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>Remember: Protestants use the term justification to refer to an event at the beginning of the Christian life where God forgives us and declares us righteous. As a result, a Protestant will think that the Catholic is saying that we need to do works in order to come to God and be forgiven.
>Trent thus relates James’s statement not to the initial justification that occurs when we first come to God but to the growth in righteousness that occurs over the course of the Christian life.
Protestants have a deficient understanding of justification, and hence they understand justification by works to be something different. A protestant understands justification to be solely the changing of state from sin to grace. A Catholic understands justification to be not only that, but each and every increase of grace inside that state of grace. Hence a protestant is correct in stating a man is justified by faith not by works as refers to the changing of state since this understanding is not fundamentally different than Catholic theology espoused especially in St. Pauls epistles, however is incorrect when saying a man is justified by faith alone, since they ignore everything that occurs inside the state of grace. The article follows with I believe a false statement
>An open-minded Protestant might say, “Well, we don’t use the term justification that way, and we might not agree about the interpretation of particular verses, but we can acknowledge that what Catholics are saying here is true, even if they express it differently.”
I believe this is glossing over the difference that such justifications in Catholicism are not simply a man becoming more righteous, but a real requirement to enter heaven, since heaven is simultaneously a reward for merit and unearned by grace. I believe a protestant would reject the idea that further works inside of a justified state merit anything. The council is I believe clear that works inside a state of grace do merit entering heaven when it declares in the session on justification
>CANON XXXII.-If any one saith, that the good works of one that is justified are in such manner the gifts of God, as that they are not also the good merits of him that is justified; or, that the said justified, by the good works which he performs through the grace of God and the merit of Jesus Christ, whose living member he is, does not truly merit increase of grace, eternal life, and the attainment of that eternal life,-if so be, however, that he depart in grace,-and also an increase of glory; let him be anathema.
This is something that I do not believe can be reconciled.