St. Ambrose regards innocence as the positive element of justification: “After this [i.e. Baptism] you received a white robe, to indicate that you stripped off the vesture of sin and put on the chaste garments of innocence.”[944]
Harnack claims that St. Augustine first stemmed the current dogmatic tradition and reshaped it by going back to St. Paul. Bellarmine[945] refuted this audacious assertion long before it was rehashed by the German rationalist. The Council of Trent was so thoroughly imbued with the teaching of Augustine that its decrees and canons on justification read as though they were lifted bodily from his writings. The great “Doctor of Grace” flatly contradicts the Protestant theory of imputation in such utterances as these: “He [St. Paul] does not say, ‘the righteousness of man,’ ... but ‘the righteousness of God,’—meaning not that whereby He is Himself righteous, but that with which He endows man when He justifies the ungodly.... The righteousness of God is by faith of Jesus Christ, that is, by the faith wherewith one believes in Christ. For here is not meant the faith with which Christ Himself believes, just as there was not meant the righteousness whereby God is Himself righteous. Both no doubt are ours; but yet they are called [in one case] God's, and [in the other] Christ's, because it is by their bounty that these [pg 320] gifts are bestowed upon man.”[946] Again: “When righteousness is given to us, it is not called our own righteousness, but God's, because it becomes ours only so that we have it from God.”[947] Again: “The grace of God is called the righteousness of God through our Lord Jesus Christ, not that by which the Lord is just, but that by which He justifies those whom from unrighteous He makes righteous.”[948] Again: “The love of God is said to be shed abroad in our hearts, not because He loves us, but because He makes us lovers of Himself; just as the righteousness of God is used in the sense of our being made righteous by His gift.”[949] According to St. Augustine, therefore, justification culminates in a true sanctification of the soul. “When he [St. Paul] says: ‘We are transformed into the same image,’ he assuredly means to speak of the image of God; and by calling it ‘the same,’ he means that very image which we see in the glass,... and that we pass from a form that is obscure to a form that is bright,... and this [human] nature, being the most excellent among things created, is changed from a form that is defaced into a form that is beautiful, when it is justified by its Creator from ungodliness.”[950]
The Augustinian passages which we have quoted (and they are not by any means all that could be quoted) enumerate the distinguishing marks of sanctifying grace in so far as it is the formal cause of justification.[951]
c) The argument from Revelation can be reinforced by certain philosophical considerations which show the absurdity of the imputation theory from the standpoint of common sense.
A man outwardly justified but inwardly a sinner would be a moral monster, and Almighty God would be guilty of an intrinsic contradiction were He to regard and treat such a one as just. This contradiction is not removed but rather intensified by the Lutheran appeal to the extraneous justice of Christ.[952]
The incongruity of the Lutheran doctrine of justification becomes fully apparent from the consequences which it involves, to wit: (1) all Christians without distinction would possess exactly the same degree of sanctity and justice; (2) justification once obtained by fiduciary faith could not be lost except by the sin of unbelief; and (3) children would not be justified by Baptism because they are not sufficiently advanced in the use of reason to enable them to “apprehend” the external righteousness of Christ. The first of these inferences [pg 322] runs counter to common sense and experience. The second, which Luther clothed in the shameful exhortation, “Pecca fortiter et crede fortius et nihil nocebunt centum homicidia et mille stupra,”[953] is repugnant to the teaching of Scripture and destructive of morality.[954] The third consistently led to the rejection of infant baptism by the Anabaptists, the Mennonites, and other Protestant sects.
3. Sanctifying Grace the Sole Formal Cause of Justification.—In declaring that “inherent grace” is the “sole formal cause of justification,” the Council of Trent[955] defined it as an article of faith that sanctifying grace of itself is able to produce all the formal effects of justification, e.g. forgiveness of sins, the sanctification of the sinner, his adoption by God, etc.,[956] and consequently requires no supplementary or contributory causes. In other words, justification is wholly and fully accomplished by the infusion of sanctifying grace.
a) It appears from the discussions preceding its sixth session that the Tridentine Council not only meant to condemn the heretical contention of Butzer that “inherent grace” must be supplemented by the “imputed justice of Christ” as the really essential factor of justification,[957] but also wished to reject the view of divers contemporary Catholic theologians[958] that “intrinsic righteousness” [pg 323] is inadequate to effect justification without a special favor Dei externus.[959] In this the Fathers of the Council were on Scriptural ground. The principal effects of justification,—forgiveness of sins and internal sanctification,—are both produced by sanctifying grace. Sacred Scripture is perfectly clear on this point. It represents sin as opposed to grace in the same way in which darkness is opposed to light,[960] life to death,[961] the new man to the old.[962] The one necessarily excludes the other. Sanctifying grace and sin cannot co-exist in the same subject.
Internal sanctification may be defined as a permanent, vital union with God, by which the soul becomes righteous and holy in His sight and obtains a claim to Heaven. That this is also a function of sanctifying grace appears from those Scriptural texts which treat of the positive element of justification.[963] With this doctrine Tradition is in perfect accord, and consequently the Fathers of Trent were right in teaching as they did, in fact they could not have taught otherwise.[964]
b) While all Catholic theologians admit the incompatibility of grace and sin in the same subject, they differ as to the kind and degree of opposition existing between the two. Some hold that this opposition is purely moral, others that it is physical, again others that it is metaphysical.