C. Common Concerns: Cheap Grace
C. Common Concerns: Cheap Grace
Since Newman interpreted the Evangelicals of his day as maintaining justification by mere imputation, he sought to show the integral connection of justification and renewal.866 As we have observed, Newman’s bone of contention was not with “imputation” strictly speaking, as much as a reduction of the doctrine of justification to imputation.867 The reason for the Evangelicals’ error, according to Newman, was the popular belief in justification by sola fide, which he regarded as a direct route to antinomianism.868 Newman suggests that this tendency is evidenced in the typical Evangelical exegesis of James concerning the necessity of works in justification, a teaching that Newman finds wholly inadequate.869
Vermigli recognizes the possibility that justification by faith alone can become a form of cheap grace. At the beginning of his “Justification is by Faith Alone” section of his locus, for instance, he emphasizes:
Further, this also is to be noted, as we have already taught, that we do not say that faith through which we are justified is in our minds without good works, though we do say that the same “only” is that which takes hold of justification and the remission of sins. The eye cannot be without a head, brains, heart, liver, and other parts of the body, and yet the eye alone apprehends color and light. Therefore, those who reason against us in this way commit the error of false argument: faith (as they say) justifies; but faith is not alone; ergo faith alone does not justify.870
Furthermore, Vermigli, like Calvin, affirms that the virtuous life (or good works) of the one who is justified in Christ is acceptable to God. He writes, “We have never denied that the works of those now justified are acceptable to God.”871 Nevertheless, for Peter Martyr, sola fide is not the problem; it is the solution, so long as it is rightly understood. Therefore, he goes to great lengths to argue that faith may be alone, but it must never remain alone.872
In their mutual concern to avoid “cheap grace,” Newman and Vermigli stand together in the conviction that the one who is justified will most certainly live a life that bears witness to the holiness of God.