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.

117. The faith of the new heaven and the new church in a specific form is this: Jehovah God is love itself and wisdom itself, or goodness itself and truth itself. As divine truth, or the Word, which was “God with God,” he came down and took on a human manifestation for the purpose of forcing everything in heaven, everything in hell, and everything in the church back into the divine design. The power of the Devil, that is, hell, had become stronger than the power of heaven, and on earth the power of evil had become stronger than the power of goodness; therefore total damnation stood threatening at the door.

[2] By means of his human manifestation, which was divine truth, Jehovah God lifted this pending damnation and redeemed both people and angels. Afterward, in his human manifestation, he united divine truth to divine goodness. In this way he returned to the divine nature that he had had from eternity, together with the human manifestation, which had been glorified. These things are meant by this statement in John: “The Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh” (John 1:1, 14). And in the same Gospel, “I came forth from the Father and have come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go to the Father” (John 16:28). From all this it is clear that if the Lord had not come into the world no one could have been saved.

The situation today is similar. Therefore if the Lord does not come into the world again in the form of divine truth, which is the Word, no one can be saved.

[3] For our part, the specifics of faith are these: 1. There is one God, the divine trinity exists within him, and he is the Lord God the Savior Jesus Christ. 2. Believing in him is a faith that saves. 3. We must abstain from doing things that are evil — they belong to the Devil and come from the Devil. 4. We must do things that are good — they belong to God and come from God. 5. We must do these things as if we ourselves were doing them, but we must believe that they come from the Lord working with us and through us.

The first two points have to do with faith; the second two have to do with goodwill; and the fifth has to do with the partnership between goodwill and faith, the partnership between the Lord and us. (On these points, see also §44 above.)

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).