I submitted this paper for Theological Systems (TH 761) at Bob Jones University on December 10, 2004.
Introduction
The Reformation marked a significant turning point in the history of the doctrine of justification. Both Rome and Protestantism articulated their positions through the controversy which was set into motion by the Augustinian monk Martin Luther. In the years following the Reformation, Rome’s position stayed essentially the same. Protestantism, however, was by no means a monolithic movement. The emphasis on sola scriptura had a profound impact on the diversity that developed. Since Scripture was the ultimate authority in the Protestant church, no human authority existed that could keep the church together. Each individual was bound to obey divine truth as he understood it. This fact accounts for the multiplicity of groups and positions that have developed out of the Reformation.
With reference to the doctrine of justification, the debate concerning faith and works, law and gospel had not been satisfactorily solved, at least not in everyone’s opinion. Post-Reformation history demonstrates the continual struggle within Protestantism to find the proper balance between these two poles. An overemphasis on one to the detriment of the other always resulted in error. James Buchanan argued that “all the errors which have arisen on” the subject of justification fall into the categories of legalism or antinomianism “more or less fully developed.”1 History has demonstrated that he was right.
Post-Reformation Developments
The Protestant view of justification was a reaction to the abuses of Rome. As with all reactionary movements, the tendency to go too far often results in error. Johann Agricola (c. 1494–1566), one of Luther’s followers, is a well-known example of this.2 He took some of the early unguarded statements of Luther and went beyond his teacher, arguing that the law had no place in the life of a believer at all.3 As a result, he failed to emphasize the appropriate place of works and was dangerously close to, if not guilty of, antinomianism.4 In later years several English Calvinists tended toward antinomianism. Tobias Crisp (1600–43) spoke in terms of “free grace” and defended the notion that “one’s actions do not relate to salvation.”5 Antinomian developments were in the minority though. Most of what followed the Reformation were movements in the direction of legalism.
These legalistic reactions to the Reformed teaching represent several objections and concerns. Many were sympathetic with the Catholic protest that the Reformers had invented a doctrine which promoted a legal fiction. If the individual were not de facto righteous, God’s declaration was by necessity dishonest. They also questioned the notion of imputation. That someone else’s life could count in place of one’s own seemed at best unjust. Finally, the abuses of justification by faith, that is, the real tendency toward moral laxity, caused many to reject it or at least to reformulate it.6
Arminianism
Early followers of Arminius rejected the notion of a substitutionary atonement. Dutch jurist and theologian Hugo Grotius formulated the governmental theory,7 a position which has been widely adopted by Arminians.8 With the undermining of the concept of penal substitution came the corresponding denial of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the believer.9 Christ’s death was not vicarious, and neither was His life. He owed obedience to God as any other man. His righteousness then could not be counted for another. Rather than imputation serving as the objective basis for God’s declaration of righteousness, the believer’s faith became his righteousness.10 Consequently, Arminians did not regard faith so much as trust in the work of Christ but a commitment to obey Christ. This commitment became a new law that the individual had to meet in order to earn righteousness with God. In many ways, Arminian justification was a movement back towards the Roman Catholic position.
Baxterian Neonomianism
Richard Baxter (1615–91) was a self-educated Puritan who was on par with any Puritan of his day.11 According to Packer, Baxter was “the greatest of Puritan writers on Christian practice.”12 In spite of this, Baxter was not without his problems. He was unique among the Puritans in that he was the only prominent four-point Calvinist.13 He agreed with Arminianism on the issues of imputation and faith, and in many ways what Baxter said was merely an echo of the earlier Arminian objections. For Baxter the atonement was penal (differing here with the Arminians), but it was not substitutionary in the truest sense.14 In the atonement, God had established “a new law offering amnesty to penitent breakers of the old law.”15 The gospel then was this new law consisting of repentance and faith. These functioned as “the ground[s] of salvation rather than being merely the instrument[s] of salvation” and consequently were themselves “one’s personal saving righteousness.”16 He emphatically rejected the notion that Christ’s righteousness was imputed to the believer, arguing that all incentive to keep the law would be utterly abolished and antinomianism would be the logical end.17
What the Arminian teaching did to the conformists, Baxterianism did to the nonconformists.18 As Luther had feared, the doctrine of justification had been perverted by legalism once again. In an attempt to rescue the gospel from immoral living, these Neonomians had traded one error for another. The demands of the new law brought people into bondage and undue introspection. Assurance was entirely subjective, being based in the one’s attainment of a certain level of holiness.
The Modern State of Justification
The last fifty years have been characterized by a renewed attention on the doctrine of justification. The present theological scene resembles the days of the Protestant Reformation in terms of justification’s prominence in theological discussions. While there has been a significant number of distinctive positions on the doctrine of justification, at least three significant foci of theological dialogue are responsible for this recent altercation. (1) The relationship between faith and works is hotly debated in what has been termed the “Lordship salvation” controversy. (2) Ecumenism has greatly influenced Christendom with a strong pull for union between Evangelicals and Catholics. (3) Finally, the “New Perspective” on Paul and justification is proving to have profound implications for the doctrine of justification.
Justification and Works: The Lordship Controversy
Dispensational theology arose partly in response to the legalism that was characteristic of the church in the 19th century.19 Darby and his followers relegated the law to a former dispensation; it is grace that governs God’s people in the church age. Consequently, much of dispensationalism has fallen into a form of antinomianism, at least in theory if not in practice.20 While many have avoided this error, the dispensational theology of law opens the door for this abuse.
Easy Believism
Two names stand out in the Lordship debate on the side of “free grace.” Zane Hodges (b. 1932) and Charles Ryrie (b. 1925) have led the defense of what has been termed “easy believism.” These men are concerned to preserve the freeness of God’s justifying grace and avoid the error of legalism. Hodges’s book Absolutely Free!21 is the most thorough expression of his views. He wrote it in response to John MacArthur’s The Gospel According to Jesus.22 Hodges essentially reduces faith to the intellectual level. To believe the gospel is to assent to its truthfulness. He rejects any notion of the necessity of perseverance in faith, asserting that saving faith need not last any longer than its inception. The first act of faith is by itself sufficient to justify.23 Discipleship and sanctification should follow, but they have absolutely no connection to the reality of one’s salvation.24 According to Hodges, then, a person is justified by faith alone, and neither faith nor justification guarantees anything about the moral quality of his life. Justification is simply a matter of going to heaven, not how one lives life on this earth.
Ryrie does not go as far as Hodges does, but he is in basic agreement with him on the fundamental issues of the debate. So Great Salvation25 was Ryrie’s response to MacArthur’s The Gospel According to Jesus. Ryrie maintains that submission, sorrow for sin, and repentance (understood as anything other than a change of opinion about Jesus) are in no way conditions to salvation. In Ryrie’s view repentance is essentially synonymous with faith, which includes no element of submission to or commitment to follow Christ. That is discipleship—something totally distinct. If justification were dependent upon an individual’s commitment or submission to Christ, salvation would be partly based on works.26 Both Hodges and Ryrie want nothing to do with a gospel that requires anything more than belief in the gospel. Anything else is legalism.
Lordship Salvation
John MacArthur, Jr. (b. 1939) is the pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California. The Lordship controversy officially began when MacArthur wrote his book The Gospel According to Jesus in response to the teaching of Ryrie and Hodges. After Hodges and Ryrie wrote their responses, MacArthur came out with his most mature defense of Lordship salvation, Faith Works.27 MacArthur expresses the essence of his position in these words: “The gospel call to faith presupposes that sinners must repent of their sin and yield to Christ’s authority.”28 Repentance, which involves a change of mind, will, and emotions, is a vital part of the gospel message. Repentance and surrender to Christ are inseparable, both of which cannot exist in isolation from faith.29 MacArthur, following the Reformers, regards sanctification as the inevitable corollary to justification:
God justifies no one whom He does not sanctify. No second work of grace is necessary for those who have been born again…. Sanctification is not a second-level experience entered into sometime after conversion…. Justification is a one-time event; sanctification is an ongoing process. Justification frees us from the guilt of sin, sanctification from the pollution of sin…. When we trust Christ for salvation we settle the issue of who is in charge. At salvation we surrender to Christ in principle, but as Christians we will surrender in practice again and again.30
MacArthur was not without his problems in this Lordship controversy.31 In an attempt to refute the antinomianism of Ryrie and Hodges, MacArthur erred with reference to the basis for God’s declaring the sinner to be righteous. He was guilty of adding regeneration to the imputed righteous of Christ:
Justification… or God imputing to us his righteousness, God putting his righteousness to our account, must be seen in two ways. First of all, it is a forensic declaration, that is, it is a statement of God relative to judicial reality…. There is a second aspect [of justification], and theologians would call this the ontology of justification, or the reality of it. And it is this: that God not only declares us to be righteous, based on the satisfying work of Christ, but in Christ he makes us righteous. We are made righteous…. And so you must see, then, in justification by faith, both of those elements. That which is declared about us, that we are from now on right with God, can only be declared because in fact it is true that we have been recreated in his image.32
This final statement is clearly a departure from the Reformation teaching. In no sense is justification God’s declaring the sinner to be righteousness because He has actually made him righteous in a moral sense by regeneration.33
Justification and Ecumenism: ECT
Another significant issue concerning justification has been the trend for ecumenical unity. Both Catholics and Protestants are doing the unthinkable: they are setting aside their differences and accepting each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. Surprisingly, some prominent evangelicals have taken part in these efforts, one of the most notable being J. I. Packer. Two documents were formulated expressing the points of unity to which both Catholics and Protestants could ascribe. The first document was produced in 1994 and was entitled, “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium.”34 It asserts the following about justification: “We affirm together that we are justified by grace through faith because of Christ. Living faith is active in love that is nothing less than the love of Christ.” In 1998 a second article appeared entitled “The Gift of Salvation.”35 It became clear that the doctrine of justification needed more attention, so the group met again to formulate a more details position. This time they affirmed a much more detailed position:
We agree that justification is not earned by any good works or merits of our own; it is entirely God’s gift, conferred through the Father’s sheer graciousness, out of the love that he bears us in his Son, who suffered on our behalf and rose from the dead for our justification…. In justification, God, on the basis of Christ’s righteousness alone, declares us to be no longer his rebellious enemies but his forgiven friends, and by virtue of his declaration it is so.
They attempted to affirm that justification is by faith alone in the Reformation understanding of those words, but they acknowledged that there are still further issues that need to be explored.
Justification and Biblical Theology: The “New Perspective”
Justification is again at the forefront of theological discussion in light of the recent biblical-theological “discoveries” of the “New Perspective” on Paul.36 Central to this approach to Pauline theology is the recovery of a biblical point of view on Judaism, and consequently the law, works, and justification—all of which Luther misconstrued in light of his personal struggles with the Roman Catholic Church.
Three names surface in connection with this new view of Paul: E. P. Sanders, James D. G. Dunn, and N. T. Wright. These men do not agree on all the issues. At some points they differ sharply. But they are in agreement on a few central points: (1) first-century Judaism was not legalistic but exclusivistic, (2) “works of the law” are Jewish distinctives not works of self-righteousness, and (3) justification is a doctrine about unity in the church not how a person goes to heaven.
At present the most significant representative of this new view is N. T. Wright. He has labeled his views the “fresh perspective.”37 Wright has many novel things to say about justification. First, “righteousness” is understood in terms of the covenant.38 God’s righteousness is His covenant faithfulness. Wright handles the classic text 2 Corinthians 5:21 differently than traditional Reformed theology has. In his own words,
The key text, which is 2 Corinthians 5:21, has been read for generations… as an isolated, detached statement of the wondrous exchange. When we do this we forget that the entire passage… and the chapter and a half that follow it… are about apostleship…. After this I started to read dikaiosune as “covenant faithfulness.”… And then I realized that the whole thing here is 2 Corinthians 3, the new covenant. God has made us ministers of the new covenant. We are embodying the covenant faithfulness of God.
Wright laments the fact that justification is so connected to the concept of “going to heaven.” Justification is not so much about salvation as it is about the church.39 It is about covenant membership. For Paul justification was not “how someone enters the community of the true people of God, but… how you tell who belongs to that community.”40 Wright points out that 1 Thessalonians, a book that deals specifically with people who come to faith, says nothing about justification. The first mention of justification is in Galatians, where Paul’s point is that justification means the Jew and Gentile are one in Christ. Wright, commenting on justification in Galatians, notes that “the first major discussion of justification is really all about who you are allowed to eat with. It’s not about how to go to heaven when you die.”41
Conclusion
Agreement on the doctrine of justification is at an all-time low. Even within conservative Protestantism debates about the relationship between faith and works and justification and sanctification continue. Where it is not disputed, it is ignored. Most evangelical churches do not give a proper place to doctrine, focusing more on practical issues. Dividing doctrine has been displaced by uniting love. The ecumenical movement has only muddied the waters. Terms have been chosen that allow both sides to affirm the same statements while believing different things. The “fresh perspective” on justification may have some valuable insights to offer to the discussion. Strangely, in the midst of all the confusion and debate, both moralism and antinomianism are rampant in the church today. The need for men of God to rise up and proclaim with precision the Scriptural teaching of justification is greater than ever.
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Notes
1. James Buchanan, The Doctrine of Justification: An Outline in the Church and of Its Exposition from Scripture (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1955), 154. ↩
2. R. D. Linder, “Agricola, Johann,” Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. Walter A. Elwell (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984), 25–26. ↩
3. “Agricola argued that people were sufficiently motivated by hearing of Christ’s sacrifice for their sins and that the preaching of the law was unnecessary and perhaps even harmful. Luther responded that although the severity of Christ’s sacrifice indeed demonstrated the enormity of human sin, the law still needed to be preached forcefully, and people still had to be convicted of their sin by the law.” Ibid. ↩
4. A. A. Hodge comments, “When real Antinomianism was consistently taught by John Agricola (1566), he was strenuously opposed and successfully refuted by Luther, and caused to retreat.” Outlines of Theology, electronic ed. (Simpsonville, SC: Christian Classics Foundation, 1996), 404. Luther ultimately won the debate, and the Lutherans adopted the third use of the law—to condemn and show man his sin. Argricola, however, went to the grave convinced that Luther had misunderstood him. Linder, 26. ↩
5. Kathy Leid, “Crisp, Tobias,” Who’s Who in Christian History, electronic ed., ed. J. D. Douglas, Philip W. Comfort (Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1997), n.p. ↩
6. It is interesting that Paul anticipated these abuses (Rom 6:1), yet he did not change his position on justification. Instead, he demonstrated the falsity of the seemingly logical conclusions. ↩
7. Leon Morris, “Atonement, Theories of the,” EDT, 102. ↩
8. R. W. A. Letham, “Arminianism,” New Dictionary of Theology, ed. Sinclair B. Ferguson and David F. Wright (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1988), 46; “Grotius, Hugo,” NDT, 284; R. G. Clouse, “Grotius, Hugo,” EDT, 489. ↩
9. James I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1990), 156–57. ↩
10. Packer comments, “The Arminian alternative was that faith itself is the ground of justification, being itself righteousness (obedience to the new law) and accepted by God as such.” Ibid., 157. ↩
11. Erroll Hulse, “The Story of the Puritans,” Reformation and Revival 5:2 (Spring 1996): 13; J. Van Engen, “Baxter, Richard,” EDT, 129–30; J. I. Packer, “Baxter, Richard,” NDT, 82–83. ↩
12. Packer, A Quest for Godliness, 157. ↩
13. Hulse, 13. He held to a form of Amyraldism, a system that attempted to blend Calvinism and Arminianism and find a middle ground. ↩
14. Packer, “Baxter, Richard,” NDT, 82. ↩
15. Hulse, 13. ↩
16. Packer, “Baxter, Richard,” NDT, 83. ↩
17. Packer, A Quest for Godliness, 158. ↩
18. Ibid., 160. ↩
19. W. R. Godfrey, “Law and Gospel,” NDT, 380. ↩
20. John H. Gerstner, Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth: A Critique of Dispensationalism, 2nd ed., edited by Don Kistler (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria Publications), 240–301. While Gerstner wrongly deals with dispensationalism as a whole, his critique of the antinomianism of some of the leading proponents of the system is worth reading, in spite of his extremes. ↩
21. Zane C. Hodges, Absolutely Free!: A Biblical Reply to Lordship Salvation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1989). ↩
22. John F. MacArthur, Jr. The Gospel According to Jesus: What Does Jesus Mean When He Says, “Follow Me”? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988). ↩
23. “We miss the point to insist that true saving faith must necessarily continue. Of course, our faith in Christ should continue. But the claim that it absolutely must, or necessarily does, has no support at all in the Bible.” Ibid., 63. ↩
24. “We certainly must not assume that a person who has ‘dropped out’ of the process is necessarily unsaved. They may in fact have found their spiritual education more taxing than expected; they may have failed to count the cost correctly.” Ibid., 88. ↩
25. Charles C. Ryrie, So Great Salvation: What It Means to Believe in Jesus Christ (Wheaton: Victor Books, 1989). ↩
26. Ryrie does admit that commitment is a necessity for salvation, but he qualifies it this way: “Of course, when one believes he commits to God. Commits what? His eternal destiny. That’s the issue, not the years of his life on earth.” Ibid., 123. ↩
27. John F. MacArthur, Jr., Faith Works: The Gospel According to the Apostles (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1993). In 1994 MacArthur revised his first book The Gospel According to Jesus, making important changes to some of his overstatements. ↩
28. Ibid., 23. ↩
29. Ibid., 76. ↩
30. Ibid., 108–09. ↩
31. For a critique of both sides of the debate, see Michael Horton, ed., Christ the Lord: The Reformation and Lordship Salvation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992). The authors are far closer to MacArthur than Hodges and Ryrie, but they criticize MacArthur at times for his terminology. MacArthur equates faith and obedience, and the necessary result is a justification by obedience, and certainly obedience is a work. See especially 81–105. ↩
32. Quoted by Michael Horton. Ibid., 41. MacArthur’s words sound strikingly close to Trent: “Justification… is not only a remission of sins but also the… renewal of the inward man through the voluntary reception of the grace and gifts whereby an unjust man becomes just” (42). ↩
33. MacArthur has since corrected some of his misguided statements. But he was not alone. Other prominent evangelical leaders have made similar statements. Donald Barnhouse wrote this in his commentary on Thessalonians: “Justification is the act of God whereby He takes a man who is dead in trespasses and sins and says, ‘I create within you the new life of Christ and now I look upon you and see you just as perfect as I see the Lord Jesus Christ.’” Thessalonians: An Expositional Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan), 56. It is clear from this statement that moral and spiritual transformation are in some way functioning as the basis for God’s declaring the sinner to be righteous. He says nothing of substitution or a judicial transfer of Christ’s righteousness, only a recreation within the believer. ↩
34. “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium,” First Things 43 (May 1994): 15–22. ↩
35. “The Gift of Salvation,” First Things 79 (January 1998): 20–23. ↩
36. The connection between the ecumenical movement with its efforts to unite Protestants and Catholics and the inclusivistic implications of the “New Perspective” is very intriguing. One wonders whether biblical theological findings are driving this new movement as they claim, or whether the ecumenical motivations are abusing the tool of biblical theology in an attempt to find in Paul an authoritative justification for their ecumenical pursuits. ↩
37. Travis Tamerius, “A Reformation & Revival Journal Interview with N. T. Wright: Part One,” Reformation and Revival 11:1 (Winter 2002): 131. ↩
38. N. T. Wright, “Justification,” NDT, 359–61. ↩
39. Travis Tamerius, “Sounding the Alarm: N. T. Wright and Evangelical Theology,” Reformation and Revival 11:2 (Spring 2002): 27. ↩
40. N. T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 119. ↩
41. Travis Tamerius, “A Reformation & Revival Journal Interview with N. T. Wright: Part Two,” Reformation and Revival 11:2 (Spring 2002): 145. ↩