The name Jesuits was first used by Calvin and others to designate the Roman Catholic order called The Society of Jesus, founded in 1534 by the Spanish noble Ignatius Loyola. The pope formally recognized the new order in 1540.1
After two painful operations on a leg injury received in battle, Ignatius was convinced that his career as a soldier had ended.
While in the hospital, in fits of fever because of his injury, he is said to have received visions of the virgin Mary, and he vowed his life to the service of the church.2 The Protestant historian Wylie says that "he who lay down on his bed the fiery soldier of the emperor rose from it the yet more fiery soldier of the pope."3
The Society of Jesus became a totalitarian institution4 demanding complete obedience to an infallible church and an infallible pope.5 Their constitution demanded the rejection of "all opposing opinion or judgment," including their own.6
This made the Jesuits "a weapon by which not only was the Reformation checked, but a 'Counter-Reformation' was organized which regained for Rome much that she had lost." 7 "And it must be con fessed," says Wylie, "that these new soldiers did more than all the armies of France and Spain to stem the tide of Protestant success, and bind victory once more to the banners of Rome."8
The Germans had demanded a free council to address the issues raised by the Reformers. The emperor Charles V, who wanted to unite his empire, agreed. He knew that many able bishops wanted re forms, and also that the pope was not indifferent to their requests. But he had not reckoned on the Jesuits.
The Society of Jesus was but five years old when the council met at Trent, in northern Italy in 1545. The maxim of the society was the relentless suppression of heresy.
They sought no compromise with the Reformers. It was Lainez, one of Loyola's early disciples and his successor as head of the society, who "made it his business to prevent the council making any concessions to the Protestants. His address, his subtlety and tenacity, gave him great influence" against liberal Roman Catholic bishops. He persuaded "the council to grant no doctrinal reforms."9
The Council of Trent met sporadically from 1545 to 1563 and consisted of 25 sessions. Its success in restoring coherence to Catholicism (now, properly "Roman" Catholicism) made permanent the split in Christendom. It provided guidelines for a major offensive to win back the part of Europe that became Protestant. It helped define the areas of future operation for the Jesuits, who were the epitome of the Counter-Reformation.
"It is not often realized," writes one historian, "how much of modern Catholicism, as we know it, springs from no farther back than Trent." 10 The influence of Trent lasted right through until the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), when some significant reforms took place.11
Two views of salvation
Out of the Reformation came two views of salvation. On the one hand, the Catholic view, formulated by the Council of Trent, was predicated on ecclesiastical tradition. On the other hand, the view of the Reformers was based on Scripture. The outcome of the Council of Trent, for the Catholic Church, was largely the result of a Jesuit influence, largely steeped in established, traditional formulations.
On January 18, 1562, at the opening of the final period of the council, the arch bishop of Reggio declared that church tradition had authority over Scripture. He cited as evidence, among other things, the change of the day of worship from the seventh to the first day of the week.12 While Trent emphasized tradition, the Reformers insisted on Scripture.
The fundamental issue of the Reformation was the doctrine of justification by faith. 13 The question was, How can a sinner be just before God?
This question should interest Adventists on two counts: first, because the basis of the three angels' messages is the "everlasting gospel" (Rev. 14:6); and second, because of our emphasis on the judgment. We could put the question another way: How can a sinner stand before God's holy law in the judgment and be acquitted? The soteriological views that came out of the Reformation and the Council of Trent gave two radically different answers.
Four areas of disagreement on the subject of justification stand out: (1) the meaning of justification, (2) the basis of God's declaring a sinner righteous, (3) the means by which a person is justified, and (4) the effect of justification. 14
A fifth area of disagreement, which is really at the root of the other differences, was over the understanding of the nature of sin and human depravity. 15
Comparison between the two views
1. The meaning of justification. "Justification," Trent said, "is not only remission of sins but also sanctification and renovation of the interior man.'" "God cannot consider one just or nonsinner without making him just." Trent confused justification with sanctification.16
On the other hand, the Reformers taught that to justify meant "to declare," "to credit," or "to account righteous." "It is a forensic judicial change in relation to God." 17
2. The basis of justification. What many do not realize is that for both Protestants and Catholics, salvation is by grace alone. 18 Catholics believe that the "whole of justification is the work of God's grace." 19 What, then, is the difference?
For the Reformers, the basis of justification, of God's acceptance and declaration that we are righteous, was the perfect life and death of Jesus imputed, credited, counted, to the believer an act of grace for us. It was based on a righteousness that is totally outside of the believer an "alien righteousness."20 Luther said, "Believers inwardly are always sinners; therefore they are always justified from without."21
On the other hand, for the Catholics at Trent, justification was on the basis of an infused, or imparted, inherent righteousness "poured forth in their hearts by the Holy Ghost" grace within.22 It was based on the grace of Christ in the believer through the Holy Spirit. This, they said, is God's gift of grace that justifies.
3. The means of justification. The fundamental argument of the Catholic position at Trent was to deny that we are justified by faith alone on the basis of the merits of Christ.Trent declared that the means of justification was by God making us righteous "through re birth in Christ" and the "infusion" of righteousness in sanctification through the Holy Spirit.23 Imputed righteousness was said to mean imparted righteousness "by which He makes us just." "Imputation of... the merits of Christ in fact takes place in the infusion [impartation, bestowal] of charity."24
For the Reformers the means of justification was faith alone in the completed work of Christ plus nothing. Luther said, "Wherefore God doth accept or account us as righteous only for our faith in Christ."25
4. The effect of justification. For the Re formers, the effect of justification was full and complete pardon and acceptance the moment a sinner believed in Christ. Nothing else could be added to justify the sinner. Regeneration and sanctification were the immediate fruit. While obedience was the wholehearted response of the believer, perfect obedience was impossible because of his or her sinful nature.26
For the Catholics, justification was in complete, being based on sanctification, and it could be increased by good works. They declared that it was possible for the justified to perfectly keep the commandments of God.27
5. Sin and depravity. The basic difference between the two views was and is in the understanding of sin and depravity. The Catholic position externalized sin and taught that depravity is curable in this life.28 In other words, sinless perfection and complete obedience are possible in this life through indwelling righteousness.
Taking its starting point from Thomas Aquinas, who taught an incomplete view of the Fall, the teaching of Trent insisted that "the will was fallen or corrupted but the intellect was not affected."29 In justification, human sin is not merely covered but actually eradicated.
In contrast, the Reformers believed that sin is what we are our disposition and that depravity is total. That is, every area of our being was affected by the Fall.30 The final effect will not be eradicated until glorification.
Subtle shift at Trent
A significant, subtle, but often unnoticed shift took place in the Catholic doctrine of justification at the Council of Trent. Trent's teaching was not the crude legalism that Luther encountered years be fore when Tetzel was selling indulgences, whereby it was believed people could purchase forgiveness. The Reformation had spread too widely for that to be accepted, even by the bishops.
What Trent did was to substitute the work of the Holy Spirit for the work of Christ as Savior, thus making the Holy Spirit our justifier instead of Christ. Trent made the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in the new birth and sanctification (God's gift of grace in us), the basis of justification instead of the completed work of Christ.31
While the work of the Holy Spirit is as necessary for the plan of salvation as the work of Christ for us, the Holy Spirit is not our justifier and our Savior Jesus is. Atonement, mediation, and intercession are the special work of Jesus, while sanctification and regeneration is the special work of the Holy Spirit. 32
Just as Jesus and the Holy Spirit are inseparable and yet distinct, so justification and sanctification (including regeneration) are inseparable and yet distinct. The work of Jesus as our justifier has to do with our standing before God and is a work of God done for us---righteousness imputed, or credited, to us; while the work of the Spirit as our sanctifier has to do with our state in this present life and is a work of God in us---righteousness imparted or a share of it given, to us.33
The work of the Holy Spirit is to point the sinner to the completed work of Christ and to lead him or her to trust in that alone for salvation. In that trust the believer grows as he obeys and cooperates with the Spirit, who works within, transforming the life.
Loving obedience and sanctification are always the response to and outcome of the free gift of salvation in Christ. If that response is missing, that is sure evidence that a person has never accepted the free gift of God's grace. But while the response of obedience is essential, it is never the basis of our acceptance with God.
In his classic work on the Reformation (The Doctrine of Justification, 1867), James Buchanan highlights this subtle error in Trent's theology. The statement needs to be read carefully: "There is, perhaps, no more subtle or plausible error, on the subject of justification, than that which makes it to rest on the indwelling presence, and the gracious work, of the Holy Spirit in the heart. It is a singularly refined form of op position to the doctrine of justification by the imputed righteousness of Christ, for it merely substitutes the work of one divine Person for that of another; and it is plausible, because it seems to do homage to the doctrine of grace, by ascribing to the presence and operation of the Holy Spirit the production of faith, and all the effects which are ascribed to it, whether these belong to our justification or to our sanctification."34
Buchanan warns that it is more difficult to expose and refute error when presented in this apparently spiritual form than when it comes in the more crude forms of legalism and salvation by works.
Thus we have the two views of salvation: justification as making righteous and justification as declaring righteous.
The judgment
Now let us apply these two views of salvation to the question stated earlier: How can a sinner stand before God's law in the judgment and be acquitted? According to Trent, God has to make us righteous before He can acquit us. In other words, believers must become sinlessly perfect first through indwelling righteousness.
Because of their wrong view of sin and depravity, and their externalizing sin and lessening the effects of the Fall, Trent could advocate perfectionism. "Rome teaches," writes Berkouwer, "not only the possibility of moral perfection but also the presence of perfection through the infusion of sanctifying grace in baptism."35
This emphasis on the perfecting of the saints led to the whole system of monasticism, considered "the boldest organized attempt to attain to Christian perfection in all the long history of the church."36 Because Trent made justification depend on sanctification, there could be no assurance of salvation until perfection had been reached.37
For the Reformers, however, believers have perfection credited to them, even the righteousness of Christ, the moment they believe and sincerely accept the gift of grace in Christ Jesus. On this basis, alone, they are acquitted in the judgment. For the Reformers, obedience is the loving response of a believer to the gift of grace.
However subtle these differences might appear on the surface, they lead to radically different conclusions about salvation, and even after 400 years the gap still exists.
1. E. H. Broadbent, The Pilgrim Church (London: Pickering and Inglis, 1931), 151.
2. T. M. Lindsay, The Reformation (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1883), 38.
3. J. A. Wylie, The History of Protestantism (London: Cassell, Fetter, Galpin, n.d.), vol. 2,380.
4. Fredrick A. Norwood, The Development of Modern Christianity Since 1500 (New York: Abingdon Press, 1956), 81; cited in Seventh-day Adventist Bible Students' Source Book (hereafter Source Book) (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1962), 539, 540.
5. J. Atkinson, "Catholic Counter-Reformation," in Sinclair B. Ferguson and David F. Wright, eds. New Dictionary of Theology (Leicester, England: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 562.
6. Cited in Norwood.
7. Broadbent.
8. Wylie, 377.
9. Lindsay, 38-90.
10. Jeremy C. Jackson, No Other Foundation: The Church Through Twenty Centuries (Westchester, 111.: Cornerstone Books, 1980), 146.
11. Atkinson.
12. Cited in Source Book, 887.
13. Alister E. McGrath, Justification by Faith: What It Means to Us Today (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988), 7; James Buchanan, The Doctrine of Justification (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977 [from the 1867 printing by T. and T. Clark, Edinburgh]), 19,153; New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), vol. VIII, 89.
14. Buchanan, 113-126.
15. See New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. VIII, 88. 16 Ibid., 84, 85.
16. Ibid., 84, 85.
17. Buchanan, 115. See also McGrath's summary of the Reformation view: "Justification is the forensic declaration that the Christian is righteous, rather than the process by which he or she is made righteous. It involves a change in status rather than in nature" (61).
18. G. C. Berkouwer, Faith and Justification (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954), 13.
19. New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. VIII, 90.
20. McGrath, 52.
21. Martin Luther, Commentary on Romans (1515-1516) (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1954), 83.
22. Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, trans. H. J. Schroeder, 43; cited in T. Hoyer, Why I Am Not a Roman Catholic (St. Louis: Concordia, 1960), 12,13. See also Source Book, 553.
23. National Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. VIII, 84.
24. Ibid.
25. Luther, Commentary on Galatians (1535) (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1979 [from 1850 ed.]), 71.
26. Z. Ursinus and C. Olevianus, The Heidelberg Catechism (1563) (Grand Rapids: Christian Reformed Church, 1975), 25, 50. "Even the very best we do in this life is imperfect and stained with sin."
27. Schroeder, 36, 44; cited in Hoyer, 16, 17. "No one should use that rash statement... that the observance of the commandments of God is impossible for one that is justified. For God does not command impossibilities" (36). "If anyone says that the commandments of God are even for one that is justified and constituted in grace, impossible to observe, let him be anathema" (44).
28. Schroeder, 43; cited in Hoyer, 8: "This concupiscence [lust, desire], which the apostle sometimes calls sin, the holy council declares the Catholic Church has never understood to be called sin in ... those born again." New Catholic Encyclopedia: vol. 8, 88: "The Protestant view of justification logically presupposes the idea of a moral deterioration of man that is due to the Fall and incurable in this world" (vol. VIII, 88).
29. F. A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? (Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, 1976), 52.
30. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (London: Banner of Truth, 1941), 246, 247.
31. McGrath, 68; Berkouwer, 95; Berkhof, 512.
32. J. C. Ryle, Holiness (Newark, Del: Cornerstone, n.d. [reprint]), vii.
33. See Seventh-day Adventists Believe . . . (Washington, D.C.: Ministerial Association, General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, 1988), 118, 123. "Through Christ we are justified, adopted as God's sons and daughters, and delivered from the lordship of sin. Through the Spirit we are born again and sanctified" (118).
34. Buchanan, 387.
35. Berkouwer, Faith and Sanctification (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952), 53.
36. R. Newton Flew, The Idea of Perfection in Christian Theology (Oxford, 1968), 158; cited in H. K. LaRondelle, Perfection and Perfectionism (Berrien Springs, Midi.: Andrews University Press, 1971), 301 (see also 301-309; Berkouwer, Faith and Sanctification).
37. Buchanan, 123.
