Justification.... Sanctification....
There are TWO DIFFERENT issue here: Justification and Sanctification (narrow sense, both).
Let me use this analogy:
FIRST: On January 23, 1988, I was born. I was GIVEN life - the miracle, the wonderful, mysterious GIFT of life (we might agree that actually happened about 9 months earlier, but let's proceed). At that point, I became alive. I became a human being - with all that means, biologically and spiritually, all that means in terms of God and me. GIFT. G.I.F.T. This purely, solely, only, exclusively by mercy since prior to that, I did NOTHING. I thought nothing. I willed nothing. I sought nothing. I desired nothing. NO good works. GIFT. G.I.F.T. Mercy. M.E.R.C.Y. On January 23, 1988 - I was removed from my mother (C-Section) - unbreathing, unconscience - I had NOTHING to do with it. NOTHING. N.O.T.H.I.N.G. Gift. Mercy. No merits. No works. No will. Nothing in or from me. GIFT. MERCY. Someone ELSE is to be credited. Entirely. Wholly. Completely. MONERGISTIC. Life is mine - by grace, by mercy, from God, as a GIFT. I am a human being, with all that means - by grace, by mercy, from God, as a GIFT.
In the same way, God saved me (what Protestants mean here is justification - narrow sense). God GAVE me spiritual life, God GAVE me faith, God GAVE me the Holy Spirit.... God caused me to be born AGAIN, now not only with physical life but with spiritual life, now I am not only the child of my parents but a child of God. This CHANGES my relationship to God, as a result solely, only, exclusively because of God's mercy, grace, favor; solely, only, exclusively because of what CHRIST has done as THE Savior; solely, only, exclusively because God GAVE me the GIFT of faith in Christ as my Savior: Sola Gratia - Solus Christus - Sola Fide. You know, the view the RCC decided to split Christianity over. We believe this is MONERGISTIC, because CHRIST is the Savior - not me, not you, not the Pope, not Mary, not the RC Denomination. I'm NOT the Savior - in whole or in part - because the job is taken and He didn't blow it. What makes me a CHRISTIAN is that God's merciful, gracious GIFT of faith means I'm looking to CHRIST as THE Savior, not in the mirror as all my Catholic teachers taught me to do, many Catholic sermons taught me to do, as Catholics here at CARM keep telling us we must do.
SECOND: Almost immediately after being born (well, maybe some months later, lol), my parents, my society and yes God called me to GROW. To mature. To become more loving, more caring, more righteous, more ethical. THIS is a process (unlike my conception). To LIVE the life I was GIVEN. THIS is synergistic (unlike conception). GROWING to be more God like. GROWING in the directions that my parents, my society, my God call me: "Thou shalt be HOLY just as the Lord God is holy." "Thou shalt be PERFECT just as your Father in Heaven is perfect." "LOVE in exactly the same way as Christ loved us on the Cross." High callings! I'm not "there" yet. I'm still GROWING (well, I'd LIKE to say always growing..... sometimes I'm not, sometimes I even retreat). And I do so in large part because of God's EMPOWERING, not due to some innate homo sapiens ability. Yes..... in a few cases, the Bible also calls this "grace" but the CONTEXT tells us this is different, here it means "strength" or "empowering". It is still ours by mercy (we don't DESIRE anything from Him), but here it means strength. This growing up, this discipleship, this CHRISTIAN-walk is something a CHRISTIAN does, not something that makes one a Christian; it is the RESULT of justification not the cause. My being nice to my neighbor is not what causes me to have physical life, having physical life enables me to be nice to my neighbor. What I do as a growing, maturing, developing man is not what makes me a homo sapien nor worthy of being given life.
It is NOT a case of SELF somehow taping into the "gas" God gives in order to slowly "save" self in a SYNERGISTIC process - almost never complete in one lifetime and so (as in Hinduism) more time is supplied to finish the job, salvation being a JOINT EFFORT: Jesus doing what He can (perhaps) but it's insufficent, inadequate, He fails as a Savior - so we come to the rescue to help save Him from being a failure by supplying what He could not: Jesus does what He could (but it's inadequate, a failure) so WE help Him but adding the really important part, the part that actually results in our salvation (albeit we won't get the job done before we die - thus the RCC now gives us Purgatory). In the view of Protestants, AT THE VERY LEAST, modern Catholicism is confusing DIFFERENT ISSUES: man and God, law and gospel, sancatification and justification - leading to the Christless, Crossless, Bloodless, merciless religion we hear as constant din from them; nearly indistingishable from Judaism and Islam, all boasting of SELF. Yes, I know, as YOU, post Trent popular Catholicism occasionally gets around to saying we get HELP. A point Jews and Muslims ALWAYS point out, always stress - but only a few Catholics do, and then usually only if pressured into it. But God HELPING us gain life is not the same as God GIVING us life. Jesus HELPING us to save ourselves is not the same thing as Jesus saving us. What I see is actually not a blending or confusing or entangling different issues, but the actual ABANDONMENT - entirely - of grace, mercy, Christ, the Cross, the Blood, in spite of such talk. The Gospel has simply been .... abandoned. What is left is just the growing part, the walk part, the maturing part. Christ AS SAVIOR has been lost (the key point of CHRISTianity!), all that is left is the Jewish, Muslim, Hindu point of getting closer to heaven each day by what WE do - with the HELP of God.
As I noted to you before, it is MY OPINION that IN SPITE OF the mess the RCC now teaches, the Gospel has not been killed. Because of the reading of Scripture..... because of the gospel proclaimed in the liturgy and often in hymns, because the ancient festivals continue..... Catholics STILL have some concept (however buried) of Christ as SAVIOR. IF..... oh what a big and difficult word that is...... IF you can help the Catholic untangle the MESS they've been taught, you can find they are actually Christians after all. I believe this to be the case; I believe Catholics generally ARE heaven-bound in spite of their denomination. Sad. Because the one issue a church should be MOST clear on, the MOST distinctively CHRISTian - that's the very doctrine Catholicism is weakest on, so blurry, so confused, so entangled, so NON-distinctively Christian.
WHY does modern, post-Trent popular Catholicism work so hard to entangle and confuse Law and Gospel, Sanctification with Justification, self with God? Well, originally just to avoid stopping the successful Indulgence sellers believing that poor Catholics would give more money to fill the RCC with gold if they believed this was salvic, if their coin ringing in the plate replaced the Blood pouring from the Savior on the Cross.... And of course, the devil seeks to destroy the Gospel... and he does it not by denying Jesus but by making Him as small and irrelevant as possible, self as big and important as possible... to TRY to make the Gospel amazingly complex, incredibly entangled, with Jesus really just one helper. The RCC likes to add that itself is the even more important helper.
Pax
- Josiah
