The Just Shall Live By Faith: Resolving the Catholic-Protestant Debate on Justification from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans

by Erick Ybarra

Both Catholics and Protestants hold to the biblical worldview which sees God establishing a wonderful creation wherein He governs all things according to an order of justice. The created order is not a free-for-fall that is subject to the dictates of human choice. Human beings, simply by virtue of their being creatures made in God’s image, are held accountable to live up to God’s purposes. As such, mankind is ordered to conform to the Creator’s holy standards for human existence. Those standards are summed up into two realities: to enjoy perfect fellowship with Him and share in His own everlasting goodness, glory, and happiness. As the biblical story makes clear, however, the primordial fall of mankind in Adam has subjugated the world under several evils that have disabled humans from living up to God’s standard. In His mercy and love, God has established a plan to reconcile mankind back to Himself through His Son Jesus Christ by graciously justifying all those who repent and believe in the Gospel of His Kingdom promised in the Hebrew Scriptures. Over 500 years ago, serious biblical thinkers believed that the Catholic Church had significantly erred in the doctrine of human salvation. The 16th century Protestant reforms all followed the fundament of Martin Luther who dogmatically held that sinful human beings are justified, or made right with God, by faith alone (sola fide). The faith that justifies, according to Protestant theologians, is understood as metaphorically putting out an empty hand to allow the gift of an imputed and alien righteousness to drop in its palm. Faith, as a function towards justification, achieves nothing. It is merely an instrument of receiving the merits that obtain the forensic imputation of being righteous before the tribunal of God by means of an alien righteousness.
The Catholic Church, while being adamant on the primacy of God’s grace through the infinite merits of Christ’s passion and blood in all aspects of salvation, insisted that justification, while necessarily involving the forgiveness of sins, also includes the sanctification and renewal of the inner man by the power of God, truly making the human person righteous and holy in God’s sight. This book seeks to show from Paul’s epistle to the Romans that justification must involve the element of the ontological renewal of the inward man and the obedience offered up in faith to God through the risen Christ. This is achieved from the sound exegesis of three witnesses from the Hebrew Bible that Paul thought proved his doctrine of justification: Abraham’s God-glorifying faith (Gen. 15:6), the 32nd Davidic Psalm on the forgiveness of sins for penitents, and the famous citation from Habakkuk 2:4, “The just shall live by faith.” Paul, as well as the Church Fathers in the post-Apostolic era, are unanimous in holding that faith involves more than simply an empty instrument regarding justification before God, despite their saying that justification is by faith alone (sola fide). Everything hinges on what we mean by faith and whether it involves an imparting of righteousness into the soul or simply an empty instrument through which to forensically receive the imputed righteousness of another, Jesus Christ.

Genres: Theology, Religion, Christianity

151 pages, Paperback

Published June 29, 2022

Reviews

[A.J. Jr. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Erick Ybarra has written a very important book on justification. Protestants in the Lutheran and Reformed tradition should read and respond to this book. Reading this book also challenged me to increase my faith (Lord increase my faith!), because I want the kind of faith our father Abraham had: to hope against hope, to believe God can and will do that which is seemingly impossible. I read the kindle edition of this book and it did contain some typographical mistakes. Although not terribly distracting, they did mar a good book that deserves better. This book was a pleasure to read. It's very well researched and written, and was very thought provoking. I highly recommend this book to Catholics and Protestants alike who are interested in doing a deep dive into the Apostle Paul's teaching in his epistle to the Romans regarding justification.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my second read through. it hit much deeper than the first. Erick's arguments make a lot of sense

[Henry]

The substance of this book was genuinely helpful. However it could really have used some better editing. There are so many grammatical issues - it feels like every other line - and they are so glaring that it is actually fairly distracting. The book reads in places as if the author had dictated it with no subsequent editing.

[Michael T Moos · Rating 5 out of 5]

For any Protestant who is not confident in their doctrine of justification or needs to do theological hoop jumping to explain certain passages of scripture concerning “faith and works” look no further than the pages of this book.