Post Series
1—Introduction
2—Aquinas
3—Luther
4—Calvin
5—Wright
6—Conclusion
“Martin Luther is the theologian of justification,” so says Carl Trueman. ((Trueman, “Simile peculator et justus,” 73.)) In fact, for Luther it is “the summary of Christian doctrine,” “the sun which illuminates God’s holy church,” and “distinguishes our religion from all others.” ((Althaus, Theology, 224.)) It is no secret that Luther was reacting to issues he saw within the Catholic church, primarily in relation to the doctrine which helps answer our question: justification. For decades he had pursued rightness with God through the penitential cycle developed in medieval Christendom in the Thomistic tradition, resulting in a deep hatred of the notion of the righteousness of God. ((Fudge, “Saints, Sinners, and Stupid Asses, 231.)) He had become deeply troubled by his perceived inability to grasp this righteousness and truly become right with God. ((Fudge, “Saints, Sinners, and Stupid Asses, 231-232.)) By the time of Luther, there were at least three major signs of the disintegration of the Thomistic medieval theological tradition that led to Luther’s own personal theological angst: 1) an undermining of the concept of grace; 2) a distortion of the understanding of God; and 3) a view of the relationship between God and man in the “economy of salvation” that no longer grasped the interdependence between God’s rule and human behavior. ((Oberman, Reformation, 105.)) It is this entire medieval tradition, influenced by Aquinas and confirmed by the Council of Trent, with which Luther became frustrated and ultimately revolted against. ((Oberman,Reformation, 119.))
Primary among his targets within this tradition was answering the question how one becomes right with God, the doctrine of justification. Because Luther viewed justification as “the basic and chief article of faith with which the church stands or falls,” ((Althaus, Theology, 224.)) Luther spent much of his life formulating and defending how the Church should answer the question on becoming right with God. In short, his answer is a revolutionary reaction against the prevailing Thomistic tradition that rooted justification in faith plus man’s facere quod in se est, ((Latin for a man’s “sincere and good efforts” or “what one is able to do.”)) replacing it instead with a justification rooted in God alone that reunited Christ’s righteousness and God’s justice. ((Oberman, Reformation, 124.)) In the end, his theological endeavor is nothing short than the destruction of the Thomistic framework upon which his early soteriology rested and a reinterpretation of the concept of the righteousness of God. ((McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 221.))
Justification Defined
In his commentary on Galatians, Luther said that our justification is our “one sure foundation,” which was ravaged by the “infinite and horrible profanation and abomination” of his time. ((Luther, Galatians, xv.)) Luther understood and defined justification as “God’s act of crediting, imputing, or recognizing as righteous, that is, as the act through which God grants a man value in relationship to him…the act by which God receives the sinner who is unrighteous before him as righteous.” ((Althaus, Theology, 227.)) Luther understood justification in terms of status and relation, rather than substance and transformation as had been the case with Aquinas and the broader Catholic tradition. ((Trueman, “Simile peculator et justus,” 81.)) He uses this term—“justification” or “to justify”—in more than one manner: 1) he most often means “the judgment of God with which he declares man to be righteous;” 2) he also uses the term to designate “the entire event through which man is essentially made righteous,” from his imputation of righteousness to him becoming righteous. ((Althaus, Theology, 226.)) While it appears as though Luther believes justification to be both an act and process, he does not make the distinction between justification (event) and sanctification (process) that later became part of the Protestant understanding through Calvin. ((Althaus, Theology, 226.)) Instead, it is all justification, because a person cannot be more righteous before God than he or she already is in light of the event at which he was justified. This present declaration, born from the decisive justification event, is based upon the known outcome of God’s promise for full righteousness. The believer is in a sense fully righteous, though it will not be fully realized until the end when he or she will actually be fully righteous; the present declaration anticipates a future full righteousness. ((Trueman, “Simile peculator et justus,” 76.))
According to Luther, when a person grasps Christ by faith, the new believer is declared righteous in the present, having Christ’s righteousness imputed to them. ((Trueman, “Simile peculator et justus,” 76.)) “The righteousness of Christ is imputed to the sinner. God sees the sinner as one with Christ…Thus the righteousness granted to the sinner is not his own product by himself but an ‘alien’ righteousness belonging to Jesus Christ.” ((Althaus, Theology, 227.)) To the early Reformation imputation meant just this: a divine decision in which the believer is declared righteous on account of the external, “alien” righteousness of Christ. ((McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 212.)) This is an important point, because it represents a large departure from the Thomistic and larger Catholic tradition, which believed the nature and state of man itself became re-ordered and actually righteous by an infusion of an original, inherent personal righteousness. Instead, Luther said the sinner is declared righteous because of a righteousness outside of himself (Christ’s) gives him that status. Consequently, Luther views justification within the order of salvation as an event at which someone is declared to be righteous before God. His understanding of the manner in which a person is made right with God is illustrated in fig. 3:
Contrary to the prevailing Thomistic tradition of his day, who held room for human initiation of the process of justification through some form of preparation, one of Luther’s key insights is that humans absolutely cannot initiate the event of becoming right with God. ((McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 224.)) In his debate with Erasmus, for instance, Luther emphasized this very thing in On the Bondage of the Will. Luther makes it clear that “[man’s] salvation is utterly beyond his own powers, devices, endeavors, will, and works, and depends entirely on the choice, will, and work of another, namely of God alone.” ((Luther, Bondage of the WIll, 137.)) Unlike the Thomisic process wherein a person prepares himself in some manner for the process of justification, it is God entirely who takes the first initiative, leaving no room for synergism. ((Synergism is the belief that salvation is dependent upon both God and man.Through their own free will a person moves toward God as much as God moves toward that person.))
After the grace of God through unmerited election, Christ is “grasped” by faith. This faith is given to man by God and is the only way in which Christ Himself is given to man. ((Althaus, Theology, 231.)) Once Christ is seized by faith the person is justified, he or she is declared righteous by God. For Luther, Christ and faith cannot be treated as two different things, but one in the same: we become right with God on account of Christ in the same way we become right with God on account of faith in Christ. ((Althaus, Theology, 231.)) It is through the obedience of Christ that we become right with God, that our status changes before God and we are declared righteous. ((Althaus, Theology, 231.))
Interestingly, Luther places the doctrines of justification and Jesus Christ within the same house: “Justification through faith alone is not a second or a new element in relationship to faith in Christ; rather it is precisely this faith itself, understood in its radical seriousness and related to man’s quest for salvation…they belong very close together and are interdependent in his theology.” ((Althaus, Theology, 225.)) As Luther declares, we “so clearly and powerfully teach and proclaim the doctrine that Christ alone is the only valuable possession we have and our only reason for being called Christians. We wish to know no other Lord, no other righteousness, no other holiness.” ((Althaus, Theology, 225.)) The doctrine of justification is so tightly wrapped within that of Christ because of the primary importance Luther places on our participation and union with Him. For Luther, humans are incapable of achieving even the slightest bit of righteousness outside of union with Christ. ((Trueman, “Simile peculator et justus,” 81.)) Unlike the Thomistic tradition, it is only by grace through faith in Christ that we are finally and entirely declared righteous by God, that we are given the status “righteous” and become right with Him once again.
Like Augustine, Luther understands the righteousness of God as “the righteousness by which God justifies sinners, rather than as the abstract divine attribute which stands over and against humankind, judging on the basis of merit.” ((McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 232.)) This notion is a radical departure for Luther, whereas in his past he came to hate the phrase, for it meant “the formal or active righteousness by which God is righteous, and punishes unrighteous sinners.” ((Luther as quoted in McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 219.)) This early concept viewed righteousness as that of an “utterly scrupulous and impartial judge, who rewarded or punished humans on the basis of an ultimately unknown quality.” ((McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 219.)) Rather than being a divine attribute of God, it is the method by which he declares a person right unto relationship with Himself. This righteousness comes to man entirely outside of himself and is not a quality of himself or his product. ((Althaus, Theology, 229.)) Luther explains his understanding of this external righteousness in commentary called, “Two Kinds of Righteousness.” He describes the righteousness a man receives at baptism and through repentance as an “alien righteousness…instilled from without.” ((Luther, “Righteousness,” 135.)) Through faith Christ’s righteousness becomes our own in that it is the source of all our own actual righteousness, which is “given in place of the original righteousness lost in Adam.” ((Luther, “Righteousness,” 136.)) As Luther makes clear, we are made right with God through the righteousness of Christ by faith alone outside of any working or merit on our part.
Role of Faith; Role of Merit
Crucial to understanding Luther’s answer to our question is understanding how strongly he emphasized that Christ’s work does us absolutely no good without faith, using the phrase “to the extent that we believe” to emphasize his point regarding the work of Christ. ((Althaus, Theology, 212.)) As Althaus notes, “Christ’s work of reconciliation and redemption is not a material achievement which would be valid and effective even without our knowing it and without personal sharing with Christ…It demands ‘subjective’ appropriation in faith; it actually works salvation only for and in faith.” ((Althaus, Theology, 213.)) A person, then, receives the righteousness of Christ in no other way than through faith. For Luther, faith is “the means whereby one can apprehend God in the power of the divine reality by throwing oneself upon God.” ((Fudge, “Saints, Sinners, and Stupid Asses, 237.)) In his lecture on Romans he puts it bluntly: “Righteousness is given only through faith in Jesus Christ.” ((Luther, Romans, 109.)) In this lecture on Romans 3:21-22, he defined faith in Christ in this way: “to believe in Christ means to direct oneself to him with one’s whole heart and to order everything with respect to him.” ((Luther, Romans, 105.)) It is by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone that the believer is made right with God. In the words of one theologian, “the implications for all of this for all of life at the end of the Middle Ages were staggering.” ((Fudge, “Saints, Sinners, and Stupid Asses, 248.))
The scholastic dogma at the time, which followed Thomistic assumptions, held that faith was informed by charity and the notion of “doing what one is able to do” (facere quod in se est), a concept that relates to a person doing his or her best, giving his or her best effort in order to reach God in preparation for justification through meritorious service. ((McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 107-116, 141, 221.)) In his earlier understanding of the nature of salvation, Luther believed the IustitiaDei was predicated upon the notion that God rewarded the person who had done what he was able to do with justifying grace; in the end, becoming right with God was based on God’s recognition of an individual’s best personal effort. ((McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 221.)) Through Luther’s theological journey and wrangling, he denied this belief in light of justification and the reality of faith. According to Luther “faith in Christ eliminated the facere quod in se estidea,” denying the foundational scholastic principle that faith is formed by charity through merit. ((Fudge, “Saints, Sinners, and Stupid Asses, 235.))
Contrary to the Thomistic tradition encapsulated in the Roman Catholic church, there is no room for works of charity in becoming right with God. In commenting on Galatians 2:16 Luther makes plain, “The right way to become a Christian is to be justified by faith in Christ. Here we must stand, and not upon the wicked interpretation of those who say that faith justifies when love and good works are combined within.” ((Luther, Galatians, 90.)) For Luther, the Thomistic notion that we are justified by faith combined with charity is a “most deadly and devilish poison,” instead insisting that we are justified solely by faith in Christ. ((Luther, Galatians, 90.)) Luther’s denial that any work was valid for becoming right with God “was both original and devastating,” altering the basic structure of Medieval Christian ethics and emptying merit and reward of any significance. ((Fudge, “Saints, Sinners, and Stupid Asses, 247.)) Instead, “Justification…is given to men through faith alone.” ((Althaus, Theology, 245.)) For Luther works is what he termed a “second kind of righteousness,” which is our proper righteousness. Our proper, second righteousness “is that manner of life spent profitably in good works.” ((Luther, “Righteousness,” 138.)) It is the result of the first, alien righteousness of Christ and “goes on to complete the first for it ever strives to do away with the old Adam and to destroy the body of sin.” ((Luther, “Righteousness,” 138.)) Luther makes it clear that this second righteousness is not a second phase of justification—as was the case for Aquinas—for our works cannot make us right with God. Instead, after the first righteousness makes us right with God through imputation of the alien righteousness of Christ, “the Holy Spirit, through the works which he works in us, both inwardly and outwardly bears witness that we are saved.” ((Althaus, Theology, 247.))
