Article by Joe Carter: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/9-things-you-should-know-about-the-council-of-trent

A further update: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/is-the-reformation-over-a-statement-of-evangelical-convictions/

John Stott: “We are ready to co-operate with them (Roman Catholics, Orthodox or liberal Protestants) in good works of Christian compassion and social justice. It is when we are invited to evangelize with them that we find ourselves in a painful dilemma for common witness necessitates common faith, and co-operation in evangelism depends on agreement over the content of the gospel.”

“At the moment the Roman Catholic Church condemned the biblical doctrine of justification by faith alone, she denied the gospel and ceased to be a legitimate church, regardless of all the rest of her affirmations of Christian orthodoxy. To embrace her as an authentic church while she continues to repudiate the biblical doctrine of salvation is a fatal attribution.” – Dr. R.C. Sproul, “Is the Reformation Over?” Tabletalk, September 2009, p. 7.

See the Roman Catholic Church’s Council of Trent, Canons 9, 11, 24, 30, 32.

“The Roman Catholic Church has changed since the 16th century. There’s no question about it. And the differences that we had in the 16th century have changed. They’re far greater now than they were in the 16th century. All the Mariological decrees have come since the Reformation. The ‘de fide’ proclamation of the infallibility of the Pope came since the Protestant Reformation. Things are not getting better; they’re worse. And in the recent Roman Catholic Catechism of the decade of the 90s, all of the essential issues of the 16th-century debate were reaffirmed in that catechism including the treasury of merit, purgatory, indulgences, justification through the sacraments. So, when people say that the Reformation is over, they just don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s that simple.” – Dr. R. C. Sproul

R C Sproul – from the sermon: https://learn.ligonier.org/sermons/abraham-justified-faith

In our day, the doctrine of justification has been battled afresh within so-called evangelical circles, revealing that evangelical circles are not truly evangelical. Anyone who challenges sola fide cannot do so and legitimately be counted as an evangelical, because justification by faith alone is at the very heart of historical evangelicalism.

Be that as it may, all kinds of people call themselves evangelicals, but they call themselves evangelicals with a dead vocation. Their profession of evangelicalism is a false profession because they deny the evangel that defines evangelicalism. At the center of the debate is whether or not the aspect of imputation is crucial to justification by faith alone.

We saw the startling manifestation in the mid-1990s called “Evangelicals and Catholics Together,” when some leading evangelicals in our country declared to the world that they had a unity of faith in the gospel with their Roman Catholic friends, who appealed to their own orthodox Roman Catholic doctrine. Nevertheless, these so-called evangelical leaders declared that they had a union of faith in the gospel with their Roman Catholic friends.

In discussions with these evangelical leaders, I raised some questions. I said: “I know I don’t have a unity of faith with people who deny justification by faith alone and preach a different gospel from the biblical gospel. I can be friends with them. I can have a unity in concerns about abortion and a host of other things, but not in the gospel, because we don’t believe the same gospel. Here’s my problem: If you have a unity of faith in the gospel with these people, and I don’t have a unity in the faith in the gospel with them, how can I possibly have a unity of faith in the gospel with you?”

We had a series of meetings that were important, and in one meeting, I kept pressing the point to one of the leaders of this group. I said, “Do you believe that justification by faith alone is essential to the gospel?” He kept saying to me, “I think it’s central to the gospel.” I said: “That’s not what I asked you. I asked you whether it is essential. If you don’t have justification by faith alone, you don’t have the gospel.” Try as hard as I could, I could not get the man to make that assertion.

So much controversy arose out of that ECT initiative that they came out with a second document, which in my judgment was far worse than the first one, in which they said, “We together agree in the faith of the gospel because we believe that justification requires faith, and we believe that we are saying the same things that the Reformers were saying in the sixteenth century.” Then they came to me and said, “What do you think now?”

I said, “What do I think now? Like Michael Horton says, if you are making chocolate chip cookies and you get eggs, flour, milk, and sugar and you mix it all together, you have the stuff that makes up chocolate chip cookies, but there is one critical ingredient that is missing. There are no chocolate chips. Without the chocolate chips, you do not have chocolate chip cookies. Without sola fide, you do not have justification by faith alone.”

At the end of that second document, they said, “We leave the question of imputation for later discussion.” I thought: “Leave the question of imputation for later discussion? That is the chocolate chips.”

Historically, the whole issue regarding justification is about this question: How does the righteousness of Christ become mine? Is it because it is poured into me through the sacrament of baptism and later again through the sacrament of penance? Or is the righteousness of Christ imputed to me, counted for me, transferred to my account?

Here is the point of the debate in a nutshell: Is the righteousness by which I am justified a righteousness that is found in me, an inherent righteousness? The Council of Trent says you must have righteousness inhaerens. In other words, righteousness must be in you before God will ever decree that you are justified. That is why you must have the structure of purgatory and all the rest, so that you might spend millions of years there until you get enough righteousness in you before God will ever pronounce you just.

That is not gospel; that is bad news. It would leave me without hope. If I have to wait until I am inherently righteous, I am a dead man. But the gospel is that we are righteous on the basis of the righteousness of Jesus that is transferred to our account, imputed to us, what Luther called a iustitium alienum, an alien righteousness, a righteousness that is extra nos, outside of us. The righteousness by which you are justified is the righteousness that Christ manifested in His life of perfect obedience.

It is Christ’s righteousness that justifies you. All you bring to the table is your trust in Him and His righteousness. If you add one ounce of your own righteousness as your confidence in your justification, you are repudiating the gospel. That is what Paul is saying here without any ambiguity by citing David.

David described the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works. Do you know such blessedness? There is no greater blessedness under heaven than to have God, in His mercy and grace, transfer the righteousness of Jesus to your account.

On Christmas Eve, I told a story about a priest with dirty clothes. I did not just do that to entertain the children. That story about the priest and the dirty clothes is the story of imputation. It is the story of the gospel, the only gospel by which we stand or fall. Dear friends, imputation is what it is all about. It is Christ’s righteousness counted for you.

Can you imagine standing before God? When I stand before God, He will know everything I have ever done wrong, every evil thought, and every wicked deed I have ever performed. If He looks at me inherently, all He will see are filthy rags. But that is not how He looks at me. He looks at me and He sees Christ. He sees the covering of the righteousness of Christ, the cloak of righteousness. That is why the New Testament says that Christ is our righteousness. He is my righteousness. The only righteousness I possess is the righteousness of Christ, and I possess it by transfer, by reckoning, by imputation.

Based on that, I tell my friends in the theological world that if you negotiate imputation, you give it all away. That is the article upon which sola fide stands or falls, and sola fide is the article upon which the gospel stands or falls. The gospel is the article upon which the church stands or falls.