ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CONFESSIONS 1 CON1-Q046 JANUARY 2005 CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY: CAPTION FIRST, INC. P.O. BOX 1924 LOMBARD, IL 60148 * * * * * This text is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communications Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. * * * * >> DAVID: Melanchthon frequently refers to such things as first grace, congruent merit, condign merit, the *habitus of love and the like in the theology of his opponents. How do these concepts fit into an overall understanding of salvation in the late Middle Ages? >> DR. CHARLES P. ARAND: You know, that's a very good question because students run across this kind of terminology throughout the Apology, and without a broader understanding of medieval theology on where these terms fit or these concepts fit, it's hard to grasp, perhaps, what Melanchthon is talking about. The first thing we need to realize is that medieval theology was not monolithic. Coming out of the Middle Ages, the church had any number of conflicting theological currents. In particular, there were two schools of thought that probably vied with one another for the understanding of justification. One school of thought could be referred to as the *via antiqua, the old way. This would be grounded in the Augustinian *Thomistic tradition, the tradition of Thomas Aquinas. The other school of thought was known as the *via moderna, the modern way. This was grounded, particularly, in the thinking of William *Ockham and Gregory *Beal. Now, we'll first take a look at the *via antiqua and its scheme of salvation. We have to realize that whether we're talking about *via antiqua or *via moderna, all of them work with a two-step or two-stage approach to salvation. The first involved a movement from a state of sin to a state of grace. The second involved a move from a state of grace to a state of perfection. Now in the *via antiqua, the movement from a state of sin to a state of grace began, basically, with one's baptism. In baptism, one was given grace, if you will. Now grace, here, is going to be thought of primarily as almost a substance that is infused into us. I might use the analogy, today, although it might be a little bit unfair, but I think it gets at the idea, the analogy of grace almost as spiritual steroids. Grace is something that's strengthens one and equips one to develop the habit of love, the habit of loving God. Or we can think of a booster shot, or grace as the knowledge of the gospel that is poured into us. Now, that involves the movement from a state of sin to a state of grace. Once one has been equipped with that grace, one can began practicing love, if you will, developing the habit of love. Now, why love? Love is seen as the greatest of all the virtues by late medieval theology, in part, because of Paul's statement, grace, faith, and hope abide. The greatest of these is love, or love, faith, and hope abide. The greatest of these is love. On a deeper level, it was considered that God is love, and if we are to be saved or to become righteous, we need to become like God. Therefore, we need to become loving people. So one now in a state of grace devotes one's life to developing the habit of love. And you'll run across that phrase many, many times within the apology. The hope is that by performing this habit of love, at a high level, at the end of one�s life, one might be declared righteous; that is, one will have achieved righteousness. This, then, will be called condign merit; or you might say, full merit; that is, one receives a person into heaven. He accepts that person, receives him, and beatifies him. Now, you can note that there is, you might say, a progression. Righteousness is something we achieve, but we also have to be very careful. We sometimes talk about Roman Catholics as seeking salvation by works alone. Well, that's not quite correct. They would rarely, if ever, acknowledge that outside maybe in the popular mind. One could never be saved by works alone. In fact, within the Thomas Aquinas tradition, they might say, we're saved by grace alone. Why? because the works by which we attain righteousness are grace-assisted works, grace-supported works. They are works that are assisted by grace and performed in a state of grace. Had God not provided that context, they would do us no good. Now, let's move on to *via moderna. As you recall when I talked about the *via antiqua, I said the movement from a state of sin to a state of grace begins with baptism where God gives us grace. And for Aquinas, this was given freely. Well Gabriel *Beal and William *Ockham asked the question: If we earn final merit, if we earn final beatification or final acceptance by God, if we earn that by doing acts of love with the help of God's grace, shouldn't we earn something by doing acts of love without the help of God's grace? So they sort of backed it up a step and said, what about the non-Christian who tries as hard as he can to love God. Yes, he's going to fall short, and it's not going to save him. But theoretically, one could love God with all one's heart, but it's extremely difficult. So they coined the phrase *faqua quad in est, which means do what is within you. Or you might say, do the best that you can. Or I might even contemporize it by saying; God helps those who help themselves. It might be analogous to telling my child, you have to clean up your room. Make it spotless, every item of clothing picked up, every window dusted, everything vacuumed including under the bed. If you do that, I'm going to give you $20. They clean their room. I go back in and inspect it and say, you know what? It's not perfect. You missed this, and you missed that. But you know what? You gave it good faith effort. I'll give you $10. Well, what they suggested is that by doing what one can in a state of sin or a state of nature, that God rewards that, not with final merit or final acceptance, but he rewards it with that first grace or that first dose of grace, for lack of a better word. In other words, that first dose of grace which Aquinas said is given freely in baptism, *Beal and *Ockham said, that is called congruent merit, that it is an appropriate merit or a fitting merit or maybe kind of like a half merit. It's like, well, you gave it your best shot. It deserves at least this. So doing what you can then acquires that first grace. Now you're in a state of grace, and everything else works in the same way that it did within the *via antiqua, or within the Thomas Aquinas system. You earn that first race for *Beal and *Ockham, now with that first grace, you can begin doing acts of love with the assistance of grace on the way towards acquiring condign merit, or the full merit, full acceptance by God at the end of your life because you have become a loving person. That is, you have become righteous. In that instance, the declaration of justification is really more of a descriptive word than a performative word. In other words, it describes what you have, in fact, become. Whereas, for Luther and Melanchthon, the word of justification is a performative word. It creates the reality that it speaks about. So when God declares us righteous, He, in fact, makes as a righteous, or we really are righteous on account of his word.