115. The second memorable occurrence. Once an angel said to me, “Do you want to see clearly what faith and goodwill are, and therefore what faith separated from goodwill is, and what faith united to goodwill is? I will express it in visual terms for you.”

“Please do!” I answered.

The angel said, “Instead of faith and goodwill, think of light and heat, and you will see them clearly. Faith in its essence is truth that relates to wisdom. Goodwill in its essence is affection that relates to love. In heaven, truth related to wisdom is light and affection related to love is heat. The light and heat that angels live in are, in essence, exactly this. As a result, you can clearly see what faith is when it is separated from goodwill and what it is when it is united to goodwill.

“When faith is separated from goodwill, it is like the light in winter. When faith is united to goodwill, it is like the light in spring. The light in winter, which is a light separated from heat, is united to coldness; therefore it completely strips trees of their leaves, kills grass, makes ground as hard as rock, and freezes water. Light in spring, which is a light united to heat, causes trees to grow, first producing leaves, then flowers, and finally fruit; it also unlocks and softens the ground so that it produces grass, plants, flowers, and shrubs; and it melts ice, so that water flows from its sources again.

“The situation with faith and goodwill is absolutely identical. Faith separated from goodwill kills everything. Faith united to goodwill brings everything to life. This killing and this bringing to life are vividly visible in this spiritual world of ours, because here faith is light and goodwill is heat. Where faith has been united to goodwill there is a paradise of gardens, flower beds, and lawns; the more united faith and goodwill are, the more pleasing the gardens are. Where faith has been separated from goodwill, there is not even grass; the only greenness comes from thorns and brambles.”

At that point there were some members of the clergy not far away. The angel called them “justifiers and sanctifiers of people through faith alone” and also “arcanists.” We said the same things to the members of the clergy and added enough proof that they could see that what we said was true. But when we asked them, “Isn’t that so?” they turned away and said, “We didn’t hear you.” So we cried out to them and said, “Then keep listening to us,” but they put both hands over their ears and shouted, “We don’t want to hear you!”

Closing Thought from Jeremiah 7:2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11

Stand in the gate of the house of Jehovah and proclaim this word there. “Thus says Jehovah Sabaoth, the God of Israel: ‘Make your ways and your deeds good. Do not put your trust in lying words, saying, “The temple of Jehovah, the temple of Jehovah, the temple of Jehovah are these.” Are you going to steal, kill, commit adultery, and swear falsely, and then come and stand before me in this house that bears my name and say “We are delivered” when you are doing all these abominations? Has this house become a den of thieves? Behold I, even I, have seen it,’ says Jehovah.”

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.

4. Concerning justification:

(a) When that blessed fullness of time had come, the heavenly Father, the Father of mercies, sent Jesus Christ, his own Son, to the human race, in order both to [redeem] the Jews, who were under the law, and to allow the Gentiles, who were not following justice, to attain it, and all people to receive adoption as his children. God sent him forth as a propitiator for our sins through faith in his blood, not for our sins only but also for those of the whole world (Session 6, chapter 2).

(b) Nevertheless, not all people receive the benefit of Christ’s death, but only those with whom he shares the merit earned through his suffering. Therefore if people were not born again in Christ, they never would be justified (Session 6, chapter 3).

(c) The beginning of this justification is to be derived from the preexisting grace of God through Jesus Christ, that is, from his calling to us (Session 6, chapter 5).

(d) We are made ready for his justice when, stirred by divine grace and conceiving faith by hearing, we freely move toward God, believing those things to be true that have been divinely revealed and promised to us — especially this promise, that God justifies the impious by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, and that when we understand that we are sinners and are beneficially struck with fear of divine justice, we are raised to hope since we have confidence that God is appeased toward us because of Christ (Session 6, chapter 6).

(e) This readiness and preparation are followed by the process itself of being justified, which is not only a forgiving of our sins but also a sanctification and renewal of our inner self through the receiving of the grace and of the gifts by which we turn from an unjust person into a just person and from an enemy [of God] into a friend, so that we inherit the hope of everlasting life (Session 6, chapter 7).

(f) The final cause of this justification is the glory of God and of Christ, and life everlasting. The efficient cause is a merciful God who washes and sanctifies us gratuitously. The meritorious cause is God’s most beloved Only-Begotten, our Lord Jesus Christ, who, when we were enemies, for the exceeding goodwill with which he loved us, merited justification for us by his most holy suffering on the wood of the cross, and made satisfaction for us to God the Father. The instrumental cause is the sacrament of baptism, which is the sacrament of the faith without which no one was ever justified. The lone formal cause is the justice of God — not the justice with which he himself is just, but the justice with which he makes us just; namely, the justice with which we, being endowed by him, are renewed in the spirit of our mind, and we are not only reputed just, but are truly called just, and are in fact just, receiving justice within us, each according to our own measure, which the Holy Spirit distributes to everyone as he wills (Session 6, chapter 7, §2).

(g) Justification is a transferal from that state in which we are born a child of the first Adam, to the state of grace and our adoption as children of God through the second Adam, Jesus Christ our Savior (Session 6, chapter 4).