Welcome back to James Popery. I'm Joe Heschmire. I want to talk about this idea of whether or not Roman Catholics believe in workspace salvation.

Because this is a charge I've heard many times. And there are aspects of Catholic theology that I understand sound alien and even heretical to Protestant ears.

Particularly, I want to talk about this idea of a so-called treasury of merit. I don't know if you've heard of this, but if you have and you're a Protestant,

you might have found it weird and, again, Pelagian sounding or something.

Many Protestants, understandably, find the whole thing completely unbiblical.

You are not going to find the treasury of merit anywhere in the scriptures.

It's not hinted at, talked about explicitly or even implicitly. If you are a Roman Catholic

watching this, you have probably heard of it, but you don't know what it means. If you're

a Protestant, you have likely never heard of this. I had never heard of it.

And once we describe it, it's going to actually make sense of a whole bunch of other doctrines.

We actually would call this the spine of Roman Catholic doctrine because it's a doctrine that holds up all of these other ideas.

So let's dig into this. So what is the Treasury of Merit and is it biblical?

Look, I don't agree with the Protestant past you just heard from about it being the

spine of Catholic teaching, but I do think he's right about a couple things.

Number one, many Christians, including many Catholics, are completely oblivious to what

the Treasury of Merit is. And number two, getting this question right is really helpful

in making sense of a bunch of other areas.

Catholics and Protestants disagree.

Most notably, purgatory and indulgences.

I'm not going to get into those topics today, by the way,

but this is much more at the root of that fight

that I think many Catholics and Protestants realize.

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