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.

79. As predicted, there is such great darkness in the Christian denominations of today that during the day there is no light from the sun, and during the night there is no light from the moon or the stars. The one and only cause of this is the teaching that we are justified by our faith alone. This teaching presents faith as the sole means of being saved, although it also asserts that no one has ever seen a sign that this faith is flowing in, progressing, making a home, working, or achieving any results in us. We are told that this faith has nothing to do with our obeying the law of the Ten Commandments, or our goodwill, good works, repentance, or efforts to live a new life — these actions have no impact whatever on our faith; instead these actions arise spontaneously, but are completely useless for preserving our faith or gaining us salvation.

This teaching holds that faith of this kind grants the reborn, or those who have received their badge of freedom, exemption from being subject to the law. In addition, Christ covers up their sins before God the Father. God the Father then forgives those sins (since he has not seen them) and bestows upon these people renewal, sanctity, and eternal life. These thoughts and many others like them lie at the core of this teaching.

Its outward features remain outside this core; they are the activities of goodwill, good works, acts of repentance, and the following of the law, which are actually extremely valuable. Christian authorities present them, however, as lowly, humble servants; faith is the lady of the house. As servants, they are allowed to follow along behind her, but not to have any contact with her. Nevertheless, because these preachers and teachers are aware that lay people are counting on these activities as well as their faith to save them, they take great care to ensure that these topics are included in their sermons and conversations. They even pretend to combine these activities with, and find a place for them in, the process of justification. They do so, however, only to please the ears of the crowd and to keep their own oracular pronouncements from sounding too much like riddles or sorcery.