Monday, November 23, 2020

Robert C. Koons on the lack of Attestation for Sola Fide in the Patristic Era

Commenting on the lack of exegetically-sound patristic evidence for Sola Fide, Robert C. Koons, a convert to Roman Catholicism from Lutheranism, wrote:

 

Many Lutherans have disputed this charge of innovation. This raises an issue of fundamental importance: can the Lutheran doctrine of justification be found in the Fathers? Here we must resist the temptation to engage in what scientists call “cherry-picking” the data—citing proof texts in which Church Fathers insist that we are saved through faith and by the merits of Christ. These points aren’t the ones in dispute. The crucial issue is this: is the righteousness by which the justified are justified an alien righteousness, the righteousness of Christ outside of us (extra nos) and apart from regeneration and the new kind of life that results? This I can’t find anywhere before Luther. If we look at the corpus of Fathers who are typically cited by Lutherans—Clement of Rome, Ambrose, Basil, John Chrysostom, Augustine—we find that they all give to regeneration and to the fruits of the Spirit a role to play in our justification. In short, we find the Fathers affirming what Lutherans affirm, but not denying what Lutherans deny, and it is the denials rather than the affirmations that are in dispute in the conflict between Rome and the Lutherans.

 

Some examples:

 

Those who were perfected in love by the grace of Go have a place among the pious who shall be made manifest at the visitation of the kingdom of Christ . . . [I]f we perform the commandments of God in the concord of love, that through love our sins may be forgiven. (Clement, First letter to Corinth, chapter 50)

 

Repentance without almsgiving is a corpse and is without wings. (John Chrysostom, On Repentance and Almsgiving, Homily 7)

 

“For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith working through love.” What is the meaning of “working through love”? Here he gives them a hard blow, by showing that this error had crept in because the love of Christ had not been rooted within them. For to believe is not all that is required, but also to abide in love. (John Chrysostom, Commentary on Galatians, Homily 5)

 

The faith that saves is faith working in charity . . . Faith without works is not sufficient for salvation . . . Mortal sins are forgiven through repentance, prayer, and almsgiving . . . Even eternal life itself, which is surely a reward of good works, is called by the apostle “a gift of God.” But a gift is not a gift at all if it is not made gratuitously. Consequently, we are to understand that even man’s good deserts are themselves gifts of God. When, therefore, eternal life is bestowed because of them, what else is this but a return of grace for grace? (Augustine, Enchiridion, chapters 67, 69, 107).

 

This point is admitted by both Martin Chemnitz (a second-generation Lutheran reformer and theologian, 1522-1586) and by Robert Preus, in his more recent book, Justification and Rome. (Robert C. Koons, A Lutheran's Case for Roman Catholicism [Eugene, Oreg.: Cascade Books, 2020], 1-3, emphasis in bold added)

 

In the footnote for the above, we read:

 

Chemnitz argues that one can find passages in the devotional and meditative writings of some of the Fathers that supports justification by faith, but he admits that, in every case, when one turns to the Fathers’ more polemical and theological works, one fins many “unfortunate statements” that contradict the Lutheran position. Chemnitz, Justification, 53. According to Robert Preus, Luther’s emphasis in justification was “new since apostolic times” (Justification and Rome, 121n8). In the same book, Preus also admits that it was “unknown to scholastic theology preceding the Reformation” (65), which scholastic theology was based on the writings of Augustine (45). (Ibid., 3 n. 5)

 

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