Whether the Gospel requires both faith and works.
Whether the Gospel requires both faith and works.
§ 28. Bellarmine responds: “The Gospel requires faith; faith requires works. Therefore the Gospel also requires works, if not immediately, then mediately.”
We respond. (1) Both premises are laboring under ambiguity. The Gospel does require faith, but not in the same way as the Law requires works, by way of coercion. Rather, the Gospel is the efficacious instrument through which the Holy Spirit kindles faith in people’s hearts. The Law does require works, but it does not give the power to do them; the Gospel requires faith but gives the power to believe. It is in this sense that it is called “the word of faith” [Rom. 10:8], “the hearing and preaching of faith” [Rom. 10:17; Gal. 3:2, 5]. Therefore just as the connection between what is related and the correlate is permanent,9 so also we can say that faith is required in the Gospel as something correlated, because faith is that instrument by which we apprehend Christ’s benefits which are offered in the word of the Gospel. Faith requires works; that is, true faith shows itself through works and produces good fruits like a generous and fertile tree. With these fruits it proves itself as pleasing to God and as dutiful to men.
(2) Thus though in a sound sense it can be said that the faith that springs from the Gospel requires works, yet from this it cannot and should not be inferred that either the Gospel or the faith which springs from the Gospel requires works to earn or accomplish justification, because they are not required as the cause or merit for justification but as the consequence and effect of it. To this pertains the common saying that faith has a twofold working [ἐνέργειαν]: one formal, which is seen in the Gospel and apprehends Christ with all His benefits and which thus justifies; the other effective, which shows itself through good works, of which the rule and norm is the divine Law.
(3) From ambiguous premises comes an ambiguous conclusion. “The Gospel requires works” can be understood in two ways: first, that it is the doctrine and rule of good works; that it requires new and more perfect works than those which have been prescribed in the Law; that it demands works by way of force. In this sense we reject the proposition. The second way is that the benefit of the Gospel is not only the remission of sins but also the renewal through which we are prepared for good works; that faith kindled through the Gospel necessarily shows itself through good works; that works are required of those who believe the Gospel. In this sense we tolerate that proposition after first explaining the misuse of words under which it labors.
1 I.e., matter; that from which something arises or of which it consists.
2 I.e., their aim, purpose, or goal. An end is the cause for which a doer acts or that for whose sake something happens.
3 It is “proper” when it always befits or belongs to something and befits or belongs to that thing alone.
4 See the Second Article of the Apostles’ Creed (Concordia, 16).
5 Lectures on Galatians (1535), WA 40/1:527 (cf. AE 26:343).
6 Read Deus with Cotta instead of Deum.
7 indulgentiae, or “pardon.”
8 Things or propositions are subordinate to each other when they do not contradict each other and one is categorized under the other.
9 Among the rules governing relations, Johann Micraelius states: “Related things are together both in nature and in recognition, so that when one is posited, the other is posited too, and when one is recognized, the other is recognized too.” Micraelius uses “father” and “son” as an example (Lexicon Philosophicum, s.v. “Relatio”).