THE FORGOTTEN VIRTUE
Grace, Martin Luther, and the Divine Masterplan
A reflection on grace, virtue, Martin Luther and salvation, exploring faith and works, the virtuous pagan, and how grace transforms us into the likeness of Christ.
“What do you think of Martin Luther?” I asked the Oldman one day.
“What I think of Martin Luther?”
He nodded slowly, for what felt like a very long time, before he began.
“Martin Luther did what he believed he had to do. The Ninety-Five Theses and all that. And whatever one thinks of the Reformation, the Catholic Church itself needed reform.
“But I think Christians should understand what actually happened to the Bible during the Reformation. Luther did not simply tear books out of his 1534 Bible. He moved the books Catholics call the Deuterocanon into a separate section, labelled them Apocrypha, and said they were useful to read but were not to be regarded as equal to Holy Scripture.
“That distinction matters. My own opinion is that Christians ought at least to read those books before confidently declaring that they do not belong there. They were part of the Christian biblical tradition Luther himself inherited. One should understand what was changed, why it was changed, and what the Church believed before the Reformation.”
To be clear, I do not share the subtle bile hidden in plain sight among some contemporary Catholic commentators when they speak about Protestants or Martin Luther. Perhaps it is because, as an African, I look at the Reformation through another window.
I sometimes wonder whether God, who has repeatedly brought good out of human division and human failure, permitted the fracture of Western Christianity to accomplish things neither side could have imagined. The Catholic Church needed reform. The Reformation helped force reform upon it. And centuries later, Christians formed in Protestant traditions would be among those whose consciences were sufficiently disturbed by the slave trade to become powerful voices for its abolition.
I would therefore be careful about saying that the schism itself was ordained by God. Human beings are far too eager to place God’s signature beneath our own history. But I am comfortable saying this:
God can bring redemption even out of schism.
And God is always concerned with suffering humanity.
GOD AND SUFFERING HUMANITY
“About suffering humanity: some forty years ago, listening to the BBC, a wise old man, his name long forgotten, was asked: ‘On whose side is God?’
“He answered cheerfully: ‘God is always on the side of suffering humanity.’
“This was during the long Palestinian-Israeli conflict. That answer became an article of faith for me. It cleared my eyes.”
Not because religion does not matter. Religion matters enormously. Religion can lead us toward God or distort our understanding of Him. It can form saints. It can also provide vocabulary behind which extraordinarily wicked people hide.
What the old man’s answer taught me was something different: God is not impressed by our labels.
Catholic. Protestant. Muslim. Jew. Hindu. Traditionalist. A label tells God nothing He does not already know. He sees the human being underneath it.
SAUL OF TARSUS AND THE PRIORITY OF GRACE
“Consider Saul of Tarsus. If God dealt with human beings according to religious labels alone, how do we explain Saul?”
He was not a Christian. Worse, he actively persecuted Christians and approved of the killing of Stephen. Yet Christ knew his name:
“Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
Before Saul knew Christ, Christ knew Saul. Before Saul sought Christ, Christ sought Saul. That should make every Christian extraordinarily humble.
“What does God care about? Let me suggest two things. One: that He created man in His own image. Two: that while any man still breathes, he remains within reach of grace and therefore within God’s divine masterplan.”
That is the extraordinary thing about Christianity. The story is never finished simply because we think we know what somebody is.
THE MURDERER ON DEATH ROW
“There is the extraordinary story of Jacques Fesch, a French murderer executed in 1957 and later declared a Servant of God in the Catholic Church.”
On death row, Fesch underwent a profound spiritual conversion. Think about that: a murderer, condemned to die, yet somewhere between the crime and the guillotine, grace found him.
Or perhaps more accurately:
He finally stopped running from the grace that had been looking for him.
What value was the label attached to him before that moment? Whatever religion he claimed before killing a man had clearly not prevented him from becoming a murderer. Yet his crime did not place him beyond the reach of Christ.
That is Christianity.
Religion is not the destination. Religion is supposed to illuminate the path as we trudge along the steep and narrow way toward God. Could the Almighty despise whatever fragment of truth leads a man toward justice, mercy, humility, repentance and ultimately toward Himself?
I leave you to answer that.
A famous hymn says: “Just as I am, I come to Thee.” That is the beginning.
Come. Just come.
He will do the rest.
BUT WHAT ABOUT VIRTUE?
And this is where we arrive at something Christianity sometimes discusses far less than it should: virtue.
What is virtue? Simply put, virtue is the habitual disposition to do good. Not merely doing one good thing, but becoming the sort of person inclined toward what is good.
Christianity did not invent the concept. Philosophers wrestled with virtue centuries before Christ. But Christianity took the idea and placed it inside the life of grace: faith, hope, charity, prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance.
Christianity has never taught that virtue purchases salvation.
Grace is not wages.
But Christianity has equally never taught that grace makes virtue irrelevant. Quite the opposite. Grace is supposed to transform us.
THE VIRTUOUS PAGAN
And here Catholic theology confronts a difficult but necessary question: What of those who never encountered Christ, were never evangelised, yet sincerely sought truth and tried to live according to conscience?
Imagine a man living somewhere in Africa one thousand years ago. He never heard of Jesus Christ. He never saw a Bible. He never met a missionary. He never heard the Ten Commandments. Yet he cared for his parents. He fed the hungry. He rejected cruelty. He tried to be honest. When families quarrelled, he made peace.
What do we do with that man? Do we simply say:
Wrong continent. Wrong century. Hell?
Catholic Christianity does not require us to say that. And this is where the Church’s teaching is considerably more subtle than many Christians realise.
The Second Vatican Council teaches in Lumen Gentium that those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and, moved by grace, strive to do His will according to conscience, may attain eternal salvation.
Read that carefully. Not because Christianity does not matter, not because all religions are the same, not because being a nice person purchases a ticket to heaven, and certainly not because virtue replaces Christ.
They may be saved by Christ.
That is the point. Christ’s ability to save is not limited by our ability to evangelise.
PAUL HAD ALREADY OPENED THE DOOR
Paul writes in Romans 2:13-15 about Gentiles who do not possess the Law yet do by nature what the Law requires. He speaks of the law being written upon their hearts and of conscience bearing witness.
Paul is dismantling a dangerous assumption: possession of religious instruction does not automatically produce righteousness. Hearing the law is not the same as obeying it. Possessing Scripture is not the same as being transformed by it. Calling yourself Christian is not the same as resembling Christ.
That distinction should terrify us far more than questions about people who never heard the Gospel. Because perhaps the more dangerous question is not, “What will God do with the man who never heard about Jesus?”
Perhaps it is:
“What will God do with those of us who heard Him every Sunday and still refused to become like Him?”
MY ANCESTORS AT THE TIME OF CHRIST
Now set aside Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius. Consider my ancestors at the time of Christ.
They lived somewhere in Africa. Along the Niger perhaps. Somewhere else perhaps. It does not matter. They never heard Christ preach. They never read the Sermon on the Mount. They never heard an Apostle. They never possessed a New Testament.
Yet surely among them were men and women who loved their children, cared for their elderly parents, shared food with neighbours, despised injustice and made peace when families quarrelled.
How?
Because human beings bear the image of God. Because conscience is not a Christian invention. Because truth existed before any missionary arrived carrying a Bible. And because, as Paul himself recognised, something of the moral law can be written upon the human heart.
This does not make revelation unnecessary. It makes revelation glorious.
Revelation illuminates more perfectly what humanity has been stumbling toward in the darkness.
THE WEDDING GARMENT
“The Parable of the Wedding Banquet speaks to this mystery.”
A king prepares a feast. The invited guests refuse. He sends servants into the streets and crossroads. They gather everyone they can find, both good and bad. But then one man is discovered without a wedding garment. He is cast out.
I once described virtue as the wedding garment. Today I would put it more carefully:
The wedding garment is the transformed life.
It is what grace is supposed to produce in us. Not merely the label, not merely the invitation, not merely being inside the banquet hall, but transformation.
And who should be most frightened by that parable? The people outside?
Perhaps not.
Perhaps it is those of us already sitting at the table.
You and I.
THE FORGOTTEN HEART OF CHRISTIANITY
Nothing about grace diminishes the Christian obligation to become virtuous. Any theology that makes uprightness, holiness, mercy, justice and righteousness somehow optional has misunderstood grace itself.
When Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,” He did not say: seek first the correct label. He repeatedly demanded transformed lives.
Forgive. Love. Give. Serve. Make peace. Show mercy. Care for the least. Take up your cross. Follow Me.
The Gospel is filled with verbs.
GRACE AND VIRTUE
“What about grace?”
Everything begins with grace.
That is the correction I would make to my earlier formulation. I once wrote that grace requires no effort while virtue is developed through diligent practice. There is truth in that distinction, but it can easily be misunderstood.
Grace is God’s gift. We do not earn it. But grace is not meant to leave us exactly where it found us.
The Catholic understanding is beautifully balanced: even our ability to respond to God is itself assisted by grace, yet that grace calls for our cooperation. God acts and we respond. God gives and we receive. God calls and we follow.
Through that lifelong cooperation, character is transformed. What we repeatedly choose matters because, over time, our choices shape the sort of people we become.
THE GOLD COIN
Imagine I give a beggar a gold coin and ride away. That is gift: unearned, unmerited. But the story has only begun.
What does he do with what he has received? Does he bury it? Does he waste it? Does he use it to transform his life? Does he help someone else?
The analogy is imperfect, as all analogies are, but the point remains:
Grace is not given because we are virtuous. Grace enables us to become what God calls us to be.
The fruit does not purchase the tree. But a living tree should eventually bear fruit.
WORKERS OF VIRTUE
James puts the matter with devastating simplicity:
Faith without works is dead.
Not imperfect or slightly deficient. Dead.
Works do not purchase grace. But grace that never produces love, mercy, justice, repentance or transformation should cause us to ask some very uncomfortable questions about what exactly we think grace means.
Virtue is not an alternative to grace. Virtue is one of the fruits of a life cooperating with grace.
BACK TO MARTIN LUTHER
And so, finally, back to Martin Luther.
History deserves precision. Luther did not simply remove the Deuterocanonical books from his 1534 German Bible. He separated them from the Old Testament canon and placed them together as the Apocrypha, describing them as books not equal to Holy Scripture but nevertheless useful and good to read.
He also famously questioned the theological value of James, calling it an “epistle of straw” in comparison with writings he believed proclaimed Christ more clearly.
Why does that matter?
Because James contains one of Christianity’s most uncomfortable sentences:
“Faith without works is dead.”
And perhaps that sentence deserves to make all of us uncomfortable: Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Evangelical, Pentecostal. All of us.
Because in the end, God will not be confused by our denominational labels. He knows what grace He gave us. He knows what truth we encountered, what opportunities we had, what we understood, what we rejected, and He knows what we became.
That is why the question is not merely:
Did I receive grace?
The more frightening question may be:
What did grace produce in me?
Because Christianity was never intended merely to make us people who believe the right things.
It was intended to make us, by grace, people who become more like Christ.
Obi Akaraiwe | Don Kenobi
Started in Rome: 27 December 2023, 07:30 GMT+1
Completed in Luton: 30 December 2023, 09:03 GMT
Revisited and substantially updated: August 2026
YouTube Link: [https://youtu.be/0-iijVSDDXI?si=6VGGmPwhnM3F412S]
