Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin as Dewey, Cheatum, and How, Part II

A Catholic had been arguing with a Protestant on a blog and the former gave in to the latter enough to say that "Justification" comes first, and then "Sanctification", a classic Protestant notion.

I wrote:

If I may interject, an offer an observation. You wrote, "One is justified by faith, that is step one. Step two is sanctification."

No, it's not. 1 Corinthians 6:11 lays out the sequence: "And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." Notice how this is

the opposite of what Protestantism teaches. Protestantism teaches you are justified first by faith, then you are baptized as an outward sign of your inner justification, and then you work toward sanctification. But that's NOT what St. Paul wrote. He said you hare first baptized, then sanctified, and then justified! Almost the exact opposite of Protestant teaching.

Your correspondent reads like an excellent person, indeed, but like most Protestants, she doesn't "get it" about what Christianity is: Transformation in Christ. St. Paul, the Protestant go-to guy, is always saying something like "In Christ you are a new creation!" •2 Cor 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (Again, a new creation.)

2 Peter 1:4 might well put it best, but see also St Paul in Romans, 6:4, 7:6, 12:2; Galatians 3:27; Ephesians 4:22-24; Colossians 3:8-12. And it's not just Peter and Paul! •John 1:12 “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (Obviously, a new creation.)

St. John's "ye must be born again" fits perfectly into this. To be born again is a new, transformed, creation. "You are a teacher in Israel," Our Lord says to Nicodemus, "and you don't know this?" Israel was all about the Covenants, and our participation in the Covenants transform us just as it did the Jews – far more so, of course. God set up a system of salvation from the beginning, one told through the OT via the Covenants, participation in which transformed "God's people" then and MORE SO now, through Seventh, and Last New Covenant, the Holy Eucharist. The great St. Athanasius said it VERY plainly, indeed. "For the Son of God became man so

that we might become God." (De inc. 54, 3: PG 25, 192B) and [CCC 460] And of course St. Thomas: "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods." (Opusc. 57, 1-4) [CCC 460]

The traditional Catholic way of saying this was "infused grace", and opposed that the Protestant "imputed grace". We are truly changed in our nature – when the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity became Man, He elevated human nature so it could receive Him, and then through Baptism removes Original Sin's impediment to this, and then the Holy Eucharist fulfills it (with Confession restoring the infused grace if necessary). The Eastern Churches call it "Theosis". There's no more amazing, profound, uplifting, glorious story – yet alas, Protestants are still out in the weeds coming up with theological excuses about how such transformation is both not necessary and impossible.

Martin Luther said we were NOT transformed and grace was not imputed. Rather, we were manure piles covered with God's grace-snow. C.S. Lewis, a Protestant, in his 10th Letter to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer, has a gentle, polite, but absolute take-down of Luther's doctrine.

("Jack" Lewis obviously partnered with Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe for the most part, but he clearly kept an untrusting eye on 'em!)

An Préachán