Per Christum

It often happens that non-Catholics, particularly Protestants, misunderstand or misinterpret the documents of the Council of Trent. This usually occurs unintentionally, but it is nevertheless facilitated by many preconceptions about Catholicism that many Protestants bring to the table. Some come to these texts with the specific purpose of finding polemical ammunition to use against Catholicism. In the latter case, the documents are often strip-mined for proof texts that somehow prove that the Church teaches heresy. In either event, Trent is misunderstood because it has been ripped out of its proper context: the scholastic theology of the middle ages.

I have therefore decided to devote a series to the explication and interpretation of the Council documents, particularly those concerning justification. The decrees and canons on justification are easily the most misinterpreted documents of the Council. This confusion can be easily cleared up by a brief introduction to the modes of thinking and expression used by the scholastics. These Catholic theologians made use of very different methods of theological inquiry than those that are common today.

Not every misconception about Trent arises from confusions about scholastic methodology or terminology, however. There are many instances where people have made mistakes about Catholic teaching simply because they have not read the Church’s documents for themselves, but rather have been content to rely on biased second-hand sources that perpetuate myths or calumnies about Catholicism. In other cases, people have simply not read the documents carefully enough.

I thus intend to enumerate as many misconceptions about Trent as I can find, and then to refute those misconceptions based with the documents of the Council.

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Misconception #1: Trent Teaches that a Man may be justified by works.

This is perhaps the most common of all the misconceptions about Trent, but it is also the easiest to refute. It arises partly out of some statements like we find in canon 9, which states:

If anyone shall say that by faith alone the sinner is justified, so as to understand that nothing else is required to cooperate in the attainment of the grace of justification, and that it is in no way necessary that he be prepared and disposed by the action of his own will: let him be anathema.

It is often assumed that by “nothing else,” the Council is referring to works that a man may contribute towards his own justification. However, this interpretation is flatly contradicted in a number of places. The very first canon on justification states:

If anyone shall say that a man can be justified before God by his own works which are done either by his own natural powers, or through the teaching of the Law, and without divine grace through Christ Jesus, let him be anathema.

Similarly, chapter 5 of the Decree on Justification says:

It [the Synod] furthermore declares that in adults the beginning of that justification must be derived from the predisposing grace of God through Jesus Christ, that is, from his vocation, whereby without any existing merits on their part they are called, so that they who by sin were turned away from God, through His stimulating and assisting grace are disposed to convert themselves to their own justification, by freely assenting to and cooperating with the same grace…

We can see that the Council rejected the proposition that a man may obtain or even contribute towards his own justification by any works or existing merits of his own. What, then, was canon 9 referring to when it said “nothing else?” We may find the answer in chapters 6 of the Decree on Justification, where the Council describes the necessary conditions for justification:

The Manner of Preparation

Now they are disposed to that justice when, aroused and assisted by divine grace, receiving faith “by hearing,” they are freely moved toward God, believing that to be true which has been divinely revealed and promised, and this especially, that the sinner is justified by God through his grace, “through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus,” and when knowing that they are sinners, turning themselves away from the fear of divine justice, by which they are profitably aroused to a consideration of the mercy of God, they are raised to hope, trusting that God will be merciful to them for the sake of Christ, and they begin to love him as the source of all justice and are therefore moved against sins by a certain hatred and detestation, that is, by that repentance, which must be performed before baptism; and finally when they resolve to receive baptism, to begin a new life and to keep the commandments of God.

We can see here a number of necessary predispositions for justification. These are: 1) Faith, 2) Hope, 3) Love, 4) Repentance from Sin 5) Resolve to be baptized and to live the Christian life. Once all these conditions are satisfied, a person may be considered to be a justified man.

It is only by a careful consideration of the above chapter that we can fully understand the meaning of Trent’s anathemas against the formula of “justification by faith alone.” This misunderstanding arises when Protestants, who see the Council’s condemnation of the principle of “justification by faith alone,” immediately jump to the conclusion that it is endorsing a doctrine of “works-righteousness.”

The condemnation of the doctrine of justification by faith alone was primarily aimed at the Protestants, although it did not subscribe to any doctrine of justification by works. At this time, Martin Luther was teaching that a man may be justified by naked or fiducial faith (fides nuda). This teaching is in opposition to the doctrine of justification by faith formed by charity (fides caritate formata), which the Catholic theologians were teaching. Fiducial faith denotes an individual’s trusting confidence that God has truly forgiven him his sins and imputed the righteousness of Christ to himself, with no infusion of hope and love for God. Faith formed by charity, on the other hand, indicates a faith that includes hope and love. Thus the 14th canon on justification states:

If anyone says that justifying faith is nothing else than confidence in divine mercy, which remits sins for Christ’s sake, or that it is this confidence alone that justifies us, let him be anathema.

Additionally, the 7th chapter of the Decree on Justification has this to say of unformed fiducial faith:

For faith, unless hope and charity be added to it, neither unites one perfectly with Christ, nor makes him a living member of his body. For this reason it is most truly said that “faith without works is dead,” and is of no profit, and “in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith, which worketh by charity.” This faith, in accordance with apostolic tradition, catechumens beg of the Church before the sacrament of baptism, when they ask for “faith which bestows life eternal,” which without hope and charity faith cannot bestow.

The distinction between fides nuda and fides caritate formata is perhaps a minor distinction, but nevertheless it formed the occasion for the soteriological debates of the sixteenth century and the anathemas of Trent.

Unfortunately, this error does not arise through any sort of unfamiliarity with scholastic terminology, or even Catholic theology in general. Rather, it arises from the inability to carefully read the texts promulgated by Trent. If more people would carefully analyze these documents, as opposed to searching them for proof-texts to suit some polemical purpose, then the misconception would never arise.

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