My Discussion with a Group of Protestants

I apologize in advance for the length and complexity of this post.

Let me begin by saying that your comments show that you lack any familiarity with the Scholastic philosophy of the early and high Middle Ages.  To call the early Scholastics, and St. Thomas Aquinas in particular, nominalists is to betray a complete lack of knowledge of the philosophical thought of the men of that time.  The early Scholastics, and St. Thomas in particular, were realists as it concerns the universals.  St. Thomas held that the universal form of a particular thing is concretely real through a natural mode of being within the particular itself, but in addition he held that it is also real in the human mind through a mode of intention.  Thus, the particular is real, but so is the universal, because the universal is not a mere concept or name, but is a real essence existing in both a natural mode in the particular thing in question, and in a mode of intentionality in the human mind.  Moreover, the universal is not real because of man's thought; instead, it exists the in particular itself prior to any human apprehension of it through abstraction by the agent intellect.  This philosophical viewpoint was only later denied, culminating in the metaphysical nominalism of Ockham.  In concluding my introductory remarks, I would like to point out that I have no real interest in debating points of doctrine with Protestants, because I left Protestantism behind over 15 years ago, and to be blunt, Protestantism bores me; but that being said, I will now move on and give a critique of your post.

This appraisal of the philosophy of the Middle Ages is a massive generalization and is clearly in error.  To call St. Thomas Aquinas, who was a philosophical realist, a nominalist shows a great lack of knowledge on this topic.  Please back up your assertions with quotations from St. Thomas Aquinas showing that this great intellectual of the Middle Ages was a nominalist.

This statement shows confusion on the nature of the debate about the reality of the universals and the particulars.  The universal is the immaterial essence of the particular thing.  The forms are not material, but immaterial, but that does not mean that they are not real, because they are most certainly real.  Reality is not confined to material existence, as any good philosopher or theologian knows.  Unless you wish to assert that God, from all eternity, is a material being.  The universal exists in the mind of God and through a mode of intention in the mind of man, and thus the universals are very real indeed, although they are not material.  This type of existence cannot be described as nominal, and to say that it is, is to betray a total lack of understanding of the distinctions made in early medieval Scholasticism.  William of Ockham is the full flowering of nominalism in metaphysics and he died in the middle of the 14th century.  It is only the later Scholastics, and not all of them by any means, who held to a type of metaphysical nominalism.

This comment needs further clarification, because as it presently stands, it is so imprecise that it is hard to even see what you mean.  Clearly, by abstracting from the particular through the action of the agent intellect man does apprehend the form of the particular object in question, i.e., he apprehends its universal essence.  But your statement as it is presently worded is so convoluted, as to be unintelligible.  The first part of the statement sounds like a form of modern idealism, while the second part appears to reduce the universals to thought which is not consonant with the metaphysics of early and middle Scholasticism.  The universal exists through a mode of intention in the mind, but it is not the mind that gives them existence, because the universal exists in each particular thing in a natural mode prior to any act of human intellection.

This statement shows a lack of understanding of the nominalist position itself, because the nominalists didn't claim that there were no universals but that the universals were mere names or concepts, and so, these two positions, i.e., the misrepresentation of nominalism by Protestant Interlocutor, and the actual position of the nominalists, are not identical.  But I agree wholeheartedly that the nominalists were in error, I just don't agree with your misrepresentation of their position.

This statement doesn't conform to anything I've read in the Scholastics in general or St.Thomas in particular. Men and women share the same universal form or essence, i.e., human nature, and thus they are one species; and in addition, because they share a common essence, they have the same rights and duties.  Certainly, there are biological differences between men and women, and thus they are not identical at the particular level, but they are equal because they share a common human nature.  To assert anything else would involve major philosophical and theological problems.  On the theological level it would make the salvation of women impossible, since Christ assumed human nature as a particular male individual.  If men and women at the level of their common humanity are different in the way you imply, it follows that Christ did not save women by becoming man, which is a ludicrous proposition to assert.  You need to clarify further what you mean by this bizarre statement.  If I were to posit a guess as to your meaning, I think you are trying to distinguish between maleness and femaleness, which are particular instances of the one universal human nature, but I don't know why you thought that this idea was vital to your argument.  Also, in using the word Idea you need to be careful, because for Plato the Ideas are self-subsisting realities not dependent upon thought for their existence; and Aristotle, who accepted in a modified form Plato's views on this topic, also refused to limit their existence to thought.  It is not man's apprehension of the universal that gives it existence; instead, man apprehends the already existing reality of the universal which then exists in his mind through a mode of intention.  You seem to be confusing modern idealism with Plato's position.

Ockham is a philosophical nominalist who lived at the end of the Scholastic period.  That said, this is the only one of your comments so far that I believe is completely historically accurate.

This is the point at issue and so asserting that what I have said is not true is not sufficient, you must prove that it is not true.  You have not even addressed my points in your post.  The Reformers reduction of salvation to an intellectual faith alone, which is not formed by charity, is a theological novum, and no one prior to the 16th century would have accepted such an idea.  As St. Augustine said about faith and works, "Let us now consider the question of faith.  In the first place, we feel that we should advise the faithful that they would endanger the salvation of their souls if they acted on the false assurance that faith alone is sufficient for salvation or that they need not perform good works in order to be saved.  When St. Paul says, therefore, that man is justified by faith and not by the observance of the law, he does not mean that good works are not necessary or that it is enough to receive and to profess the faith and no more.  What he means rather and what he wants us to understand is that man can be justified by faith, even though he has not previously performed any works of the law. For the works of the law are meritorious not before but after justification." [St. Augustine, "On Faith and Works," Ancient Christian Writers, volume 48, pages 28-29]  The Catholic Church holds that we are justified by grace alone, through faith, but that faith must be formed by charity (agape), or it is dead and cannot justify a man. As St. Paul said, "If I have all faith, as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing," and as he went on to say, "Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." [1 Cor. 13:2 and 13:7]  Faith must be infused with divine love or it is dead and cannot justify anyone.  Moreover, the Reformers reduction of the doctrine of justification to legal categories of thought is nominalist as well, for this conception of justification does not exhaust the nature of what it is to be justified by grace alone through faith.

On this we agree, because Luther was a nominalist; and I would add, that he was more precisely a theological nominalist.

This is an interesting assertion, but it is not backed up with any evidence.  Thus, I stand by my original statement.  Clearly, the Reformers reduced the various mysteries of the faith to simple categories of thought, as an example the reduction of justification to a legalistic framework is clearly a form of nominalism applied to theology.  It empties justification of any ontological content, for as I stated in my previous post, what God declares to be so, is so, not only through some form of a legal fiction as the Protestant Reformers erroneously held, but also through a true regeneration of man at the ontological level.

I have not misunderstood it at all, but you have evaded the point at issue with a quotation from Luther that really doesn't address our conflicting views.  Let me point out first that although Luther's aphorism is untraditional, a Catholic can make use of it, if it is properly defined, and the reason that this is possible is because Catholics distinguish between mortal sin and venial sin, and it is only mortal sin that expels charity from the soul. In other words, venial sins do not remove a person for a state of grace, and so a person with various venial sins can be called just and yet venially sinful at the same time, but not mortally sinful.  Now let us move on to the crux of the dispute between the Catholic Church and Luther as it concerns the use of the phrase, simul justus et peccator, and how it is to be understood.  When Luther used the phrase simul justus et peccator, he was not using it in order to differentiate between mortal and venial sins, but he used it in order to assert that concupiscence, which is the inclination to sin caused by the fall, is itself sin; but the Catholic Church doesn't accept that to be the case.  So, even though concupiscence remains in the justified man after his translation to a state of grace, it does not follow that he is still sinful.  The fact that you didn't know this shows that you are unfamiliar with this element of the dispute between the Lutheran Churches and the Catholic Church.  Prescinding from the various historical disputes about this phrase, had you even looked at all the documents issued in connection with the recently signed Joint Declaration on Justification (henceforth referred to as the Joint Declaration) between the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church, you would have had a better grasp of this important topic.  What I am saying about Luther's understanding of the phrase can be easily confirmed by looking at the Joint Declaration itself, in which sadly the Lutherans in their explanatory paragraph (n. 29) continue to assert this bizarre theory, and by looking at the Response of the Catholic Church to the Joint Declaration (henceforth referred to as the Roman Response), which was issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, clarifying the Catholic position on this issue. Now, since this is an important issue, I will quote in full the section of the Roman Response that touches on use of the simul justus et peccator phrase, and here is what the CDF said: "The major difficulties preventing an affirmation of total consensus between the parties on the theme of Justification arise in paragraph 4.4 The Justified as Sinner (nn. 28-1,0). Even taking into account the differences, legitimate in themselves, that come from different theological approaches to the content of faith, from a Catholic point of view the title is already a cause of perplexity. According, indeed, to the doctrine of the Catholic Church, in baptism everything that is really sin is taken away, and so, in those who are born anew there is nothing that is hateful to God. [cf. Council of Trent, Decree on original sin (DS 1515)] It follows that the concupiscence that remains in the baptised is not, properly speaking, sin. For Catholics, therefore, the formula at the same time righteous and sinner, as it is explained at the beginning of n. 29 ('Believers are totally righteous, in that God forgives their sins through Word and Sacrament ...Looking at themselves ... however, they recognize that they remain also totally sinners. Sin still lives in them...'), is not acceptable. This statement does not, in fact, seem compatible with the renewal and sanctification of the interior man of which the Council of Trent speaks. [see the Council of Trent, Decree on justification, cap. 8: ". . . iustificatio . . . quae non est sola peccatorum remissio, sed et sanctificatio et renovatio interioris hominis" (DS 1528); cf. also can.11 (DS 15619)] The expression 'Opposition to God' (Gottwidrigkeit) that is used in nn. 28-30 is understood differently by Lutherans and by Catholics, and so becomes, in fact, equivocal. In this same sense, there can be ambiguity for a Catholic in the sentence of n. 22, '. . . God no longer imputes to them their sin and through the Holy Spirit effects in them an active love,' because man's interior transformation is not clearly seen. So, for all these reasons, it remains difficult to see how, in the current state of the presentation, given in the Joint Declaration, we can say that this doctrine on simul iustus et peccator is not touched by the anathemas of the Tridentine decree on original sin and justification." [Roman Response, no. 1] When you look at section 4.4 of the Joint Declaration itself, you can see exactly what the Lutherans understand by the phrase, simul justus et peccator, and it has nothing to do with the quotation that you gave from Luther's Heidelberg Disputation; instead, it is the assertion that man is totally just and totally sinful at the same time, and that concupiscence is sin, when in fact it is not. This conception of justification is irrational and impossible, in that it is contrary to the principle of non-contradiction. Certainly, the phrase can be given a Catholic meaning by distinguishing between mortal and venial sins, but the Lutherans do not do that; instead, they assert, as Luther himself asserted, that man is totally just and totally sinful [i.e., mortally sinful] at the same time, and this attempt to combine mutually exclusive terms is based on Luther's view of justification as a mere legal fiction, i.e., upon his belief that grace really does not change man in any kind of an ontological sense.

On this we basically agree, and confirmation of this can be seen by looking at my quotation from St. Augustine's treatise "On Faith and Works" above. It's important to note that the ritual and judicial precepts of the law were of a temporary nature, and that by our assimilation to Christ we have undergone these things in a spiritual way in Him, because He is our Head; but the moral law, which is written by God into the very nature of the human person, is eternal; and so, all men, under the power of God's grace, must do good and avoid evil.

This is what Catholics believe as well, but unlike the Reformers, our soteriology and ecclesiology are not nominalist in nature, because Catholics understand that the application of the merits of Christ's redemptive activity continues throughout time in the Church; just as His passion continues in, with, and through, His Body, the Church.  For the Church is the perpetual extension of the incarnation throughout time.  In reference to the continuation of Christ's passion in the Church, St. Augustine said, "What does the scripture mean when it tells us of the body of one man so extended in space that all can kill him?  We must understand these words of ourselves, of our Church, of the Body of Christ.  For Jesus Christ is one man, having a Head and a Body.  . . . And so the passion of Christ is not in Christ alone; and yet the passion of Christ is in Christ alone.  For if in Christ you consider both the Head and the Body, then Christ's passion is in Christ alone, but if by Christ you mean only the Head, then Christ's passion is not in Christ alone.  For if the sufferings of Christ are in Christ alone, that is in the Head alone; why does a certain member of Him, Paul the Apostle, say, 'In my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions?'  Hence if you are in the members of Christ, . . . whatever you suffer at the hands of those who are not members of Christ, was lacking to the sufferings of Christ.  It is added precisely because it was lacking.  You fill up the measure, you do not cause it to overflow.  You will suffer just so much as must be added of your sufferings to the complete passion of Christ, who suffered as our Head and who continues still to suffer in His members, that is, in us." [Emile Mersch, The Whole Christ, pages 424-425; taken from St. Augustine's, Enarrationes in Psalmos, Commentary on Psalm 62]  Clearly, for St. Augustine, Christ and the Church are one mystical Man, and so anything that happens to His Body, to each individual member of it, happens to Christ.  This truth is beautifully illustrated in the account of St. Paul's conversion in the book of Acts, for when Christ appears to Saul on the road to Damascus, He says, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?" [Acts 9:4]  You will notice that Jesus didn't say, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting My followers," no, He did not say that; instead, Christ said, ". . . why are you persecuting Me?" Why did the Lord say this? Because He associates all those who have been incorporated into His Body with Himself, for all who have been made members of Christ are living His life and energy in this world, as they move toward their definitive home in Heaven with their mystical Head. [cf. John 15:1-11]  Moreover, in reference to suffering St. Paul tells us in Romans 8:14-17, that ". . . all who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God.  For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of sonship.  When we cry, 'Abba! Father!'  It is the Spirit Himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with Him in order that we may be glorified with Him."  Jesus is the Messianic Suffering Servant, and the Church is the perpetual extension of this reality throughout time; and so, if we are to be glorified with Him, we must participate in His passion.  This participation in Christ's passion on the part of His Body the Church, is a wonderful gift of God's grace, for it is Christ who suffers in each one of us.

Here again is the crux of our disagreement, because Catholics hold that what God declares to be true, is ontologically true.  The Reformers held that God declares, as a legal fiction, that man is just, when in fact he remains unjust, and as a Catholic I cannot subscribe to that viewpoint.  This theological idea, that God declares something to be so, when it in reality is not, makes God a liar; and this reduction of justification to legal categories of thought is a form of theological nominalism.

Catholics hold that justification and sanctification occur simultaneously, and this Catholic belief is the ancient understanding of the effect of justifying grace as the Protestant scholar Alister McGrath quite readily admits in his historical survey of the doctrine of justification, for as he said, "The essential feature of the Reformation doctrine of justification is that a deliberate and systematic distinction is made between justification and regeneration.  Although it must be emphasized that the distinction is purely notional, in that it is impossible to separate the two within the context of the ordo salutis, the essential point is that a notional distinction is made where none had been acknowledged before in the history of Christian doctrine.  A fundamental discontinuity was introduced into the western theological tradition where none had ever existed, or ever been contemplated, before.  The Reformation understanding of the nature of justification as opposed to its mode must therefore be regarded as a genuine theological novum." [Alister McGrath, Iustitia Dei, volume 1, page 186]

Again, this is where we disagree, because I hold, in line with the 2,000 tradition of the Church, that when a man is justified, all that is truly sinful is removed from him, concupiscence alone, which is not in reality sin, remains.  While you hold, in line with the theological novelties of the 16th century Protestant nominalism, that man, even after being justified, is and remains totally sinful, because grace does not establish an ontological connection between man and God, it does not truly begin the process of man's theosis, but instead only establishes a legal fiction, whereby God calls the totally sinful man just, even though he in reality he remains unjust.

I agree, because the righteousness of the justified man is a gift of God's grace, but this grace given righteousness is not foreign or extrinsic to the justified man, and so it becomes his actual possession, because grace has ontologically changed him, making him truly just and not merely nominally just.

There is great truth in what Chesterton said in comparing Calvinism and Manichaeism, even though you don't recognize this fact; but anyone familiar with St. Augustine's Anti-Manichaean writings would understand what Chesterton meant.  To say that nature is in itself sinful and depraved is to say that sin and evil are essential and thus created realities, when in fact they are not.  The assertion that nature is evil is a form of dualism.  In reality, evil is a privation of the good, it is a relative absence of the good in the will of the creature, and so evil and sin have their origin in man's will, not in God.  God is all good, all holy, all perfect, and so He is not the cause of sin, but He permits man to sin, because He created man in freedom.  Clearly, it was man's abuse of his own created freedom that brought sin into the world, and thus God is not the author or cause of sin.  God's foreknowledge of our sins does not mean that He is the author of sin.  Whatever He causes, He foreknows, but it does not follow that whatever He foreknows, He causes. [see St. Augustine, De Libero Arbitrio, Book 3, 2:4-3:8, 4:11; City of God, Book 5, 10:1-2]  Moreover it should be remembered, that every nature is from God as is every good thing.  Sin is not something positive; it is a defect rather than a created nature.  This defect or absence of the good is not the work of God. It is a voluntary defect and it is in the power of man's will to cause it. [St. Augustine, De Libero Arbitrio, Book 2, 20:54]  Calvinism makes sin natural to man, and in doing this it postulates a form of dualism akin to Manichaeism, and so Chesterton's comment is apropos.

As I said at the very beginning of this post, I have no interest in an extended debate on these issues: first, because my time is limited as I'm preparing to go back to school; and second, to be honest, the theological novelties of the Protestant Reformers hold no intellectual interest for me.  I do recommend reading an excellent book written by Johann Adam Moehler that compares the Catholic and Protestant theological systems, and it's called, Symbolism: Exposition of the Doctrinal Differences between Catholics and Protestants as Evidenced by their Symbolical Writings.  Moehler's book is a detailed study of the theological and anthropological issues that separate Protestants and Catholics, and unlike some people's comparisons of Catholic and Protestant soteriology, it uses the documents of both sides in order to fairly present their positions.  I highly recommend the book.

Oh, it is quite relevant, because the doctrine of the Trinity is present in scripture, but the doctrine of total depravity is not. Nor do any of the quotations you've given prove that man's nature is totally depraved.  Man's nature is not depraved after the fall, because Adam lost nothing natural to his existence as man; instead, he lost the supernatural gift of sanctifying grace (divine intimacy and communion), and the preternatural gifts of integrity, immortality, impassibility, and infused knowledge.  Moreover, if nature is sinful, then it follows that God, as the sole Creator of nature, is the cause and origin of sin, but every Catholic Christian knows that that idea is false, because moral evil and sin are not natural, nor are they essential and created realities; instead, moral evil is unnatural, it is a relative absence of the good in the will of the creature, and to say otherwise is to fall into Manichaean dualism.  Clearly, unregenerate man cannot save himself, for he requires the gift of God's grace in order to have the likeness to God (theoeideis) lost by sin restored, but that is not the same as saying that man's nature is totally depraved.

No, the Fathers of Trent are not saying that.  What they are saying is that if a man has faith alone, which is not formed by charity, he is not saved.  Nowhere, in either the Decree on Justification, nor in the canons appended to the Decree, does it deny that man is saved by grace alone, because that is precisely the teaching of Trent.  The Tridentine Fathers teach that man is saved by grace alone, but not by an unformed faith alone.

As St. Prosper said, "That some men are saved is the gift (i.e., grace) of Him (i.e., God), who saves; that some men are lost, is the fault of those who are lost."  Salvation is by grace alone, but grace perfects, restores, and elevates nature, and so it empowers man to act in the supernatural order.  The Catholic Church teaches that we are saved by grace alone, through faith, hope, and charity. [see the Council of Trent, Decree on Justification, chap. x]

The problem is this, you read scripture in the light of the 450 year old tradition of John Calvin, and I read scripture in the light of the 2,000 year old Apostolic Tradition of the Catholic Church.  Scripture does not teach that man's nature is totally depraved, and thus I will not agree with you on this topic.  I, unlike the followers of Calvin, am not a Manichaean dualist.  I hold that nature is created by God, and that it is good, because He has made it.  Nature cannot be depraved, nor can man be intrinsically evil, for to believe that is to be a Manichaean, and not a Christian.  Now, I do believe that because of the fall, man's nature, wounded by the loss of the preternatural gifts intended to perfect it, cannot achieve, under its own power, eternal life.  But man, even before the fall into sin, was not able to give himself divine life, because that can only be given to man by God.  Which is why, for man to be saved, he must be raised above his nature, and above his natural existence, into the supernatural life of the Triune God, and this can only be accomplished — as I have already indicated — through the gift of God's grace.

One other thing, I do not use the NIV Bible, and the reason I do not is because it was translated by Evangelical scholars in order to support various Protestant doctrinal theories, including the idea that nature is sinful.  Thus, in the quotation you have given above, the following translation is given:  ". . . also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts."  Now, what the NIV translators have translated as sinful nature is the Greek word, sarx, which is accurately translated into English as the word flesh.  Thus, nowhere does scripture call nature in itself sinful.  In fact, sin is by definition unnatural.

Finally, let me address your use of the term total inability, because I hold that a Catholic can accept the technical term total inability in relation to man's natural status before God, but he can never accept the concept of total depravity.  The reason that a Catholic can accept the first term is because salvation is purely by God's grace, which is a supernatural gift imparted to man in order to restore, perfect, and elevate him above his own natural existence.  Thus, by the power of grace (i.e., God's deifying energy) given to man in Christ Jesus, the divine likeness disfigured by sin is restored, and man is elevated into the very life of the Trinity, i.e., he is divinized.  But the second term, i.e., total depravity, is not acceptable, because human nature is not depraved.

Protestant Errors:  Nominalism, Total Depravity, Faith Alone, and Justification

by Steven Todd Kaster

Original Version:  4 August 2004 (from a thread at the Phatmass Phorum)

This text is based on posts taken from the forum thread linked above, but was reworked and expanded into its present form on:  15 February 2026

Copyright © 2004, 2026 - Steven Todd Kaster