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Justification in Historical Perspective
Theological debates within scholarly quarters of the church are nothing new for the Christian faith. Occasionally, however, one of these debates spills over from the academic world and begins to ignite controversy within and among churches and parachurch ministries, between pastors and friends. This was certainly the case with the âopenness of Godâ debate that rocked the evangelical Christian world in the 1990s.1 At the opening of the second decade of the twenty-first century, it appears that another debate has reached similar proportions in evangelical circles and beyond, namely, the debate on the nature of justification and its proper place within Christian theology.
In an important sense, the church was handed the justification debate within the very texts that constitute its authoritative canon. There, the apostle Paul writes concerning the nature of grace, faith and works: âFor by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of Godânot the result of works, so that no one may boastâ (Eph 2:8-9 NRSV). And concerning justification:
Because by works of the law no flesh will be justified in his sight, for through law comes the knowledge of sin. But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested, although it is testified to by the law; the righteousness of God has been manifested through faith of Jesus Christ to all those who believe. For there is no distinction, for all sinned and are lacking the glory of God; they are justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. (Rom 3:20-24, authorsâ translation2)
And then there is James:
But someone will say, âYou have faith and I have works.â Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believeâand shudder. Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith apart from works is barren? Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, âAbraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,â and he was called the friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone⌠. For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead. (Jas 2:18-24, 26 NRSV)
Sixteen centuries later, the Protestant Reformers would seize upon Paulâs expression of justification as constituting the very essence of the gospel itself. Similar to traditional Lutherans, many Reformed evangelicals today view the doctrine of justification by faith as âthe heart of the Gospel,â as âthe article by which the church stands or falls.â3 And so, it is not surprising to find a number of Reformed evangelicals making strong statements in defense of the centrality of justification over the last several decades.4 However, more recently the debate has intensified among evangelicals in that challenges to the traditional Reformed understanding of justification are increasingly arising from within the broader evangelical camp itself. From academic monographs to the popular pages of Christianity Today magazine,5 from the high-profile engagement of renowned pastor-scholars John Piper and N. T. Wright to controversy within campus parachurch ministries,6 the justification debate is being felt throughout the evangelical world.
Unlike the âopenness of Godâ debate, however, contemporary ferment related to justification ranges far beyond evangelical circles. For example, in the eyes of many, the 1999 âJoint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationâ has served largely to reverse the five-hundred-year split between the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches on justification.7 In academic New Testament studies today, the ânew perspective on Paulâ has embroiled scholars of many stripes in both exegetical debates about justification and historical disagreements about the nature of Second Temple Judaism(s). In fact, as one begins to canvas the various issues related to justification today, it quickly becomes apparent that almost every question is a contested one. Debate piles upon debate, layer upon layer. And like most theological controversies of magnitude, the intensity of the contemporary justification debate(s) is in large part due to the fact that it is inherently tied to a number of other issues of significant importâissues exegetical and hermeneutical, soteriological and ecclesiological, methodological and historical, ethical and practical.8 This chapter offers a historical survey of the development of, and debates concerning, the doctrine of justification in its many permutations throughout church history.
THE EARLY CHURCH
The seemingly straightforward question of the status of the doctrine of justification in the early church is, in fact, a significant point of debate today. No one doubts that Pauline-like statements on justification are scattered throughout the early church writings. For instance, near the end of the first century, we find Clement of Rome professing:
And so we, having been called through his will in Christ Jesus, are not justified through ourselves or through our own wisdom or understanding or piety, or works that we have done in holiness of heart, but through faith, by which the Almighty God has justified all who have existed from the beginning; to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen. (1 Clem. 32.4)9
Similar statements throughout the next several centuries are common.10 But the question is: What is to be made of such statements? For some, despite statements such as these, the pre-Augustinian fathers show an unfortunate lack of truly independent interest in, or reflection upon, Pauline doctrines of original sin, grace and justification by faith alone.11 According to Alister McGrath, the limited amount of attention given to the topic in patristic literature is characterized by âinexactitude and occasional apparent naivety,â and reflects a âworks-righteousness approach to justification.â12 For others, early Christian statements on justification reflect a significant continuity not only between the patristic writers and Paul, but between patristic writers and the Reformers themselves. No one has argued this point more forcefully than Thomas Oden, who claims that âthere is a full-orbed patristic consensus on justification that is virtually indistinguishable from the Reformerâs teaching.â13
Between these two views, one finds a range of scholars who conclude for some form of a via media. Most emphasize that serious account must be taken of the historical, polemical and rhetorical particularities of the early church, that the richly textured images of salvation are many and varied within patristic literature, and that what Reformation-sensitive ears could easily hear as âjustification by worksâ is better interpreted as an early Christian defense of the biblical notions of human freedom, moral responsibility and the goodness of God against the competing perspectives of astrology/fatalism, stoicism and Gnosticism.14 While concern with Paul broadly, and justification by faith specifically, can be found in the early church, we cannot thereby conclude that they meant by these statements what the later Reformers would mean.15 What does seem clear is that when the pre-Augustinian fathers wrote of the gracious, works-free nature of salvation/justification, many of them indexed this to initial justification, which itself was connected to conversion and/or baptism.16 Once initial justification had taken place, believers were expected to be caught up in a transformative process of growth in grace, virtue and good works.
Assessments of the distance between patristic and later Protestant conceptions of justification vary. Again, Oden argues that a robust patristic âconsensusâ on justification existed and is in substantial continuity with the later Reformers. For others, certain early writers stand out as significantly âmore Protestant,â whether Clement of Rome, Marius Victorinus, Augustine of co...