C. The Sacramental Framework of Justification
C. The Sacramental Framework of Justification
Newman assigned instrumental value to the sacraments. Accordingly, “Justification comes through the Sacraments; is received by faith; consists in God’s inward presence; and lives in obedience.”714 Against the low-church Evangelicals of his day, who tended to regard sacramental instrumentality as a “yoke on the necks of the disciples,” that “obscures the free grace of the Gospel,”715 Newman contends that sacramental rites actually inculcate Christian faith.716 In arguing this case, he cites a catena of biblical examples, including the empowering presence of angels, Naaman bathing in the Jordan, the Brazen Serpent, and the Mount of Transfiguration.717 In each of these instances, divine grace is imparted through a tangible form and effects actual change in the recipient, not simply a legal fiction. From this premise, Newman argues that Protestants fail to understand how justification is properly mediated and manifested, a fact that is allegedly betrayed by their inadequate exegesis of James’s teaching on the necessity of “works” in justification.718
Controversy surrounding the sacraments was a major reason for Newman’s composition of the Lectures on Justification (1838). The “Advertisement” to the original edition cites disagreement over their proper form and function, particularly their God-ordained role as instruments of grace, as a primary purpose for delivering the lectures and composing the volume.
The present Volume originated in the following way: It was brought home to the writer from various quarters, that a prejudice existed in many serious minds against certain essential Christian truths, such as Baptismal Regeneration and the Apostolical Ministry, in consequence of a belief that they fostered notions of human merit, were dangerous to the inward life of religion, and incompatible with the doctrine of justifying faith.719
It is noteworthy that Newman refers to the issue as consisting of “essential” Christian truths, and that he capitalizes “Baptismal Regeneration” and “Apostolical Ministry.” Because these rites emerge from Christ’s incarnation and in some mystical sense possess divine character, they are, for Newman, essential. When Newman reached this conclusion, his doctrine of justification changed drastically, moving from a Calvinist orientation to a growing emphasis on the efficacy of the sacraments.720 According to Sheridan, Newman first went public with this belief in 1828, preaching at St. Mary’s on the spiritual influence of baptism.721 In the following years, Newman became more confident of his position and by 1833 his theological shift was complete.722 No longer could “faith alone” exclude sacramental instrumentality.
The challenge for Newman as an Anglican was the Thirty-Nine Articles’ eleventh article, which asserted that “we are justified by Faith only,” along with the Book of Common Prayer’s Homily of the Passion for Good Friday, which stated that “Faith is the one mean and instrument of justification.”723 Newman accepted these statements at face value, agreeing that genuine faith is the sole instrument by which one is justified over other graces such as love and hope. He then made a further clarification that had the effect of thwarting the Anglican position of sola fide, and, to his thinking, sanctioned the practice of baptismal regeneration. Faith, he asserted, is “the sole internal instrument, not the sole instrument of any kind.”724 Such a distinction is an important underpinning to Newman’s doctrine.
There would be nothing inconsistent, then, in Faith being the sole instrument of justification, and yet Baptism also the sole instrument, and that at the same time, because in distinct senses; an inward instrument in no way interfering with an outward instrument. Baptism might be the hand of the giver, and Faith the hand of the receiver. However, this is not the exact relation of Faith to baptism, as is plain for this reason—that Baptism occurs but once, whereas justification is a state, and Faith “abides.” Justification, then, needs a perpetual instrument, such as faith can be, and Baptism cannot. Each, then, has its own office in the work of justification; Baptism at the time when it is administered, and faith ever after.725
The Anglican Newman was prepared to accept and even use the language of “faith only” as a “lively mode of speech [figurative] for saying that we are justified neither by faith nor by works, but by God only.”726 He found this usage in Philip Melanchthon, in the Homilies, and in Bishop George Bull, for example, but he believed that “it is more suited to the Schools, than to the taste of a people like the English at the present day.”727 Be that as it may, Newman’s interpretation of sola fide is a definite departure from the classic formulation, first expressed by Luther, “propter Christum per fidum”—a position aimed at safeguarding justification by iustitia aliena. In Newman’s vision, faith is more than the means by which one grasps Christ (fides apprehensiva);728 it represents, rather, a complex set of activities that include the sacraments, love, and obedience.
While then we reserve to Baptism our new birth, and to the Eucharist the ultimate springs of the new life, and to Love what may be called its plastic power, and to Obedience its being the atmosphere in which faith breathes, still the divinity appointed or (in other words) the mysterious virtue of Faith remains. It alone coalesces with the Sacraments, brings them into effect, dissolves (as it were) their outward case, and through them unites the soul to God.729
Quoting Hebrews 11:1, Newman defines faith as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”730 This “substance” of faith, according to Newman’s protracted exposition, is predicated on the “unseen” and “hoped for” end, and therefore resists simple definition. In other words, faith remains undefined until it seizes upon its proper object, which, for the Christian, is the living Christ.731 For the patient reader, it eventually becomes clear that this is the burden of Newman’s argument: to connect faith with the presence of Christ.732 Thus, faith is not mere assent of the mind (assensus), as Catholics defined it; nor is it simply trust (fiducia) as promulgated by Luther—it is union with Christ.733 Whether this union comes through baptism, the inward instrument of faith (following baptism), or by the symbols that represent grace (i.e., obedience and hope), faith is manifest communion with Christ.734 After a great deal of parsimony, the closest Newman comes to explicating a positive definition is, “Salvation by faith only is but another way of saying salvation by grace only.”735 What may seem unnecessarily opaque and subtle in Newman’s definition, is more intelligible in the light of his doctrine of justifying presence.