Gibson on Article XIII: Of Works before Justification

This Article has remained unchanged since the publication of the Edwardian Series in 1553. There is nothing corresponding to it in the Augsburg Confession, nor has its language been traced to any earlier source. Its object is evidently to condemn the scholastic theory of congruous merit.

The subjects which require consideration in connection with it are these —

1. The title as compared with the Article itself.

2. The scholastic theory of congruous merit.

3. The teaching of the Article upon the subject.

I. Tlie Title as compared with the Article itself.

It will be noticed that whereas the title speaks of works before jastiflcation, in the body of the Article

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the phrase is not repeated, but a different one takes its

place. Works done before the grace of Christ and the inspiration of His Spirit. The question

then at once arises, Are these two expressions strictly convertible terms? The answer to this must depend on the reply given to another question, Is grace ever given before justification ? If 7iot, the two expressions, “works before justification,” and “works before grace,” may be regarded as convertible ; but if it should appear that grace is sometimes given before justification, then it will be evident that the title of the Article is too wide, and must be limited by the expression actually used in the Article itself. The question as to the relation of grace to justification is one which must be decided strictly by the testimony of Holy Scripture, and it is believed that there is ample evidence to establish the fact that grace may be given before justification. As Bishop Bull says : ” The truth is that no work really good can precede the grace of God, since without that grace it cannot be performed. But good works may precede justification, and actually do precede it ; for grace is given before justification, that we may perform those things by which we arrive at justification.” ^ For proof of this it is sufficient to refer to two representative instances : (a) On the day of Pentecost, after the address of the Apostle Peter to the multitude, we read, ” They were pricked in their heart {Karevvyrjaav rrjv KapBlav), and said unto Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brethren, what shall we do “(Acts ii. 37)? Here, without doubt, was the grace of God at work. The grace of comjninctimi was granted ; but the reply of S. Peter shows equally clearly that even so those who had thus received grace were not yet justified. ” Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your

sins ; and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” (6) Again, it will scarcely be doubted that S. Paul received grace at the moment of his conversion. ” Behold, he prayeth,” was the message which came to Ananias (Acts ix. 11), and that prayer can only have been offered up and rendered acceptable by the action of the Holy Spirit upon his heart. But, strictly speaking, he was not justified for three days after his ” conversion ”; for when Ananias came to him his words were these, ” And now, why tarriest thou ? Arise and be baptized, and wash away thy sins” (Acts xxii. 16).

There is, then, a real discrepancy between the title of this Thirteenth Article and the substance of it, and so much was practically confessed by the Westminster Assembly of Divines, who suggested as an emendation that the Article itself should run as follows: “Works done before justification hy Christ and regeneraiion by His Spirit, are not pleasing unto God,” etc.^ This emendation, of course, brings the Article into conformity with the title, but at the expense of truth ; and, as things actually are, there can be no question that the title must be interpreted by the Article, which speaks not of all, but only of soTne ” works before justification,” viz. those which precede the action of God’s grace in the heart of man. The origin of the discrepancy which thus exists has been traced by Archdeacon Hardwick to an earlier draft of the Article. As was mentioned in the Introduction,^ there still exists in the Record Office a MS. copy of the Articles, signed by the six royal chaplains, to whom they were submitted before their final revision and publication, and

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in this we find that in the Article itself we have the expression : ” Opera quae fiunt ante justificationem cum ex fide Jesu Christi non prodeant,” etc.^ It is evident that Cranmer and those working with him afterwards felt that this was inaccurate, and therefore modified the wording of the Article before publication, introducing the phrase which we now read in it, ” Works before the grace of Christ,” etc., although the old title was still allowed to remain, inexact though it was.

II. The Scholastic Theory of Congruous Merit,

The object of the Article, as has been already stated, is to repudiate the erroneous teaching of some of the school-authors ^ on the subject of grace. The school-authors, or schoolmen here referred to, are the divines of the centuries immediately preceding the Reformation : S. Bernard (1115) being generally reckoned as the “last of the Fathers,” and S. Anselm (1109) or Peter Lombard, the “Master of the Sentences” (1164), the first of the schoolmen.’ We are here concerned, how-

2 The Latin of the Article has merely *’ ut muUi vocant.” The regular name for the schoolmen in Latin is “scholastici” (cf. Art. XXIIL of 1553, doctrina Soholasticorum), a name which tells us nothing about the men themselves, except that they belonged to the “schools,” either as teachers or learners.

’ The change of name is significant. The Fathers, “Patres,’* as Archbishop Trench points out, were productive, bringing out of their treasure things new and old. The schoolmen, on the contrary, were content simply to vindicate and establish the old. “The more illustrious teachers of earlier periods of the Church had found each his own s])ecial and peculiar work to perform, his own position to make good. Occupied with this, they had not found the inclination or the leisure for a deliberate oversight of the whole field of theology; they had not mapped it out as it demanded to be mapped out. It was to this that the schoolmen addressed themselves — to the organising after a true scientific method the rude undigested mass which lay before

ever, not with the men, nor with the scholastic system as a whole, but simply with one particular portion of it, namely, its teaching on grace. In reasoning on this subject, some among the schoolmen had come to teach a doctrine which is, to say the least, seriously tainted with semi-Pelagianism ; for they maintained that man might be entitled to receive initial grace as the reward of actions done in his own strength without the aid of God’s Holy Spirit. Starting from the view that the Fall only involved the loss of the donum supematurcde^ and left man with moral and religious faculties belonging to him by nature, they taught that the exercise of these faculties was the natural transition to grace, and that a good use of them was the medium of grace, or, in their phraseology, merited it of congruity (de congruo). God, they said, was not bound to reward such actions, but it was congruous or fitting that He should. But after grace was received, the work done in dependence on the aid of the Holy Spirit was really good, and this God was bound to reward, crowning His own gifts in man. Such actions deserved grace de condigno, and for them God was a debtor. The stock instance to which they made their appeal was the case of Cornelius (Acts x.), whose ” prayers and alms came up for a memorial before God,” and drew down God’s grace upon him. The true explanation of such a case as this will be given in the next section. For the present, it is sufficient to notice that the theory, as popularly represented, opens the door to Pelagianism, and makes (at least in some cases) the beginning of man’s

them.” Thus their work was to adjust the relations of the various parts of theological learning, and to draw up in “Sums of Theology ” the complete doctrine of the Church to which they professed implicit obedience. And further, they set themselves to “justify to the reason that which had first been received by faith,” explaining the ” how ” and the ” why” of the Church’s teaching, and vindicating the rational character of supernatural truth. See Trench’s Medieval Church History^ Lect. xiv.

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salvation his own act. Moreover, it brought back into the Church the conception of earning a reward, against which S. Paul’s whole teaching on grace was directed.^ The scholastic opinions and distinctions, however, on this subject have never been formally adopted by the Church of Rome. The idea of congruous merit was rightly condemned as bordering on Pelagianism by some of the Tridentine divines, and the decrees of the Council avoided altogether the phrases ineritum de congruo and de condigno ; and while, on the one hand, they guarded against Pelagianism by anathematising anyone who should say ” that without the preventing inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and His help, man can believe, hope, love, or be penitent, as he ought, so that the grace of justification may be conferred upon him,” * on the other hand they condemned the assertion that ” all works done before justification, in what manner soever they be done, are truly sins, or deserve the hatred of God.” ’

III. The

Teaching of the Article upon the Suhfect.

In considering what the teaching of the Article really is, it is important to remember the exact phrase to which attention has been previously drawn, “Works done before the grace of Christ and the inspiration of His Spirit,” and also to bear in mind the fact already

^ The illustration commonly given to explain the scholastic distinction brings this out very clearly. A servant, it is said, deserves his wages de condigno : he may deserve support in sickness or old age de congruo.

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established, that grace may be and sometimes is given before justification. When due weight is given to these two considerations, it will be seen that there is reaUy nothing in the Article which in any way depreciates the good works of those who, born in an inferior system, make such use of the opportunities granted to them as to draw down further blessings upon them. Article X. has asserted that ” the condition of man after the fall of Adam is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself by his own natural strength and good works to faith and calHng upon God.” The Article before us supplements this by maintaining that works done before the

grace of Christ, and the inspiration of His Spirit, are not pleasant to God, forasmuch as they spring not of faith in Jesus Christ, neither do they make men meet to receiYe grace, or … deserve grace of congruity : yea rather, for that they are not done as God hath willed and commanded them to be done, we doubt not but that they have the nature of sin.

What it is intended to deny in each case is the semi- Pelagian notion, revived by some of the schoolmen, that in certain cases the initiative in the work of salvation rests with man. But we are not called upon by subscribing these Articles either to deny that God looks with favour upon the good deeds of men who are outside His covenant, or to maintain that the virtues of the heathen are really sins. All we deny is that they “deserve grace of congruity ” ; for if grace be a supernatural gift freely bestowed by God on men in order that they may attain eternal life, then certainly grace is found working outside the Christian covenant, and influencing men before they are (in theological language) […] Wherever, then, a work that is really good can be found

• “They who acknowledge no grace of God, save that one only which is infused in justification, or who contend that at least that one goes before 28

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done by men trained in any system, it is to be ascribed to the action of God’s grace, and not to the man’s own unaided efforts.^ Thus in the case of Cornelius, to which the upholders of the doctrine of congruous merit made their appeal, we may fearlessly assert that his ” prayers and alms” were “pleasant and acceptable to God” (grata Deo), for so much is involved in the statement that they ” came up for a memorial before God ” (Acts X. 4). But we deny that they were due to ” his own natural strength.” We deny also that they ” deserved

all others, greatly err ; since they cannot deny that faith at least precedes justification in nature, which faith we certainly have not from ourselves, but from the preventing gi-ace of Christ. More rightly, therefore, do other Piotestants, who arc more sound and moderate, willingly concede that various disposing and preparing acts, produced in us through the Holy Ghost assisting, and not by the sole X)Owers of our freewill, are required before justification, though most of them deny to these acts any power of justifying.”— Bp. W. Forbes, Comiderationes Modesto;, vol. i. p. 25.

1 Hard wick {Articles, p. 402) quotes in illustration of this the following from Bishop Woolton’s Christian Manual, p. 43 (Ed. Parker Society); •’ Albeit the works of heathen men are not to be compared with the good works of faithful men cngraflFed in the Church of Christ ; yet for many causes, and principally for that without all controversy, all good gifts and endowments even in the paynims, are God’s good gifts, they have the title and name of good works in some respects given unto them.” Cf. The Life and Letters of F. J. A. Hort, vol. ii. p. 337 : ” The principle underlying Article XIII. seems to mc to be this, that there are not two totally different modes of access to God for men, faith for Christians, meritorious performance for non- Christians. There is but one mode of access, faith ; and but one perfect, and, as it were, normal faith, that which rests on the revelation in the i>erson of Jesus Christ But faith itself, not being an intellectual assent to proiK)sitious, but an attitude of heart and mind, is present in a more or less rudimentary state in evei7 upward effort and aspiration of men. Doubtless the faith of non- Christians (and much of the faith of Christians for that matter) is not in the strict sense “faith in Jesus Christ”; and therefore I wish the Article were otherwise worded. But such faith, when ripened, grows into the faith of Jesus Christ ; as also it finds its rational justification in the revelation made through Him. Practically the principle of the Article teaches us to regard all the good there is in the world as what one may call imperfect Christianity, not as something essentially different, requiring, so to speak, to be dealt with by God in a wholly different manner.”

grace of congruity,” for we maintain that they were actually done by the aid of Divine grace, and that thus, although they were done ” before justification,” they cannot truly be described as ” works done before the grace of Christ and the inspiration of His Spirit”; for, as Augustine says, “Whatever of good works Cornelius performed as well before he believed in Christ as when he believed, and after he had believed, are all to he ascribed to God.” ^

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Notes

• Harmony of Justification^ p. 162.
• See Neal’s History of the Puritans, vol. iii. p. 561. The Assembly also suggested a change in the closing words of the Article, substituting ”thty are sinful” for the far milder phrase, “We doubt not that they have the nature of sin.”
• See vol. i. p. 13.
• See Hardwick, p. 281.
• De Pr(P(lf.Ht. SavHorvm, c. vii.