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Good Works and Assurance of Salvation in Three Traditions: Fides Praevisa, the Practical Syllogism, and Merit1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Eugene F. Rogers Jr.
Eugene F. Rogers Jr.
Affiliation:
Religious Studies Cocke Hall, The University of Virginia, Charbttesville, VA 22903 USA
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Extract

In what follows I offer a dyptich on the assurance of salvation and its relation to good works in three Christian traditions, Reformed, Lutheran, and Catholic. The Orthodox Reformed (or the Reformed scholastics in the generations after Calvin) consider the assurance of salvation in terms of the practical syllogism: crudely put, my salvation depends on God's election, but I can tell whether I am among the elect by examining my good works. The Orthodox Lutherans (Lutheran scholastics in the generations after Luther) consider die assurance of salvation in terms of fides praevisa, or (crudely) faith that God foresees, in abstraction from the further question of whether or not God also causes it. Thomas Aquinas, comparable in method and influence, considers the sort of knowledge that observation of one's merits bestows: not certainty but conjecture.y

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , May 1997 , pp. 131 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1997

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References

2 On election and incarnation, Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II/2, §§32–35, pp. 3–506, esp. §33, pp. 94–194; on the Protestant Orthodox, see esp. pp. 45–47, 65–76, 102–103, 110–115, 127–145.

3 Anderson, H. George, Murphy, T. Austin, and Burgess, Joseph A., eds., Justification by Faith: Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue VII (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985), §§108–112.Google Scholar

4 Heppe, Heinrich, Reformed Dogmatics Set Out and Illustrated From the Sources, rev. and ed. by Bizer, Ernst, trans, by Thomson, G. T. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1978)Google Scholar; and Schmid, Heinrich, The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 3d ed., revised, trans, by Hay, Charles A. and Jacobs, Henry E. (Philadephia: United Lutheran Publishing House, 1969). Future references appear in the text.Google Scholar

5 Barth, Karl, Foreword to Heppe, pp. v–vi.Google Scholar

6 E.g., III/3, 7; IV/1, 52, 68.

7 IV/1, 52.

8 IV/4, 103.

9 IV/4, 104.

10 Jenson, Robert and Gritsch, Eric W., Lutheranism: The Theological Movement and Its Confessional Writings (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976), ch. 3, pp. 36–44Google Scholar.

11 Augustine, De praedestin atione sanctorum15, and Calvin, Institutes, 111.22.1, III.24.5, and elsewhere. For more historical discussion of these tropes, see Barth, CDII/2, 60/63 and 118–120.

12 For more on the distinction between Alleinwirksamkeit and Allwirksamkeit, see Otto Hermann Pesch, to whom I owe the terms, in Die Tlieobgie der Rechtfertiguvg bet Martin Luther und Thomas von Aquin: Versuch eines systematisch-theologischen Dialogs (Mainz: Matthias Grūnewald, 1967), pp. 252, 368–377 and esp. 840–849.Google Scholar

13 This way of restating the matter dates back to Luther; for discussion see Pesch, , Rechlfertigung, pp. 309–310, with multiple referencesGoogle Scholar.

14 For example, it falls under the heading of Book III, ‘The Way We Receive the Grace of Christ,’ rather than the doctrine of God (a placement that does not work until Barth).

15 See Willis, David, Calvin's Catholic Christology: The Function of the So-Called extra Calvinisticum in Calvin's Theobgy (Leiden: E.J. Brill), 1967Google Scholar.

16 The background on merit and the background on hope of the account offered here are by now standard; the present contribution is on the relation of the two concepts in Thomas Aquinas, and their implicit comparison to the Protestant Orthodox. A representative sample of standard accounts would include Otto Hermann Pesch, Die Theologie der Rechtfertigung bei Martin Luther und Thomas von Aquin (cited above), esp. pp. 771–784 (on merit); Pfuertner, Stephen, Luther and Aquinas on Salvation, trans. Quinn, Edward (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1964)Google Scholar (on hope); Anderson, H. George, Murphy, T. Austin, and Burgess, Joseph A., eds., Justification by Faith: Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue VII (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985), esp. §§108–112 (on merit)Google Scholar; and Wawrykow, Joseph P., God's Grace and Human Action: ‘Merit’ in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame, Ind. and London: Notre Dame University Press, 1995)Google Scholar. For the topic of this essay cf. also Wawrykow's ‘John Calvin and Condign Merit,’ Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte 83 (1992): 73–90.

17 See ST 1.95.1, 1.100.1. For an exhaustive account, see Pesch, pp. 596–792. For more along the present lines, see my Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995) pp. 106–107, 188–196Google Scholar.

18 Most movingly in the Genesis Commentary(Luther' Works, ed. Pelikan, , vol.5, pp. 41–50Google Scholar, = WA 43, 457–462), esp. this passage (p. 47): Staupitz used to comfort me with these words: ‘Why do you torture yourself with these speculations? Look at the wounds of Christ and at the blood that was shed for you. From these predestination will shine. Consequently, one must listen to the Son of God, who was sent into the flesh and appeared to destroy the work of the devil (1 John 3:8) and make you sure about predestination. And for this reason he says to you:… “No one shall snatch you out of My hands”.’ (cf. v. [John 10:]28.)147 19 For texts and discussion, see Pesch, Rechtfertigung, pp. 262–283.

20 I adapt the text of Summa Theologiae, ‘Blackfriars, ed.,‘ with facing English and Latin, 60vols (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963–1976)Google Scholar. Further references by numbers only in the text.

21 I here assume without argument a nonstandard account of how grace assumes nature, or faith assumes the natural cognition of God, in the Five Ways. See Thomas Aquinas and KarlBarth, and compare Preller, Victor, Divine Science and the Science of God: A Reformulation of Thomas Aquinas (Princeton University Press, 1967)Google Scholar.

22 As Preller puts it (Divine Science and the Science of God, p. 23): Aquinas makes it quite clear that philosophical arguments are not needed to establish the truth of revealed propositions (including those that in theory might be proved apart from revelation); in the context of theological reflection on revealed propositions, philosophical arguments may be cited only as external arguments with probable authority [1.1.8 ad 2]. Since, in the Summa Theologiae, the propositions ‘God's existence can be proved’ and ‘God exists’ are taken as revealed and certain [by Rom. 1:19–20 and Ex. 3:14, cited in the sed contras of 1.2.2 and 1.2.3], the philosophical arguments that occur in conjunction with them are offered by Aquinas as external and probable only. For discussion, see Preller, pp. 22–34 and Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth, pp. 17–70, 149–153.

13 ‘ Cognition’ is Thomas's weakest word for knowledge, and is distinguished sharply from ‘scientia.’ Despite the fact that Thomas calls sacred doctrine scientia (I.I) in itself, human minds can possess no scientia circa res divinas in this life (11–11.9.2). For discussion see Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth, pp. 35–36, 116–117.

24 Each of the Five Ways ends with some such remark as ‘whom all call God’ (1.2.3), and the linguistic character of faith is inalienable in this life (II–II.1.2). The Five Ways do not lead to saving faith (II–11.2 ad 3), although they can be taken up into it.

25 Wawrykow, ‘John Calvin and Condign Merit,’ p. 87.

26 For the Five Ways as expressing God's claim upon the world, see DiNoia, Joseph, The Diversity of Religions: A Christian Perspective (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1992), p. 130Google Scholar, and, with reference to Thomas'scommentaryonRomans, Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth, pp. 141–146.

27 Wawrykow, (God's Grace and Human Action, pp. 171–177)Google Scholar argues for the application of the creature to its act as a gloss on auxilium, in a way that should satisfy Protestant worries about habit-talk. In fact, Wawrykow's account of Thomas's auxilium bears some resemblances to what George Hunsinger refers to as ‘actualism’ in Karl Barth. (See Hunsinger, George, How To Read Karl Barth ‘Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991’, pp. 30–32, 271–272, and elsewhere.)Google Scholar

28 Pesch, (Rechtfertigung p. 526)Google Scholar puts it this way: It is easy to overlook: The justification of the sinner is no ‘new’ dispensation of God's but the carrying out of God's creatorly will over against the rebellious human creature. The dimensions of nature that remain undisturbed are therefore to be conceived of as the effectiveness by anticipation [Vorauswirksamkeit] of the grace that saves. For an answer to Protestant objections to this use of nature and grace, see Thomas Aquinas and KariBarth, pp. 188–196.

29 Bernard of Clairvaux, On Grace and Free Choice, as translated in Rūng, Hans, Justifcatiom The Doctrine of Karl Barth and a Catholic Reflection, 2d ed., trans. Collins, Thomas, et al. , (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1981), p. 266, my italics)Google Scholar. For more along these lines, see Thomas and Barth, chapter 7.

30 The ‘demons believe and tremble’ (James 2:19) because their belief is not voluntary but, since they are more intelligent than human beings, coerced by the greater evidence to them of signs, which increases their hatred (II–II.5.2, esp. ad 1–3). Faith, on the other hand, gains joy (delectatio) by proving. In this Thomas is as Anselmian as Barth: it is not the existence of faith but its eager nature that desires proof (Karl Barth, Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum: Anselm's Proof of the Existence of God in the Context of his Theological Scheme [London: SCM Press, 1960; reprint, Pittsburgh: The Pickwick Press, 1975], pp. 16–18.) For a technical discussion of Thomas on this point, see Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth, pp. 166–180; for Thomas and Barth on the point, see pp. 196–202.