GORDON-CONWELL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC UNDERSTANDINGS OF JUSTIFICATION

FINAL EXAM QUESTION #6

A FINAL EXAM PAPER SUBMITTED TO DR. MYATT

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

FOR THE COMPLETION OF TH 502 THEOLOGY SURVEY II

BY

JONATHAN S. JONES

JACKSON, TENNESSEE

MAY 10, 2015

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To compare the Protestant and Catholic perspectives on

justification one must not only survey the doctrine but the

various strands that weave into it. Justification is a central

doctrine for Protestants because it ties together their

anthropology, hamartiology, and soteriology. Sola fide not only

represents the heart of their theology, but stands as a summary

of it as well. For Catholics, justification is not perceived in

the same way, though it is no less intricate. In this paper,

both perspectives regarding the doctrine shall be summarized and

compared. My hope is to look at not merely the doctrine itself,

but to expose the inner logic of both systems and, therefore, the

deeper differences yielding the divergent perspectives.

Protestant justification

For Protestants, the doctrine of justification is the heart

of the gospel, the keystone to all theology. By it the church

stands or falls. It is the rallying point among all Protestant

believers and the line of division between them and Catholics.i

John Calvin defined justification as “the acceptance with which

God receives us into his favor as righteous men. And we say that

it consists in the remission of sins and the imputation of

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Christ’s righteousness”.ii Justification, then, consists in two

parts—forgiveness and imputation—neither of which depending on

any work of the believer. Freely by the grace of Jesus Christ

sinners pass from being destined for God’s judgment to receiving

His favor. For Protestants, all other theology is tied up in

this.

Paul teaches that all have sinned and come short of the

glory of God.iii After the Fall, humanity was left “blind,

darkened in understanding, and full of corruption and perversity

of heart, so that of himself he has no power to be able to

comprehend the true knowledge of God”.iv Israelites possessed the

Mosaic Law, although they were never able to keep it. No amount

of good works could repair this separation anyway because of

human depravity.v People are at enmity with God, “children of

wrath” and “dead in trespasses and sins”, says Paul.vi Sin

separates humanity from God. Nevertheless, God demands His

people to be holy as He is holy,vii for His infinite holiness

cannot admit anyone into His presence with sin.

Jesus Christ satisfied the Law and God’s requirement for

holiness by living a perfect, sinless life. He paid the penalty

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for sin by being “pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed

for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us

peace.”viii Jesus bought peace and forgiveness for sinners on the

cross and redeemed humanity from its bondage to sin.ix Christ,

who knew no sin, became sin and suffered in their place of

sinners “that [they] might become the righteousness of God.”x By

his blood Christ has redeemed his followers.xi His sacrifice

paid the price that men and women could not pay for their sins.

Because of this, God can now justify the believer and treat them

as righteous; “I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds

no more.”xii Christians can have confidence in their redemption

because of Christ’s resurrection.xiii

By faith in Christ’s substitutionary work one is declared

righteous by God. The terms “upright”, “righteousness”, and “to

justify” translate the New Testament’s terms δικαιος, δικαιοσυνη,

δικαιοω and their variants.xiv Protestants emphasize as “to

declare righteous” as the correct translation of δικαιοω over the

Catholic understanding “to make righteous”, but this is still

debated among linguists.xv In the Protestant paradigm, God

declares the believing sinner “righteous” and imputes Christ’s

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righteousness to them, though nothing changes about the person’s

real state as a sinner. In the words of the Augsburg confession,

“we receive forgiveness of sin and become righteous before God by

grace, for Christ’s sake, through faith, when we believe that

Christ suffered for us and that for his sake our sin is forgiven

and righteousness and eternal life are given to us”.xvi It is a

pure gift of grace when the Judge forgives the sinner and credits

him or her with Christ’s righteousness.xvii

Though no works give confidence of a right standing before

God, they must follow to demonstrate the Holy Spirit’s work in

the believer’s life. Christians take no credit for any good works

since they are still sinners in constant need of mercy and

grace.xviii For Luther, good works are the fruit of

justification, but they must remain separate from growth in

love.xix Calvin, too, insisted on the separation between

justification and good works.xx

The Protestant understanding of justification stands on two

legs, sola fidei and sola gratia. By faith, not works, one receives

God’s forgiveness of sins because of Christ’s work in his or her

place. Luther’s use of “faith” is multifaceted. It is a

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personal assent to believing in God’s historical activity in

Christ for each believer. Faith is trusting in God’s promises of

peace and salvation. Finally, by faith the believer is united to

Christ.xxi God’s grace accessed through faith leads to Christ’s

righteousness being imputed to each believer. He or she declared

“righteous” though there is nothing truly righteous about him or

her. xxii Thus, because of faith in Christ’s righteousness

displayed in the Cross, sinners are forgiven, declared righteous,

and admitted into fellowship with God regardless of any sin ever

committed past, present, or future.

Catholic justification

For Catholic Christians, justification is not the center

piece of their theology. It weaves together with other doctrines

but is not their binding force. Understanding Catholic

justification is difficult for Protestants because it operates

under a familial rather than a forensic paradigm, Therefore, each

doctrinal star in the constellation is viewed through a different

lens. Here I offer my best attempt at unfolding Catholic

theology as Catholics explain it, not as Protestants do.

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Instead of a doctrine at the heart of Catholic theology,

there lies a mystery: “the Most Holy Trinity”.xxiii Everything

orients around God’s self-revelation as Father, Son, and Holy

Spirit, including justification. Tri-unity is God’s “innermost

secret” that He desires to share with His children. Sharing that

secret goes beyond mere knowledge of it; God wants men and women

to enter into His “eternal exchange of love”.xxiv Adoption of men

and women into the Divine family sets the context for the Roman

Catholic’s understanding of justification.xxv

Trent defined justification as “a translation from that

state in which man is born a child of the first Adam, to the

state of grace and of adoption of the sons of God through the

second Adam, Jesus Christ out savior.”xxvi Justification is not

only the remission of sins, but a transformation from death to

life.xxvii Both sides agree that justification involves

forgiveness. But, the Catholic definition also includes

sanctification. Trent and the CCC distinguish justification from

sanctification where appropriate, but they do not separate the

two.xxviii

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Protestants see man’s fundamental stance before God as a

guilty criminal; Catholics see fallen men and women as God’s

children who have become self-destructive. Original sin has not

left them totally depraved, but “separated from God and totally

disinherited”.xxix After the Fall humankind is subject to

“ignorance, suffering, and the dominion of death”.xxx Humankind

was created to worship God eternally, but it sought its own glory

instead. Adam and Eve cut their lives off at the root in their

disobedience to God by breaking this fellowship, and no one but

God can reestablish it. Still, humankind retains its nature and

calling as “a religious being” who “lives a fully human life only

if he freely lives by his bond with God.”xxxi Insofar as humans

acknowledge their dependence on this transcendent relationship,

they retain their capacity for freedom. True freedom requires a

right relationship with God, and sin’s fundamental rupture left

humanity unable to liberate itself.

Sin is not a “thing” against which one struggles, but a

perverted use of freedom detrimental to this life-sustaining

fellowship.xxxii The will is “bent”, not obliterated, yet unable

to choose salvation without the grace of God. Religious longings

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show God’s grace embedded in its very nature beyond the

destructive power of the Fall.xxxiii Justification recognizes this

self-contradiction in the human heart, leads to detachment from

it, and purifies the wound.xxxiv

In faith one responds freely to God’s revelation and begins

the process of justification.xxxv Starting with repentance, one

experiences “a radical reorientation of [their] whole life, a

return, a conversion to God with all [their] heart, an end of

sin, a turning away from evil”.xxxvi One receives forgiveness for

his or her sins and accepts God’s righteousness by faith in Jesus

Christ during baptism.xxxvii In baptism, the Christian is forgiven

and washed clean of sins. No mere symbol, baptism is a rebirth

ontologically transforming the sinner from spiritual death to

abundant life in Christ.xxxviii Faith is one’s entrance into

communion with the spiritual realm, and engagement with the

supernatural world requires one to go through creation, not

around it. Through Baptism, Christians unite with Christ and

become the righteousness of God.xxxix

A convert’s free will is justified, “bent” back to its

original right-ness, when restored to its true relationship with

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God. This freedom gets exercised in works of charity and

participation in the Church’s sacraments, drawing one deeper into

Trinitarian life. The Holy Spirit continues maturing Christians

in Christ that the “whole being” might grow in righteousness.xl

Cooperation with each person of the Trinity becomes the context

for living out one’s justification and growth in righteousness,

and Trinitarian participation is the purpose of all the Church’s

sacraments.xli This is not to diminish that a one’s entire life

is to be lived as communion with the Trinity.xlii

Comparison

Finding the differences between Protestant and Catholic

perspectives regarding justification is not simply a difference

of definition, though it is certainly no less. It helps little

to compare the two simply as “justification-by-declaration”

versus “justification-by-transformation” without attention to the

other doctrinal strands woven together.xliii It is a difference in

paradigms. I hope to have explained both positions as each would

in their own terms, thus exposing their inner logic. This is the

only way forward to a true assessment and comparison. Both affirm

justification by grace alone through faith. Both affirm that

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Jesus paid the penalty for sinners on the Cross, and that only

faith in his work for their forgiveness can save. However,

understandings of original sin and its damage to humanity differ

greatly, leading to different articulations of its remedy.

Genuine differences stem from Protestantism’s nominalist

philosophical assumptions as opposed to Catholic sacramental

theology.

Official teaching on justification prior to the sixteenth

century had been somewhat ambiguous, and Luther forced the

Catholic Church to finally to address that.xliv Protestantism’s

radical emphasis on the individual in sin and salvation makes

dependence on Jesus all the more personal. This pastoral nature

of the discussion was a major concern from the beginning.xlv

Luther’s reprioritizing personal conviction over the authority of

the church radically changed the course of Western Europe.xlvi

One need not worry whether God is pleased by what he or she has

or has not done since one is saved sola gratia, “not a result of

works, so that no one may boast.”xlvii One can be assured of God’s

pleasure regardless of sin that has been committed. For personal

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sin can never overpower the love of God demonstrated on the

Cross, and the resurrection assures this as true.

Protestant justification assumes a very low view of creation

and especially of humanity. Humanity not only lost free-willxlviii

but its value, also, when Adam and Eve rebelled against the

Creator.xlix In combatting scholasticism’s exaggerated views of

creation’s autonomy, Luther fought too hard in the other

direction by teaching humanity’s imago dei nature had been replaced

with the “image of Satan.”l Seeing humanity as anything other

than sinful detracts from God’s glory. However, sin cannot

revoke God’s declaration that creation is “good”. Its very

existence ex nihilo shows the gratuitousness of God’s will. All of

creation, humanity included, comes from God’s grace, fallen or

not. Men and women humbly confess being made in God’s image.li

The doctrines of the man as imago dei and creation ex nihilo imply

nature receives meaning and purpose and from a Source other than

itself. Nature cannot outgrow its dependence upon the Creator,

therefore can it stop sharing in God’s truth, goodness, and

beauty.lii

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For Protestants, men and women never progress beyond their

fundamental status as guilty sinners however “righteous” they may

be declared, semper iustus et peccator (“always just and sinner”) in

Luther’s words.liii Sin corrupted humankind to the core and

nothing can change that fact despite any declaration from on

High. Faith and works were completely separate for Luther, and

the latter had absolutely no bearing on one’s stance before God.

Luther’s insistence on being declared “righteous” without it

being true in reality shows Luther’s dependence upon nominalist

philosophy.liv Roman Catholics fully affirm sola gratia as it is

taught by Protestantism.lv But, it is impossible for such an

encounter to leave men and women unchanged.

Catholic teaching on justification does not dissolve simply

into “works righteousness.” God reconciles people to Himself

through union with Christ in baptism.lvi Original sin is washed

away that people might mature toward true humanity supremely

demonstrated in Jesus. Acts of love are means for Christians to

grow in righteousness insofar as they facilitate sacramental

participation in God’s life through Christ preparing one to enjoy

ever-increasing communion within the Divine Family. The CCC lays

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out this holistic vision integrating faith and works in the very

beginning: “God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a

plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in

his own blessed life…He calls man to seek him, to know him, to

love him with all his strength…In his Son and through him, he

invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children

and thus heirs of his blessed life.”lvii

Recent Attempts at Reconciliation

With the increasing secularization of Western culture and

suppression of religious influence in society, many are seeing

more than ever the need for cooperation among Catholics and

Protestants. Various attempts are being made at the socio-

political, ecclesial, and theological levels.

The statement “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The

Christian Mission in the Third Millennium”lviii [ECT] is the fruit

of conversations from 1992 to 1994 between Catholic and

Protestant leaders under the guidance of John Richard Neuhaus.lix

ECT demonstrates a united front on select issues in hopes that

further dialogue will yield more unity in other areas.

Justification surfaces early in ECT as an area of whole-hearted

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agreement. It is the basis for all who accept Jesus Christ as

Lord and Savior unites believers as brothers and sisters.lx ECT

in no way avoids stating the existence of misunderstandings

between Protestants and Catholics, but rightly points out that

misrepresentations and caricatures are not disagreements. It

lists a host of disagreements with justification nowhere to be

found. ECT leads by example as much as its theological acumen

with its posture of listening. Practical ways in which

Evangelicals and Catholics can cooperate provide fertile soil for

theological reflection. For the sacramental theologian,

engagement with the world means engagement with eternal

realities, and socio-political cooperation could uncover areas of

doctrinal compatibility.

The “Join Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification” [JD]

by the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church might be

the most unexpected document to Christians aware of the history

of anathemas between Roman Catholics and Lutherans.lxi However,

the anathemas do not apply to the doctrines contained in JD.lxii

JD does not exhaust either sides’ teaching on justification, but

“it does encompass a consensus on basic truths”.lxiii It

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establishes a beginning point for agreement even though there are

“compatible” differences.lxiv

Both sides hold that justification “is the work of the

triune God” that “directs us in a special way towards the heart

of the New Testament witness to God’s saving action in Christ”.lxv

Both affirm humanity’s inability to contribute to its own

salvation in any way. Catholic insistence on free will does not

apply to initiating one’s salvation, and mere acceptance of

justification shows God’s grace at work.lxvi Likewise, Lutherans

insist on a passive justification but “do not deny that believers

are fully involved personally in their faith, which is effected

by God’s Word.”lxvii Both affirm justification by grace through

faith in Christ.lxviii Christians continue fighting against sin,

though they are not enslaved by it because, through union with

Christ in baptism, Christ is their ruler.lxix Justification comes

by faith in the gospel “apart from works of the law.lxx Finally,

good works contribute to the believer’s salvation, either as the

Holy Spirit’s work for deepening communion with Christ, or as

preserving the believer in grace.lxxi

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The JD strives for unity which Pope John Paul II hoped would

characterize the new millennium. Pope Benedict XVI said “new

steps” are needed in today’s efforts for unity.lxxii “The real

issue can only lie in how far we are today able to go beyond the

positions of those days [the Reformation] and how we can arrive

at insights that will overcome the past. To put it differently:

unity demands new steps.”lxxiii The JD represents just such a

step.

I believe the most significant signs of progress are coming

through retrievals of divine transcendence and the world’s

sacramental participation through Christ. The most profound

attempt at reconciling the Protestant and Catholic perspectives

has been the recent thesis put forth by Hans Boersma who claims

the Reformation resulted from the loss of a participatory,

sacramental ontology that had been central to the Church’s

development during her first thousand years. The early church’s

leaders and teachers assumed this world participated in God’s

greater reality, Heaven. This other-worldly perspective gave the

Church insight to understand how the world relates to God’s

transcendent immanence.

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The world itself is a sacrament that invokes the reality

which it signifies, much as a photograph depicts a reality

greater than its own two-dimensional image.lxxiv Though there is a

real distance in natures, what one sees in creation is a

manifestation of supernatural realities. It was this sacramental

ontology that waned during the early Medieval period, and this

loss combined with univocitylxxv and nominalismlxxvi led to the

tragic breakdown of the sixteenth century. According to Boersma,

the Reformers wanted to redefine the relationship between nature

and the supernatural, and thereby justification. Luther,

specifically, was bothered by the esteem given to nature and

natural reasoning, and for him philosophy and theology were as

distinct from one another as possible. Calvin was much closer to

the patristic sense, or the “Great Tradition,” of nature’s

shortcomings being perfected by grace and the inseparable nature

of justification and sanctification.lxxvii

As one who has spent a considerable length of time on both

sides of the justification question, I find that my experience

matches that described by Boersma—modernity and postmodernity has

in many ways successfully supplanted the Christian worldview by

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and large for Protestants and Catholics alike. If any progress

is to be made on the justification issue, and I believe there has

been already, then it must be with an earnestness and trust that

keeps listening to one another. We must remain open to the

possibility that maybe God’s reality is bigger than our words,

maybe the future is bigger than the problems we have inherited

from the past, and maybe the blood of Christ that reconciles us

to God will one day reconcile his people back together into one

visible church.

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Brown. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1986: 352-365.

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Christian Classics, vol. 20. Philadelphia, PA:

Westminster, 1960.

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“Cannons and Decrees of the Council of Trent.” Confessions and

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Ed. Mark Noll. Vancouver, B.C.: Regent College Publishing,

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Nashville, TN: Broadman and Holman, 1988: 126-132.

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Crossway, 1998.

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The Luther World Federation and the Catholic Church. “Joint

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http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstu

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Paul II, Pope John. “Tertio Millennio Adveniente.” Accessible at

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Endnotes

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i Jaroslav Pelikan, Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700), in The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine 3 (Chicago, IL: University ofChicago Press, 1984), 139.ii III.XI.2; John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battls. The library of Christian Classics, vol. 20 (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1960), 727.iii Rom 3.23.iv “The Genevan Confession”, 4 in Confessions and Catechisms of the Reformation, ed. Mark Noll (Vancouver, B.C: Regent College Publishing, 2004), 127.v Heb 10.3-4, 11.vi Eph 2.1, 3.vii Lev 11.44; 1 Pt 1.16.viii Isa 53.6.ix Eph 1.7.x 2 Cor 5.21; cf. Rom 3.20ff.xi Eph 1.7; Col 1.14; Rom 5.9.xii Heb 10.17.xiii Rom 4.24f; Jn 14.29; I Cor 15.19ff.xiv Horst Seebass, “Righteousness, Justification” in New International Dictionary ofNew Testament Theology, vol.3, ed. Lothar Coenen, Erich Beyreuther and Hans Bietenhard, gen. ed. Colin Brown (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1986), 352.xv see Colin Brown, “9. Contemporary Interpretations of Righteousness” under “Righteousness, Justification” in NIDNTT, 3.371-373.xvi “Augsburg Confession” par. 4 in Confessions and Catechisms of the Reformation, 88-89.xvii Rom 5.8.xviii “The 67 Articles of Ulrich Zwingli”, par. 22 in Confessions and Catechisms of the Reformation, 41; “The Augsburg Confession”, par. 20 in Confessions and Catechisms of the Reformation, 94-96; Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers (Nashville, TN: Broadman and Holman, 1988), 73.xix Theology of the Reformers, 73; Martin Luther, Galatians. The Crossway Classic Commentaries, ed. Alister McGrath and J.I. Packer (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1998), 90.xx Hans Boersma, Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), 93; see Institutes, III.xi.13-23.xxi Alister E. McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction 3rd ed. (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001), 456; see also George, Theology of the Reformers, 70-71.xxii Rom 4.4, 5, 13, 16; Eph 2.8-10.xxiii Catechism of the Catholic Church 2nd ed (United States Catholic Conference, Inc., 1997), par. 261.xxiv Jn 4.8; CCC 221.xxv Cf. Rom 8.15; 8.23; 9.4; Gal 4.5; Eph 1.5.xxvi “Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent”, 4 in Confessions and Catechisms of the Reformation, 175.xxvii Rom 6.3.xxviii “Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent,” 7, 10.xxix “Justification” from Assoc. for Catechumenal Ministry, p.1.xxx CCC 405.xxxi CCC 44.xxxii CCC 387.

xxxiii Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent”1xxxiv CCC 1990; cf. “Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent” 6 which discusses the various stages of awareness that prepare one for justification; Confessions and Catechisms of the Reformation, 175-176.xxxv CCC166; cf. Mt 24.22, 24, 31; 2 Pt 1.10xxxvi CCC 1431.xxxvii CCC 1987, 1989, 1991.xxxviii Jn 3.3.xxxix Rom 6.3; 2 Cor 5.21.xl Rom 6.19, 22; Eph 4.13; Phil 3.15; Col. 1.28; 4.12; CCC 1995.xli CCC 1084, 1127.xlii “the whole Christian life is a communion with each of the divine persons”; CCC 259.xliii McBrien, 317.xliv This is easily seen when compared to full-scale treatments of topics like the Incarnation and atonement. Jaroslav Pelikan, “Justification” in The Melody of Theology(Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1988), 143.xlv “…it is a matter of experience that weak and terrified consciences find it most comforting and salutary. The conscience cannot come to rest and peace through works, but only through faith, that is, when it is assured and knows that for Christ’s sake it has a gracious God, as Paul says in Romans 5.1, “Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God”; The Augsburg Confession, 20 in Confessions andCatechisms of the Reformation, 94-95. Indeed, this was even Luther’s own experience out of which his revolutionary teaching grew. His struggle with confession and penancecorresponded with many peoples’ doubts concerning the sacrament of penance (Pelikan, Reformation of Church and Dogma, 128-129; cf. Roland Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life ofMartin Luther (New York NY: Penguin, 1977), 40-42.xlvi Mark Noll, Turning Points, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2012), 148.xlvii Eph 2.8.xlviii See Hoekema for a fuller description of both Martin Luther’s and John Calvin’sdistaste for the term “free will”; Anthony Hoekema, Created in God’s Image (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 233f.xlix For example, “We acknowledge man by nature to be blind, darkened in understanding, and full of corruption and perversity of heart, so that of himself he has no power to be able to comprehend the true knowledge of God as is proper, nor to apply himself to good works. But on the contrary, if he is left by God to what he is by nature, he is only able to live in ignorance and to be abandoned to all iniquity” (The Genevan Confession, 4; CCR, 127).l Fallen humanity still bears God’s image, Gen 9.6; cf. Hoekema, Created in God’s Image,16-17. Luther paved the way for later thinkers developing their concept of sin as the image of Satan which replaced the God’s image in humanity in the Fall; see Pelikan, Reformation of Church and Dogma, 143. This also substantiates Erasmus’ accusation against Luther as resurrecting Manicheism; Ibid.,140.li cf. the Prodigal Son who returned to His Father after remembering who he was; Lk15.11-32, esp. vv.17-19.lii CCC 319; cf. Rom 1.20.liii George, 71.

liv Boersma, Heavenly Participation, 92-93; see also The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism, 190-191, where Bouyer states, “The concepts [righteousness] of a purely empirical system, such as nominalism, since they rule out any idea of a being not subject to the categories of our own existence, exclude utterly even the possibility of anything transcendental”, 191.lv Louis Bouyer, The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism (Princeton, NJ: Scepter Publishers, 1956), 72; It is worth noting here that Bouyer was a Luther pastor for many years before reconciling to the Roman Catholic Church.lvi Eph 2.16; Rom 6.4.lvii CCC 1.lviii Pope John Paul II, “Tertio Millennio Adveniente.” Accessible at https://www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/jp2third.htm .lix Evangelicals and Catholics Together: Toward a Common Mission, eds. Charles Colson and Richard John Neuhaus (Dallas, TX: Word, 1995), xi.lx Ibid., xviii.lxi “Cannons and Decrees of the Council of Trent” can. 4 and “Profession of the Tridentine Faith” art. XI, in Confessions and Catechisms of the Reformation, 184, 210.lxii This qualification, despite constant referencing, appears to be lost on some. For example, see “The Vatican II sect’s Protestant Revolution: the 1999 Join Declaration with the Lutheran on Justification,” 227-233. Also, it might help those similarly worried for theological compromise to remember the remaining condemnations from Trent and Lutheran confessions are still in effect; JD, par.1. Still, the Catholic Church’s anathemas only apply to the living since “judgment after death is reserved to God alone,” and this includes Luther’s; Joseph Ratzinger, “Luther and the Unity of the Church,” Church Ecumenism, and Politics: New Endeavors in Ecclesiology (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 2008), 104.lxiii The Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church, “Join Declaration on theDoctrine of Justification”, 5. Available at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_3110199_cath-luth-joint-declaration_en.html .lxiv JD 14.lxv JD 15, 17.lxvi Ibid., 20.lxvii Ibid., 21.lxviii Ibid., 25-27.lxix Ibid., 29.lxx Ibid., 31; Rom 3.28.lxxi Ibid., 39.lxxii John Paul II, “Tertio Millennio Adveniente”, 16. Accessible at https://www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/jp2third.htm .lxxiii Ratzinger, “Luther and the Unity of the Churches,” 105.lxxiv Heavenly Participation, 1-11.lxxv i.e., the rise of “being” as an absolute category to which even God is subject and therefore the antithesis of analogia entis, put forth by Duns Scotus; Ibid., 68-76.lxxvi i.e., a rejection of real universals taught by William of Ockham; Ibid., 80.lxxvii Ibid., 90-91, 93-94; Calvin, Institutes III.xi.6; III.xvi.1.