Theologians are divided in the matter. Some maintain that no human being can or could ever be saved without explicit belief in both the Trinity and the Incarnation. Others[803] hold that this necessitas medii did not exist under the Old Covenant. A third school[804] avers that no such necessity can be proved either for the Old or the New Dispensation.
The first of these three opinions is excessively rigorous and intrinsically improbable. The Jews had no clearly revealed knowledge of the Trinity and the Incarnation, and consequently were under no obligation to believe them. As the divinely constituted guardians of the Messianic prophecies, they were bound to believe in the Redeemer, [pg 283] though only necessitate praecepti. The gentiles were dispensed even from this.
The second opinion, which limits the necessitas medii to the New Testament, lacks solid proof. The Scripture texts cited in its support merely prove the efficaciousness of belief in Christ,[805] or the duty of embracing that belief on the strength of the Apostolic preaching,[806] or, finally, the impossibility of redemption except through the mediation of Jesus;[807]—all truths which in themselves have nothing to do with the question under discussion.
The third and most probable opinion is that even under the New Covenant, explicit faith in Christ, and a fortiori in the Divine Trinity, cannot be regarded as an indispensable medium of justification and salvation, (1) because St. Paul does not mention these two dogmas in the decisive passage, Heb. XI, 6; and (2) because a supernatural act of justifying love and contrition may be inspired by belief in the existence of God and divine retribution; and (3) because this latter belief implicitly, by way of desire (fides in voto), includes belief in Christ and the Trinity.[808] Nevertheless it must be held that an adult who desires to be received into the Church and is baptized in the name of the Most Holy Trinity, is bound to believe in the Trinity and the Incarnation by more than a mere necessitas praecepti, namely, by what is technically called necessitas medii per accidens, a necessity from which God dispenses only in exceptional cases, [pg 284] when it is either physically or morally impossible to elicit an act of explicit faith.[809] It is for this reason that the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office decided, February 28, 1703, that missionaries are bound to explain to all adult converts who have the use of reason, even though they be near death, those mysteries of the faith which are necessary for salvation necessitate medii, especially the Trinity and the Incarnation.[810]
Section 2. The Necessity Of Other Preparatory Acts Besides Faith
1. Heretical Errors and the Teaching of the Church.—Martin Luther, to quiet his conscience, evolved the notion that faith alone justifies and that the Catholic doctrine of the necessity of good works is pharisaical and derogatory to the merits of Jesus Christ. This teaching was incorporated into the symbolic books of the Lutherans[811] and adopted by Calvin.[812] It has been called one of the two basic errors of Protestantism. The Tridentine Council solemnly condemns it as follows: “If anyone saith that by faith alone the impious is justified, in such wise as to mean that nothing else is required to coöperate in order to obtain the grace of justification, and that it is not in any way necessary that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own [pg 286] will; let him be anathema.”[813] Other acts that dispose or prepare the soul for justification, according to the same Council, are: the fear of divine justice; hope in God's mercy; charity, which is the font of all righteousness; detestation of sin, and penitence.[814]
2. Refutation of the Sola Fides Theory.—The Lutheran theory involves an open rupture with the traditional teaching of the Church and is positively unscriptural. Luther himself felt this, as appears from his interpolation of the word “alone” in Rom. III, 28 and his rejection of the entire canonical Epistle of St. James.[815]
a) The teaching of the Bible in regard to the rôle played by good works in the process of justification may be summarized as follows: