The Reformation Debates Over the Doctrine of Grace
The Reformation Debates Over the Doctrine of Grace
As we have seen, the idea that Christ's work on the cross opens up a new way of existence for human beings is articulated in a number of metaphors or images, such as “salvation” and “redemption,” initially in the writings of the New Testament (especially the Pauline letters: see p. 270) and subsequently in Christian theological reflection based upon these texts. We now turn to consider a major new direction in Christian discussion of the doctrine of grace, which is associated with the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century.
From “Salvation by Grace” to “Justification by Faith”
During the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, a fundamental shift in the vocabulary of salvation began to take place. Earlier Christian theologians – such as Augustine – had given priority to those New Testament texts that used the language of “salvation by grace” (e.g., Ephesians 2: 5). However, Martin Luther's (1483–1546) wrestling with the issue of how God was able to accept sinners led him to focus on those passages in which Paul spoke primarily of “justification by faith” (e.g., Romans 5: 1–2).
Although it can be argued that the same fundamental point is being made in both contexts, the language used to express that point is different. One of the most important influences of the Reformation was the displacement of the language of “salvation by grace” by that of “justification by faith.” It is not clear why this transition took place. The most likely explanation is that it occurred through the personal influence of Martin Luther, for whom the idea of “justification by faith” took on an especially significant role during his formative years.
The doctrine of justification came to be seen as dealing with the question of what an individual had to do in order to be saved. As contemporary sources indicate, this question came to be asked with increasing frequency as the sixteenth century dawned. The rise of humanism brought with it a new emphasis upon individual consciousness and a new awareness of human individuality. In the wake of this dawn of the individual consciousness came a new interest in the doctrine of justification – the question of how human beings, as individuals, could enter into a relationship with God. How could a sinner hope to do this? This question lay at the heart of the theological concerns of Martin Luther, and came to dominate the early phase of the Reformation. In view of the importance of the doctrine to this period, we shall consider it in some detail, beginning with Luther's discussion of the doctrine.
The Theological Breakthrough of Martin Luther (1483–1546)
In 1545, the year before he died, Luther contributed a preface to the first volume of the complete edition of his Latin writings, in which he described how he came to break with the church of his day. The preface was clearly written with the aim of introducing Luther to a readership which might not know how he had come to hold the radical reforming views linked with his name. In this “autobiographical fragment” (as it is usually known), Luther aimed to provide those readers with background information about the development of his vocation as a reformer. After dealing with some historical preliminaries, taking his narrative up to the year 1519, he turned to describe his personal difficulties with the problem of the “righteousness of God”:
I had certainly wanted to understand Paul in his letter to the Romans. But what prevented me from doing so was not so much cold blood in my heart as that one phrase in the first chapter: “the righteousness of God is revealed in it” (Romans 1: 17). For I hated that phrase, “the righteousness of God,” which I had been taught to understand as the righteousness by which God is righteous, and punishes unrighteous sinners. Although I lived a blameless life as a monk, I felt that I was a sinner with an uneasy conscience before God. I also could not believe that I had pleased him with my works. Far from loving that righteous God who punished sinners, I actually hated him. [...] I was in desperation to know what Paul meant in this passage. At last, as I meditated day and night on the relation of the words “the righteousness of God is revealed in it, as it is written, the righteous person shall live by faith,” I began to understand that “righteousness of God” as that by which the righteous person lives by the gift of God (faith); and this sentence, “the righteousness of God is revealed,” to refer to a passive righteousness, by which the merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, “the righteous person lives by faith.” This immediately made me feel as though I had been born again, and as though I had entered through open gates into paradise itself. From that moment, I saw the whole face of Scripture in a new light. [...] And now, where I had once hated the phrase, “the righteousness of God,” I began to love and extol it as the sweetest of phrases, so that this passage in Paul became the very gate of paradise to me.
What is Luther talking about in this famous passage, which vibrates with the excitement of discovery? It is obvious that his understanding of the phrase “the righteousness of God” had changed radically. But what was the nature of this change?
The basic change was fundamental. Originally, Luther regarded the precondition for justification as a human work, something which the sinner had to perform, before he or she could be justified. Increasingly convinced, through his reading of Augustine, that this was an impossibility, Luther could only interpret the “righteousness of God” as a punishing righteousness. But, in this passage, Luther set out how he discovered a “new” meaning of the phrase – namely, a righteousness which God gives to the sinner. In other words, the precondition for divine acceptance is provided by God, who graciously gives sinners what they require if they are to be justified.
Luther's insight here is that the God of the Christian gospel is not a harsh judge who rewards individuals according to their merits but a merciful and gracious God who bestows righteousness upon sinners as a gift. The general consensus among Luther scholars is that his theology of justification underwent a decisive alteration at some point in 1515.
Luther on Justifying Faith
Central to Luther's insights was the doctrine of “justification by faith alone.” The idea of “justification” is already familiar. But what about the phrase “by faith alone”? What is the nature of justifying faith?
“The reason why some people do not understand why faith alone justifies is that they do not know what faith is.” In writing these words, Luther drew attention to the need to inquire more closely concerning that deceptively simple word “faith.” Three points relating to Luther's idea of faith may be singled out as having special importance to his doctrine of justification. Each of these points was taken up and developed by later writers, such as John Calvin (1509–64), indicating that Luther made a fundamental contribution to the development of Reformation thought at this point. Specifically:
The doctrine of “justification by faith” thus does not mean that the sinner is justified because he or she believes, on account of that faith. This would be to treat faith as a human action or work. Luther insists that God provides everything necessary for justification, so that all that the sinner needs to do is to receive it. God is active, and humans are passive, in justification. The phrase “justification by grace through faith” brings out the meaning of the doctrine more clearly: the justification of the sinner is based upon the grace of God and is received through faith.
The doctrine of justification by faith alone is thus an affirmation that God does everything necessary for salvation. Even faith itself is a gift of God rather than a human action.
The Concept of Forensic Justification
One of the central insights of Luther's doctrine of justification by faith alone is that the individual sinner is incapable of self-justification. It is God who takes the initiative in justification, providing all the resources necessary to justify that sinner. One of those resources is the “righteousness of God.” In other words, the righteousness on the basis of which sinners are justified is not their own righteousness but a righteousness which is given to them by God. Augustine had made this point earlier; Luther, however, gave it a subtle new twist which led to the development of the concept of “forensic justification.”
The point at issue is difficult to explain and centers on the question of the location of justifying righteousness. Both Augustine and Luther are agreed that God graciously gives sinful humans a righteousness which justifies them. But where is that righteousness located? Augustine argued that it was to be found within believers; Luther insisted that it remained outside believers. For Augustine, the righteousness in question is internal; for Luther, it is external.
For Augustine, God bestows justifying righteousness upon the sinner, in such a way that it becomes part of his or her person. As a result, this righteousness, although originating from outside the sinner, becomes part of his or her person. For Luther, the righteousness in question remains outside the sinner: it is an “alien righteousness” (iustitia aliena). God treats, or “reckons,” this righteousness as if it were part of the sinner's person. In his Romans lectures of 1515–16, Luther developed the idea of the “alien righteousness of Christ” imputed – not imparted – to us by faith, as the grounds of justification. His comments on Romans 4: 7 are especially important:
Since the saints are always conscious of their sin, and seek righteousness from God in accordance with his mercy, they are always reckoned as righteous by God. Thus in their own eyes, and as a matter of fact, they are unrighteous. But God reckons them as righteous on account of their confession of their sin. In fact, they are sinners; however, they are righteous by the reckoning of a merciful God. Without knowing it they are righteous; knowing it they are unrighteous. They are sinners in fact but righteous in hope.
Believers are righteous on account of the alien righteousness of Christ which is imputed to them – that is, treated as if it were theirs through faith. Earlier, we noted that an essential element of Luther's concept of faith is that it unites the believer to Christ. Justifying faith thus allows the believer to link up with the righteousness of Christ and be justified on its basis. Christians are thus “righteous by the imputation of a merciful God.”
Through faith, the believer is clothed with the righteousness of Christ in much the same way, Luther suggests, as Ezekiel 16: 8 speaks of God covering the nakedness of sinners with a garment. For Luther, faith is the right (or righteous) relationship to God. Sin and righteousness thus coexist; believers remain sinners inwardly but are righteous extrinsically, in the sight of God. By confessing their sins in faith, believers stand in a right and righteous relationship with God. From their own perspective they are sinners, but in the perspective of God (Latin: coram Deo) they are righteous.
This approach accounts, in Luther's view, for the persistence of sin in believers, while at the same time accounting for the gradual transformation of the believer and the future elimination of that sin. Luther thus declared, in a famous phrase, that a believer is “at one and the same time righteous and a sinner” (simul iustus et peccator); righteous in hope but a sinner in fact; righteous in the sight and through the promise of God yet a sinner in reality.
These ideas were subsequently developed by Luther's follower Philip Melanchthon to give the doctrine now generally known as “forensic justification,” hinted at but not fully developed by Luther. Where Augustine held that the sinner is made righteous in justification, Melanchthon argued that justification is about the sinner being counted as righteous or pronounced to be righteous. For Augustine, “justifying righteousness” is imparted; for Melanchthon, it is imputed. For Augustine, justification and sanctification were simply different aspects of the same thing. Melanchthon drew a sharp distinction between the event of being declared righteous and the process of being made righteous, designating the former “justification” and the latter “sanctification” or “regeneration.”
According to Melanchthon, God pronounces the divine judgment – that the sinner is righteous – in the heavenly court (in foro divino). This legal approach to justification gives rise to the term “forensic justification,” from the Latin word forum (“marketplace” or “courtyard”) – the place traditionally associated with the dispensing of justice in classical Rome.
The importance of this development lies in the fact that it marked a radical break with the teaching of the western church up to that point. From the time of Augustine onward, justification had always been understood to refer to both the event of being declared righteous and the process of being made righteous. Melanchthon's concept of forensic justification diverged radically from this. As it was taken up by virtually all the major reformers subsequently, it came to mark a standard difference between the Protestant and Catholic churches from that point onward.
In addition to their differences on how the sinner was justified, there was now an additional disagreement on what the word “justification” designated in the first place. As we shall see, the Council of Trent, the Catholic church's definitive response to the Protestant challenge, reaffirmed the views of Augustine on the nature of justification and censured the views of Melanchthon.
John Calvin (1509–64) on Justification
The model of justification which would eventually gain the ascendancy in the later Reformation was formulated by Calvin in the 1540s and 1550s. Calvin defines justification as follows:
To be justified in God's sight is to be reckoned as righteous in God's judgment, and to be accepted on account of that righteousness. [...] The person who is justified by faith is someone who, apart from the righteousness of works, has taken hold of the righteousness of Christ through faith, and having been clothed with it, appears in the sight of God not as a sinner, but as a righteous person. Therefore justification is to be understood simply as the acceptance by which God receives us into his favor as righteous people. We say that it consists of the remission of sins and the imputation of the righteousness of Christ. [...] believers are not righteous in themselves, but on account of the communication of the righteousness of Christ through imputation, something to be noted carefully. [...] Our righteousness is not in us, but in Christ. We possess it only because we participate in Christ; in fact, with him, we possess all his riches.
The basic elements of Calvin's approach can be summarized as follows. Faith unites the believer to Christ in a “mystic union.” (Here, Calvin reclaims Luther's emphasis upon the real and personal presence of Christ within believers, established through faith.) This union with Christ has a twofold effect, which Calvin refers to as “a double grace.” First, the believer's union with Christ leads directly to his or her justification. Through Christ, the believer is declared to be righteous in the sight of God. Second, on account of the believer's union with Christ – and not on account of his or her justification – the believer begins the process of being made like Christ through regeneration. Calvin thus asserts that both justification and regeneration are the results of the believer's union with Christ through faith. Justification and regeneration are distinct, but they cannot be separated in reality.
The Council of Trent on Justification
By 1540, Luther had become something of a household name throughout Europe. His writings were being read and digested, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, even in the highest ecclesiastical circles in Italy. Something had to be done if the Catholic church was to re-establish its credibility in relation to this matter. The Council of Trent, summoned in 1545, began the long process of formulating a comprehensive response to Luther. High on its agenda was the doctrine of justification.
The sixth session of the Council of Trent was brought to its close on January 13, 1547. The council's Decree on Justification sets out the Catholic teaching on justification with a considerable degree of clarity. Trent's critique of Luther's doctrine of justification focused on four main points:
We shall consider each of these four points individually.
The Nature of Justification
In his earlier phase, around the years 1515–19, Luther tended to understand justification as a process of becoming, in which the sinner was gradually conformed to the likeness of Jesus Christ through a process of internal renewal (see pp. 338–9). In his later writings, however, dating from the mid-1530s and beyond, perhaps under the influence of Melanchthon's more forensic approach to justification (see p. 340), Luther tended to treat justification as a matter of being declared to be righteous rather than a process of becoming righteous. Increasingly, he came to see justification as an event which was complemented by the distinct process of regeneration and interior renewal through the action of the Holy Spirit. Justification alters the outer status of the sinner “in the sight of God” (coram Deo), while regeneration alters the sinner's inner nature.
Trent strongly opposed this view, and vigorously defended the idea, originally associated with Augustine, that justification is the process of regeneration and renewal within human nature which brings about a change in both the outer status and the inner nature of the sinner. The fourth chapter of the Decree on Justification provides the following precise definition of justification, making this point:
The justification of the sinner may be briefly defined as a translation from that state in which a human being is born a child of the first Adam, to the state of grace and of the adoption of the sons of God through the second Adam, Jesus Christ our Savior. According to the Gospel, this translation cannot come about except through the cleansing of regeneration, or a desire for this, as it is written, “Unless someone is born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he or she cannot enter into the Kingdom of God” (John 3: 5).
Justification thus includes the idea of regeneration. This brief statement is amplified in the seventh chapter, which stresses that justification “is not only a remission of sins but also the sanctification and renewal of the inner person through the voluntary reception of the grace and gifts by which an unrighteous person becomes a righteous person.” This point was given further emphasis through canon 11, which condemned anyone who taught that justification takes place “either by the sole imputation of the righteousness of Christ or by the sole remission of sins, to the exclusion of grace and charity [...] or that the grace by which we are justified is only the good will of God.”
In brief, then, Trent maintained the medieval tradition, stretching back to Augustine, which saw justification as consisting of both an event and a process – the event of being declared to be righteous through the work of Christ and the process of being made righteous through the internal work of the Holy Spirit. Reformers such as Melanchthon and Calvin distinguished these two, seeing “justification” as the event of being declared to be righteous and “sanctification” or “regeneration” as the accompanying process of internal renewal.
Catholics and Protestants thus used the same word “justification” to mean very different things. Trent used the term “justification” to refer to what, for Protestants, consisted of both justification and sanctification.
The Nature of Justifying Righteousness
Luther emphasized that sinners possess no righteousness in themselves. They have nothing within them which could ever be regarded as the basis of God's gracious decision to justify them. Luther's doctrine of the “alien righteousness of Christ” (iustitia Christi aliena) made it clear that the righteousness which justifies sinners is outside them. It is imputed, not imparted; external, not internal.
Early critics of the Reformation argued, following Augustine, that sinners are justified on the basis of an internal righteousness, graciously infused or implanted within their persons by God. This righteousness is itself given as an act of grace; it is not something merited. But, they argued, there had to be something within individuals which could allow God to justify them. Luther dismissed this idea. God can justify individuals directly, rather than through an intermediate gift of righteousness.
Trent strongly defended the Augustinian idea of justification on the basis of an internal righteousness. The seventh chapter makes this point perfectly clear:
The single formal cause [of justification] is the righteousness of God – not the righteousness by which he himself is righteous, but the righteousness by which he makes us righteous, so that, when we are endowed with it, we are “renewed in the spirit of our mind,” and are not only counted as righteous, but are called, and are in reality, righteous. [...] Nobody can be righteous except God communicates the merits of the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ to him or her, and this takes place in the justification of the sinner.
The phrase “single formal cause” needs explanation. The “formal” cause is the direct, or most immediate, cause of something. Trent is thus stating that the direct cause of justification is the righteousness which God graciously imparts to us – as opposed to more distant causes of justification, such as the “efficient cause” (God) or the “meritorious cause” (Jesus Christ).
But the use of the word “single” should also be noted. One proposal for reaching agreement between Roman Catholics and Protestants, which gained especial prominence at the Colloquy of Ratisbon in 1541, was that two causes of justification should be recognized – an external righteousness (the Protestant position) and an internal righteousness (the Roman Catholic position). This compromise seemed to hold some potential. Trent, however, had no time for it. The use of the word “single” was deliberate, intended to eliminate the idea that there could be more than one such cause. The only direct cause of justification was the interior gift of righteousness.
The Nature of Justifying Faith
Luther's doctrine of justification by faith alone came under severe criticism. Canon 12 condemned a central aspect of Luther's notion of justifying faith, rejecting the idea that “justifying faith is nothing other than confidence in the mercy of God, which remits sin for the sake of Christ.” In part, this rejection of Luther's doctrine of justification reflects the ambiguity, noted above (pp. 339–41), concerning the meaning of the term “justification.” Trent was alarmed that anyone should believe that they could be justified – in the Council of Trent's sense of the term – by faith, without any need for obedience or spiritual renewal. Trent, interpreting “justification” to mean both the beginning of the Christian life and its continuation and growth, believed that Luther was suggesting that simply trusting in God (without any requirement that the sinner be changed and renewed by God) was the basis of the entire Christian life.
Luther, however, did not actually hold this position, although his occasionally rather strident manner of expressing himself could have allowed this misunderstanding to arise. Rather, he was affirming that the Christian life is begun through faith, and faith alone; good works follow justification and do not cause that justification in the first place. Trent itself was perfectly prepared to concede that the Christian life was begun through faith, thus coming very close indeed to Luther's position. As the eighth chapter of the Decree on Justification declares, “we are said to be justified by faith, because faith is the beginning of human salvation, the foundation and root of all justification, without which it is impossible to please God.” This is perhaps a classic case of a theological misunderstanding, resting upon the disputed meaning of a major theological term.
The Assurance of Salvation
For Luther, as for the reformers in general, one could rest assured of one's salvation. Salvation was grounded upon the faithfulness of God to his promises of mercy; to fail to have confidence in salvation was, in effect, to doubt the reliability and trustworthiness of God. Yet this must not be seen as a supreme confidence in God, untroubled by doubt. Faith is not the same as certainty; although the theological foundation of Christian faith may be secure, the human perception of and commitment to this foundation may waver.
The Council of Trent regarded the Protestant doctrine of assurance with considerable skepticism. The ninth chapter of the Decree on Justification, entitled “Against the Vain Confidence of Heretics,” criticized the “ungodly confidence” of the reformers. While no one should doubt God's goodness and generosity, Trent declared, the reformers were seriously mistaken when they taught that “nobody is absolved from sins and justified, unless they believe with certainty that they are absolved and justified, and that absolution and justification are effected by this faith alone.” Trent insisted that “nobody can know with a certainty of faith which is not subject to error, whether they have obtained the grace of God.”
Trent's point seems to be that the reformers were seen to be making human confidence or boldness the grounds of justification, so that justification rested upon a fallible human conviction rather than upon the grace of God. The reformers, however, saw themselves as stressing that justification rested upon the promises of God; a failure to believe boldly in such promises was tantamount to calling the reliability of God into question.