Debate: Confession and Penance (Walter Martin vs Mitch Pacwa)

this evening John Ankerberg will examine what Roman Catholicism teaches concerning the doctrine of penance the Catholic Church says that after baptism if a man or a woman to miss mortal sins he loses his salvation in order to regain his salvation a person must come via the Sacrament of Penance Catholicism defines the Sacrament of Penance as having three parts first contrition that is a person must be sorry for his sins second a person must fully confess each one of his mortal sins to a priest and third he must do works of satisfaction such as fasting saying prayer almsgiving are doing other works of piety the priests give him to do according to the Catholic Church after baptism anyone who commits mortal sin and does not do penance will not regain salvation and will not be forgiven by God is Catholicism's doctrine of penance truly biblical is Catholicism correct in saying it is absolutely necessary for our person to do works before God will forgive him Protestants believe man cannot merit justification or forgiveness by working in cooperation with God's power if he could salvation and forgiveness wouldn't be totally the gift of God Protestants believe that Catholicism Sacrament of Penance infers that the sacrifice of Christ was not sufficient to atone fully for man's sin and that Christ's sacrifice must be supplemented by man's good works Protestants believe that it is solely the merits of Christ sacrificial death on the cross which are imputed or transferred to the believer that cancel out the sinners death that's why for Protestant justification and forgiveness take place in a single moment the moment the sinner through faith asks Christ for forgiveness of his sins however Roman Catholics believe that more than faith is needed in order for a person to obtain forgiveness they insist there must be both faith and works the Council of Trent declared anyone says that the good works of the justified person do truly merited increase of race and the obtaining of eternal life let him be anathema the Protestants respond only Jesus Christ can atone for man's mortal sins and he did it once for all when he died on the cross and completely satisfied the divine law what God desires in the sinner before he grants forgiveness is not worth the satisfaction or a punishment of oneself for sins the attendant but repentance which is a change apart a turning away from sin and a complete trust in the work of Christ for the forgiveness of sin tonight you'll hear both sides presented concerning how a person can receive forgiveness for sins committed is it by confession of sins to Christ trusting solely in his merit or is it by the Sacrament of Penance where a person must be contrite confess his sins to a priest and do good work before God will forgiveness welcome good evening we're talking tonight about some of the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church and we want to make it so that it's vital special for you in the audience this is something we're all concerned about when a person becomes a Christian in the Roman Catholic Church after baptism what happens when they commit a sin a mortal sin well there is the Sacrament of Penance that they say that a person must go through and that's what we're going to discuss tonight and my guests are Father Mitchell Pacwa who is an ordained Roman Catholic priest he is also a member of the Society of Jesus a Jesuit he has an earned PhD and is currently a professor at Loyola University in Chicago in Mitchell we're glad that you're here and my second guest is dr. Walter Martin director and founder of the Christian Research Institute in California Walter is the author of many books especially the classic book known by both Protestants and Catholics is the kingdom of the cults and Walter we're glad that you're here tonight too let me see if I can frame this for you if you're a Christian and you've sinned what did you do what did you do to get your salvation back if you're a Catholic because in the Roman Catholic Church if a man commits a mortal sin after baptism he loses his justification he loses his salvation and he must regain it now how Roman Catholic Church says the Sacrament of Penance is the way that you do it and it can it's it is involved with at least three parts contrition the person must be sorry for his sins and second the person must confess each one of his mortal sins fully to a priest and third he must do works of satisfaction such as fasting saying prayers almsgiving or doing other works of piety that the priest gives them to do now anyone after baptism who commits mortal sin and does not do this according to the Roman Catholic Church will not regain salvation and will not be forgiven by God and to before I come to my guest let me just get the official statements on the board here this is the Council of Trent penance if anyone denies that for complete and perfect remission of sins three actions are required in the penitent person namely contrition confession and satisfaction which three are called the parts of penance let them be an anthem or another part section eight but let them bear in mind that the satisfactions they as the priests would impose should be also for the avenging and Punishment of past sins or the holy synod teaches that the liberality of the divine bounty is so great that we are able through Christ Jesus to make satisfaction to God the Father not only by punishments voluntarily assumed by us for the punishment of sin or imposed at the discretion of the priests in proportion to the transgression but even by temporal scourgings inflicted by God and patiently borne by us and finally if anyone says that the total punishment is always remitted by God at the same time as the guilt and that the satisfaction of penitence is nothing else than the faith by which they apprehend that Christ has made satisfaction for them let them be an anthem on now we also have to make it clear that the Roman Catholic Church is not talking about the eternal punishment they are talking about the temporal punishment but even that has been a portent to Protestants dr. Martin I'm going to come to you tonight this is kind of standard knowledge among Roman Catholics that if they commit a mortal sin they must come via the Sacrament of Penance why is it important to Protestants and specifically we want to keep it in the area of what does the Bible have to say is this biblical is this true Christianity what's the evidence well from a biblical perspective there is no evidence that penance even exists at all except as a construct of Catholic theology biblical theology doesn't mention the word penance at all it uses the word tenth of your sin which means change your mind and the reason why Protestantism reacted and protested that the meaning of the word against this particular doctrine was because it hit at the heart of the finished work of Christ on the cross in first John chapter 2 the scripture specifically states that Jesus Christ is expiation or the satisfaction for all our sins not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world so by dying on the cross for our sins Christ paid the price once for all for all sin the Epistle to the Hebrews carries exactly the same idea that he offered one sacrifice for sin forever he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high so what Protestants object to primarily in the Catholic doctrine is trying to add to what Christ did for us on the cross by having the priests act in local Christos in place of Christ and to add to the merits of Calvary and this of course brings us right to the heart of justification by faith and right to the heart of the concept of the mass or the Lord's Supper and I think that's why Protestants react so strongly to it you said in the end of one of our programs on justification by faith that the system of salvation that is being offered by the Roman Catholic Church logically concludes that it's faith plus works would you say this also supports that yes I think that the Roman Catholic doctrine puts a great deal of emphasis does the Council of Trent on the subject of faith but it adds to this under an Anatomy I don't think people understand what that means but when the statement of Trent and I quote them again where Trent states that if you do not accept their concepts that you are anathema the Holy Catholic Church and a sanitizing that's the strongest word you can get New Testament Greek it means under the divine damnation literally the word that Paul used in Galatians chapter 1 so when Trent issued that on most Protestants are unaware of this they anathematized all Protestantism and Trent has never been rescinded in this area there have been numerous books written by Catholic theologians from the Catholic theology neither Pope nor councils can earn when they speak in matters of faith and morals as a result of that Trent still stands on the record and a thematized or cursing in the name of God all Protestants Protestants find that an uncomfortable position to be placed in father Pacwa what I want to come to you on is in your response Trent said this Sacrament of Penance is necessary for salvation this is this is vital to every Roman Catholic this is vital to every Protestant the Protestant that does not come via contrition confession and satisfaction and I want to call this conversation to the area of satisfaction we're going to come to confession in the next programs but this area of satisfaction if a person does not do this satisfaction because the Sacrament works Ex opera prado that is almost automatically by the doing by the doing of the works when the person does have contrition when he does have confession and when the priest gives absolution it does not take effect until he does his satisfaction how can you get away from the fact that you are putting a small s on your t-shirt up there you're a small Savior you're doing something that Jesus Christ was supposedly supposed to do all of it he was the savior the angel sudden Luke okay couple things first of all let me address Walter Rossi anatomy okay an anatomy only applies to those who know that this is true in other words that you cannot be anathematized if in your own conscience you think that this is wrong if it goes so radically against your conscience that you know it is it's you know no just just evil okay so in that sense the the anatomy is there and those for those who understand what we say and and say yes that's true and then don't do it okay so it's not an Anatomy you know a car blush and that we respect and this is you see this in Pius the ninth back in the nineteenth century and of in terms of something pre-vatican too as well as in vatican ii that we also do respect the contents of all Protestants and we do not anathematized them out of out of course so that is a very important keeping other invincible ignorance if they are not aware of this but those that are aware that read their Bible want to know first of all we're going to find penance in the New Testament we find the word repentance yeah and trick Christmas a couple things video now let me get back to the thing on satisfaction then we're going to get depends right we know from experience when we're forgiving it and this is Protestant or Catholic when we come to Christ for forgiveness of sin and we are truly repentant can we turn around from them we let them go and yet which one of us does not still have you know echoes of the sins we've already committed whereby you still remember what you did and it still is attractive you know someone who repents of sake you know that an act of lust that's that you know is it the sorry port they believe that Jesus is the one who deems a fourth but that does not remove the attractiveness of repeating the same sin no that's and it's not just lost it might be any other sin that's already okay now that's what we call the fullness pikake that is the ashes the remnant from the sin that Christ has forgiven how do you deal with that effect of your sins that's where the satisfaction comes in that it's for these effects of sins that remain within us by our own human experience everyday experience Oh into after we repent of sin and that that needs to be changed you want that removed from us that is not holy that is not good that is not from the Lord and has to be done away with the acts of satisfaction our car to process all that removal and the steps that are necessary for the removal to replace the attraction to sin with the things of God by arms giving and so on okay our prayer fasting that changes state exchanges places okay for that and that's a long process for anybody Protestant or Catholic in terms of this being something about the small s and that's being a savior as you see in the Council of Trent document the in Section six on justification anybody who says that they can do these good actions even after the sins are forgiven and do so on their own power and by their own ability let them be anathema that you we do not believe that a person does these acts of satisfaction without grace that it is precisely the grace of the sacrament of reconciliation or confession that is operative in the penitence so that they can do these actions of satisfaction and it is only Christ working in the person that makes them able to be effective if a person is acting apart from God's grace apart from Christ and trying to satisfy their know the Passons on their own in in a separate free price let them be anathema according to the Council of Trent that we don't do it apart from break it is only in grace that we do so Walter precisely at this juncture the error arises because in first John chapter one we are told if we confess our sins this is written by John to the ephesian church she was the elder at Ephesus if we confess our sins he not the priest Christ he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness all unrighteousness that would include any residual sin that would include any residual leftover thoughts of lust or covetousness or whatever it might be it says that if we confess to Christ Christ is faithful and just to forgive and to cleanse us from all our sins why is it necessary for me to go to a priest or any person to go to a priest to receive absolution from him and to go through the three stages that we are talking about when in the words of the old hymn jesus paid it all all to him I owe sin had left his crimson stain he washed it why do snow I confess to Christ Christ forgives me of my sins he cleanses me all by grace through faith what is the necessity am I having to go through what Trent says is necessary what Catholic theologians say is necessary when this scripture to which we must make our final appeal okay I'm going to break in right here we're going to take a break and when we come back father talk well you can give a full answer to that but stick with us we'll be right back we're back and if you just joined us we're talking about the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church specifically the doctrine of penance and that part which is the third part where you have first contrition then confession the third part is we make satisfaction expiation for our sins for temporal punishment if we don't were not forgiving father pockle you're going to respond to dr. Martin dr. Martin made a couple statements one being that you know why should you listen to Trent or Catholic theologians first of all you know Trent with merely restating what had been taught throughout the history of the church with the ones who came up with the new doctrine were the Protestant reformers not the Catholics it's not at all as if Trent had you know invented the idea of confession the only groups that had denied confession would be the Waldensians the Kothari and a few other groups like that in the in the history of the church but when we go back to the history of the church we see that in the earliest centuries Origen and even Tertullian you know talks about by a sacrament of that confession now it was very different informed public and it was it was public in front of everybody a couple things the confession of sin was done in private to the bishop sometimes he as matter of fact yes sometimes most often that was the case in the in Northern Europe proselytize by the Irish monks that was always the case in the Mediterranean world it was sometimes done in price and mostly done in private sometimes in public but that was rare you don't have many cases of that in the in the history of confession where the person actually mentioned it sends out loud but they did their penance in public that everybody did in the early church but it was also biased you also know from your church history that it's not the unanimous consent of the of the church fathers that they had confession the way you're talking about it and the way Trent is mapping it out if you look at the elucidation is under Tertullian itself you'll find that the east stopped it in 400 AD the West changed it to private and the Orthodox made it beyond in terms of form but that's one of the things that we also understand about the sacrament confession that we do not have any claim that the format of how it's done is the same we know that then you wouldn't even mind a person confessing to God as a matter of fact if a person is to make a good confession they need to do that it's not either/or yeah but it's necessary for the priest yet to hear it that's the difference it's not just to God as matter of fact also in terms of Catholic law it is necessary only when a person commits mortal sin and that was also the case in the early church we have then come back to that a little later on in terms of mortal and venial yeah the fact of I think all sins are mortal but the fact is that you don't have to confess been--you you can work those out by works of expiation - yes and that's right you can but the ones you must confess would be mortal sins and in the early church those are the ones that you had to confess okay we'll come back to church history in a bit but talk to the biblical evidence concerning what altering the thing the reason I had adjusted churches used to get it sounded almost as if Trent was making that up and that's not at all the case and that's the reason I think we're making it up we'll come back to it yeah the of the art I just gave you five things that they did make up that wasn't unanimous consent you can prove that in church history okay in terms of they were not unanimous consent in terms of those things being explicit ated and that's true with most church doctor but that's the form the Trent says it's got to be by the priest and well that was it was done by the bishop and nearly sometimes and it was voluntary and other times it wasn't even there is what the church spot most most but most often what you find in again throughout Peter or the church in terms of the places that mention it it is done to the bishop and he's the one that has the authority and the reason that they did that was difficult okay I want to come back to that the church by Church Fathers we get to the area of confession but really again come back most in the scripture yeah that's exactly I'm trying to get to the reason that they did it in the early church was because of the biblical injunction that Protestants do not keep because they don't have the authority to do so namely and the text abductor dr. Martin is so familiar with is in John chapter 20 and the basis of our understanding of fashion Jesus appears on Easter Sunday night in his glory comes through the locked doors and says peace be with you they're made he shows him a tangent seat he says that again peace be with you as the father has sent me so I send you so here he is giving them the power to do exactly what he did because he's got he has the authority to do that and then he said he breathed on them and said receive the Holy Spirit the priest does not forgive sins on his own human power by his own human wit but by the power of the Holy Spirit and if you forgive people since they are forgiven them and if you retain people since they are hell bound so that's the power of the priest to forgive sin is given by Christ on Easter Sunday night I believe in you see the st. Thomas that is grounded in the death of Jesus whereby he forgave from the cross and his death is the power of it and it's also grounded in his resurrection when on the night of his resurrection he gives them this authority now that authority was used by Paul for instance against America committed I got about two minutes left but we've got to verse on the board and the question I think this comes right to the point of the matter just like with the keys given to Peter and the power that's there sure there's a power that's given the question is what kind of a power is it a declaratory power to preach and proclaim the gospel so that when people believe and repent the fact is that they will be they will have their sins forgiven by God or is John 20:23 saying that you have to come before the priest and he here is a complete order of all of your mortal sins in order and he prescribes penance or here ascribe satisfaction works of satisfaction so that your sins will be forgiven now that's of course we got about a minute left we're going to come back to this fully next week but Walter get in here I to make the point here that Jesus said as my father sent me I send you the parallel passage to that as you well know Luke 24 where he appears in the upper room to them says that the purpose he's giving them this message for is that they might proclaim the Gospel and the remission of sins and through the preaching of the Cross through what he did now if you parallel that with the very passage that you quoted he isn't saying I am sending you in the sense that I'm going to make little gods out of you with the power to forgive sin as my father anointed me to be Messiah he's not saying that he's saying what I'm doing is I am sending you into the world to preach the gospel and the remission of sins just as I was sent to do that that was his commission okay you can see we're just getting to the essence of this so I hope that you'll join us next week we're going to continue to talk about how can you know that your sins are forgiven according to what the scriptures are saying so please join us them glad that you joined us we're talking about some of the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church and specifically tonight how is it that after a person has become a Christian in the Roman Catholic Church by baptism after baptism what if he commits a mortal sin what do you have to do we have to come via the Sacrament of Penance to have that mortal sin forgiven because in essence that mortal sin has destroyed obliterated the justification that you had within you you are without salvation you need to regain your salvation dr. Martin I'm going to come to you tonight the Catholic Church has said at the Council of Trent that we are able in the power of Christ not our own power but using and cooperating with his power but we do something with that power we are able to make satisfaction to God the Father for the punishment of temporal sin and we need to come back to that why do you find that important well the reason it's so abhorrent to Protestantism and to biblical theology I believe is because it's adding to the merits of Christ the Lord Jesus Christ with one sacrifice for sin forever purged our sins the Lord Jesus Christ entered the holiest of all with his own blood the Lord Jesus Christ made the one professor is not necessary for repetitive sacrifice is not necessary for anyone to stand between us and him he is the mediator between God and man when we were talking before in our previous program with father Pacwa he cited John chapter 20 as an illustration of who sends you remit they are remitted who sins you retain they are retained this assumes that Christ was at that time speaking to the 12 apostles the context is not that at all it's Christ speaking to the apostles is Christ speaking to disciples who are in the room because when you cross-reference it to the 24th chapter of Luke and to Christ's own Commission from the father the father gave him a commission to preach the gospel and when he preached the gospel if men received what he said Christ absolve them of their sins if they didn't he told them they were children of the devil and they remained in their sins that same power is given to Christians not to a priesthood but to Christians the second century Christians did not interpret that passage in fact the Greek Fathers dr. jr. manty points this out the great Greek scholar and authority on grammar in the New Testament he points out in his grammar book that the Greek fathers never cited John chapter 20 as proof of auricular confession or absolution or penance or anything whatever because it was not in their vocabulary and then we had also a quotation from Tertullian about Tenon's and the early church fathers I think is very interesting because Tertullian is in the second century of the Christian era and Tertullian is very clear in his position on the subject now he's an eyewitness in his elucidation the penitential system of the primitive days referred to in our author and here we get to Tertullian and to turian states particularly that voluntary confessions were made in the east of the West but with widely varied with widely various acceptance under local systems of discipline it also points out that the whole concept of the early church was one of confession publicly not privately and the reason they gave it up referred to in the author began when less public confessions were author on account of the scandals which publicity generated so it wasn't that the apostles were doing it and they were imitating it they weren't doing it they were doing it publicly as they did in Corinth holding the sins up for everybody to see it generated so much scandal and so much problem that then they decided well we'll make this an in-house type thing where you can come and talk about this without public scandal so what developed as confession penance and so forth was actually an evolution by change it was not by divine revelation so if Tertullian is stating this in the second century the Christian era and if John 20 and Luke 24 and Luke 4 are cross-reference you don't have any power to forgive anybody sins in the name of Christ is not necessary because Jesus forgives sin when we go directly to him surely we cannot believe for a minute that God would stop the power to forgive sin by himself and restricted only to a selected group of people if he did that he'd be limiting his own omnipotence and he's not going to do that he still forgive sin that's why John says if we confess our sins he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all that includes temporal punishment all unrighteousness that's the Protestant position and that's the direct opposite of the Council of Trent final pop I'd like you to start your response with this verse that's come up both weeks of first John chapter 2 1 and 2 ok because there you have a straight balled statement that I think we need to address that Christ is the propitiation he is the expiation for all of our sins that's right and our faith in the doctrine of confession and no way denies that as a matter of fact that's what we believe is a very basis of the power of confession that Jesus is the propitiation that it is not what the sinner does that phase the center it is Christ's death on a cross and his resurrection from the dead that redeems anybody who goes to confession and the power for confession is given to the priest only by the power of the death and resurrection of Jesus I agree with that what I'm finding hard to agree with is the fact talk to the fact of the satisfaction because that verse is talking to the point that Jesus paid all the satisfaction there's nothing else that he gives that as a gift and one of the things that I know vitamin does say yet last Timon and would repeat again today is that the ability to do the satisfaction is itself a Grace and it is the grace of Jesus Christ operative in the sinner in the repentance center that gives them the power to do satisfaction that is worthwhile so that it is precisely that propitiation of Christ actively working and this is and I think this gets at the difference between Catholic and Protestant understanding that Protestants see that as merely a declaratory act that Jesus just declares one to be forgiven whereas we think no it's that plus this working that out as a matter of fact as Paul says a faith that works itself out in love not a faith that is just in the head but one that is working itself okay so that that's the power of Christ to change the person inside out and it's rather than as being something that denies what we believe that's the basis of what we believe it it on the head again and dr. Martin please talk to this point of is the scripture talking about the fact of God working in and through us so that in cooperation with his strength we do something as Trent says we are able to make satisfaction versus the fact of what the whole thing of justification does revolve around we've talked about this in a couple of other programs is justification as the Reformers said that which is propitiated by Christ and then imputed to us because of the merits of Christ and there is nothing for us to do in fact we are warned not to do anything what do you think oh I think pretty obviously I would ask for the popular question if God declaratively said Parker you're a sinner but I can't you absolutely righteous this moment and I impute to you the righteousness of my son in totality mm-hmm would you not be forgiven I would be forgiven but one of the things that I would say about that word is that God does not give us a word that you know and this is where we have the strong reaction against Luther that for him the word of Christ is that you had the sinner who was like a pile of dung kala dong is the word here you yes covered over by Christ with life like snow and that's the way that that this imputation works and it covers us over but underneath what are you cow dung and the Catholics say no God's Word is a creative word and a recreated word so that when God speaks whatever he says is done and it makes it a change lieutenant so that the the power of God's Word to justify me is not a legal tie and this is where we get to the legal fiction problem right it's not simply some sort of a declaration and then it's left but rather it's a word that operates within reaches for the Catholic image using the Catholic approach to Martin Luther's image would be to take that same cow dung plow it under so God's seed in there and bring forth clients bring forth wheat out of that very car down by transforming it into something different than what it is and that's what God that's way we're not thank God we're just transforming up yeah but we're begging the question here because in the fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans David is a pile of cow dung he's already betrayed Uriah and his heritage he's already lied he cheated he stolen he's murdered and he's committed adultery and produced a bastard yes and he in other words everything is shot Nathan says you're the man you did everything say here's the pile of cow dung if there ever was one yes right yes and God looks at him and David writes his his Psalm blessed is the man him to whom the Lord will not impute since so despite that let me finish despite the fact that David commits the transgression and does all these things he's used as an illustration in Romans 4 of a man justified before God declaratory by faith okay before you answer we got to take a break here gonna be out of time for the whole cut stuff we want to come back to this thing all right so hold on we'll be right back [Music] welcome we're back we're talking about how does a man find forgiveness before God according to Roman Catholic theology and we're right to that point where it's very important that how is a man justified is there an infusion of grace that transforms the man so that the righteousness inside the man with the power of Christ is the state is the basis upon which God looks and says because you are just I will declare you justified or is justification that which Christ has done at the cross and the sinner comes and holds out his hand and God gives him the gift which is imputed which is transferred from one account to the other from Christ's account to the count of the center or better in union with Christ God looks at that sinner and because of the merits of Christ declares that he has the standing of righteousness and then begins the transformation but the man and his merits has nothing to do with God's declaration now Pilate Pilate Paco we need you to come on back and we're glad you're here dealing with the example of that schlemazel David right who had no sin with Bathsheba and then was caught okay by the Prophet Nathan he said thou art the man David repented and that this was you know and then it was forgiven and and the Prophet who was it the David just confessed to God by himself no the minister of forget of announcing the forgiveness of God was the Prophet Nathan first point we don't have to worry we don't worry about that because Trent said that the doctrine of penances they enunciated has nothing to do with you customers system so don't worry about that what about it just to have it clear that there are Old Testament students for this and that including the priesthood is also of the Old Testament was part of that that whole sense of there being intermediaries who would announce forgiveness okay but along with that what happens to David he still is going to be punished for his sin and I think he commits the sin its forgiven but he must still undergo the punishment I didn't believe that he would bring up this example because that's the classic one used throughout the history of the church for you know understanding that you must still do satisfaction for the sense I did it for a reason and good and thank you and there's the reason it is at least on our side is that he himself is still punished in spite of the fact that is forgiveness all right so he would not be before Walter answers let me ask you this so the basis of justification in the Roman Catholic Church is the fact that God analyzes looks at the center and sees that he's righteous within there's a transformation that takes place and because he is just he pronounces him just okay yeah so it's the basis of the righteousness oh the center yes with the cooperation of Christ but he actually have to be transformed yes God can't call a rose an ashtray exactly right it is precisely God's Word that is bringing that transformation about it is God's great only through Jesus Christ that brings that transformation about and Jesus Christ is the goal of that transformation so that it's Paul says you must put on the mind in the heart of Christ so that the trend the justification includes learning and being transformed by greater to think like Christ and to love like I understand all that but the basis is the man himself inside of himself he's got to be righteous otherwise God doesn't call him righteous that's like and it Dodger does it that's what we want to talk about is that what you think the Bible saying Walter no that's a direct opposite of it and there's the confusion of terminology here I chose David an illustration because I know very well that that's the new illustration in Catholic theology for the reason of pointing out that the temporal punishment that David should have received was death mm-hmm that's how he should have been executed at all but he was redeemed by grace because through the lineage of David the throne of day would be established in Christ through Bathsheba so he took the pile of dung the adultery of David and Bathsheba and transformed it by grace so that through it comes the Davidic line and the Messiah had nothing to do with the intrinsic goodness of either one of them they were adulterers and we don't know and we don't believe that it's part of the intrinsic goodness the mercy of God that by which the sinner is not executed you know when they commit the sin that that's part of God's mercy and not their meritorious works of the sinner that make that possible Trent teaches clearly that nobody can do any meritorious works nor can even one act of faith be meritorious for salvation it is God's grace that gives you the faith and Christ's redemptive death that brings you salvation not one person what I believe even if it is in Christ it's not my act that saves me it's Christ's grace working within that's intrinsic to session six yeah but you have to but let's let's come back to the whole thing of that a moment but I'm still stuck on the fact of what is the basis that the Bible is talking about for justification and maybe I could get an exegetical opinion from you dr. Paco here and because you are a professor at Loyola and concerning the Scriptures and would you give me the antonym for the word condemn in Romans 8:33 which reads this way it is God that blank I'll let you fill in the word who is he that condemneth it's not that justified all right so the anthem of condemn which is a declaration is justification which cannot be an infusion it must be adequate ory thing that God does only if you limit condemnation to being something that is merely declaration it is not condemnation by God also a word that makes you what it says it is condemnation by God means that you are in a damned state let's pick let's pick that up and let's let me give you another verse to see how that works out here he who justifies the wicked the scripture says now corn Roman Catholic theology of justification is the infusion of God's grace that would be a great thing right the Bible says this he who justifies the wicked it's hateful to Jehovah the whole verse goes this way he who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the just even both of them are hateful to Jehovah this is an actual Hebrew translation of proverbs 17:15 now I submit to you that if infusion is what justification is then God would not have said it was hateful to him but what he's talking about is somebody that makes a declaration about those that are evil and declares them to be just when they're not and vice versa it has got to be a declaration according to Scripture I'll go one step further is I would say in doing the word study that there is no place in the scripture that uses the word justification des cailloux is infusion of grace well I would disagree I want to effect that the 1:1 test I would think of it being first John chapter 3 where he says how high on the guy assume a big I assist in the one who does righteousness is righteous okay that says something about the very essence of that person and as a matter of fact or other text is where righteousness is not something that you receive but it's something that you do for instance in Matthew's Gospel Jesus our Lord Himself says in chapter 6 verse 1 that your righteousness that is your dekai Asuna that is your justification is your honor and your fasting and your prayer yeah but you're avoiding the topic of talking about where you have God in the context and man as a sinner all of the verses that talk in terms of justification in terms of redemption put it into those context let me give you one spot specifically that will nail you down in this I think and that's role as chapter four it's a very interesting thing here but to the one who does not work does not work does not cooperate does not work but believes in him who justifies not the just ones not the ones that have infused grace not who have a transform life but the pec towards the ungodly who justifies the ungodly his faith is reckoned as righteousness and where I thought you were going Walter as Romans chapter 4 two verses after that where David says blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven and whose sins have been covered here's old Luther's illustration of the dung he's been covered how blessed is the man who sins the Lord will not impute will not take into account I quoted that before the point also that I was trying to make is that we have strayed from the basis of justification while we're so busily engaged in talking in Trenton here on justification by faith we have to ask ourselves the question is it faith that justifies the man before God and if it is it becomes a work how is the man justified how is a man counted righteous in the eyes of God Romans chapter 3 24 and Titus three seven both say the same thing therefore having been justified by faith Paul says in Romans five cross-reference to being justified freely by His grace so in Romans 3:24 grace justifies in Titus three seven grace justified and so grace provides the justifying righteousness of God Walter announcer could you hold that thought and father Pacwa could you hold your thought there and we'll come on back to this because we're out of time I'm sorry we're just past that point we're talking about how is a man justified before God and so please stick in there we'll come back to it next week [Music]

Channel: Veritas Dipolog

Views: 8,828

Rating: 4.6641221 out of 5

Keywords: Sacrament of Confession, Confession, Confession to a Priest, Sacrament, Sacrament of Penance, Penance, Priest, priests, Roman Catholic, Catholic

Id: eZyVDPZ_XeM

Length: 45min 58sec (2758 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 27 2017