Friday, October 1, 2021

Augustine vs. Protestantism on Faith and Works

The following is from Augustine’s “Faith and Works,” translated by Marie Liguori in Treatises on Marriage and Other Subjects (The Fathers of the Church 27; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1955, 1985):

 

There are certain persons who are of the opinion that everybody without exception must be admitted to the font of rebirth which is in Christ Jesus our Lord . . . (Chapter 1 [p. 221])

 

If, however, a well person asks for baptism and there is time to instruct him, when would it be more propitious for him to hear how it behooves him to become a faithful Christian and to live accordingly than the very time when, his mind attentive and aroused by religion itself, he asks for the sacrament of life-giving faith? . . .Do we also refrain from observing others who year by year hasten to the cleansing waters of regeneration, and note how they comport themselves during the days they are being catechized, exorcised, scrutinized: their careful vigilance when assembling, their fervent zeal, and eagerness, their solicitous suspense? (Chapter 6, 9 [p. 230]—Contrast this and other like-statements in “Faith and Works” with some Protestants who object to adult converts being catechised, whether by LDS, Catholics, etc., arguing it is "works-based salvation" such as James G. McCarthy, The Gospel According to Rome, p. 36)

 

To preach Christ consists in declaring not only what must be believed about Him, but also what precepts must be observed by one hoping for membership in the unity of the Body of Christ. (Chapter 9, 14 [p. 237])

 

But what answer will they give one who urges these questions and who declares, further, that nothing should be said to him before baptism about the necessity of disavowing idolatry; the chosen people heard nothing of such renouncement before they crossed the Red Sea; the prohibition was contained in the Law that was given them only after they had been delivered from Egypt. Surely, they would say to that man: ‘You are going to be a temple of God when you shall have received Baptism.’ Besides, the Apostle answers: ‘And what agreement has the temple of God with Idols?’ (Chapter 12, 18 [p. 243])

 

(21) Therefore, let us now see that must be torn away from the hearts of the God-fearing to prevent the loss of salvation through a treacherously false security, if, under the illusion that faith alone is sufficient for salvation, they neglect to live a good life and fail by good works to persevere in the way that leads to God. Even in the days of the Apostles certain somewhat obscure statements of the Apostle Paul were misunderstood, and some thought he was saying this: ‘Now the Law intervened that the offense might abound. But where the offense has abounded, grace has abounded yet more.’ These words are true only because the receivers of the Law were men presumptuous of their own strength, with too much pride to beg God in right faith to help them overcome their evil concupiscence. They were burdened, therefore, with many and serious sins and even with the Law itself by reason of their perversion of it. Compelled by deep guilty, they took refuge in faith to obtain for them the mercy of indulgence and ‘help from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.’ With charity poured forth in their hearts by the Holy Spirit, they effected through love and conquest of the concupiscence of this world as predicted in the psalm: ‘Their infirmities were multiplied: afterwards they made baste.’ When the Apostle says, then, that in his opinion man is justified through faith without the works of the Law, he does not intend by this decision to express contempt for the commandments and the works of justice by the profession of faith, but to inform anyone that he can be justified by faith even if he has not previously fulfilled the works of the Law; for they follow when one has been justified, and do not come before for one to be justified. There is no need, however, for further discussion of this problem in the present work, especially since I have published a detailed answer to the question in a book bearing the title, The Letter and the Spirit. Since this problem is by no means new and had already arisen at the time of the Apostles, other apostolic letters of Peter, John, James, and Jude are deliberately aimed against the argument I have been refuting and firmly uphold the doctrine that faith does not avail without good works. Paul himself does not approve any kind of faith whatever as long as it achieves belief in God, but only that salutary and definitely evangelical faith from which good works proceed through love for he says very plainly: ‘but faith which works through charity.’ That is why he claimed that the faith which seems to some sufficient for salvation is useless, so that he says: ‘and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, yet do not have charity, I am nothing.’ It follows that where charity is operative in the Christian, there is no doubt that he is living the right kind of life: ‘Love therefore is the fulfillment of the Law.’

(22) From this it is clear that Peter, in his second letter, had a special motive when he urged his readers to holiness in living and character and declared that this world would pass and that new heavens and a new earth were expected which would be given to the just to inhabit. He wished that they might take care how to live, and might become worthy of that dwelling. He knew that certain unjust persons had taken occasion from some obscure passages of the apostle Paul to have no care for a right mode of life, as if secure in salvation through faith alone. He mentioned that Paul’s letters contained certain places hard to understand and that men twisted them, as also other Scriptures, to their own ruin. When Paul refers to eternal salvation which will be given only to them who had lived good lives, he is in perfect agreement with the other Apostles. Here is what Peter says: ‘Seeing therefore that all these things are to be dissolved, what manner of men ought you to be in holy and pious behavior, you who await and hasten towards the coming of the days of God, by which the heavens, being on fire, will be dissolved and the elements will melt away by reason of the heat of that fire! But we look for new heavens and a new earth, according to his promises, wherein dwells justice. Therefore, beloved, while you look for these things, endeavor to be found by him without spot and blameless, in peace. And regard the long-suffering of our Lord as salvation. Just as our most dear brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given him, has written to you, as indeed he did in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things. In these epistles there are certain things difficult to understand, which the unlearned and the unstable distort, just as they do the rest of the Scriptures also, to their own destruction. You therefore, beloved, since you know this beforehand, be on your guard lest, carried away by the error of the foolish you fall away from your own steadfastness. But grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. To him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity.’

(23) James was so severely annoyed with those who held that faith without works avails to salvation that he compared them to evil spirits, saying: ‘Thou believest that there is one God, Thou doest well. The devils also believe, and tremble.’ What cold be said more tersely, with greater truth and more vehemence? We also read in the Gospel that, when the evil spirits confessed Christ to be the Son of God, He rebuked them. He praised Peter for making this same acknowledgement. ‘What will it profit, my brethren,’ James says, ‘if a man says he has faith, but does not have works? Can the faith save him?’ and again, ‘faith without works is useless.’ How long are they going to cling to deception and promise themselves eternal life from dead faith. (Chapter 14, 21-23 [pp. 246-50]—here, Augustine teaches that good works are necessary for increase in justification, that justification is not a once-for-all event, and many other doctrines which are antithetical to Protestant theologies of salvation)

 

To believe in Christ is not to have the faith of devils, accurately termed a dead faith’ it is to have a faith ‘which works through charity’ (Gal. 5.6). (Chapter 16, 30 [p. 259]—note: while a Protestant may claim that Augustine, like James, is condemning mere intellectual assent, in light of chapter 14 [see above], this is not the type of faith Augustine has in mind, nor does Augustine think of works as the fruit merely of “true faith”—he believes good works, after initial justification, to be meritorious and adds to [progressive] justification).

 

This, then, is beneficial, to believe in God with the right kind of faith, to worship God, to know God, that He may help us to live the right kind of lives, and, if we sin, that we may merit His pardon, not continuing with persistence and rash security in deeds that are hateful to Him, but withdrawing from them and saying to Him: ‘I said: O Lord, be thou merciful to me: heal my soul, for I have sinned against thee,’ a prayer which, for those who do not believe in Him, has no auditor. In vain, too, do they utter these words who are estranged from the grace of the Mediator because they have strayed far from Him. Therefore, we have those words from the Book of Wisdom which I certainly do not understand how a rash confidence interprets: ‘For if we sin, we are thine,’ since we have a good and great Lord who both wills and has the power to heal the sins of penitents, One who by no means would fail to destroy the persistently malicious. Finally, when Solomon had said, ‘we are thine,’ he added: ‘knowing thy power, a power indeed from which the sinner is neither able to hide nor withdraw. He went on to add: ‘But we shall sin now, knowing that we are counted with thee.’ Who, worthily reflecting on our habitation with God, to which all who are called according to plan are appointed by predestination, does not strive to live in a manner befitting that dwelling place? John, too, says: ‘these things I have written to you in order that you may not sin. But if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the just; and he is a propitiation for our sins’ (1 John 2.1-2). He does not say this to give us protection in sinning. Rather, that if we have sinned we may, by forsaking sin utterly, have every hope of forgiveness because of that Advocate of whom infidels are deprived. (Chapter 22, 41 [pp. 270-71]—note how, through use of 1 John 2:1-2, Augustine does not believe that, at conversion, one’s then-future sins have been propitiated/forgiven)