Grace that enables merit, or grace that excludes it · the question on which the Reformation turned.

What Are “Works”?

In Scripture, “works” are simply what a person does: deeds of obedience or disobedience measured against the law of God. The question the Reformation pressed was not whether Christians should do good works, for all agreed they must, but what part works play in a sinner’s acceptance with God. Are they part of the ground on which God justifies and finally saves, or are they the fruit of a salvation already freely given?

Rome answers carefully, and its answer should be stated fairly. It denies that any work done before grace can earn salvation: “no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification” (CCC 2010). But once grace has been infused, the works it produces are held to be truly meritorious, so that the believer cooperates in obtaining the increase of grace and eternal life itself. Grace, in Rome’s system, does not exclude works from salvation; it makes them worthy of reward. Gregg Allison describes the whole scheme as “a cooperative venture between divine grace and human effort.”

Rome’s Insistence on Works

The Catechism, quoting the Second Vatican Council, describes salvation as coming “through faith, Baptism and the observance of the Commandments” (CCC 2068). Justification itself “establishes cooperation between God’s grace and man’s freedom” (CCC 1993), and the justified, moved by the Spirit, merit their own salvation:

No one can merit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversion. Moved by the Holy Spirit, we can merit for ourselves and for others all the graces needed to attain eternal life, as well as necessary temporal goods.

CCC 2027

The same principle extends beyond the individual. The good works of Mary and the saints are stored in the Church’s treasury, by which the saints “attained their own salvation and at the same time cooperated in saving their brothers” (CCC 1477). The living, in turn, may perform the works required for indulgences on behalf of the dead, “so that the temporal punishments due for their sins may be remitted” (CCC 1479).

The Council of Trent made the point under anathema. It declared that the justified, by their good works, “truly merit increase of grace, eternal life, and the attainment of that eternal life” (Canon 32), and condemned anyone who says that good works “are merely the fruits and signs of justification received, but not a cause of the increase thereof” (Canon 24). That is precisely what the Reformers said.

Rome’s theologians speak of two kinds of merit: congruous merit, a reward of fitness granted out of God’s liberality, and condign merit, a reward of worthiness that God is bound in justice to pay. James McCarthy shows which kind eternal life is: “It is merited condignly, not congruously. It is not a free gift which God graciously gives apart from anything man has done to earn it.”

Rome and Scripture Side by Side

Grace Is No More Grace

Paul’s argument in Romans 11:6 does not allow grace and works to be mixed, however carefully the proportions are measured. If salvation rests even in part on what we do, it is no longer a gift but a wage, for “to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt” (Romans 4:4). Rome’s distinction between works before grace and works after it does not escape the point. Paul excludes works from justification altogether, and locates the believer’s good works after salvation, as its fruit (Ephesians 2:10; Titus 3:5–8).

The Westminster Confession states the Reformed conclusion:

We cannot, by our best works, merit pardon of sin, or eternal life, at the hand of God, by reason of the great disproportion that is between them and the glory to come, and the infinite distance that is between us and God.

Westminster Confession of Faith, 16.5

None of this makes works unimportant. The same chapter calls good works “the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith” (16.2), and James insists that a faith without them is dead (James 2:17, 26). Calvin answered Trent in a sentence: “It is therefore faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone.” Works do not make a man righteous; a righteous man does good works.

The Five Solas

The Reformation’s five solas are, at bottom, five ways of saying that salvation is God’s work and not ours.

The Catechism itself preserves a prayer of Thérèse of Lisieux that comes very near the gospel: “In the evening of this life, I shall appear before you with empty hands, for I do not ask you, Lord, to count my works” (CCC 2011). That is the posture of every sinner saved by grace, and it was Augustus Toplady’s too:

Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling.

Roman Catholicism   Roman Catholic Justification