HOME | contents | Justification:as used by Paul | Paul, James | Greek fathers | St Augustine | RC - Anglican | Luther | justification-sanctification | merit | vocation: real solution
Justification by faith is the subject of St. Paul's argument in Romans 3-5.
He contends that we are "justified" by our faith,
which is a Divine gift,
and not by our works
as was held by the Pharisees among whom he had been brought up.
The meaning of this word "justification" has at various periods
been a subject of controversy.
Justification is a Latin word which means "making righteous".
But it is an incorrect translation of St. Paul's word δικαίωσις,
which, as modern scholars are agreed, does not mean "making righteous".
"Accounting righteous" was the meaning given to it by Luther and
in Article 11.
But we must go farther back still.
St. Paul was not a Greek but a Jew.
Even though he wrote in Greek, his thought was not Greek but Hebrew.
According to Dr. Goudge, the Hebrew meaning of justification is "vindication".
God "justifies" His people,
declares them to be righteous,
by some great act of vindication such as the escape from Egypt under Moses
or the return from captivity under Zerubbabel.
Our Lord was vindicated or shown to be righteous by His resurrection from
the dead,
and we are shown to be righteous by our faith in Him,
which is a gift of God,
and not by any good works of our own.
This faith includes:
Thus justification is the removal of men from heathen darkness,
or from bondage to the Jewish Law,
to the free life of the Christian Society,
and to union with Jesus Christ its head;
and the means of justification is baptism (Rom.6.3).
But it is not enough to believe and be baptized.
Faith is not really faith at all unless it bears fruit in good works,
which St. Paul calls "the fruits of the Spirit" (Gal.5.22).
Our final vindication is to take place when our Lord returns to judge the
world.
St. Paul, at any rate during the earlier part of his career,
expected this to take place in his own lifetime (I Thess.4.17).
The more usual view that justification means "accounting righteous" is
supported by the parable of the Prodigal Son.
The son is treated by
his father as if he were righteous, though he is not, because his father
loves him;
but we must suppose that he afterwards devoted himself to becoming
a fit object for his father's love.
He was treated as righteous though he had not yet become so.
top
St. James (2.14-26) who says: "You see that a man is justified by works,
and not by faith alone" (verse 24) verbally contradicts St. Paul's doctrine
of justification by faith (Rom.3.28, 4.2).
(It was for this reason that Luther called the Epistle of St. James "an
epistle of straw".)
The contradiction is explained by the use of the words "faith" and "works" in different senses by St. Paul and St. James.
St. Paul means by "faith" complete confidence and self-surrender
to God.
St. James means intellectual assent to a proposition, such as "There
is one God".
St. Paul means by "works" obedience to the Jewish Law and its traditional interpretation by which, according to the Pharisees, a man might earn his salvation from God.
St. James means by "works" deeds of mercy such as, according to St. Paul, were the result of the fruits of the Spirit (Gal.5.22; Rom.8.5).
St. Paul and St. James were dealing with different situations and with different
opponents.
The opponents of St. Paul held that salvation could be earned by observing
the Law.
The opponents of St. James held that right belief (orthodoxy)
was sufficient,
even if it bore no fruit in the believer's life.
St. Paul taught that works without faith cannot save us;
St. James, that faith without works is dead;
and both appealed to the example of Abraham.
The truth is that both faith and works are needed,
but works are the result of faith, not a substitute for it.
Lutherans have always been inclined to place right belief before action,
and even to regard active reform as the duty of the State, not of the Church.
But popular religion today in English-speaking countries is in the tradition
of Calvin rather than of Luther, and its adherents since the decay of Calvin's
dogmatic system are inclined to follow St. James rather than St. Paul.
Right faith, indeed faith in any sense, is of little account in their eyes
compared with right action.
But though barren orthodoxy is certainly useless, and faith is not real
faith unless it results in good works, yet good works which are not supported
by faith in God are not likely to last long.
We have heard far too
much of the "good man without faith" who is not so common as is
popularly supposed.
It is the teaching of St. Paul, not that of St.
James, which needs to be emphasized now.
top
St. Paul's teaching was widely, and for long periods, misunderstood.
The cause of this was the disappearance of Jewish Christianity,
and with it the situation which confronted St. Paul.
St. Clement of Rome, the earliest of the Fathers, combined the teaching of
St. Paul and St. James;
but justification was not of much interest to most of the Greek Fathers.
top
St. Augustine, whose personal experience was like that of St. Paul, was
the first to give profound attention to the subject.
But he knew little Greek and no Hebrew.
He depended on Latin translations, and he thought wrongly that when St. Paul
said "justified" he meant "made righteous".
top
Latin theologians down to the time of the Reformation followed St. Augustine
in the same mistake.
It was made a formal dogma by the Council of Trent, one of the chief objects
of which was to exclude from the Roman Communion every trace of sympathy
with Lutheranism.
Hence justification is used by Romanists to include the first part of sanctification;
whereas Anglicans and Lutherans mean by it the act of acceptance by God which
is to be followed by sanctification.
Romanists mean by "justify", "make righteous";
Anglicans and Lutherans, "account righteous", or "vindicate",
show to be righteous.
The truth for which Anglicans and Lutherans contend is that our salvation
is entirely the gift of God, and is not in any way due to us or earned by
our righteous works.
It is precisely what St. Paul contended for against the Pharisees.
The truth for which Romanists contend is that we are not saved by any kind
of sudden transaction.
Sanctification as well as justification is needed,
and sanctification is a long process that can only be carried out,
apart from special outpourings of God's grace,
within the sacramental fellowship of the Church.
Between these two truths there is no necessary contradiction.
top
The members of the Italian "Oratory of Divine Love",
including Reginald Pole (afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury)
and others who were afterwards leading members of the Council of Trent,
were ready to go half-way to meet Luther on this subject;
and Bartholomew Carranza, Primate of Spain,
was imprisoned by the Inquisition for his teaching on Justification
which he carried into a period when it was no longer tolerated
(though he was finally acquitted at Rome after seventeen years in prison).
Nor was the doctrine of Luther new.
Many medieval theologians before him held it.
Why was it, then, that the effect of Luther's teaching was so great?
It was because Luther was the leader of a revolution;
and "Justification by Faith Alone" was, for him and his followers,
the mark of their breach with the old order.
The Church in the sixteenth century had long been rotten with abuses,
and every attempt to reform it had failed because the vested interests to
which the abuses were profitable were so strong.
Luther was the first to break away from it altogether
(apart from the movements led by Wycliffe and Huss in an earlier generation).
Justification by Faith Alone was the slogan of the revolution and rallied
to it many who were weary of the existing order for political and economic
reasons.
Luther was not by temperament a man who would have been easily induced to
agree to a compromise, but he was never given the chance.
His demand for reform was met with the cynical comment,
"This fellow wants fresher eggs that are to be found in the market" [Cardinal
Cajetan.],
and he was ordered to submit or be excommunicated.
The result was the outbreak of the Reformation,
and violence on both sides soon made the breach irreparable.
The English Reformation took a very different course.
There "Justification by Faith Alone" played no important part.
The question at issue was Royal or Papal Supremacy, and such doctrines as
transubstantiation and purgatory were tests of orthodoxy because the power
of the clergy and of the Pope seemed to most men to be built upon them.
For this reason Luther and Lutheranism are extremely difficult for the practical
English mind to understand.
Luther has never had any great influence in England.
It was Calvin, not Luther, who nearly swept the English Church into the religious
revolution of the Continent.
We cannot understand Luther's doctrine without studying his personal
history.
Like St. Paul, he was a man of strong passions and sensitive conscience.
Like St. Paul, he was brought up in an age when traditional religion had
developed an elaborate system of earning merits by conformity to rules.
It has been called "salvation by dodges".
Like St. Paul, he found that the devotions and practices recommended to him
did not bring peace to his conscience.
Then the great illumination broke upon him.
He found that he had only to put his whole faith in Jesus Christ,
and all methods of earning salvation became unnecessary.
This conviction dominated him for the rest of his life.
He felt that he must bring others to the same experience as he had had himself.
He might have said with St. Paul,
I would that all that hear me this day might become such as I am.
(Acts 26.29).
But Luther had not the constructive power of St. Paul.
He could throw down, but he could not build.
St. Paul's letters are of permanent value.
They fit the needs of every age.
Luther's message was to his own day.
His three pamphlets,
[On the Babylonish Captivity ;
Freedom of a Christian Man ;
Address to the Christian Nobility of Germany (1520).]
which have no special value for other countries and later times, stirred
Germany to the foundations.
The Gospel that he proclaimed was "Justification by Faith Alone".
He called it "articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesiae",
the test whether a church is standing or falling.
The Church would not accept it,
and therefore he rejected the Church and set up a new organization in its
place;
but he handed over that organization to the control of the German princes
who alone had the power to protect him from the Pope and the Emperor;
and they used it for their own purposes.
Luther meant by Justification by Faith
that we are accounted righteous for the sake of our Lord's death
and not for our own merits or anything that we have done ourselves.
This is true, but Dr. Goodge's view that justification is not accounting
righteous but vindicating is more in accordance with St. Paul's Hebrew background.
But Luther added to this, two further doctrines, for which there is no
Scriptural basis, and we have therefore no reason to believe them to be true.
He taught that the infinite merits of Christ are imputed or accounted to
us so that God accepts us because of them, and that we know ourselves to
be accepted by God when we feel assurance of it in our own hearts.
As has already been shown (p. 184), St. Paul teaches that what is imputed
to us is our own faith, not the righteousness of Christ.
God treats
us as if we were righteous because that is the best way to enable us to become
righteous.
It is not pretended that we are righteous when we are not.
The
doctrine of assurance is extremely dangerous for "the heart is deceitful
above all things" (Jer.17.9), and the feelings are most untrustworthy
guides.
We are to trust not in our own feelings
but in the promises of God,
who has undertaken to forgive us for Christ's sake
and has given to us outward signs, or sacraments,
which are pledges to us of His grace and forgiveness.
It is this doctrine of assurance,
which lies at the root of the individualism and subjectivity,
which are the bane of all the heirs of the Reformation
and of Lutheranism in particular.
It is bad theology and bad psychology
to direct our attention chiefly to our own feelings.
We should rather think of God, of His goodness, and of His gifts.
These dangers are not necessary consequences of Lutheranism,
but they have in fact often been its results.
If all that were needed for salvation were justification by faith,
guaranteed by the assurance of a man's own heart,
the Church would not be necessary.
The sacraments would not be necessary.
The observance of the moral law would not be necessary.
Luther did not carry his teaching to such extremes.
He fought against antinomianism.
[Antinomianism is the theory that,
faith being sufficient, morality is unnecessary.]
He recognized the importance of church membership
and accepted three sacraments:
Baptism, Penance, and the Eucharist.
The Churches of Sweden and Finland, which have been profoundly influenced
by his teaching, have a strong sense of Church membership (shown by the absence
of large schisms in those countries) and teach the necessity of the sacraments.
But the consequence of the Continental Reformation, of which Luther was the first champion, has been the establishment of a new kind of Christianity unlike anything that had gone before in which the individual is prior to the Church, the pulpit takes the place of the altar, and the supreme authority in doctrine is the Bible interpreted for each individual by himself.
The Anglican Communion,
though it has been very strongly influenced by this new type of Christianity,
does not officially accept it.
Neither imputed righteousness,
nor assurance,
nor any of their results are found in the Anglican formularies.
top
the act by which God forgives and accepts us
is incomplete without sanctification.
We are not to suppose that the Prodigal Son,
when the feast was over and the fatted calf had been eaten,
continued to be a prodigal son.
If he had, his father's love would have failed to win him.
is the development of character under the guidance of
the Holy Ghost.
It must be a long and difficult process.
Some sects, especially those in which "sudden conversion" is expected,
neglect the process of sanctification with disastrous results.
The normal means of sanctification is the use of the sacraments,
especially confirmation, absolution, and communion;
but they will not do their work unless the will of the recipient cooperates.
The old nature must be "crucified",
bad habits got rid of,
good habits formed to take their place.
The agent in the whole process is God the Holy Ghost,
without whose constant help we can do nothing.
Gradually the power of the Resurrection increases in us
until at last we are fit for complete union with our Lord,
but we do not expect to reach our end in this life.
The sanctification and perfection of each person
assists the sanctification and perfection of the whole Church.
Every good action performed,
every bad habit overcome,
strengthens the whole Church,
and every sin,
even of thought,
hinders and hurts the whole Church.
top
Finally something must be said about the medieval doctrine of Merit, which
aroused the wrath of Luther;
and about the problem that it was intended to solve.
It is now recognized by all parts of the Church that we are saved by the
merits of Christ and not by our own.
Nothing good that we do can save us.
But though the Church recognizes this,
it is by no means recognized by popular sentiment.
The belief that our own goodness deserves reward is deeply rooted in the
individualist and Pelagian English character.
It is taken for granted by most conventional and uninstructed people.
The Roman Communion teaches,
not that we can be saved by our own merits,
but that when we have been saved from eternal death by the merits of our
Lord,
the temporal punishment of our sins has still to be paid
by ourselves or others
in this life or the next.
This doctrine sprang from the system of canonical penalties in the ancient
Church.
A man who had committed a grave sin was excommunicated.
Even when he had repented,
he was excluded from communion for a fixed time,
sometimes for as much as twenty years.
The Church through the bishop, however, might shorten this time.
In the course of time this power of remitting canonical penalties came to
be exercised if the man would perform some work of piety according to the
ideas of the age such as a pilgrimage or a Crusade.
Moreover, with the growth of belief in Purgatory,
it came to be held that the Church could remit not only penalties in this
life,
but also the time to be spent after death in the flames of Purgatory.
Further, it came to be universally held,
when medieval conditions made anything approaching the Christian life difficult,
that to become a monk or a nun was a "counsel of perfection",
not indeed necessary to salvation but bestowing much greater chances of salvation.
Thus a distinction was made between "precepts" binding upon all
Christians,
and "counsels" (especially poverty, celibacy, and obedience)
which were not binding upon all
but which were highly desirable
and gained much merit for those who accepted them.
This distinction was based on I Cor.7 in which St. Paul recommends,
but does not command, celibacy,
and II Cor.8.8-10 in which he recommends poverty;
also on Matt.19.12 and 16-22, where the rich young ruler was bidden to sell
all that he had and give the proceeds to the poor.
The Schoolmen of the thirteenth century worked these ideas into a system
based on the "treasure-house of the Church", the heavenly bank.
All good works done by the faithful, which were not binding on all but were
of "counsel", earned merit, which was stored up in the bank.
Such works were called "works of supererogation".
The Pope held the keys of this bank and could bestow out of its treasures
remission of the penalties, which people would otherwise have had to pay
for their sins not only in this life but also in Purgatory.
The cheques that conveyed these remissions were called indulgences.
Before the Reformation
indulgences were often hawked about and sold in the open market.
It was the sale of indulgences by Tetzel in order to provide money for the
building of St. Peter's at Rome that aroused the protest of Luther and was
the immediate cause of the outbreak of the Reformation.
The Council of Trent checked the abuses of the sale of indulgences,
but it gave its irrevocable sanction to the system of indulgences itself
which forms to this day a very large element in the popular religion of all
Romanist countries.
An indulgence is of no use to the recipient unless he is in grace;
[That is, baptized,
in communion with the Church,
and not in unrepented mortal sin.]
but on this condition one can get an indulgence for reading the Bible,
for taking the pledge,
for performing various acts of devotion,
for hearing Mass at what is called a "privileged altar" on certain
days,
for climbing on one's knees the steps of the Santa Scala at Rome
(supposed to have been the staircase up which our Lord was taken at His trial),
and so on.
There is hardly any popular devotion in the Roman Communion which is not
accompanied by "spiritual favors",
indulgences to be obtained by those who practice it;
and these indulgences may be applied
for the benefit of one's departed friends in Purgatory,
so that the offer of indulgences to the faithful appeals to natural affection
as well as to self-preservation.
The Schoolmen distinguished between
merits "de congruo", earning reward "by fitness",
and merits "de condigno", earning reward by right.
The former were the merits of good men outside the Church,
the latter the merits of Christians living in grace.
This distinction is referred to in Articles 12 and 13.
The doctrine of Merit, with all its consequences, is entirely rejected by
the Anglican Communion, and indeed by the whole of Christendom outside the
Roman Communion.
Our Lord said (St. Luke 17:10),
When ye have done all the things that are commanded you, say,
We are unprofitable servants;
we have done that which it was our duty to do.
(compare Isa.64.6:
All our righteousnesses are as a polluted garment).
St. Paul teaches that our salvation is wholly of faith, not of works.
Even St. James does not suggest that our good works can earn merit in God's
sight.
There are no works of supererogation.
The very utmost that we can do is nothing
in comparison with what God has done for us,
and everything good that we do
is due wholly at every stage to the work of the Holy Ghost within us.
We reject also the doctrine that our sins are a debt, which has to be paid
off.
There is no quid pro quo [Return for services rendered.] relation
between God and man.
Whatever suffering we have to endure in this life or the next is intended
to reform us.
God is not like a creditor demanding the payment of a debt,
but like a surgeon operating on a malignant growth,
or like a father teaching his children by punishment the danger and folly
of sin.
The English Church was right, therefore, in denouncing the "sacrifices
of masses"
(the chantry system in which men endowed a chaplaincy,
that masses for their souls might be said for ever to get them out of Purgatory)
as "blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits" (Article 31).
This sentence, forming as it does part of the Article on the sufficiency
of Christ's one Offering, does not deny that the Holy Eucharist is the principal
means by which we are united in that offering, or that the prayers offered
at the Holy Eucharist for both the living and the dead have their effect
(James 5.16).
top
The problem of the special calling may be answered in this way:
There is only one standard for Christians, and that is perfection (Matt.5.48).
There is not one standard for the clergy and another for the laity,
or one for monks and nuns and another for those living in the world.
The man or woman who is called to greater self-sacrifice than others, like
the rich young man in the Gospel who was invited to sell his goods and give
the money to the poor (Mark 10.21; Matt.19.21; Luke 18.22), is not called
to perform a work of supererogation, which will earn merit in the sight of
God.
He is given a command, which he may not disobey without sin.
If he is called to be a monk, or a missionary,
and if he is certain that God has really called him,
not only by the witness of his own very fallible heart,
but also by the willingness of the Church through her officers to accept
him,
he is bound to obey the call.
The man or woman who is not called to such a life ought not to attempt it.
Each of us has his or her vocation, some higher, some lower.
The higher vocations are those that involve the greater self-sacrifice,
not those that include authority or high place.
It may be a higher call to be a martyr or a missionary than to be a bishop.
But the duty of each is to fulfil his or her vocation perfectly.
God does not call us all to be martyrs, or monks, or missionaries,
but He calls us all to perfection.
top