Justification1
By Kenneth D. Macleod
I. From the Fathers to the Reformation
We are familiar with the concise, scriptural definition of The Shorter Catechism: ‘Justification is an
act of God’s free grace, wherein He pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in His sight, only for
the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone’ (Ans. 33). James Buchanan explains the
term as meaning ‘man’s acceptance with God, or his being regarded and treated as righteous in His sight – as the
object of His favour and not of His wrath, of His blessing and not of His curse’.2
Accordingly this is not man’s inward righteousness, his sanctification; it is his legal standing before God. The
question is: Does God now accept the sinner, or does he still stand condemned before his holy Judge? Louis
Berkhof brings out this point clearly with his definition: ‘Justification is a judicial act of God, in which He
declares, on the basis of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, that all the claims of the law are satisfied with
respect to the sinner’.3 Justification is not the infusing of righteousness
into a sinner; it is appropriate to use these words in describing regeneration and sanctification but not
justification. In the same category as justification is condemnation; they are opposites, but they are
both legal concepts. So John Owen points out that ‘condemnation is not the infusing of a habit of wickedness
into him that is condemned . . . but the passing a sentence upon a man with respect unto his wickedness’. Then
he comes to his main point: ‘No more is justification the change of a person from inherent unrighteousness unto
righteousness by the infusion of a principle of grace’, but the passing of a sentence declaring ‘him to be
righteous’.4
It is vitally important, as we will see, to keep this distinction between justification and sanctification very
clearly in view; in God’s revelation of religious truth in Scripture these are distinct ideas. The
Westminster Confession stresses that sinners are justified, ‘not by infusing righteousness into them, but
by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous: not for anything wrought in
them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone’ (11:1). Much of the doctrinal confusion that has plagued the
Christian era has arisen through a failure to keep distinct the two ideas of justification and
sanctification.
One other general point at this stage: Buchanan notes what is ‘characteristic of all human systems as
distinguished from the divine method of justification’; it is ‘self-righteousness or self-sufficiency in one or
other of its manifold forms, which are all, more or less, opposed to dependence on the grace of God’. This
error, he says, is universal, and manifests itself in human beings in three distinct ways: (1) ‘in reliance on
the general goodness of their character and moral conduct’, (2) ‘in their observance of religious forms and
ceremonies, as a compensation for any shortcoming in moral obedience’, (3) ‘in their possession of peculiar
privileges, viewed as special tokens of God’s favour’.5
With these points in mind, let us now proceed to consider how the doctrine of justification has fared at the
hands of the Church – and, in particular, its theologians – in the period since the Apostles. The Fathers, the
Church leaders during the centuries immediately following the Apostles, do not provide an elaborate exposition
of the doctrine of justification. But in their writings we find indications of what they believed on the
subject. For instance, in the Epistle to Diognetus, we read:
In whom was it possible that we, transgressors and ungodly as we were, could be justified, save in
the Son of God alone? O sweet interchange, O unsearchable operation, O unexpected benefit, that the
transgression of many should be hidden in one righteous Person and that the righteousness of One should justify
many transgressors!6
However, after Constantine established Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire, persecution became a
thing of the past and professing Christians began to lose their sense of sin. Accordingly they no longer felt
their need of an effective remedy; they lost sight of the significance of the blood of Christ and turned their
backs on the doctrine of justification by faith.
There can be no doubt that the unscriptural teachings of Romanism on this subject can in part be traced back to
the writings of Augustine of Hippo (354-430); he was the greatest of the Fathers and did much to oppose the
teachings of Pelagius – the British monk who denied original sin and maintained that man has power to save
himself. However, Buchanan argues that, while Augustine’s use of the term justification included the idea
of sanctification, he did not confound the two ideas. Augustine’s ‘was not a mind’, Buchanan insists,
that could confound things so different as the guilt of sin and its defilement, the remission of sin
and the renewal of the sinner, a man’s external relation to God and his inherent spiritual character. And . . .
there is no evidence to show that he made a sinner’s forgiveness and acceptance with God to rest on his own
inherent righteousness as its procuring cause.7
Buchanan describes the views of Anselm on this subject (died 1109) as ‘thoroughly Protestant’ and quotes Bernard
of Clairvaux (died 1115) saying, ‘The Apostle says, "If one died for all, then were all dead," meaning thereby
to intimate that the satisfaction made by One should be imputed to all, even as One conversely bore the sins of
all’.8 The most prominent of mediaeval theologians was Thomas Aquinas (died 1274),
whose massive writings have been fundamental for later Roman Catholic thinking. His idea of justification
included three components: the forgiveness of sin, the infusion of grace, and the turning of the will to
God. And in the theology of the Middle Ages the justification of a sinner became dependent on the grace that is
infused into him; further, the good works which result from the infused grace have merit before God. It is that
merit which leads to pardon and acceptance with God. There was even a kind of merit in doing one’s best; what it
amounted to was that people could have some claim on God for spiritual blessings on the basis of their good
works.
And in Baptism, it was said, God first renews the soul and then forgives, completely removing all the effects of
original sin – though, if the Baptism is to be thus effective in adults, they must be properly prepared by
exercising the seven virtues of faith, fear, hope, love, penitence, with a purpose to receive the sacrament of
the Lord’s Supper, and a purpose to lead a new and obedient life – a whole series of good works. We may note the
form in which the Roman teaching on Baptism is put in the present-day Catechism of the Catholic Church:
‘By Baptism all sins are forgiven, original sin and all personal sins, as well as all punishment for sin’; and,
further: ‘Baptism not only purifies from all sins, but also makes the neophyte [that is, the one who has just
been baptized] "a new creature", an adopted son of God, who has become a "partaker of the divine nature", member
of Christ and co-heir with Him, and a temple of the Holy Spirit’.9 This is what is
claimed to take place merely as a result of the priest taking some water, sprinkling it on the person and
repeating the requisite words.
It was in such a climate that the sale of indulgences flourished in the early sixteenth century – people were
given the impression that a monetary contribution would lead to the forgiveness of their sins; it was even
possible for them to deliver themselves from the agonies of purgatory on account of sins they had not yet
committed. And it was when these indulgences began to be sold among his own people that Martin Luther prepared
the 95 theses that he nailed to the door of the Wittenberg church, which was effectively the beginning of the
Reformation.
Luther had previously come to realise, through painful personal experience, that the way of salvation which God
has provided for sinners is by faith in Jesus Christ, not through the ceremonies of the Church. He had suffered
terribly at the thought of the righteousness of God, which he had understood as God dealing righteously with the
sinner – which for him could imply nothing else but God’s inflexible severity in punishing sin.
But Luther relates his deliverance:
At last I came to apprehend it thus: through the gospel is revealed the righteousness which avails
with God, a righteousness by which God, in His mercy and compassion, justifies us, as it is written: ‘The just
shall live by faith’. Straightway I felt as if I were born anew; it was as if I had found the door of paradise
thrown wide open. The expression, ‘the righteousness of God’, which I so much hated before became now dear and
precious . . . I see the Father – inflexible in justice, yet delighting in mercy – ‘just’ beyond all my
terrified conscience could picture Him; He ‘justifies’ me a sinner.”10
God had showed the future Reformer – with whom the idea of justification by faith is so closely associated –
that sinners are saved by faith alone, not by their good works.
So during the winter of 1515-16 Luther, lecturing on Romans 3:28, was declaring to his students:
We hold, recognise and affirm, we conclude from what is said that a man is justified, reckoned
righteous before God, whether Greek or Jew, by faith, apart from the works of the law, without the help and
necessity of the works of the law.11
The Lord had led him to a thorough understanding of the doctrine of justification, which William Cunningham
describes as
the great fundamental distinguishing doctrine of the Reformation . . . regarded by all the Reformers
as of primary and paramount importance. The leading charge which they adduced against the Church of Rome was
that she had corrupted and perverted the doctrine of Scripture upon this subject in a way that was dangerous to
the souls of men; and it was mainly by the exposition, enforcement and application of the true doctrine of God’s
Word in regard to it that they assailed and overturned the leading doctrines and practices of the papal
system.12
Thomas M‘Crie was impressed by two particular points in the writings of the Reformers:
The first is the exact conformity between the doctrine maintained by them respecting the
justification of sinners and that of the Apostles. The second is the surprising harmony which subsisted among
them on this important doctrine. On some questions respecting the sacraments and the external government and
discipline of the church, they differed; but on the article of free justification, Luther and Zwingli,
Melanchthon and Calvin, Cranmer and Knox spoke the very same language. This was not owing to their having read
each other’s writings, but because they copied from the same divine original . . . Some of their successors, by
giving way to speculation, gradually lost sight of this distinguishing badge of the Reformation and landed at
last in Arminianism, which is nothing else but the popish doctrine in a Protestant dress.13
II. Reformation Teaching
As time went on, the Reformers may have expressed more clearly their understanding of justification, but they
taught the substance of it from the beginning. They were clear that justification describes a change in the
sinner’s legal state, not in his moral character – yet they were equally clear that a change of moral character
must inevitably accompany his justification. When sinners are justified, their guilt has been removed; they are
no longer under condemnation; they have been forgiven; they have been accepted before God as if they had always
kept his law perfectly. And sinners are justified, not because of anything they have done to deserve it, but
only by God’s grace, for the sake of the righteousness of Christ – which has been imputed to them and received
by faith alone.
Yet while regeneration and sanctification form no part of justification, every justified sinner is regenerate;
his sanctification has begun and it will continue. Thus Calvin corrected Cardinal Sadoleto:
You touch on justification by faith. But this doctrine, which stands supreme in our religion, has
been effaced by you from the memory of men. You allege that we take no account of good works. If you look into
my catechism, at the first word you will be silent. We deny, it is true, that they are of any avail in man’s
justification, not even so much as a hair, for the Scripture gives us no hope except in the goodness of God
alone. But we attribute worth to works in the life of the just, for Christ came to create a people zealous of
good works.14
The Roman Catholic response came ultimately from the Council of Trent, which gathered for three periods between
1545 and 1563 in what is now a northern Italian town but was then within the Holy Roman Empire. On the subject
of justification, the Council produced 16 chapters and 33 canons which, says Cunningham, are ‘characterised by
vagueness and verbiage, confusion, obscurity and unfairness’. Indeed he adds, ‘It is not very easy on several
points to make out clearly and distinctly what were the precise doctrines which they wished to maintain and
condemn’.15 But it is important to note that, despite Vatican II, Rome has not
rejected the Canons of the Council of Trent; they are still central to her teaching. Pope John Paul II described
Trent’s declarations on justification as ‘one of the most valuable achievements for the formulation of Catholic
doctrine’, adding significantly that ‘the Council intended to safeguard the role assigned by Christ to the
Church and her sacraments in the process of sinful man’s justification’.16
The Council was adamant that justification not only includes the forgiveness of sins but also sanctification, a
renovation of man’s moral nature.17 The critical point here, of course, is how the
term justification is used in Scripture. In various contexts, it is used as the opposite of
condemnation; for instance: the judges in Israel were to ‘justify the righteous and condemn the wicked’
(Deut. 25:1); and in a context that is more directly relevant to our present concerns, Paul encourages
believers with the words: ‘It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth?’ (Rom. 8:33). In each
case, to justify and to condemn are clearly legal terms; to justify is the opposite of to
condemn and means to declare righteous; justification is not a term which can be used to
describe the infusion of righteousness into anyone – any more than condemnation can be used to describe
making that person’s moral character worse.
We may note one further piece of evidence: David’s plea in Psalm 143:2: ‘Enter not into judgement with Thy
servant: for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified’. Here justification is again placed in the context
of an act of judgement. In the particular context of a sinner entering the kingdom of God, his
justification does not refer to him being made righteous; it refers to him being accounted righteous; it
is a statement of how God, as judge, views him. For the sake of Christ, the justified sinner is viewed as free
from guilt and as having always kept the law of God perfectly.
Yet in somewhat different contexts, we have what Buchanan16 refers to as the
declarative sense of justification – for example, Luke 7:29, where we are told that ‘all the people . . .
justified God’. In other words, the people declared, or acknowledged, that God was righteous. Similarly when
James asks, ‘Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?’
(2:21), he intends us to understand that Abraham’s works declared the genuineness of his spiritual state.
James is not discussing how Abraham entered the kingdom of God. He did so by faith; but where there is faith,
good works will follow. Here James is referring to Abraham’s good work of offering his son Isaac on the altar.
Good works declare that the faith in the justified person’s heart is genuine.
But not all that seems to be faith is actually genuine. This is what James has in mind when he says, ‘Even so
faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone’ (v 17). This is why James can ask, ‘What doth it profit, my
brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? Can faith save him?’ (v 14). The question is: Can
the dead faith, the faith from which good works do not flow, save anyone? And the answer must be, No, for it is
not genuine, living faith – which is clear because there are no works to evidence spiritual life, neither before
God or before other human beings. Those individuals whose works justify them, in the sense in which James uses
the word, have already been justified by faith without works; and that is now to use the word in a
somewhat different sense to how James used it and, more importantly, in a rather different context – that of
entering the kingdom of God. In this context it is of unspeakable importance to understand that no works of ours
can in the least degree contribute to our acceptance with God.
Trent thundered its anathema against anyone who would deny the need for divine grace in justification –
which for the Council included sanctification. But, in the Christian Church, the number of outright Pelagians
must always have been minimal (Pelagians claim that human beings are able to make themselves acceptable to God
by what they can do, without help from above). The vast majority of professing Christians would allow some place
for grace; by far the commoner error is to attempt to divide up the basis for salvation between divine grace and
human works – which is semi-Pelagianism, its best-known branch being Arminianism.
But Trent thundered a further anathema against ‘anyone [who] says that the sinner is justified by faith
alone, meaning that nothing else is required to co-operate in order to obtain the grace of
justification’.19 This was the main error confronting the Reformers: not a
doctrine, at least in theory, of works alone – but semi-Pelagianism, the doctrine of works plus grace.
Cunningham comments that, when we view Trent’s scheme as a whole and ‘in connection with the natural tendencies
of the human heart’, it is
so constructed as to be fitted to foster presumption and self-confidence, to throw obstacles in the
way of men’s submitting themselves to the divine method of justification, and to frustrate the great end which
the gospel scheme of salvation was, in all its parts, expressly designed and intended to accomplish.20
And he expresses that divine purpose in the words of the Westminster Confession: ‘that both the exact
justice and rich grace of God might be glorified in the justification of sinners’ (11:3).
We need not go beyond the Epistles of Paul to understand that our works can form no part of the basis for our
salvation. Works rule out grace; ‘to him that worketh’, Paul stresses, ‘is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt’. But, on the other hand, ‘to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth
the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness’ (Rom. 4:4,5); it is the ungodly who are
justified. ‘No place is left’, says Owen emphatically, ‘for any works to make the least approach towards our
justification before God’.21
We may note, at slightly greater length, the views of the English Reformers, as expressed in their Homily on Salvation:
The true understanding of this doctrine – we be justified freely by faith, without works; or that we
be justified by faith in Christ only – is not that this our own act to believe in Christ, or this our faith in
Christ, which is within us, doth justify us and deserve (or merit) our justification . . . but the true
understanding and meaning thereof is that although we hear God’s Word and believe it; although we have faith,
hope, charity, repentance, dread and fear of God within us, and do never so many works thereunto, yet we must
renounce the merit of all our said virtues . . . which we either have done, shall do, or can do, as things that
be far too weak and insufficient and imperfect to deserve remission of sins and our justification. And therefore
we must trust only in God’s mercy and that sacrifice which our High Priest and Saviour Jesus Christ, the Son of
God, once offered.22
It cannot be too strongly stated that the one basis for the forgiveness of sinners and for accepting them as
righteous before God – that is, for their justification – is the work of Christ in this world as the substitute
of sinners. That basis is the righteousness of Christ imputed to them and received by faith alone. So John
Calvin states:
The power of justifying which belongs to faith consists not in its worth as a work. Our
justification depends entirely on the mercy of God and the merits of Christ; when faith apprehends these, it is
said to justify . . . We say that faith justifies, not because it merits justification for us by its own worth,
but because it is an instrument by which we freely obtain the righteousness of Christ.23
Again in the words of the Westminster Confession, God justifies,
nor by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience, to [sinners]
as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving and
resting on Him and His righteousness, by faith: which faith they have not of themselves; it is the gift of God
(11:1).
And this issue remains one of the great dividing lines between true, scriptural Christianity and the errors of
Rome. For instance, Karl Keating, described as ‘a Roman Catholic apologist’, wrote in 1988, ‘The Bible is quite
clear that we are saved by faith. The Reformers were quite right in saying this, and to this extent they merely
repeated the constant teaching of the Church. Where they erred was in saying that we are saved by faith
alone.’24 The error, of course, lies on Keating’s side of the argument but,
as we will notice again later, any omission of that significant word alone in this context is downright
dangerous.
While justification is by faith alone, faith is not the only activity in the regenerated soul. When God implants
new life in the soul – the new life which makes faith possible – he also implants every other grace. Otherwise
it would be, to hark back to James’ expression, a dead faith. The Westminster Confession expresses the
matter with characteristic conciseness: ‘Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and His righteousness, is
the alone instrument of justification; yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with
all other saving graces’ (11:2). We may also note that saving faith is not, as Roman Catholics and others are
encouraged to believe, only assent – a mere intellectual acceptance that particular teachings are true.25 Faith includes assent, of course, but it is more than assent; it includes trust. In the
exercise of the faith that justifies, the sinner receives and rests upon Jesus Christ ‘as He is offered to us in
the gospel’.26
When sinners believe, they are justified. In other words, the righteousness of Christ is imputed to them. Just
as the sin of the human being – his guilt – is put to the account of Christ, so the righteousness of Christ is
put to the account of the sinner when he believes, and he is accounted righteous. Charles Hodge explains the
righteousness of Christ to mean: ‘all He became, did and suffered to satisfy the demands of divine justice, and
merit for His people the forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life’.27
Christ was in the world as the substitute of his people. In his sufferings, he was bearing the punishment due to
those who would believe on him; in his law-keeping, he was also acting as their substitute. What Christ did as
the substitute of sinners is imputed to them – that is, it is put to their account.
Hodge remarks that ‘Philemon had no doubt what Paul meant when he told him to impute to him the debt of
Onesimus’.28 Believers are treated, in a legal sense, as if they had brought about
these blessings themselves. Because Christ suffered in their place, they are forgiven; because Christ kept the
law in their place, they are treated as if they had kept the law perfectly themselves and so they have a right,
in Christ Jesus, to eternal life.
Justification is not merely forgiveness. In W G T Shedd’s words:
The law is not completely fulfilled by the endurance of penalty only. It must also be obeyed. Christ
both endured the penalty due to man for disobedience and perfectly obeyed the law for him; so that He was a
vicarious substitute in reference to both the precept and the penalty of the law.29
This was the understanding of the Reformers but was denied by Rome and by the followers of Arminius.
The Arminians believed that God treated faith as if it was complete obedience to the law – on the grounds that
the believer’s faith ‘is counted [or reckoned, or imputed] for righteousness’ (Rom. 4:5). Their idea is
that God accepts the sinner on the basis of his faith and of the perfect obedience which flows from it, and thus
faith becomes the ground of justification. But this is to treat faith as a work, in spite of the fact that this
verse refers to the one who is justified as’him that worketh not’. Commenting on this verse, Hodge states: ‘It
must express the idea that it was by means of faith that Abraham came to be treated as righteous, and not that
faith was taken in lieu of perfect obedience’. And Matthew Poole notes that faith is ‘not considered in
itself as a work, but in relation to Christ, the object of it, and as an act of receiving and applying Him’; so
that the sinner by faith lays hold of the righteousness of Christ, which is imputed to him. Thus Calvin
comments: ‘Faith adorns us with the righteousness of another, which it begs from God’. Faith has no merit
whatever in itself; it is just the instrument which lays hold of the glorious provision which God has made in
Christ for needy sinners.
To see what is imputed to the sinner in justification we must note the teaching of 2 Corinthians 5:21. There
Paul says in the name of all believers: ‘He [God] hath made him [Christ] to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that
we might be made the righteousness of God in him’.
Charles Hodge comments as follows:
There is probably no passage in the Scriptures in which the doctrine of justification is more
concisely and clearly stated than in this. Our sins were imputed to Christ, and His righteousness is imputed to
us. He bore our sins; we are clothed in His righteousness. Imputation conveys neither pollution nor holiness.
Christ bearing our sins did not make Him morally a sinner, any more than the victim was morally defiled which
bore the sins of the people [of Israel]; nor does Christ’s righteousness become subjectively ours; it is not the
moral quality of our souls. That is what is not meant. What is meant it is equally plain. Our sins were the
judicial ground of the sufferings of Christ, so that they were a satisfaction of justice; and His righteousness
is the judicial ground of our acceptance with God, so that our pardon is an act of justice. It is a
justification; or a declaration that justice is satisfied . . . it is not mere pardon, but justification alone,
that gives us peace with God.
III. The Influence of Ecumenical Thinking
We have lingered for some time with the Reformers, as it was in their age that the details of this vital
doctrine of justification were hammered out on the basis of Scripture. Let us now move on to notice how the
forces of twentieth-century ecumenism have impinged on this doctrine. We may look first at the Anglican-Roman
Catholic International Commission, originally established in 1970. What is of interest to us at the moment is
the second report of this body, ARCIC II, entitled Salvation and the Church, which was published in
1987.
The Commission was intended to further an ecumenical agenda, though Pope John Paul II suspended further talks in
the wake of the appointment of an openly-homosexual Anglican bishop in the United States. Salvation and the Church claims that ‘the doctrine of justification . . . can be properly treated only within the wider
context of the doctrine of salvation as a whole’. This is intended to allow the doctrine to be treated within
the bounds of the Roman Catholic concept of justification, as inclusive of sanctification. Not unexpectedly
then, the report merely states: ‘It is by faith that [salvation] is appropriated’30. The report thus lacks the necessary emphasis on faith alone, which, on the other
hand, is the emphasis of the eleventh of the Thirty-Nine articles of the Church of England: ‘We are accounted
righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord Jesus Christ, by faith, and not for our good works
or deservings . . .’31
The report attempts to minimise the differences between the two sides at the Reformation and describes ‘the
disagreements as largely the result of misunderstandings, suspicions and fears’.32
In woolly language it affirms: ‘The righteousness of God our Saviour is not only declared in a judgement made by
God in favour of sinners, but is also bestowed as a gift to make them righteous’ – where no attempt is made to
differentiate between justification and sanctification, which are, in Scripture, two distinct doctrines. Not
surprisingly, the report concludes that ‘this is not an area where any remaining differences of theological
interpretation or ecclesiological emphasis, either within or between our Communions, can justify our continuing
separation’.33 The tragedy is, of course, that while the Roman Catholic Church has
always blatantly allowed tradition an equal place with Scripture as a source for their doctrines, the Anglican
Churches have departed from their historic stance of giving to Scripture fundamental authority over their
teachings. If they respected God’s authority, the Church of England representatives would never have dared to
desert their Reformation heritage so readily.
The words of William Cunningham on the subject of free justification are highly relevant at this point:
This was what Luther called the article of a standing or a falling Church; and the history of the
Church, both before and since his time has fully justified the propriety of the description. There has perhaps
been no department of divine truth against which the assaults of Satan have been more assiduously directed ever
since the origin of the Christian Church than the Scripture doctrine of justification, and there has probably
been no doctrine, the profession and preaching of which have more generally indicated with correctness the state
of vital religion in the Church in all ages.34
Obviously the unwillingness of the representatives of the Church of England to hold fast the doctrine of
justification indicates clearly the low state of true religion in that body today.
Sadly also, present-day Lutheranism must be similarly described in the light of discussions between the Lutheran
World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church. These discussions resulted in a Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in 1999, which was published on October 31, the day on which, 482 years earlier,
Luther had nailed up his theses in Wittenberg. The choice of date was no coincidence, but the Joint Declaration is a betrayal of the work of Luther and the other Reformers. While it acknowledges that real
difficulties did exist at the time of the Reformation, it aims ‘to show that, on the basis of their dialogue,
the subscribing Lutheran Churches and the Roman Catholic Church are now able to articulate a common
understanding of our justification by God’s grace through faith in Christ’ – but not by faith alone. And
it claims to show ‘that the remaining differences in its explication are no longer the occasion for doctrinal
condemnations’.35
However, the ‘common understanding’ seems to rest on a willingness to allow each party in the discussions to
follow their own distinctives. ‘God’s saving work’, it is claimed, ‘can be expressed in the imagery of God as
judge who pronounces sinners innocent and righteous . . . and also in a transformist view which emphasises the
change wrought in sinners by infused grace.’36 Now, it is wrong to use the word
imagery in this context, for God does actually judge sinners. But, more fundamental to our present
discussion is the fact that, while true Protestants believe that salvation includes both justification and
sanctification, they are also clear that the sinner’s acceptance with God is his justification – when the
sinner, who has no righteousness of his own, receives the righteousness of Christ by faith alon.
IV. Destroying Paul’s Doctrine
Let us turn finally to what has become known as the ‘New Perspective on Paul’. The story may begin with E P
Sanders, who calls himself a liberal, modern, secularised Protestant and was a Professor of Religion at Duke
University in America. His book, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, published in 1977, focuses on Judaism
between 200 BC and 200 AD and attempts to answer the question: What type of religion was Paul reacting against?
His conclusion is that in the Judaism of Paul’s time ‘election and ultimately salvation are considered to be by
God’s mercy rather than human achievement’.37
The implication is that Paul could not have been arguing against a reliance on works in his Epistles; however,
it would seem that Sanders and the writers who have followed him have concluded that, because the Judaism of
Paul’s time did not deny grace, it was clear from every charge of resting on works. However, Sanders has
actually acknowledged that the Apocryphal book, 4 Esdras, does promote ‘a religion of individual
self-righteousness’38, and it is unlikely to have been the only explicit statement
of legalism from that era; indeed others have pointed to writings of Josephus, the Jewish historian of the first
century AD. What has become known as Second-Temple Judaism may have been cleared of the charge of Pelagianism,
but it has by no means been cleared of semi-Pelagianism.39
Building on Sanders’ work are the writings of James Dunn, another liberal Protestant, who was a Professor of
Divinity at Durham University. Dunn, who is credited with coining the expression ‘New Perspective on Paul’,
claims that Sanders did not succeed in explaining Paul’s relation to Judaism. He argues that Paul was objecting
to Jewish exclusivism, not to legalism – that the Apostle was opposing the Jews’ use of ‘the works of the law’
to exclude the Gentiles from the covenant community. Dunn claims that the Jews used certain of these ‘works of
the law’ – particularly circumcision, food laws and feast days – as what he calls ‘boundary markers’, to
distinguish those who belonged to God’s covenant people from those who did not.
Dunn’s thinking destroys Paul’s doctrine of justification: he redefines the righteousness of God as his covenant
faithfulness, and sees justification as an acknowledgement that someone is already among God’s covenant people,
while claiming that ‘Paul is ready to insist that a doing of the law is necessary for final acquittal before
God’.40 If this looks very much like justification by works, we must notice an even
more fundamental error: Dunn rejects the substitutionary death of Christ; he sees it merely as a
‘representative’ death in which believers share. We are left with an ongoing justification which will be
finalised on the day of judgement.
In the words of Professor Cornelis P Venema’s critique, this justification concludes ‘with God’s vindication of
the believer who remains steadfast by the obedience of faith to the end’.41 But it
is important for us to distinguish the final judgement, at the end of the world, from justification by faith,
which, as we have repeatedly noted, is a divine, legal declaration that the believing sinner is, for the sake of
Christ and his righteousness, perfectly righteous; the law is perfectly satisfied as far as this sinner is
concerned because of what the Saviour has done in his place. This declaration can never be changed; it does not
need to be confirmed, even on the day of judgement; it most certainly can never be reversed. What will take
place at the judgement is that evidence will be led to prove, beyond any possible doubt, that those who are
called to enter heaven in their resurrected bodies are indeed truly godly. We must not lose sight of the
finality of the sentence that is pronounced in justification, when the sinner first believes.
We turn now to a third ‘New Perspective’ writer, the present Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright,42 who has an Evangelical background. He is a prolific author and has written a number the
books promoting his New Perspective views. Among his books is What Saint Paul Really Said, which is
addressed to a popular audience. There is no doubt that Wright is a first-class communicator, which makes his
departures from Scripture all the more dangerous. He claims that what the Apostle Paul really said was very
different from what the Reformers understood by his writings. What then is the gospel according to Tom Wright?
This gospel is not an answer to the question, How can I find favour with God? but an answer to a very different
question, Who is Lord?
Paul was proclaiming, Wright declares, ‘that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth had been raised from the dead by
Israel’s God; that He had thereby been vindicated as Israel’s Messiah; that, surprising though it might seem, He
was therefore the Lord of the whole world’. Thus men and women are liberated ‘from paganism which had held them
captive’ and are enabled ‘to become, for the first time, the truly human beings they were meant to be’.43 Obviously there is far more to the salvation proclaimed by the biblical gospel than
this. Professor Venema complains that ‘one of the most vexing features of the New Perspective is its failure to
explain the connection between the justification of believers and Christ’s atoning work’.44 This applies to Wright in particular.
Clearly the New Perspective has an unscriptural view of justification. Lying behind it is an inadequate view of
the atonement, and lying behind that again must be an inadequate view of sin. But let us listen to Cunningham:
All false conceptions of the system of Christian doctrine assume, or are based on, inadequate and
erroneous views and impressions of the nature and effects of the Fall – of the sinfulness of the state into
which man fell; producing, of course, equally inadequate and erroneous views and impressions of the difficulty
of effecting their deliverance, and of the magnitude, value and efficacy of the provision made for accomplishing
it. Forgiveness and regeneration, even when admitted to be in some sense necessary, are represented as
comparatively trivial matters, which may be easily cured or effected – the precise grounds of which need not be
very carefully or anxiously investigated, since there is no difficulty in regarding them as, in a manner, the
natural result of the mercy of God, or, as is often added, though without any definite meaning being attached to
it, of the work of Christ.45
But why spend time on the unscriptural ideas of the New Perspective? It is the concern which has prompted more
than one author to write on the subject. One of them has said, probably reflecting particularly his own,
American, scene: ‘Some within the Reformed churches have enthusiastically heralded the NPP and its supposed
compatibility with Reformed and biblical teaching. Upon examination, however, the NPP, both in its particulars
and as a system, will evidence marked differences with Reformed and biblical teaching.’ He goes on to assess the
‘sympathies’ of the NPP with the doctrine of salvation; he asserts: ‘To the extent that these sympathies exist,
[they] are not with Protestantism but with Roman Catholicism’. And he points to ‘the potential dangers to the
Church that are occasioned by enthusiastic and uncritical receptions of the NPP’.46
Wright spells out as follows his view of the ecumenical implications of his ideas:
Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith impels the churches, in their current fragmented state,
into the ecumenical task . . . The doctrine of justification, in other words, is not merely a doctrine which
Catholic and Protestant might just be able to agree on, as a result of hard ecumenical endeavour. It is itself
the ecumenical doctrine, the doctrine that rebukes all our petty and often culture-bound church groupings, and
which declares that all who believe in Jesus belong together in the one family.
Enough has been said surely to make it clear that the New Perspective teachings on justification are not those
of Paul, or of Scripture generally. But sinners conscious of their guilt can rest assured that the Reformers’
teaching on justification – which is the doctrine of justification revealed in the Bible – does give a safe
answer to that most vital of questions: How can I, a sinner, be accepted by God? It was because the Philippian
jailor was taught the doctrine that the Lord Jesus Christ had died in the place of sinners that he believed and
was justified. And it was because the Publican believingly understood something of the doctrine of substitution
– which was illustrated in the sacrifices being offered as he stood at the temple – that he went down to his
house justified.
The Reformers have left this generation with a precious heritage; let us not turn our backs on it. The Lord in
his kindness gave the Holy Spirit, to a remarkable extent, to them and to other godly theologians in the
immediately succeeding generations. John Owen, one of the greatest theologians of the century following the
Reformation, gave this as the substance of what he was pleading for at a particular stage of his work on
justification: ‘that men should renounce all confidence in themselves and everything that may give countenance
thereunto, betaking themselves unto the grace of God by Christ alone for righteousness and salvation’.47 If the Church holds to this doctrine it will have a solid, scriptural answer for seeking
souls. To the extent that the Church today has given up its Reformation heritage, it is losing the capacity to
give a helpful answer to anyone who has come under conviction of sin.
Let us close with a warning and an encouragement from the Covenanter, James Fraser of Brea:
Look not to what you have done, but to what Christ has done; you neither share in whole nor in part
with Christ. Good works are mentioned, not to buy or purchase glory by, but to evidence an interest in Christ
and sincerity in grace; if there be as much as will evidence sincerity, there is enough.48
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