Salvation

Let me assure you. The Catholic gospel is the true gospel. Catholics "born again"
the Catholic way can get to heaven, because this is the biblical way of salvation.

I ardently hope that your Baptist acquaintance realizes the importance of being fair
and doing careful research. Many self-proclaimed "fundamentalists" relish anything
that makes the Catholic Church look bad, even isolated statements. Not every belief
of a Catholic is truly a Catholic belief. Just because someone holds a certain belief
does not necessarily mean that it is one of the official beliefs of his or her church.
To be totally fair, we need to seek out the reliable sources of official teachings to
know what the official teachings of a given church really are. We must go deeper
than merely grasping for what conveniently serves our prejudices.

We Catholics believe that our dogmas about justification and salvation have never
changed. We also believe that official doctrines can be expressed more clearly as
time passes. This is a task for each generation of faithful Catholics. A critic of our
religion is wiser to begin with current expressions of our beliefs on these important
issues than with statements made several hundred years ago. Old statement are
harder to interpret because the full context is not always available. So it is more
important to know what today’s Catholic Church teaches than what the Catholic
Church taught years ago, even though the substance has not changed. As time
passes, “all movements move.” So acquaintances like yours, if they want to be
completely fair to us, must listen to us before they proceed to lecture us.

It is important for us Christians to understand the biblical doctrine of justification,
but it is not necessary for us to know this in order to have God’s life within our
souls. The biblical teaching about justification properly belongs to Christian
education, not to the evangelization of pagans. One can be a poor theologian and
still be saved. St. Paul, in the book of Acts and in his letters, especially Romans and
Galatians, always explained justification to Christians, NOT to any others. For this
reason, charitable Protestants should be able to view Catholics as genuine Christians,
even though they appear a little confused about the various aspects of justification.
As we shall see, it is really classical Protestantism which misconstrued justification.

Jesus Christ continues to save and sanctify us through the grace that flows to us
from the Cross and the Resurrection through the sacraments and our prayers. The
Catholic Mass is the main portal into the present for this grace. Jesus does not
suffer or die again in the Catholic Mass, but His glorified humanity (His Body and
Blood) on the altar (“the table of the Lord”--First Corinthians 11:21, cf. Malachi 1:6-
7) reminds our Heavenly Father of the infinite merits of His Son’s earthly life, His
good deeds, His passion, and His finished work of suffering and death on the Cross
for all mankind. Wherever Jesus is present, He IS our propitiation (First John 2:2).

At every Catholic Mass, seven days a week, a portion of one of the four Gospels is
read aloud to Catholics in their own languages. Persons who have heard or read
Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John have had an opportunity to “respond to the gospel.”
The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are “the same sort of” gospel as the
gospel according to Paul (Galatians 1:8-9). The contents of the four Gospels show
that “preaching the gospel” can occur without even a mention of justification. The
gospel according to Pope Benedict XVI is also the same gospel of truth and salvation.

To dwell with God for all eternity, one must “die in a state of grace,” in Catholic
terminology, or “have Jesus living in one’s heart,” as evangelicals often express it.
Neither of these phrases is, strictly speaking, a biblical expression, yet both of them
can accurately represent a cluster of important biblical ideas surrounding the power
of the saving words and deeds of Jesus Christ. Every person who lives in a state of
grace has a saving personal relationship with the Person of Christ, the Risen One.

Everyone who dies in a state of grace is saved for all eternity, even if such a person
has not been able to accomplish a single good work or meritorious action while being
and living within this state of grace. However, someone living in a state of grace
(“walking in the Spirit”) sooner or later does good deeds, pleasing to God. One
must be in a state of grace to possess a living faith, one that is always accompanied
by supernatural hope and love, and one that normally results in good internal and
external acts that are befitting one of God’s adopted children.

According to official Catholic teaching, Catholics believe that we cannot save
ourselves, any more than many evangelical Protestants believe that they can save
themselves. Like many of them, Catholics also believe that a Christian can fall from
a state of grace by means of freely choosing to live in a way one fully knows is
seriously offensive to God. Such persons sadly commit spiritual suicide after being
born again in baptism. Everyone supernaturally living in a state of grace possesses
in some way a living faith, hope, and love. Without love, real faith can exist, but it
is a “dead faith” that cannot save a person. Living faith “works through love” and
brings about St. James’ “justification by works,” resulting in heaven as a true reward.

All of us were born in a state of spiritual death (Ephesians 2:1-3, First John 5:19).
For any of us to live with God for all eternity, God, through His Spirit, must transfer
us from the power of darkness into the Kingdom of His beloved Son (Colossians 1:
13-14). He does this through faith and repentance that lead to baptism (Colossians 2:
12-13). To be justified by faith is to be justified by baptism (Galatians 3:26-27).

According to official Catholic teaching, whenever a person is transferred from a state
of spiritual death into a state of grace (spiritual life), this change can never be
merited. It is a spiritual adoption of each one of us into God's family. It is totally
and always a free gift from God. St. Paul’s “justification by faith” is this totally
unmerited transfer into the state of grace.

St. Paul's words were obviously written to people who could understand them. He
was not telling infants what they had to do to be saved. He was writing to adults
about their own response to the Gospel. His congregations were composed of adults
who had become believers on the mission field. In such a missionary context, a
faith response always begins the personal journey to salvation, including baptism.

I'll try to make the truth of this as clear as I can. Allow me to present eight major
points for your careful consideration.

1. Christian baptism is modeled on the baptism of Jesus.   Baptist Fundamentalists
teach that the Holy Spirit comes at the moment a person believes, not when he or
she is baptized. Fundamentalists place the divine declaration of justification before a
person is baptized, not after it. Yet the Spirit came down on Jesus when John the
Baptizer baptized Him, immediately before the Father declared His delight in the
righteousness of His beloved Son. In the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ baptism, there
are the revealing actions of the Trinity, the three distinct divine Persons mentioned
in Christian baptism (Matthew 28:19-20). The post-baptismal, divine declaration is
a harbinger of the justification that first occurs when a person is baptized in the
name of the Trinity. Like Jesus Himself (1 Timothy 3:16), Christians are “justified
in the Spirit.” God’s act of justification is dynamic. He not merely changes His
mind about Christians because of Christ. He actually changes Christians through the
grace of baptism. It is still Jesus Who saves us, but He saves us through the gifts of
His resurrection life and His grace in baptism (1 Peter 3:21).

2. Baptism is a part of anyone’s being born again. Fundamentalists can miss this
fact because they might not understand the original Greek of the New Testament.
“Water” (1:32-33) and “Spirit” (1:33) relate John’s account of the baptism of Jesus
(John 1:26-34), to another reference to it, only two chapters later. John 3:5 is the
very next mention of “Spirit” in the fourth Gospel. Much of John, chapter three,
appears to be dealing with baptism as practiced by the followers of Jesus. It is
difficult to deny that John 3:3-5 is referring to Christian baptism. Because “water
and Spirit” are both governed by only one Greek preposition in 3:5, this verse is
teaching the need of everyone and anyone for spiritual purification through one and
the same baptismal birth. Later in this same chapter, purification is associated with
baptism (3:25-26). The very next mention of “water” refers to baptism (3:23), and
the very next mention of “Spirit” refers back to the baptism of Jesus (3:34). There
are still other Bible verses that report the role that God has assigned to baptism in
the process of salvation ((1 Peter 3:21, Acts 2:39, 22:16, with Romans 10:9-10).

3. Justification is a sanctifying divine action that occurs in the liturgy of Baptism.
Fundamentalists have little patience with liturgy in general, and much less with
acknowledging a saving aspect to any liturgy. First Corinthians 6:11: “You were
washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ
and in the Spirit of our God.” Three Greek verbs are translated as “you were
washed,” “you were sanctified,” and “you were justified.“ These are forceful
expressions, parallel in structure, and refer to something that has taken place “in the
name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” Notice that salvation
takes place in the Name of Jesus. It is Jesus that saves us. The Greek prepositional
phrases, both beginning with “in” in the English translation, weigh down each one of
these verbs and tie them to the same sacred action. These modifying phrases work
together to convey to the verbs a tone of authority, sobriety, and dignity, likely
liturgical in nature. Since by “washed” it seems clear that “baptized” is meant (cf.
Ephesians 5:26), all three verbs are almost certainly a description of what happened
to the unjust Corinthians when they were baptized. During this sacred action, each
sinner was washed, sanctified, and justified all at once. Since these three
expressions converge on the same liturgical moment, they most naturally converge in
their meanings, even if they are not completely synonymous. In this context, the
three verbs nuance one another, and give perspective to the same reality which they
signify, what baptism accomplishes, or what Jesus accomplishes through baptism. It
is baptism that makes the difference between what the Corinthian believers once
were and what they have now become. Here, as in Titus 3:5-8, we notice a washing
of the sinner from his or her sins and a renewal in righteousness through the Holy
Spirit with the result of justification. To be justified is, in concrete reality, to be
washed and to be sanctified. To be justified means that a person has been sanctified
through baptism in Jesus' Name. The Lord promises NEVER to acquit the wicked
(Exodus 23:7), yet He DOES justify the ungodly (Romans 4:5). Both statements
must be correct, since God cannot contradict Himself. There is only one way that
both assertions can be true. Justification cannot happen without the sinful person
first being actually changed by God's grace. This must happen before his acquittal.

4. Fundamentalists have been misled by Luther’s main theological errors. Martin
Luther was right in concluding that salvation is a gift, and that justification takes
place through faith. He was wrong in denying that God’s Word also teaches that
salvation is a reward, and that justification also takes place through good deeds.
Luther’s most crucial error was his belief that the obvious disorder in our human
nature is sinful in itself. If it were so, but it is not, then our All-Holy God could
never be entirely pleased with even a recently baptized person, who always carries
within himself this supposedly sinful inclination to sin. From this Luther concluded:
1) there can be no adequate righteousness within a believer to merit his justification
by God. (Since God does justify the ungodly, He must do so, concluded Luther, by
Christ’s perfect righteousness outside of the believer), and, 2) there can be no sense
in which a Christian living in a state of grace after baptism can truly merit eternal
life. Because the alien righteousness of Christ is 100% perfect, there are no degrees
of justification in Luther’s thinking. No one can improve on the degree of Christ’s
righteousness, and so, for Martin Luther and his followers, the justified person has
all of this righteousness in God’s sight at once and forever, as long as he or she truly
believes. For them, justification is identical in all the justified. Fundamentalists do
not follow Luther all the way, even though this would be logical. They believe that
dead babies go to heaven without faith, and that salvation is within the free-will
grasp of each adult. For Luther, however, dead babies must have faith and baptism
in order to escape damnation, and since none of us can ever merit heaven, even our
choices cannot alter our eternal destinies. Indeed, according to Luther, we do not
have a truly free will when it comes to spiritual matters, and whether we will be
saved or lost is God’s choice, and His alone. Only His predestination is decisive.

5. Just as Protestant Fundamentalists refuse to call Mary "blessed," even though the
Holy Spirit, speaking through her, predicted that all future generations of believers
would do so (Luke 1:48), so these Christians, who pride themselves in using biblical
terminology, also refuse to say that a loving Christian is “justified by works,” as St.
James does (James 2:24). Why are good people who are otherwise so prone to
using biblical expressions so reluctant to do so in these cases? Their inconsistency in
this almost surely betrays a mind-set that is falling short of being completely biblical.

They never tie the divine gift of life in the world to come as directly to keeping the
commandments as Christ did (Matthew 19:16-22). Jesus told the rich young man
that everlasting life will be a reward, not only a gift. Fundamentalists are more than
willing to admit that Christians, who will inhabit the world to come, will have kept
God's commandments sometime during their lives here and now, but they insist that
this future life is not at all conditioned on keeping the commandments. Yet Jesus
sets up a cause-effect relationship between the two. Faced with this rather obvious
contradiction, Fundamentalists prefer to push “dispensational distinctions” instead;
they respond that Old Testament Jews, including Jews who lived before Jesus died,
could, only theoretically, have earned salvation in this sort of way, but Christians
can never do so today. Oddly enough, such dispensation-minded Christians are
claiming, almost incredibly, that this teaching of Jesus in Matthew's Gospel is not for
Matthew's Christian readers at all! They think that, since Matthew "is a very Jewish
gospel," and James is "a very Jewish letter," this crucial distinction is quite obvious.

Luther himself was not guilty of this form of theological gymnastics. Rather, Luther
sincerely admitted that he could not harmonize James with Paul. On the contrary,
the Catholic Church insists that there is no contradiction. Both writers are saints
who were inspired by the same Holy Spirit. Whatever is asserted by the biblical
writers is asserted by the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit never contradicts Himself.
So there must be a stage of justification by works (St. James) as well as a stage of
justification without works (St. Paul). Because the Catholic Church is truly catholic,
that is, universal in her commitments and goals, her teachings about justification and
salvation fit ALL the books of the Old Testament as well as the New, the letter of
St. James as well as all the letters of St. Paul. Martin Luther, in effect, shrunk the
canon of the Holy Scriptures, even though it was he who had accused the papists of
embracing the letter of St. James and leaving out all the rest of the biblical books.

According to official Catholic teachings, whenever a soul in this life is transferred
from spiritual death to spiritual life, he or she enters a state of grace. Such a move is
always unmerited. The undeserved nature of this bears repetition and should never
be forgotten. While one remains in a state of grace, though, one can do deeds that
are pleasing to God, deeds that He will reward for all eternity. Merit in God's sight
is a supernatural reality in the sanctified, and this, too, must never be forgotten. A
person in a state of grace always has a living faith, because charity and hope are also
living within his or her heart. Given enough time, living faith always results in good
works. So if a person dies in a state of grace, any good works he or she did while
physically AND spiritually alive, with living faith, hope, and charity within his or her
heart, merits living in the world to come, just as Jesus taught the rich young man.
All Christians must strive to possess perfect holiness, without which they cannot see
God (Hebrews 12:14). When Christians die with a personal holiness that is partial,
not perfect, their spirits will need to be “made perfect” in purgatory (Hebrews 12:23).

6. Fundamentalists tend to overlook God’s declaration in the matter of Abraham’s
justification by works. For them, what St. James means by “justification by works”
is only a human declaration of a person’s goodness, not a divine declaration at all.
But this is an error. More than once the Lord God Himself declared through the
inspired biblical writers that Abraham is His friend (2 Chronicles 20:7, Isaiah 41:8).
Isaac could have declared his own father to be righteous after the ordeal on Mount
Moriah, but what matters to St. James is God’s own declaration of Abraham’s
friendship with Him. Since friendship with God allows for degrees, God’s process
of justification allows for degrees. “Remember the deeds of the fathers, which they
did in their generations; and receive great honor and an everlasting name. Was not
Abraham found faithful when tested, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness?”
(1 Maccabees 2:51-52). Faith allows for degrees of growth. Abraham’s faith was
credited to him by God as personal righteousness. Similarly, according to the Old
Testament, God's grace allowed Phinehas to do a holy, zealous deed, one that God
credited to him as personal righteousness (Psalm 106:30-31). This is God’s infallible
evaluation of the quality of the man’s deed as it has been sung throughout the
generations of Israel. God was truly pleased. Similarly, it was the quality of
Abraham’s faith that moved God to credit it to him as his personal righteousness
(Genesis 15:6). The faith belonged to Abraham and so did the righteousness that
God acknowledged, though both were gifts from God through His abundant grace.

7. Fundamentalists normally teach that justification is a different reality from
sanctification, but St. Paul seems to make no such distinction. In St. Paul, as in
Catholic theology, these refer to the same reality, or two aspects of the same
mystery. The entire period between a Christian’s initial calling to salvation and his
glorification is one of justification (Romans 8:30, 33). Elsewhere, St. Paul calls this
middle period one of “sanctification by the Spirit” (2 Thessalonians 2:13-14). For
St. Paul, the Christ Who is our sanctification is also our righteousness (1 Corinthians
1:30), and the baptism which justifies us can just as easily be said to sanctify us (1
Corinthians 6:11, 1 Peter 1:2, Romans 1:7, 1 Corinthians 1:2, 1 Thessalonians 4:7).

8. Fundamentalists seem to miss the verses which teach that Christians can truly
MERIT the GIFT of future life in the world to come as an inheritance. They say no
one, not even a Christian, can live well enough to be worthy of everlasting life, but
St. Paul clearly disagrees (Hebrews 6:9-10, 12:14, 2 Thessalonians 1:5-7, 2 Timothy
4:6-8). His prayers reflect the existence of genuine Christian merit. St. Paul does
not pray make-believe prayers (Colossians 1:10), or waste his precious breath (1
Thessalonians 2:12). Despite the rather obvious fact that all our good works have
blemishes caused by human weaknesses, New Testament writers present God as
fully accepting of them (Luke 1:6). Many times in the Old Testament, too, God or
the inspired writer commends a living or dead king for having done everything that is
good and right in God’s sight (1 Kings 11:38, 14:8, 15:5, 22:43, 2 Kings 10:30, 12:2,
14:3, 15:3,34, 18:3, 22:2, 2 Chronicles 14:2, 17:3, 20:32, 24:2, 25:2, 26:4, 27:2, 29:
2, 31:20, 34:2). Such divine commendations often occur within the context of the
king’s chief human failures. Unmerited divine life within our souls makes it possible
for us to merit life in the world to come, even though we remain weak.

So I would suggest that your Baptist acquaintance needs to read his Bible more
carefully. The Bible is God’s infallible Word, and so there is no higher authority on
earth than God’s Word rightly interpreted. Erroneous biblical interpretations
promoted as God’s ideas, though almost always sincere, are a widespread form of
non-Catholic idolatry, which is “giving a divine status to what is only human.”

What the Apostles taught by the power of the Spirit is God’s Word, NOT just the
Bible (2 Thess. 2:15). It appears quite impossible to establish from the Bible alone
that the Bible contains all of God’s Word. The whole faith, though perhaps not
completely contained in the Bible, was once committed to God’s people (Jude 3).
When one finds the Roman Catholic Church, one finds this people, our people. God
assures us that what we believe about salvation comes to us from the Apostles.

The basis of the Protestant teaching about salvation is unstable. Each and every
“Bible alone” teaching refutes itself unless the Bible teaches or at least implies that
idea. This is nowhere to be found without its many pages. The "Bible alone"
teaching is a non-biblical tradition against non-biblical traditions. It refutes itself.
While the Holy Bible reliably points the way to salvation, when properly used in
conjunction with Sacred Tradition, not everything that the Bible teaches about
salvation is easy to understand, especially St. Paul's writings (Second Peter 3:15-
16). Here Dr. Martin Luther took a wrong turn, and so does your acquaintance.
                               THE END.

QUESTION: I have a Baptist acquaintance. He's friendly but I would not call him
a friend, mainly because he seems to look down on our Catholic religion. He says
that he is even proud to be called a "Fundamentalist." He believes that a Catholic
can be saved, yes, but not if the person believes the official Catholic teachings about
salvation and justification. He says that the Catholic Church officially teaches a false
Gospel. His biggest objection concerns our being "born again" by means of faith in
Jesus. Justification is by faith alone, he insists, and Catholics seem to want to add
something to faith. Ever since the challenges that Martin Luther and his followers
posed to our church, Roman Catholicism officially looks like "a works system of
salvation" that has a place for Jesus but "does not depend entirely on Him for
salvation." Most Catholics seem intent on "saving themselves" by means of good
works rather than by "trusting in Jesus alone" to take them to heaven without any
merits of their own. When we are "trusting in Jesus alone," God declares us to be as
righteous as Jesus is, because Jesus has taken our place in God's sight (justification).
Must Catholics be "born again" the Protestant way in order to get to heaven?
Answered by Rev. Paul L. Rothermel

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Salvation IS Catholic

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