Posted on 01/01/2007 11:05:13 AM PST by NYer
The Rev. Laurence Wells, rector of St Michael and All Angels Anglican Church in Orange Park, Florida, and a subscriber to the definition of justification promulgated by the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, has asked me to to respond to five questions regarding justification and the Bible. I am reluctant to do so, as I am not a biblical scholar and therefore am forced to rely almost exclusively upon the commentators I have at hand. In the end we can only find ourselves matching scholar for scholar. “I’ll see your R. C. Sproul and raise you N. T. Wright.” I am also reluctant to do so for another reason: the doctrines of the Church rarely hang on the exegesis of a handful of biblical texts. This is why a Catholic biblical scholar like Joseph Fitzmyer and a Lutheran biblical scholar like John Reumann can reach significant consensus on the various meanings of righteousness in the Scriptures, and yet find themselves in disagreement on the doctrine of justification (see John Reumann, Righteousness in the New Testament). Dogma is not just a reiteration of Scripture but a normative way of reading Scripture that has imposed itself on the mind of the Church by the Holy Spirit and magisterial authority.
The doctrine of justification is particularly confusing because we too quickly assume that if we can figure out what Paul really meant when he wrote about justification, we will have solved the doctrinal question of justification. But as Robert W. Jenson has noted, the matter is not nearly so simple:
In the historic discourse of the church, the phrase “the doctrine of justification” is severely multivocal. The phrase’s formulaic use, however, has regularly led into the unstated supposition that it must be univocal, that justification is the caption for some one problem together with its proposed solutions. This is not the case. At least three different questions with their own sets of proposed answers have, at various times, gone under the one title “justification.” Confusion would not have ensued if the three questions had been merely unrelated.
At a first locus of doctrine labeled justification, we have the apostle Paul’s question “How does God establish his righteousness among us?” together with his and others’ labor to answer it. For a second locus labeled “justification” we have Western Augustinianism’s several efforts to describe the process of individual salvation, to lay out the factors and steps of the soul’s movement from the state of sin to the state of justice. A third locus under the same label–—the specifically reforming doctrine of justification–—includes the body of teaching that the American Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogue called “hermeneutic” or “metatheological” or “proclamatory.” This doctrine describes nothing at all, neither God’s justice nor the process of our becoming just. It is instead an instruction to those who would audibly or visibly speak the gospel, a rule for preachers, teachers, liturgists, and confessors. This instruction may be formulated: So speak of Christ and of hearers’ actual and promised righteousness, whether in audible or visible words, whether by discourse or practice, that what you say solicits no lesser response than faith—or offence. (Read the entire citation.)
Once we acknowledge the possibility that Paul and Augustine were asking and answering different questions, we will be cautious about assuming that agreement in historical-grammatical biblical exegesis means agreement in doctrine. We must, of course, do our exegesis. We must continue to study the Scripture and put our theological questions to it. But we will also push beyond the grammatical-historical reading of the texts to a reading that is truly theological, a reading grounded in the tradition of Christian proclamation, liturgy, theological reflection, and ascetical practice.
And so now to the questions that have been put to me:
First, in Luke 18:14 we read, “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other.” (From the parable of the publican and the pharisee.) Now what has happened here? Is the “justification” of the publican—a type for all sinners—a definitive act, or has he only entered into a process which is less than complete? If it is the latter, how do you account for the perfect tense of the participle “justified,” and indeed, what would be the point of the parable?
My first reaction is that this parable contributes little to the Protestant-Catholic debate on justification. Jesus’ parables rarely fit into our doctrinal boxes and usually explode them. Clearly Jesus is concerned here to compare and contrast two attitudes of prayer. The pharisee, though observant to Torah and the halachic tradition, comes to God in a spirit of boasting, accomplishment, and judgment. Instead of rejoicing in the fact that the publican—precisely the sort of person who responded positively to Jesus’ message—has turned to God in repentance, humility, and prayer, the pharisee condemns him. He can only see a person who has less spiritual wealth than himself. As Luke Timothy Johnson comments, “The pious one is all convoluted comparison and contrast; he can receive no gift because he cannot stop counting his possessions.” Despite his external posture, his heart is turned not to God but inward to himself. The publican, on the other hand, has no spiritual wealth to boast about and so comes to God in a spirit of humility, poverty, repentance, and need. His vision is fixed on God. It is the publican, Jesus tells us, who returned home “justified” by God, not the pharisee.
What does “justified” mean here? John Reumann believes that in this context the word here is best understood as “found favor” or “accepted as righteous.” God approves and accepts the publican because of the penitential humility of his heart.
How does this parable speak to the Protestant-Catholic debate? Certainly it reminds all parties that God looks beyond our behavior into our hearts. We must not persuade ourselves that we are right with God merely because we have technically observed his commandments. It is possible to obey God’s commands in a spirit that contradicts and denies his love. This is a truth shared by all Christians. But may this parable be enlisted as support of the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith? Mr. Wells obviously thinks it may be; but I am skeptical. Clearly, the publican has no works of Torah to plead but only sins, yet still God approves him; but one could easily infer from the text that he was accepted because of the attitude of his heart, because he was penitent and humble. If this is why God justifies the publican, then, by the Reformation construal of justification, the publican has been saved by a “work.” Catholic apologist Robert Sungenis* makes this point in his book Not by Faith Alone:
One of the assumptions Protestants make when they interpret Luke 18:14 is that the justification of the tax collector is the single point in his life that he was justified. In contemporary understanding, it is as if the tax collector were walking up the aisle after saying the sinner’s prayer and finally receives the grace of God into his life and now he is a Christian. Once justified, the tax collector will now go home and lead a life of sanctification. … The context of the parable does not support this interpretation, nor is it consistent with the rest of Jesus’ teaching. … Granted that, regarding works, the parable does not refer to works specifically, but then neither does it specify the word faith. Rather, the emphasis is on repentance, which implies both faith and works. (p. 194)
Is Jesus here telling us that a specific kind of faith is a condition for salvation? The Catholic is comfortable with this question, as he confesses with the Church that justifying faith is faith informed by love and hope, and he sees this kind of faith well realized in the publican. Moreover, it must be noted that Protestants too can argue about the kind of faith necessary for justification. Is justifying faith a passive faith? a penitent faith? an obedient faith? a lively faith? a faith that works through love (Gal 5:6)? all of the above? Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans, Wesleyans, and Pentecostals give different answers—and by their different answers advance different, and conflicting, versions of justification by faith.
But it seems to me that once we have put this question to the parable, we have missed its point.
Second, in Romans 5:1-2, we read “since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand…” The Greek participle is not perfect but only aorist, I admit; but the results are clearly perfect: we have peace, we have obtained access, we stand. How do you interpret this verse?
I do not have a definitive interpretation of these verses. What precisely does Paul mean by the phrase “justified by faith”? Only a few verses later Paul declares that we are justified by the blood of Christ (5:9). I think we can all agree that here Paul is extolling the wondrous grace of God, who has achieved our reconciliation with himself through the death and resurrection of his Son. Christians now enjoy peace with God because they have latched onto Christ and seek to conform their lives to him within the life of the Church. They are precisely people of faith, in contrast to all who do not know Christ and do not follow him. I am skeptical about attempts to precisely delimit the meaning of “faith,” to define it, for example, as a trust that excludes repentance, obedience, intellectual assent, and love. I doubt very seriously that Paul was at all interested in such fine distinctions. Christians are people of faith because in faith they have left behind their former lives, confessed Jesus as Lord, and submitted themselves to the life of the Church. In faith they live in Christ and follow Christ. As I survey the New Testament, I see “faith” as enjoying a rich complex of interrelated meanings.
Note that if we push this text too hard, we find ourselves once again arguing whether faith is condition of salvation and therefore asking in what faith consists. Is that really what Paul was concerned about in Romans or his other letters? I do not know how far to follow N. T. Wright here, but I do believe he is correct that Paul’s primary concern is to justify the inclusion of Gentiles within the new Israel, without requiring them to become practicing Jews through circumcision and obedience to the Mosaic law. He simply was not asking and answering the questions of Augustine and Luther.
What precisely does “we have been justified” mean? Is Paul speaking here of an imputed righteousness or an effective righteousness? Need the former exclude the latter? When God declares us to be righteous, are we not indeed truly made righteous? Given the extensive research of Chris VanLandingham, recently published as Judgment and Justification in Early Judaism and the Apostle Paul, everyone should think twice before dogmatically declaring that dikaioô has an exclusively forensic meaning here and elsewhere in Paul. Why may we not agree with John Henry Newman when he states “to ‘justify means in itself ‘counting righteous,’ but includes under its meaning ‘making righteous;’ in other words, the sense of the term is ‘counting righteous,’ and the nature of the thing denoted by it is making righteous”? Why may we not agree with Thomas F. Torrance when he asserts “Justification is not only a declaratory act, but an actualization of what is declared”?
Does Rom 5:1-2 in any way call into question the Catholic construal of justification? Not that I can see. As a Catholic I would be delighted to preach on this text and declare to my congregation that in Christ we now enjoy peace and reconciliation with God.
Third, can you direct me to a single verse of the NT which speaks of justification as a process?
A single verse? How about the entire New Testament! Jesus, Luke, Paul, James, John—all speak of a cooperative relationship between God and his Church, between God and believers. This is why the Church Fathers are synergists with regards to salvation and why they assert conditional election through God’s prevision of freely-chosen disbelief and sin, Sts Augustine and Fulgentius being the most notable exceptions (see William Most). And of course there are those passages in the New Testament that speak of a future judgment based on deeds (again I reference VanLandingham).
But perhaps Wells’s concern here is grammatical or definitional. Since Augustine it has been customary for Catholic theologians to speak of justification as a process: the believer grows in acceptability by God as he grows in holiness. Justice and sanctity are thought together. But Protestant exegetes assert that in the New Testament a clear distinction is made between justification and sanctification. Some Catholic exegetes agree. Personally I find a verbal distinction between justification and sanctification helpful, as long as we remember that both words direct us to the indivisible reality of our new being in the incarnate and risen Son. Certainly the Catholic should not hesitate to assert that incorporation into Christ is a decisive event that does not admit of degrees. To be in Christ is to be simultaneously forgiven by the Father and indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Newman elaborates:
The fact that we are the temple of God does not admit of more or less; such words have no meaning when applied to it. Righteousness then, considered as the state of being God’s temple, cannot be increased; but, considered as the divine glory which that state implies, it can be increased, as the pillar of the cloud which guided the Israelites could become more or less bright. Justification being acceptableness with God, all beings who are justified differ from all who are not, in their very condition, in a certain property, which the one body has and the other has not. In this sense, indeed, it is as absurd to speak of our being more justified, as of life, or colour, or any other abstract idea increasing. But when we compare the various orders of just and acceptable beings with one another, we see that though they all are in God’s favour, some may be more “pleasant,” “acceptable,” “righteous,” than others, and may have more of the light of God’s countenance shed on them; as a glorified Saint is more acceptable than one still in the flesh. In this sense then justification does admit of increase and of degrees; and whether we say justification depends on faith or on obedience, in the same degree that faith or obedience grows, so does justification. And again (to allude to a point not yet touched on), if justification is conveyed peculiarly through the Sacraments, then as Holy Communion conveys a more awful presence of God than Holy Baptism, so must it be the instrument of a higher justification. On the other hand, those who are declining in their obedience, as they are quenching the light within them, so are they diminishing their justification
For the Catholic, justification is a state into which one is brought at holy baptism. This state can strengthened by prayer and obedience, weakened and destroyed by grave sin, and renewed by repentance and sacramental absolution. Hence we may describe justification as both event and process.
Fourth, do you still maintain the claim that Luther added the word “alone” to the phrase “by faith”? Is so, what do you make of Fr Joseph Fitzmyer’s writing in the Anchor Bible Commentary that Luther was anticipated in his “alone” by a long list of Church Fathers, including St Thomas Aquinas? Fr Fitzmyer is a Jesuit scholar, whose Catholic credentials are, I believe, fairly solid. He cannot be dismissed in the manner of Hans Kung.
I have never claimed that Luther invented the phrase “by faith alone,” nor do I dismiss Hans Küng’s important book on justification, which I have approvingly referenced repeatedly here on Pontifications. I gladly acknowledge that there are ways to formulate the sola fide in a manner acceptable to Catholic dogma. What is important is not Luther’s use of the phrase faith alone but what he and the other 16th century Protestant reformers meant by it. It is this meaning that is judged unacceptable by the Catholic Church.
Fifth, if the formula “justified by faith alone is incorrect,” then precisely what is faith combined with?
To think this from a Catholic perspective one needs to think of the whole process, or narrative, of salvation, beginning with conversion and baptism and culminating in the final judgment and glorification. The adult sinner hears the gospel. He is convicted of his sin and confesses Christ Jesus as his Lord and Savior. He is still not justified. Why? Because he has not yet been baptized! He must desire and ask the Church for baptism. Only then is he incorporated into Christ, reborn in the Holy Spirit, and united to the Holy Trinity—and thus made righteous. Before baptism, faith is not justifying; it is, as Newman writes, only the title to the justifying act that is baptism. It is baptism that makes faith justifying. The faith that brings us to baptism and receives baptism must itself die and be reborn in Christ and his vicarious faithfulness.
Once the sinner is baptized, he is justified. He has been made a member of the body of Christ and introduced into the state of grace that is life in the Trinity. Was he justified by his moral works? No, absolutely not. Moral works before baptism neither justify the sinner nor merit eternal salvation. The foundational significance of faith was solemnly declared by the Council of Trent:
And whereas the Apostle saith, that man is justified by faith and freely, those words are to be understood in that sense which the perpetual consent of the Catholic Church hath held and expressed; to wit, that we are therefore said to be justified by faith, because faith is the beginning of human salvation, the foundation, and the root of all Justification; without which it is impossible to please God, and to come unto the fellowship of His sons: but we are therefore said to be justified freely, because that none of those things which precede justification—whether faith or works—merit the grace itself of justification. For, if it be a grace, it is not now by works, otherwise, as the same Apostle says, grace is no more grace.
Because it is faith that brings one to baptism and receives baptism, one can appropriately, though perhaps not with full accuracy, say that one is justified by faith alone. If a person were to die immediately after baptism, without any good deeds to his credit, he would be immediately translated into heaven. The Church also recognizes that faithful catechumens who die before baptism are also saved: they are saved by their desire for baptism. Following Scripture and holy tradition, Trent identified holy baptism as the instrumental cause of justification. Newman suggests that we speak of baptism as the external instrumental cause of justification and faith as the internal instrumental cause.
But most of us, of course, do not die immediately following baptism. God calls us to live the life of the Spirit within the world, in obedience to our Lord. What then is the salvific role of our ascetical, liturgical, and moral deeds? The Catholic Church recognizes that because it is possible for the justified believer to turn away from the love of God through grave sin and disbelief, our actions enjoy a salvific urgency and import. By our grace-enabled works we strengthen our union with God and maintain the state of justification. These works are accomplished in dependence upon Christ and therefore are accomplished in faith and by faith. Faith necessarily expresses itself in action. Faith lives in deeds. Because we are given the freedom to cooperate with the grace of God, and because our works deepen our communion in the Holy Trinity and form us into the image of Christ, we may speak of works as justifying and even as meritorious. It was, after all, an Apostle and brother of Jesus who declared, “A person is justified by works and not by faith alone” (James 2:24).
(*I have refrained from citing Robert Sungenis in my previous articles, because the guy appears to have gone off the deep end and become an embarrassment to the Catholic apologetics community; but I must say that I have found his book Not by Faith Alone to be quite helpful. He offers a consistent, reasonable, and well-argued Tridentine reading of the Scriptures.)
justification: "Control" [or "cloverleaf" in Mac OS] + J
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