Annotation CCXII

”Of sin indeed, because they believed not,” etc. — John 16:9

Whether faith alone suffices for salvation.

John Ferus, in the commentaries, elucidating these words: “By the merits of Christ ALONE,” he says, “are we saved; and of these merits we are made partakers through faith alone.” In this opinion, Domingo de Soto admonishes that that particle, “THROUGH FAITH ALONE,” is to be guarded against, because from it [it] could be gathered that faith alone suffices for salvation — which is the error of the Lutherans. Meeting this censure, Michael [Medina] thus writes: “But how catholic this phrase is, we have brought to light in the preceding [pages], from many authors. Whence, [as to the fact] that he concludes, from the saying of the author, that we are saved through faith alone — we willingly grant [it], so long as we speak of the Christian faith, which includes love and works — [the faith] concerning which he sees, even unwilling, that the author always speaks, [and] understands [him to mean] this. But the Lutherans speak not of this faith, but of an unfruitful and unformed credulity, when the heretics attribute justice, or the obtaining of felicity, to faith [alone]. Nay, and the author, as is gathered from his words, teaches that we are made partakers of the merits of Christ through faith alone in this sense: that the participation of the same [merits] befalls [us] neither by nature, nor by any other [thing] besides the faith of Christ. For it is the faith of Christ alone through which, grafted into Christ and made one with him, we participate in his power and merits. Which sense, although it is most plainly gathered from the author’s words, I know not by what means it could be stained with Lutheran suspicion. He then carps at another saying of the author, by which he had taught that unbelief makes all [things], even [those] good in appearance, unpleasing [to God] — as if he should say that all the

works of unbelievers are sins. For [they] are called unpleasing, whatever [things] are not produced from the Christian faith — not because they displease God (which is required for the notion of sin), but because they do not please, according to that [saying]:¹ ‘Without faith it is impossible to please God.’”