23. The Council of Trent has the following to say in regard to the faith that makes us just: The perpetual consent of the Catholic Church has been that faith is the beginning of human salvation, and the foundation and root of all justification. Without faith, it is impossible to please God and to come into the company of his children; see §5 a above. The same document also says that faith comes from hearing the Word of God; see §§4 d, [8].

As you can fully see from statements given above in §§4, 5, 7, and 8, that Roman Catholic council united faith and goodwill or faith and good works. The Protestant churches, named for the founders mentioned above, separated faith and goodwill or good works, however, and declared that the ingredient that actually saves us is faith and not goodwill or good works; they separated the two so as to differentiate themselves from Roman Catholics with regard to goodwill and faith, since these two are the essential characteristics of the church. I have heard this assertion a number of times from the founders of the Protestant churches themselves.

I have also heard from them that they reinforced this separation [of faith and goodwill] with arguments such as the following: On our own, none of us can do the type of good things that contribute to our salvation; we cannot fulfill the law either. They also separated faith and goodwill to prevent our own sense of merit (which arises from doing good works) from becoming part of our faith.

From the statements presented from the Formula of Concord in §12 above it is clear that the points just made were the origins and purposes behind the Protestant denial that good actions and goodwill play any role in our acquisition of faith and therefore of salvation. The following are among the statements presented there: Faith actually does not make us just if it has been formed through acts of goodwill, although Catholics say it does; see §12 b. For many reasons we must reject the proposition that good works are necessary for our salvation. One reason is that Papists adopted these views in support of a bad cause; see §12 h. People ought to reject the decree of the Council of Trent [and whatever else is used to support the opinion] that our good works preserve and maintain our salvation and faith; see §12 m. Not to mention many other such statements in the Formula of Concord.

In the following sections [§§24– 27] you will see that Protestants do in fact unite faith and goodwill and attribute to them a shared power to save; the only difference between the Protestant and the Roman Catholic views concerns how our good works come into existence.

33. Why was the Athanasian Creed and its statements about a trinity of persons particularly responsible for leading to the idea of three gods? Because the word “person” leads to that idea, and also because the following words in that creed sow this notion: “The Father is one person, the Son another, and the Holy Spirit another.” Also the statement a little further on: “The Father is God and Lord, the Son is God and Lord, and the Holy Spirit is God and Lord.” The statement mainly responsible, however, is the following: “Just as Christian truth compels us to confess each person individually as God and Lord, so the catholic religion forbids us to say that there are three gods or three lords.” The thrust of these words is that because of Christian truth we should confess and acknowledge three gods or lords, but because of the catholic religion we are not allowed to say or name three gods or lords. Therefore we should have the idea of three gods or lords but not confess them orally.

Nevertheless, the trinity as taught in the Athanasian Creed is in harmony with the truth, provided that in place of a trinity of persons you substitute a trinity in one person — the trinity that exists within God the Savior Jesus Christ (see Teachings for the New Jerusalem on the Lord, published in Amsterdam in 1763, §§55– 61).