From Reformation times to the present the doctrine of justification by faith alone has repeatedly emerged as the crucial point of confrontation between Roman Catholics and Protestants.

When Angelo Roncalli became Pope John XXIII he proclaimed the need for modernisation of the Roman Catholic Church. The outcome of this was the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) which appeared to head off in a new direction without any indication that the older direction had been abandoned. Some Protestants began to believe Rome was going through the Reformation at last, others suspected all that had changed was Rome’s rhetoric.

The real crux of division in the sixteenth century involved both the nature and the means of justification. The Reformers supported justification by an alien or extrinsic righteousness, and the Roman Catholic position was justification by an intrinsic righteousness. At the Council of Trent misunderstandings arose over how certain points were expressed, and over doctrinal disagreements.

The Reformers of the sixteenth century defined justification as the act of reconciliation flowing from the grace of God through the imputation of Christ’s righteousness or merits to the sinner and received by faith irrespective of any progress in sanctification. Roman Catholics regarded justification as equivalent to the whole process of salvation, not just its inception, as flowing from the grace of God and as taking effect through the infusion of the righteousness of God into the soul.

The Roman Catholic understanding of justification equalled what the Protestant understood by justification and sanctification linked together. To put it another way, the Protestant view was justification by faith alone while the Roman Catholic position was justification by faith, works and sacraments.

Trent formulated its dogma in response to the newly articulated proclamation of the gospel by the Reformers. Roman Catholic and Protestant agreement concerning justification by faith at the Colloquy of Regensburg was disowned by Luther and Trent, and Catholic doctrine was restated in a way specifically designed to exclude the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone. Trent held that works before justifying grace cannot merit grace, but after justifying grace one can merit final justification (i.e. eternal life) through cooperating with grace.

Although the doctrine of justification did not receive special attention, Vatican II broadened the definition of faith, stressing the presence of Christ in the proclamation of the gospel, emphasised grace, and to some extent also applying "at once justified and sinner" to the church itself.

On the other hand, it did not deny any of Trent’s pronouncements on justification. Protestants were labelled "separated brethren," no longer excluded from salvation: "All those justified by faith through baptism are incorporated into Christ." This was an immense change from the traditional view that the Roman Catholic Church was the one true church, to be equated with the body of Christ.

The conciliatory nature of these official statements paved the way for discussions on doctrinal issues in the following decades. Reformationists had recovered the authentic Pauline meaning of justification as a forensic or juridical term. Both Lutheran and Reformed theologians recognised that the verb ‘to justify’ was forensic, meaning ‘to declare or pronounce to be righteous,’ and not ‘to make righteous.’

For the Reformers, justification by faith was the very foundation of the church and the grounds of the believer’s assurance of salvation. Luther proclaimed that the just shall live by faith alone, and emphasised the incapacity of humanity for any kind of self-justification. The believer receives a righteousness that is not his own, but an ‘alien’ righteousness as a free gift of God’s grace.

Similarly, Calvin believed that justification excludes the righteousness of works. Protestants suspicious of developments within Roman Catholicism point out that the Council of Trent has not been disowned. There is a fair degree of truth in this statement. After Trent, all earlier Roman Catholic teachings were read through Tridentine eyes and interpreted in line with Trent. Since Vatican II, the status of Tridentine is unclear.

The documents of Vatican II contain only indirect references to justification. Post-Vatican II Roman Catholic theologians may irenically and zealously attempt to harmonise Vatican II with Trent, or reject Trent altogether, but they cannot speak on behalf of the church as long as Roman Catholicism is committed to the notion of infallible tradition and unerring councils.

Since Vatican II did not specifically deal with the issue, modern Catholicism is compelled to take the irrevocable teaching of Trent – "If anyone shall say that the sinner is justified by faith alone – let him be anathema"- as its starting point in contemporary dialogue because Trent remains Rome’s official position on the reformational view of justification, including both its dogmatic declarations and its anathemas.

In recent times the Reformers’ affirmation of justification by faith alone has gained a more appreciative hearing from Roman Catholic theologians. Hans Kung in 1957 argued that the Tridentine doctrine of justification is compatible with that of Karl Barth, and that the Roman Catholic Church is labouring under a five-hundred-year-old misunderstanding.

According to Kung, the Council of Trent, like the Reformation, maintained the doctrine of sola fide, ‘by faith alone.’ Kung’s reason for this misunderstanding was that people on both sides of the conflict tended to forget that the statements of Trent were made in a polemical situation and were inevitably one-sided. Many Protestant and Roman Catholic theologians have taken issue with Kung on this point, showing that his discussion is inadequate especially on the nature of justification.

Because of the conciliatory nature of Vatican II a number of bilateral commissions have been established to explore areas of agreement and disagreement. In recent years a number of these discussions have focused on the doctrine of justification. In the "Anglican-Lutheran Dialogue" held in Helsinki in August-September of 1982, it was acknowledged that there is increasing agreement with Roman Catholic theologians in understanding the doctrine of justification.

However, the US Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue document, Justification by Faith, released in 1983 acknowledged that the concepts of justification by an extrinsic and intrinsic righteousness are totally different. These discussions resulted in the publication of a heart-warming though ambiguous inter-confessional statement on justification by faith. Whether one is declared righteous or made righteous by infused grace is left unclarified.

Despite press reports that Lutherans and Catholics had reached a fundamental consensus on the gospel, both parties agreed they still hold irreconcilable differences on justification.

Carl Braaten, an authoritative theologian in American Lutheranism maintains that the article of justification which Luther rediscovered belongs to the foundation of the whole Christian church. It has to do fundamentally with the "standing and falling of the church." Not all Lutheran theologians ascribe to this primacy given to justification by faith through fear that this concentration upon faith will overshadow the object to whom faith submits, namely Jesus Christ.

This was followed by ARCIC II, the report of the Second Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission published in 1987, in which the development of the disagreement re-justification was mapped out historically. Released under the title Salvation and the Church, the British document which is placed against the views of Anglican theologians such as Hooker, Taylor and Waterland is much weaker.

The difference between the Reformation view which is forensic and declaratory and the Catholic view which is transformationist is constantly blurred. Typical is the statement, "God’s grace effects what he declares: his creative word imparts what it imputes. By pronouncing us righteous, God also makes us righteous."

The ecumenical visionary Archbishop William Wake writing several hundred years before ARCIC’s statement speculated that if points of terminology between the Protestant and Roman Catholic doctrines of justification could be clarified, agreement on the doctrine (if not the practices flowing from it) would be close. The Reformers’ watchword sola fide was intended to suggest that faith was merely receptive, the subjective appropriation of the benefits of Christ. In Trent’s anathema of justification by faith alone, faith was interpreted as a vain human boasting confidence that we are justified.

Wake’s statement suggests that the conflict between Reformation views of justification and the doctrine of Trent is largely attributable to differences of terminology and mutual misunderstanding. It is difficult to sustain the argument that these learned men simply misunderstood each other.

The keynote of ARCIC’s agreed statement however, is vague and open to interpretation that the heart of the gospel proclaimed by the Church is salvation through the grace of God in Christ.

ARCIC II affirmed that justification and sanctification must go together. In the minds of the participants and many churchmen the first statement of ARCIC II brought agreement significantly closer. Others viewed it as a complete failure, especially in the area of beliefs and practices. It failed to clarify the bearing of the doctrine of justification on purgatory and indulgences.

In the light of their agreement that "the two communions are agreed on all the essential aspects of the doctrine of salvation," one can only assume they regarded some essential elements of the doctrine of justification as a non-issue or optional extra.

Some Roman Catholic attitudes to justification by faith have undoubtedly changed at an intellectual level, but this does not mean they are willing to accept the practical implications. The Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory which emerged in the middle ages is still practised in Roman Catholic circles today though far less than before. Purgatory is often reinterpreted as a time of purification after death rather than a place of punishment. Convergence between the Protestant and Roman Catholic doctrines of justification will remain a mirage, while prayers for the dead, purgatory and indulgences prevail within Roman Catholic system.

Another area where the implications of justification by faith can be explored is the place of the sacraments. Whereas Protestants see the sacraments as signs and symbols by which faith is affirmed, Roman Catholic teaching on the church and the sacraments as means of grace is clear evidence that justification by faith alone is not being taken seriously.

A wrong understanding of the way in which God justifies sinners implemented in the practices of sixteenth century Roman Catholicism is still a wrong understanding in the twentieth century. To this day Roman Catholicism retains its transformationist view of justification, together with the concomitant doctrines and practices.

Dulles states that the theology of justification in Roman Catholic teaching has undergone no dramatic change since the Council of Trent. After Vatican II a new Profession of Faith was issued to replace the Tridentine Profession. To study its requirements is to be left in no doubt about the continuity of teaching linking the faith of the Vatican Council and the faith of Trent.

On November 19, 1988 the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued its verdict on justification by faith, which was seen as a severe setback to the cause of Protestant-Roman Catholic unity. According to The Times report "the principal instruments of justification are the sacraments for which faith has in reality a decisive even if subordinate role."

In continuity with the Council of Trent Catholic theologians of today insist that good works are necessary for continued life in the grace of God. However true it may be that the decisions of Trent on justification are still the official doctrine and practice of the Roman Catholic Church in many countries, one should not underestimate the significance of the historical and exegetical research of recent years and the serious and frank bilateral dialogues.

Many Roman Catholic exegetes acknowledge the centrality and the forensic nature of justification in the New Testament, particularly in Paul’s writings (Romans 3:28-30; 5:1; 10:4; Galatians 2:16; 3:8, 24 & Philippians 3:9). Twentieth century Catholicism fears that the doctrine of justification with forensic overtones could lead to an insipid nominalism in which the present efficacy of God’s love is overlooked and justification is understood in a purely extrinsicist fashion.

Ever since the Lutheran-Roman Catholic statement and the ARCIC II document, the debate has grown in intensity. In a widely publicised document of 1994 entitled "Evangelicals and Catholics Together," it is abundantly clear that the distinctions which the Reformers believed to be of utmost significance are not that significant to modern Protestants.

Historically, Protestantism was prepared to die for the gospel of justification by faith alone. However, in order to articulate a view of justification that both sides would affirm the word "alone" is missing from the ECT joint affirmation. This omission causes friction among Protestants who believe that the foundation of the faith is now under threat from within the Protestant camp.

It seems that the issue dividing Roman Catholics and Protestants (and Protestants and Protestants) of "justification by faith alone" is no closer to being resolved. Some Roman Catholics are not willing to compromise their stance as are some Protestants. Just as Vatican II chose to ignore this essential element of the gospel, so too did the framers and signers of Evangelicals and Catholics Together.

To deny sola fide is to deny the gospel; to deny the gospel is to deny Jesus Christ the Son and the Father who sent Him. If the primary aim is to close ranks between Protestants and Roman Catholics without resolving this issue the united (small c) christians of the world will answer Christ’s rhetorical question in Luke 18:8 ("when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?") with a resounding "No."

[Carol Ball serves in the Chaplaincy Centre at the University of Queensland and is a postgraduate student at the Queensland Baptist College of Ministries. She attends Ashgrove Baptist Church in Brisbane, Australia.]