Here is an excellent article comparing the Council Trent with the Second Council of Orange. Trent was an ecumenical council calling all the bishops of the Church to attend or with representatives and held as binding on all Catholics. The Second Council of Orange was a local council, but received papal approval by Pope Felix IV, making them binding on the Faithful.
Many Calvinists think the Second Council of Orange approved of their theology. This article explains how this is incorrect.
Just as a helpful note on "actual grace" or "helping grace" and "sanctifying grace":
In Christian theology, "actual grace" or "helping grace" and "sanctifying grace" are distinct concepts.
"Actual grace" or "helping grace" refers to the temporary assistance given by God to help a person to perform a specific good action or avoid a specific evil action. This type of grace is said to be "actual" because it refers to God's grace accepted by a person to help him to act according to His will, man is always free to reject such graces.
On the other hand, "sanctifying grace" refers to the state of grace in which a person is placed when they receive God's forgiveness for all their sins and are reconciled into Him in Baptism. This type of grace is said to be "sanctifying" because it transforms a person to be holy, remitting all sin, and transforming them from a state of sinfulness to a state of righteousness and making him or her an adopted child of God and incorporates one into the Mystical Body of Christ-- the Church.
While actual grace is temporary and specific to a particular situation or action; it is available before and after justification. Sanctifying grace (justification) is transformative, changing the very nature of the person into a child of God. Sanctifying grace can be lost by mortal sin (and regained through the sacrament of confession) but being a child of God can never be lost the soul is marked or sealed and this is permanent:
Ephesians 1:13
"having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of the promise"
In short, actual grace is a temporary assistance to help a person act in accordance with God's will, while sanctifying grace is a transformation that makes a person holy and righteous.
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From:
calledtocommunion.com
John Hendryx is a PCA member who studied at Reformed Theological Seminary and owns and edits Monergism.com, a well known Reformed website and online Reformed library and bookstore. He has posted an article claiming that the sixth session of the Council of Trent (AD 1547) is at odds with the Second Council of Orange (AD 529). Because the acts of the Second Council of Orange were approved by Pope Boniface II on January 25, in AD 531, if Hendryx’s claims were true, this would imply that at the Council of Trent the Magisterium of the Church rejected soteriological doctrines it had previously affirmed over a thousand years earlier, and would thereby strengthen the Reformed claim to have preserved the authentic soteriology of the early Church. Here I show two things: first, that the Tridentine canons Hendryx thinks are contrary to the doctrine promulgated by the Second Council of Orange are not only entirely compatible with the teaching of Orange but in full continuity with it, and second, that in multiple ways Reformed theology deviates from the soteriological doctrines taught at the Second Council of Orange.
Interior of the Cathedral at Orange, France
Hendryx quotes the following three canons from the Second Council of Orange.
CANON 5. If anyone says that not only the increase of faith but also its beginning and the very desire for faith, by which we believe in Him who justifies the ungodly and comes to the regeneration of holy baptism — if anyone says that this belongs to us by nature and not by a gift of grace, that is, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit amending our will and turning it from unbelief to faith and from godlessness to godliness, it is proof that he is opposed to the teaching of the Apostles, for blessed Paul says, “And I am sure that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6). And again, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8). For those who state that the faith by which we believe in God is natural make all who are separated from the Church of Christ by definition in some measure believers.
