Cicero says, justice is rendering to each man his due, and Pelagius agrees. Paul says, justice is God’s giving ungodly sinners eternal life, and Augustine follows Paul. Remigius of Auxerre noted the contrast: “Mea iustitia est malum pro malo reddere. Tu solus iustus, quam circa nos ostendisti, reddens bonum pro malo, qua de impio facis bonum.” Yet, by the twelfth century, theologians were quoting the Ciceronian definition and attributing it to Augustine, and Biel inserts a Ciceronian justice in his... Read more

McGrath notes that Augustine interpreted the genitive in the phrase “righteousness of God” in Rom 1 objectively, so that it was understood as the righteousness that God gives in saving sinners (in “making” them righteous). Ambrosiaster, as I pointed out in an earliet post, interpreted the genitive subjectively – the righteousness is God’s own faithfulness to His promises. As McGrath points out, these were so far from being seen as incompatible interpretations that “it is not uncommon to find both... Read more

There was a consensus among the theologians of Trent, McGrath argues, that justification was “factitive,” a view that excluded that “a sinner may be justified solely as a matter of reputation or imputation, while remaining a sinner in fact.” But of course that raises the question, What exactly is a fact? (more…) Read more

McGrath traces the odd development in Lutheran Orthodoxy of the notion that regeneration and faith precede justification in such a way that “where Luther had understood justification to concern the unbelieving sinner, orthodoxy revised this view, referring justification to the believing sinner.” This takes Lutheran Orthodoxy back in the direction of a medieval doctrine, albeit retaining the forensic character of justification. On some other points, Reformed Orthodoxy remained more true to Luther than Lutherans: “the strongly predestinarian cast of Reformed... Read more

McGrath notes, “While justification was universally understood to involve the regeneration of humanity, the opinion that an ontological change is thereby effected within humans is particularly associated with the period of High Scholasticism and the development of the concept of created grace. The earlier medieval theologians expressed the change effected in justification in terms of a particular presence of God in his creature, which did not necessarily effect an ontological change.” Read more

At least since the Reformation, the choices on the meaning of justification have been two: Either justification is a declaration of right standing or it’s a making-righteous (as in Bonaventure’s claim that the grace of justification purifies, illuminates, and perfects the soul). But are these the only alternatives? (more…) Read more

NT Wright’s denial that justification is “entry language” is usually taken as a criticism of evangelical Protestant treatments of justification. But his denial cuts deeper: From the high middle ages, Roman Catholic theologians taught that justification was a motus from sin to grace. From Wright’s viewpoint, the Reformers agreed with Catholic soteriology at this level: Protestant and Catholic doorways were different, and were entered in different ways, but both saw justification as a doorway. Read more