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.

54. Brief Analysis

The leaders of the church today insist that the intellect has to be held under obedience to faith. In fact, they say that true faith is a faith in the unknown — a blind faith, a faith of the night.

This is the first absurdity. Faith has to do with truth and truth has to do with faith. In order for truth to become part of our faith, we have to see it in its own light; otherwise what we are believing in could be false.

There are many further absurdities that flow forth from faith as the church today defines it: God the Father bore a Son from eternity. The Holy Spirit emanates from both the Father and the Son. Each of these three is a person and a god in his own right. Both the body and the soul of the Lord originated from his mother. These three persons, and therefore three gods, created the universe. One of them came down and took on a human manifestation in order to reconcile the Father to us and save us. We are saved through the assigning, attributing, and transferring of his justice to those of us who by grace have acquired faith and believe the absurdities just listed. Prior to receiving that faith, we are like a statue, a log of wood, or a stone. Just hearing the Word allows faith to flow into us. Faith alone has the power to save us apart from the works of the law, even if that faith is untouched by goodwill. Faith produces a forgiveness of our sins without our having to go through repentance first. On the basis of that forgiveness of sins and nothing else, even if we have not repented we are nevertheless made just, regenerated, and sanctified. Then goodwill, good works, and a restoration of wisdom spontaneously come upon us.

From the body of teaching based on the idea of three gods, these and many other teachings like them flow forth like illegitimate offspring conceived as the result of an ongoing illicit affair.