Justification and the Gospel

Understanding the Contexts and Controversies

R. Michael Allen

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780801039867
• eBook ISBN:
  9781441243003
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Seeking to move beyond current heated debates on justification, this accessible introduction offers a fresh, alternative approach to a central theological topic. Michael Allen locates justification within the wider context of the gospel, allowing for more thoughtful engagement with the Bible, historical theology, and the life of the church. Allen considers some of the liveliest recent debates as well as some overlooked connections within the wider orbit of Christian theology. He provides a historically informed, ecumenically minded defense of orthodox theology, analyzing what must be maintained and what should be reconfigured from the vantage point of systematic theology. The book exemplifies the practice of theological interpretation of Scripture and demonstrates justification's relevance for ongoing issues of faith and practice.

Part 1

Justification and the Gospel

1
The Place of Justification in Christian Theology Page

In this chapter and the next, we will consider a thesis: the gospel is the glorious news that the God who has life in himself freely shares that life with us and, when we refuse that life in sin, graciously gives us life yet again in Christ. While participation in God is the goal of the gospel, justification is the ground of that sanctifying fellowship. As we unpack this thesis, we will begin with the twofold subject matter of Christian dogmatics: God and all things in God. Thus, we will trace out the external works of God that are known as the gospel—God’s gracious giving of life to us. We will argue that the doctrine of justification is the key doctrine for expressing certain facets of the gospel, though it does not engage every pertinent question and cannot be called, without qualification, “the article of the standing or falling of the church.” While it is absolutely necessary, it is not altogether sufficient for the Christian confession. We will then consider two ways in which the doctrine of justification does shed light on other doctrines, exercising sway across the dogmatic spectrum (though not independently) by speaking into our doctrine of God and doctrine of humanity.

Thinking Dogmatically: God and Fellowship with God

The subject matter of Christian dogmatics is the life of God and others in him: the gospel is the glorious news that the God who has life in himself freely shares that life with us and, when we refuse that life in sin, graciously gives us life yet again in Christ. As we begin to consider the scope and sequence of the gospel, we do well to describe the very practice of theological knowledge and rational testimony to the gospel.

In the first question of his Summa Theologiae, Thomas Aquinas addresses the object of theological knowledge: “All things are dealt with in holy teaching [sacra doctrina] in terms of God, either because they are God himself or because they are relative to him as their origin and end.”1 In his concern to address the question of theology’s subject, Thomas notes a potential objection: “Besides, all matters about which a science reaches settled conclusions enter into its subject. Now sacred Scripture goes as far about many things other than God, for instance about creatures and human conduct. Therefore its subject is not purely God.”2 Indeed, Thomas notes the way other medieval theologians speak of the subject matters of theology: of reality and its symbols (Augustine, Lombard), the works of redemption (Hugh of St. Victor), or Christ and his body (Robert Kilwardy and others). He does not dismiss the topics they raise as if they were unfitting for theological reflection, though he locates them as always subordinate to God: “All these indeed are dwelt on by this science, yet as held in their relationship to God.” Later: “All other things that are settled in Holy Scripture are embraced in God, not that they are parts of him—such as essential components or accidents—but because they are somehow related to him.”3 Other things exist not in themselves, but in God’s power and by his will. Other things prosper and flourish not by their own mettle, but by the provision and grace—the life-giving promise—of the triune God. Indeed, this is the promised end of the gospel: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God” (Rev. 21:3). Human life exists for and is defined by fellowship with this living One.

This gospel is good news precisely because it is a promise of life from one who has life in himself. Pledges are only as good as their author. Indeed, the apostle Paul shows concern for this question in his writing to the Roman Christians. After recounting the great divine promises of assurance in Romans 8:31–39, he then notes that a doubt may arise in his audience’s mind. They could be remarkably enthused by the pledges given there—who would not be?—and yet wonder if God is able and/or willing to come through on these promises. After all, God promised great things to Israel and seems not to have kept his word. He had pledged that they would be his people, and yet, most recently, the vast majority of Israelites had rejected the Messiah. Thus, Paul must launch into a discussion of the truthfulness and trustworthiness of God’s Word (e.g., Rom. 9:6). Paul’s reflection on the election of God and the story of Israel demonstrates the importance of the doctrine of God for the gospel to be good news (see Rom. 9–11). The reliability of one’s word matters a great deal for those who would bank on it. The God of the gospel is the one of whom it is said, “For from him and through him and to him are all things” (Rom. 11:36). God’s Word called the world into being from nothing and creates new life just the same. It makes all the sense in the world to cast our cares upon him.

The Gospel according to John presents a similar concern for the theological basis of the gospel itself, rooting the incarnational mystery (John 1:14: “the Word became flesh”) in the story of the God who was alive and gave life to all things (see John 1:1–4). Repeatedly, the Gospel points backward to the full life from which the Word comes to give life; the Prologue accents this point lest the reader miss it. Indeed, knowing the fullness of God generates faith in his gospel. For this very reason, Thomas argued that knowledge of the Trinity was important for Christians.

The knowledge of the divine persons was necessary to us on two grounds. The first is to enable us to think rightly on the subject of the creation of things. For by maintaining that God made everything through his Word we avoid the error of those who held that God’s nature necessarily compelled him to create things. By affirming that there is in him the procession of Love, we show that he made creatures, not because he needed them nor because of any reason outside him, but from Love of his own goodness. . . . The second reason, and the principal one, is to give us a true notion of the salvation of mankind, a salvation accomplished by the Son who became flesh and by the gift of the Holy Spirit.4

Knowing the self-sufficiency of the triune life demonstrates the divine freedom (from external need or compulsion) and, thus, the gratuity of God’s external works, both creation and new creation. More recently, John Webster has focused upon the importance not only of knowing the triunity of God but also of grasping the aseity of God as the necessary backdrop and launching pad of God’s gospel.5 In an era dominated by historicist approaches to God, reflection upon God’s life in himself has not been given great prestige in contemporary theology. Such reflections upon the “immanent Trinity”—that is, God’s life in himself—are viewed suspiciously as being prone to speculation that is separated from or opposed to God’s revelation of himself in Jesus Christ. Yet careful consideration of the biblical witness points us back behind the divine economy to its roots in God’s eternal life in himself, from which his movement toward us, in creation and new creation, is generated.6 It is thus decidedly unhistorical to limit our theological reflections to the events experienced by the prophets and apostles in the name of historical concern and, perhaps, a christocentric epistemology, precisely because Jesus and his ambassadors constantly point backward to the one who commissioned and sent them (see, e.g., John 5:19, 26, 30).7 Discerning the eternal roots of the gospel is essential to maintaining the genuine gratuity and the unimpeachable reliability of that same news. And this is crucial for understanding the place of justification in Christian theology. Justification describes a crucial event in the divine economy. Yet it remains an event in the history of God’s external works, which range from creation to consummation.

John Webster has raised the question of distorting the doctrine of justification by asserting that it is the “ruler and judge over all other Christian doctrines.”8 As I have described above, Webster argues that the gospel speaks of the God who has life in himself and then gives that life to others. In other words, there are two parts to Christian doctrine—God and the works of God—of which it can truly be said that “there is only one Christian doctrine, the doctrine of the triune God,” for this God does these things.9 What, then, of the gospel and, specifically, the doctrine of justification? Webster argues that there are two ways in which they are made relative.10 First, all the works of God are relative and subordinate to the being of God—there was a time when he, and he alone, was; all else flows out of this triune fullness. Second, the works of God include creation and providence, as well as the gospel and justification. In other words, soteriology is not the sole external work of God.

We could add a still further relativization: within the work of salvation, justification is not the only divine act. The God who declares the ungodly righteous also makes them holy and upright. The God who suffers in our place also sanctifies our persons. The Bible is not stingy in its description of God’s saving work: justification is a glorious part of this jewel, but it is a many-splendored beauty that exceeds God’s justifying work alone.

In light of these reflections regarding the nature of theology’s object and the scope of the gospel, then, we can ask what use might be made of some Protestant insistences that justification by faith alone is the cardinal or primary piece of Christian doctrine. Among a number of contemporary Lutheran theologians, and especially in the American movement known as Radical Lutheranism, justification becomes not only a doctrine but also a principle and maxim. We will consider three such approaches, two European Lutherans (Eberhard Jüngel and Oswald Bayer) and one Radical Lutheran (Mark Mattes). For example, Jüngel argues,

In the justification article all these statements come to a head. The decision is made here first of all as to who this God is, and what it really means to be creatively active. Next, it says what it means to die for others and to bring forth new life in the midst of death: a life that imparts itself through the power of the Spirit to our passing world in such a way that a new community arises—the Christian church. The justification article brings out emphatically the truth of the relationship between God and people and in so doing the correct understanding of God’s divinity and our humanity. And since the Christian church draws its life from the relationship between God and people, and only from that relationship, the justification article is the one article by which the church stands and without which it falls. So every other truth of the faith must be weighed and judged by that article.11

What does Jüngel mean? “It is only when explained by means of that doctrine [of justification] that Christology becomes a materially appropriate Christology at all.”12 Jüngel’s concern is that justification alone unfolds the name of Jesus in a specifically Christian way. Just as ancient theologians, in the courses charted by Arius and others, had to insist that there were un-Christian ways of talking about Jesus, so Jüngel suggests that any Christology that does not describe the justification of the ungodly misses the mark in testifying well of Jesus. As he argues later, the sola gratia simply unfolds the solus Christus in authentic fashion.13 But it is not merely authentic; it is autocratic: justification is “the hermeneutical category of theology,” inasmuch as it brings all doctrine into the realm of the legal dispute.14 Jüngel suggests that thereby justification proves its mettle and its primacy—but he has yet to argue for the superiority of the legal metaphor. And many who have gone through judicial proceedings in various facets of life would consider them barely tolerable, much less good, and only good on the basis of instrumental value in making other things possible. Surely a claim that the legal dispute is lord and ruler of doctrine requires argument.15

Bayer’s approach is particularly notable when it comes to this issue. He argues that there is real breadth to the doctrine of justification in Martin Luther’s theology, inasmuch as it affects social and anthropological reflections. “Justification is not a separate topic apart from which still other topics could be discussed. Justification is the starting point for all theology and it affects every other topic.”16 Bayer argues that justification uniquely identifies humanity as being curved outward, defined by that which is outside of it rather than internal to it or fashioned by it. Thus it has implications for the self (not self-created or even self-shaped, but given being and gratuitously created) and for society (not the project of human progress or the occasion for anthropological achievement). In every aspect humanity is marked by gift: justification offers the fundamental articulation of life by gift.

Bayer agrees with Luther, then, about the subject matter of theology. In his comments on Psalm 51, Luther says: “The proper subject of theology is man guilty of sin and condemned, and God the Justifier and Savior of man the sinner. Whatever is asked or discussed in theology outside this subject, is error and poison.”17 It is clear that Bayer intends the doctrine of justification to identify the word of law and the promise of gospel, both spoken in divine-human exchange. Theology reflects on that conversation: confession of sin, assurance of pardon. God speaks only these two words; therefore, the doctrine of justification is the subject matter of theology. Thus, Bayer says that justification is not only the “starting point” but also “the basis, boundary, and the subject matter of theology.”18

Mattes has gone so far as to suggest that justification must be the criterion for every theological statement, or else one has fallen into system-building and the theology of glory. He clearly worries that theological reflection will easily follow the presuppositions of the sinner; only justification puts the sinner on his heels and hallows the Word of God. Justification serves as a second-order epistemic principle, shaping every statement made by Christians in their first-order claims (their prayer and praise, worship and witness). Like Jüngel and Bayer, Mattes clearly thinks the hiddenness of God is a danger to any approach that does not treat justification as a sieve for theological speculation.

Webster catalogs a number of similar references, all of which try in some way to express the classic affirmation of many Protestants that justification is the article by which the church stands or falls (articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae).19 Webster finds these varying approaches wantin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Endorsements
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1: Justification and the Gospel
• Part 2: Christ for Us
• Part 3: Christ in Us
• Notes
• Subject Index
• Scripture Index
• Back Cover