Part II The Middle Ages

Justification is one of a number of concepts that have been used within Scripture and the Christian tradition to capture the nature and implications of God’ s redemption of the world through Christ. As will become clear, at certain points during the development of Christian theology – especially during the sixteenth century – this concept came to assume a particularly significant role. A good example of this is found in the sixteenth-century Protestant declaration that the doctrine of justification was ‘ the article by which the church stands or falls (articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae )’ , 1 which reflects a belief within the emerging Protestant churches that the upholding of this specific doctrine – rather than of any others – was of critical importance. At other times, however, the concept has played a much less prominent part in theological reflection on either the foundations of salvation, or on the distinctive shape of the Christian life. The present study is offered as a resource to stimulate and inform this theological reflection on the ongoing place of the concept of justification in the church’ s self-understanding of its identity and mission.

This leads into the second and largest part of the work, which focuses on the discussion of the doctrine of justification in the Middle Ages. During this period of extended reflection, many of the major themes to be debated by the Protestant reformers and at the Council of Trent assumed their traditional form. Yet the Middle Ages cannot be seen simply as a period of preparation for the momentous events of the sixteenth century, when the doctrine of justification took centre stage in debates about the nature of the gospel and the identity of the church. The medieval period often displayed an extraordinary theological creativity and merits close attention as an exercise in remaining anchored to the insights of core biblical texts, being duly attentive to the theological legacy of Augustine of Hippo , and engaging the pastoral and homiletical tasks of the church. The concept of justification was particularly valued by medieval biblical exegetes and theologians on account of its utility in framing a range of questions, such as the relation of Christianity and Judaism, the nature of grace, and the connection of the life of faith and the sacramental economy of the church. It is impossible to make sense of some of the debates of the sixteenth century without a good knowledge of the theological history of the previous five centuries.

The third part of this work explores the origins and significance of the evangelical movements of the early sixteenth century, which eventually came to be known collectively as ‘ Protestantism’ . The historical analysis here presented attempts to capture something of the fine detail of the period, noting the initial diversity of reforming movements in Germany and Switzerland, which eventually began to converge on certain ways of framing their emerging insights on how sinners were accepted by God. It also considers how these insights were given more formal expression in Lutheran and Reformed Orthodoxy, before considering further developments of these approaches in the English Reformation, Puritanism and Pietism.

Justification became an important theme in the late 1530s for the Catholic church, as it attempted to understand and respond to the religious controversies centring on the question of justification, which increasingly seemed likely to fracture the unity of western Christendom. The fourth part of this book deals with Catholicism’ s increasingly focused engagement with the doctrine of justification, which can be traced back to evangelical renewal movements within the churches in Spain, Italy and France. It deals with early Catholic efforts to understand and respond to Protestant formulations of the doctrine, including attempts at rapprochement, before offering an extensive account of the discussion of the doctrine at the Council of Trent , and its final ‘ Decree on Justification’ (1546). Although the concept of justification came to be central to Catholic reflections on grace and salvation for the remainder of the sixteenth century, this proved to be a temporary development. By the end of the seventeenth century, Catholicism had reverted to using a range of soteriological metaphors, moving away from what proved to have been a temporary focus on the single image of justification.

The fifth part deals with the discussion of the doctrine of justification in the modern period, when a growing tendency towards rationalism, evident in some sections of the radical Reformation and English Deism , led to a growing suspicion of the plausibility of some core Christian ideas associated with justification by faith – such as the notion of human sin, or the idea of Christ’ s death on the cross as a sacrifice for such sin. The geographical overlap of the domains of the Enlightenment with those of Protestantism meant that Protestant writers in England and Germany found themselves having to demonstrate the plausibility of the theological structure within which the doctrine of justification was embedded, and not merely the doctrine itself.

The discussion of justification in this final part of the work opens by considering the shift in intellectual culture of the eighteenth century, focussing particularly on Deism and leading representatives (and critics) of the German Aufklärung . After considering the development of the doctrine within German liberal Protestantism, the analysis shifts to the period of theological recovery in the aftermath of the First World War. This analysis includes reflections on the importance of shifting paradigms of Pauline interpretation for theological reflection on the doctrine of justification, and the ecumenical endeavours to achieve some degree of mutual understanding across denominational divides concerning the doctrine that had proved so divisive in the sixteenth century.

The work concludes with some reflections on the significance of the history of the doctrine of justification for the study of doctrinal development in general, along with thoughts on its place within and significance for contemporary Christian theology .