80. In order to provide evidence from the Formula of Concord for what I have just said (for more on the Formula of Concord, see §9 above), I will add the following references. My purpose is to keep you from thinking that I am hurling unfounded accusations.

The works enjoined by the second tablet of the Ten Commandments are civic in nature and form a part of our external worship that we can do on our own. It is foolish to dream, though, that they make us just before God (pages 84, 85, 102).

Good works must be completely excluded from the article on justification through faith (pages 589, 590, 591, 704–708).

Our good works play absolutely no part in our justification (pages 589, 702; appendix, pages 62, 173).

Our good works do not preserve faith or salvation in us (pages 590, 702; appendix, page 174).

Our repentance, too, plays no role in our being justified by faith (pages 165, 320; appendix, page 158).

Repentance consists in merely calling on God, confessing the gospel, giving thanks, obeying our leaders, and doing our jobs (pages 12, 198; appendix, pages 158, 159, 172, 266).

Our living a new life, too, has nothing to do with our process of being made just (pages 585, 685, 688, 689; appendix, page 170).

Our efforts to practice a new kind of obedience play no part in our faith or our being justified (pages 90, 91, 690; appendix, page 167).

Those who are reborn are not under the law; they are liberated from slavish adherence to it. They are in the law but under grace (page 722 and elsewhere).

The sins committed by the reborn are covered up by Christ’s merit (pages 641, 686, 687, 719, 720, not to mention many other similar passages).

It is important to recognize that all Protestants, including both Lutherans and Calvinists, have similar teachings regarding justification by faith alone; see §§17, 18 above.

20. Brief Analysis

Although scarcely anyone has realized it, on these four points Protestants agree with Roman Catholics so closely that there is hardly any meaningful difference between them, except that Catholics unite faith to goodwill but Protestants separate the two. In fact, the agreement between them is so little known that even theology professors are going to be astounded by this statement.

The reason why this is unknown is that Roman Catholics rarely turn to God our Savior; they turn instead to the pope as Christ’s vicar, and also to the saints. Therefore they have let their tenets regarding the assigning of Christ’s merit and our being justified by faith lie dormant. Nevertheless, the points above in §§3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 taken from the Council of Trent (which were ratified by Pope Pius IV, as shown in §2) make it abundantly clear that these are among the tenets that are received and acknowledged by Catholics. Compare these with the tenets from the Augsburg Confession and the Formula of Concord in §§9, 10, 11, and 12, and you can see that the distinctions between them are not substantial; they are merely verbal. By reading and carefully comparing the quotations earlier in this work, the church’s theology professors will indeed be able to see (although not fully) the agreement between the Protestant and the Catholic views on these points. Some further illustrations of the agreement will be given in the following sections, so that theology professors, and also less highly educated clergy and lay people, will be able to see it.