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Rethinking Calvin and Justification Sola Fide and Reconsidering the Unitive Dimensions of Love (and why Catholics and Reformed Could Agree on This)

Justification sola fide: in its sixteenth-century context, this claim was an important limiting principle in framing God’s work of justification. The phrase was not so much a positive assertion as it was a negative one. No one in the sixteenth century would have denied a role for faith in justification. The problem in the eyes of the Reformers, however, was that the causal basis for justification was not limited to faith but instead included other causes, in particular merit, in accounting for one’s justification.1 Sola fide thus had a specific purpose, which was not to exclude a role for works from the totality of Christian salvation. Noteworthy is the fact that Calvin admits in his Romans commentary that the phrase “faith alone” is nowhere to be found in Scripture. But he reasons for it as an implication of the fact that justification rests on mercy rather than the worth of works; that is, if justification depends neither on the law nor on ourselves, it must rely on God’s mercy alone, and if mercy alone then for Calvin faith alone.2 Thus sola fide was never intended to be in competition with works per se.