106. Brief Analysis

When the leaders and priests of the Roman church are ordained into the ministry, they swear to uphold the decrees of the Council of Trent. This is clear from the papal bull issued by the Roman pope Pius IV, on November 13, 1564, which presents the formula to be followed when declaring a sworn profession of faith:

I with a firm faith believe and profess all and every one of the things contained in that creed which the holy Roman Church makes use of. I likewise undoubtingly receive all other things delivered and declared by the sacred Canons and ecumenical Councils, and particularly by the holy Council of Trent — so help me God.

In that same oath they constrain themselves to believe and profess the specific teachings sanctioned by the Council of Trent regarding the assigning of Christ’s merit to us and our justification by faith in that, as is clear from the following words in that same papal bull:

I embrace and receive all and every one of the things which have been defined and declared in the holy Council of Trent concerning original sin and justification.

The contents of those teachings can be reviewed in the material collected from the Council of Trent in §§3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 above.

These principles established in the Council of Trent lead to the following conclusions.

Roman Catholics before the Reformation had exactly the same teachings as Protestants did after it regarding the assigning of Christ’s merit to us and our being justified by faith in that; the only difference was that Catholics united this faith to goodwill or good works (see §§19, 20 above).

The leading reformers — Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin — retained the Roman Catholic dogmas regarding the assigning of Christ’s merit to us and our being justified by faith. They kept those views as they had been, and still were at the time, among Roman Catholics. The reformers separated goodwill or good works from that faith, however, and declared that faith alone saves, for the purpose of clearly differentiating themselves from Roman Catholics with regard to the essentials of the church, which are faith and goodwill (see §§21, 22, 23 above).

The leaders of the Protestant Reformation do indeed describe good works as an appendage to faith and even an integral part of faith, but they say we are passive in the doing of them, whereas Roman Catholics say we are active in the doing of them. There is actually strong agreement between Protestants and Catholics on the subjects of faith, works, and our rewards (see §§24– 29 above). Clearly, then, these beliefs used to be as important to Roman Catholics as they are now to Protestants.

3. From the Council of Trent concerning original sin:

(a) The entire Adam, through the offense of his prevarication, was changed, in body and soul, for the worse. The prevarication of Adam injured not only himself but also his posterity; it transfused not only death and pains of the body into the whole human race but also sin itself, which is the death of the soul (Session 5, numbers 1, 2).

(b) This sin of Adam — which in its origin is one, and being transfused by propagation, not by imitation, is in each one as his or her own — cannot be taken away by any other remedy than the merit of the one and only Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, who reconciled us to God in his own blood, being made justice, sanctification, and redemption for us (Session 5, number 3).

(c) All human beings had lost their innocence in the prevarication of Adam; they became unclean and by nature children of wrath (Session 6, chapter 1).