After the debate, I attended a reception for participants and guests at a local Christian bookstore near Fuller Theological Seminary. In a back room where the books were half-priced I browsed, while I eavesdropped on a Protestant seminarian and a Roman Catholic layman. They were debating the debate, particularly sola fide. The Protestant told the Roman Catholic that they could be friends but that he could not consider him a brother in Christ, since Roman Catholics believe in works righteousness.

 

I listened to the points and counterpoints, and patiently watched them butt heads for a few more minutes and then decided to try something out. I asked the Roman Catholic how it was that he was able to do the goods works that he did and if he believed that they earned him salvation. He said they did not earn him salvation and that he was only able to do them by the grace of the Holy Spirit in his life. I asked the seminarian what was wrong with that. He really didn’t know.

 

I then asked the seminarian if he was truly united with Christ. And when Paul writes of “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” does this mean we actually participate in the life of Christ, that we have the very life of the Son of God in us. “Yes, it does,” he said. I suggested that if, as the Scriptures say, in Christ is the fullness of grace, then the idea of “infused grace,” an idea condemned as a Roman Catholic heresy, might actually have some merit. Granted that my intrusion was not theologically clever, I think both men saw that perhaps there was still the need for Protestants and Roman Catholics to engage in closer, more sympathetic dialogue. The seminarian later thanked me.