Justification Archives - Page 2 of 8

July 26, 2024July 27, 2024

Eternal Election Through Temporal Word and Sacrament Ministry

Throwback Post

The divine power and sacramentality of the word of justification raises the issue of predestination. We will discuss this question in greater detail on the basis of Luther’s answer in The Bondage of the Will (1525) in a future chapter. Here it is important briefly to note how Luther deals with the issue in light of his doctrine of the sacramentality of the gospel.

Although Luther comments on predestination somewhat infrequently, he does have a clear doctrine of predestination derived from engagement with St. Paul and St. Augustine of Hippo.¹ Nevertheless, unlike Augustine, Luther describes election as executed by God in and through the preaching of the promise in Christ. In a passage in “A Sermon on Preparing for Dying” (1519) Luther writes:

Therefore fix your eyes upon the heavenly picture of Christ, who for your sake went to hell and was rejected by God as one damned to the eternal perdition, as He cried on the cross, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?” Behold, in that picture your hell is overcome and your election assured, so that if you but take care and believe that it happened for you, you will certainly be saved in that faith.²

July 23, 2024July 22, 2024

Mystical Union by Faith: Vows Before Consummation

Throwback Post

According to Martin Luther, the believer receives all that is Christ’s , through faith in the word: “The one who has faith is a completely divine man, a son of God, the inheritor of the universe. He is victor over the world, sin, death, and the Devil.”¹ The scholastics claimed that the habitus of love makes faith living. But Luther argued this was incorrect. Love is not the “form” (in the Aristotelian sense) of faith. Christ is.² Faith holds Christ like a ring holds onto a jewel.³

In other words, because faith takes its reality from Christ and his alien righteousness, it lives on and subjectively justifies the sinner. As Lutheran theologian Regin Prenter observed: “Faith lives completely and alone by the real presence of Christ. To the same extent that Christ is really present, faith is really present, and only to that extent.”⁴ Moreover, to use the terminology of later Protestantism, Luther believed the Word of God and the saving faith it creates did not simply justify believers. It sanctifies them as well. Here the Reformer echoed Jeremiah’s description of the Holy Spirit working through the proclamation of the New Covenant to write the commandments on the hearts of believers (Jer. 31:33).

Luther’s Use of Aristotle

Luther clearly rejected the medieval Church’s belief that habits implanted in the soul sanctified the Christian. However, interestingly, he did not totally abandon the language of formation taken from Peripatetic philosophy. Nevertheless, instead of using Aristotle’s concept of ethical formation through habits (i.e., augmentation of human agency and right performance), Luther used Aristotelian epistemology’s concept of objects of consciousness imposing their form on the knower’s intellect.

July 18, 2024July 18, 2024

Sex and the Sacrament: Christ’s Body Given For You

Throwback Post with a Longer Excerpt

The objective bodily presence of Jesus is a necessary corollary of the full assurance the gospel brings. In his earthly ministry Jesus was physically present with sinners and had fellowship with them through common meals in order to assure them of his eschatological verdict in their favor. Our physical bodies are our availability to one another.¹ To pledge one’s self to another is put one’s self physically at the disposal of that other.

In giving the gospel-promise, God makes himself a servant and puts himself at the disposal of his creature (Phil. 2:7). God put himself at the service of his creatures first in the Tabernacle/Temple and its sacrifices in the Old Testament. Next the Lord assumed a body and became a human person in the Incarnation. He thereby continues his act of self-giving by making his bodily presence available through the Lord’s Supper.

July 16, 2024July 18, 2024

Holy Absolution: Objective Justification Received by Subjective Faith

Throwback Post

Luther’s significant catechetical sermon of 1519 clearly shows his belief in the divine power and sacramentality of the Word of God. In “The Sacrament of Penance,” Luther begins by radically modifying his pre-Reformation theology of confession and absolution in light of his discovery the gospel as the pure promise of righteousness and salvation for the sake of Christ. The medieval Church had spoken of three parts to penance: confession, absolution, satisfaction.¹ By contrast, Luther now speaks of three elements: absolution, grace, and faith.²

In the beginning of the sermon, Luther boldly states that absolution is a unilateral and unconditional divine action: “It follows, then, in the first place, that he forgiveness of guilt, the heavenly indulgence, is granted to no one on account of the worthiness of his contrition over his sins, nor on account of his works of satisfaction, but only on account of his faith in the promise of God, ‘What you loose . . . shall be loosed.”³ Jesus’ historical promise establishes the validity of the word; receiving the word in faith makes it efficacious. “For as you believe, so it is done for you.”⁴ Here we can observe Luther’s use of the Ockhamist concept of covenantal causality, albeit used in a way that guarantees the promise of grace rather than the meritorious character of congruous merit.

Absolution is a divine efficacious word (Thettel-Wort) and not a mere piece of information (Heissel-Wort).⁵ The word that the priest (or pastor) speaks is a sacramental instrument wherein the wholly present God communicates his grace: “This is why it [confession and absolution] is called a sacrament, a holy sign, because in it one hears the words externally that signify spiritual gifts within, gifts by which the heart is comforted and set at peace.”⁶ The sinful heart is only set at peace by divine grace present in the objective word. It follows that the word itself is the divine instrument that creates faith in the heart. As suggested earlier, the logical implication of this is that validity of the sacrament and its efficacy are all contained in the Word of God itself.⁷

July 13, 2024July 15, 2024

God Reconciles All People Objectively and Universally

Christ’s work reconciles God and humanity. This occurs both objectively and subjectively. Moreover, since each person of the Trinity is involved, reconciliation takes on a threefold movement. This threefold movement can be summarized in the distinctive realities of atonement, justification (both objective and subjective), and election.¹ The New Testament distinguishes each aspect of reconciliation from the others, although theologians have often confused them throughout Church history.

The event of atonement constitutes the first movement of reconciliation, or redemption, as already examined in the last section. The movement of atonement proceeds from the Son to the Father. Having received all things from the Father, the Son is capable of returning himself to the Father in the power of the Spirit….

Universal Objective Justification

The second movement of reconciliation is universal and objective justification.² Universal objective justification is the Father’s response to the Son’s payment for the sin of the whole world. The Father declares the whole world forgiven on the basis of the Son’s objective atoning work. Objective atonement and objective justification are therefore distinct and should not be confused with one another: “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men” (Rom. 5:18, emphasis added). And “. . . in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them [i.e., justification]” (2 Cor. 5:19, emphasis added).