Is Justification a One-Time Event or a Process? | 2nd Sunday of Lent

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Hey everyone,

 

Welcome to The Sunday Catholic Word, a podcast where we reflect on the upcoming Sunday Mass readings and pick out the details that are relevant for explaining and defending our Catholic faith.

 

I’m Dr. Karlo Broussard, staff apologist and speaker for Catholic Answers, and the host for this podcast.

 

In today’s episode, we’re going to focus on four details that are relevant for doing apologetics found within all the readings for this upcoming Second Sunday of Lent, Year C. The first comes from the first reading, which is taken from Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18. The related topic is two-fold: whether justification is a one-time event in the past or a process, and the nature of justification itself as interior righteousness. The next two details come from the second reading, taken from Philippians 3:17—4:1. The apologetical topic related to these two details are the veneration of the saints and the doctrine of hell. Finally, the last detail is found in the Gospel reading, taken from Luke 9:28b-36. The relevant topic there is communication with the dead.

 

Let’s get started with the first reading, which, again, is taken from Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18. We read,

 

The Lord God took Abram outside and said,
“Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can.
Just so,” he added, “shall your descendants be.”
Abram put his faith in the LORD,
who credited it to him as an act of righteousness.

He then said to him,
“I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans
to give you this land as a possession.”
“O Lord GOD,” he asked,
“how am I to know that I shall possess it?”
He answered him,
“Bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old she-goat,
a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.”
Abram brought him all these, split them in two,
and placed each half opposite the other;
but the birds he did not cut up.
Birds of prey swooped down on the carcasses,
but Abram stayed with them.
As the sun was about to set, a trance fell upon Abram,
and a deep, terrifying darkness enveloped him.

When the sun had set and it was dark,
there appeared a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch,
which passed between those pieces.
It was on that occasion that the LORD made a covenant with Abram,
saying: “To your descendants I give this land,
from the Wadi of Egypt to the Great River, the Euphrates.”

 

The line that I want to highlight is the author’s affirmation that Abram’s faith was credited to him as an “act of righteousness.” This is often a go-to text for conversations involving the topic of justification. Paul himself quotes this verse in Romans 4:2: “[I]f Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. ³ For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.”

 

Now, for some Protestants,[i] justification is a one-time event that occurs when we first express faith. As Paul writes in Romans 5:1, “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

 

Some argue that we know Paul is referring to an action in the past because the Greek for “we are justified by faith” (dikaiōthentes) can literally be translated as “we have been declared righteous.”[ii] Dikaiōthentes is a passive participle in a simple past tense, which usually refers to an antecedent time with respect to the main verb,[iii] which in this case is dikaioō, “justify; declare righteous.”[iv]

 

Moreover, Paul says this in the context of quoting Genesis 15:6, which is the line we’re focusing on here: “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness”[v] (Rom. 4:3). If Abraham was justified once and for all at the moment of faith, and Paul is drawing a parallel between his justification and our justification, it follows that we are justified once and for all at the moment when we profess faith in Christ—contrary to what the Catholic Church teaches about an ongoing process of justification.

 

The Catholic Church distinguishes between different stages of justification. In chapter ten of its Decree on Justification, “The Increase of the Justification Received,” the Council of Trent speaks of those who have “been thus justified and made the friends and domestics of God,” thereby recognizing an initial stage of justification in which a person first comes into relationship with Christ.

 

The council then says that such justified Christians “increase in that justice received through the grace of Christ and are further justified” through the “observance of the commandments of God and of the Church” and by “faith cooperating with good works.” This “increase in justice” that makes a Christian “further justified” signifies an ongoing stage of justification.

 

So, which view is right? Is justification a one-time event in the past? Or, like the Council of Trent teaches, does it involve an ongoing and/or future state?

 

The detail that we’re focusing on here, when read within the context of Genesis, provides us the answer.

 

As I mentioned, Paul quotes Genesis 15:6, which speaks of Abraham’s faith being reckoned as righteousness. This is not the first time Abraham was justified.

 

In Hebrews 11:8, we discover that Abraham obeyed God’s call “by faith,” and the type of faith that he had was a faith “without [which] it is impossible to please God” (v.6) and a faith by which “men of old received divine approval” (v.2). This means that Abraham responded to God’s call with a faith that justifies—a saving faith.

 

So, the righteousness that was reckoned to Abraham later, when he believed God’s promise in Genesis 15:6, was not his initial stage of justification. It was a new act of belief that God reckoned as a new act of righteousness.[vi] The translation of the Lectionary brings this point out nicely, saying that the Lord “attributed it to him [Abraham] as an act of righteousness.”

 

This reveals that justification is not a one-time event of the past. Rather, it’s a process with different stages of that justification.

 

For more information on this topic, check out my book Meeting the Protestant Challenge: Answering 50 Biblical Objections to Catholic Beliefs.

 

Now, someone might offer an objection here: “This seems to cut against the Catholic view that our works play a causal role in our justification during this ongoing stage of justification because Paul quotes this passage in Romans 4 as evidence that we are not justified by works, which, from the Catholic perspective, would apply to the initial stage of justification, which is not merited in any way by works.”

 

So, the question becomes, “How can Paul speak of being justified without works at a stage of justification the Catholic Church says we are justified by works?”

 

One possible answer is that when Paul quotes Genesis 15:6 he’s not intending to parallel stages of justification but rather is simply using that moment in Abraham’s life, which happens to be the present stage of justification, as an example of what it means for a Christian to be justified by faith, which at this part of Paul’s teaching refers to the initial stage. In other words, Paul is telling the Romans, “You’re not justified by works [which in context would be a reference to circumcision] but rather by faith, like Abraham was justified by faith without circumcision.” A comparison of what justifies—namely, faith, can be made without specification of when that faith justifies.

 

For example, our CEO at Catholic Answers Chris Check might say to a new employee just joining the staff, “Luke, please receive this gift as a token of my appreciation for you being on our team, just like I’ve given such a gift to Jimmy Akin,” even though the gift was given to Jimmy who’s been serving Catholic Answers for thirty years.

 

Similarly, Paul is speaking of a gift—justification, and how both Christians and Abraham receive it. But his emphasis is on receiving the gift regardless of the duration of “employment” in the Christian life.

 

Another possible answer is that Paul intends to teach that Abraham’s act of faith in Genesis 15:6 was in no way merited by anything he did prior to it. It was pure gift and thus the justification that he has on account of it is still without works, even though it refers to an ongoing stage of his justification.

 

Another thread to tease out here is the nature of justification. Notice it’s Abram’s faith that was reckoned as righteousness. Faith is a supernatural act whereby a person’s intellect assents to God’s divine promises moved the will. This means the interior powers of the person are properly ordered to God as their ultimate end or goal, which means such powers are rightly ordered. Thus, Paul can speak of Abram’s faith being “reckoned as righteousness.”

 

But if such interior faith is that which grounds the righteousness, it follows that our righteousness, or justification, is something rooted within us—that’s to say, it’s an interior righteousness as opposed to something that’s merely forensic.

 

So, Paul’s teaching here about Abraham’s faith being reckoned as righteousness is multifaceted when it comes to justification.

 

Okay, let’s now turn to the second reading, which, remember, is taken from Philippians 3:17—4:1. Here’s what Paul says:

 

Join with others in being imitators of me, brothers and sisters,
and observe those who thus conduct themselves
according to the model you have in us.
For many, as I have often told you
and now tell you even in tears,
conduct themselves as enemies of the cross of Christ.
Their end is destruction.
Their God is their stomach;
their glory is in their “shame.”
Their minds are occupied with earthly things.
But our citizenship is in heaven,
and from it we also await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
He will change our lowly body
to conform with his glorified body
by the power that enables him also
to bring all things into subjection to himself.

Therefore, my brothers and sisters,
whom I love and long for, my joy and crown,
in this way stand firm in the Lord.

 

One detail that I think is worthy of highlight, even if only briefly, is Paul’s instruction for his readers to imitate him and observe his model conduct. The related topic here, so it seems to me, is the veneration of saints.

 

One of the ways that we honor/venerate the saints is to look to them as models for our Christian life and imitate them. Here Paul is saying to imitate him. Therefore, we have biblical confirmation for honoring/venerating the saints, at least in the sense of looking them as models par excellence of the Christian life.

 

Now, our Protestants aren’t going to have a problem with this general honor that we give to the saints. But it’s still good to highlight as a reminder of what the veneration of the saints is all about: we imitate them so we can imitate Christ.

 

The other detail is Paul’s statement that the end of those who have become “enemies of the cross” is “destruction.” What does Paul envision here by “destruction”?

 

Well, look at what he contrasts such destruction with: the citizenship of heaven. He writes, “Their end is destruction . . . Their minds are occupied with earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven.” Given such a juxtaposition between “destruction” and “citizenship in heaven,” we have good reason to conclude that Paul envisions “destruction” as the opposite of heaven, which is hell.

 

Now, this doesn’t prove factual damnation—namely, that some will in fact be damned. It only gives us potential damnation for those who in this life are enemies of the cross. But it at least shows that for Paul damnation was not incompatible with an all-loving God, such as Jesus Christ. And this can go a long way when talking with a Christian universalist, who believes that all will eventually be saved because the doctrine of hell is irreconcilable with an all-loving God.

 

Finally, we come to the Gospel reading, which is taken from Luke 9:28b-36. I’m not going to read the whole thing, but it’s Luke record of the transfiguration. The line I want to focus on comes from verse 30: “Behold, two men talked with him, Moses and Elijah.”

 

The apologetical significance this has is that it provides us with a response to the common charge that we Catholics shouldn’t be “communicating” with the dead, like when we invoke them to intercede for us.

 

Here, Jesus communicates with Moses, who, according to Deuteronomy 40:5, died. Elijah, of course, didn’t die.

 

If communication with the dead, of any sort, were absolutely forbidden, then Jesus would be giving a bad example here. But surely, we don’t want to say this. Therefore, we can conclude that communication with the dead, of any sort, is not absolutely forbidden.

 

Now, a Protestant might counter that no human can initiate communication with the dead, which is what is done in the practice of invoking the intercession of the saints. Since Jesus is God, such initiation is within his prerogative. Therefore, he wouldn’t be leading us astray on the view that we can’t initiate communication with the dead.

 

Well, this sort of view doesn’t work with St. Peter, who initiates communication with the dead Tabitha in Acts 9:40. While she was dead, Peter says, “Tabitha rise.” If only Jesus can initiate communication with the dead and we can’t, then was Peter doing something wrong? Of course not! And we know for sure because God performs a miracle on occasion of this command by Peter, thereby confirming the permissibility of Peter initiating communication with the dead Tabitha.

 

Conclusion

 

Well, my friends, that brings us to the end of this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word. The readings for this upcoming 2^ND Sunday of Lent, Year C don’t sell us short when it comes to material for apologetical discussions. We have material for:

 

• The nature of justification: a) as interior righteousness versus mere forensic, and b) the different stages of justification,
• The veneration of the saints,
• The doctrine of hell, and
• The invocation of the intercession of the saints.

 

As always, I want to thank you for subscribing to the podcast. And please be sure to tell your friends about it and invite them to subscribe as well through any podcast platform that they use. You can also access the archived episodes of the Sunday Catholic Word at sundaycatholicword.com.

 

You might also want to check out the other great podcasts in our Catholic Answers podcast network: Trent Horn’s The Counsel of Trent, Joe Heschmeyer’s Shameless Popery, Jimmy Akin’s The Jimmy Akin podcast, and Tim Staples “1 on 1 with Tim,” all of which can be found at catholic.com. And if you want to follow more of my own work, check out my website at karlobroussard.com

 

One last thing: if you’re interested in getting some cool mugs and stickers with my logo, “Mr. Sunday podcast,” go to shop.catholic.com.

 

I hope you have a blessed 2^nd Sunday of Lent, Year C. Until next time, God Bless.

 

[i] See James White, The God Who Justifies: The Doctrine of Justification (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 2001), 89.

[ii] The Lexham English Bible, 3^rd ed., eds. W.H. Harris, III, E. Ritzema, R. Brannan, D. Mangum, J. Dunham, J.A. Reimer, and M. Wierenga (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2013).

[iii] See M.S. Heiser and V.M. Setterholm, Glossary of Morpho-Syntactic Database Terminology (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2013).

[iv] The Lexham Analytical Lexicon to the Greek New Testament (Logos Bible Software, 2011).

[v] See Jimmy Akin, “Faith and Works,” September 1, 1999, www.catholic.com.

[vi] See Jimmy Akin, “Whose Righteousness was Reckoned?” January 3, 2018, www.catholic.com.