Justification by faith alone and imputed righteousness seem to be today still one of the main things Protestants bring up in their disagreement with Rome. Why is it so important? It’s hard to see a difference between justified by faith that produces works vs justified by faith and works, and formal cause of justification being inherent in the individual (infused) vs being alien from Christ (imputed). When asked what I disagree with Rome I’d rather bring up the papacy, first and foremost, and front there everything else will flow. Lagalism and over dogmatizing everything, transubstantiation, purgatory and treasury of merit, celibate priesthood, mortal sin basically driving the Holy Spirit out of you or making it dormant, forcing people to do auricular confession. Specifically the fact that they believe mortal sin makes them fall out of a “state of grace” where if they die before repenting and wanting to confess, they go to hell. That’s much more indicative to me of a works based salvation than their belief in justification by faith and works or infused righteousness. Why did the Protestant reformation, and modern Protestants as well, focus so much on this issue of justification instead of these other differences which seem much worse to me. What’s so important about infused or imputed, about faith that creates works or faith and works, when you have the whole of the papal system as a problem? Did most fathers believe in infused righteousness? I know Augustine did. Justification can’t be that big of a deal if people got it wrong for more than 1000 years. I’ve seen some Protestants act like if you believe in infused justification you’re probably not saved, like assenting to imputed is some sort of tenant of the faith, when it never really was an issue. I think this is a big issue in the Protestant movement tbh. This adamant insistence that people need to have the same view as you of salvation. Like some calvinsits , for example, think Calvinism is completely OBVIOUS from Scripture and anybody that believes otherwise is clearly very wrong about how they’re saved. When Calvinism didn’t even exist in the early church. Augustine didn’t teach Calvinist level predestination and eternal security. Also why did the eastern churches never develop this concept of imputed righteousness? They’re reading in the original language. It’s so weird to me they hardly even have a theory of atonement. What does everyone think?
After the Emperor Justinian closed down the philosophical schools and outlawed paganism, the main reason anyone would pursue higher education was to enter the civil service. The Empire covered the greatest extent it ever would from that point on, and once the Islamic conquests began, the only missionary activity was to the north. Meanwhile, Western Europe and the Atlantic Islands were continuing to be evangelized and Christianized, and state-sponsored revivals of learning kept a certain creative spirit alive. In the Byzantine Empire, the church was a department of the State and exhibited all the features of institutional conservatism that such institutions typically do. After the patriarchate of Photius, there was very little doctrinal development within the Empire until after Byzantines recovered Constantinople following the Fourth Crusade. To see any truly creative thinking, one has to look to Arab Christians living under Islamic rule.
This article goes into that in more detail if you're interested. I used to be Eastern Orthodox so this is all very familiar to me. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/byzantine-philosophy/
It comes down to this: who or what is a person trusting in for his justification? "Justified by faith and works" is contrary to John 6:29, Eph. 2:8-9, and Gal. 3. If a person thinks he must do good deeds, or receive certain sacraments, or perform penances in order to be fully justified, that person has fallen into a trap. Jesus' redemptive work is complete by itself. By faith the person is made spiritually whole and is given God's own perfect righteousness. By faith in Jesus, without supplementation, the person is justified. To add works for the sake of supplementing that justification is tantamount to saying, "the sacrifice of the cross was not enough to fully justify me; I must do things to add to it, and if I don't do enough, I won't achieve eternal life." And of course, when can a person ever know for sure that he's done enough? He can't. He isn't supposed to add self-justification. A person's own attempts at righteousness are like filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6... the 'filthy rags' were soiled menstrual cloths). We are counseled to look to Jesus' death and resurrection as fully sufficient for all of our justification. The good things we do as followers of Christ are done for the sake of love. Love of God and love of our 'neighbor.' Not to earn any piece of justification. And they are done in the power of the Holy Spirit who leads us to do these things and gives us strength to do them.