Does contrition free us from sins?
Does contrition free us from sins?
§ 78. (IV) “Contrition does not fill a person with sins and curses but frees him from sins and brings blessings.” He explains this more clearly (ch. 12, col. 1296): “By common consent Catholics teach that contrition is the cause of the remission of sins,” from the Council of Trent (session 6, ch. 6; session 14, ch. 4). “Most of the Scholastics teach that contrition merits the remission of sins congruously.”
We respond. If we could merit the remission of sins and life through our own contrition, Christ was punished for our sins either in vain or insufficiently [cf. Gal. 2:21]. For Scripture attributes the fact that Christ’s benefits are attributed to us not to contrition as an instrument but to faith alone (Acts 10:43; Rom. 4:3; and in many other places). If we apply the forgiveness of sins to ourselves through contrition as an instrument, we are not then achieving forgiveness without the Law and its works. But now “blessedness belongs to that man to whom God reckons righteousness apart from works,” as the apostle states in clear words (Rom. 4:6) and as will be taught in greater detail in its own place [On Justification through Faith (Commonplace XIX), §§ 150–83, esp. § 155].
But how does Bellarmine prove his thesis? (1) “The fact that a person sees that he is empty of good works and burdened with sins is not the effect of contrition but comes partly from humility and partly from the examination and recognition of his very self.”
We respond. Things that are subordinate and connected must not be put in opposition to each other. All these things pertain to contrition in order that a person may recognize his own deformity in the mirror of the Law, that he may grieve earnestly over it and humble himself before God, the most just Judge.
(2) “If contrition is the work of God, how does it flee from God and become the way to despair unless faith is added?”
We respond. Salutary contrition is always connected to faith, just as filial fear is always connected to the love of God. But now, when we declare that contrition is the work of the Holy Spirit, we are speaking especially about salutary contrition. The contrition that flees God in the case of the despairing happens only accidentally by the fault of a nature corrupted by sin, and in this respect the most holy divine Law is called “the minister of death and damnation” (2 Cor. 3:7) which “works wrath” (Rom. 4:15), “increases sin” [Rom. 5:20], etc.
(3) “The Ninevites were doubtful about the remission of sins, and yet they did not flee from God.”
We respond. Their doubts concerned not the forgiveness of their sins but the avoidance of temporal punishment [cf. Jon. 3:9]; nor did they lack faith, for otherwise they could not have pleased God [cf. Heb. 11:6].