E. The Christocentric Focus of Justification
E. The Christocentric Focus of Justification
Reflecting on how Newman relates the concept of mysterious union with Christ to the sanctifying capacity of justification, Morales offers a helpful summary.
Close consideration of these texts makes it appear that Newman in fact opts for what the theology of the sixteenth century called the doctrine of double justification, according to which in order to be true and complete our justice must be completed by that of Jesus Christ, which would come to make up for the deficiencies that the previous sinful condition always leaves in the justified individuals.751
In working out his double righteousness position, Newman traces the logical progression of redemptive history with reference to the judicial and actual dimensions of salvation, particularly as they unfold from the Gospels to Acts. For example, after developing the Old Testament metaphors of “clothing” and “temple”752 and the significance of Adamic typology,753 Newman explores how these motifs enrich the cruciform shape of justification.754 He makes this argument along the parallel tracks of a forensic and real righteousness, progressing toward the telos of justification, which is “the fruit of our Lord’s resurrection.”755 It is here, in the shekinah presence of God, that one is accepted and renewed on the basis of God’s inward presence, which is simply to say that one is justified.
Newman applies the biblical theme of shekinah to the issue of justification in order to illustrate what he means by the salvific gift of God.756 For him, this glory denotes an “attribute, property, virtue, or presence of the Divine Nature manifested visibly.”757 After establishing the meaning of this presence for salvation and for moral order, as exemplified in the experience of Moses who passed through the Sea (salvation) before arriving at Sinai (moral order), Newman considers the words of Jesus in which the Lord prayed to the Father, “The glory which Thou gavest Me, I have given them.”758 Newman then asks, “What is this glory which has passed from Christ to us?”759 His answer points to the glory of the Father that raised Jesus from the dead.760 It is this same glory that justifies sinful humanity. Quoting Paul, he notes: “‘All have sinned, and come short of,’ or are in need of, ‘the glory of God.’”761
Newman proceeds along this redemptive-historical trajectory to introduce the mission of the Holy Spirit as the gift and the agent who applies the benefits of Christ’s death and resurrection in the form of divine gifts, a complex of blessings that are summarized by the word “atonement.”762 These benefits include pardon, grace, reconciliation, renewal, holiness, and spiritual communion. Newman’s point eventually becomes clear—the manner in which the presence of Christ inhabits the justified one is by the Spirit. Once again, Newman’s idea of the activity of justification, in which the divine members cooperate, is facilitated by Newman’s Trinitarian synthesis. After the Son merits salvation, the Holy Spirit applies it through personal inhabitation.
One interesting aspect of Newman’s synthesis is the way he reads the Old Testament teaching on justification. Between Sinai and Pentecost, when the Mosaic Law governed God’s covenant with Israel, the Jewish people enjoyed the promise of God’s Spirit (e.g., Joel 2, Zech 12), Newman claims, but they were devoid of actual possession of his divine presence.763 “Judaism was the time of shadows,” according to Newman, “it was Judaism which contained but the profession, the appearance of great things, exciting hopes which it could not gratify.”764 Abraham and saints of old were the recipients of “righteousness or acceptableness.”765 The difference, however, between this and the blessing of the New Covenant, lies in “what this righteousness is under the Gospel; or in what way this acceptableness is conveyed, whether by a mere act of God’s will or by a positive gift on His part?”766 Newman’s definition of the precise nature of this Old Covenant version of “righteousness” or “acceptableness” does not venture beyond these words in his Lectures. For further insight, we must look to a message that he preached three years later.
In a sermon from 1841, “Faith the Title for Justification,”767 Newman begins with the question, “If all that is necessary for acceptance with God be faith in Christ, how is Church Communion, how are Sacraments, necessary?”768 He is anxious to affirm the primacy of faith as described by the Apostle Paul, that which legitimately lays claim to justification apart from conditions, while at the same time preserving the obligatory nature of baptism as an instrumental rite. Newman’s attempt to reconcile these positions is predicated on the assertion that “to have a title [i.e., faith] is not the same thing as to be in possession.”769 For Newman, the “mere act of God’s will,” which comes by faith, does not equate to his “positive gift,” which comes through baptism. Developing the idea further, Newman continues by asserting that the one “who believes shall to a certainty at some time and by some means be justified.”770 “Faith,” in this case, “is the means of gaining justification,”771 but justification is unrealized until one undergoes baptism. In this way, Newman seeks to do business with the Pauline texts commonly marshaled on behalf of sola fide by reading them as a real, proleptic movement toward justification among Old Covenant believers. However, and this is a profound qualification, in Newman’s argument, the title or claim of faith does not actually obtain justification until it receives the endowment of the Spirit which is properly realized in baptism.
As a positive example of this pattern, Newman points to the Apostle Peter who concluded his Pentecost sermon by calling his hearers to be “baptized for remission of their sins and the reception of the Holy Spirit.”772 He is also keen to point out how he observes the sacramental emphasis unfolding in later chapters of Acts, such as when the Ethiopian eunuch, Paul, and Cornelius and his household underwent baptism. Then, arguing negatively, Newman contends that, “Satan has so disordered Christendom, that numbers perhaps have faith without as yet having justification,”773 a fact that is obvious to him in the meager progress toward sanctification, profanity, pride, despondency, and headstrong blindness to the truth on the part of Christians of his day.
Because Abraham and saints of old were deprived of the New Covenant sacrament of baptism, Newman puts them into a special class that carries the “title” for justification, without truly possessing justification, a category that resembles one for whom baptism is unavailable—such as in the catechumen who dies before he is received into the Church, or the believer who undergoes baptism by martyrdom—but who is nevertheless a child of God. The novelty of this position may explain why Newman doesn’t address it in detail outside of his 1841 sermon. Nevertheless, an important question to emerge from Newman’s soteriological disjunction between the Old and New Covenants is the relationship of Christ and the Holy Spirit in his doctrine of justification.