Tridentine Justification as an Ethical Premise

TRIDENTINE JUSTIFICATION AS AN ETHICAL PREMISE A REVIEW ARTICLE The second volume of the new series, Woodstock Studies, generated by Jesuit scholarship at the Woodstock Theological Center in Washington, appeared this year under the expressive title, The Faith That Does Justice.* Although concentration of the book's nine essays on the theme this title represents was originally stimulated by internal concerns of the Jesuit order, the book's relevance is not narrowly domestic, and it represents one of the all-too-rare attempts by Catholic academic theologians to produce something that might be described with full seriousness as moral theology. Broadly speaking, the book is concerned to explore the relationship of Christian faith to Christian morals. Thus stated, the subject is clearly an ancient one, extensively treated and even, in a sense, debated, within the New Testament itself. Nevertheless, during much of the history of Christian theology this topic has been viewed in an unfortunately limited perspective. The contexts especially of Pauline vs Jewish, Augustinian vs Pelagian, and Lutheran vs Catholic polemics have had the effect of focussing theological attention on competing theories about the respective sufficiency, mutual necessity, or relative priority of faith and morals with respect to individual salvation. In the modern era, Protestants have labored in various ways to maintain the validity of sola fide while at the same time excluding crudely antinomian implications.1 Catholics, having made the dogmas of merit and of growth in grace a theological warrant for moral effort, have for the most part directed that effort with little further recourse to theological principles. As a result, what Catholics * The Faith That Does Justice: Examining the Ch1istian Sources for Social Change, ed. John Haughey (New York: Paulist Press, 1977); the present study will concentrate on one essay in this work written by Richard R. Roach and entitled "Tridentine Justification and Justice". 1 " A common criticism of the main-line Protestant view is that there is no road from it to ethics, that it represents a cul-de-sac." Ziesler, J. A., The Meaning of Righteousness in Paul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), p. 5. The author briefly reviews some major attempts to deal with this problem exegetically. Present Truth, a journal expressly founded to preserve the purity of Reformation doctrine, has dealt with this problem repeatedly, most extensively in Vol. 3, no. 3 (July, 1974), and Vol. 4, no. I (February, 1975). 450 TRIDENTLNE JUSTIFICATION 451 call moral theology has proceeded independently of dogmatic, systematic, or historical-biblical theology. It operated mainly through the elaboration of natural law theses and the weighing of casuistic precedents, under firm but largely negative control by ecclesiastical officialdom, whose authority in such matters was the only theological principle regularly invoked. Quite recent times have seen a rapid decline of interest in moral theology of that type, and a widespread tendency to replace it with ethical investigation or prudential moralizing of a more candidly secular kind. But, along with the inclination to abandon theological pretenses, there has also appeared a tendency to provide Christian moralists with more positive and substantial theological foundations. Something of the latter tendency was perceptible in the largely Protestant " social Gospel" movement.2 The same tendency is considerably more conspicuous in the largely Catholic movement called "liberation theology." 3 Proponents of liberation theology have been criticized often and not always unfairly for presenting a highly eclectic or even tendentious theology, tailored to fit their political predispositions.4 A proclivity towards failings of that kind is particularly understandable in view of the fact that so much of this theology has been developed in social and economic circumstances that lend special urgency to practical moralizing, and offer small encouragement to niceties of leisurely scholarship. Against such a background the appearance of a book like The Faith That Does Justice is decidedly opportune. It is the work of North American Catholic scholars, 2 " We have a social Gospel. We need a systematic theology large enough to match it and vital enough to back it." Rauschenbusch, W. A Theology for the Social Gospel (New York: Macmillan, 1917), p. I. 8 " When we talk about theology as critical reflection...we also refer to a clear and critical attitude regarding...