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I hope to post more elaborate comments on Newman\u2019s classic and challenging Lectures on Justification <\/i> (recently reprinted by Wipf & Stock), but a few tidbits with have to suffice. <\/p>\n
1) Newman frames the whole discussion by distinguishing between justification and faith as they are in idea and terminology, and justification and faith as they are in concrete reality. One need not agree with his every application of this distinction to recognize the usefulness of the distinction, and the way it lends itself to what I\u2019ve called a \u201cthick description\u201d of faith (Newman himself uses similar terminology). <\/p>\n
2) Newman gets Luther badly wrong, collapsing Luther into 19th-century evangelicalism even though he includes at least one extended quotation from Luther that makes the differences clear. If the Finns like Mannermaa are correct, Newman and Luther are bosom buddies, both insisting that justifying righteousness is the righteousness of Christ who dwells in believers through the Spirit. <\/p>\n
3) Perhaps the most challenging aspect of Newman\u2019s work (written while he was still an Anglican) is his claim that the Protestant doctrine of faith is an abstraction. Faith, for Protestants, is more than assent but less than obedience, and Newman claims that this understanding of faith lends an air of abstraction and unreality to Protestant theology in general. He writes, \u201cThere is nothing precise, nothing to grapple with, when we are told, for instance, that faith justifies independent of its being a right and good principle, \u2013 that it justifies as an instrument not as a condition, \u2013 that love is its inseparable accident, yet not its external criterion, \u2013 that good works are necessary, but not to be called so in controversy or popular preaching; and that nothing in us constitutes our being justified. Such a doctrine is, what it makes justification to be, a shadow.\u201d The Protestant doctrine of faith is not so meager of Newman claims, but this critique hits enough soft spots to deserve close consideration, and a more extended discussion than I can offer here. <\/p>\n
One line of response could pick up on Newman\u2019s own description: \u201cLove and fear, and heavenly-mindedness, and obedience, and firmness, and zeal, and humility, are as certainly one with justifying faith, considered as a thing existing, as bones, muscles, and vital organs, are necessary to that outward frame of man which meets the eye, though they do not met it. Love and fear and obedience are not really posterior to justifying faith for even a moment of time, unless bonse or muscles are formed after the countenance and complexion.\u201d All of which might well be a helpful analogy, but Newman must also admit that musics and bones and organs are not sight <\/i> . <\/p>\n
4) Newman anticipates in interesting ways some of the thinking of NT Wright. Newman affirms \u201cjustification by faith alone\u201d but says that it doesn\u2019t describe the manner by which we are justified, but rather serves as a symbol and emblem of the fact that we are justified apart from any merit or worthiness on our part. Teaching justification by faith tells us that God alone justifies us through Christ. Faith, he says, is an instrument of justification, but not an instrument for the initiation of justification. Rather, for Newman, baptism initiates into a state of acceptance and justification (and, for Newman, is the moment when the Spirit of Christ indwells), but one continues in that state through faith. This appears to be close to Wright\u2019s idea that justification is not \u201centry language\u201d in Paul. <\/p>\n
Much to contemplate and argue with in Newman. Hopefully, more later. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I hope to post more elaborate comments on Newman\u2019s classic and challenging Lectures on Justification (recently reprinted by Wipf & Stock), but a few tidbits with have to suffice. 1) Newman frames the whole discussion by distinguishing between justification and faith as they are in idea and terminology, and justification and faith as they are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theology-soteriology"],"yoast_head":"\n