1. There is something in the forgiveness of sin which implies an
element of positive good, and this is called justification. It
means that the attitude of God towards forgiven sin is believed by
the Catholic Church to be no mere neglect or forgetfulness of its
evil, but an actual and complete forgiveness. At the time of the
Protestant Reformation a long controversy was waged over this very
point, in which the Reformers took up the curious position that
forgiveness implied nothing more than that God did not impute sin.
He covered up the iniquities of the soul with the Blood of His
Son, and no longer peered beneath the depths of that sacred and
saving sign. The problem has probably hardly any meaning now,
since the original doctrinal principles of Protestantism, the
ostensible reasons for the sixteenth century revolt, have been
abandoned long since as hopeless of defence. In fact all that was
really positive in Protestantism has been ruined by its basic
negative principle of private judgment. Against such a battering
ram Christianity itself is powerless. But that long-forgotten
discussion had this much of value, that it brought out in clear
perspective the fullness of the Catholic teaching on the central
doctrine of justification and showed its depth and meaning.
2. Briefly, then, it may be stated that it is not simply that God
does not impute evil, but that He forgives it. It is as though a
rebellion had taken place and its leader had been captured and
brought before his offended sovereign. Now the king might do
either of two things, if he wished not to punish the culprit. He
might simply bid him go off and never appear again, or he might go
even further by actually forgiving the rebellion and receiving
back into favor the rebel. It is one thing to say that no
punishment will be awarded, it is another to say that the crime is
forgiven, and that everything is to go on as though nothing had
happened. In the first case we might say that the king chose not
to impute the sin, in the other that he forgave and justified the
sinner. It is just this, then, that the Catholic Church means when
she teaches justification as implied in the idea of forgiveness.
It is just this, too, that Our Lord meant when He detailed His
beautiful parable about the prodigal son. The boy's return home
does not mean merely that the father refrains from punishment, but
rather that there is a welcome so hearty and so complete that the
serious-minded elder brother, coming in from his long labor in the
fields, is rather scandalized by its suddenness and its intensity.
Such is indeed God's treatment of the soul. He is so generous, so
determined not to be outdone by any sorrow on the part of the
sinner, that He overwhelms with the most splendid favors the
recently converted soul.
3. But in this connection we must see in justification a process
by which the Presence of God is again achieved by man. By sin
grace was lost, and with grace went out the Divine Three in One,
the temple was desecrated, the veil of the Holy of Holies was
utterly rent. Then sin is forgiven and, once more, the Sacred home
is occupied by God. Moreover, when God comes to the soul He comes
with His full strength of love, and thereby gives a new energy and
life to man. We love because of some beauty, goodness, excellence,
that we see in others. We love, then, because of what is in them.
It is their gifts that cause or ignite our love. But God, Who is
the only cause Himself, creates excellences by love. We are not
loved because we are good; we are good because we are loved, so
that this indwelling itself fashions us after God's own heart. "It
is the love of God," says St. Thomas (_Summa theologica_, i,
20.2), "that produces and creates goodness in things." The divine
presence, then, of God in the soul, effected by sanctifying grace,
makes the soul more worthy a temple, more fit a home. God does not
come to us because we are fit, but we are fit because God comes to
us.