two elements of justification: the remission of fault and of the penalty due to II. This is the work of God. The positive element, that is, the grace of God, did not exist for them. Man is just by his very nature, when he wishes to be so, opposing the disorder of sin.The ancient Protestants made the doctrine of justification the genetic principle of all their theology, giving to the two elements mentioned a new and different sense from that always understood by tradition: a) the negative element, that is, liberation from sin, was conceived not as remission and destruction of sin in the soul, but as a pure and simple non-imputation of sin by God. Between a just man and a sinner there is no intrinsic difference, but only the fact that God casts a cloak over the misery of the former, covering him with the merits of Christ, no longer imputing his faults to him; whereas He does not do this for the latter, whom He therefore holds guilty and condemns. This doctrine is in close relation to the Lutheran doctrine (v. LUTHER) concerning original sin and its consequences. Original sin caused the total corruption of human nature, entering, so to speak, to become part of II. The fallen man is irremediably corrupt; even Baptism cannot heal him. This corruption, which becomes evident in concupiscence, that is, in the disordered inclination of our sensitive nature to evil, is identified with original sin and is the cause of all other sins. Justification must be understood as a judicial act, by which God (analogously to what happens in human courts, that is, in the forensic custom for accused persons of crime) declares the sinner without fault and absolves him, without his interior state being changed. Man is therefore just and sinner at the same time.
b) The positive element of justification, sanctifying grace, is understood as pure external favor, that is, imputation of the justice of Christ, which is attributed to the just as if it were his own, without its being so. His fault is no longer imputed to him, but the justice of Christ is appropriated to him. Thus he ceases to be a sinner (juridically only) and begins to be just (juridically). In the Formula of Concord (III, 55) it is said: “All our justice is foreign to us (extra nos est)… it is in Christ our Lord Jesus alone.” The Protestants recognize in the justified only faith, that is, firm trust, subjective conviction, that his sins, by the mercy of God, are no longer imputed to him as fault.
The extrinsicist concept of justification proper to Luther and his first followers was called a “mechanical” way of conceiving justification; it was therefore modified by the Enlightenment, by Pietists, and by Modernists. The latter, if they
follow the doctrine of absolute immaculateness, see in the positive element of justification the phenomenon of development of the natural religious sentiment, which is the active germ of every form of religion; for them justification is the transformation that occurs in consciousness under the impulse of natural forces. Today in orthodox Protestant theology, which preserves the forensic concept of justification, every theologian seeks to give a personal explanation.
Even Baius formulated a doctrine of justification akin to that of Luther. He held, in fact, that original sin consists properly in concupiscence, which remains in us even after Baptism, and that it is therefore not remitted unless it ceases to be imputed to the believer. In this conception sin and justice do not exclude each other, but can coexist in the same soul. It is perfect charity that confers justification. By it the just man overcomes concupiscence, because charity, when it is perfect, necessarily (though spontaneously) leads to doing good. Good is like the fruit of a tree, spontaneous but necessarily produced. By charity man is just and is led to good, but his sins are not thereby remitted; this depends on the reception of the Sacraments.
III. CATHOLIC DOCTRINE
The Church, faithfully adhering to the sources, gives to justification a much deeper and more intelligible content. a) Concerning the negative element of justification, the Church teaches that sin, whether original or personal, in the justified soul is truly remitted and destroyed, so that nothing remains in it that can be imputed to it as fault (cf. Rom. 8:1). Justice is not the cloak of Christ cast over its interior permanent corruption, but is the total healing of II. The Council of Trent defines with singular precision this crucial point of Catholic dogma: “If anyone denies that original sin is remitted through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ conferred in Baptism, or even asserts that it is not entirely taken away (in Baptism) all that constitutes sin in its true and proper essence (et totum id quod veram et propriam peccati rationem habet),” but affirms that sin is only covered or not imputed, let him be anathema” (sess. V, can. 5; Denz-U, 792). What is said concerning Baptism is repeated also of Penance (sess. XIV, cap. 2; Denz-U, 895) and in general of every true justification, obtained even by a single act of charity, since it is proper to justification necessarily to include the destruction of sin (cf. sess. VI, cap. 7 and can. 11; Denz-U, 799, 821).This point of doctrine was too important not to be clarified and condemned. For in play is the efficacy of the redemptive work of Christ, which would be powerless before sin, if it remained in us despite its action. Christ would be conquered by evil; there would be a kind of hypocrisy even in God, if, declaring us without fault and without misery, our interior were full of it; nor would it be true that in heaven “nothing unclean shall enter, nor any one who practices abomination” (Apoc. 21:27), if he who enters were not substantially different from the sinner.
The complete destruction of sin in the soul is not impossible, because the state of sin is nothing other than the culpable privation of divine grace and the persistence of the will in adherence to a dishonest end, chosen against God and in preference to God, our ultimate end. Habitual sin is essentially the love of a creature or of oneself more than of God. Original sin produced that privation and that perversion of the will in all, through an act performed by Adam; personal sin causes that state through an act proper to the will of the sinner. The sinful act passes away, but the state of privation and disorder it determines remains. To remit sin it is not at all necessary to make what has been done as if it had not been done (a contradictory thing), but it is sufficient for a new infusion of grace, a divine reality that sets the will of the sinner aright, moving it to love God as its ultimate end above all things: thus restoring order to the soul that it had broken. In this way sin is remitted, destroyed, reduced to nothing, and the soul returns upright, just, and pure. These terms are used by Holy Scripture already in the Old Testament (e.g., Ps. 50:3–4; 102:12; Is. 44:22; Ez. 36:25), but even more in the New Testament, where the state of sin is conceived as a defilement, as a sickness of the soul, symbolized by all bodily infirmities that Christ healed. Jesus heals “the whole man” (Is. 7:23); he heals the soul before the body (Lk. 5:20; 7:48; Jn. 5:14); his blood cleanses the stain of sin (1 Jn. 1:7, 9); he is the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world (Jn. 1:29), so that there is nothing blameworthy left in those who have been incorporated into him through the grace of baptism and raised to new life (Rom. 6:3–11; 7:24). The mere non-imputation does not do justice to the full sense of these texts, and in vain do Protestants invoke others where non-imputation is spoken of (Ps. 32:1; 2 Cor. 5:19), or the covering of sins (1 Pt. 4:8). The sentiment of Tradition is in perfect harmony with Scripture when it observes, with St. Augustine, that God no longer imputes sins to the guilty because they have ceased to exist; they may be said not to exist because God no longer sees them; and he no longer sees them because they are no longer there. Indeed, as St. Thomas observes, “it is said that charity covers sins (not in our eyes but) in the eyes of God; (for this to be true) it is necessary that God destroy them” (In IV Sent., d. 22, q. 1, a. 1, ad 2).
b) As regards the positive element of grace, too, the Church has a well-defined doctrine, which is the antithesis of the Lutheran view and brings out the true riches of Redemption. The Church teaches that grace is not an extrinsic denomination, that is, the mere attribution of Christ’s justice to the sinner, but a spiritual regeneration and sanctification of man; it is a mysterious yet real gift of God inherent in the human soul, transforming it, so that we are not only called just but are just in reality. This gift was merited by Christ and is transmitted to us through his humanity (Rom. 5:18; 1 Cor. 1:30), operative in the Sacraments, and configures us to him, so that we may be said to become “the justice of his justice” and to put on Christ (cf. Gal. 3:27); yet this expression does not exclude the reality and interiority of the divine gift of grace, but rather highlights its meritorious and efficient cause and its end, which is to make us like Christ and impress upon us his moral likeness (cf. 1 Cor. 15:49; Col. 3:10; Rom. 8:29). The Council of Trent defines: “If anyone says that grace is only the favor of God, without this favor putting anything in us, let him be anathema” (sess. VI, can. 11; Denz.-U., 821). Theology, following St. Thomas, observes that the cause of our grace is the love of God. Now from the love of God (to love is to will good) there always flows some good in the creature. Therefore the love that God bears toward the just is the infusion of justice as a gift of his love. Only by understanding grace in this sense can we comprehend why it is called in Holy Scripture “rebirth” (Jn. 3:5, 8, 47) “from water and the Holy Spirit”; “rebirth from God” (ibid., 1:13; 2:29); “regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit” by which we become “a new creature” (2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15); “a new man renewed in the inner self in righteousness and true holiness” (Eph. 4:23–24); through it we are admitted to “the communion of the divine nature” (2 Pt. 1:4), become “temples of God” (Jn. 14:23; 1 Cor. 3:16; 2 Cor. 6:16), living and fruitful by the same vitality that comes from Christ, as the branch lives and bears fruit by the sap it receives from the vine (Jn. 15:5; 17:19).
All these texts are irreconcilable with Lutheran extrinsicism and indicate as the positive effect of grace an interior transformation and elevation, which the Fathers did not hesitate to call “deification” (θεώσις). “Our justice,” writes St. Augustine—“which is called the justice of God (Rom. 3:23), not because it is the justice by which God is just (this is the Lutheran sense), but because it is the justice with which he made us just, changing us from the impious we were” (Serm. 131, 9). The redeemed man, the Fathers insist, following the teaching of Holy Scripture, is restored to the justice from which Adam fell, who was just by an interior justice that made him a friend of God. On reflection, sin and grace are so antithetical that they cannot even be conceived as coexisting. Whoever has grace has charity, by which he loves God above all things; whoever is in sin loves a creature more than God. Therefore the charity “which is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5) destroys sin, and sin, which is the free defective will of man, destroys charity. Sin is not extrinsic to man, and therefore neither is the grace that makes us just. Indeed, grace is so precious a reality in Christianity (maxima et pretiosa promissa, 2 Pt. 1:4) that St. Thomas does not hesitate to see in it the very substance of the New Law, that is, the Gospel. “The New Law is the grace of the Holy Spirit, which is given through faith in Christ” (Sum. Theol., I-II, q. 106, a. 1). If one regards this substantial reality of Christianity as a mere extrinsic favor to man, a nothingness within him, one can well measure to what emptiness the work of Christ is condemned.
IV. CAUSES OF GRACE — These are distinctly enumerated by the Council of Trent (sess. VI, cap. 7; Denz.-U., 799). The final cause is “the glory of God and of Christ and eternal life.” The glory of God first, then that of Christ according to his humanity, and finally eternal life, which glorifies us: three ends that are connected and subordinated to one another. The utility of grace is entirely ours (finis cui); through grace man attains eternal life, and thereby proclaims the goodness of the God-Man, who merited grace for us, and his right to be exalted above every creature, so that in heaven, on earth, and in the abyss every knee should bow before him (Phil. 2:10), and thus the infinite perfection of God is manifested, who gave us the Redeemer and willed that Redemption be accomplished in a manner so consonant with his wisdom, his justice, and his mercy.
The first source of our justice, that is, the principal efficient cause, “is the merciful God, who freely (that is, without any merit on our part) washes and sanctifies us, seals and anoints us with the promised Holy Spirit.” Grace is not granted on account of merits that one might exhibit, but is entirely gratuitous. Merits cannot precede the state of grace, but can only follow II.
The meritorious cause of grace is “Our Lord Jesus Christ, who by dying on the wood of the Cross merited grace for us.” His merit does not become ours in the sense of being transferred to us, but it is what moves God to show us mercy. We must unite ourselves to Christ so that the efficacy of His merit may operate in us; the first union takes place through faith, by which we accept His word as truth, voluntarily submit to His sanctifying action, and are ready to obey His command. Faith is thus the proximate disposition in us for receiving grace. Theologians call it the dispositive cause. In this sense we must understand the statement of St Paul that faith justifies (Rom 1:12; 5:1; 3:28; 9:30; 10:6; Gal 2:16; 3:24). It is the obligatory way and the first effective step toward grace: “the justice of God through the faith of Jesus Christ” (Rom 3:22, 30). Not that faith is the essential and constitutive part of grace, but it is the necessary preparation of the soul, the foundation on which God builds the work of sanctification; it may be compared to the vital germ that will develop into grace. The Council calls it the “foundation and root” of grace. Man, however, has held that fiducial faith (fiducia cordis) is the very substance of grace, the effect and cause of the imputation of Christ’s merits.
The instrumental cause of grace is Baptism, which the Council calls the “sacrament of faith.” Without faith, the same Council adds, “no one has ever been justified.” Faith already contains Baptism in desire, and for this reason it is more fully manifested as the instrumental cause of grace.
The formal cause, that is, the intrinsic constitutive element of grace, is “solely the justice of God: not that by which He is just, but that which (derived from Him as just) comes to us and makes us (intrinsically) just” (Denz-U, 820). This justice is sanctifying grace.
V. Human Cooperation with Grace
Grace is an effect of God’s action, but it implies our cooperation through freely performed acts. Luther thought that man could make no preparation for II. The Council of Trent condemned this doctrine (Sess. VI, can. 7), affirming the necessity of preparation without which grace would not be connatural to man, but foreign to his nature, not vital, not worthy of man himself, who must offer to God a “reasonable service” (Rom 12:1), that is, a “spiritual” worship, intelligent and free (cf. Sum. Theol., 1a-2ae, q. 113, a. 3; De Veritate, q. 28, a. 3-4). Scripture is explicit: God invites man to awake, to rise (Eph 5:14), to repent, to convert (Is 45:28), to believe (Mk 1:15), without which there is no grace but death (Lk 13:3-5; Jn 8:24; 20:31). It is the sinner himself who must perform these acts, urged and aided by actual grace, which is the divine call and impulse. It is the constant practice of the Church not to admit adults to Baptism unless they have first undergone the catechumenate, which is precisely a suitable period of preparation for the gift of grace.The first of the sinner’s acts is undoubtedly faith. It is the first step toward salvation: through it we know, desire, and therefore adhere to God who promises to save us. The Council of Trent calls faith “the beginning of human salvation, the foundation and root of every grace,” without which “grace never occurs” (Sess. VI, cap. 8). In this sense, the Council adds, the text of St Paul (Rom 3:28) is to be understood, which attributes grace to faith. But the faith that prepares is not merely fiducial faith that infuses the certainty that God in His mercy has forgiven sins for the sake of Christ’s merits (the Protestants have exaggerated even this interior certainty, which they affirm must be absolute and without hesitation [cf. Denz-U, 820, 823-26]); it is above all an act of the mind and will by which we firmly hold all divine revelation with the promises it contains (cf. ibid., 798); apart from faith, the whole world of grace would lack objective and real foundation and would remain outside the soul and inoperative. Confidence flows from this certainty as its effect.
But faith is the first act destined to arouse others; the Council clearly enumerates them, observing that in the process of passive justification “the soul, stirred and supported by grace, hearing the word of God (Rom 10:7), conceives faith in itself and thus freely takes the first step toward God, believing it true that what God has revealed and promised, and chiefly that God justifies the sinner through grace on account of the Redemption accomplished by the Lord Jesus (ibid. 3:24); and thus, while as a sinner he is shaken by the fear of divine justice, turning to consider divine mercy he is lifted up by hope, trusting that God will be propitious to him for the sake of Christ’s merits, and thus begins to love Him as the source of all justice and therefore to rebel against his sins with that hatred and detestation that constitutes penance, required before receiving Baptism (Acts 2:38). The sinner then resolves to receive Baptism, to begin a new life, and to observe the divine commandments” (Sess. VI, cap. 6; Denz-U, 798). A logical progression of acts perfectly in accord with the laws of human psychology. It may be said that they are initially included in faith, provided that faith is not reduced to a mere act of irrational trust. The act of sincere faith that begins conversion is a movement toward God, observes St Thomas, and therefore itself a turning away from sin. A free movement of the human will in conformity with its nature. The turning away from sin and the turning toward God is “metanoia,” that is, interior rectification, which the soul accomplishes under the influence of the fear of God (which is not always servile, but can already be the fruit of incipient love for divine goodness), in the consideration of infinite mercy, which has made us hope for the forgiveness of sins for the sake of the Redeemer’s merits (v. CONVERSION).
Thus in grace God and man work together. The initiative and primacy undoubtedly belong to the merciful action of God; but under this action man is not inert and receives only extrinsic favors and designations; rather, by freely consenting to the divine impulse, he is transformed within, destroying the state of guilt and passing into the state of grace, whose infusion is the term of justification. Through grace we are made just, established in the new life; we are called and truly are children of God; and by harmonizing our actions with the will of God, in the likeness of Christ whose spiritual image grace impresses upon us, we can bear fruit which the heavenly Father rewards with eternal life (cf. Lk 15; Jn 15:5-6; Rom 6:22).
In the journal Il Concilio di Trento (various issues from 1943 to 1947) there are articles and notices concerning justification: F. Cavallera, La session VI du Concile de Trente sur la justification, in Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique, 47 (1946), pp. 103-12; id., Le décret du Concile de Trente sur la justification (13 Jan. 1947), ibid., 9 (1949), pp. 65-76, 146-68; S. Lyonnet, De «iustitia Dei» in Epistola ad Romanos 3, 25-26, in Verbum Domini, 25 (1947), pp. 129-44, 193-203, 257-63 (important study, as it inaugurates a new exegesis of the celebrated Pauline passage); H. Jedin, Geschichte des Konzils von Trient, I, Brescia 1949, passim; E. Mura, Il Corpo di Stato di Cristo, II, Italian trans., Rome 1949, pp. 108-208; R. Leemryer-J. Rivière, Justification, in Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, VIII, cols. 2042-24 (a broad and authoritative article). M.-J. Scheeben, I misteri del cristianesimo, Italian trans. by J. Gorlani, Brescia 1949, pp. 453-52 (the mystery of Christian justification), Marcelino Daffara.