Sure! So, I’m thinking of the egg being salvation and the chicken being sanctification.
Please correct me if I’m wrong: I’m guessing a Catholic would say the chicken comes before the egg. Sanctification comes first and gives birth to salvation. It is a necessary cause of salvation, but never it’s effect.
I’m also thinking many Protestants, such as a good number of Evangelicals would say the egg comes before the chicken, which hatches from it, starting as a clumsy chick and growing into a mature hen or rooster. Salvation always comes first, giving birth to sanctification, but sanctification never gives birth to salvation.
I agree with all of that, yes. At the same time, let's dig a little deeper. Your categories and experience--particularly your concept of 'salvation'--are largely formed by Evangelical Christianity. Since Catholics and Evangelicals have notably different understandings of salvation the question can become complicated. For example, let's take two propositions, one from a Catholic and one from an Evangelical:
- The Catholic says, "Sanctification leads to salvation."
- The Evangelical says, "Salvation leads to sanctification."
While it looks fairly simple, the fact that the two groups define 'salvation' differently becomes important. I just wanted to point that out. But let's talk about the early Protestants, such as the Lutherans and the Calvinists, rather than the Evangelicals. The early Protestants were the first Protestants to break away from the Catholic Church and for that reason they make for an easier comparison.
Both Catholics and early Protestants agree that the initial state is called 'justification,' and that justification leads to sanctification. At the same time they disagree over certain details of justification. This dispute about justification eventually came to be seen as the heart of the Reformation. Each of the four sources I gave you in
this post talk about justification, and many of them compare the Catholic understanding to the Protestant understanding.
We are saved to do good works, not by them, and God will reward us for them, but this reward can never be salvation, for salvation is an absolutely free gift.
Evangelicals will say this, yes, but at the heart of the issue is that question of justification. In response to the Reformation the Catholic Church called the Council of Trent. Session VI of the Council addressed the question of justification, and you can read the canons
here. The first three canons relate to the theme I pointed out about Ephesians 2 in
this post, that idea that "God did it."
I don't want this post to be too long. It may already be too long. For now I will just give a very short glimpse of the Catholic view. Protestants distinguish grace and work. If it is grace then it is not a work (a work is just something that a human does). If it is a work then it is not grace.
For Catholics it's not that simple. As I said
earlier, God's nature is very mysterious. Catholics believe that something can be grace and a work at the same time. They don't have to be completely separate, even if they often are separate. So for Catholics justification is always God's act, it is always grace, but it can still involve a work (cf. James 2:24). Really for Catholics, even the act of faith, the act of believing, is a work, for it is something that a human does. Belief is a human act. Maybe you could even say that belief is a good work. Anyway, that's enough for now!
It’s a kind of double edged sword. A blessing that gives me an open mind and a desire to learn, but a curse that renders me less certain of what to believe than those with much stronger faith who teach me.
That makes sense. It is my belief that, in the end, it will be more of a blessing than a curse.
