The Biblical Evidence for the Catholic Doctrine of Justification
By Dr. Robert Sungenis · 2019 · ISBN 978-0-9818660-9-3
Justification is the doctrine the Reformation was fought over, and the claim at its centre is that a man is saved by faith apart from works. This book tests that claim against Scripture itself, passage by passage, and against the Fathers who read those passages long before the argument existed.
The examination is deliberately exhaustive rather than selective. James 2 gets the treatment it is usually spared. So does the use of the phrase faith alone in patristic literature, which turns out to be a good deal less friendly to the Reformation reading than the slogan suggests. The second edition adds appendices on that patristic usage, on the Council of Valence, on adoption, and on the Lutheran and Catholic joint declaration on justification.
The aim is not to score points. It is to make both sides take the other at their word, which is the only footing on which the disagreement can actually be settled.
In proving from Sacred Scripture the veracity of the Catholic theology of justification, Robert Sungenis leaves nothing to chance, no stone unturned, no concession for any other reasonable argument. I applaud this work, and recommend it for all who wish to know how and why the Bible teaches that we are not saved by faith alone.
Only some books deserve to be called seminal and revolutionary. This is surely one of them. Not By Faith Alone pays the reformers the ultimate compliment of taking them at their word; it also renders a real service to anyone who cares deeply about Christian unity. For there can be no such unity apart from the truth.