Rome’s View of the Church’s Role
Three questions, each irreconcilable, collided in the sixteenth century and divided the Roman Catholic Church from Protestant churches: how a sinner is justified, what is the nature of grace, and what has final authority in defining the gospel and the means of salvation. The disagreement was never only about doctrine in the abstract. In each of these three areas, Rome assigns to the Church a role that the Reformation churches refused to assume. Rome makes the Church the dispenser of justification through the sacraments, the administrator of grace, and the interpreter of Scripture who stands beside Scripture in her traditions.
Each of these areas touches the gospel itself, since each answers how God saves sinners and by whose word we know it. For that reason they hardened into the three great watchwords of the Reformation, sola fide, sola gratia, and sola scriptura, three of the five solas.
| Roman Catholic Church | Scripture |
|---|---|
| Justification by faith and sacraments. Justification is granted through baptism and furthered by the other sacraments, which the Church holds as necessary for salvation [§1992, §1129]. | Justification by faith alone. God declares ungodly sinners righteous through faith in Christ, apart from works and sacraments (Romans 3:28; 4:5; Ephesians 2:8–9). |
| Grace administered through sacraments by the Church. Grace is a habitual gift infused into the soul, and the sacraments confer it by the very act performed (ex opere operato) [§1128, §2000]. | Grace is undeserved favor, not a substance to be administered. It is freely given in Christ to sinners who believe, and the sacraments are signs and seals of faith, not channels of grace (Romans 3:24; 4:11; 11:6; Titus 2:11). |
| Authority of Scripture and tradition. The Church does not draw her certainty about revelation from Scripture alone, and the Magisterium alone interprets it authoritatively [§82, §85]. | Scripture alone as final authority. Scripture is God-breathed and sufficient, and every tradition must be tested by it (2 Timothy 3:16–17; Matthew 15:3, 6; Acts 17:11). |
