Hope Without Certainty
Trent’s sixth session, 1547 · a hope that may not presume · the Reformers’ certainty grounded in the promise of God.
Can a Christian know that he is right with God and that he will be with Christ when he dies? Few questions press closer to the heart, and few divide Rome and the Reformation more sharply. Rome does not deny that a believer may hope for heaven; she commands it. What she denies is that he may be certain of it. Apart from a special revelation, the Catholic may trust God’s mercy but may not be sure of his own standing in grace, because that grace can be lost. The Reformers answered that assurance belongs to the very nature of faith, because faith rests not on the believer’s condition but on the promise of God.
Background
The medieval doctrine of assurance grew out of the medieval doctrine of grace. Grace was understood as a quality infused into the soul at baptism, increased by the sacraments and good works, destroyed by mortal sin, and restored through penance. If acceptance with God depends on the presence of that quality within, then certainty depends on knowing one’s own soul, and no man can see his soul clearly. Thomas Aquinas therefore taught that no one can know with certainty that he has grace, except by revelation; he may know it only “conjecturally by signs,” such as delight in God and the absence of any known mortal sin.1
Luther lived inside that system and nearly broke under it. Recalling his years as an Augustinian friar, he wrote:
And yet my conscience would not give me certainty, but I always doubted and said, “You didn’t do that right. You weren’t contrite enough. You left that out of your confession.”2 Martin Luther
History and Development
When Luther discovered that the righteousness of God is a gift received by faith, assurance came with it. The evangelical preachers taught that the believer may and should be certain that his sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, since to doubt it is to doubt God’s word. Rome heard in this a dangerous presumption. On January 13, 1547, the Council of Trent answered in its Decree on Justification with a chapter titled “Against the Vain Confidence of Heretics.” It granted that no pious person should doubt God’s mercy, Christ’s merit, or the sacraments, but it insisted that each one, looking at his own weakness, “may entertain fear and apprehension concerning his own grace.”3 Chapter XII forbade anyone to presume that he is among the predestined, and chapter XIII warned, “let no one promise himself anything as certain with absolute certainty” concerning perseverance.3 The canons then attached the anathema to the Reformation position.
What Rome Teaches
Trent’s chapter IX ends with the sentence on which the Roman doctrine still rests:
No one can know with a certainty of faith, which cannot be subject to mistake, that he has obtained the grace of God.3 Council of TrentSession VI, Chapter IX, 1547
The canons are sharper. Canon XIII condemns anyone who says it is necessary to believe “for certain, and without any hesitation” that his sins are remitted; canon XV condemns the claim that the justified man “is bound of faith to believe that he is assuredly in the number of the predestinated”; and canon XVI declares:
If any one shall say, that he will for certain, of an absolute and infallible certainty, have that great gift of perseverance unto the end, unless that he have learnt this by a special revelation; let him be anathema.4 Council of TrentSession VI, Canon XVI, 1547
The modern Catechism of the Catholic Church keeps the same doctrine in gentler words. “Since it belongs to the supernatural order, grace escapes our experience and cannot be known except by faith. We cannot therefore rely on our feelings or our works to conclude that we are justified and saved” (§ 2005).5 Faith itself is a gift that “we can lose” (§ 162), and mortal sin “results in the loss of charity and the privation of sanctifying grace, that is, of the state of grace” (§ 1861). The remedy for such a fall is the sacrament of penance, which the Fathers called “the second plank [of salvation] after the shipwreck which is the loss of grace” (§ 1446). What remains for the faithful is hope: “We can therefore hope in the glory of heaven promised by God to those who love him and do his will” (§ 1821).
Even the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1999), which spoke warmly of relying on God’s promises, added that “every person, however, may be concerned about his salvation when he looks upon his own weaknesses and shortcomings.” Allison and Castaldo conclude that “the substance of the Catholic position has not changed significantly.”6 The logic is consistent. If justifying righteousness is grace infused and kept by cooperation, then final salvation depends on how the believer finishes, and no one can know that in advance.
The Reformers’ Response
The Reformers moved the ground of assurance from the believer to Christ. Luther, lecturing on Galatians in 1531, put it this way:
This is the reason why our theology is certain: it snatches us away from ourselves and places us outside ourselves, so that we do not depend on our own strength, conscience, experience, person, or works but depend on that which is outside ourselves, that is, on the promise and truth of God, which cannot deceive.7 Martin Luther
Calvin built assurance into his definition of faith itself: “a firm and sure knowledge of the divine favour toward us, founded on the truth of a free promise in Christ, and revealed to our minds, and sealed on our hearts, by the Holy Spirit.”8 Faith that is unsure of God’s favor, Calvin argued, has not yet understood the promise it claims to believe. The Reformers did not teach that every believer feels unbroken confidence. They knew the doubts of tender consciences. But they taught that doubt is a weakness to be overcome by looking to Christ, not a virtue to be cultivated as humility.
The Westminster Confession later answered Trent almost word for word. Where Trent denied a “certainty of faith,” Westminster affirmed that true believers may have “an infallible assurance of faith, founded upon the divine truth of the promises of salvation, the inward evidence of those graces unto which these promises are made, the testimony of the Spirit of adoption witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God.”9 Assurance rests first on the promise, is confirmed by the fruit of grace, and is sealed by the Spirit.
Rome’s Teaching and Scripture
Scripture was written so that believers may know. “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:13). John does not say “hope” or “conjecture”; he says “know,” and the ground is believing in the name of the Son. Jesus Himself said that whoever hears His word and believes “has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24).
The Spirit bears witness. “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:16). Allison notes how strange it is that Rome affirms the Spirit as the guarantee of our inheritance yet denies the assurance Paul draws from that witness.10 No special revelation is needed beyond the one already given to every child of God.
The keeping is God’s. Christ’s sheep “will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:28). “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6). Nothing “in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39). Rome makes perseverance uncertain because it rests on our cooperation; Scripture makes it certain because it rests on God’s faithfulness.
Godly fear is not doubt. Rome appeals to Philippians 2:12, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” but the next verse gives the reason: “for it is God who works in you.” Peter’s charge to “confirm your calling and election” (2 Peter 1:10) presumes that it can be confirmed. Warnings are the means by which God keeps His people, not evidence that He may let them go. God swore an oath so that “we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us” (Hebrews 6:18), an anchor “sure and steadfast” (6:19).
Conclusion
The question of assurance is not a matter of temperament. It reveals what a person is trusting. If our standing before God depends on a grace within us that we may lose, then we can only hope, and we must keep returning to the priest, the confessional, and finally the fires of purgatory to repair what we have lost. If our standing depends on Christ’s finished work and God’s oath, then doubt is the sin and certainty is the obedience of faith. Rome calls this confidence presumption. The apostles called it the privilege of every believer, and it is the reason the Reformation was first experienced as a deliverance: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).
Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version.
