By grace — entirely, and the Church has never taught otherwise. That has to be cleared up first, because the question usually hides a strawman. Catholics are not Pelagians; no one earns salvation by piling up good deeds. The Council of Trent taught that nothing preceding justification — neither faith nor works — merits the grace of justification; it is God’s free gift. St. Paul’s words stand exactly as written: “by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves… not of works, that no man may glory” (Ephesians 2:8–9). No Catholic disputes a syllable of that.

So where is the real disagreement? Over one word: alone. The Reformation claim is that we are justified by faith alone. But that exact phrase occurs once in all of Scripture — and it is denied: “by works a man is justified, and not by faith only” (James 2:24). James is blunt about the stakes: “faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). A corpse-faith saves no one. So Scripture affirms salvation by grace through faith — and expressly refuses to attach the word “alone.”

The resolution isn’t a compromise; it is what the texts plainly say. The faith that saves is living faith — “faith that worketh by charity” (Galatians 5:6). Works are not a second, rival ladder set up beside grace; they are the life of grace showing itself, the way breathing shows you are alive. Which is why the very passage that excludes boasting finishes: we are “created in Christ Jesus in good works, which God hath prepared” (Ephesians 2:10). Paul excludes works done to earn salvation; he requires the works that flow from it. When Paul says “not works” he means the works of the Law done to put God in our debt; when James says “not faith alone” he means the obedience that living faith always produces.

St. Augustine cut the knot eleven centuries before the argument erupted: “It is His own gifts that God crowns, not your merits.”1 Even the good we do is grace working in us — so works never compete with grace; they are grace, arriving at its destination. The honest answer to “works or grace?” is that it is a false choice. We are saved by grace, through a faith alive enough to act and to endure.2 Strip out the works and you do not get a purer faith — you get a dead one. The fuller treatment of faith, works, and James 2 walks through every disputed text.