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human point of view, the supernatural works of faith working through love have merit before
God, and secure an increase of grace. Such works are impossible, however, without the
continuous operation of the grace of God. The result of the whole process was known as
justification rather than as sanctification; it consisted in making man just before God. These
ideas are embodied in the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent.
2. AFTER THE REFORMATION.
The Reformers in speaking of sanctification emphasized the
antithesis of sin and redemption rather than that of nature and supernature. They made a clear
distinction between justification and sanctification, regarding the former as a legal act of divine
grace, affecting the judicial status of man, and the latter, as a moral or re-creative work,
changing the inner nature of man. But while they made a careful distinction between the two,
they also stressed their inseparable connection. While deeply convinced that man is justified by
faith alone, they also understood that the faith which justifies is not alone. Justification is at
once followed by sanctification, since God sends out the Spirit of His Son into the hearts of His
own as soon as they are justified, and that Spirit is the Spirit of sanctification. They did not
regard the grace of sanctification as a supernatural essence infused in man through the
sacraments, but as a supernatural and gracious work of the Holy Spirit, primarily through the
Word and secondarily through the sacraments, by which He delivers us more and more from
the power of sin and enables us to do good works. Though in no way confounding justification
and sanctification, they felt the necessity of preserving the closest possible connection between
the former, in which the free and forgiving grace of God is strongly emphasized, and the latter,
which calls for the co-operation of man, in order to avoid the danger of work-righteousness. In
Pietism and Methodism great emphasis was placed on constant fellowship with Christ as the
great means of sanctification. By exalting sanctification at the expense of justification, they did
not always avoid the danger of self-righteousness. Wesley did not merely distinguish
justification and sanctification, but virtually separated them, and spoke of entire sanctification
as a second gift of grace, following the first, of justification by faith, after a shorter or longer
period. While he also spoke of sanctification as a process, he yet held that the believer should
pray and look for full sanctification at once by a separate act of God. Under the influence of
Rationalism and of the moralism of Kant sanctification ceased to be regarded as a supernatural
work of the Holy Spirit in the renewal of sinners, and was brought down to the level of a mere
moral improvement by the natural powers of man. For Schleiermacher it was merely the
progressive domination of the God-consciousness within us over the merely sentient and ever
morally defective world-consciousness. And for Ritschl it was the moral perfection of the
Christian life to which we attain by fulfilling our vocation as members of the Kingdom of God. In
a great deal of modern liberal theology sanctification consists only in the ever-increasing
redemption of man’s lower self by the domination of his higher self. Redemption by character is