Ecclesial Deism

Assumption of St. John the Evangelist

Taddeo Gaddi (1348-1353)
Collezione Vittorio Cini, Venice

St. Irenaeus and St. Clement of Alexandria, who both lived during the second century, tell us that after the Apostle John returned from exile on Patmos, he remained at Ephesus "till Trajan’s time." Trajan became emperor in AD 98. According to the tradition, St. John was the last of the twelve Apostles to die. When the angels carried his soul into Heaven, was the Church then left to fall into heresy and apostasy? (continue reading)

Faith, the Ascension, and the Meaning of Life

I recently added two posts at Called to Communion. The first is about the nature of faith in relation to reason, and about a significant difference between Catholic and Protestant conceptions of faith in relation to the Church. The second is a reflection on the relevance of the Ascension to the meaning of life and finding true happiness.

Happy Pentecost, the birthday of the Church!

Podcast: Faith and Reason

In the latest podcast at Called to Communion, Tim Troutman and I talk about falsifiability, fideism, presuppositionalism and other questions pertaining to the relation of faith and reason.

To stream it, go here. To download the mp3, right-click here, and select "save as".

I wrote more on the falsifiability of the doctrine of Christ's resurrection here.

Wilson vs. Hitchens: A Catholic Perspective

I wrote some thoughts here on the Wilson vs. Hitchens debate narrated in the forthcoming film titled Collision.

Justification: Divided over Charity

Council of Trent
Paolo Farinatis (c. 1524 - c. 1606)
(click on the painting for a larger image)

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia article on Protestantism, there are three primary theological principles separating Catholics and Protestants. These principles have to do with justification, Church tradition, and Church authority. Here I want to focus on justification, briefly laying out the fundamental difference between the Catholic and Protestant positions on this doctrine only with respect to the role of charity.

Protestants and Catholics have somewhat different definitions of the term 'justification'. For Protestants, 'justification' refers not only to an initial justification at the moment of faith, but also to a final justification at the Final Judgment (see, for example, here and here). The Catholic understanding of the term 'justification' includes a third aspect: ongoing justification (see here). That is partly because the Catholic Church defines 'justification' such that sanctification is intrinsically included within it (see here), while Protestants define 'justification' such that sanctification is not included within it per se, but is supposed to attend or follow it.

These disagreements between Protestants and Catholics are partly semantic differences. Mere semantic differences are not substantive differences. But the disagreements are not entirely semantic. In this post, however, I will focus only on one aspect of [initial] justification, namely, its relation to charity.

Recently, Pope Benedict spoke about justification as the topic of one of his weekly general audiences. That address is something I hope all Protestants will carefully and prayerfully read. In that address he said the following:

"For this reason Luther's phrase: "faith alone" is true, if it is not opposed to faith in charity, in love.

Responding to Pope Benedict's statement quoted above, R. Scott Clark, professor of Church History & Historical Theology at Westminster Seminary [a Protestant seminary] wrote [UPDATE: his post has been moved to his new blog here] the following:

That conditional, that "if," makes all the difference in the world. That one little conditional is the difference between Rome and Wittenberg. Why? After all, Protestants affirm that faith alone is not opposed to charity (love) or sanctification. That's certainly true, but the question here is whether [...] Benedict means by "faith" what we mean by it and whether we're talking about the same justification and the same role of faith? For us Protestants, charity is the fruit and evidence of justification. Is it so for Benedict? If so, he's abandoned his own catechism and magisterial Roman dogma since 1547. That would be remarkable indeed! (emphasis mine)

Clark suggests that the fundamental point of disagreement between Catholics and Protestants regarding justification is whether charity is or is not necessarily present with justifying faith as its form. In other words, Is the faith by which we are justified necessarily formed by charity [fides formata caritate ] or not?

Catholics understand charity to be that theological virtue by which we love God above all things for His own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God - see CCC 1822 and ST II-II Q.23 a.3. And Catholics do believe that charity is evidence of justification, and that charitable actions are the fruit of justification. But the fundamental point of disagreement between Protestants and Catholics with respect to the role of charity in [initial] justification seems to be whether charity is necessarily present within the person having justifying faith, or whether charity only necessarily follows justifying faith as its fruit. We can see the Catholic position on the relation of justifying faith and charity in Chapter VII of Session VI of the Council of Trent in 1547:

For though no one can be just except he to whom the merits of the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ are communicated, yet this takes place in that justification of the sinner, when by the merit of the most holy passion, the charity of God is poured forth by the Holy Ghost in the hearts of those who are justified and inheres in them; whence man through Jesus Christ, in whom he is ingrafted, receives in that justification, together with the remission of sins, all these infused at the same time, namely, faith, hope and charity. For faith, unless hope and charity be added to it, neither unites man perfectly with Christ nor makes him a living member of His body. For which reason it is most truly said that faith without works is dead and of no profit, and in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but faith that worketh by charity. This faith, conformably to Apostolic tradition, catechumens ask of the Church before the sacrament of baptism, when they ask for the faith that gives eternal life, which without hope and charity faith cannot give.

(To avoid the technical part of this post, skip over the following section between the dashed lines.)

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Why does the Council of Trent teach that charity must be present in us in order for our faith to be justifying? St. Thomas Aquinas addresses the relation of charity and justifying faith in Summa Theologica II-II Q.4 a.3, where he argues that charity is the form of faith. First, consider some background philosophical anthropology.

Rational beings each possess two rational powers: intellect and will. The intellect is by its nature directed toward the true; the will is by its nature directed to the good. These two powers (i.e. intellect and will) have habits, i.e. dispositions. Good habits are called virtues; bad habits are called vices. The virtues can be divided into the natural virtues and the supernatural virtues. The natural virtues can be acquired (though not perfectly) through the use of our own powers, without supernatural infusion. There are three supernatural virtues, called 'supernatural' because they can be acquired only by supernatural infusion. Hence they are also called the "theological virtues". They are faith, hope, and charity. Faith is a virtue of the intellect; charity is a virtue of the will. The theological virtue of hope also is a virtue of the will.

Why then, according to Aquinas, is charity the form of faith? In ST II-II Q.4 a.3 he writes:

As appears from what has been said above (I-II, 1, 3; I-II, 18, 6), voluntary acts take their species from their end which is the will's object. Now that which gives a thing its species, is after the manner of a form in natural things. Wherefore the form of any voluntary act is, in a manner, the end to which that act is ordered, both because it takes its species therefrom, and because the mode of an action should correspond proportionately to the end. Now it is evident from what has been said (art. 1), that the act of faith is directed to the object of the will, i.e. the good, as to its end: and this good which is the end of faith, viz. the Divine Good, is the proper object of charity. Therefore charity is called the form of faith in as much as through charity the act of faith is perfected and is formed.

What is Aquinas saying here? His argument can be analyzed in this way:

(1) Voluntary acts take their species from their end, which is the will's object. [From ST I-II Q.1 a.3 and ST I-II Q.18 a.6]

(2) That which gives a thing its species is its form, in the manner of a form in natural things.

Hence

(3) The form of any voluntary act is, in a manner, the end to which that act is directed. [From (1) and (2)]

(4) An act of faith is related both to the object of the will, i.e. to the good and the end, and to the object of the intellect, i.e. the true. [ST II-II Q.4 a.1]

(5) The act of faith is directed to the object of the will, i.e. the good, as to its end. [From (4)]

(6) This good which is the end of faith, viz. the Divine Good, is the proper object of charity. [From ST II-II Q.24 a.1]

Therefore,

(7) Charity is the form of faith inasmuch as through charity the act of faith is perfected and is formed. [From (3), (5),(6)]

Premises (1)-(3) are quite straightforward. To understand the basis for premise (4), we have to look back at ST II-II Q.4 a.1. Recall that faith is "the substance of things hoped for". (Hebrews 11:1) Because hope is a virtue of the will, faith is a virtue of the intellect, and because faith is defined as "the substance of things hoped for" (ST II-II Q.4 a.1), therefore the act of faith on the part of the intellect is directed to the same object and end that the act of charity on the part of the will is directed to (i.e. the Divine Good). Premise (5) follows directly from (4). Premise (6) is drawn from ST II-II Q.24 a.1, where Aquinas argues that the subject of charity is not the sensitive, but the intellective appetite, i.e. the will, which is ordered to the good. (To understand why charity is a virtue of the [rational] appetite, see also my post titled "Love and Unity: Part 2".) Charity is thus the form of faith [forma fidei], in that it is only through charity that the act of faith attains the end by which it is given its species.

Aquinas makes this even clearer in the following article (ST II-II Q.4 a.4), where he argues that unformed faith [fides informis] is the same habit as formed faith. He writes:

We must therefore hold differently that formed faith and unformed faith [fidei formatae et informis] are one and the same habit. The reason is that a habit is differentiated by that which directly pertains to that habit. Now since faith is a perfection of the intellect, that pertains directly to faith, which pertains to the intellect. Again, what pertains to the will, does not pertain directly to faith, so as to be able to differentiate the habit of faith. But the distinction between formed faith and unformed faith [fidei formatae et informis] is in respect of something pertaining to the will, i.e. charity, and not in respect of something pertaining to the intellect. Therefore formed faith and unformed faith [fides formata et informis] are not distinct habits.

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What is this unformed faith [fides informis]? Aquinas identifies it with the faith referred to in James 2:20, where St. James writes that "faith without works is dead'. Thus according to Aquinas, fides informis is "dead faith". What makes it dead is the absence of the virtue of charity in the will, for as St. Paul says in Galatians 5:6, "faith worketh through charity". [cf. ST II-II Q.4 a.2 arg.3] In other words, what distinguishes formed faith [i.e. living faith] from unformed faith [i.e. dead faith] is nothing in the faith itself, that is, nothing in the habit in the intellect. Rather, what distinguishes formed faith (i.e. living faith) from unformed faith (i.e. dead faith) is that the former is accompanied by the supernatural virtue of charity in the will, while the latter is not accompanied by the supernatural virtue of charity in the will.

The interesting thing here is that Protestants do not believe that anyone is justified by dead faith. Protestants believe, with Catholics, that a justifying faith must be a living faith. So the difference between Catholics and Protestants with respect to this point is that Protestants do not believe that charity is what makes faith living (though they do believe that charity necessarily follows living faith), while Catholics believe that charity is precisely what makes faith living.

This raises the following questions for Protestants: What is the difference between dead faith and living faith? More specifically, what does living faith have per se that dead faith does not? Are they two species of faith? If so, are they both gifts of God? If so, when a man moves from dead faith to living faith, does God take away His previous gift of dead faith? If God does not do so, then does the gift of dead faith remain in the man, but inactive for the rest of his life as a believer? On the other hand, if dead faith is *not* a supernatural gift of God, then how is it different from any belief about God we might come to merely through our natural power of reason? And if dead faith is no different from any belief about God we might come to merely through our natural power of reason, why is it rightly called 'faith'? Moreover, how can charity be the fruit of living faith if living faith does not contain charity? In other words, how can charity come from non-charity?

In his Institutes, John Calvin briefly treats the relation of charity to faith. There he writes, "For the teaching of the Schoolmen, that love is prior to faith and hope, is mere madness; for it is faith alone that first engenders love in us." (Institutes, III.2.41) Aquinas discusses this question in ST II-II Q.4 a.7 and ST II-II Q.17 a.8. Aquinas makes a distinction between the order of generation and the order of perfection. In the order of generation, faith precedes hope and charity, because we cannot hope in or love what we do not know. This is because the movement of the will toward its end depends upon the intellect presenting this end to it. But, according to Aquinas, in the order of perfection, charity precedes hope and faith. This can be shown from what St. Paul himself says in 1 Corinthians 13:13.

When Calvin claims that "faith alone first engenders love in us", there is a certain *qualified* sense in which a Catholic can agree, because faith precedes charity in the order of generation. But the question is whether faith without charity simultaneously co-present, is living, and thus justifying, faith. In his article, Clark cites Calvin's commentary on Galatians, where Calvin writes: "When you are engaged in discussing the question of justification, beware of allowing any mention to be made of love or of works, but resolutely adhere to the exclusive particle." (Commentary on Galatians 5.6, 1548). By "the exclusive particle" Calvin means the term 'alone', as in "faith alone". So we see here Calvin at least implicitly denying that charity is necessarily simultaneously co-present with justifying faith.

The Catholic Church teaches that the supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and charity are infused into us when we receive the Holy Spirit in the sacrament of baptism. St. Paul writes that "the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us" (Romans 5:5). Only when faith is living (i.e. accompanied by the virtue of charity as its form), is faith justifying. Notice that this does not mean that the deathbed convert must do charitable works in order to be justified. It does mean, however, that unless there is charity in his will, whatever virtue of faith is present in his intellect is not a justifying faith.

Professor Clark seems not recognize that justification being progressive is fully compatible with an initial justification. For example, Pope Benedict claims that "Faith is looking at Christ, entrusting oneself to Christ, being united to Christ, conformed to Christ, to his life. And the form, the life of Christ, is love; hence to believe is to conform to Christ and to enter into his love." Clark responds by saying, This is code for "to be gradually sanctified and gradually justified." Of course Catholics do believe that being conformed to Christ and entering His love is something that does continue over the course of a believer's life, insofar as the believer makes use of the means of grace. But, Catholics also believe that in our [initial] justification in the sacrament of baptism, we are at that moment "conformed to Christ and enter into His love", for at that moment we receive His life and love and Holy Spirit into our hearts. The death-bed convert who converts in his dying breath, is at that very moment truly "conformed to Christ", even though at that moment he might not yet be as conformed to Christ as he possibly could be, and will be in heaven.

If Clark is right that this disagreement between Protestants and Catholics regarding the role of charity in [initial] justification is "the difference between Rome and Wittenberg", then I'm left wondering how Protestants can be so sure that charity is not what makes faith living, that they are willing to make (or perpetuate) this 488 year-old schism on account of it. I invite my Protestant brothers and sisters, in this week of prayer for Christian unity, to consider prayerfully this fundamental point of disagreement. It is tragic and ironic that we should be divided over the role of charity. May charity break down this division between us, by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit.

He Made Them Wander in the Wilderness Forty Years

Moses and the Brazen Serpent
Sebastian Bourdon (1653-1654)

What Fr. Williams says here fits with what St. Thomas Aquinas says here about the relation between faith and ecclesial authority.

Unity, Faith and Submission

Here is a quotation from the Catholic encyclopedia article on "Protestantism":

[BOQ] Again, it is illogical to base faith upon the private interpretation of a book. For faith consists in submitting; private interpretation consists in judging. In faith by hearing, the last word rests with the teacher; in private judgment it rests with the reader, who submits the dead text of Scripture to a kind of post-mortem examination and delivers a verdict without appeal: he believes in himself rather than in any higher authority. But such trust in one's own light is not faith. Private judgment is fatal to the theological virtue of faith. John Henry Newman says "I think I may assume that this virtue, which was exercised by the first Christians, is not known at all amongst Protestants now; or at least if there are instances of it, it is exercised toward those, I mean their teachers and divines, who expressly disclaim that they are objects of it, and exhort their people to judge for themselves" ("Discourses to Mixed Congregations", Faith and Private Judgment). And in proof he advances the instability of Protestant so-called faith: "They are as children tossed to and fro and carried along by every gale of doctrine. If they had faith they would not change. They look upon the simple faith of Catholics as if unworthy the dignity of human nature, as slavish and foolish". Yet upon that simple, unquestioning faith the Church was built up and is held together to this day.

Where absolute reliance on God's word, proclaimed by his accredited ambassadors, is wanting, i.e. where there is not the virtue of faith, there can be no unity of Church. It stands to reason, and Protestant history confirms it. The "unhappy divisions", not only between sect and sect but within the same sect, have become a byword. They are due to the pride of private intellect, and they can only be healed by humble submission to a Divine authority. [EOQ] (my emphases)

J.P. Moreland: "Fighting Bibliolatry"

Today I finished substitute teaching some classes on natural theology for a friend from seminary who is presently at the ETS meeting in San Diego. I see now that J.P. Moreland's talk on Wednesday seems to be the subject of conversation. Among the interesting points in Moreland's talk is this:

"A third area where Moreland critiqued evangelical over-commitment to Bible was in the scarcity of evangelical appeals to natural theology and moral law in their political and cultural discussions."

I agree. Subjects such as cloning, abortion, and sexual ethics are often treated as if there is no such thing as natural law. And sacred theology is often treated as if there is no such thing as natural theology or a positive philosophy that can provide a support for sacred theology. Moreland's call for a continued movement away from fideism is much needed. I was at the ETS meeting in Philadelphia in November of 1995 when Moreland gave the keynote, advocating the importance of the place of philosophy. When Moreland finished speaking, Greg Bahnsen stood up and went right after Moreland: "Couldn't you just replace [in your talk] every instance of your use of the word 'philosophy' with the word 'theology'"? asked Bahnsen. Moreland responded by explaining why he believed that philosophy served as a praeambula fidei. About two weeks later, Bahnsen died of mitral valve failure. (May his soul rest in peace.) From the point of view of improving prospects of a reunion between Catholics and evangelicals, Moreland's position is much better than Bahnsen's presuppositionalism (which is a form of fideism).

Protestantism is still recovering from its initial low view of reason, characterized, for example, in these statements by Martin Luther:

"Reason is the devil's greatest whore; by nature and manner of being she is a noxious whore; she is a prostitute, the devil's appointed whore; whore eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her wisdom ... Throw dung in her face to make her ugly. She is, and she ought to be, drowned in baptism . . . She would deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house, to the closets [i.e. toilets]."

"Reason is contrary to faith."

"Reason is directly opposed to faith, and one ought to let it be; in believers it [i.e. reason] should be killed and buried."

Granted that everything Luther said has to be taken with a grain of salt, but when one's view of reason is that low, fideism (and its resulting biblicism) is one's only option. As evangelical philosophers continue to discover the possibility of genuine philosophy and develop its role in the practice of theology, I think the prospects for Catholic-evangelical reunion will continue to improve.

Slick, Clark, and Monocausalism

The Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry (CARM) was founded in the mid-1990s by Matt Slick, a 1991 graduate of Westminster Theological Seminary in Escondido, California. He claims to be ordained, though by whom is not clear to me. At the CARM website, we can find an article with the following title: "Are Roman Catholics Christian?".

The article begins as follows:

Are Roman Catholics Christians? They are, if they have trusted in Jesus alone for the forgiveness of their sins. However, if they believe that they are saved by God's grace and their works, then they are not saved -- even if they believe their works are done by God's grace -- since they then deny the sufficiency of Christ's sacrifice.

His argument goes like this:

(1) We are saved by grace and works [Assumption]

(2) Our works are done by God's grace [Assumption]

Therefore,

(3) Christ's sacrifice was not sufficient. [From (1) and (2)]

But:

(4) Christ's sacrifice was sufficient. [Assumption]

Therefore,

(5) Premise (1) is false. [From (1), (2), (3) and (4)]

(6) Anyone who claims (3) is not saved. [Assumption]

Therefore,

(7) Catholics who claim (1) and (2) are not saved. [From (3), and (6)]

The problem with this argument is that (3), (5) and (7) are all non sequiturs, given a Catholic understanding of the term 'sufficient'. So the entire argument is, in that sense, question-begging. What is missing is the specification of the term 'sufficient': sufficient for what, with respect to what? When St. Paul fills up in his own flesh that which is lacking in Christ's sufferings (Col. 1:24), is St. Paul suggesting that Christ's sacrifice was insufficient? For Catholics, the answer is 'yes' and 'no', i.e. 'yes' in one sense, 'no' in another sense. 'Yes', in the sense that Christ's sacrifice was not sufficient to make St. Paul's sufferings for the Colossian believers unnecessary. But 'no' in the sense that Christ's sacrifice was sufficient to make possible a way to God for the Colossians and the whole world.

I'm concerned that monocausalism is working as an underlying assumption here in Slick's argument. Monocauslism is the notion (in this context) that if God is doing something, then we cannot also be doing it. It is a denial of the concurrence of primary and secondary causation. This is what seems to be driving the idea that if we (by divine grace) are contributing to our salvation through our works (cf. Phil 2:12), then it must be the case that something is being taken away from our being saved by grace alone, or by Christ alone. Our good works (worked in us by God's grace) are treated by monocausalists as though in competition with Christ's salvific work. If Christ's work saves us, then (think monocausalists) there is no room for us to do anything that contributes to our salvation. In this way monocausalism is what sets up the false dilemma of Pelagianism on the one hand, and the "Free Grace" type of position [i.e. think Zane Hodges] on the other hand. Monocausalism is a philosophical position, and it should not be treated as a claim that needs no substantiation.

With monocausalism in mind, notice the way Scott Clark, of Westminster Theological Seminary, accuses the Catholic doctrine of being "Pelagian" in his recent article titled: "Trent, Sungenis, Shepherd and Federal Vision". He followed that the next day with an article titled, "Mark Noll on Why the Reformation is Over (or Not)". Notice the monocausalism in the following line from that article:

Rome teaches a different definition of grace and she has always taught a soteriology of "grace plus." We confess a soteriology of grace plus nothing.

The Catholic Church also teaches a soteriology of grace plus nothing: it is all by grace. Only through monocausalistic lenses are grace-given works seen as something outside of (or in addition to) grace. Clark then adds:

She [i.e. the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent] understood that we [i.e. Protestants] say that only Christ fulfilled the law and that justification cannot be improved or perfected, that there is no "initial" and "final" justification but only one justification for all time.

Then he says:

Mark notes that Rome says that faith is a free gift. Yes, it is, but to imply that Rome means by "faith" in the act of justification that it remains a free gift is equivocation. Yes, in Roman dogma, faith begins as a free gift initiated in baptism, but in Roman dogma it is also the case that we must do our part. We must cooperate with grace.

Notice the monocausalism in the notion that if we must do our part, it is no longer a free gift. The implicit assumption is that our salvation cannot be a free gift if our very doing of these good works contributes to our salvation. But implicit in that assumption is the assumption that our very doing of these good works cannot itself be a free and gracious gift of God. Hidden behind these claims is the philosophical assumption that operates behind both occasionalism and deism: monocausalism. In my opinion, we need to shine a critical light on that philosophical assumption.

Justification by faith

Faith is not merely a generic "trusting in Jesus". First, faith includes believing a set of propositions, i.e. the whole truth God has revealed to the Church, the "one faith" which we profess in the Creed, and which the catechumen confesses before the Church just prior to being baptized (CCC 1237). Second, faith also includes the act of receiving the sacraments, and trusting what the Church says about them. The person who claims to have faith but refuses the sacraments does not have faith. As the Catechism says, the "response of faith" is "inseparable from Baptism". (CCC 1236) Third, faith also includes trusting those through whom the propositions and sacraments have come to us, that is, the magisterium of the Church. This is what St. Augustine means when he says, "For my part, I should not believe the Gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church." And this is what St. Cyprian means when he says, "He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church as a mother." In this way, true faith includes all three bonds of unity. We often seem to interpret St. Paul's statements about "justification by faith" as meaning that we are justified by a generic "trusting in Jesus". But the faith of which St. Paul is speaking is not a mere "trusting in Jesus", but a rich full faith that includes all three aspects mentioned above. That is, in fact, the fullness of what it means to "trust in Jesus".

Since faith is something thicker and fuller than a merely subjective and inward "trusting in Jesus", we do not need to treat "justification by faith" and "justification by baptism" as mutually exclusive. Peter Leithart writes:

This is, I think, what Paul means in Romans 6:7 when He says - in a context having to do with deliverance from the power of sin, and, not incidentally, with baptism - that we are “justified from sin.”

The fuller conception of faith that St. Paul and the Church hold allows us to read the epistle to the Romans without worrying that "justification by baptism" intrudes upon or detracts from "justification by faith". Being baptized is part of what it means to have faith, and so being justified by baptism is part of what it means to be justified by faith. The entirely modern, entirely individualistic, entirely subjective, entirely internal and entirely phenomenological conception of faith that is common in American evangelicalism is not the faith of St. Paul or the Church. Recovering the faith that was handed down to the saints will help us overcome the individualism that presently hinders the reunion of all Christians.

"I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints." (Jude 1:3)

UPDATE (09/23/07): I have modified this post. My original comments here were critical of Leithart's comment, but a gracious reader pointed out that I had misread him, and that he was actually saying just the opposite of what I had thought. So I am glad now to be able to retain the quotation as a positive example of this fuller conception of justification.