fides caritate formata: faith
informed by love; i.e., faith that is animated and instructed by love (caritas) and is therefore active in
producing good works. According to the medieval doctors, fides caritate formata could exist only when the believer was in a
state of grace, since such fides must
rest upon a habit or disposition of love supernaturally created in the soul by
grace. This conception of faith is denied by the Reformers and the Protestant
orthodox insofar as it implies the necessity of works for justification and
insofar as it rests on a concept of a created grace (gratia creata) implanted or infused into human beings (Richard
A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn
Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker
Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2017], 122)
