M. Different Conclusions: Formal Cause
IV.
M. Different Conclusions: Formal Cause
An interesting way to compare Newman and Vermigli with regard to the formal cause of justification is with reference to Andreas Osiander. It has been observed that John Henry Newman and Osiander share a similar conception of justification by divine indwelling; furthermore, Newman and Vermigli both comment on Osiander’s position.988 Richard Laurence, Archbishop of Cashel, pointed out in 1839 that Newman assigned “a particular sense to the word Justification which with exception of Osiander no Protestant ever affixed before him.”989 Newman himself also hints of this connection in the appendix of his Lectures,990 in which he comments that Osiander’s doctrine concerning the essential righteousness of Christ is “not very different from the doctrine of Petavius.”991 Therefore, consideration of Osiander’s formulation offers insight into the way that Vermigli may have assessed Newman’s doctrine.
Osiander held that the essential righteousness of Christ’s divine nature (apart from his human nature) was the sole cause of justification. The deity of Christ justifies because it alone is essentially righteous.992 Such righteousness, according to Osiander, is not forensically attributed to the sinner in an alien righteousness (iustitia aliena); rather it consists in the substantial indwelling of Christ’s righteousness (iustitia Dei inhabitans). In other words, according to Osiander’s hypothesis, justification is not the forgiveness of sins; rather, it consists in this essential indwelling, which renews one’s soul.993 “Therefore, we are justified with his essential righteousness,” Osiander explains, “as it is written, ‘One will call him YHWH, who is our righteousness.’”994 Simply put, justifying righteousness is located in Christ who abides in the believer.995
It is interesting to consider the central motivation behind Osiander’s position, 996 which he conveys in his De Justificatione, reacting to the forensic emphasis of Melanchthon and his followers:997 “They teach [doctrines] colder than ice, that we are accounted righteous only on account of the remission of sins, and not also on account of the righteousness of Christ dwelling in us by faith. God is indeed so unjust as to regard him as righteous in whom there is really nothing of true righteousness.”998 In response to this statement, Seeberg concludes, “This citation reveals [Osiander’s] aim. Justification as connected solely with imputation is to his mind an irreligious conception.”999
Osiander’s concern to avoid reducing justification to a legal fiction is noteworthy because it is shared by both Newman and Vermigli. As we have seen, this concern is part of what drove Newman to join forensic imputation and internal renewal in the adherent presence of God. It was also a motivating force behind Vermigli’s insistence that justification must, in a meaningful way (although not as the fundamental ground), include regeneration and sanctification. In each of these proposals, including Osiander’s, the need to identify justification’s formal cause—and, by extension, the question of how to properly relate forensic imputation and internal renewal—calls for attention.
In addition to Philipp Melanchthon1000 and John Calvin,1001 Peter Martyr expressed opposition to Osiander’s position in his letter to the “Polish Lords and Ministers” in 1556:
We reject as foreign and alien to the Scriptures the ‘essential justice’ which Osiander has invented. We do not recognize any other basis for justification than that which Paul in Romans and Galatians teaches us[,] . . . how righteousness is imputed to us by faith. . . . Moreover, if the just live by faith, as Habakkuk has testified, and our justification is our life, we do not now have an essential justification but one imputed by faith, as the apostolic letters have handed down.1002
It is noteworthy that Vermigli’s assessment of Osiander’s position does not mention the problem of Osiander driving a wedge between the natures of Christ when he singles out the divine nature as the basis of justification. Nor does Martyr specifically address the matter of how to properly define the nature of our union with Christ, as Calvin does with his mystica unio.1003 Of course, there is every reason to believe that Martyr would have vehemently opposed Osiander on these points.1004 However, what we do observe is Vermigli addressing his critique to Osiander’s decision to ground justification in something other than forensic imputation. In raising this objection, not only does Vermigli reveal the central concern of his doctrine, he also offers a clue to how he may have responded to Newman’s position.
It is also significant that Vermigli’s response to Osiander begins and ends with reference to the way in which justification by essential righteousness violates the teaching of Scripture. This is what one might expect, since, in his locus, Vermigli is principally concerned with demonstrating from the Bible the inadequacy of works and the futility of basing justification on anything other than the forensic imputation of divine righteousness.1005 Similar to Calvin, who also critiqued Osiander on this point,1006 Vermigli insists that justification cannot be based upon any sort of inherent righteousness but rather on the forensically imputed righteousness of Christ alone.
What do the above observations suggest about the way Vermigli may have responded to Newman? To begin with, it is very possible that Vermigli would have affirmed aspects of Newman’s doctrine.1007 They share a common concern to avoid the reduction of justification to a legal fiction and for giving due attention to the Spirit’s ongoing work of renewal in making Christians righteous. They also agree on the need to affirm forensic imputation as the formal cause by which one is declared righteous and thus made acceptable to God. That is to say, unlike Osiander, Vermigli and Newman maintain that a man may only attain forgiveness through a crediting of righteousness. Real and significant as these commonalities are, however, there remains a fundamental element of Newman’s position to which Vermigli would fervently protest: Newman’s inclusion of internal renewal along with forensic imputation in the formal cause of justification. For Vermigli, this inclusion represents a category confusion that effectively undermines what he regards as the biblical foundation of justification. Because the sine qua non of Martyr’s doctrine is the reckoning of divine righteousness as the sole fundamental cause of one’s forgiveness, Newman’s doctrine, in the final analysis, would be unacceptable.
What would Newman have said about Vermigli? In the absence of any such comment, we do not know for sure. But it is probable that he would have likened Vermigli’s position to that of Calvin and Bucer, which Newman describes in his appendix as being quite close to his own.1008 The key difference, according to Newman, concerns the role of faith, which Bucer upholds as “the interposing and acceptable principle between us and God.”1009 While it is likely that Martyr’s forceful assertion of sola fide would have been off-putting to Newman, reminding him perhaps of those one-dimensional Evangelicals to whom he was reacting,1010 he would have recognized an affinity between Vermigli’s and Bucer’s positions, and, therefore, a certain compatibility with his own.
Despite the fact that they both include the forensic imputation of Christ’s righteousness in their doctrines of justification, along with a desire to meaningfully connect justification to the work of the Spirit in producing virtue, Vermigli and Newman differ on the precise nature of justification’s formal cause. For Vermigli, this cause is strictly the forensic imputation of Christ’s righteousness accessed by faith alone. For Newman, it is the divine presence of God, which includes both imputation and internal renewal. Newman could have recognized an affinity with Vermigli, due to Vermigli’s position that justification entails a two-fold righteousness. However, Peter Martyr would have been unable to reciprocate. As he puts it concerning the basis of justification, it “is not to be looked for from works; it should be enough for us, that the good works we do after justification are sacrifices of thanksgiving (eucharistika). Let us not make them propitiatory sacrifices, by which we would do great injury to Christ.”1011