GRPL sola fide ping for edification and discussion.
Posted on 02/02/2005 9:04:07 AM PST by Frumanchu
In the popular jargon of religion the word "forensic" is used infrequently. The term is not foreign to ordinary language, however, as it is used regularly in newspaper and other media reports, particularly with reference to criminal investigations and trials. The work of criminal pathologists and coroners often touch on what is called forensic medicine and/or forensic evidence. Here the term "forensic" refers to matters that concern the judicial system and judicial proceedings.
A second manner in which the term "forensic" is used in ordinary language has to do with public speaking. Contests are held in schools and colleges, sometimes in a statewide venue that are called "Forensic Events." They may involve the giving of speeches or the contests of formal debates.
The link between these ordinary usages of the term "forensic" and its use in theology is relatively simple. When the term "forensic" is used with respect to the doctrine of justification it has to do with a legal or judicial matter involving some type of declaration. We can reduce its meaning simply to the concept of legal declaration.
The doctrine of justification involves a legal matter of the highest magnitude. It involves a matter of judgment before the supreme tribunal of God. The most basic of all issues we face as fallen human beings is the issue of how we as unjust sinners can hope to survive a judgment before the court of an absolutely holy and absolutely just God. God is the Judge of all the earth. Herein lies our dilemma. He is just; we are unjust. If we receive from His hands what justice is due to us, we face the everlasting punishment of hell.
God, who is holy, requires that His creatures be holy. The standard is perfection. If we sin but once we have become debtors who cannot possibly pay what we owe. Once we are marred by imperfection it is impossible thereafter to make up for that imperfection. We live out Lady Macbeth’s torturous task of trying to remove a stain that no one can make clean. The spot cannot be eradicated by any natural or human means. Only God can make that which is scarlet become white as snow or that which is crimson become as wool.
The question we face is how we as unjust sinners can become just in the sight of God. The two competing theories in answer to this question that have fueled such serious controversy are the Roman Catholic and Protestant Reformation theories. These are not the only theories that have been advanced in history but they are the chief views that have clashed. The controversy over the doctrine of justification in the sixteenth century was surely the most volatile and divisive in church history.
In simple terms the issue boils down to this: Are we justified by a process by which we become actually just or are we justified by a declarative act by which we are counted or reckoned to be just by God? Are we declared just or are we made just by justification?
In some respects this may be seen as a false dilemma in that the Protestant view claims that those who are declared just in justification are also made just via sanctification and glorification. Is the dispute merely a semantic one in that Rome calls justification what Protestants call sanctification?
Surely there is a confusion in the use of these terms that has added to the controversy. But the vital question is: What does the Bible mean by justification? Our final authority for our understanding of justification rests neither on Roman Catholic pronouncements about it nor on Protestant creedal affirmations about it, but solely on what Scripture pronounces. Clearly the Protestant and Roman Catholic pronouncements differ. The question is which, if either, accurately confesses the Biblical view.
There is a semantic question here that has been exacerbated by the fluid changes of the use of language. Alister McGrath notes this question in his application of semantic field theory. To the concept of justification McGrath states:
The semantic field of a word includes not merely its synonyms, but also its antonyms, homonyms and homophones. As such, it is much broader than the lexical field, which may be defined very precisely in terms of words which are closely associated with one another. … The translation of a word into a different language inevitably involves a distortion of the semantic field, so that certain nuances and associations present in the original cannot be conveyed in a translation, and new nuances and associations not already present make their appearance.1
The problem McGrath addresses is well known to anyone who has ever been involved in the task of translating documents. McGrath sees this as having a strong impact on the historical development of the doctrine of justification. McGrath notes also that there is a difference between the concept of justification and the doctrine of justification. He says:
The concept of justification is one of many employed within the Old and New Testaments, particularly the Pauline corpus, to describe God’s saving action toward his people. … The doctrine of justification has come to develop a meaning quite independent of its biblical origins, and concerns the means by which man’s relationship to God is established.2
We quite agree that there is a difference between the concept of justification and the doctrine of justification. We must point out, however, that it is also true within the Scriptures themselves. The Biblical doctrine of justification may be distinguished from Biblical concepts of justification but may not be separated from them. That is the Biblical doctrine of justification is made up of the Biblical concepts regarding justification.
Where the semantic field theory comes into play is with respect to the translation of Biblical terms into our present languages. The problem involves the translation of the Hebrew tsedaqah into the Greek dikaiosun and then into the Latin used by the church fathers and particularly in the scholastic era. The English word "justify" derives from the Latin iustificare. The etymology of iustificare, drawn from the Roman culture, means to make just, from the root facare.
McGrath sees Augustine’s treatment of justification in this Latin sense as pivotal to the subsequent development of the doctrine of justification in the Roman Catholic Church:
Augustine understands the verb iustificare to mean "to make righteous," an understanding of the term which he appears to have held throughout his working life. In arriving at this understanding, he appears to have interpreted facare as the unstressed form of facere, by analogy with vivificare and mortificare. Although this is a permissible interpretation of the Latin word, it is unacceptable as an interpretation of the Hebrew concept which underlies it.3
McGrath goes on to say:
Man’s righteousness, effected in justification, is regarded by Augustine as inherent rather than imputed. … the righteousness which man thus receives, although originating from God, is nevertheless located within man, and can be said to be his, part of his being and intrinsic to his person.4
This distinction between inherent versus imputed righteousness touches the eye of the Reformation hurricane and reveals the central importance of the concept of forensic justification to the wider issue of the doctrine.
In the Roman view justification is the process by which a person is made just. That person does not become just by his own power. The begin made just is only possible by the gracious infusion of the righteousness of Christ. Rome strongly repudiates the Pelagian heresy that Adam’s sin affected Adam alone. Because of the fundamental denial of original sin by Pelagius, he insisted that a person can be just before God without the aid of infused grace. For Pelagius grace may facilitate the achievement of righteousness but it is not a necessary condition for that achievement. Pelagius was condemned both at Carthage and at the II Synod of Orange in 529 a.d. Rome sees the grace of regeneration as necessary for justification. Chapter III of the Sixth Session of the Council of Trent declares:
But though He died for all, yet all do not receive the benefit of His death, but those only to whom the merit of His passion is communicated; because as truly as men would not be born unjust, if they were not born through propagation of the seed of Adam, since by that propagation they contract through him, when they are conceived, injustice as their own, so if they were not born again in Christ, they would never be justified, since in that new birth there is bestowed upon them, through the merit of His passion, the grace by which they are made just.5
In chapter VII of Trent’s Sixth Session the non-forensic view of justification is made clear. The chapter is entitled: "In What the Justification of the Sinner Consists, and What are its Causes." It states:
This disposition or preparation is followed by justification itself, which is not only a remission of sins but also the sanctification and renewal of the inward man through the voluntary reception of the grace and gifts whereby an unjust man becomes just … the single formal cause is the justice of God, not that by which He Himself is just, but that by which He makes us just, that, namely, with which we being endowed by Him, are renewed in the spirit of our mind, and not only are we reputed, but we are truly called and are just receiving justice within us, each one according to his own measure, which the Holy Ghost distributes to everyone as He wills, and according to each one’s disposition and cooperation.6
Rome sees not only grace as a necessary condition for justification but also faith as well. Trent says of the necessity of faith:
But when the Apostle says that man is justified by faith and freely, these words are to be understood in that sense in which the uninterrupted unanimity of the Catholic Church has held and expressed them, namely, that we are therefore said to be justified by faith, because faith is the beginning of salvation, the foundation and root of all justification, without which it is impossible to please God.7
Here we see the Roman Catholic view of justification by faith. It is slanderous to Rome to charge them with a pure Pelagianism that teaches justification by works. Rome has a view of justification by faith. Faith as the beginning, foundation, and root of justification is a necessary condition for justification. It is a sine qua non for justification, a necessary prerequisite. However, it is neither the instrumental cause (the means by which) of justification—the instrumental cause is Baptism initially and the sacrament of Penance later for those who need a second plank of justification, nor is it a sufficient cause of justification. It is a necessary cause because without it one cannot be justified. It is not a sufficient cause because one could have faith and still not be justified. Herein is it clear that though justification is by faith, it is not by faith alone.
The doctrine of justification by faith alone and forensic justification are not only rejected by Trent, they are anathematized. Canon 9 of Trent’s Sixth Session reads:
If anyone says that the sinner is justified by faith alone meaning that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to obtain the grace of justification, and that it is not in any way necessary that he be prepared and disposed by the action of his own will, let him be anathema.8
Canon 10 repudiates the forensic character of justification:
If anyone says that men are justified without the justice of Christ whereby He merited for us, or by that justice are formally just, let him be anathema.9
The Reformation view of forensic justification rests on the principle that by the imputation of the righteousness of Christ the sinner is now made formally, but not materially, just in the sight of God.
Luther’s famous dictum simul justus et peccator gets to the heart of the issue regarding forensic justification. The Latin phrase means "at the same time just and sinner." This simultaneous condition refers to the situation wherein the sinner is counted just forensically by virtue of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, while he remains in and of himself, yet a sinner.
Luther did not mean that the sinner who is still a sinner is an unchanged person. The sinner who has saving faith is a regenerate person. He is indwelt by the Holy Spirit. But he is still unjust in himself. Nor does it mean that the sinner is not in a real process of sanctification by which he is becoming just. Those who possess saving faith necessarily, inevitably, and immediately begin to manifest the fruits of faith, which are works of obedience. However, the grounds of that person’s justification remain solely and exclusively the imputed righteousness of Christ. It is by His righteousness and His righteousness alone that the sinner is declared to be just.
Inseparably connected to the doctrine of forensic justification is the concept of imputation. The issue of the Reformation focused on the distinction between infused righteousness and imputed righteousness. For Roman Catholicism, justification occurs via the infusion of the grace of Christ, which makes righteousness possible if the believer assents to and cooperates with this grace (assentire et cooperare). Chapter XVI of Trent declares:
For since Christ Jesus Himself … continually infuses strength into those justified, which strength always precedes, accompanies and follows their good works, and without which they could not in any manner be pleasing and meritorious before God, we must believe that nothing further is wanting to those justified to prevent them from being considered to have, by those very works which have been done in God, fully satisfied the divine law according to the state of this life and to have truly merited eternal life … Thus, neither is our own justice established as our own from ourselves, nor is the justice of God ignored or repudiated, for that justice which is called ours, because we are justified by its inherence in us, that same is (the justice) of God, because it is infused into us by God through the merit of Christ.10
This chapter ends with a solemn declaration:
After this Catholic doctrine of justification, which whosoever does not faithfully and firmly accept cannot be justified, it seemed good to the holy council to add these canons, that all my know not only what they must hold and follow, but also what to avoid and shun.11
After articulating the concept of infused righteousness and declaring that faithful and firm acceptance of this doctrine of justification by infused righteousness is necessary for justification, Trent declares in Canon 11:
If anyone says that men are justified either by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ or by the sole remission of sins, to the exclusion of the grace and the charity which is poured forth in their hearts by the Holy Ghost, and remains in them, or also that the grace by which we are justified is only the good will of God, let him be anathema.12
This Canon 11 is a shotgun blast. Some of the pellets fired missed the Reformation position completely, while other pellets from the scattered shot hit home. The Reformers did not exclude the infusion of grace. Grace is poured into the soul. The issue was the grounds of our justification. For the Reformers the sole grounds are the imputed righteousness of Christ, not the inherent righteousness of the believer or the infused righteousness of Christ. The shotgun does blast the Protestant doctrine of imputation. The final clause of Canon 11 also misses the mark. We are not justified solely by the "good will of God." That is the Socinian view of justification, which was as repugnant to the Reformers as it was to Rome.
The concept of imputation is crucial both to the Biblical concept of justification and to the Reformation. Indeed imputation is of the heart and essence of forensic justification. There is no forensic justification without imputation.
There are two aspects of imputation, which I will distinguish as being the negative and the positive aspects. Our redemption is accomplished by the work of Christ. In the atonement Christ satisfies the demands of God’s justice by suffering and dying in our stead. He receives in Himself the penalty due our sin. He receives the curse declared to be due any who fail to keep the law of God. This is a vicarious or substitutionary work. Christ died "in behalf of" (huper) His people. He is the Lamb of God who carries the burden of our sin. The atonement involves the judicial imputation of our sins to Christ. If our sins were infused into Him rather than imputed, He would become inherently evil and therefore unable to offer an atonement for Himself, let alone for us.
But the atoning death of Christ is but one aspect of imputation, the negative aspect. The positive dimension of the saving work of Christ involves His life of perfect active obedience. Jesus not only died for us; He lived for us as well. He lived in perfect fulfillment of the law, meriting by His righteousness the blessing promised in the old covenant.
In our justification this perfect righteousness and merit of Christ are imputed to the believer. This is the grounds of our justification. It is the inherent righteousness of Christ, not the inherent righteousness of the believer that is the ground of our justification.
Rome rejects this notion of imputed forensic justification on the grounds that it involves God in a "legal fiction." This casts a shadow on the integrity of God and His justice. They claim that for God to consider someone just who is not inherently just is for God to be involved in some sort of fictional deceit. Rome cannot tolerate Luther’s dictum, simul justus et peccator. For Rome a person is either just or sinner, one cannot be both at the same time. For Rome only the truly just can ever be declared to be just by God.
Perhaps the charge of legal fiction is the most serious and grievous charge Rome levels against the Reformation and against sola fide. Here nothing less than the Gospel is at stake. Rome declares the Reformed understanding of the Gospel to be a legal fiction. In doing so we believe that Rome has declared the Biblical Gospel a legal fiction. The Biblical Gospel stands or falls with the concept of imputation. Without the imputation of our sins to Christ there is no atonement. Without the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to us, all the infused grace we have will not avail us for salvation. Christians who receive the grace of regeneration and the indwelling presence and power of the Holy Spirit still sin and fall short of the glory of God. All the benefits of sacramental grace do not gain us the holiness absolute divine justice requires. We need a righteousness that is greater than whatever righteousness inheres in us, by whatever means or grace it so inheres, in order to stand before the judgment of God.
It is for this reason Luther and the Reformers insisted that the righteousness by which we are justified is a righteousness that is extra nos. It is a righteousness that is "outside of" or "apart from" us that is imputed to us. It is a justitia alienum, an alien righteousness, a righteousness given by another in our behalf.
The forensic declaration of justification is not a legal fiction. It is real and authentic because the imputation upon which it is based is no fiction. It is a real imputation of real righteousness of a real Christ. Christ is our righteousness. He does more than merely help or assist us by His grace and power to become righteous. He gives us His righteousness before the tribunal of God. Our righteousness remains as filthy rags. We must be adorned or cloaked by His righteousness, a cloak that covers the nakedness of our sin. This is the truly good news of the Gospel that by grace God counts or reckons the very righteousness of Christ to us. Anything else is another Gospel, which is not another "Gospel," because there is only one authentic Gospel. To preach or teach any other Gospel is to fall under the anathema of God.
When Abraham believed God it was "counted" or "reckoned" unto him as righteousness. This reckoning, which came before he performed any of the works of the Law, as Paul labors so vigorously to instruct in Romans 3 and 4, was not a legal fiction. It was the application of the Gospel—indeed an imputation of the righteousness of Christ before Christ was even born. Abraham required nothing less than we need and it was supplied to him. Abraham was justified by faith apart from the works of the Law. As James indicates, Abraham subsequently demonstrated the fruit of his saving faith but the declaration by God of his justification came the moment he believed and was reckoned just.
Another distinction that is made in Reformed theology to clarify the nature of forensic justification is that between an analytical view of justification and a synthetic view. The Roman Catholic doctrine is analytical justification. The Reformation and Biblical view is synthetic justification.
Linguistic philosophy differentiates between an analytical statement and a synthetic statement. An analytical statement is basically a tautology. It is a proposition that is true by definition or true by analysis. There is nothing added in the predicate that is not already inherently contained in the subject. For example, the statements "A triangle has three sides," or "A bachelor is an unmarried man" are analytical. A triangle by definition has three sides. A bachelor by definition is an unmarried man. We cannot have a married bachelor. If we analyze the term "bachelor" we realize that it refers necessarily and inherently to an unmarried man.
On the other hand a synthetic statement adds information in the predicate that is not inherent or analytically contained in the subject. If we stated that "the bachelor is bald" we would be saying something about the bachelor that is not universally true of bachelors and therefore not inherent in the concept of bachelorness. Here there is a kind of synthesis between bachelorness and baldness. One particular from the universal category of bachelorness is combined with a particular trait of humanness—baldness. In this case something is added (though it is not hair) on the predicate that is not found necessarily in the subject.
The Roman Catholic view of justification is analytical in that God declares a person to be just when justice (or righteousness) inheres in the subject. The subject is righteous under divine analysis. He may not have become righteous without the necessary assistance of infused grace but however he got to be righteous he is only deemed to be righteous because he is now inherently righteous. There is no added "plus" by which the person is considered righteous. The just are justified because they are just analytically.
By stark and radical contrast, the Protestant view of justification is synthetic. God’s declaration of justice is based on an added "plus" that is not inherent to the person. That plus is the righteousness of Christ that is imputed to the believer. It is the regenerate believing sinner who is declared just by the addition or imputation of the righteousness of Christ. Here the gracious character of our justification stands out in bold relief and God is seen as both Just and the Justifier of those who believe. G. C. Berkouwer observes: "But in the declaratory character of justification lies the constant reminder of the pure correlation between grace and faith."13 Berkouwer maintains that both sola fide and sola gratia find their purest expression in forensic justification.
Alister McGrath notes four characteristics of the Protestant doctrine of justification that were established by the year 1540.
1. Justification is the forensic declaration that the Christian is righteous, rather than the process by which he or she is made righteous. It involves a change in status rather than in nature.
2. A deliberate and systematic distinction is made between justification (the external act by which God declares the believer to be righteous) and sanctification or regeneration (the internal process of renewal by the Holy Spirit).
3. Justifying righteousness as the alien righteousness of Christ, imputed to the believer and external to him, not a righteousness that is inherent within him, located within him, or in any way belonging to him.
4. Justification takes place per fidem propter Christum, with faith being understood as the God-given means of justification and the merits of Christ the God-given foundation of justification.14
This summary of the issues by McGrath is not without its problems. In his first point regarding forensic justification he says, "It involves a change in status rather than in nature." The technical point in question here focuses on what McGrath means by "involves." Technically the term justification does refer to the declarative judicial act of God and not to the person who receives the benefit of this declarative act and is said to be justified. The declaration changes the status of the believer and not his or her nature. However, as John Gerstner relentlessly points out, it is not a declaration about or directed toward people who are not changed in their constituent nature. God never declares a change in status of people who are unchanged in nature.
Justification, technically considered, may not mean the change of human nature but it certainly involves a change in nature. This may merely be a slip of the pen by McGrath who, in his second point, notes the deliberate distinction between justification and sanctification or regeneration.
It is proper, of course, to distinguish between justification and sanctification or regeneration but we must not separate them. They are intimately involved with one another. Indeed if they are not involved there is no justification. Faith is not justification and justification is not faith, but faith is involved in our justification as the instrumental cause of it. Causes and effects are distinguished but involved together in the causal nexus.
In this sense we must speak of the complex or nexus of justification. Justification in the narrow sense refers strictly to God’s forensic declaration. But the complex of justification in the wider sense involves other elements. This is important to maintain lest we all into the antinomian error of assuming that God justifies people who are and remained unchanged. All who are justified possess faith. Faith abides as a necessary condition for justification. All who have faith are regenerate. Reformed theology sees regeneration as a necessary condition for faith. All who are regenerated are changed in their natures.
It is not the change in our nature wrought by regeneration or our faith that flows from it that is the ground of our justification. That remains solely the imputation of the righteousness of Christ. But that righteousness is not imputed to unbelieving or unregenerate persons. The change from the state of unregenerate to regenerate is a real and vital change in the nature of the person. The change from unbelief to belief is a result of a crucial change in the believer.
Gerstner comments on this:
Just as there are Protestants, as well as Romanists, who misunderstand historic Protestant justification, so there are Romanists who do understand it. Thus Michael Root in Alistair McGrath on Cross and Justification (The Thomist, 1990, pp. 705ff.), has stated that according to "every Reformation theologian I know, however, coming to faith in the justifying righteousness of Christ constitutes a momentous change in the believer." By contrast, Alistair McGrath, in his two volume survey of justification, says that Protestants understand justification as "strictly" a legal declaration of righteousness which works no "real change" in the believer.15
Earlier Gerstner cites a similar reference by Kenneth Foreman: "It [justification] does not refer to the state of man, only to his status." Here Gerstner says, "True, it does not refer to the state of the man, but it does not exclude it."16
Perhaps this point can be clarified by noting the difference between the words "strictly" and "merely." When McGrath says that justification is strictly a legal declaration of righteousness, he is technically correct as long as he does not mean "merely" as if no real and momentous change in the sinner has occurred.
After his thorough-going analysis of justification, McGrath concludes:
On the basis of the above analysis, it will be clear that there exist real differences between Protestants and Roman Catholics over the matter of justification. The question remains, however, as to the significance of these differences. How important, for example, is the distinction between an alien and an intrinsic justifying righteousness? In recent years, there appears to be increasing sympathy for the view that these differences, although of importance in the Reformation period, no longer possess the significance that they once had. This is not to say that the Christian denominations are agreed on the matter of justification, for it is obvious that their respective teachings have a different "feel" or "atmosphere" to them. It seems that in the modern period the Christian denominations have preferred to concentrate on their points of agreement, rather than draw attention to their historical disagreements!
This may be due in part to an increasing recognition that today the real threat to the gospel of grace comes from the rationalism of the Enlightenment rather than from other Christian denominations.17
This statement makes McGrath appear as a prophet. He wrote these words before the 1994 document, Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium appeared. This document, crafted by a group of Evangelicals and Roman Catholics under the leadership chiefly of Charles Colson and Richard John Neuhaus, apparently gives a clear answer to McGrath’s questions about the significance of the debate over forensic justification.
The Colson-Neuhaus document is clearly aware of the threat to the Gospel waged by post-Enlightenment modernity. They offer a joint statement that declares a united affirmation of justification:
We affirm together that we are justified by grace through faith because of Christ. … All who accept Christ as Lord and Savior are brothers and sisters in Christ. Evangelicals and Catholics are brothers and sisters in Christ.18
This joint affirmation of justification says nothing about justification by faith alone, nothing about the imputed righteousness of Christ, and nothing about forensic justification. The document lists several points of ongoing disagreements from which list these items are conspicuous by their absence. The document adds that the list of disagreements is not exhaustive and that there are other abiding points of dispute that are not listed specifically. Here the chief issues of the most volatile theological debate in Christian history are not even mentioned, leaving the impression that they are at best insignificant differences.
When this document was released I was quoted in the press (accurately) as saying that the document "trivialized the Reformation." To state a present affirmation of unity on a doctrine that has divided two major communions for over 450 years without speaking a single word to the historic issues is astonishing and unconscionable to me.
McGrath asks, "How important is the distinction between an alien and an intrinsic righteousness?" I answer, "How important is the Gospel?" If the dispute between infusion and imputation, between forensic and non-forensic justification, between sola fide and fide, is not a dispute about the very essence of the Gospel, then I suppose the distinctions aren’t very important. If they do refer to essential elements of the Gospel then the differences have eternal significance.
That post-Enlightenment modernity represents a clear and present threat to the Gospel does not mean that other threats to the Gospel have disappeared. Luther was convinced that the Roman doctrine was a crucial threat to the Gospel. He was not protesting against a particular period in history or a particular culture, he was protesting against the distortion of the Gospel, which distortion persists to this day in Rome, not in the technical details, but in systemic fashion. Rome remains systemically opposed to forensic justification. It is still anathema to the Vatican. They see forensic justification as a fundamental denial of the gospel worthy of anathema. Historic Evangelicalism sees the denial of forensic justification as a fundamental denial of the Gospel and itself worthy of anathema.
It would be wonderful to see Rome and Protestants be united in a clear affirmation of the Gospel. That has not happened. Until it does, the two communions are locked in a situation where compromise is not tenable. Our justification is grounded solely on the righteousness of Christ imputed to us by faith alone or it is not. Any compromise of this is a compromise and betrayal of Christ and the Gospel. There is simply no room to negotiate on this point.
John Richard Neuhaus has expressed his distress over Protestants who repudiate the Colson-Neuhaus document claiming that we who oppose it are guilty of nit-picking. What we are striving to get people to understand is that forensic justification is not a nit. It is essential to the article upon which the church stands or falls.
Footnotes:
1 Alister E. McGrath, Justitia Dei Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 9.
2Ibid., p. 2.
3Ibid., pp. 30–31.
4Ibid.
5H. J. Schroder, Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (London: Herder Book Co., 1941), pp. 30–31.
6Ibid., p. 33.
7Ibid., pp. 34–35.
8Ibid., p. 43.
9Ibid.
10Ibid., p. 41.
11Ibid., p. 42.
12Ibid., p. 43.
13G. C. Berkouwer, Geloof En Rechtvaardigin (Kampen: Kok, 1949), p. 92 (Maar in het declaratorisch karakter der rechtvarrdiging ligt de voortdurende herinnering aan de zuiverver correlatie tussen genade en geloof).
14Alister E. McGrath, Justification by Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988), p. 61.
15John H. Gerstner, “Aquinas Was A Protestant,” Tabletalk, Vol. 18, No. 5, 1994, p. 52.
16Ibid., pp. 14–15.
17McGrath, Justification by Faith, p. 71.
18The Institute of Religious and Public Life (New York, n.d.), p. 5.
“Justification by Faith Alone: The Forensic Nature of Justification.” Justification by Faith Alone: Affirming the Doctrine by Which the Church and the Individual Stands or Falls. Don Kistler, ed. Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1995.
GRPL sola fide ping for edification and discussion.
It'll take me a while to read it.
When Christ healed healed the sick, he declared them "salvum", -- whole. That declaration followed an act of faith, such as touching His garment. The declaration was accompanied by an actual healing: the lame actually walked and the blind actually began to see. This points, in my opinion, to a change in nature rather than merely in status.
Worth repeating. And repeating. And repeating. :)
Personally, I found this part intriguing: When Abraham believed God it was "counted" or "reckoned" unto him as righteousness. This reckoning, which came before he performed any of the works of the Law, as Paul labors so vigorously to instruct in Romans 3 and 4, was not a legal fiction. It was the application of the Gospel—indeed an imputation of the righteousness of Christ before Christ was even born.
Paul: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou will be saved."
All the pages and all the experts in the world cannot add one bit of knowledge to this Biblical statement. You think it too simple? Jesus: (paraphrased) Become as one of these little children....."
I think the initial fall of Adam is a little more severe...
We were more like illegal aliens in the Kingdom of God that did not deserve due process. The death of Christ made us all legitimate citizens of the Kingdom of God again, but we still need to own up to the sins we commit.
Annalex is certainly right--the change is one of nature. Sproul does seem to affirm that (against McGrath), but I'm not sure that his view is as widely held as he makes it out to be. Luther's analogy (correct me if I misquote) of a dunghill covered in snow certainly does not suggest a change in nature.
"This points, in my opinion, to a change in nature rather than merely in status."
Yes it is both.
"Act of faith"
The act was preceded by the gift.
ASV Eph 2:8 for by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
Now before anyone gets worked up on which one is the gift, the Greek makes both a gift, grace and faith. Greek scholars please back me on this.
Now the reason it HAS to be a gift is mans TOTAL depravity!
ASV Rom 3:10 as it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one; 11There is none that understandeth, There is none that seeketh after God;
And so you pit the milk against the meat, even as we are encouraged to seek the deeper truths of scripture (Heb 6, for starters).
Absolutely! But a little context makes things more clear:
"For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also" James 2: 26
[21] "Not every one who says to me, `Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. [22] On that day many will say to me, `Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' Matt.7
[11] Afterward the other maidens came also, saying, `Lord, lord, open to us.' Matt.25
[46] "Why do you call me `Lord, Lord,' and not do what I tell you? Luke.6
but I pommel my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. 1 Corinthians 9:27
Therefore let any one who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. 1 Corinthians 10:12
. . . stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery . . . You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. Galatians 5:1,4
that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. ,b>Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brethren, I do not consider that I have made it my own . . . I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:11-14
Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by giving heed to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons. 1 Timothy 4:1
For some have already strayed after Satan. 1 Timothy 5:15
Take care, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day . . . that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we share in Christ, if only we hold our first confidence firm to the end. Hebrews 3:12-14
For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God, and the powers of the age to come, if they then commit apostasy . . . Hebrews 6:4-6
Forsaking the right way they have gone astray; they have followed the way of Balaam, . . . For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overpowered, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. 2 Peter 2:15,20-21
The passage you are referring to is in Acts 16, when Paul and Silas are preaching to the jailer. In Acts 2, Peter and the other apostles were also asked what to do to be saved. Peter's response in Acts 2:38 is "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost".
Your passage not only contains the call to believe, but also to be baptized, since after Paul preached Jesus to them, the jailer and his family were baptized(Acts 16:33). The passage in Acts 2 calls on the people to repent and be baptized. These are not mutually exclusive. Belief in Jesus Christ leads to repentance and baptism for the remission of sins.
By the works of the Law no flesh shall be justified. Yet can faith which is without works save?
There is plenty of disagreement about your statement. I defer to the interpretation of James by the Early Christians and the Catholic/Orthodox Church, not the Reformers. The Reformers had an agenda: bolstering their new false gospel of justification by faith alone and sola scriptura via reinterpreting and twisting what was already settled for 1500 years. One must ignore these novel false interpretations and look to the original unbiased Christian understanding of James. For that one must look to Catholic and/or Eastern Orthodox sources and ignore the novelties of the Reformers.
If baptism has nothing to do with salvation, then why does the Bible teach that baptism does each of the following:
Puts One In Christ - Galatians 3:27
Into His Death - Romans 6:3-7
For Remission of Sins - Acts 2:38
Wash Away Sins - Acts 22:16
Answer of Good Conscience - 1 Peter 3:21
Saves Us - Mark 16:16
Starts New Life - Romans 6:3-5
Freed From Sin - Romans 6:7,16-18
Lord Adds To Church - Acts 2:38-47
Spirit Adds To Body - 1 Corinthians 12:13
Yes, one could, but only if one were woefully ignorant of history.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.