Self-Justification is Essentially Projection
STILL ROUGH===Pt II- The Metaphysical Structure of Sola Fide is Isomorphic with Psychological Projection
I. Justification per Sola Fide is indistinguishable from Psychological Projection
Part I of this series constituted a constructive hylomorphic analysis of Jung´s notion of psychological projection along with Luther´s notion of justification as a self-conscious status. No doubt protestants and Lutherans will accuse me of a straw man so, in charity, I´ll switch it up to disputatio in part II to free myself from this accusation and clarify the critique. This section dives deeper into the metaphysics of the human soul to extend the argument.
II. Indistinguishability translates into identity.
Indistinguishable Form, Matter, and Intention\End translate into the same essence.1
A. Is the Form of Justification per Sola Fide Identical with Projection?
It seems the Form of Justification per sola fide is objectively the Righteousness of Jesus Christ. The status of justification is, thereby, not a projection but a free gift. The visible form or evidence of faith is testimony, by which the justified soul lays claim upon the mercy and merit of Jesus Christ. Romans 10:9 “For if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and if you believe in your heart that God has raised him up from the dead, you shall be saved.”
It seems the Form of Justification per sola fide is fiduciary trust in the promises of God, which engages the whole existence of man and bears a distinct psychological form with clear indicators—e.g. fruits of the spirit. The object is certainly God and His Work, not our own good works and certainly not a distorted image of projection. Romans 3:28 “For we maintain that a person is justified by faith alone apart from the works of the law.” Human works or imaginings add nothing to the work of God´s Grace through faith alone.
On the contrary, James 2:24; 26 “You see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.” “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” Faith and obedience are inseparable, as are justification and justice. So says the Council of Trent, “Justification itself, which is not remission of sins merely, but also the sanctification and renewal of the inward man, through the voluntary reception of the grace, and of the gifts, whereby man of unjust becomes just…an heir according to hope of life everlasting.”2 To claim with certainty to the status of being justified without becoming just could only be the work of psychological projection.
I answer that the two formal conditions of justifying faith as pertains the intellect—i.e. testimony, assent—and will—i.e. baptism, obedience— are satisfied and unified by membership in the Church Catholic. Recall the teaching of the Fathers: Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus. Without this sufficient condition, the object of faith becomes obscured as if justifying faith could (1) be an experience rather than assent to Apostolic Faith testifying to the person and character of Our Lord Himself, or (2) as if regeneration were an experience rather than the efficacious operation of the Sacrament of Baptism.
The argumentation has hithertofore concerned the self-conscious status of justification according to sola fide and not the reality of justification in the regenerate soul. These two must be clearly distinguished. All baptized souls are really made just, they are cleaned of original sin, and the charity of God is infused the soul with the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. This holds regardless of what opinion the believer himself holds about baptism, regeneration, and justification. And from this basis it is only natural that good works and fruits with follow the dispensation of supernatural grace and infusion of supernatural virtue, again regardless of specific dogmatic conviction.
However, because the normative content of the justification status per sola fide denies and contradicts the reality of justification via baptism in the soul, as well as the exact formal conditions of the submission of the intellect and obedience of the will to proper authority, the self-conscious “status” of justification according to sola fide threatens the regenerate souls capacity to attain or retain the status of justification—e.g. baptism may be neglected, sacramental confession is an outright redundancy—and frustrates the movement of the soul toward perfection.
Correlary Distinction: Speculative\Practical Intellect
The speculative intellect assents to truth, while the practical intellect orders acts toward the good. St Thomas clarifies: “the speculative and practical intellect are not distinct powers, because they are distinguished only according to their relation to action. The speculative intellect considers things as they are, while the practical intellect considers things as they are to be done.”3
If the speculative intellect assents to the absence of punishment as its redemption, the practical intellect will be tempted to share this disfigured grace with the world and call it prudence. If the highest good is a justice that is understood by the speculative intellect as a strictly forensic non-ontological declaration rather than the instantiation of just order, the practical intellect will suffer greatly as guided by privational rather than substantive justice. Where true justice would embrace or utilize punishment to restore just order, this privational justice applied by the practical intellect will be reticent to do so. This will lead the will to fear rather than desire punishment and punishing, also foster resentment towards those not punished, and derision of one´s own soul not so dignified to desire it.4 Ultimately, the practical intellect co-natured by this privational notion of justice will perceive many good things that are in accord with justice to be evil and contrary to God´s own nature falsely concieved and vice versa—E.g. Fasting and penances will be seen as redundant and superfluous by the practical intellect operating under this privational notion of justice. Correcting, or worse punishing, others cruel. This perversion will tend to produce a laxity towards oneself, an obsequiousness towards ones neighbor, and a negligence in devotion to God.
Correlary Definition: The Good Arises from an Integral Cause, Evil from Any Defect. A single defect makes something evil. One is healthy who suffers from no bodily ailment whatsoever; One is sick who suffers from even a slight cold. Good can only be caused by something wholly good. This guards against a common false inference. St Bonaventure points out, because “evil occurs in every way, and the good in one way, it does not follow that if the defect of something (e.g., a good intention) suffices to produce evil, its presence suffices to produce good.”5
We see that the entire soul is poisoned by this small but ultimately consequential fracture in the regenerate soul. The status of justification per sola fide precludes rather than fosters the potency for participation in the created justice of God infused in the soul at baptism.
To the first opinion, the form of justification is the soul´s own created justice, not the justice of God Himself. By denying this, the distinction between creature and Creator is blurred, all while issuing an invitation to the problematics of panthiesm. Without this a distinction between God´s own justice and created justice, its not obvious why justification is Good for the soul—e.g. why should the soul thereafter seek to become actually just?— or why justification is Good for God—i.e. that the ultimate work of Jesus Christ amounts to something greater than a Precious Blood inspired form of nominalism. Does God actually perfect the soul or simply replace it´s justice with His Own. In the latter case the intelligibility of justification itself becomes and issue, as we have seen, and the only way out is an irrational mysticism whereby justification is grounded in a direct, private, immanent experience of the Divine, rather than a public, created reality mediated by the Church and her Sacraments. In each case, we gain immediate contact with “God´s own justice, at the price of our soul never becoming actually just or even believing it was redeemed to hope to participate in and possess God´s created justice. Matt 6:26 “For what good is it for a man to gain the whole world at the price of his own soul?”
To the second opinion, the object of hope in the case of sola fide is, at least in part, a false one: ones own belief or experience. Having thoroughly obscured the proper object of faith, i.e. intellectual assent to the symbol of the faith\obedience as regards baptism and submission to the Church, it follows that sola fide then perverts the virtue of hope itself—detached from its proper object— to adorn the doctrine with some apparent existential depth. Trusting in God´s promises takes the form of abuse of Divine Mercy and presumption, if hope is detached from the Apostolic faith and obedience. Detached from these formal conditions of faith, the content must be self-confirmed, experiential, interior detached form objective conditions—identical to what we see in projection.
B. Is the Matter Identical As Well?
It seems the Matter of Justification for are the Merits of Jesus Christ imputed as righteousness in the regenerate soul.6 To psychologize the origin of this dogma is to commit the genetic fallacy.
It seems the Matter is belief itself, not merely believing in Jesus Christ as Savior, but also believing that one is also saved by him. Luther says “thou must receive by faith, and in receiving him thou must believe that thy sins are his sins, and that his righteousness is thy righteousness.”7
It seems the Matter of Justification is in the testimony of inner transformation and renewal of the heart. The experience of billions of Christians confirms this interior reality of faith, not projection or an Evil Image.
On the contrary, Titus 3:5 “He saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit.” Water is the material cause of regeneration in baptism, operating on a human being who recieves the sacrament. The status will manifest itself primarily in the growth of infused Charity in the soul. The will is, therefore, the crucial matter of justification, because the virtue of justice and charity reside in the rational will, not in the intellect. Therefore, belief alone does not really justify, it resides only in the intellect, belief can reflexively self-justify via projection.
I answer that sola fide justification resides in the mind. And furthermore that there can be no certain reflexive knowledge of one´s own possession of the justification status. The likelihood that one is living in a state of grace or can be known by the intellect abstracting on the basis of similitude—i.e., primarily whether one is increasing in charity as measured by deeds or producing fruits of the Spirit and\or practicing the beatitudes. These give evidence of ontological participation in supernatural infused grace.
In contrast, the sola fide justification status, relieving the will of its duty, then places a heavy epistemological burden on the shoulders of the intellect, whereby (1) not mere (a) belief in Jesus Christ, but also (b) a reflexive belief in, or rather certainty as regards, one´s own eternal glory, is required to claim the justification status. This might not be such a burden if it were not coupled with: (2) this certainty cannot be grounded in any positive observable factor, because intrinsic justice is ruled out as a formal cause of the status, excluding ipso facto ontological participation as a basis for claiming the status. Thus, (1) and (2) together present a near intolerable psychic stressor, and guarantee that the intellectual backing for (1) will have to find its ground in sense experience.
This is not all, (3) the privational notion of justice that governs the status known by the speculative intellect, then deforms the practical intellect and thereby the will.
Corollary Distinction: Synderesis\Conscience: Synderesis is the common sense habits that provide general principles to the practical intellect—e.g. that good should be pursued and evil avoided. Conscience, in contrast, application of these general principles to particular actions.
The worse the reality of sin gets, the more the status of justification will conflict with the principles of synderesis—i.e. not to lie or that the status of being eternally redeemed should have some evidence in the soul. This will stress the conscience to try to reconcile not merely (1) the needed certainty of the status with (2) its own absence of formal conditions, but then (3) the reality of sin in the life of the believer and anxiety about this picture not making sense. The normal release valve is to remove the status but that is tantamount to apostasy here. Thus conscience, finding no formal way to integrate evil into the status, nor to doubt the status or do penance to regain it, has to seek a universal to integrate the particular outside of the soul.
Corollary Definition: The Intellect is of Universals, Sense of Particulars. Sense knows particulars intuitively and cannot know universals, the intellect can know both particular and universal through abstraction or intuition.8
The worse the believer sins, the more knowledge of his justification will need to look like intuitive knowledge and the only adaptation of the intellects abstractive capacity is to make sense of the particular in terms of an Evil Universal, becuase the formless good status doesn´t permit abstractive knowledge or doubt even. Thus sin in the life of the believer increases proportionately to the integrating power of exterior universals like (a) total depravity, (b) alien righteousness, and (c) the Evil Image to hang onto to the justification status. (a) claims intellectual universality to the unflattering moral reality, (b) gives intuitive intellectual justification for the reconciliation of (1) with (3), and (c) helps resolve remaining stress and problems integrating moral failure with declarative righteousness. Yet the problem integrating evil particulars whether deeds or moral feelings, is a formal condition of the metaphysical structure of the sola fide justification status. Furthermore we know this circumstance (3) is more likely to arise due to the ill effects of the doctrine on the will itself. Thus while the sola fide justification status will not necessitate projection in every case—in the case of upright individuals it entails that the status will be warranted with, likely positive and elevating, religious experience rather than moral performance. However, as viciousness increases, so will the tendency to appeal to (a) a general depraved condition of man, (b) alien righteousness, and (c) a projected Evil Image about “works righteousness.”
The first claim is beyond dispute: the Merit of Our Lord is the matter of justification as to an efficient cause. I only dispute the Lutheran idea that the soul is not made properly just therethrough or that the soul doesn´t properly constitute the matter of justification as to a formal cause. To omit this does make the dogma identical to projection, where a positive status is granted to the self “from outside“ without any good action done by or potency present in the soul to justify the claim.
To the second, there are two competing objects of knowledge to claim to the status, one of which is false. The second claim that by believing we are saved, rather than believing Christ is Savior sets up two rival objects to justifying faith, (1) Jesus Christ as Redeemer and (2) Self-Conscious belief in one´s Redemption by Jesus Christ—only one of which is proper object of justification.
To the third, similarly there is little to dispute. To call upon the Holy Name in faith and to be baptized in the Holy Spirit come with inward transformation. This confirms to Catholic dogma. The doctrine of sola fide as a self-conscious status, in contrast, poisons the practical intellect and rational will, so that this potency cannot be fully actualized, yet there is no doubt that the supernatural potency of regeneration via baptism will manifest in the life of every believer regardless of doctrine.
C. Is the End Identical?
The End of Justification per sola fide is of Eternal Glory.9 Not a dissociation from reality.
The End of Justification per sola fide is Good Works carried out in gratitude, joy, and charity, rather than in fear.10
But I say, Matthew 7: 10 Wherefore by their fruits you shall know them. This is eloquently translated by The Semiotician “The meaning of a belief is the sum total of its practical consequences for action.” The practical fruits of the Justification status per sola fide are bad.
I answer that temporally separating justification and sanctification destroys both. Justification is lost conceptually, as the soul is called just without being just, and the soul is imagined to be able to enter glory immediately after death without having been made just as well. Thus misconceiving the Form and End itself, the perfection of the soul needed at the end, as well as the proper intention to get there, sola fide promotes sloth aboud desiring our final End.
Corollary Distinction: Concupiscible and Irascible Appetite. There are two species of sensitive appetite. The concupiscible appetite is that faculty by which the soul desires the good, as it is apprehended as agreeable and delightful to the senses, and turns away from evil, which is apprehended as harmful and unpleasant to the senses. The irascible appetite is that faculty by which the soul tends toward something because it is apprehended as a good that has the power to overcome difficulties that hinder the attainment of the good desired by the concupiscible appetite or the avoidance of the evil it turns away from; for example, by the irascible appetite, we desire a fight as a good by which we resist those obstructing the attainment of food.11
The sola fide status has, with Luther at least, its root in excessive fear in the irascible appetite and a deficit of courage in the will to govern this fear towards the good. As we have seen this fear of justice or punishment is a sensible particular that cannot be integrated into the self, and is externalized in the form of the Evil Image. This allows the concupiscible appetite to enjoy the absence of the fear it projects onto another in the Evil Image. Thus what is really an issue for the rational will to govern, is resolved by mind itself via projection and enjoying the self´s freedom from the Evil Image. The less difficult the path to salvation actually is for a human, the more likely the irascible appetite will be frusterated and manifest undue fear and anger that threaten the justification status and need to be externalized. This sensible pleasure of the concupiscible appetite in being not-Evil, is not the same as the delight in or love of the Good and progress in virtue towards beatitude.
A Thing’s Ultimate Perfection is its Operation. A thing is perfect insofar as it is in act. The first act is that of its very being, the second is its operation. A MD degree gives a doctor, complete doctor-being or act and rights. yet surgery is the proper operation and ultimate perfection of the surgeon.12
Thus one must distinguish between justification as a self-conscious status, and justification in the baptized believer. And consider both in act and operation. Regardless of their own belief about baptism or justification, the soul is cleansed of original sin and really made just through baptism. Each baptized soul has, through the merits of Jesus Christ the act or form of justice animating it. The works of love that are the proper operation of the justified soul will follow as a matter of course from the grace of regeneration. With this exception: Sola Fide is a projection as regards the form and first act of the self conscious status, which does not make baptism invalid, rather it makes perfect sanctification thereafter impossible. The form of the self-conscious status of sola fide Justification removes the two great guardrails of the spiritual organism. First the fear of God´s justice and necessity of penance for the temporal punishment of sin. Second, the desire for perfection manifest in perfect obedience and conformity to law. The status invites the luke-warm soul to stay put when penance is desperately needed, and the devout soul to avoid excessive piety and works of mercy when under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost to perform great deeds. These are two forms of the same thing: spiritual sloth, and thus the act or form of self-conscious justification is defective which therefore obstructs the ultimate perfection and operation of the justified soul.
The End of Justification per sola fide cannot be Eternal Glory because the desire for perfection and reward is an invalidating condition of faith itself. Furthermore St Paul declares that Charity is the only sufficient condition for salvation: I Cor 13:2 “if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.”
Without desiring perfection, also imagining salvation without charity as a possibility, this dogma cuts faithful of from their true Eternal End. This in the long run increases, not only fear as a consequence of bad conscience, but then increases the negative very same image that is fueled by fear of divine judgment against sin to create once again a mirror: a pharisaical attitude against works-righteousness itself. The only salvific work of sola fide—i.e. faith in faith absent works—is not good at all.
Summary: Something Good, like the status of justifiction can only be caused by something entirely good, it cannot be caused by evil or infected with evil as a defect. With projection and sola fide, we see a similar causal structure, the formal cause is an increasing absence of form itself and dissociation from reality as well as the claim of justice over their soul or actions, the material cause is an Evil image projected onto another. The final cause operates efficiently, so say the scholastics, and here as well, where the end is a sensible enjoyment of the negative freedom from unintegrated negative subconscious elements in the form of the Evil image. This is the grace of projection, and it is forensically without inhering in the soul.
We see the psychological mechanism of sola fide is a re-enforcing one just like projection: The status does not come from another, but from the self, thus this misrecognition at the very heart of the self-conscious status becomes an engine of mediocre moral lives and subsequent psychic frustration by obviating the intention of the just: i.e. perfection. These negative externalities build up over time then serve to fuel the projection and privational identity. Thus, rather than tending towards freedom for the good as it intends, sola fide in practice increases the slavery of souls to a projection of their own increasingly diseased self-consciousness to secure for them the privational sola fide status of “being justified.”
D. Contrast this with the causal analysis of the Sixth Session of the Council of Trent concerning Justification:
Of this Justification the causes are these: the final cause indeed is the glory of God and of Jesus Christ, and life everlasting; while the efficient cause is a merciful God who washes and sanctifies gratuitously, signing, and anointing with the holy Spirit of promise, who is the pledge of our inheritance; but the meritorious cause is His most beloved only-begotten, our Lord Jesus Christ, who, when we were enemies, for the exceeding charity wherewith he loved us, merited Justification for us by His most holy Passion on the wood of the cross, and made satisfaction for us unto God the Father; the instrmental cause is the sacrament of baptism, which is the sacrament of faith, without which (faith) no man was ever justified; lastly, the alone formal cause is the justice of God, not that whereby He Himself is just, but that whereby He maketh us just, that, to wit, with which we being endowed by Him, are renewed in the spirit of our mind, and we are not only reputed, but are truly called, and are, just, receiving justice within us, each one according to his own measure, which the Holy Ghost distributes to every one as He wills, and according to each one’s proper disposition and co-operation. 13
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The more projections are thrust in between the subject and the environment, the harder it is for the ego to see through its illusions. A forty-five-year-old patient who had suffered from a compulsion neurosis since he was twenty and had become completely cut off from the world once said to me: ‘But I can never admit to myself that I’ve wasted the best twenty-five years of my life!’ It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own life and the lives of others yet remains totally incapable of seeing how much the whole tragedy originates in himself, and how he continually feeds it and keeps it going. Not consciously, of course—for consciously he is engaged in bewailing and cursing a faithless world that recedes further and further into the distance. Rather, it is an unconscious factor which spins the illusions that veil his world. And what is being spun is a cocoon, which in the end will completely envelop him.”
Jung, Carl G. “Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self.” The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, vol. 9, pt. 2, trans. R. F. C. Hull, Princeton UP, 1959, §17.
https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/trent/sixth-session.htm
ST I, q. 79, a. 11, ad 1
A most generous reading of Nietzsche´s critique of German Lutheran christianity will find his critique apropos at exactly this point: the imprudence of those who refuse to punish and insist upon justice. This reticence plagues christianity to this day.
“If the suppressed, the down-trodden and the wronged, prompted by the craft of impotence, say to themselves: ‘Let us be different from the bad, let us be good! and good are all those, who wrong no one, who never violate, who never attack, who never retaliate, who entrust revenge to God, who, like us, live aloof from the world, who avoid all contact with evil, and who, altogether, demand little of life, as we do, the patient, the humble, the just’ — this means, viewed coolly and unprejudicially, no more than: ‘We, the weak, are — it is a fact — weak; it is well for us not to do anything, for which we are not strong enough.’ But this stern matter of fact, this meanest kind of prudence, shared even by insects (which occasionally simulate death, in order not to do ‘too much’ in case of great danger), has, thanks to the trickery and self-imposition of impotence, clothed itself in the apparel of renouncing, silent, abiding virtue, as if the weakness of the weak one itself — were a voluntary performance, a thing self-willed, self-chosen, a deed, a desert.” On the Genealogy of Morals, First Essay, Section §13
He even says this translates into false understandings of fogiveness and charity. To not punish is to forgive, or to love even! What if forgiveness requires the opposing party to accept punishment. Hello doctrine of purgatory!
“Weakness is to be falsified into desert, no doubt whatever — it is, as you said.” — “Go on!” — “And impotence which requiteth not is to be falsified into ‘goodness;’ timorous meanness into ‘humility;’ submission to those, whom one hates, into ‘obedience’ (namely to one, who they say commands this obedience; they call him God). The inoffensiveness of the ‘weak one,’ cowardice itself in which he is rich, his standing at the door, his unavoidable necessity of waiting comes here by good names, such as ‘patience;’ they even call it the cardinal virtue. Not-to-be-able-to-take-revenge is called not-to-will-revenge, perhaps even forgiveness (’for they know not what they do; we alone know what they do’). They also talk of ‘love for their enemies’ — and sweat in doing so.” On the Genealogy of Morals, First Essay, Section §14
Scotus *Ib. n. 7. Cfr. Oxon. II. d. 3. q. 1. n. 4. q. 6. n. 16.
S. Thom., In lib. IV Sent. Dist. VIII, q. I, a. 1, sol. 1 ad 1.
1a 2ae, q. III, a. 2 c.
“Projection, as Freud described, originates from the deflection of the death instinct outwards and in my view it helps the ego to overcome anxiety by ridding it of danger and badness.”
Klein, Melanie. “Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms.” International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, vol. 27, 1946.
Luther, Martin. “The Freedom of the Christian.” 1520. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1911/1911-h/1911-h.htm
Aristotle says.
ST I, q. LXXXII, a. 5
“For faith alone, and nothing else, justifies and saves, as we have shown above from St. Paul and from his master, Christ. This is the true and only way to salvation, and whoever departs from it departs from life and salvation, and will surely perish eternally."
Luther, Martin. The Smalcald Articles. 1537. The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Part II, Article I.
“Faith does not require information, instruction, or law; it is already informed and taught through the Holy Spirit, as St. Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4: ‘Concerning brotherly love you have no need to have anyone write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God.’ Thus a man becomes willing and cheerful to do and suffer all things for Christ, whom he now recognizes as a gracious gift-giver.”
Luther, Martin. The Freedom of the Christian. 1520.https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1911/1911-h/1911-h.htm