I previously wrote about the importance of works as the manifestation of faith.

Works matter, not because we earn our salvation through these, but because they are the exercise of our faith. They are what gives life to faith, and what makes it manifest. They also become yet another channel for grace, both for ourselves and for others: a grace which strengthens our faith. This is not by any means to our own credit: our good works are the response which faith, hope, and love require of us to be effective. These latter three virtues are granted to us by God—as are any graces. He has willed that salvation must be a cooperative venture: it is a gift to us, but one with which we must cooperate. It is by our works that we engage in this cooperation with Divine grace; God calls us, and we must respond, which we do through our works. Just as sin can be in the body or the spirit, so too must salvation be participated in by both body and spirit.

This is a statement with which the more orthodox and faithful of Catholics would agree. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “Divine providence works also through the actions of creatures. To human beings God grants the ability to cooperate freely with his plans” (see paragraph 323). The form which this cooperation takes is, on the one hand the theological virtues—faith, hope, and love—and on the other hand our works; the former are spiritual things which may be manifested in the latter, but the latter are often physical things which can strengthen the former.

As for the three theological virtues, it seems to me obvious to state that they are properly exercised with some knowledge. We cannot place faith in that about which we know nothing, nor can it be a source for hope or the basis of love. Instead, we must begin with some basic knowledge about God; that is, we begin by knowing of the possibility of God’s existence, and by believing that this possibility is true. It is not for nothing that the Baltimore Catechism, among other, begins with the question of God’s existence:

1. Who made us?
God made us.

2. Who is God?
God is the Supreme Being, infinitely perfect, who made all things and keeps them in existence.

Such is the beginnings of belief, too. We cannot believe in God if we do not know that the concept “God” exists. This is echoed in both historic creeds, “I believe in God the Father almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth…” and “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.” We believe—to some extent—in God because we are able to conclude intellectually that He exists.

However, this intellectual belief in God is not the fullness of faith: it’s what we do with that knowledge, with that belief, which matters. If the thing does not inform our lives and our lifestyles, then it is useless knowledge, indeed a useless belief. It seems to me very unlikely that during the particular judgment will hinge entirely on answering affirmative to the question “Did you discover and acknowledge God’s existence? Did you affirm that Christ was God, that He died and then rose from the dead after three days?”

So much can be stated without controversy, but I think it is the form of the response in which men of good will often disagree. On the one hand, there are those who essentially state that salvation is a matter only of “accepting Jesus as you personal Savior” at some point in time. There is only one loophole to this: blaspheming the Holy Spirit (“the one unforgivable sin,” see Mark 3:29 and Luke 12:10); unfortunately, a substantial number of people holding this belief also apparently believe that this acceptance of Christ and subsequent salvation are nullified if the person is or later becomes a Catholic.

On the other hand, there is the insistence on the need for baptism. “Jesus answered: Amen, amen I say to thee, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). This and other passages pertaining to Baptism underlie one of the few truly universal practices of Christianity—though there are again disagreements as to what effect (if any) Baptism has on a person’s soul, not to mention the appropriate age for its the administration. It seems to me, in any case, that Baptism itself is a form of work; and that this work is performed by the priest (in the universal sense of the word, that is, by any of the people of God), on the one hand; by the parson being baptized, or by is parents or guardians, on another hand; by the whole Church; and lastly (and most importantly) by the Holy Spirit. It is a work of God, but it is also a work in which God generally waits for men to work before He, too, acts (a possible exception is “baptism of desire,” in which case a formal baptism with water is desired but impossible before a person’s life ends).

There are also those who insist, with the Church, that works really do matter. Even the Christians who make the claim that salvation comes only through “accepting Jesus as you personal Savior” will in the end admit to this—if only in a negative sense. The message of Christianity—Catholic or otherwise—is one of salvation; but salvation presupposes that there is something from which to be saved. To paraphrase Professor Peter Kreeft, the “good news” is only really good if it applies to us; if there is nothing from which to be saved, then salvation is meaningless. It’s akin to hearing a doctor tell you “Congratulation, you’ve just won a $500,000 triple-bypass surgery absolutely free!” This is only good if you actually need a triple bypass surgery, for if you are healthy and have no problems with your blood vessels’ being blocked, then the triple bypass surgery is useless to you.

This is something which all Christians recognize to some extent: we are in need of salvation, specifically of salvation from sins the wages of which are death (Romans 6:23). But what is sin? The basic answer is that it is any thought, word, or deed which is “bad” or “evil.” We know that it is bad or evil because God told us—either through direct or indirect means—that it is bad or evil.

Ah, but there is more to this that that. Faithful Catholics and even many Protestants will rightly go a step further: sin is bad not just “because God says so,” but because it leads us away from God Who Is the Source of all which is good. Sin separates us from God, Who Is also the Source of all life. Hence, the wage of sin is death, because if the Source of life is absent, then so too must be life.

When sin becomes habitual, we fall away from God, because we are practicing that which leads us away from Him. We become good at that which we practice well, and sin is such a thing. By practicing sin, we become proficient at drawing away from God; by inculcating vice, we become predisposed to sin.

The Church also turns this statement on its head. If God is the Source of all which is good, then by doing good things we must draw nearer to Him. By practicing sanctity—that is, by performing good works—we therefore become proficient in drawing nearer to God; by inculcating virtue, we become more predisposed to sanctity. Thus, we do draw nearer to God through our good works—and thus we become more receptive to His grace, and thus can draw nearer still.

Where faith comes into this picture is that it helps to inspire us to do good works. Inculcating virtue helps to become proficient at sanctity: and faith, hope, and love are all virtues—the theological virtues. Our good works are only the outward manifestations of these virtues; they are the ways in which we practice these virtues. But by practicing these virtues, we grow stronger in them—it is a sort of natural grace which God has “built-in” to our design. Note that this built-in feature of our design was put there by God—so it is still His grace which allows for good works to strengthen faith, hop, and love, and for these to increase our sanctity.

These theological virtues may begin in us on an intellectual level, but in the end they must be an act of our wills. Once again, they can be an act of the will only because the will is free: this is also a gift from God, so this is also a form of grace which is “built-in” to our design. By practicing good works, we are practicing our faith by exercising our will; by strengthening our virtue, we increase our will’s predisposition towards the Source of all virtue, God. But how is a thing strengthen save through exercise? Thus, good works help to strengthen the virtues by exercising them.

Finally, I would be remiss if I failed to talk about the other role of grace in all of this. Yes, grace is necessary for this entire economy to occur, for without the graces (that is, the gifts) of a free will and the ability to strengthen our virtues by exercising them, we would get nowhere. For that matter, without the grace of the intellect, we would have nowhere from which to start.

However, there is more to grace than this, because these graces which I have thus far mentioned do not of themselves allow us to draw all the way to God, or to heaven. Even having been given the means of doing all of this, and even if we actually used these gifts to their fullest we would still fall short. “Doth he thank that servant, for doing the things which he commanded him? I think not. So you also, when you shall have done all these things that are commanded you, say: We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which we ought to do” (Luke 17:9-10). We can draw nearer to God, but the distance which we must cross is infinite.

Grace makes up the distance which we cannot. Still, God will not transport us across this distance against our wills, and so this saving grace will not be ours unless we accept it; and this we do by cooperating with it. But such cooperation is difficult if we are not in some small way predisposed to sanctity; thus, our works help us even with this grace, if only by helping us to accept it.