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The
Gift of Salvation
A Statement by Evangelicals and
Catholics Together
January 1998
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In the spring of 1994, a
distinguished group of Roman Catholics and
evangelical Protestants issued a
much-discussed statement, “Evangelicals and
Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in
the Third Millennium” (First Things, May
1994). That statement, commonly referred to as
“ECT,” noted a growing “convergence and
cooperation” between Evangelicals and
Catholics in many public tasks, and affirmed
agreement in basic articles of Christian faith
while also underscoring the continuing
existence of important differences. The
signers promised to engage those differences
in continuing conversations, and this has been
done in meetings of noted theologians convened
by Mr. Charles Colson and Father Richard John
Neuhaus. At a meeting in the fall of 1996, it
was determined that further progress depended
upon firm agreement on the meaning of
salvation, and especially the doctrine of
justification. After much discussion, study,
and prayer over the course of a year, the
following statement was agreed to at a meeting
in New York City, October 6-7, 1997. The
convenors and participants express their
gratitude to Edward Idris Cardinal Cassidy,
President of the Pontifical Council for
Promoting Christian Unity, for his very active
support throughout this process. In future
conversations they intend to address the
outstanding questions noted at the end of this
statement.
For God so loved the world that he gave his
only Son, that whoever believes in him should
not perish but have eternal life. For God sent
the Son into the world, not to condemn the
world, but that the world might be saved through
him.
—John 3:16-17
We give thanks to God that in recent years many
Evangelicals and Catholics, ourselves among them,
have been able to express a common faith in Christ
and so to acknowledge one another as brothers and
sisters in Christ. We confess together one God,
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; we
confess Jesus Christ the Incarnate Son of God; we
affirm the binding authority of Holy Scripture,
God’s inspired Word; and we acknowledge the
Apostles’ and Nicene creeds as faithful witnesses
to that Word.
The effectiveness of our witness for Christ
depends upon the work of the Holy Spirit, who
calls and empowers us to confess together the
meaning of the salvation promised and accomplished
in Christ Jesus our Lord. Through prayer and study
of Holy Scripture, and aided by the Church’s
reflection on the sacred text from earliest times,
we have found that, notwithstanding some
persistent and serious differences, we can
together bear witness to the gift of salvation in
Jesus Christ. To this saving gift we now testify,
speaking not for, but from and to, our several
communities.
God created us to manifest his glory and to give
us eternal life in fellowship with himself, but
our disobedience intervened and brought us under
condemnation. As members of the fallen human race,
we come into the world estranged from God and in a
state of rebellion. This original sin is
compounded by our personal acts of sinfulness. The
catastrophic consequences of sin are such that we
are powerless to restore the ruptured bonds of
union with God. Only in the light of what God has
done to restore our fellowship with him do we see
the full enormity of our loss. The gravity of our
plight and the greatness of God’s love are brought
home to us by the life, suffering, death, and
resurrection of Jesus Christ. “God so loved the
world that he gave his only Son, that whoever
believes in him should not perish but have eternal
life” (John 3:16).
God the Creator is also God the Redeemer, offering
salvation to the world. “God desires all to be
saved and come to the knowledge of the truth” (1
Timothy 2:4). The restoration of communion with
God is absolutely dependent upon Jesus Christ,
true God and true man, for he is “the one mediator
between God and men” (1 Timothy 2:5), and “there
is no other name under heaven given among men by
which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Jesus said,
“No one comes to the Father but by me” (John
14:6). He is the holy and righteous one who was
put to death for our sins, “the righteous for the
unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1
Peter 3:18).
The New Testament speaks of salvation in various
ways. Salvation is ultimate or eschatological
rescue from sin and its consequences, the final
state of safety and glory to which we are brought
in both body and soul. “Since, therefore, we are
now justified by his blood, much more shall we be
saved by him from the wrath of God.” “Salvation is
nearer to us now than when we first believed”
(Romans 5:9, 13:11). Salvation is also a present
reality. We are told that “he saved us, not
because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but
in virtue of his own mercy” (Titus 3:5). The
present reality of salvation is an anticipation
and foretaste of salvation in its promised
fullness.
Always it is clear that the work of redemption has
been accomplished by Christ’s atoning sacrifice on
the cross. “Christ redeemed us from the curse of
the law by becoming a curse for us” (Galatians
3:13). Scripture describes the consequences of
Christ’s redemptive work in several ways, among
which are: justification, reconciliation,
restoration of friendship with God, and rebirth
from above by which we are adopted as children of
God and made heirs of the Kingdom. “When the time
had fully come, God sent his son, born of a woman,
born under law, that we might receive the adoption
of sons” (Galatians 4:4-5).
Justification is central to the scriptural account
of salvation, and its meaning has been much
debated between Protestants and Catholics. We
agree that justification is not earned by any good
works or merits of our own; it is entirely God’s
gift, conferred through the Father’s sheer
graciousness, out of the love that he bears us in
his Son, who suffered on our behalf and rose from
the dead for our justification. Jesus was “put to
death for our trespasses and raised for our
justification” (Romans 4:25). In justification,
God, on the basis of Christ’s righteousness alone,
declares us to be no longer his rebellious enemies
but his forgiven friends, and by virtue of his
declaration it is so.
The New Testament makes it clear that the gift of
justification is received through faith. “By grace
you have been saved through faith; and this is not
your own doing, it is the gift of God” (Ephesians
2:8). By faith, which is also the gift of God, we
repent of our sins and freely adhere to the
Gospel, the good news of God’s saving work for us
in Christ. By our response of faith to Christ, we
enter into the blessings promised by the Gospel.
Faith is not merely intellectual assent but an act
of the whole person, involving the mind, the will,
and the affections, issuing in a changed life. We
understand that what we here affirm is in
agreement with what the Reformation traditions
have meant by justification by faith alone ( sola
fide ).
In justification we receive the gift of the Holy
Spirit, through whom the love of God is poured
forth into our hearts (Romans 5:5). The grace of
Christ and the gift of the Spirit received through
faith (Galatians 3:14) are experienced and
expressed in diverse ways by different Christians
and in different Christian traditions, but God’s
gift is never dependent upon our human experience
or our ways of expressing that experience.
While faith is inherently personal, it is not a
purely private possession but involves
participation in the body of Christ. By baptism we
are visibly incorporated into the community of
faith and committed to a life of discipleship. “We
were buried therefore with him by baptism into
death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead
by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in
newness of life” (Romans 6:4).
By their faith and baptism, Christians are bound
to live according to the law of love in obedience
to Jesus Christ the Lord. Scripture calls this the
life of holiness, or sanctification. “Since we
have these promises, dear friends, let us purify
ourselves from everything that contaminates body
and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence
for God” (2 Corinthians 7:1). Sanctification is
not fully accomplished at the beginning of our
life in Christ, but is progressively furthered as
we struggle, with God’s grace and help, against
adversity and temptation. In this struggle we are
assured that Christ’s grace will be sufficient for
us, enabling us to persevere to the end. When we
fail, we can still turn to God in humble
repentance and confidently ask for, and receive,
his forgiveness.
We may therefore have assured hope for the eternal
life promised to us in Christ. As we have shared
in his sufferings, we will share in his final
glory. “We shall be like him, for we shall see him
as he is” (1 John 3:2). While we dare not presume
upon the grace of God, the promise of God in
Christ is utterly reliable, and faith in that
promise overcomes anxiety about our eternal
future. We are bound by faith itself to have firm
hope, to encourage one another in that hope, and
in such hope we rejoice. For believers “through
faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming
of the salvation to be revealed in the last time”
(1 Peter 1:5).
Thus it is that as justified sinners we have been
saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved.
All this is the gift of God. Faith issues in a
confident hope for a new heaven and a new earth in
which God’s creating and redeeming purposes are
gloriously fulfilled. “Therefore God has highly
exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is
above every name, that at the name of Jesus every
knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under
the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”
(Philippians 2:9-11).
As believers we are sent into the world and
commissioned to be bearers of the good news, to
serve one another in love, to do good to all, and
to evangelize everyone everywhere. It is our
responsibility and firm resolve to bring to the
whole world the tidings of God’s love and of the
salvation accomplished in our crucified, risen,
and returning Lord. Many are in grave peril of
being eternally lost because they do not know the
way to salvation.
In obedience to the Great Commission of our Lord,
we commit ourselves to evangelizing everyone. We
must share the fullness of God’s saving truth with
all, including members of our several communities.
Evangelicals must speak the Gospel to Catholics
and Catholics to Evangelicals, always speaking the
truth in love, so that “working hard to maintain
the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace . . .
the body of Christ may be built up until we all
reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of
the Son of God” (Ephesians 4:3, 12-13).
Moreover, we defend religious freedom for all.
Such freedom is grounded in the dignity of the
human person created in the image of God, and must
be protected also in civil law.
We must not allow our witness as Christians to be
compromised by halfhearted discipleship or
needlessly divisive disputes. While we rejoice in
the unity we have discovered and are confident of
the fundamental truths about the gift of salvation
we have affirmed, we recognize that there are
necessarily interrelated questions that require
further and urgent exploration. Among such
questions are these: the meaning of baptismal
regeneration, the Eucharist, and sacramental
grace; the historic uses of the language of
justification as it relates to imputed and
transformative righteousness; the normative status
of justification in relation to all Christian
doctrine; the assertion that while justification
is by faith alone, the faith that receives
salvation is never alone; diverse understandings
of merit, reward, purgatory, and indulgences;
Marian devotion and the assistance of the saints
in the life of salvation; and the possibility of
salvation for those who have not been evangelized.
On these and other questions, we recognize that
there are also some differences within both the
Evangelical and Catholic communities. We are
committed to examining these questions further in
our continuing conversations. All who truly
believe in Jesus Christ are brothers and sisters
in the Lord and must not allow their differences,
however important, to undermine this great truth,
or to deflect them from bearing witness together
to God’s gift of salvation in Christ. “I appeal to
you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ, that all of you agree with one another so
that there may be no divisions among you and that
you may be perfectly united in mind and thought”
(1 Corinthians 1:10).
As Evangelicals who thank God for the heritage of
the Reformation and affirm with conviction its
classic confessions, as Catholics who are
conscientiously faithful to the teaching of the
Catholic Church, and as disciples together of the
Lord Jesus Christ who recognize our debt to our
Christian forebears and our obligations to our
contemporaries and those who will come after us,
we affirm our unity in the Gospel that we have
here professed. In our continuing discussions, we
seek no unity other than unity in the truth. Only
unity in the truth can be pleasing to the Lord and
Savior whom we together serve, for he is “the way,
the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).
EVANGELICAL
PROTESTANTS
Dr. Gerald L. Bray
Beeson Divinity School
Dr. Bill Bright
Campus Crusade for Christ
Dr. Harold O. J. Brown
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
Mr. Charles Colson
Prison Fellowship
Bishop William C. Frey
Episcopal Church
Dr. Timothy George
Beeson Divinity School
Dr. Os Guinness
Trinity Forum
Dr. Kent R. Hill
Eastern Nazarene College
Rev. Max Lucado
Oak Hills Church of Christ
San Antonio, TX
Dr. T. M. Moore
Chesapeake Theological
Seminary
Dr. Richard Mouw
Fuller Theological Seminary
Dr. Mark A. Noll
Wheaton College
Mr. Brian F. O’Connell
Interdev
Dr. Thomas Oden
Drew University
Dr. James J. I. Packer
Regent College,
British Columbia
Dr. Timothy R. Phillips
Wheaton College
Dr. John Rodgers
Trinity Episcopal School for
Ministry
Dr. Robert A. Seiple
World Vision U.S.
Dr. John Woodbridge
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School |
ROMAN
CATHOLICS
Father James J. Buckley
Loyola College in Maryland
Father J. A. Di Noia, O.P.
Dominican House of Studies
Father Avery Dulles, S.J.
Fordham University
Mr. Keith Fournier
Catholic Alliance
Father Thomas Guarino
Seton Hall University
Dr. Peter Kreeft
Boston College
Father Matthew L. Lamb
Boston College
Father Eugene LaVerdiere, S.S.S.
Emmanuel
Father Francis Martin
John Paul II Institute for Studies on
Marriage and Family
Mr. Ralph Martin
Renewal Ministries
Father Richard John Neuhaus
Religion and Public Life
Mr. Michael Novak
American Enterprise Institute
Father Edward Oakes, S.J.
Regis University
Father Thomas P. Rausch, S.J.
Loyola Marymount University
Mr. George Weigel
Ethics and Public Policy Center
Dr. Robert Louis Wilken
University of Virginia |
See related articles on
the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation:
From
the February / March 2017 Issue of Living
Bulwark:
• An
Introduction to the Age of the
Reformation, by Timothy
George
• Roots
that Refresh: The Vitality of
Reformation Spirituality, by Alister McGrath
• Reading
Scripture with
the Early
Reformers
• Your
Word is Truth: Statement of
Evangelicals and Catholics Together
From
the April / May 2017
Issue of Living Bulwark:
•
A
Spiritual Orientation to 500th
Reformation Anniversary, by
Raniero Cantalemessa
•
Justification:
A Summary of
Lutheran-Catholic
Dialogue and Joint
Agreement
•
Faith
is not Opposed
to Love: A
Clarification
on “By Faith
Alone” by
Benedict XVI
• Evangelicals
and Catholics
Together: Joint
Statement on the Gift
of Salvation
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