The Biblical Foundations of Catholic Salvation
(Part 6)
Paul Newcombe
JUSTIFICATION IS NOT A ONE-TIME EVENT BUT AN ONGOING PROCESS
Because many (but not all) non-Catholic denominations view justification as a legal act that occurs in a court room, many also view justification as a one-time event that can never be repeated. It occurs at the time the individual accepts, by faith alone, Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior. Once justified many Protestant people are taught to consider themselves “saved”. Of course, not all Protestant churches teach this concept, however, it has been a prevalent theme amidst the reformed, evangelical and fundamentalist movements.
In viewing justification as a family event lived out in a household of faith, the Catholic Church has insisted that justification is not a one-time act of God but an ongoing process of growth and development — a progression which reflects the advance of children who are growing up and maturing within the family of God. This is the proper course of a true family life. Our heavenly Father adopts us into his family through His completely free gift of justifying grace given at baptism where we are born again “of water and the spirit” (John 3:5), however, God also supplies us with actual grace throughout the course of life. As we freely respond to God’s grace and subsequently live out our Christian life in obedience to the divine family code — God responds by unleashing even more grace in our lives as His faithful children. As grace increases, justification increases, and we become more and more righteous in the eyes of God.
If God removes justifying grace from our soul, then justification ceases. This occurs when we knowingly and wilfully commit a deadly sin — known to Catholics as mortal sin (see Rom 1:29-32; 1 Cor 6:9-10; Gal 5:19-21; Eph 5:5; 1 John 5:16-17). In this scenario we become like the prodigal son who freely chose sinful behaviour that contradicted the family code and in doing so disinherited himself from the family and its internal life. When, as runaway children, we repent before our heavenly Father in a sincere desire to return to our home, God, as a loving Father, immediately extends forgiveness and restores justifying grace. Moreover, God restores our righteousness as a fully-fledged child of God — a true family member and an heir to the heavenly inheritance. This is vividly depicted by the joyful announcement of the father who gladly receives his prodigal son into the family home once again:
“We are going to have a feast, a celebration, because this son of mine was dead and has come back to life; he was lost and is found.” (Luke 15:23-24).
God provides grace to His children in the degree to which we cooperate with Him in obedience to the family code. Children who are obedient to God’s word make good family members and continue to grow in righteousness by His grace — moving from spiritual infanthood, through the difficult teenage years, and into spiritual adulthood. However, it must be noted that God the Father has infinite respect for human free-will and will therefore not force any child to remain within the embrace of His family. God the Father is not glorified by robotic pre-programmed faithfulness — we are not traveling on Holy Spirit auto-pilot. Instead, His glory is manifested when His children freely give their hearts to Him on a daily basis — both in word and deed — for the season of their earthly lives. The Catholic emphasis is not given to a one-time altar-call where we “get saved”, but instead to a daily conversion-of-the-heart where it is our free choice to love God and receive His graces, or, reject Him and become a runaway child in pursuit of other Gods and other desires. Salvation is certainly a free gift of grace, however, we all have the God-given freedom to accept or reject this most precious gift. Redemption has occurred upon the cross, but now it must be applied through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will knock on the door of our heart each and every day to apply Christ’s life to our own, however, this can only be achieved when we freely submit to His grace each and every day through a life of faithfulness — in word and deed.
DID ABRAHAM “GET SAVED?”
Oftentimes the above description of salvation as a family pilgrimage is criticized by churches who are actively promoting the “getting saved” motif. Justification is said to occur at a one-time “altar call” (or other similar conversion experience) when the individual first acknowledges Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior. The life of Abraham has become a prominent and well-known method for debunking the Catholic notion of salvation. As a result, many Protestant denominations are currently proclaiming that Abraham was justified before God when, by faith alone, he “believed in the Lord”. This one-time justifying event is said to occur in Genesis 15 and the now very famous verse 6 is identified as the moment when Abraham’s saving faith is manifested:
And he believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness (Genesis 15:6).
According to the vast majority of non-Catholic biblical interpreters from denominations that identify themselves as non-denominational, fundamentalists, or evangelicals — Genesis 15:6 is the moment when Abraham first had saving faith in God as his Savior. He believed in God, and he was justified. This, we are told, is a clear biblical example of salvation by faith alone — it is a one-time event, an act of saving faith, and not, as Catholics would suggest, an ongoing process. This is the common and almost omnipresent view that pervades the preaching, literature, and public statements of many “bible churches”. Illustrations of this standard interpretation can be observed in the following statements assembled from prominent leaders within the above-mentioned denominations:
Dr. Van Lees, a conservative evangelical pastor, explains:
In Paul's use of justification, he argues that Abraham was justified in a saving sense the moment he believed God. That is found in Genesis 15. When Abraham received the promise of God, he believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Genesis 15:6 states: “Then he [Abraham] believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.”[1]
David Chadwell (Oxford Church of Christ – Mississippi) in his When Faith Was Reckoned For Righteousness explains:
Upon God’s reassurance, Abraham believed God’s promise. At that point the faith reckoned for righteousness came into existence. “And he (Abraham) believed in Jehovah; and He (Jehovah) reckoned it to him for righteousness” (Genesis 15:6).[2]
John Ankerberg in his Protestants and Catholics: Do They Now Agree? explains:
"Paul appeals to Abraham in Genesis 15, stating that Abraham was justified the moment he believed in God".[3]
Pastor Eric Hollingsworth (Christ Reformed Evangelical Church, Castro Valley, California) in his Justification By Faith Alone explains:
So why is it, how can it be, that today there is such great confusion about how we are saved? …Because today, there are those who say that justification is a life-long process…
"Open your Bibles please to Genesis 15, verse 6. In our study of Genesis, the life of Abraham, we’ve arrived this morning at the verse which many call the hinge of the Bible. Because this is the verse that Paul quotes in both Romans and Galatians, when he explains how men and women are saved: by grace alone, through faith alone, because of Christ alone.
Well, beloved, we’re going to spend the next two Sundays on Genesis 15:6, because Genesis 15:6 is the Gospel. …This is our foundation; it’s the foundation of the church of Jesus Christ! So if we get this wrong, we get everything wrong; as Luther said, the church will fall. If we get this wrong, we might as well go back to Rome.
…Do you know why Genesis 15:6 is quoted by Paul in his two most careful and methodical expositions of justification? Because this is the first time in Scripture that God explicitly shows us how a person was saved. We know that Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, and others were saved, but it’s not until Abram that we get to see behind the scenes, as it were, that we get to see how salvation works. So Paul takes Abram and puts him on display, as the pattern of how anyone can be saved; how a sinner can be made right with God, how we can stand in His holy presence.
…How was Abram saved? “And he believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.” We saw in Romans 3 the basis of Abram’s justification, the ground of his justification, what made it possible for God to justify this sinner. How? Only because of the cross, only because of the blood of Jesus, only because of the perfect obedience of Christ.
But how do we sinners then appropriate His blood, His obedience, for ourselves? How do these become our own, what’s the means, the instrument of our justification, what channel does God use as a conduit for His saving grace? Genesis 15:6, “And he believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.” …Like we can see all through the New Testament, that we’re justified, that we are given, as a free gift, a right standing before God, how? When we simply believe".[4]
To preach that Abraham was justified for the first time in Genesis 15:6 when he first believed in God as his saviour is to completely destroy the context of Abraham’s life in Genesis. To say that Abraham is here justified by faith alone apart from any obedience to God’s word and His commandments is to wrench a text out of its intended context in the most profound manner. To see the historical context, we need to first go back and read through Genesis 12, 13, and 14. When one does this, it immediately becomes apparent that the standard “bible-believing”, fundamentalist, or evangelical interpretation of Genesis 15 is completely and utterly impossible.
In Genesis 12:1 Yahweh commands a 75-year-old Abraham to leave everything he knows — his country, his relatives, his financial security and to go to an unidentified foreign land that will be shown to him in the future. I would suggest that very few people have received a direct call from God to do something as all-encompassing as this call received by Abraham. Amazingly, Abraham responds — he leaves his entire life behind and in his senior years embarks on a demanding journey into unfamiliar territory in order to follow God. It must be noted that Hebrews chapter 11 presents a very important comment on this event, a comment which clearly identifies Abraham’s faith to be the basis of his phenomenal obedience:
“It was BY FAITH that Abraham obeyed the call to set out for a country that was the inheritance given to him and his descendants, and that he set out without knowing where he was going” (Hebrews 11:8).
Is Genesis 15:6 really the first time that Abraham exhibits faith in God? Not according to the book of Hebrews which depicts God as his saviour in Genesis 12 and Abraham is depicted with a faith that is fully operational in responding to God’s command.
So, Abraham takes his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot and the people he had acquired in Haran and sets off for the promised land which turns out to be the land of Canaan. When Abraham arrives in Canaan, what does Yahweh do for him? Pile wealth and riches and power upon him? No. Abraham’s new homeland is immediately stricken with a famine! Abraham is forced to flee to Egypt to survive this famine, and here, he almost loses his wife to the Pharaoh who tries to take her as his own. In Genesis 13 Abraham comes back to the promised land only to discover that his own nephew has started a family feud that splits his kinsmen right down the middle. Lot, in his greed, decides he needs his own land. Abraham, as the humble father figure, asks Lot to choose which part he would like to inhabit. Lot chooses the Jordan plain which was the richest and most fertile land. Abraham, trusting the Lord, gives up the best land to his nephew. Meanwhile, throughout chapters 12 and 13 of Genesis Abraham is consistently building altars, offering sacrifice, invoking the name of Yahweh in prayer and public worship — showing forth his faith in God. However, according to the evangelical “bible Christian” interpretation, Abraham doesn’t have any faith yet. Why? Because we haven’t reached Genesis 15:6 where he purportedly receives God as his personal Lord and Savior for the first time and “gets saved” by faith alone.
As we continue to examine the life of Abraham prior to Genesis 15:6, we come to chapter 14 which describes Abraham watching five foreign kings who swoop in from Iraq and Iran and conquer four resident kings and in the process his own nephew Lot gets captured! Trusting the Lord, Abraham goes to retrieve his nephew and, in a battle, (which must have received divine assistance) he overcomes overwhelming opposition and conquers these five foreign kings and comes back victorious and enriched. Abraham, in fighting the Lord’s battle, is now ruling over nine kings! Yet what does he do? Start setting up thrones for himself and forcing his subordinate vassal states to kneel before him? No. Instead he chooses to submit to the king of Salem, the priest-king Melchizedek — “the priest of God most high” (Gen 14:18). Abraham pays his tithes to Melchizedek and swears an oath to God (Gen 14:20-24). Abraham then receives the blessing of God’s own priest-king — “Blessed be Abram by God most high” (Gen 14:20). Again, all of this occurs before Genesis 15:6. All before Abraham has any faith?
How could the non-Catholic “bible believing” Christian feel confident in suggesting that it isn’t until Genesis 15:6 that Abraham exhibited faith and accepted God as his saviour? This interpretation is incorrect due to its complete neglect of the overwhelming context which defines Abraham as a man of deep faith in Genesis 12, 13 and 14.
When the context is properly observed there is no possibility that the non-Catholic interpretation of Genesis 15:6 is even remotely the case. Abraham’s faith in God is clearly present throughout his exploits on behalf of Yahweh. Not in a one-time legalistic event but through a progressive justification culminating in his willingness to sacrifice Isaac in Genesis 22. Far from Genesis providing Christian people with an ideal proof-text that proves justification to be a one-time event, it actually depicts the Catholic perspective of justification as an ongoing process in the most lucid way.
DID DAVID “GET SAVED?”
St. Paul likewise depicts the salvation of David as an ongoing process where a person is justified as a spiritual infant before God and then grows into higher levels of righteousness before God — from spiritual infanthood to spiritual childhood and on the spiritual adulthood. He also depicts the possibility of becoming a runaway child by abandoning the divine family laws through the wilful commission of deadly sins. All of this is present in the life of King David which builds upon the example of Abraham. The lives of both these covenant fathers exhibit justification as a progressive and fluid journey before God as opposed to a one-time conversion experience that subsequently ensures our salvation. For example, in his explanation of justification St. Paul quotes King David in Psalm 32:
“Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are blotted out. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him.” (Psalm 32:1).
This psalm depicts David’s gratefulness to God who has forgiven his coveting of Bathsheba, his adultery with her, and his eventual murder of her husband (Uriah). St. Paul makes use of this event in David’s life as part of his description of justification in Romans 4:5-8, which indicates that David was in fact justified by God in Psalm 32 (following, of course, his heart-felt repentance for his sins). It would be superfluous for St. Paul draw the attention of his readers to David at this point if Psalm 32 was not, in fact, a justifying event. Is Psalm 32 therefore the first moment we consider David to exercise faith in God? Should we view Psalm 32 as the one-time alter-call in David’s life where he received God by faith alone in the same manner many Protestants are apt to employ today? Based on St. Paul’s use of Psalm 32 one could easily make this argument in an attempt to support justification as a singular act of faith — David repents, sees his needy state before God, shows forth his belief in God and is instantly justified by a solitary act of faith. What could be simpler? What more is needed? The transaction is complete. Justifying grace has been imputed. David is now “saved”. Where is the ongoing process that Catholics insist upon?
The fallacy involved in this argument can again be uncovered when we look at the whole picture of David’s life instead of isolating a single verse. The earlier Psalms, for instance, as well as the historical record in 1st and 2nd Samuel record that David was a man of God prior to the forgiveness he received in Psalm 32. Even while he was still a young shepherd boy David called upon the power of Yahweh to kill Goliath — the greatest shock-trooper of the Philistine army (see 1 Samuel 17). David clearly exhibits faith in God when he says of Goliath:
“Yahweh who rescued me from the claws of lion and bear will rescue me from the power of this Philistine.” (1 Samuel 17:37).
Through his faith in God David engages in mortal combat with Goliath and defeats him. David cuts off Goliath’s head and sends the entire Philistine army into panic and disarray — it is by his hand that the enemies of God are defeated. Any cursory reading of 1st and 2nd Samuel will demonstrate that David’s relationship with God is intimate and faithful long before he meets Bathsheba. In fact, he is described as a “man after God’s own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14) which is a description that is uniquely applied to David — no other person receives this title in all of sacred scripture. This single-handedly demonstrates that Psalm 32 is not the first time David exhibits faith in God, nor is it the first time he is justified. David’s justification is clearly depicted as a fluid process:
(i) That grows by grace through a living faith:
“Yahweh who rescued me from the claws of lion and bear will rescue me from the power of this Philistine.” (1 Samuel 17:37).
(ii) Is quenched by his willful sins with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah:
Next morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by Uriah. In the letter he wrote, “Station Uriah in the thick of the fight and then fall back behind him so that he may be struck down and die”. (2 Samuel 11:14-15).
Yahweh the God of Israel says this, …“Why have you shown contempt for Yahweh, doing what displeases Him? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, taken his wife for your own, and killed him with the sword of the Ammonites”. …Thus Yahweh speaks, “I will stir up evil for you out of your own house”. (2 Samuel 12:7, 9, 11).
(iii) Is re-ignited by God following his heart-felt repentance:
Have mercy on me, O God, in your goodness, in your great tenderness wipe away my faults; wash me clean of my guilt, purify me from my sin. …God, create a clean heart within me, put into me a new and constant spirit, do not banish me from your presence, do not deprive me of your Holy Spirit. Be my savior again, renew my joy, keep my spirit steady and willing. (Psalm 51:1-2, 10-12)
David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against Yahweh”. Then Nathan said to David, “Yahweh for His part, forgives your sin; you are not to die”. (2 Samuel 12:13).
(iv) And then resumes the life of salvation by grace:
Yahweh is my rock and my salvation; my deliverer is my God. I take refuge in Him, my rock, my shield, my horn of salvation, my stronghold and my refuge (2 Samuel 22:2-3).
David’s life is again reminiscent of Christ’s depiction of the prodigal son who lives in a justified state with his father only to fall away, return, receive forgiveness, and rededicate himself to the family. David’s justification likewise passes through several phases as he grows up in God family and assumes greater roles of responsibility according to his faithfulness to God. As his spiritual maturity and reliability increases, his justification increases. When he departs from God’s statutes through wilful sin his justification decreases and is even extinguished. As noted by Catholic theologian, Robert Sungenis:
“This agrees with Catholic theology that one who commits adultery and murder is in mortal sin — a sin that removes sanctifying grace from the soul and puts one in an unjustified state before God. When sanctifying grace is restored, the individual is again justified in the sight of God, as St. Paul claims of David in Romans 4:5-8.”[5]
Again, there is no one-time alter-call-style episode being depicted in the life of David. No legal transaction. Nowhere do we find scripture highlighting or focusing upon a singular and all-important saving event where David presents his faith to God and then considers himself “saved” due to this initial act of faith. David mentions nothing of this crucial and unrepeatable event, but instead he depicts his salvation as a progressive and life-long spiritual pilgrimage. David’s progressive justification corresponds perfectly with Catholic theology which stresses justification as the development of children within a family setting — an ongoing process which reflects the growth of children in the family of God.
Footnotes:
[1] Lees, Van. Doctrines of Salvation Series - Part 9, in Covenant of Grace Church website, http://covenantofgracechurch.org/modules/tinyd0/index.php?id=9, access date 31 October 2005.
[2] Chadwell, David. When Faith Was Reckoned For Righteousness, in West Ark Church of Christ website, http://www.westarkchurchofchrist.org/chadwell/book4c4.htm, access date 31 October 2005.
[3] Ankerberg, John. Protestants and Catholics: Do they now agree?, Harvest House Pub, Feb 1995.
[4] Hollingsworth, Eric. Justification By Faith Alone, in Christ Reformed Evangelical Church website, http://www.crechurch.org/CREC/sermons/genesis_15_6.htm, access date 31 October 2005.
[5] Sungenis, Robert. How Can I Get To Heaven, Santa Barbara, Queenship Publishing, 1998, p.165-166.