Justification: Historic journey from the Middle Ages through now
Erwin R. Gane
What does justification mean? The standard view in the
Middle Ages was that when God justifies a believer, the Holy Spirit injects
into the soul a habitus or quality that makes the soul intrinsically
righteous, having the capacity to perform works that can earn merit with God.1
The Reformers rejected this view in favor of one of two alternatives. Luther
and Calvin recognized justification as a forensic (legal) declaration that
Christ’s righteousness counted for the believer, while in the same act, the
Holy Spirit brings Christ’s presence to the heart. Hence, righteousness is both
counted and experienced. Later Reformation writers separated the legal declaration
from the Spirit’s transformation. They regarded justification as forensic only;
Christ’s righteousness is put to the account of the believer in justification,
while regeneration is a separate act of God by which He progressively
transforms the heart. These three major views are the subject of this article.
The Roman Catholic view
Thomas Aquinas
(ca. 1225–1274) defined justification as infusion of grace that repairs the
soul so that now it has the power to do good works. As a result, believers have
the natural ability to perform in a manner acceptable to God.
In his famous Summa
Theologica, Aquinas wrote,
Man is helped
by God’s gratuitous will, inasmuch as a habitual gift is infused by God into
the soul; and for this reason, that it is not fitting that God should provide
less for those He loves, that they may acquire supernatural good, than for
creatures, whom He loves that they may acquire natural good. Now He so provides
for natural creatures, that not merely does He move them to their natural acts,
but He bestows upon them certain forms and powers, which are the principles of
acts, in order that they may of themselves be inclined to these movements, and
thus the movements whereby they are moved by God become natural and easy to
creatures. . . . Much more therefore does He infuse into such as He moves
towards the acquisition of supernatural good, certain forms or supernatural
qualities, whereby they may be moved by Him sweetly and promptly to acquire
eternal good; and thus the gift of grace is a quality.2
He continued,
Hence it
remains that grace, as it is prior to virtue, has a subject prior to the powers
of the soul, so that it is in the essence of the soul. For as man in his
intellective powers participates in the Divine knowledge through the virtue of
faith, and in his power of will participates in the Divine love through the
virtue of charity, so also in the nature of the soul does he participate in the
Divine Nature, after the manner of a likeness, through a certain regeneration
or re-creation. . ..
. . . For grace
is the principle of meritorious works through the medium of virtues, just as
the essence of the soul is the principle of vital deeds through the medium of
the powers.3
“In the
infusion of justifying grace there is a certain transmutation of the human
soul, and hence a proper movement of the human soul is required in order that
the soul may be moved in its own manner.”4
Aquinas held
that because grace, a divine quality, is infused into the soul of the believer,
the soul, now naturally righteous, has the capacity to perform good works. He
emphasizes that the immortal soul within the individual becomes reformed so
that it is now righteous.5
This Catholic
formulation was challenged by the Reformation, and the Roman Catholic answer to
the Protestant challenge came at the Council of Trent (1545–1563). The
council’s decrees express the doctrinal beliefs of official Roman Catholicism.
On the question of justification, its definition “was modeled upon the pattern
found in Thomas.”6 The decree of justification accepted at Trent may
be considered in three parts: preparation for, definition of, and increase of
justification.
1. Preparation
for justification. According to Trent, it is not merely a matter of God’s
grace leading the individual to repentance, but of the sinner’s own will
cooperating with grace, projecting him towards justification. The council
taught “that God justifies the impious by his grace, through the redemption
that is in Christ Jesus; and when, understanding themselves to be sinners,
they, by turning themselves, from the fear of divine justice whereby
they are profitably agitated, to consider the mercy of God.”7
2. The
definition of justification. Like Aquinas, Trent defined justification as
an inner renewal of the soul. “This disposition, or preparation, is followed by
Justification itself, which is not remission of sins merely, but also the
sanctification and renewal of the inward man, through the voluntary reception
of the grace, and of the gifts, whereby man of unjust becomes just.” This
re-creation of the soul takes place at baptism. At baptism “the charity of God
is poured forth, by the Holy Spirit, in the hearts of those that are justified,
and is inherent therein: whence, man, through Jesus Christ, in whom he is
ingrafted, receives, in the said justification, together with the remission of
sins, all these [gifts] infused at once, faith, hope, and charity.” Even so, no
one can be thoroughly certain that his sins are forgiven and that he is
justified, “seeing that no one can know with a certainty of faith, which can
not be subject to error, that he has obtained the grace of God.”8
3. Increase
of justification. Thus, according to Roman Catholic theology, justification
is never complete for the believer. Trent taught that “they, through the
observance of the commandments of God and of the Church, faith co-operating
with good works, increase in that justice which they have received through the
grace of Christ, and are still further justified.” The justified person has the
ability to do works that are meritorious in the sight of God and that will
improve upon his level of justification.9
Thus, the Roman
Catholic position on justification, as defined by Aquinas and Trent, involved
transformation, re-creation, and re-forming of the immortal soul. This was not
merely a reiteration of Jesus’ teaching on the new birth. For Aquinas and
Trent, righteousness within is a habitus or quality injected or infused
into the souls of believers so that they are intrinsically or inherently
righteous. Righteousness within is not Christ within by the presence of the
Holy Spirit, but a quality injected into the soul by the Holy Spirit, so that
the soul that is now righteous in nature has the capacity to perform works that
are meritorious in God’s sight. This was the theology to which Luther and
Calvin reacted so vigorously.
Martin Luther’s view
The two leading
sixteenth-century Reformers were Martin Luther (1483–1546) and John Calvin
(1509–1564). On scriptural grounds, both rejected the Roman Catholic concept of
justification. They opposed the idea that humans can predispose themselves
towards justification, the concept of infused grace, the idea of the
transmutation (re-making) of the soul, the notion that justification is never
complete, and the teaching that the justified person is capable of doing
meritorious works.
Luther and
Calvin saw justification as involving two inseparable aspects: (1) the legal or
forensic aspect is God’s forgiveness of the believers’ sins and His crediting
Christ’s righteousness to their account; and (2) the experiential aspect is
Christ’s gift of His righteousness to believers by the Holy Spirit. The soul is
not re-formed or re-created so that it becomes inherently righteous. The Holy
Spirit within believers’ hearts is their righteousness. Christ within is the
Spirit within is righteousness within. The indwelling Christ is our
righteousness within. The transformation is Christ, by the Holy Spirit, coming
to dwell in the human heart, so that His righteousness becomes the believers’ righteousness;
not by re-creating the soul into an independently righteous entity but by
providing righteousness by His righteous presence. Believers remain fallen,
sinful human beings, but their fallen natures are now under the control and
direction of the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Paul Althaus
writes in his The Theology of Martin Luther:
Luther uses the
terms “to justify” [ justificare] and “justification” [ justificatio]
in more than one sense. From the beginning, justification most often means the
judgment of God with which he declares man to be righteous [justum reputare
or computare]. In other places, however, this word stands for the entire
event through which a man is essentially made righteous (a usage which Luther
also finds in Paul, Romans 5), that is, for both the imputation of
righteousness to man as well as man’s actually becoming righteous. . . . This
twofold use of the word cannot be correlated with Luther’s early and later
theology; he uses “justification” in both senses at the same time, sometimes
even shortly after each other in the same text.10
In his Disputation
Concerning Justification (1536), Luther wrote of justification as God
counting the believer righteous. Thus, as he often did, he emphasized the legal
aspect of justification. “To be justified,” he wrote, “includes that idea,
namely that we are considered righteous on account of Christ.”11
Luther
continues, “He sustains and supports them on account of the first fruit of his
creation in us, and he thereupon decrees that they are righteous and sons of
the kingdom. For we perceive that a man who is justified is not yet a righteous
man, but is in the very movement or journey toward righteousness. . . .
Therefore, whoever is justified is still a sinner; and yet he is considered
fully and perfectly righteous by God who pardons and is merciful.”12
Yet, in the
same work, Luther explained, “Natural motion is our motion, but this movement
of justification is the work of God in us, to which our propositions
refer.”13 Explaining what is meant by the righteousness of God being
outside of us, Luther wrote, “The phrase is grammatical. To be outside of us
means not to be out of our powers. Righteousness is our possession, to be sure,
since it was given to us out of mercy. Nevertheless, it is foreign to us,
because we have not merited it.”14
Luther
underlined his understanding that justification is a heart experience, not just
a legal declaration, by his comment on Romans 12:1, “Up to this
point he has taught how to become a new man, and he has described the new birth
which makes the new man (John 3:3ff.). But now he
is teaching concerning the works of the new birth which anyone who has not been
made a new man does in vain and presumptuously. For being comes before doing,
and suffering comes before being. Therefore the order is: becoming, being, and
then working.”15
Luther knew all
too well that the imagery of the new birth does not occur in the book of
Romans, as the imagery of justification does not occur in John, chapter 3. Yet
he identified the two metaphors. Justification, to Luther, was the new birth.
He made the same identification at the beginning of his sermon on John 3: “This
chapter stresses above all else that sublime topic: faith in Christ, which
alone justifies us before God.”16 But the term justification
is not mentioned in John 3. The point is that Luther saw the new birth as
justification.
Thus, Luther
regarded justification as involving the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in
the life of the believer. “Then what does justify? Hearing the voice of the
Bridegroom, hearing the proclamation of faith—when this is heard, it justifies.
Why? Because it brings the Holy Spirit who justifies. From this it is
sufficiently evident what the distinction is between the Law and the Gospel.
The Law never brings the Holy Spirit; therefore it does not justify, because it
only teaches what we ought to do. But the Gospel does bring the Holy Spirit,
because it teaches what we ought to receive.”17
Certainly
Luther recognized justification as God’s legal act of forgiving sin and
reckoning the perfect righteousness of Christ to the believer. But in the works
that evidence his mature theology, he repeatedly wrote of justification as also
involving the gift of Christ to the heart. For example, in his lengthy comments
on Galatians 2:16, contained in
his 1535 Lectures on Galatians, Luther wrote, “Therefore the Christ who
is grasped by faith and who lives in the heart is the true Christian
righteousness, on account of which God counts us righteous and grants us
eternal life.”18 The presence of Christ in our hearts, Luther said,
is the reason God counts us righteous and grants us eternal life.
Rejecting the
Roman Catholic concept of inherent righteousness of soul for the justified,
Luther wrote,
Therefore we,
too, acknowledge a quality and a formal righteousness in the heart; but we do
not mean love, as the sophists do, but faith, because the heart must behold and
grasp nothing but Christ the Savior. . . . Here it is to be noted these three
things are joined together: faith, Christ, and acceptance or imputation. Faith
takes hold of Christ and has Him present, enclosing Him as the ring encloses
the gem. And whoever is found having this faith in the Christ who is grasped in
the heart, him God accounts as righteous. This is the means and the merit by
which we obtain the forgiveness of sins and righteousness.19
Commenting on Galatians 2:20, Luther wrote,
“But so far as justification is concerned, Christ and I must be so closely
attached that He lives in me and I in Him. What a marvelous way of speaking!
Because He lives in me, whatever grace, righteousness, life, peace, and
salvation there is in me is all Christ’s; nevertheless, it is mine as well, by
the cementing and attachment that are through faith, by which we become as one
body in the Spirit. Since Christ lives in me, grace, righteousness, life, and
eternal salvation must be present with Him; and the Law, sin, and death must be
absent.”20
Some scholars
have denied that Luther’s definition of justification includes the gift of
Christ to the heart by the transforming presence of the Holy Spirit. But
reputable Luther scholars have recognized the balance in his thought between
justification as God’s legal declaration and His gift of Christ to the heart.
For example,
Althaus comments,
Although faith
is not to be considered as a “work” in relationship to our justification, it
remains the source and fountain of “good works.” As such it is the beginning of
a new righteousness which a man has because he is actually righteous. This is
implicit in the fact that faith justifies through Christ, that is, it brings
Christ into the heart, or, expressed in other words, it is worked by the Holy
Spirit and “brings (this Spirit) with it.” This means—as Luther says in his
first lectures on Galatians—that God’s name, his holy, pure, and divine nature
as revealed to us in Christ, so joins itself to our heart in faith that it
makes our heart like itself. Thus our heart itself becomes righteous, not only
because it is accepted as such through the imputation of Christ’s
righteousness, that is, of God’s own righteousness; but it also becomes
righteous because God’s Holy Spirit is poured into the heart and he brings love
and new obedience to him. . . .
Faith looks
only and solely to the Christ for us, toward his righteousness “outside of us”;
yet it thereby becomes the presence and the power of Christ in us. One and the
same faith in Christ gives both forgiveness of sins and the triumph over sin.
In faith a man becomes a new man. Justifying faith means being born again from
God. The certainty of God’s forgiving mercy makes me glad in God, and brings
the slavish service under the law to an end, works a new, free, and joyful
obedience to God’s will, places me in the line of battle against the sin of the
old man, creates the readiness to serve someone else in love and to suffer “in
love and praise of God.” . . .
The two effects
of faith in Christ are: It receives the forgiveness of sins and therewith the
imputation of righteousness; it also establishes a new being and makes a man
righteous in himself. These two effects of faith are inseparably joined
together in Luther’s theology. When he speaks of that righteousness which faith
is and gives he sees both together: the righteousness imputed for Christ’s
sake, and man’s transformation to a new obedience. “Justification” in the full
sense of the word consists in both of these together. The basic and decisive
factor is that man is forgiven and receives new worth before God.21
Evangelical
theologians in recent times have been engaged in a healthy debate on this
subject. The recent book Justification: What’s at Stake in the Current
Debates, edited by Mark Husbands and Daniel J. Treier, is very revealing
with the forensic-only position being seriously questioned.22
Moreover, a group of Finnish historians have recently established that Luther
saw justification as an experiential, spiritual union with Christ. Quite apart
from their ecumenical interest, they have come up with an interpretation of
Luther that contradicts the traditional forensic-only view.23
John Calvin’s view
John Calvin’s
definition of justification is similar to Luther’s. In book III, chapter XI of
his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin identifies two vital
ingredients of justification: (1) the legal element, according to which God
forgives sin and credits the righteousness of Christ to the believer; and (2)
the experiential element, by which Christ comes into our hearts by the presence
of the Holy Spirit.
On the first
point, Calvin wrote,
A man is said
to be justified in the sight of God when in the judgment of God he is deemed
righteous, and is accepted on account of his righteousness; for as iniquity is
abominable to God, so neither can the sinner find grace in his sight, so far as
he is and so long as he is regarded as a sinner. Hence, wherever sin is, there
also are the wrath and vengeance of God. He, on the other hand, is justified
who is regarded not as a sinner, but as righteous, and as such stands acquitted
at the judgment-seat of God, where all sinners are condemned. As an innocent
man, when charged before an impartial judge, who decides according to his
innocence, is said to be justified by the judge, so a man is said to be
justified by God when, removed from the catalogue of sinners, he has God as the
witness and assertor of his righteousness. In the same manner, a man will be
said to be justified by works, if in his life there can be found a
purity and holiness which merits an attestation of righteousness at the throne
of God, or if by the perfection of his works he can answer and satisfy the
divine justice. On the contrary, a man will be justified by faith, when,
excluded from the righteousness of works, he by faith lays hold of the
righteousness of Christ, and clothed in it appears in the sight of God not as a
sinner, but as righteous. Thus we interpret justification, as the acceptance
with which God receives us into his favor as if we were righteous; and we say
that this justification consists in the forgiveness of sins and the imputation
of the righteousness of Christ. . . .
Hence, when God
justifies us through the intercession of Christ, he does not acquit us on a
proof of our innocence, but by an imputation of righteousness, so that though
not righteous in ourselves, we are deemed righteous in Christ.24
On the second
point, that justification involves the bestowal of Christ upon our hearts by
the presence of the Holy Spirit, Calvin wrote, “In this way, in this meaning, I
deny not that Christ, as he is God and man, justifies us; that this work is
common also to the Father and the Holy Spirit; in fine, that the righteousness
of which God makes us partakers is the eternal righteousness of the eternal God,
provided effect is given to the clear and valid reasons to which I have
adverted us one with himself, and, therefore, we glory in having a fellowship
of righteousness with him.”25
Calvin seems to
have given greater emphasis to the legal (forensic) aspect in justification
than did Luther.26 “Calvin speaks of the believer being ‘grafted
into Christ’, so that the concept of incorporation becomes central to
his understanding of justification. The iustitia Christi [the
righteousness of Christ] on the basis of which man is justified, is treated as
if it were man’s within the context of the intimate personal relationship of
Christ and the believer.”27
Justification today
Among
theologians and Christian denominations today, a number of different views
regarding justification are held. Among the views propagated today are the
following: (1) the Roman Catholic position that justification makes the soul
intrinsically righteous; (2) the view of Luther and Calvin that justification
involves both a legal element and Christ’s bestowal of Himself upon the heart
of the believer by the presence of the Holy Spirit; (3) the legal-only position
that regards justification as solely God’s declaration that the righteousness
of Christ is counted for the believer who remains unrighteous; and (4) the view
that there is no legal aspect to justification, that it is only God’s act of
making the believer right in heart with Himself.
The
evangelicals who argue for legal-only justification are in the tradition of
post-Reformation orthodox, scholastic Lutheranism, not in the tradition of the
Reformation itself. Despite their attempts to identify themselves with the
Reformation, they are being untrue to the understanding of salvation taught by
Luther and Calvin. Obviously each new generation must determine for itself from
the scripture text what Paul meant by justification. But authors and churches
that claim the Reformation as the historical foundation of their concept of the
gospel, or claim that their theology is a perpetuation and an advancement of
Reformation theology, while they ignore or misinterpret the basic
understandings of the magisterial Reformers, are sadly committing themselves to
a distinctly unhistorical position.
1. See Alister
E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the
Christian Doctrine of Justifi cation (Cambridge: University
Press, 1986), 1;40–51.
Christian Doctrine of Justifi cation (Cambridge: University
Press, 1986), 1;40–51.
2. Thomas
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, vol. 20, Great
Books of Our Western World, First Part of the Second Part
(Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), question 110,
article 2, http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2110.htm
(accessed Oct. 8, 2009).
Books of Our Western World, First Part of the Second Part
(Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), question 110,
article 2, http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2110.htm
(accessed Oct. 8, 2009).
3. Ibid., question 110, article 4, http://www.newadvent.org/
summa/2110.htm (accessed Oct. 8, 2009).
4. Ibid.,
question 113, article 3,
http://www.newadvent.org/
summa/2113.htm (accessed Oct. 8, 2009).
summa/2113.htm (accessed Oct. 8, 2009).
5. See McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 44–47, 63–65, 81, 82, 85–87.
6. Reinhold
Seeberg, Text-book of the History of Doctrines
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books House, 1977), 2:433.
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books House, 1977), 2:433.
7. Philip Schaff, Creeds of Christendom (Grand Rapids, MI:
Baker Books, 1919), 2:93; emphasis added.
8. Ibid., 94–99.
9. Ibid.,
99–101, 107–109.
10. Paul
Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, trans. Robert
C. Schultz (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 226.
C. Schultz (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 226.
11. Luther’s
Works, ed. Helmut T. Lehmann, (Philadelphia:
Muhlenberg Press, 1960), 34:153.
Muhlenberg Press, 1960), 34:153.
12. Ibid.,
34:152, 153.
13. Ibid.,
34:177; emphasis added.
14. Ibid.,
34:178.
15. Ibid.,
25:104.
16. Ibid.,
22:275.
17. Ibid.,
26:208.
18. Ibid.,
26:130.
19. Ibid.,
26:132.
20. Ibid.,
26:167, 168.
21. Paul
Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, 234, 235.
22. See, for
example, “God’s declaration in other words, is
itself constitutive of that which is declared. God’s word is
always effective. When it goes forth, it never returns to
Him void. So a judicial act for God is never merely judicial;
it is itself transformative.” Bruce L. McCormack, “What’s at
Stake in Current Debates Over Justification: The Crisis of
Protestantism in the West,” in Justification: What’s at Stake
in the Current Debates, eds. Mark Husbands and Daniel J.
Treier, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 107.
itself constitutive of that which is declared. God’s word is
always effective. When it goes forth, it never returns to
Him void. So a judicial act for God is never merely judicial;
it is itself transformative.” Bruce L. McCormack, “What’s at
Stake in Current Debates Over Justification: The Crisis of
Protestantism in the West,” in Justification: What’s at Stake
in the Current Debates, eds. Mark Husbands and Daniel J.
Treier, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 107.
23. See Tuomo
Mannermaa, Christ Present in Faith: Luther’s
View of Justification (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press,
2005) ; and Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, eds.,
Union With Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998).
View of Justification (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press,
2005) ; and Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, eds.,
Union With Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998).
24. John
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, bk. III, ch.
XI, trans. Henry Beveridge (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
1559, 1962), 2, 3.
XI, trans. Henry Beveridge (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
1559, 1962), 2, 3.
25. Ibid., 10.
26. McGrath, Iustitia
Dei, 2:36–38.
27. Ibid., 36,
37; see also Wilhelm Niesel, The Theology of
Calvin (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1956), 120–139.
Calvin (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1956), 120–139.