Post Series
1—Introduction
2—Aquinas
3—Luther
4—Calvin
5—Wright
6—Conclusion
In his lengthy response to Wright and effort to uphold the traditional Reformation answer to our question through Luther and Calvin, John Piper wrote, “my ultimate reason for writing this book is to avert the double tragedy that will come where the obedience of Christ, imputed to us through faith alone, is denied or obscured.” ((Piper, Justification, 187.)) From his perspective the corrections made within the Church by the Protestant Reformation concerning the nature of justification are being undermined. Traditionally, how one becomes right with God has been understood to fall along two fault lines: faith and meritorious works. Now through the efforts of such people as N. T. Wright, that answer is becoming obscure and the distinct fault lines blurred. In light of this obscuring and blurring, understanding how Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin have understood the nature of justification is crucial to properly answering our question, especially in light of the new perspectives argued by Wright and the like.
Much of the theology of the Medieval Catholic Church—and even contemporary Catholic dogma—reflected Thomas Aquinas, including the nature of salvation and justification. For Aquinas, a person is initially made right with God primarily by His own grace and mercy, who initiates the process of justification. Because human nature is spoiled, a person cannot receive God on their own, though they have a secondary responsibility to prepare themselves for the receipt of God’s justifying grace. Upon God’s initiation and human receipt through baptism, the justifying process begins, whereby there is an infusion of God’s grace; the person moves toward God and away from sin; sins are remitted; and finally there is an infusion of an inherent righteousness. Because Aquinas defines justification as a re-ordering, an original inherent righteousness of the human is restored. Thus, while Christ Himself merited this infusion, it is not His righteousness that affects the status of the sinner, as with Luther and Calvin. Instead, the righteous state or nature of the sinner itself is re-ordered to the way it was originally intended. Now, re-ordered post-baptism, the person embarks on a life-long journey of meritorious works in order to receive eternal life, which is possible because the free choice of the person is restored. Along this journey a person falls in and out of right standing with God and must receive the sacrament of Penance—in addition to the Eucharist—in order to become right with God once again. In the end, a person neither permanently become right with God nor is assured of their right standing until the end when the final consummation of grace occurs, revealing a persons rightness. This is problematic, because it leaves little place for the role of the righteousness of Christ and has an overly optimistic and positive view of the persons participation in the justifying process. Furthermore, a person has no assurance of their reconciled status with God and in the end that reconciliation is dependent upon the individual and a human meritorious system, rather than simply and wholly in Christ alone. It is to this system of justification that Luther reacted.
Mirroring the words of Shakespeare, Luther’s spiritual life was full of “sound and fury,” meritorious efforts that, in the end, signified nothing. He came to hate the notion of the righteousness of God precisely because he saw no way of attaining it, no way of truly becoming right with God. This all changed, however, when he finally grasped the reality that justification is entirely the work of God, a work that doesn’t at all depend upon us. According to Luther, a person is made right with God when, by unmerited election and the mercy of God-given grace, he or she grasps Christ through faith. After this “grasping” Christ’s righteousness is imputed to the sinner, restoring their status with God. It is an alien righteousness, because it is not of themselves but external and other than. Through this imputed righteousness the person’s sins are forgiven and they are a new creation. While the believer is “at once sinner and righteous,” they are now right with God for all eternity. Out of that renewed relationship, the believer lives a life of works in new obedience in response to his righteous status and as a witness that his faith is true and he is saved. In “The Smalcald Articles,” Luther provided a crucial antidote to the problematic Thomistic answer, insisting that a person is made right with God entirely outside of themselves by grace through faith, not by their own meritorious works. ((Martin Luther, “The Smalcald Articles,” in Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions. (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2005), 289. “The first and chief article is this: Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, died for our sins and was raised again for our justification. He alone is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, and God has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. All have sinned and are justified freely, without their own works and merits, by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, in His blood. This is necessary to believe. This cannot be otherwise acquired or grasped by any work, law or merit. Therefore, it is clear and certain that this faith alone justifies us. Nothing of this article can be yielded or surrendered, even though heaven and earth and everything else falls.”)) This right status is permanent and event oriented, rather than fleeting or a process, as with Aquinas. Though Luther’s view on regeneration was weak and failed to properly understand a persons continued development in righteousness, his catalytic theological breakthrough offered a needed revaluation of the nature of salvation and answer to how one becomes right with God, a revolution revised and extended by Calvin.
Like Luther, Calvin believed a sinner becomes right with God through the unmerited election of God and is moved through God’s calling to seize Christ by faith. After that seizing moment, the person is united with Christ where two things happen: the righteousness of Christ is imputed to him or her, so that their status before God is not as sinner but as righteous; the new believer begins the process of sanctification whereby they gradually grow in the righteousness of Christ and He gains power over them. The sinner plays no part in the event or process, because both are purely rooted in the grace of God. A person is right with God not through personal merit and action, but by God’s grace through the imputed righteousness of the obedient, sacrificed, and risen Christ. Like Luther, Calvin believed a person could be confident in their newly rightened status. Because the event of justification was not dependent upon the individual, but instead came by grace through faith, so too was the process of growing in righteousness and perseverance of the individual until the end completely dependent upon God. It is all God from beginning to end.
Finally, Wright seems to combine the Catholic and Protestant perspectives in order to create a “best of both worlds” scenario through a two-phased approach to justification, whereby a person becomes right with God through faith and merit. Like Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin, Wright believes a person finds initial forgiveness and vindication (phase one of justification) by grace through faith. A person, through the grace of God’s foreknowledge, is marked out and called by the Spirit and Word to repentance and to Christ. By faith, a person seizes Christ and is declared in the right by God the Judge. As Wright has maintained in at least five separate written works, this present vindication anticipates the final verdict in the future, where a person is justified and declared to be part of God’s covenantal community based upon the life lived in obedience to God. In other words: faith brings vindication and works brings justification.
Wright seems to maintain that the entire justification package manifest itself in two separate phases. This is a significant departure from the Protestant tradition of Luther and Calvin, who maintained nothing a person offers is good enough to make them right with God. While both assert that good works flow from a life saved by grace through faith, faith alone makes a person right with God apart from any meritorious work a life might offer. This does not seem to be the case for Wright, who himself said that future judgment (i.e. ultimate justification) is according to works. Though he maintains he is simply reading Paul in his Second Temple, First-Century Jewish context, this reading falls outside the Protestant tradition that understands Paul to argue the exact opposite: our justification is not in accordance with how we live, but what we believe by faith, mainly trusting in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross as a payment for our sins and a righteousness that is imputed to us by his obedience through life unto death.
In the end, Wright’s attempt at transcending the Catholic, Protestant theological divide seems to create more issues and questions than it solves. According to Wright’s scheme, it seems as though something can happen between the two phases. One has to wonder if a person sins and lives disobediently between the two phases, what happens? Is the vindication of phase one jeopardized? If so, how does a person regain the vindicated status by Judge God? If not, why, if the second phase is dependent upon a life lived by obedience? Speaking of which: how does a person know whether or not his or her lived life is enough to be declared a member of God’s covenantal community? Can one be certain that God’s verdict on the Last Day will be a positive indication of one’s membership? While Wright suggests the positive present verdict does anticipate a positive future one based on Christ, how can that be true if the final phase of that verdict still depends on a person’s performance in this life? He seems to be more in line with the Thomistic tradition than the Lutheran or Reformed ones, which is as problematic as it was at the time of Luther and Calvin as it is now.
Arguing that living a life of obedience that produces good works is a good thing, which is why the Calvinist answer to our question is a good one. It emphasizes the total dependency of the sinner on God’s grace through faith in Christ from beginning to end, while also insisting that our works grow in righteousness through our union with Christ. Wright, however, is in danger of repeating the same mistakes as Aquinas by insisting our works themselves ultimately make us right with God. Faith in not enough; it is faith plus works. God is not the only agent who makes us right with Himself; it is God’s agency plus man’s. Perhaps this is why theologians like Piper are concerned that the traditional manner in which we answer how a person becomes right with God is being “denied or obscured.” Aquinas’ perspective is what led to Luther’s deep spiritual angst and alienation. Perhaps their fear is that these new perspectives on justification could do the same in our 21st century American context, which is why answering our question is a serious endeavor.
