Rome and the Reformation at a Glance

Five charts summarize where Rome and the Reformation agree, where they part, and why. Each draws on a single source, named in the Notes, so that the reader can check the claim.

Chart RCC6

Ten Agreements and Two Fault Lines

Ten commonalities

Allison and Castaldo list what Catholics and Protestants confess together:1

  1. The Triune God
  2. The nature of God
  3. The revelation of God
  4. The person of Jesus Christ
  5. The saving work of Christ
  6. The Holy Spirit
  7. The glory and travesty of human beings
  8. Salvation initiated by God
  9. God makes us His people
  10. The living hope
▼

Fault line one: Authority

Scripture alone, or Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium together.

Fault line two: Salvation

Justification by faith alone, or justification as a process that grace infuses and works increase.

Newman called these the two fundamental decisions (Essay on the Development of Doctrine, 1845). Behind both stands the doctrine of the Church. The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification was signed at Augsburg on October 31, 1999. Anthony Lane judged that “the gap turns out to be considerably narrower than is often popularly supposed, but a gap there remains.”1

Chart RCC7

Two Axioms, Many Doctrines

Axiom one

Nature and grace are interdependent: grace perfects nature through material, visible means.

Axiom two

Christ and the Church are interconnected: “Christ and his Church thus together make up the ‘whole Christ’ (Christus totus)” [CCC §795].
▼

Sacraments

Grace conveyed through water, oil, bread, and wine.

Hierarchy

Bishops and priests who act in the person of Christ.

Church authority

The Church speaks with the voice of the Head.

Mary

The Mother of the Church, joined to her Son’s work.

This is Allison and Castaldo’s reading of Catholic ecclesiology. It shows why disputes over a single doctrine rarely stay single: Rome’s positions on the Mass, Mary, and the priesthood each follow from the same two premises.1 See also Table RCC16 and Table RCC15.

Chart RCC8

The Shared Heritage

One Bible

Both accept the Old and New Testaments. Rome added the Apocrypha as canonical at Trent in 1546.4

Two Testaments

The Old and the New, one story of redemption.

Three Creeds

The Apostles’ (from the Old Roman Creed, c. 150), the Nicene (325, expanded 381), and the Athanasian (fifth or sixth century).

Four Councils

Nicaea 325, Constantinople 381, Ephesus 431, Chalcedon 451.

Five Centuries

The first five centuries are a common inheritance, and both claim Augustine.

Geisler and MacKenzie write that “both groups accept the creeds and confessions and councils of the Christian church of the first five centuries. Both claim Augustine as a mentor.” The dates above correct those in their diagram, which lists the Nicene Creed at 326 and the Athanasian at 428.2

Chart RCC9

Two Doors into Justification

The adult: RCIA

  1. Precatechumenate: evangelization
  2. Catechumenate: instruction, “several years if necessary”
  3. Purification and enlightenment: Lent, with three scrutinies
  4. Baptism at Easter

The steps toward baptism

  1. First actual grace
  2. Faith
  3. Works
  4. Baptism

Scripture

“Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God” (Romans 5:1).

McCarthy traces the path of an adult convert through the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults and observes that the steps lead to baptism, where Rome places the beginning of justification, rather than to faith alone in Christ.3

Chart RCC10

The Merit Equation

Six factors that set the value of a work

  1. Kind of work
  2. Quantity of work
  3. Difficulty of work
  4. Duration of work
  5. Amount of sanctifying grace already in the soul
  6. Intensity or fervor

What follows

“Then, and only then, can a Catholic say that he is saved. Until then the Catholic is not saved but is being saved through a process of sanctification.”3

These are McCarthy’s summary of Catholic teaching on merit; Rome itself speaks of salvation in the past, present, and future tenses. Trent teaches that eternal life is offered “both as a grace mercifully promised to the sons of God through Jesus Christ, and as a reward which is according to the promise of God Himself, to be faithfully rendered to their good works and merits” (sess. 6, ch. 16).4 See Works and Merit and Table RCC5.

Roman Catholicism   Charts and Tables

Notes

  1. Gregg R. Allison and Chris Castaldo, The Unfinished Reformation: What Unites and Divides Catholics and Protestants after 500 Years (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016), chs. 1, 2, and 4. ↩ ↩ ↩
  2. Norman L. Geisler and Ralph E. MacKenzie, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1995), introduction and ch. 1. ↩
  3. James G. McCarthy, The Gospel according to Rome: Comparing Catholic Tradition and the Word of God (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 1995), chs. 2 and 3. ↩ ↩
  4. Council of Trent, session 4 (April 8, 1546), on the canonical Scriptures, and session 6, ch. 16, in James Waterworth, ed. and trans., The Canons and Decrees of the Sacred and Oecumenical Council of Trent (London: Dolman, 1848). ↩ ↩
  5. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), §795. The full text is at vatican.va.