A Reformation Debate

John Calvin & Jacopo Sadoleto

John C. Olin

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780823219926
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Histoire du Christianisme

In 1539, Cardinal Jacopo Sadoleto, Bishop of Carpentras, addressed a letter to the magistrates and citizens of Geneva, asking them to return to the Roman Catholic faith. John Calvin replied to Sadoleto, defending the adoption of the Protestant reforms. Sadoleto's letter and Calvin's reply constitute one of the most interesting exchanges of Roman Catholic/Protestant views during the Reformationand an excellent introduction to the great religious controversy of the sixteenth century. These statements are not in vacuo of a Roman Catholic and Protestant position. They were drafted in the midst of the religious conflict that was then dividing Europe. And they reflect too the temperaments and personal histories of the men who wrote them. Sadoleto's letter has an irenic approach, an emphasis on the unity and peace of the Church, highly characteristic of the Christian Humanism he represented. Calvin's reply is in part a personal defense, an apologia pro vita sua, that records his own religious experience. And its taut, comprehensive argument is characteristic of the disciplined and logical mind of the author of The Institutes of the Christian Religion.

Appendix
on
The Justification Controversy

I
Calvin on Justification

The following statement and explanation of the doctrine of justification by faith alone is taken from the final edition (1559) of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book III, Chapter XI, reprinted with permission from Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, tr. Ford Lewis Battles (copyright © 1960, W. L. Jenkins. Vols. XX and XXI of The Library of Christian Classics. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), 1,725—754.

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH: FIRST THE DEFINITION OF THE
WORD AND OF THE MATTER

1. Place and meaning of the doctrine of “justification”

I believe I have already explained above, with sufficient care, how for men cursed under the law there remains, in faith, one sole means of recovering salvation. I believe I have also explained what faith itself is, and those benefits of God which it confers upon man, and the fruits it brings forth in him. Let us sum these up. Christ was given to us by God’s generosity, to be grasped and possessed by us in faith. By partaking of him, we principally receive a double grace: namely, that being reconciled to God through Christ’s blamelessness, we may have in heaven instead of a Judge a gracious Father; and secondly, that sanctified by Christ’s spirit we may cultivate blamelessness and purity of life. Of regeneration, indeed, the second of these gifts, I have said what seemed sufficient. The theme of justification was therefore more lightly touched upon because it was more to the point to understand first how little devoid of good works is the faith, through which alone we obtain free righteousness by the mercy of God; and what is the nature of the good works of the saints, with which part of this question is concerned. Therefore we must now discuss these matters thoroughly. And we must so discuss them as to bear in mind that this is the main hinge on which religion turns, so that we devote the greater attention and care to it. For unless you first of all grasp what your relationship to God is, and the nature of his judgment concerning you, you have neither a foundation on which to establish your salvation nor one on which to build piety toward God. But the need to know this will better appear from the knowledge itself.

2. The concept of justification

But that we may not stumble on the very threshold—and this would happen if we should enter upon a discussion of a thing unknown—first let us explain what these expressions mean: that man is justified in God’s sight, and that he is justified by faith or works. He is said to be justified in God’s sight who is both reckoned righteous in God’s judgment and has been accepted on account of his righteousness. Indeed, as iniquity is abominable to God, so no sinner can find favor in his eyes in so far as he is a sinner and so long as he is reckoned as such. Accordingly, wherever there is sin, there also the wrath and vengeance of God show themselves. Now he is justified who is reckoned in the condition not of a sinner, but of a rightous man; and for that reason, he stands firm before God’s judgment seat while all sinners fall. If an innocent accused person be summoned before the judgment seat of a fair judge, where he will be judged according to his innocence, he is said to be “justified” before the judge. Thus, justified before God is the man who, freed from the company of sinners, has God to witness and affirm his righteousness. In the same way, therefore, he in whose life that purity and holiness will be found which deserves a testimony of righteousness before God’s throne will be said to be justified by works, or else he who, by the wholeness of his works, can meet and satisfy God’s judgment. On the contrary, justified by faith is he who, excluded from the righteousness of works, grasps the righteousness of Christ through faith, and clothed in it, appears in God’s sight not as a sinner but as a righteous man.

Therefore, we explain justification simply as the acceptance with which God receives us into his favor as righteous men. And we say that it consists in the remission of sins and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.

3. Scriptural usage

There are many clear testimonies of Scripture to confirm this fact. First, it cannot be denied that this is a proper and most customary meaning of the word. But because it would take too long to collect all the passages and to compare them, let it suffice to have called them to our readers’ attention, for they will readily observe such of themselves. I shall bring forward only a few, where this justification of which we are speaking is expressly treated.

First, when Luke relates that the people, having heard Christ, justified God [Luke 7:29], and when Christ declares that “wisdom is justified by. . . her children” [Luke 7:35], Luke in the former passage (v. 29) does not mean that they confer righteousness. For righteousness always remains undivided with God, although the whole world tries to snatch it away from him. Nor does he, in v. 35, intend to justify the doctrine of salvation, which is righteous of itself. Rather, both expressions have the same force—to render to God and his teaching the praise they deserve. On the other hand, when Christ upbraids the Pharisees for justifying themselves [Luke 16:15], he does not mean that they acquire righteousness by well-doing but that they ambitiously seize upon a reputation for righteousness of which they are devoid. Those skilled in the Hebrew language better understand this sense: where not only those who are conscious of their crime but those who undergo the judgment of damnation are called “wicked.” For when Bathsheba says that she and Solomon will be wicked [I Kings 1:21], she does not acknowledge any offense. But she complains that she and her son are going to be put to shame, to be counted among the wicked and condemned. Yet from the context it readily appears that this word, even when it is read in Latin, cannot otherwise be understood than relatively, but not so as to signify any quality.

But, because it pertains to the present case, when Paul says that Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith [Gal. 3:8], what else may you understand but that God imputes righteousness by faith? Again, when he says that God justifies the impious person who has faith in Christ [Rom. 3:26 P.], what can his meaning be except that men are freed by the benefit of faith from that condemnation which their impiety deserved? This appears even more clearly in his conclusion, when he exclaims: “Who will accuse God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who will condemn? It is Christ who died, yes, who rose again. . . and now intercedes for us” [Rom. 8:33–34 P.].For it is as if he had said: “Who will accuse those whom God has absolved? Who will condemn those whom Christ defends with his protection?” Therefore, “to justify” means nothing else than to acquit of guilt him who was accused, as if his innocence were confirmed. Therefore, since God justifies us by the intercession of Christ, he absolves us not by the confirmation of our own innocence but by the imputation of righteousness, so that we who are not right eous in ourselves may be reckoned as such in Christ. Thus it is said in Paul’s sermon in the thirteenth chapter of The Acts: Through Christ is forgiveness of sins announced to you, and everyone who believes in him is justified of all things from which the law of Moses could not justify him [Acts 13:38–39]. You see that, after forgiveness of sins, this justification is set down, as it were, by way of interpretation. You see that it is plainly understood as absolution, you see that it is separated from the works of the law. You see it as the mere benefit of Christ, and you see that it is received by faith. You see finally that a satisfaction is introduced where he says that we are justified from our sins through Christ. Thus, when the publican is said to have gone down from the Temple justified [Luke 18:14], we cannot say that he achieved righteousness by any merit of works. This, therefore, is what is said: after pardon of sins has been obtained, the sinner is considered as a just man in God’s sight. Therefore, he was righteous not by approval of works but by God’s free absolution. Ambrose has, accordingly, fitly expressed it when he calls the confession of sins a lawful justification.

4. Justification as gracious acceptance by God and as forgiveness of sins

And to avoid contention over a word, if we look upon the thing itself as described to us, no misgiving will remain. For Paul surely refers to justification by the word “acceptance” when in Eph. 1:5–6 he says: “We are destined for adoption through Christ according to God’s good pleasure, to the praise of his glorious grace by which he has accounted us acceptable and beloved” [Eph. 1:5–6 p.]. That means the very thing that he commonly says elsewhere, that “God justifies us freely” [Rom. 3:24]. Moreover, in the fourth chapter of Romans he first calls justification “imputation of righteousness.” And he does not hesitate to include it within forgiveness of sins. Paul says: “That man is declared blessed by David whom God renders acceptable or to whom he imputes righteousness apart from works, as it is written: ‘Blessed are they whose transgressions have been forgiven’” [Rom. 4:6–7 p.; Ps. 32:1]. There he is obviously discussing not a part of justification but the whole of it. Further, he approves the definition of it set forth by David when he declares those men blessed to whom free pardon of sins is given [Ps. 32:1–2]. From this it is clear that the righteousness of which he speaks is simply set in opposition to guilt. But the best passage of all on this matter is the one in which he teaches that the sum of the gospel embassy is to reconcile us to God, since God is willing to receive us into grace through Christ, not counting our sins against us [II Cor. 5:18–20]. Let my readers carefully ponder the whole passage. For a little later Paul adds by way of explanation: “Christ, who was without sin, was made sin for us” [II Cor. 5:21], to designate the means of reconciliation [cf. vs. 18–19]. Doubtless, he means by the word “reconciled” nothing but “justified.” And surely, what he teaches elsewhere—that “we are made righteous by Christ’s obedience” [Rom. 5:19 p.]—could not stand unless we are reckoned righteous before God in Christ and apart from ourselves.*

13. Righteousness by faith and righteousness by works

But a great part of mankind imagine that righteousness is composed of faith and works. Let us also, to begin with, show that faith righteousness so differs from works righteousness that when one is established the other has to be overthrown. The apostle says that he “counts everything as dross” that he “may gain Christ and be found in him,. . .not having a righteousness of [his] own, based on law, but one that is through faith in Jesus Christ, the righteousness from God through faith” [Phil. 3:8–9 p.]. You see here both a comparison of opposites and an indication that a man who wishes to obtain Christ’s righteousness mu...