“Are we saved by faith alone?” The question may sound technical, fit only for disputes among theologians. In reality, it is one of Christianity’s most decisive questions: it divided Western Christianity in the sixteenth century, and it touches the heart of every baptized person’s spiritual life. Behind it lies another, more intimate question: what saves me—what I believe, what I do, or what God does within me?
The Catholic answer can be expressed in a formula that is both firm and nuanced. Yes, we are saved by grace, freely, without being able to merit salvation by our own powers: on initial gratuity, the Church firmly confesses what the Augsburg Confession also teaches (art. 4). Yes, faith is the doorway, “the beginning of human salvation, the foundation and root of all justification”[1]. But no, it is not an isolated, intellectual “faith alone”, without love or works: such faith, Saint James says, is “dead”[2].
The misunderstanding often comes from a slogan: sola fide, “by faith alone.” Taken literally, it seems to oppose faith to works, grace to love, trust to obedience. But the observation holds only in Greek: in the text of Jas 2:24 (ouk ek pisteôs monon), the word “faith” is immediately followed by “only”—and it does so to deny the formula: “a person is justified by works and not by faith alone” (Jas 2:24)[3].
This article answers the question as it is actually posed: where the formula “faith alone” comes from, what Scripture really teaches, what the Church defined at the Council of Trent, why the debate over merit rests on a misunderstanding, and what Catholics and Lutherans recognized together in 1999. Between “saved by my works” and “saved by faith alone,” the Catholic faith offers a third way, more beautiful than either: saved by grace, through a faith that loves.
Where does the formula “faith alone” come from?
A watchword born of the Reformation
The expression “faith alone” (sola fide in Latin, allein durch den Glauben in German) is not, as is sometimes believed, a biblical quotation. The words themselves are old: Saint Thomas Aquinas already writes sola fides formata, quae per dilectionem operatur—“only formed faith, which works through love” (Summa Theologiae, III, q. 68, a. 4, ad 3). What dates from the Reformation is its use as a watchword: with Luther’s German Bible (New Testament, September 1522) and then the Lutheran confessional texts of the 1530s—notably the Augsburg Confession, presented on June 25, 1530—sola fide became the rallying cry of the Churches born of the Reformation, and one of Protestantism’s five great solas: sola gratia (grace alone), sola fide (faith alone), sola Scriptura (Scripture alone), solus Christus (Christ alone), and soli Deo gloria (glory to God alone).
For Luther, justification—the act of becoming righteous before God—is received by faith alone, understood as trust (fiducia) resting on Christ’s mercy, and not by works. The Augsburg Confession (1530), a foundational text of Lutheranism, thus teaches that people are freely justified for Christ’s sake, through faith[4].
Luther and the word “alone” added to Romans 3:28
One detail reveals what is at stake. When Luther translated the Letter to the Romans into German, he rendered Romans 3:28 as: “a person is justified by faith alone (allein), apart from works of the Law.” Yet the word “alone” does not appear in Saint Paul’s Greek text. When criticized for this addition, Luther replied in his Open Letter on Translating (September 8, 1530): he explicitly acknowledged the absence—“I know very well that the word solum is found neither in the Greek nor in the Latin text”—and defended it positively, in the name of German idiom and clarity: “Allein der glaube, und nicht die werck machen uns gerecht” (“faith alone, and not works, makes us righteous”)[5]. For the Church, this defense confirms the problem: the word adds to the text an exclusion Paul did not write—it is precisely this exclusive “alone,” setting aside man’s cooperation and love, that the Council of Trent would refuse (canon 9).
This is not merely an argument among scholars. It shows that sola fide is an interpretation of Paul, not a quotation from Paul. The entire question is whether this interpretation is faithful to the whole of Scripture—or whether it forces into the text a word Paul did not use.
A real concern behind the slogan
It would be unjust to caricature the Reformation. Behind sola fide lies a real spiritual anxiety and a sound intuition. Luther—an Augustinian monk, prey to the Anfechtungen, those assaults of anguish before a holy God recounted in Heiko Oberman’s great biography[6]—sought to understand how a sinner could stand before God. He feared the illusion of “meriting” Heaven through his own efforts, and he reacted against concrete abuses—notably the trafficking of indulgences, denounced as early as his 95 Theses (October 31, 1517)[7]—that could make salvation seem purchasable.
On this point, the Catholic Church agrees with the underlying intuition: no one can purchase or merit for himself the first grace that saves—the Augsburg Confession itself teaches this (art. 4). The disagreement does not concern the gratuity of salvation, which Catholics and Lutherans confess together, but the place of works and renewal: Lutherans too affirm them as necessary fruits of faith (Augsburg, art. 20, §§ 27-29), but never as the foundation or merit of justification; Catholics see in them, in addition, true merit, by grace[8].
What Scripture really says
“Justified by faith apart from works of the Law” (Rom 3:28)
The great text invoked in favor of sola fide comes from Saint Paul:
“For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.” — Saint Paul, Romans 3:28[9]
To read it correctly, one must understand what Paul means by “works of the Law.” For Paul as for his contemporaries, the Law is the Torah in its totality: from the moral core—the commandments—to the ritual observances that marked the people’s identity—circumcision, dietary prescriptions, the Sabbath[10]. In context, Paul is opposing Jewish Christians who required Gentile converts to observe this whole Mosaic Law as a condition of salvation. Paul affirms that observance of the Law by man’s own powers, before and without grace, justifies no one: one is saved not by becoming Jewish, but by believing in Christ. He repeats the point to the Galatians: “a person is not justified by works of the Law but through faith in Jesus Christ” (Gal 2:16)[11].
Paul therefore does not say that works of Christian love are useless. He says that no one can make himself righteous through religious performance prior to grace. This is exactly what the Church teaches: justification is “the grace of God,” not a wage owed to us. To read Romans 3:28 as opposing faith to every kind of work, including works of love, is to draw more from the text than it says.
“Faith without works is dead”: the Letter of Saint James
The Apostle James dispels the misunderstanding in the most direct possible way. His letter devotes an entire passage to the question, and it is there that the word “faith” meets the word “alone”—in Greek (pisteôs monon), and to deny it:
“My brothers, what good is it if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? […] So also faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. […] You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” — Saint James, Letter 2:14, 17, 24[12]
James takes Abraham, the very model of faith, as his example: “You see that faith was active along with his works, and by works faith was made perfect” (Jas 2:22)[13]. He concludes with a famous comparison: “as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead” (Jas 2:26)[14].
James’s genius is not to oppose faith and works, but to show that true faith produces works, just as a living tree bears fruit. A “faith” that changes nothing in one’s life and leaves a person indifferent to a hungry brother or sister (Jas 2:15-16) is not the faith that saves: it is the corpse of faith.
“Faith working through love” (Gal 5:6)
Far from contradicting James, Saint Paul himself supplies the key that reconciles them. In Galatians—the great Pauline text on Christian freedom from the Law—he writes:
“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.” — Saint Paul, Galatians 5:6[15]
This formula—fides quae per caritatem operatur, “faith working through love”—became the Catholic definition of saving faith, repeated word for word in the Catechism: “Living faith ‘works through charity’ (Gal 5:6)”[16]. It is not faith plus love as two separate additions; it is living faith, formed and animated by love. The same letter also states that “those who commit such deeds will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal 5:21)[17]: faith never dispenses us from holiness.
Saved “for good works” (Eph 2:8-10)
Ephesians 2 may summarize the whole matter. Verses 8-9 are often quoted without the tenth verse that completes them:
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” — Saint Paul, Ephesians 2:8-10[18]
Everything is here: salvation is a free gift—no one can “boast” of it as a merit wrested from God—received through faith, yet ordered toward good works as its goal. Grace does not abolish works; it makes them possible and sustains them. Good works performed before or without grace are not the cause that merits salvation—no one can merit “first grace” (CCC 2010)[19]; they are the fruit God intends. But performed in grace, they truly merit growth in grace and eternal life—always as God’s gift, never as something owed (Trent, canons 24 and 32)[20].
Judgment will be according to works
One massive fact remains: throughout the New Testament, the Last Judgment is described as a judgment according to deeds, never according to a faith without deeds. Jesus declares that the Son of Man “will repay each person according to what he has done” (Mt 16:27), and he describes the final judgment as a separation based on what was done for the least of his brothers: “I was hungry and you gave me food” (Mt 25:35)[21]. Saint Paul confirms that God “will render to each one according to his works” (Rom 2:6)[22], and that “we must all appear openly before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be repaid for what he did, whether good or evil, while he was in the body” (2 Cor 5:10)[23].
Paul even says that faith itself, without love, is worthless:
“If I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” — Saint Paul, 1 Corinthians 13:2[24]
Scripture does not contradict itself; it articulates a whole. Faith saves, but saving faith is a faith that loves and acts.
The Church’s answer: by grace, through faith, but not by faith alone
Everything begins with grace, and grace is free
Before correcting sola fide, the Church receives the truth it contains. The first word of salvation belongs not to man, but to God. No human merit precedes grace: “our justification comes from the grace of God”[25], and “the initiative belongs to God.” As early as the fifth century, the Church condemned the Pelagian idea that man could save himself by his natural powers without grace: the Second Council of Orange (529) established that even the beginning of faith is the work of grace (canon 5)[26]. On the initial gratuity of salvation, Catholics and Lutherans confess the essential with one voice. The Church describes our cooperation as God’s gift before it is man’s act: “Justification establishes cooperation between God’s grace and man’s freedom”[27].
The Catechism can therefore state, in a formula any Protestant could sign:
“Our justification comes from the grace of God. Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God […].” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1996[28]
Faith, the “beginning, foundation, and root” of salvation
The Church therefore does not belittle faith; she exalts it. In its great Decree on Justification (1547), the Council of Trent takes up a magnificent formula: faith is “the beginning of human salvation, the foundation and root of all justification”[29]. “Now without faith it is impossible to be pleasing to God” (Heb 11:6)[30]: in adults, no one is justified without a personal act of faith. For little children baptized before the age of reason, it is the faith of the Church that supplies—“it is only in the faith of the Church that each of the faithful can believe”[31]—and Baptism infuses in them the theological virtue itself, called to grow[32].
But a root is not the whole tree. Faith is the beginning, not the totality, of a salvation that must blossom into hope and love. This is precisely where, for the Church, justifying faith is never solitary: it is made fruitful by love—and Lutherans themselves confess that renewal of life necessarily follows from justification (Joint Declaration, § 26).
Living faith, formed by love
Catholic theology therefore distinguishes living faith (fides formata, “formed” by love) from dead faith (fides informis, without love). Both assent to the same truths, but only the first fully unites a person to God and saves. “But the demons too believe this, and they tremble” (Jas 2:19)[33]: their assent, wrung from them by the evidence of signs, is without love of the good or gift of grace—it is not the theological virtue deprived of love, but another figure of it, as Saint Thomas explains[34]. It does not save, because it is without love.
The Catechism summarizes: “‘faith apart from works is dead’ (Jas 2:26): when it is deprived of hope and love, faith does not fully unite the believer to Christ and does not make him a living member of his Body”[35]. This is why love is called “the form of the virtues”: it gives faith its soul. A faith that never translated into love of God and neighbor would not be the faith of the saints, but the faith of demons.
The Council of Trent: what the Church defined in 1547
In response to the Reformation, the Church spoke solemnly at the sixth session of the Council of Trent on January 13, 1547, in the Decree on Justification—one of the most carefully balanced texts of the Magisterium. It affirms at once the complete gratuity of grace, the necessity of man’s free cooperation, and the role of works performed in grace. These are the canons most directly related to our question:
| Canon (Session VI, 1547) | What it condemns | Catholic truth affirmed |
|---|---|---|
| Canon 9 | That the sinner is justified “by faith alone” in the sense that nothing else is required for cooperation | Faith justifies, but the will must be prepared and cooperate with grace[36] |
| Canon 11 | That justification is merely an external imputation, without an inward grace that transforms | Justification truly makes a person righteous through grace poured into the heart[37] |
| Canon 12 | That justifying faith is “nothing other than” trust in divine mercy | Faith is more than trust: it assents to the whole of revealed truth[38] |
| Canon 24 | That good works only attest righteousness without increasing it | Works performed in grace truly increase the righteousness received[39] |
Trent never denies that we are saved by faith and by grace. It rejects the word “alone” only when it excludes human cooperation, inward transformation, and love. Its distinction is exactly that of Saint James.
Faith, works, and merit: clearing up a misunderstanding
Do Catholics “buy” their salvation?
This is the popular objection: Protestants are supposedly saved by grace, Catholics by their “good works,” as though they purchased Heaven. This is false, and the Church herself condemns it. No human work performed before grace and without grace can merit justification. The Catechism is categorical:
“Since the initiative belongs to God in the order of grace, no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification, at the beginning of conversion. […] The merit of man before God in the Christian life arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of his grace.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§ 2010 and 2008[40]
In other words, salvation is never a wage wrested from God. When the Church speaks of “merit,” she speaks of a gift from God before she speaks of a human reward. Our good works are themselves already the effect of his grace within us.
Merit: a gift before it is a reward
Saint Augustine expressed this once and for all in a formula repeated by the Catechism:
“When you crown their merits, you crown your own gifts.” — Roman Missal, Preface of Holy Men and Women, echoing Saint Augustine, quoted in the Catechism § 2006[41]
This sentence dissolves the false debate. When a Catholic performs a good work out of love, he is not paying God; God, in sheer goodness, crowns his own gifts placed in the human heart. Toward God, man has no merit “in the strict sense of a right”—between him and us, “the inequality is measureless” (CCC 2007)[42]; but God has freely granted us “a right by grace, the full right of love” (CCC 2009). Christian merit is therefore not a natural claim God would owe us; it is the share that God, out of love, has chosen to let us take in a work that remains his. “The merits of our good works are gifts of the divine goodness,” the Catechism concludes[43].
Faith, hope, and love: faith never saves in isolation
Catholic tradition has never isolated faith. It places faith among the three theological virtues: faith, hope, and love (1 Cor 13:13). These three virtues are infused together by God at Baptism, and together they unite us to him. To isolate faith from the other two is to mutilate Christian life. As Saint Paul writes, “the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor 13:13)[44]—not because faith is secondary, but because love will remain forever when faith gives way to sight.
Catholics and Protestants: what unites and what still separates
The 1999 Joint Declaration on justification
For four centuries, sola fide appeared to be an impassable wall between Rome and the Reformation. Yet on October 31, 1999, in Augsburg—the very city of the Augsburg Confession—the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation signed the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, signed by Cardinal Edward Cassidy for the Holy See and Bishop Christian Krause for the Lutheran World Federation. This historic text records a “consensus in basic truths” concerning justification:
“Together we confess: By grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping and calling us to good works.” — Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, § 15 (Augsburg, 1999)[45]
The detail is crucial: even in this common formula, justification “by grace” and “in faith” is immediately related to the Spirit, who calls us to good works. The Declaration specifies that the doctrinal condemnations of the sixteenth century, insofar as they concern justification, do not apply to the teachings set forth in the Declaration itself—neither Trent’s to Lutherans, nor those of the Lutheran confessions to Catholics (§ 41); they remain “salutary warnings” (§ 42), and several questions—Church, ministries, sacraments—remain to be deepened (§ 43).
A differentiated consensus: agreements and disagreements
The 1999 Declaration is not a merger; it is a “differentiated consensus.” The following table summarizes what now brings the two traditions together and what still distinguishes them:
| Question | Basic consensus since 1999 | Difference that remains |
|---|---|---|
| Initiative in salvation | God alone, by pure grace | — |
| Role of faith | Faith is necessary and comes first | “Faith alone” as the sole foundation, works as necessary but non-meritorious fruits (Lutheran) vs. faith working through love, inseparable from hope and love (Catholic) |
| The sinner’s righteousness | Forgiveness and renewal confessed together | Distinction without separation between justification and renewal (Lutheran) vs. inward renewal belonging to justification itself (Catholic) |
| Good works | Necessary fruits of living faith | Fruits and signs, not “merits” properly so called, with a promised reward (Lutheran) vs. works truly meritorious by grace (Catholic) |
| Assurance of salvation | Assured confidence in God’s promises | Assurance developed into certainty of definitive salvation (Reformed traditions) vs. firm hope without presumption (Catholic) |
The heart of the remaining disagreement is no longer the gratuity of grace, but the way God’s righteousness acts in man and the exact place of renewal: Lutherans distinguish—without separating—justification itself and the renewal of life that necessarily follows from it (Joint Declaration, § 26); Catholics hold that grace, in justifying, truly transforms the soul from within[46]. On the power of grace, the Church is unconditionally optimistic: God does not merely cover sin from the outside; he heals the sinner within. For the Council of Trent, the one formal cause of justification is “the justice of God, not that by which he himself is just, but that by which he makes us just”[47].
What remains disputed
Three points continue to distinguish the traditions, even after 1999:
- Justification and renewal? In classical Lutheran tradition, the believer remains “righteous and sinner at the same time” (simul iustus et peccator): Christ’s righteousness is imputed to him through the declaration of forgiveness, while inward renewal—truly affirmed (Augsburg, art. 20, § 29)—necessarily follows from justification without being its foundation (Joint Declaration, § 26). For the Church, grace truly transforms the soul in the very act of justifying: the baptized person is not merely declared righteous; he becomes righteous, a child of God and a dwelling place of the Spirit[48].
- The merit of works. The Church maintains that works performed in grace truly merit an increase in grace and eternal life—always as God’s gift, never as something owed apart from grace.
- Assurance of salvation. Two questions must be distinguished. Assurance of forgiveness, founded on God’s promises, is confessed together (Joint Declaration, §§ 34-36); the Reformers themselves insisted on it (§ 35). On the other hand, the impossibility of losing salvation once justified is rejected by Lutherans themselves: Augsburg (art. 12, § 7) condemns those who deny that the justified can lose the Holy Spirit. Subjective certainty of definitive salvation belongs to certain Reformed traditions; the Church speaks rather of firm hope, which excludes both despair and presumption and leaves room for the freedom to persevere or fall. This question is treated separately in Can salvation be lost?.
Understanding sola fide: three meanings to distinguish
At the end of this examination, it becomes clear that “faith alone” can mean three very different things—hence the enduring misunderstanding. Everything depends on what “alone” excludes.
- If “alone” excludes all prior human merit, meaning that no one saves himself by his own powers apart from grace, then the Church says yes. Salvation is free, prior, and given. This is the true element in sola fide.
- If “alone” excludes love and works, meaning that a faith without love or deeds is enough to save, then the Church says no, with Saint James: “faith without works is dead” (Jas 2:26). This is the meaning condemned by the Council of Trent.
- If “alone” excludes the sacraments and the Church, as though the act of believing could suffice apart from Baptism and sacramental life, then the Church again says no, because Christ joined salvation to faith and Baptism: “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved” (Mk 16:16)[49].
The correct formula is therefore: we are saved by grace alone, received through faith—a faith that is never alone, because living faith always carries hope, love, and works of love with it. As Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches—love is the “form” of faith[50]—: it is not faith alone that justifies, but faith made alive through love.
In summary
- The expression “faith alone” (sola fide) is not a biblical quotation: the words are old, but the Reformation made it its watchword (1520s-1530s). Luther even added the word “alone” to his translation of Romans 3:28, where it appears neither in Greek nor in Latin—he explicitly acknowledged this in 1530.
- The verse where “faith” is followed by “alone” in Greek (Jas 2:24, pisteôs monon) says: “a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.”
- The Church affirms with Lutherans that salvation is the free gift of grace, preceded by no human merit: on initial gratuity, consensus on the basic truths (1999).
- But saving faith is living faith, “working through love” (Gal 5:6), not dead faith without works or love—the demons themselves “believe” in this way, without love, and tremble (Jas 2:19).
- The Council of Trent (1547) rejected “alone” only when it excludes human cooperation, inward transformation, and love.
- Catholic “merit” purchases nothing: “when God crowns our merits, he crowns his own gifts” (Saint Augustine).
- In 1999, Catholics and Lutherans recognized a consensus on the basic truths of justification while retaining different emphases.
- The correct formula is: saved by grace, through faith, a faith that is never alone.
Further reading
Notes and References
Council of Trent, Session VI (January 13, 1547), Decree on Justification, chapter 8: “faith is the beginning of human salvation, the foundation and root of all justification” (fides humanae salutis initium, fundamentum et radix), in H. Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, no. 1532.
1 29Letter of Saint James 2:17, French liturgical translation (AELF), translated here into English: “Thus also faith, if it does not have works, is dead.”
2Letter of Saint James 2:24, French liturgical translation (AELF), translated here into English: “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” In Greek: ouk ek pisteôs monon—“faith” (pisteôs) immediately followed by “only” (monon); Greek text: Novum Testamentum Graece (Nestle-Aland).
3Augsburg Confession (presented on June 25, 1530 at the Diet of Augsburg), article IV, Of Justification: paraphrase of the Latin text—people are freely justified for Christ’s sake, through faith (Latin: gratis iustificentur propter Christum per fidem; critical ed. BSELK; Engl. trans. Kolb-Wengert, Fortress, 2000).
4Martin Luther, Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen (Open Letter on Translating, September 8, 1530), in D. Martin Luthers Werke (Weimar, Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1909), vol. 30, part 2, pp. 632-646: allein added to Rom 3:28 as early as the German New Testament (September 1522). Luther explicitly acknowledges the word’s absence from the Greek and Latin, and defends it in the name of German: “Allein der glaube, und nicht die werck machen uns gerecht” (p. 641).
5Heiko A. Oberman, Luther: Mensch zwischen Gott und Teufel (Berlin, Severin und Siedler, 1982; Engl. trans. Luther: Man between God and the Devil, Yale University Press, 1989): learned reference biography on Luther the monk and his Anfechtungen.
6Martin Luther, Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum (95 Theses, October 31, 1517), in D. Martin Luthers Werke (Weimar, Hermann Böhlau, 1883), vol. 1, pp. 233-238.
7Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1999), § 25 (in common): faith “is active in love” and the Christian “can and must not remain without works”; what precedes or follows the free gift of faith “is neither the basis of justification nor merits it”; §§ 23 and 26 (Lutheran): renewal of life is not denied, but distinguished—without being separated—from justification itself.
8Letter to the Romans 3:28, French liturgical translation (AELF), translated here into English: “a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the Law.” The word “alone” does not appear in Greek; Luther added it in his German translation.
9Benedict XVI, general audience of November 19, 2008 (catechesis on Saint Paul and justification): for Paul as for his contemporaries, the Law is the Torah in its totality—“from the ethical core to the ritual observances” (circumcision, foods, Sabbath); official text on vatican.va.
10Letter to the Galatians 2:16, French liturgical translation (AELF), translated here into English.
11Letter of Saint James 2:14, 17, 24, French liturgical translation (AELF), translated here into English; cf. Jas 2:22 on Abraham.
12Letter of Saint James 2:22, French liturgical translation (AELF), translated here into English: “You see that faith was active along with his works, and by works faith was made perfect.”
13Letter of Saint James 2:26, French liturgical translation (AELF), translated here into English: “as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.”
14Letter to the Galatians 5:6, French liturgical translation (AELF), translated here into English: “faith working through love” (Latin fides quae per caritatem operatur).
15Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1814: “Living faith ‘works through charity’ (Gal 5:6)” (cf. Dei Verbum, no. 5; Rom 1:17).
16Letter to the Galatians 5:21, French liturgical translation (AELF), translated here into English: “those who commit such deeds will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
17Letter to the Ephesians 2:8-10, French liturgical translation (AELF), translated here into English.
18Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§ 2010 and 2008 on merit; § 2010: “no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification, at the beginning of conversion”; § 2008: “The merit of man before God in the Christian life arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of his grace.”
19 40Council of Trent, Session VI (1547), canons 24 (DS 1574) and 32 (DS 1582): the works of the justified, performed through God’s grace and Christ’s merit, truly merit growth in grace and eternal life.
20Gospel according to Saint Matthew 25:31-46, on the Last Judgment according to works of mercy, French liturgical translation (AELF), translated here into English; cf. Mt 16:27.
21Letter to the Romans 2:6, French liturgical translation (AELF), translated here into English: God “will render to each one according to his works”; cf. Rom 2:7; 2 Cor 5:10.
22Second Letter to the Corinthians 5:10, French liturgical translation (AELF), translated here into English: “For we must all appear openly before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be repaid for what he did, whether good or evil, while he was in the body.”
23First Letter to the Corinthians 13:2, French liturgical translation (AELF), translated here into English.
24Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1996: “Our justification comes from the grace of God.”
25Second Council of Orange (529), canon 5 on the beginning of faith (initium fidei: Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, no. 375), the whole confirmed by Pope Boniface II in 531 (letter Per filium nostrum to Caesarius of Arles, January 25, 531: DS 398-400): even the beginning of faith and the desire to believe are works of grace, against semi-Pelagianism.
26Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1993: “Justification establishes cooperation between God’s grace and man’s freedom” (citing the Council of Trent, DS 1525).
27Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1996: “Our justification comes from the grace of God. Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God […].”
28Letter to the Hebrews 11:6, French liturgical translation (AELF), translated here into English: “Now without faith it is impossible to be pleasing to God.”
30Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1253: “Baptism is the sacrament of faith. […] It is only in the faith of the Church that each of the faithful can believe. The faith required for Baptism is not a perfect and mature faith, but a beginning that is called to develop.”
31Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1266: “The Most Holy Trinity gives the baptized sanctifying grace, the grace of justification” which makes him capable of believing, hoping, and loving through the theological virtues (cf. also §§ 1250-1252 on the baptism of infants).
32Letter of Saint James 2:19, French liturgical translation (AELF), translated here into English: “You believe that there is one God. Excellent! But the demons too believe this, and they tremble.”
33Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 5, a. 2: the faith of demons, wrung from them by the evidence of signs, is without affection for the good and without the gift of grace—it is not the praiseworthy faith of Christ’s faithful.
34Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1815: “‘faith apart from works is dead’ (Jas 2:26): when it is deprived of hope and love, faith does not fully unite the believer to Christ and does not make him a living member of his Body.”
35Council of Trent, Session VI (1547), Decree on Justification, canon 9, in Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, no. 1559 (old Dz 819): condemnation of the idea that the ungodly person is justified “by faith alone” (sola fide) in the sense that nothing else is required to cooperate with grace.
36Council of Trent, Session VI (1547), canon 11, in Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, no. 1561 (old Dz 821): justification is not a mere external imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the exclusion of grace and love poured into the heart.
37Council of Trent, Session VI (1547), canon 12, in Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, no. 1562 (old Dz 822): justifying faith is not merely trust (fiducia) in divine mercy.
38Council of Trent, Session VI (1547), canon 24, in Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, no. 1574 (old Dz 834): good works performed in grace are not merely fruits but truly increase the righteousness received.
39“You are glorified in the assembly of your Holy Ones: when you crown their merits, you crown your own gifts”: Roman Missal, Preface of Holy Men and Women—a formula repeated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2006, which connects it to Saint Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. 102, 7. Its patristic expression is found in Saint Augustine, Letter 194, to Sixtus (c. 418), V, 19: cum Deus coronat merita nostra, nihil aliud coronat quam munera sua (“when God crowns our merits, he crowns nothing other than his own gifts”).
41Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2007: “With regard to God, there is no strict right to any merit on the part of man. Between him and us the inequality is measureless, for we have received everything from him, our Creator”; § 2009: filial adoption confers on us “a right by grace, the full right of love.”
42Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2009: “The merits of our good works are gifts of the divine goodness” (cf. Council of Trent, DS 1548; Saint Augustine, Sermon 298, 4-5: PL 38, 1367).
43First Letter to the Corinthians 13:13, French liturgical translation (AELF), translated here into English: “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
44Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (Lutheran World Federation and Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity), Augsburg, October 31, 1999, § 15; signed by Cardinal Edward I. Cassidy and Bishop Christian Krause (official text on christianunity.va).
45Council of Trent, Session VI (January 13, 1547), Decree on Justification, chapter 7, on the one formal cause of justification, in Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, no. 1529 (also cited in the Catechism § 1992).
46 47Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1992: justification “makes us inwardly just by the power of his mercy” and has “for its goal […] the gift of eternal life” (citing the Council of Trent, DS 1529).
48Gospel according to Saint Mark 16:16, French liturgical translation (AELF), translated here into English: “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.”
49Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 4, a. 3 (love is the form of faith); cf. III, q. 68, a. 4, ad 3: sola fides formata, quae per dilectionem operatur—“only formed faith, which works through love.”
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