Southern Baptist extraordinaire David Rogers asks questions about how to square Paul and James:
As I have thought about faith and works, and their relationship to salvation, I have struggled with the apparent conflict between the teaching of Paul and James. If we are honest, and have thought much about it at all, I think we all would admit to struggling with this very same thing.
He then proposes a hypothetical situation which I will let you read. But here is what I wrote:
A good place to start is by realizing that Catholics and Protestants use the word justification quite differently. In Protestantism we view in a very forensic sense, that is, like in a court room. It is the beginning of our salvation when our present, past, and future sins (that last is debated among evangelicals) are forgiven and we move into a curious status that Luther called simul justus et pecatur–at once just and a sinner. After that we move into what we have traditionally called the stage of sanctification, where we cooperate with God’s grace and love and haltingly and in a very broken way, hopefully mature into wise and obedient Christians.
In Catholicism (and Eastern Orthodoxy), the word justification is used in a transformational sense: to actually do the long hard work of teaching one to be just. In other words justification lasts from the moment of conversion until the moment of glorification (the resurrection of the righteous).
One can argue about which side better grasps the NT usage of the word justification. I find that the word us actually used in both ways in different passages. At times it is more forensic (court room declaration) and at other times it is more transformational and gradual.
If you believe that sanctification can occur without good works (which are a gift of God in themselves), then you probably do have a genuine and profound difference of doctrine with the Catholics. Otherwise I doubt your disagreement is fundamental.
If you care to join in the conversation go for it. I am happy to bring intelligent Catholics and Orthodox and Baptists together. I am, after all, evangelical--and that is a label I will accept until the day I die. But I'm also very catholic.
