A Catholic Revisits the Five Solas

In fairness, Sola Fide is precisely “Justification by faith alone.” We have to be careful as both advocates and opponents of Protestant theology can misstate what the Solas mean. It doesn’t help me or others to help them misstate their own position.

I only rejoice at full communion with the Catholic Church insofar as people believe they had no other choice in conscience and that they are fully ready to accept what the Catholic Church teaches about herself. Neither should coming into full communion imply one should have unrelenting hostility toward Reformation communities which I do not!

Our relationships to each other as Christians in various communities is changing, because I believe the Holy Spirit is doing a new, big thing. Suffice to say, I love you, especially if you love me/us, but even if you don’t, that’s my/our goal.

Restating the Solas

Let me restate the Five Solas as best as they are understood by those who hold them, and then we can talk about why Catholics don’t hold them in that form.

Sola Gratia: Believers are justified by grace alone, apart from any purported sacramental or priestly mediation by the Catholic Church (or others). Grace is immediate in the strict sense, but there is still room for sacraments as such. Just not an absolute necessity.

Solus Christus: Believers are justified by the saving work of Jesus Christ alone, especially culminating in the Cross and Resurrection, apart from any purported priestly or sacramental mediation by the Catholic Church.

Faith is a gift, and even participating in its fruits is no part of justification. Justification is the reality of being in right relationship to God; innocent, and by it, worthy of communion with God.

This sort of began with Sola Fide, but I am happy to repeat: Believers are justified by faith in Christ alone, apart from any purported priestly or sacramental meditation by the Catholic Church. Reformers could not abide “faith formed by love” because it implies an ability that fallen humanity lacks.

I also sense some confusion here, if faith is a supernatural gift that is truly possessed, but must be supplemented to move from mere knowledge to justifying, covenantal knowledge. This part of the dispute gets more interesting and complex as we go.

Sola Scriptura: Believers are justified in the knowledge of God in Christ by believing doctrines fully contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Other things like catechisms, confessions, creeds, and standards may be aids to understanding or articulating Christian faith, but the final rule of faith, and that in which believers must rest, is the Spirit of God speaking in the Scriptures.

Soli Deo Gloria: The justification of sinners, their sanctification, and eventual glorification, is for the glory of God alone. Catholic theology then and now posits an intercommunion between heaven and earth — and a participation by the faithful — that mutes the Fall, and the Creator/creature distinction. Prayers to saints and angels are forbidden.

Let me add that the rejection of images and much of what we call “sacred art” is in service to avoiding idolatry. Catholic theology in its way is almost opposite in its belief in the “enchantment” of the world. It’s all related to the different views of sacraments.

As a prelude to my articulation of Catholic theology, let me remind that I have articulated Reformation theology as those believers would do — as I once did myself — so that we can understand each other, and hopefully avoid distraction. I have done my best to steel-man it. If anything, I still fear that I understand Reformation theology better than Catholic.

Sola Gratia

We don’t understand unmediated grace. The grace most people receive was created for us. We see mediation in Christ as an extension of the hypostatic union. The mystical Body shares that dual reality with Christ Himself.

We derive our confidence of God working among us through the unique gifts of the Holy Spirit, given firstly to the Apostles and their successors the Bishops. We do not view the binding of Christ’s promises to the sacraments as restrictive; rather, to us it communicates His love.

In fact, the separation of the sacraments from justification and the holistic salvation leaves New Testament sacraments to be indistinguishable from Old Testament sacraments, per St. Thomas Aquinas. We grant the motivation in good faith was to combat the notion of automatic justification. Nevertheless, we have never believed or taught an automatic justification.

We agree that grace is the necessary thing for the salvation of anyone. Against Pelagius, we agree that graces are necessary for any communion with God.

Much more can be said, but we ought to say that God cannot declare something that is untrue. He is bound to make anything He declares to be actually so. Grace in a sense is relational, as is justification.

Solus Christus

We must start with a question: If what we call the “paschal mystery” really and totally accomplishes the salvation of sinners, how and why do they need to respond? What does rejection look like? Why not universalism?

Indeed, as we reply to Faith Alone, we must say that we cannot tell the difference between a justified sinner and someone who has the “common operations of the Spirit,” as the Westminster Confession of Faith has it.

Agape cannot merely be the fruit of justification, because it’s the substance of communion with God and any person. It cannot originate in us; the possession of agape constitutes justification; therefore, justification and agape cannot be separate processes. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit indicates friendship with God and justification.

I acknowledge the difficulty of faith as a divine gift that is not justifying, but it must be so. It would be horrible to lose faith every time one committed a serious sin! Indeed, indwelling agape may be lost, but only a few sins in themselves are injurious to faith.

Assurance is often a strong motive to believe that justification cannot be lost; this is understandable. But we tend to think of the moral certainty of a good Confession superior to any purported assurance declared by another.

On the other hand, what we do see in Reformation communities/churches in the preaching of grace is a willingness of God to restore — even subjectively — any sinner who turns back to Him. Given the fact that the Bible strongly encourages endurance, it’s possible we don’t need assurance of personal justification, but constant biblical reminders that the God who is Love is the one who doesn’t change!

I would argue that the Catholic Church simply formalizes the sanctification process. Indeed, for us, sanctification and justification are in a sense the same.

In practice, I would only fear for my soul anyway, if I had completely left the Church. To be in the Church is to be in the arms of Jesus. Let me say it again: To be in the Church is to be in the arms of Jesus.

Therefore, I say to all my brethren in Christ, no matter the distance, real or perceived, from full communion with us: Let your love for Christ and all the saints burn brightly, and we do the same! For we know that desire and love from the Holy Spirit draws us ever closer.

If and when any believer decides that they are being led to reconcile with the Catholic Church, we welcome it, and you. Though we lament anyone raised among us who leaves to go elsewhere, one bishop friend said, “Let them go and truly meet Jesus; they will return.”

Practically, everyone will face a problem that their present understanding or experience cannot explain. We must follow Jesus; He will never forsake us. God is but One. Are any Christians to say they know nothing of him? May it never be!

Responding to Sola Scriptura

This one is the crux of the disagreement. We say that the received Scriptures themselves never taught it; we further say that Old Testament believers lived with a spoken/written duality as normal; why should the Church be different?

Indeed, the New Testament Scriptures seem to say this. It is not the sheer number of Christian communities merely as an apologetic point that we say, but that most disagreement under the Sola Scriptura regime is in fact in good faith, we lament. Perhaps the principle is wrong.

Apologetics could go on endlessly here, but we will only briefly address Sacred Tradition as an obstacle: Because Mass/Divine Liturgy is so fundamental, we assert that Sacred Tradition is nothing but the fruit of prayerful reflection in community upon the life of Our Lord.

In fact, many brethren actually adopt what we class as Sacred Tradition as merely a “good and necessary inference” from Scripture itself. We have no objection to this.

Indeed, we vehemently deny that our practices have no Scriptural basis. We do concede that we ourselves have not been able to decide how explicit Scripture is on many questions, though “material/formal sufficiency” is a popular idea for some.

So long as Sola Scriptura remains at least a symbol of the Christian willingness to get as much from the Bible as possible, we can’t possibly object. But we see that the hermeneutical process seems to lead away from full communion, and this is sad. Perhaps it’s just inertia.

We say with St. Jerome that ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ, however, and we do celebrate true biblical preaching everywhere.

It was not private judgment as such that caused me to question Sola Scriptura, but the application of the “regulative principle of worship” by different people in very similar denominations that caused me to question it. The so-called RPW is the belief that worship elements must not go beyond what is authorized by the Bible.

It’s often fractious, and I might say some were uncharitable toward others, but I couldn’t say they were not earnest. The regulative principle of worship applies specifically to the corporate liturgy. If we cannot come to agree here, using the Bible, is it even reasonable to use the Bible as a final source of authority?

I still remain ready to celebrate the loving hearts of faithful Christians everywhere, but I cannot say that God inspired their mutually exclusive dogmas, even if seemingly minor. We cannot fully celebrate variations on a common theme, if we don’t know the theme.

The principal vocation of any Christian, after becoming a Christian, is to learn the will of God, and do it, without reservation. “Maria von Trapp” through Julie Andrews taught a lot of us that in 1965! And she’s definitely right about it.

Let me bring it home: if the Catholic Church enjoys no special protection as the Church, because it is not the Scriptures, then no other body of people does, either. Therefore, their dogmas in their very particularity have no reasonable likelihood of being true!

Naturalism doesn’t come by malice; it comes from an inability to find the truth of God, as distinct from my opinions. Divine faith must be refreshed from the Divine Source. If you cannot know dogmatic truth right where you live, it may not seem like it, but you’re in trouble.

I saw a Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod pastor tweet that 1 percent of the US was Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. He added cheekily, “Only 99 more to go!” Who has the theme? Even if I hold no malice toward anyone singing a similar song, I had better find it.

We Catholics have seen a disturbing tendency to confuse disunity and dogmatic uncertainty with mystery. In the end, this doesn’t serve any of the Christian faithful.

Even if we cannot by force of argument or anything else drag every Christian into submission to Pope Leo XIV, that Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod pastor is a bit like “Pope Michael” in the Midwest: we may not know who the visible head of the Church is, but we know it’s not him.

Hilariously enough, all the foregoing for some time is grouped under Sola Scriptura. But it’s the fundamental principle of a Reformation hermeneutical process. All our questions must come out there, essentially, until and unless we abandon the principle.

A point I may return to later is one I will conclude now: a hermeneutic of continuity as applied to Christian history for me and many others is rooted in the faithfulness of God, since redemptive history in the Bible is rooted in the same thing.

We think we can account for human sin whilst telling that story, and that’s honestly all anyone could ask, even if they remain unconvinced. The great French theologian Rene Latourelle wrote Christ and the Church: Signs of Salvation to essentially answer this.

If sin and wrath don’t detract from God’s glory, why would sin—despite the vexation it causes— be a blemish against the Church?

Soli Deo Gloria

This is an appropriate place to turn to the final Sola: Soli Deo Gloria. “For the glory of God alone.” We appreciate and affirm the readiness to give God all the glory He is due, as it is written: “My glory I shall not share with any other.”

We answer that, His intrinsic glory cannot be diminished. He shares a glory with us, to profit us for salvation. The Roman Rite expressly declares, “since our praise adds nothing to your majesty, but profits us for salvation.” Shared participation and glory is for fellowship. Koinonia, in the Greek.

Most of the objections to theological participation and images fail to account for the uniqueness of the Incarnation, and its permanent impact on Christian life. There is an appreciation for a literary and artistic Catholicism among many believers, but it’s irrevocably tied to Catholic liturgy and theology.

If “cultural Catholicism” has any positive connotations, they have benefited all of us. There is an unbreakable link between Heaven and Earth.

Someone said, “The glory of God is Man, fully alive.” We also agree with the writer who said, “Beauty will save the world.” It did, it is, and it will again. Amen.