The Council of Trent

The Council of Trent was the Roman Catholic Church's answer to the Reformation. It met for three working periods over eighteen years, from 1545 to 1563, with a ten-year hiatus in the middle. The rulings that the Council of Trent handed down are crucial—not only for understanding the Roman Catholic Church, but also because they highlight what indeed were the emphases of the Reformation.

First, a little context. Before the Council of Trent there was the Diet of Regensburg. It met in 1541, and it was an effort to bring about theological unity between the Lutherans and the Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire. It was called by Charles V, the same emperor who oversaw the Diet of Worms, where Martin Luther gave his famous "Here I stand" speech.

At Regensburg, Lutheran and Catholic theologians looked at various doctrines, the primary one being justification by faith. They thought they had worked out a compromise, which they brought back to the pope and Luther. The pope rejected it and Luther rejected it. This compromise was simply not acceptable to either side, leaving no hope for theological or political unity.

At this point, the Roman Catholic Church could only distance itself from the Reformers, and that's what it set out to do at the Council of Trent. There were many rulings handed down at Trent, but we want to look at three in particular.

The first one concerns Scripture. At Trent, for the first time in church history, the Apocrypha—a set of Jewish books written in Greek and dating from the intertestamental period—was declared to be part of the biblical canon. Trent also affirmed that the final authority for the church rested not in Scripture alone, as the Reformers heralded, but in Scripture and tradition, as embodied by the teachings of the pope and his bishops. And also, Trent prohibited the printing or owning of an unauthorized version of Scripture. And at that point, the only authorized version of Scripture was the Latin Vulgate. What this ruling meant was that you could not have the Bible in your own language.

The second declaration from Trent that we'll look at has to do with justification. Just as Trent rejected sola Scriptura, so too it rejected sola fide. Salvation is not by faith alone, Trent declared; we are justified by faith and works. Works contribute to our justification. Trent taught that justification is not a definitive act; it is a process.

And third, Trent rejected the doctrine of the imputation of Christ's righteousness. The Reformers taught that Christ earned righteousness before God by His passive and active obedience and that Christ's righteousness is applied to our account. So, when God sees us, He doesn't see us in our sinfulness; He sees Christ's righteousness. That's the doctrine of imputation. Trent put forth the doctrine of infusion. That means that Christ's righteousness is infused into us and now we, empowered by Christ's righteousness, do good deeds. And in our doing of those good deeds, we bring our own righteousness before God. The Reformers taught sola Scriptura and sola fide. Trent taught Scripture and tradition, faith and works. And that's the difference.