Justification: The Article On Which The Church Stands Or Falls?

Discussion in 'Theology and Doctrine' started by Jerome, May 12, 2012.

  1. Gordon

    Gordon Well-Known Member

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    As a Franciscan within our rule of life we are humble before God and everyone, to say I am like Christ is not being humble, but to strive to be like Christ is being humble before him.

    The Holy Spirit was sent to guide us, and there is a huge difference between saying you follow Christ and you are Christ. Maybe you and I have a different idea of what it means to be like Christ. Christ is without sin, and alas we are not.
     
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  2. Anna Scott

    Anna Scott Well-Known Member

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    Gordon,
    Sometime, I think disagreements have much to do with semantics. But, best to err on the side of "humble."

    Anna
     
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  3. Gordon

    Gordon Well-Known Member

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    Hi Anna - I hope you meant err on the side of "humble" LOL :D
     
  4. Anna Scott

    Anna Scott Well-Known Member

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    I did. My fingers don't always type what my brain is thinking. lol. I'm terrible about typing the wrong ending of words and things like that. I type fast, but make a lot of mistakes. I'm sure you'll see more in the future. :blush:

    Anna
     
  5. Gordon

    Gordon Well-Known Member

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    Same here - I am often two words ahead of my typing and leave stuff out.... :)
     
  6. Jerome

    Jerome Member

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    Hello Contarini,



    First of all, could you please explain what you understand to be Luther’s position on justification?


    Secondly, why is the matter of whether or not Luther’s doctrine agrees with the New Testament and/or the apostolic fathers “a separate point”? It would seem to me that if it is the case that Luther agrees with the witness of sacred scripture, then we do well to attend to what Luther teaches—not because it is Luther’s teaching, but because it agrees with the testimony of scripture concerning Christ.


    Thirdly, you seem very confident in your assertion that the article of justification is “certainly not” the article upon which the church stands or falls. This is a strange confidence in light of the epistemic humility in your claim that no “one particular view of justification can be held up as canonical at this point in the history of the Church.” Why, then, do you hold the “forensic declaration” view—which is, after all, “one particular view of justification”—to be “certainly not” true? Because, you say, scripture does not—on your reading of it, at least—appear to support it. But I thought that whether or not Luther’s teaching on justification (which I presume you understand to be “forensic”) agrees or disagrees with the New Testament is “a separate point”? Please pardon my confusion.


    Fourthly, you say that any adherence to Luther’s “particular view of justification” makes “nonsense of Anglicanism” because no church would exist between 100 and c. 1517. This strikes me as an odd claim for two main reasons: (a) it is patently hyperbolic and (b) it ignores—perhaps conveniently—the 39 Articles’ exposition of justification, which reads as follows:




    This article clearly teaches that one is justified solely by faith and not by the works of the law. We are accounted righteous before God, not because of our “inner transformation” or “mystical union to Christ”, but rather because of “the merit of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” I am not sure how you would interpret such an exposition of justification as differing substantially from Luther’s. I would be interested to hear it though.


    Fifthly, you are notably uncomfortable with the idea of Christ’s righteousness being imputed to us, and even more uncomfortable with the idea of our sin being imputed to Christ. Fair enough. After all, such a teaching renders us as entirely passive recipients of God’s grace, being made righteous solely by what must only seem to be a weak and foolish word squeezed out between the weak and foolish lips of a preacher: “By the authority of Christ I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!” But it is this very word, received in faith, that both puts the old Adam to death and raises up a new creation that loves and serves God and neighbor. That Christ was made sin (and did not merely suffer for sin, get punished on behalf of our sins) is precisely what St. Paul tells us in II Cortinthians 5:21: “God made Him [Christ] who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” And again in Galatians 3:13: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.’” On the cross, the cursed One on the tree calls out to His Father, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Luther referred to the believers clinging to Christ as the “blessed exchange” in which all that is Christ’s is made ours (righteousness, life, and salvation) and all that is ours is made Christ’s (sin, death, and damnation). Such a word makes the old Adam in us nervous—and understandably so, since it is being put to death by it. But to the new creation, these words are the bread of life for which we eternally hunger for and are in turn eternally satisfied with.


    Sixthly, I am not sure why the Joint Declaration is “probably as good as we have”. Or why “an adequate doctrine of justification will emerge” from a reunification of the RCC, the Eastern Orthodox, the Lutherans, and other Protestant denominations. What if one of them is right? Then an overlapping consensus would not improve but dilute the pure teaching on justification. As for the Joint Declaration, it seems to me to be plagued by plethora of equivocations that only superficially “justify” the substantial differences that lie beneath them. E.g., the little word “grace” is highly problematic, given the decidedly dissimilar definitions supplied by the respective confessional documents of each church. Of course, we can simply throw out the confessional documents and pretend like we agree when we say the word “grace”, but that it is not really theology. Heck, it’s not even communication!


    Lastly, you claim that if we take Luther’s doctrine of justification to be the true teaching of Christ, then we are left without a church prior to the sixteenth century. Not only is this historically dubious to you, but it is also “schismatic” and makes Christianity “completely unbelievable.” Slashing through this hyperbolic jungle, I will attempt to provide a response.


    The church is the creature of the word. The word is not the creature of the church. It is by the word that faith confesses Christ to be the Son of God. It is by this confession that the church stands against the gates of hell. The church does not confess a Christ, but the Christ: the One who was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, was buried, and who rose again on the third day. It is by faith in this Christ, the One cursed, bloody, and forsaken on the cross, that we are made righteous. While the church might not always proclaim Christ in the fullness of who He is and what He has done, yet God accomplishes His will to save through the means of the word of promise that Christ is ours and we are His.


    If this is a “schismatic” view, then it is only such in the sense of Matthew 10:34: “Do not suppose that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” When the pure teaching of Christ is attacked, and the consciences of the faithful flock are burdened by the holy Law of God, then the sword of God must be wielded with all of its might, and false teaching must be struck down to the abyss from whence it came. The exodus of the Christian is not from vice to virtue, but from virtue to Christ. In Christ we find both the fulfillment and the end of the Law. The accusations of the Law will not be silenced by our works (no matter how noble or grace-endowed we might perceive them to be) or by any other attempt to “cut it to fit.” In the Law, God’s wrath burns like the bush Moses set his trembling eyes on. It is only in Christ, i.e., in the Gospel, that the accusations of the Law cease completely, and the righteousness of God is made ours in faith. I do not hold out any hope for the declarations of would-be theologians to unite the church. It is only by faith in the forsaken God on the cross that the church can boast of unity.


    Yours in Christ,
    Jerome
     
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  7. Contarini

    Contarini New Member

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    That's a good question. For the purposes of this discussion, I'm using that language to mean the following distinctive claims, which divide classical Protestants (and many neo-Protestants) from other Christians:

    1. God accounts us as righteous on the basis of Jesus' "alien" righteousness imputed rather than imparted to us;
    2. Only faith, and not charity, plays a causal role in our reception of this righteousness and hence our justification;
    3. This applies to final as well as initial justification, so that at no point does our sanctification have any direct effect on our acceptance by God as righteous or our final enjoyment of eternal life. (I say "direct," because Luther does say in the Galatians commentary that if we don't struggle against the works of the flesh we will eventually cease to believe in Jesus.)

    I am not convinced that any of these three claims is true. However, I am fully convinced that even if they are true, the doctrine of justification that is distinguished from other doctrines of justification by these claims is not the doctrine by which the Church stands or falls.



    But you're shifting ground here. Attending to a teaching is quite different from declaring it "the doctrine by which the Church stands or falls." I'm certainly open to the idea that an NT teaching might be obscured for centuries and rediscovered, though usually, as a matter of historical inquiry, I don't find good reason to accept such claims without heavy qualification. But if the doctrine of justification characterized by the three claims I list above is not only true but the doctrine by which the Church stands or falls, then there was no Church for 1400 years. There are therefore only three possibilities:

    1. The doctrine of justification by which the Church stands or falls is not the distinctively Protestant teaching, but the much more general affirmation that we are justified by Jesus' grace received by faith, with which RCs and Orthodox agree. The Protestant teaching is either false or an adiaphoron. (This is my view.)

    2. The Protestant doctrine is the true one, but a true Church may exist (even if in a defective form) without that doctrine being maintained. Or

    3. There was no Church between the time of the Apostles and the Reformation.



    Why? To me it seems simply logical. Please refute the logic I have presented above by showing that there is some fourth possibility I have ignored.



    But Article XI does not say that there is no Church where this article is denied. Hence there was no reason to address it. My point is that Anglicanism in its doctrines, liturgy, and spirituality depends so heavily on pre-Reformation Christianity that it would make no sense if pre-Reformation Christianity was "no Church at all." That was Hooker's argument against the Puritans, and I think it rightly carried the day, although of course the Puritans put up a good fight for some time!

    The Article is also vague enough that an RC or EO might possibly affirm it, depending on how it was interpreted. I agree that the framers probably intended it to imply the more developed understanding you lay out below, so I'm not going to put a lot of weight on this (I am not a Tract 90 person as a general rule!). But as it stands, all Christians could agree with it.



    Well, the NT teaches that--the only debate is over how to interpret it!

    However, what the Article actually says is "by our own works and deservings." Of course, the dispute between Protestants and Catholics is over whether works done in us by the power of the Holy Spirit are "our own works and deservings." Again, I'm not disputing that the folks who put the Articles together intended this to be a rejection of "Rome's" position.



    I'm not sure why you think I would need to make that argument. The Article doesn't differ substantially from the Lutheran view, but it is considerably vaguer. More to the present point, it makes no claim to be the "article by which the Church stands or falls." It says that it's "a most wholesome doctrine, and very full of comfort."



    I disagree with these doctrines, yes. I have good grounds for doing so. Ignoring my actual grounds, or failing to inquire as to what they are, you proceed to tell me what my real reasons are. This is not a courteous or reasonable form of theological discussion. We can all sit around and come up with reasons why other people don't agree with our favored doctrines, instead of actually dealing with their challenges.



    No language of imputation here. Paul does not explain what "being made sin" means.



    No dispute that Jesus shared in our alienation from God's life by suffering torment and death on the Cross.

    Dispute only about whether "imputation" is the best way to talk about that holy mystery.
     
  8. Contarini

    Contarini New Member

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    Because I haven't seen better.



    Because whatever Protestants have to say that is valuable can only make its full contribution to an eventual orthodox consensus by being reintegrated into the broader stream of the Church, including the contributions of the very different Eastern approach to these things.



    They may all be right to some degree. The doctrines of Trent may in fact be everything the RCC claims for them--that is to say, a correct exposition of the historic Faith that avoids error and which must be affirmed, as far as it goes, by anyone who is orthodox. But I'm as certain as a fallible human can be in theological matters that a) there are Protestant insights that need to be more adequately received by the RCs and the Orthodox and b) none of the existing confessional Protestant statements are correct and necessary expositions of orthodoxy even as it has developed so far (which I admit Trent may be).

    Of course I could be wrong. So could you. I'm not sure what you expect to accomplish by asking this question. One could ask it of anything we happen to believe.



    Yes. That's why it's "the best we have" and not adequate even in the highly limited sense in which, say, the Nicene Creed is adequate (i.e., adequate to the task of effectively closing a particular controversy by clarifying the position that must be held for orthodoxy to be maintained).




    How does this answer my challenge?

    I repeat that challenge: if the Church cannot exist without the distinctively Protestant doctrine of justification, then where was the Church between 100 and 1500? If your last sentence means that the Church can exist even without the distinctively Protestant doctrine of justification, then you agree with me that this is not the doctrine by which the Church stands or falls, and I'm not sure what we are arguing about.



    Again, this doesn't answer my question: was there a true Church between 100 and 1500? If the "sword" in question divides Protestants from all Christians who lived between the time of the Apostles and the Reformation, well then, we know where we stand, and one can question why you choose to identify with a tradition that draws so heavily on a time when there was no true Church, rather than with a more strictly "Biblical," restorationist tradition. If it doesn't, then what's the relevance?

    You are very eloquent, but eloquence doesn't constitute relevance.

    Edwin
     
  9. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Anna, I don't really have a problem with anything you said in the above post. Imputation was perfect for all time, and the justification was by faith alone. I believe that answered the thread. The second point, of how to understand justification and what role it should play in our lives, I believe, is a complex question.
     
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  10. Jerome

    Jerome Member

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    Part I
    Contarini,

    Your "challenge" is this:

    Plato once said that without distinctions nothing can be understood. In order for us to have a meaningful theological discussion, a few distinctions need to be made. Let's begin with the following:

    (a) An orthodox church preaches the Gospel in its purity.
    (b) A heterodox church preaches the Gospel in a way that perverts its purity, but retains enough of the Gospel so as to still be properly called the church.
    (c) A heretical church is not the church at all, preaching something utterly foreign and opposed to the doctrine of Christ.

    The church is the creature of God’s justifying word of promise in Christ. Where the justifying word of God is not proclaimed, there is no church. The fact that a heterodox church is still rightly called the church does not mean that such a church does not itself depend upon the doctrine of justification as imputed righteousness for its existence, but rather that, by a felicitous inconsistency, it retains enough of the free grace of the Gospel in its preaching to be called the church. In other words, such a church is not rightly called the church in virtue of its errors, but rather in spite of them. As the scripture says, even when we are faithless, God remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself (II Timothy 2:13).To the extent that a heterodox church retains the Gospel in its preaching, we rightly say that it is the church (in the wide sense). To the extent that a heterodox church denies the Gospel in its perversion of the doctrine of justification, we rightly say that it is not the church in the (narrow sense).

    I did not frame the subject of this thread within the logic of scarcity (as you have), but rather within the logic of abundance—in accordance with the overflowing grace and mercy of God (e.g., the wedding at Cana, the feeding of the five thousand, the cross, the institution of the Sacraments, etc.). The logic of scarcity asks: what is the minimum the church must retain to be called the church? Like the question of how many pieces of straw constitute a pile (25? 12? 5?), the question of what we must retain at minimum to be rightly called the church is a dangerous and even deadly one that threatens the heart of faith: the sure and certain trust in the promises of God. The logic of abundance understands that the church’s life and breath subsists in every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4). According to such logic, the church is only the church when it is the church in the fullest sense, i.e., when it faithfully preaches the word of God as Law and Gospel, killing sinners and raising up new creations in Christ. Again, the fact that a heterodox church can still rightly be called the church is true, not in virtue of the errors taught in heterodox churches, but rather in spite of them.

    You seem to have confounded the following, distinct propositions: (a) the doctrine of justification as imputed righteousness is the article upon which the church stands or falls, and (b) the church is not truly being the church in the fullest sense of the word by not purely preaching and teaching the doctrine of justification as imputed righteousness. These are not the same. Your confounding them seems to rest on your view of the doctrine of justification as imputed righteousness to be an abstract concept, principle, or theory requiring intellectual assent and explicit confession in order to be the doctrine upon which the church stands or falls. To argue with me as though this is what I am asserting is to fight a straw man, and not what I—as well as the Lutheran reformers—am actually asserting.
    I do not understand or argue the doctrine of justification to be an abstract theory or principle appropriated via intellectual assent, but rather an event worked by God through the preacher: the actual, concrete, first-to-second-person (I to you) delivery of the free forgiveness of God in Christ for sinners. It is God’s word—not our intellectual grasp of it—which determines the salvation of its hearers. We have the sure and certain promise of God that His word will never return to Him empty, but always accomplishes the purpose for which it is sent (Isaiah 55:11). Thus God is at work wherever His Son is preached, the article of justification being the article upon which the church stands or falls even when the church does not cognitively recognize it as such. The doctrine of justification is not an explanation of the work of God in Christ, but rather a description of it. It is a doctrine that aligns itself with the axiom: lex orandi, lex credendi (“the rule of prayer is the rule of faith”). It is a doctrine descriptive of the life of prayer, which does not rely upon any work or deed as contributive to salvation, but trusts and relies solely on the merit of Christ accounted to the sinner by faith, apart from every work.
     
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  11. Jerome

    Jerome Member

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    Part II
    Here is a second distinction that is needful for our discussion to be meaningful:

    (a) A bad tree produces bad fruit. The bad tree cannot become a good tree by producing good fruit
    because 1) it is not able to and 2) it is not willing to. To produce good fruit would be to transcend its bad nature. Producing bad fruit is simply what the bad tree does. The only way for the bad tree to produce good fruit is for the bad tree to be made good.
    (b) A good tree produces good fruit. The good tree did not become good by producing good fruit, but produces good fruit because it is good. It does not try or strive to produce good fruit, nor does it examine its fruit to determine whether or not it is good. Rather, the good tree produces good fruit spontaneously, freely, and without compulsion. The good tree is accounted as good, not for the sake of the fruit it produces (though good fruit will inevitably be present on a good tree), but for the sake that it is good by its very nature.

    That good works have no part in our being accounted righteous before God does not negate the fact that good works are always present with true faith. Luther himself said that any effort to separate faith from works is as useless as the effort to separate heat from fire. While Luther taught with St. Paul that faith alone justifies sinners before God, yet he also taught (again with St. Paul) that faith is never alone, but is always accompanied by the works prepared for us in Christ before the world began. As St. Paul says:

    Notice that St. Paul says that we are made alive in Christ and created in Him in order to do good works, not vice versa. We are born as bad trees, being “dead in sins and trespasses” (2:1). As bad trees, we did what bad trees do: produce bad fruit by the “spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience” (2:2). How were we made good trees? By being made alive “together with Christ” (2:5). We are created in Christ Jesus (i.e. made good trees) solely by faith (2:8), for the purpose of doing the good works that God has prepared for us to walk in (2:10). However, it is not God who needs our works (God needs nothing), but rather our neighbor who needs them—desperately. Our works are pleasing to God not because they increase, cause, or maintain our status as justified saints before Him, but because we are the justified saints of God—having been made such through faith in Jesus Christ.

    I have noticed also that whenever anyone cites a clear word of Scripture to you regarding the teaching of justification as imputed righteousness, you frantically call upon the intercession of St. Ambiguity, St. Obscurity, and St. Competing Interpretations in order to evade what would otherwise be the sole rule, norm, and authority of church doctrine. Your evasion presupposes that the word of Scripture is so hopelessly obscure, ambiguous, and incapable of asserting anything clearly and plainly itself, that we must shine our light of interpretive skills on it in order to make it even remotely comprehensible. But it is not by the dim glimmer of our light that the Scripture needs to be understood, but the brilliant, burning, consuming light of the word itself which gives us understanding. As the Scripture says, “Your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path” (Psalm 119:105). It is not, strictly speaking, we who interpret Scripture, but Scripturewhich interprets us. In the event of revelation, it is the word of God which reveals our sin through the Law and our Savior through the Gospel. The doctrine of God justifying sinners by imputing to them the righteousness of His Son, Jesus Christ, purely and solely on account of faith in Him, does not depend upon our interpretation of it, but is simply the way in which God works and acts in creation for the salvation of sinners, and without which there would be no salvation.

    Christ did not lie when He said: “It is finished!” With Christ’s last, forsaken breath on the cross, the sins of the whole world were taken away. And with Christ’s resurrection, death, hell, and the devil were irrevocably defeated and conquered. We are not accounted righteous before God because of our works (even those He has prepared for us to walk in) but only on account of faith in what Christ has done on our behalf, for us. Christ alone is my righteousness; and He is yours as well! Don’t doubt it, but believe and rejoice in it! You are a sinner freely forgiven and accounted righteous before God solely for the sake of the bleeding, dying God on the cross! Boast in Him!

    Lutheran theology was never intended to be an innovative theology for some new time and place, but rather always intended to serve the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church from age to age. No one knew or taught this better and more often than Luther himself—as well as his fellow Lutheran reformers. I suggest you read (or at least peruse) the Book of Concord, Melanchthon's Loci Communes, and/or Chemnitz's Examination of the Council of Trent. When/if you do, you will realize that the claim that Luther's doctrine was somehow utterly foreign to the early and medieval church fathers is one that needs to be proved by the one who asserts it, rather than disproved by the one it is asserted to. In other words, the burden of proof surrounding your “challenge” lies—rather heavily I might add—on your back, not mine.

    Lastly, it was and is not my intention to be “eloquent” or “relevant”, but faithful. But the mere fact that you do not care to admit relevance to what I have written does not make it so. What I have written is composed of the subjects of real sin, real law, and real grace. What could be more “relevant” to a meaningful theological discussion? Apparently, and oddly enough, you seem to have no problem ascribing efficaciousness to your own words, but only to the words of God when He speaks of imputing Christ’s righteousness to sinners. Do not be deceived: wherever the imputed righteousness of Christ for sinners is denied, there the Old Adam and the Old Eve are frantically at work in order to protect themselves and their kingdoms from the radical and destructive grace of the cross—which for them spells death, but for the new creation in Christ spells life.

    Yours in Christ,
    Jerome
     
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  12. Gordon

    Gordon Well-Known Member

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    Thanks for that Jerome it goes hand in hand with a discussion I am having on the religious soapbox of our social motor cycle club.