Introduction
Introduction
Understanding the precise relationship between justification and sanctification continues to be a crux theologorum (cross of theologians), a challenge that we have inherited from the texts with which we build our faith. Paul the Apostle, for instance, asserts, “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Rom 3:20). But then, in the same biblical canon, we read James’s words, “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone” (Jas 2:24).
After sixteen centuries, the need to reconcile these statements in a doctrine of justification rose to the fore in the Protestant Reformations.1 Whether one considers Luther’s anfechtungen, Contarini’s illumination on Holy Saturday in 1511, Peter Martyr’s “greater light of divine truth,” or Calvin’s “chief hinge,” the doctrine of justification emerged as an instigating force of the Reformation. Such figures wrestled with Pauline texts, compared them with the teaching of James, and asked the perennial question, “What must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30).
Concerning the word “Protestant,” Diarmaid MacCulloch rightfully cautions us against employing it as a simple designation for “sympathizers with reform in the first half of the sixteenth century, since inclinations toward renewal were shared by Roman Catholics.”2 Moreover, it is valuable to remember that Protestants initially understood themselves to be working for reform within the Roman Catholic Church.3 Our first chapter, which examines the movement of evangelical renewal on the Italian peninsula, will illustrate this phenomenon.4
The second historiographical caution is to distinguish the writings of individual reformers (particularly those of the first and second generations) from the development of confessional documents, which reflect the consensus view of the Reformed churches later in the century. David Fink addresses this distinction by proposing that we understand the sixteenth-century Konfessionsbildung process as having occurred in two distinct waves,5 first from 1528 to 1537,6 and then between 1559 and 1577.7 While Fink is careful to affirm that the second wave is in basic continuity with the first, he argues convincingly that it is in the latter period that a clear consensus on the doctrine of justification emerged in terms of a formulaic explanation of forensic imputation.8
Even though confessional statements took time to develop, there appears to have been basic conceptual agreement on the doctrine of justification among the earliest generations of Reformers. According to Alister McGrath, the leading characteristics of the Protestant outlook on justification were threefold: Firstly, justification involves a “forensic declaration that the Christian is righteous,” that is, a change in one’s legal status before God (as opposed to a process of internal renewal by which one is made righteous). Secondly, there is a “deliberate and systematic distinction” between the forensic activity of justification and the internal process of sanctification or regeneration. Thirdly, “justifying righteousness or the formal cause of justification” is alien, external, and imputed.9
On the other side of the ecclesial divide, the Roman Catholic Church responded to Protestant arguments by convening the Council of Trent (1545–63), through which it defined its doctrine in its Decree on Justification (1547). Rejecting the Protestant view of “faith alone” grounded in the forensic imputation of Christ’s righteousness, the Roman Church chose to emphasize the “process” of justification, whereby the gift of righteousness is internally “infused” through her sacraments. This process is, in turn, expressed in moral virtues and good works as the necessary condition for man’s final absolution.10 As for the contemporary significance of Trent’s teaching, Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ, explains that the “theology of justification in Roman Catholic teaching has undergone no dramatic changes since the Council of Trent.”11
The fundamental difference between the Roman Catholic and Reformed Protestant doctrines of justification is the so-called “formal cause”12—a subject’s intrinsic component, or that which makes it what it is.13 Taking its cues from Aristotle’s list of four “causes,”14 the Council of Trent explicated justification’s formal cause as follows:
Finally, the one formal cause [unica formalis causa] is the justness of God: not that by which he himself is just, but that by which he makes us just and endowed with which we are renewed in the spirit of our mind, and are not merely considered to be just but we are truly named and are just . . . 15
The Protestant Reformers were also interested in defining justification’s formal cause.16 In his locus on justification, Peter Martyr Vermigli expresses general agreement with the overall causal framework of Trent in terms of the “final” cause (the glory of God), the “efficient” cause (divine mercy), and the “meritorious” cause (the death and resurrection of Christ).17 Vermigli then explains that the point of contention is particularly the “formal cause.”18 Unlike Trent, which defines this cause in terms of the righteousness with which one is counted and made just, Peter Martyr, with Reformed Protestantism, limits the strict sense of justification to the forensic reckoning of righteousness.19 He thus concludes: “Therefore, we say that justification cannot consist in that righteousness and renewal by which we are created anew by God. For it is imperfect because of our corruption, so that we are not able to stand before the judgment of Christ.”20 Peter Toon helpfully summarizes how fundamental this difference is among Catholics and Protestants:
On the formal cause of justification, that by which God actually pronounces and accepts a sinner as righteous, there had never been agreement. The traditional Roman Catholic position was that at baptism God infuses into the soul his divine grace and that this grace purifies the soul. On seeing this infused righteousness in a human being God accepts him or justifies him. This new grace of the soul is thus the formal cause of justification and is at the same time the means of sanctification. With this view Protestant scholars had no sympathy. They argued that once God’s grace enters the soul it becomes a human righteousness and no human righteousness is sufficient in quality to be the basis for justification and full acceptance with the eternal God. So they pointed to the external righteousness of Christ the Mediator and argued that his righteousness was imputed or reckoned to the Christian as the formal cause of acceptance of justification. Within both of these camps, the Roman and the Protestant, there was a limited variety of teaching within the fixed limits of either the infused, inherent righteousness or the external righteousness of Christ, as the formal cause.21
The following analysis is in agreement with Toon that the formal cause is the basic line of demarcation between the Roman Catholic and Reformed Protestant doctrines of justification. This difference remains fundamental and seemingly irreconcilable. However, besides the formal cause, there is in fact a significant amount of agreement between the two traditions regarding justification.
To evaluate agreements and differences between the Roman Catholic and Reformed Protestant positions on the doctrine of justification, the following chapters will consider two figures in whose writings the issue featured prominently: the Protestant, Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499–1562) and the Catholic, John Henry Newman (1801–90). Despite a marked increase of Vermigli scholarship during recent decades and the massive amount of research on all things Newman, relatively little consideration has been given to these figures’ treatment of the doctrine of justification. The following study seeks to fill this lacuna.
There are many reasons why Vermigli and Newman are suited for comparison. Having experienced opposite conversions from one side of the divide to the other, both had particular influences on Anglicanism and worked at the intersection of Roman Catholic and Protestant thought,22 while writing significant volumes on justification in which a forensic declaration and the internal operation of the Holy Spirit feature prominently. We dedicate two chapters of this study to examining their respective positions (chapters 2 and 4), followed by a comparative chapter that explores their common concerns and commitments alongside differing commitments and conclusions (chapter 5).
Because Vermigli and Newman were separated by three centuries, two chapters also examine their individual historical contexts (chapters 1 and 3). Such analysis reveals that, despite the gulf in time, there are a number of significant similarities in the two men’s personal and theological development. We observe, for example, that their years of study and ministry formation occurred in monastic settings. We note how both experienced religious conversion during periods of personal illness. We see them reacting with enthusiasm and spirited polemics to the traditions of their youth. The work of both men developed within dynamic religious movements (i.e., Italian Evangélisme, Reformed Protestantism, the Oxford Movement, and nineteenth-century Roman Catholicism) which were defined by collaborative efforts involving clergy, laity, literati, and secular rulers. Most significant of all, however, is Vermigli’s and Newman’s common reliance upon two-fold righteousness (duplex iustitia) in their reflection upon justification.
This is an appropriate point to say a word about the particular texts on which we will rely and how we will cite them. Peter Martyr’s locus on justification was first published within his commentary on Romans in 1558. All references to this commentary will cite page numbers from his 1560 Latin version (which is available on the Digital Library of Classic Protestant Texts) followed in brackets by the equivalent page reference from Frank James’s English translation: Peter Martyr Vermigli, Predestination and Justification: Two Theological Loci. With regard to John Henry Newman’s Lectures on the Doctrine of Justification, we will concentrate on his third edition. Since this edition was published in 1874, when Newman had become a Catholic and, therefore, is his final and most definitive version, it will be featured first in the citations. To the right of these citations in the footnotes will be page numbers in brackets, indicating where the same reference appears in his first edition, which Newman published as an Anglican in 1838. The second edition was published just two years after the first, in 1840. Since the second edition is merely distinguished by formatting changes, it is unimportant for our purposes.
With the five-hundred-year anniversary of Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses upon us, there is much to discuss among Roman Catholics and Protestants concerning the doctrine of justification. The following study hopes to enrich this conversation by clarifying where soteriological lines of continuity and difference fall, thus enabling each side to utilize theological options at their disposal, while also elucidating genuine differences that are fundamental to each tradition. Toward this end, the following study will pursue three objectives.
First, we will seek to understand the factors that influenced the development of Vermigli’s and Newman’s thought on the subject of justification. Such insight informs ecumenical dialogue by illustrating the various theological commitments and concerns that drive our theology. It also has the potential of illuminating how the doctrine of justification may lead one to cross the Catholic/Protestant divide in religious conversion.
Second, in the course of examining how the positions of Newman and Vermigli developed, we will address issues that are currently topics of debate in Vermigli and Newman scholarship. For example, contra Frank James, we argue that duplex iustitia (two-fold righteousness) continued to be the essence of Vermigli’s doctrine into his mature period. We also propose a way to answer the thorny question of whether the Catholic Newman maintained increata gratia (uncreated grace) as the formal cause of justification.
Third, we wish to identify theological nomenclature for discussing justification at the Catholic/Protestant intersection, which recognizes our common concerns and commitments as well as our different commitments and conclusions. The perspective that this provides will help each tradition to approach discussion with a clearer understanding of where the lines of commonality and diversity fall and, thus, to more effectively differentiate negotiable from non-negotiable elements of the doctrine.
1. Carter Lindberg, for example, provides reasons for the plurality of Reformation movements in his classic text The European Reformations, 2nd ed., 11–22. For a full treatment of the Reformation debates on justification and the Catholic response, see Alister E. McGrath’s magisterial work, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 3rd ed., 208–357. Berndt Hamm evaluates a variety of positions on the doctrine of justification among the first and second generations of Reformers in his chapter “What was the Reformation Doctrine of Justification?” in The Reformation of Faith in the Context of Late Medieval Theology and Piety, 179–216.
2. MacCulloch prefers the word “evangelical” as a more indicative description of the movement’s beliefs and also the nomenclature of the period. MacCulloch, The Reformation: A History, xviii.
3. So David Steimetz asserts, “It is important to remember that the Reformation began as in intra-Catholic debate.” Steimetz, “The Intellectual Appeal of the Reformation,” 459–72 (459). McGrath explains that for early Reformed theologians, the driving concern was to renew life and morals of the church and of individual Christians. McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 248–58.
4. Martin Bucer’s ongoing attempts at rapprochement into the early 1540s are a prime example from outside of Italy. Greschat, Martin Bucer: A Reformer and His Times, 168–205.
5. Fink. “Was There a Reformation Doctrine of Justification?” 205–35.
6. Ten Theses of Bern (1528), Tetrapolitan Confession (1530), First Confession of Basel (1534), First Helvetic Confession (1536), Lausanne Articles (1536), The Ten Articles (1536), and The Geneva Confession (1536).
7. French Confession (1559/71), Scots Confession (1560), Belgic Confession (1561), Heidelberg Catechism (1563), and the Second Helvetic Confession (1566).
8. Fink explains the time frame in which Reformed theology reached a “two-state model” on justification, that is, the notion that justification involves the iustitia Christi imputata in addition to the remission (or non-imputation) of sin. In addition to analyzing Reformed confessions, Fink also explains how Lutheran confessional statements unfold in a parallel chronology. Fink, “Was There a Reformation Doctrine?,” 235.
9. McGrath, “Forerunners of the Reformation?” 219–42; McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 212–13. Hamm’s conclusions support this taxonomy vis-à-vis the formal cause, imputation, and distinction of justification from sanctification. Hamm, The Reformation of Faith, 192, 194, 196. For the historical antecedents to these characteristics, see Lane, Justification by Faith, 138–40.
10. Chapter seven of the Decree on Justification explains “What the justification of the sinner is and what are its causes.” Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 2, 673.
11. Dulles, “Justification in Contemporary Theology,” 256. According to Lane, even if the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1999) is taken into account, the positive exposition of the Tridentine decree remains incompatible with a Protestant understanding, even though the gap is narrower than it was previously. Lane, Justification by Faith, 223.
12. Yarnold, “Duplex iustitia,” 208; Lane, Justification by Faith, 72; Newman, Lectures on the Doctrine of Justification, 3rd ed., 343; Vermigli, Predestination and Justification, 159; Toon, Evangelical Theology, 145–46.
13. Lane, Justification by Faith, 70.
14. In seeking to explain the “why” of a thing, that is, its cause, Aristotle describes changes of movement in terms of material, formal, efficient, and final causes. Aristotle, Physics 2:3, 1:128–31.
15. Tanner, Decrees, 673. The causal scheme of Trent, which develops the final, efficient, meritorious, instrumental, and formal causes, varies somewhat from the Aristotelian taxonomy.
16. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, 61. For an explanation of how Calvin’s causal scheme relates to Trent, see Lane, Justification by Faith, 68–72.
17. In this section, Vermigli does not mention Trent’s “instrumental cause,” namely, the sacrament of baptism. Vermigli, Romanos, 1252 [159].
18. Ibid.
19. Outside of his response to Trent’s causal framework, in which he identifies justification’s formal cause as the imputation of Christ’s righteousness (ibid., 1251–52 [159]), Vermigli does not explicitly address the causa forma.
20. Vermigli, Romanos, 1251–52 [159].
21. Toon, Evangelical Theology, 145–46.
22. For instance, the chief works that we consider in this thesis—Vermigli’s locus on justification from his Romans commentary and Newman’s Lectures on the Doctrine of Justification—explicitly level their arguments across the Catholic/Protestant divide.