When Roman Catholics show up at your door

WSC prof Scott Clark published this account of how he handled it:

I asked her how she planned to present herself to God, how well she was doing in her program of cooperating with grace. She admitted that her cooperation wasn’t perfect. I asked her what she makes of Galatians 3:10, “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the law” (emphasis added). She admitted that her obedience isn’t perfect but she hoped that her best would be acceptable to God. The late-medieval Franciscans had an expression for this view of grace and justification: “To those who do what lies within them, God denies not grace.” She is relying on what the medievals called “congruent merit,” literally the merit of agreement or covenantal merit. She’s hoping that God will impute perfection to her best efforts. …

One of the two most striking points she made had to do with authority. The first is that she is Roman Catholic because that’s where she feels most comfortable, where she finds peace. She testified that when she has strayed from the church she has lost this sense of peace….

The second appeal to authority was to implicit faith (fides implicta). The Roman Catechism §82 confesses:

Both Scripture and tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.

Faithful Romanists must accept the tradition of the church on implicit faith. They are to trust that what Rome teaches is true even though it cannot be verified from Scripture. Indeed, she was much more certain that Rome must a priori be correct than she was about what Scripture says.

Before she left I asked her what were Jesus’ last words on the cross. After some thinking she said remembered, “it is finished.” I told her that, according to Rome’s view of salvation Jesus should have said, “It is begun” to which she agreed, that’s what the words must mean. She said that Jesus has opened the way for us to do our part toward eventual acceptance with God.

Jesus, however, didn’t say, “It is under way.” He said, “It is finished.” The only way to benefit from Jesus’ work is not by grace and cooperation with grace but by God’s free favor alone, through faith resting in Christ’s finished work alone….