Amazing Rando
November 16th 2005, 01:46 AM
Hot off the presses- a paper I wrote for my Systematic Theology class on the huge topic of justification- 9 pages long. As always, comments are welcome.
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Rob Arner 11-14-05
Systematic Theology I
Justification
In Protestant theological circles, the Pauline phrases “justification by grace through faith,” or just “justification by faith” have become buzzwords. The so-called “rediscovery” of this key theological concept by Martin Luther has been touted as the most important contribution to the Christian faith made by the Protestant Reformation. But what did Paul intend to convey through his emphasis on this concept? Traditional Protestant doctrine has focused on the “legal” or “courtroom” aspects of the biblical word “justify” to convey the sense of God’s “acquitting” us poor, wretched sinners from the guilt of our sins. But as we shall see, Paul’s intended meaning of the related words dikaiosunh ”righteousness” and dikaiow,"justify" go far beyond the legal implications from which they were taken through the catachresis of the early church. This paper will catalog the biblical definitions and usage of “justification” as well as explore some of the implications that justification has in Pauline thought, both corporately for the Church, and personally for the individual follower of Jesus.
For the biblical writers, “justification” and “righteousness,” which come from the same root in Greek, carry a rich variety of meaning. In common parlance in the first century (in contexts apart from Jewish and Christian theological usage), justification was primarily a legal term. It had to do with a court of law, in which a judge would decide in favor of one of the two parties, either accuser or defendant, thereby “justifying” him or her. If the accused was acquitted of the charges against him, he was considered to be “just” or “righteous” in both the legal and moral senses.
However, this legal definition was largely co-opted and overshadowed in biblical thought by the covenantal connotations of justification. God was seen as the judge, who ruled in favor of Israel and against her oppressive enemies, the nations (Assyria, Babylon, Rome, etc). In Isaiah for example, YHWH declares that “by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many” (Isaiah 53:1), meaning that the Suffering Servant would be the agent by whom Israel was “acquitted” in YHWH’s sight and restored to the shalom state of covenantal faithfulness. This has implications for both the present and the eschatological future. As Michael Gorman summarizes it, “On the one hand, then, justification is the language of restoring and maintaining right covenant relations in the present; on the other, justification is the language of acquittal and acceptance on the apocalyptic day of judgment.” For Israel to be justified meant for the restoration of (1) right covenantal relations with God, (2) right relations with others (both within and beyond the ethnic and religious identity of Israel), and (3) vindication on the apocalyptic Day of YHWH.
In the New Testament, and particularly in Paul’s letters, the mode of justification is Jesus Christ. In particular, it is Jesus’ faithful obedience that shapes Paul’s view of justification. Gorman makes an important point when he notes that the phrase pistewV cristouused in many places throughout the Pauline correspondences such as Philippians 3:9 for example, and which is frequently translated as “faith in Christ” would be better translated as “faith of Christ” due to the use of the genitive case. The distinctions are subtle but critical. “Faith in Christ” implies that it is our faith that justifies us, whereby our response to God’s call to repentance is the agent of justification, what makes us righteous. “Faith of Christ” emphasizes instead the faith of Jesus Christ himself, namely his perfect and complete trusting obedience to God the Father, as exemplified through his life and particularly, his death on the cross. The pre-Pauline hymnic material Paul cites or paraphrases in Philippians 2:5-11 has as its hinge point Jesus’ actions when he “humbled himself and became obedient to death- even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8). It is Jesus Christ’s model of obedience and faithfulness which Christians are called to imitate that actually justifies us.
The implications of this great act of justification for God’s people are enormous, both on the corporate level (the Church), and the personal level (the individual). For the body of Christ as a whole, justification means membership in God’s covenantal people, alignment with the right “political faction,” freedom from bondage and slavery (to sin, self, and other people), participation in the resurrection, and restoration of shalom in reconciliation and right relationships. On a personal (though not private!) level, justification means acquittal from guilt, deliverance from shame of all types, and sanctification. While this is just the beginning of the list of all the effects and implications justification has on us as individuals and as the Church, it should be sufficient as a representative sample.
For the Church as a whole, justification means being welcomed with open arms into the family of God’s people. It means being embraced by the New Covenant, along with “all the overtones of appropriate behavior” that covenant membership requires. This is not to say that it is the ethical overtones inherent in covenantal relationships that make covenant relationships possible, but rather, as Gorman paraphrases Paul, “Justification is not merely a declaration, but a restoration to covenant faithfulness, and that is an inherently moral enterprise.” Our justification is then, not a matter of a pronouncement of a restored covenant followed up by no action, but rather the actual restoration and reconciliation of the broken bonds of covenantal membership, based exclusively on God’s initiative, but conditional on our response in faith.
Justification also means being aligned with the right “political party.” As Gorman shows in Apostle of the Crucified Lord, Paul’s gospel is a profoundly political one, or rather, a theopolitical message. Many of the words Paul has appropriated through catachresis to help him communicate his gospel are from the political sphere. For instance, to euaggelion, far from being a “religious” term, actually meant the “good news” of a military victory or the birth of an heir to the throne, but for Paul it takes on the meaning of the glorious news of the salvation offered through Jesus Christ, our new Lord. Furthermore, in Paul’s letters, justification takes on the connotation of being aligned with the right political faction. No longer is it safe to cast one’s lot in with the Herodians, Zealots, Pharisees, or Romans (or we might say in contemporary contexts, with the Republicans or Democrats). Now, the only politics that matter are the politics of the inbreaking reign of God proclaimed by Jesus and of the crucified Lord proclaimed by Paul. Justification in this sense means being found in proper alignment with God’s politics and plan of redemption.
In addition to the “theopolitical” overtones of the cross, justification also includes the sense of freedom for God’s people from bondage and slavery. Just as Israel celebrates YHWH’s salvation in His intervention in the Exodus event on their behalf, Paul rejoices in the liberation that comes through the justification of the cross. This is freedom from the slavery of “works of the law” (as is celebrated in Galatians 5:1), hollow legalism (Colossians 2:20-23), the slavery of sin (Romans 6:17-22), and even death itself (Romans 8:2, also see Hebrews 2:15). Through Christ, we are “redeemed” or “liberated,” words borrowed from the parlance of the slave market, from those masters, only to be made slaves to the perfect Master. Freedom in this sense is not won through violence, coercion, or forcing others to submit themselves to our will, but rather by surrendering our will to the One who demands it. The idolatry we make in this country of political freedom as an end unto itself misses the point of the gospel entirely. Justification in this sense is enslavement to God, in whom lies the most amazing freedom imaginable. Or as Gorman summarizes, “True freedom, in Paul’s experience, is belonging to the right master.”
Another major theme in Paul’s letters is justification and salvation as participation in the resurrection of the dead. The great treatise on the resurrection found in 1 Corinthians 15 makes this abundantly clear. What is frequently missing from discussions of justification and salvation as regards the resurrection however, is that the resurrection is both future, and present! Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are given a foretaste of what is to come in the future, when death is “swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:54) and we will experience “a transformed bodily existence in the presence of God.” But justification also entails present resurrection as well. Paul clearly asserts that the Church (as well as individual believers) experience present resurrection from the old life. This is made abundantly clear in Romans 6:4, which declares that “we were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”
Another implication of justification for the people of God as a whole is the restoration of shalom with God and with one another. As partakers of the New Covenant, the Church’s relationship with God is healed and restored to shalom, the way it was meant to be. This is also true of corporate relationships within the Body of Christ. The new ethic of love taught and lived out by Jesus Christ is God’s gift to us through justification by the faith of His Son. True peace with God and neighbor (as opposed to the bare absence of conflict and violence proposed by worldly schemes) is among the blessings of the gospel for all who would embrace it.
These corporate benefits of justification for the Church as a whole do not quite cover the entire scope of the term in Pauline thought. There are also many personal implications of the polyvalent terms “justification” and “righteousness.” It should be noted however, that these benefits are, as Gorman puts it, personal, but not private, in that they are not a matter of some private, subjective “religious experience,” but rather concretely individual, life-transforming applications that affect the believer’s entire being, which are offered to all humanity, to all creation to experience as individuals, but in community with one another.
For the individual Christian, justification carries with it the meaning of acquittal from guilt. In a Jewish court of law, to be “justified” is to have the judge rule in your favor, particularly if you were the defendant, perhaps on trial for your life. In Paul’s correspondences, to be justified means for God, the holy and righteous judge, to find you not guilty. Gorman points out that this has particularly strong implications in Paul’s discussions about the apocalyptic Day of Judgment. We are each to “give an account of (ourselves) to God on that day (Romans 14:2), and the one who is justified by the faith of Jesus Christ need not fear on that day.
One of the powers from which justification also saves us is from the tremendous worldly power of shame. In a society as concerned with honor and shame as first century Jews, following a Messiah who suffered the shameful death of a common criminal would have been all but unthinkable- yet somehow the gospel persists. It is a “stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:23), but it commands an unimaginable power over the lives of believers who have been delivered from all types of shame by the One who took up their shame and nailed it to the cross. As a result of justification says Paul, “anyone who trusts in Him will never be put to shame” (Romans 9:33, 10:11).
Finally, justification enables the sanctification of the individual believer. Sanctification is the clearest way Christians experience the power of justification as a process that transforms their lives to conform to that of Jesus. As Gorman notes, “Christ, for Paul, enables believers to embody the sanctified (“holy”)- i.e. distinctive or countercultural- lifestyle appropriate for the people of the covenant. Christ is believers’ holiness.” Justification enables us to grow into Christ, to conform our lives to his in perfect obedience over the course of our lives. It is through justification that we are sanctified and enabled to follow Jesus in a life of obedience, carrying our own crosses, ready and willing to live or die for Him as we seek not be served, but to serve Him; not to kill, but to be killed with Him; not to live for ourselves, but to die with Him. The life of suffering servanthood is that for which all who would name the name of Jesus Christ are called, and we are sanctified through this life of faith.
This discussion of justification may now be drawn to a close now with a note from Gorman on the costliness of our justification through faith that is all too frequently overlooked by Christians of all stripes in this popular era of “cheap grace.” Gorman writes: “For Paul and the communities to which he writes, then, cruciform faith is costly. It costs Jesus his life, it yields relentless suffering and persecution for the apostle, and it frequently brings affliction to believing communities. ‘This is what we are destined for’ (1 Thess. 3:3).” We were bought for a price, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:20 and 7:23, and the price of our justification is higher than we could ever imagine. Jesus’ costly faith is now our own. Let us now live as the justified people of God in order to share the good news of that justification with this starving and broken world.
Works Consulted
Gorman, Michael. Apostle of the Crucified Lord. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2004.
Gorman, Michael. Crucifirmity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2001.
McClendon, James Wm., Jr. Doctrine: Systematic Theology, Vol. II. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994.
Wright, N.T. “Justification.” New Dictionary of Theology, eds. David F. Wright, et al. Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988. Accessed from: http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_NDCT_Justification.htm
Wright, N.T. “Righteousness.” New Dictionary of Theology, eds. David F. Wright, et al. Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988. Accessed from: http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_NDCT_Righteousness.htm
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Sorry, I'm too lazy to format all the footnotes and titles and stuff from the Word Document to Tweb code, but I hope you enjoy nonetheless.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rob Arner 11-14-05
Systematic Theology I
Justification
In Protestant theological circles, the Pauline phrases “justification by grace through faith,” or just “justification by faith” have become buzzwords. The so-called “rediscovery” of this key theological concept by Martin Luther has been touted as the most important contribution to the Christian faith made by the Protestant Reformation. But what did Paul intend to convey through his emphasis on this concept? Traditional Protestant doctrine has focused on the “legal” or “courtroom” aspects of the biblical word “justify” to convey the sense of God’s “acquitting” us poor, wretched sinners from the guilt of our sins. But as we shall see, Paul’s intended meaning of the related words dikaiosunh ”righteousness” and dikaiow,"justify" go far beyond the legal implications from which they were taken through the catachresis of the early church. This paper will catalog the biblical definitions and usage of “justification” as well as explore some of the implications that justification has in Pauline thought, both corporately for the Church, and personally for the individual follower of Jesus.
For the biblical writers, “justification” and “righteousness,” which come from the same root in Greek, carry a rich variety of meaning. In common parlance in the first century (in contexts apart from Jewish and Christian theological usage), justification was primarily a legal term. It had to do with a court of law, in which a judge would decide in favor of one of the two parties, either accuser or defendant, thereby “justifying” him or her. If the accused was acquitted of the charges against him, he was considered to be “just” or “righteous” in both the legal and moral senses.
However, this legal definition was largely co-opted and overshadowed in biblical thought by the covenantal connotations of justification. God was seen as the judge, who ruled in favor of Israel and against her oppressive enemies, the nations (Assyria, Babylon, Rome, etc). In Isaiah for example, YHWH declares that “by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many” (Isaiah 53:1), meaning that the Suffering Servant would be the agent by whom Israel was “acquitted” in YHWH’s sight and restored to the shalom state of covenantal faithfulness. This has implications for both the present and the eschatological future. As Michael Gorman summarizes it, “On the one hand, then, justification is the language of restoring and maintaining right covenant relations in the present; on the other, justification is the language of acquittal and acceptance on the apocalyptic day of judgment.” For Israel to be justified meant for the restoration of (1) right covenantal relations with God, (2) right relations with others (both within and beyond the ethnic and religious identity of Israel), and (3) vindication on the apocalyptic Day of YHWH.
In the New Testament, and particularly in Paul’s letters, the mode of justification is Jesus Christ. In particular, it is Jesus’ faithful obedience that shapes Paul’s view of justification. Gorman makes an important point when he notes that the phrase pistewV cristouused in many places throughout the Pauline correspondences such as Philippians 3:9 for example, and which is frequently translated as “faith in Christ” would be better translated as “faith of Christ” due to the use of the genitive case. The distinctions are subtle but critical. “Faith in Christ” implies that it is our faith that justifies us, whereby our response to God’s call to repentance is the agent of justification, what makes us righteous. “Faith of Christ” emphasizes instead the faith of Jesus Christ himself, namely his perfect and complete trusting obedience to God the Father, as exemplified through his life and particularly, his death on the cross. The pre-Pauline hymnic material Paul cites or paraphrases in Philippians 2:5-11 has as its hinge point Jesus’ actions when he “humbled himself and became obedient to death- even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8). It is Jesus Christ’s model of obedience and faithfulness which Christians are called to imitate that actually justifies us.
The implications of this great act of justification for God’s people are enormous, both on the corporate level (the Church), and the personal level (the individual). For the body of Christ as a whole, justification means membership in God’s covenantal people, alignment with the right “political faction,” freedom from bondage and slavery (to sin, self, and other people), participation in the resurrection, and restoration of shalom in reconciliation and right relationships. On a personal (though not private!) level, justification means acquittal from guilt, deliverance from shame of all types, and sanctification. While this is just the beginning of the list of all the effects and implications justification has on us as individuals and as the Church, it should be sufficient as a representative sample.
For the Church as a whole, justification means being welcomed with open arms into the family of God’s people. It means being embraced by the New Covenant, along with “all the overtones of appropriate behavior” that covenant membership requires. This is not to say that it is the ethical overtones inherent in covenantal relationships that make covenant relationships possible, but rather, as Gorman paraphrases Paul, “Justification is not merely a declaration, but a restoration to covenant faithfulness, and that is an inherently moral enterprise.” Our justification is then, not a matter of a pronouncement of a restored covenant followed up by no action, but rather the actual restoration and reconciliation of the broken bonds of covenantal membership, based exclusively on God’s initiative, but conditional on our response in faith.
Justification also means being aligned with the right “political party.” As Gorman shows in Apostle of the Crucified Lord, Paul’s gospel is a profoundly political one, or rather, a theopolitical message. Many of the words Paul has appropriated through catachresis to help him communicate his gospel are from the political sphere. For instance, to euaggelion, far from being a “religious” term, actually meant the “good news” of a military victory or the birth of an heir to the throne, but for Paul it takes on the meaning of the glorious news of the salvation offered through Jesus Christ, our new Lord. Furthermore, in Paul’s letters, justification takes on the connotation of being aligned with the right political faction. No longer is it safe to cast one’s lot in with the Herodians, Zealots, Pharisees, or Romans (or we might say in contemporary contexts, with the Republicans or Democrats). Now, the only politics that matter are the politics of the inbreaking reign of God proclaimed by Jesus and of the crucified Lord proclaimed by Paul. Justification in this sense means being found in proper alignment with God’s politics and plan of redemption.
In addition to the “theopolitical” overtones of the cross, justification also includes the sense of freedom for God’s people from bondage and slavery. Just as Israel celebrates YHWH’s salvation in His intervention in the Exodus event on their behalf, Paul rejoices in the liberation that comes through the justification of the cross. This is freedom from the slavery of “works of the law” (as is celebrated in Galatians 5:1), hollow legalism (Colossians 2:20-23), the slavery of sin (Romans 6:17-22), and even death itself (Romans 8:2, also see Hebrews 2:15). Through Christ, we are “redeemed” or “liberated,” words borrowed from the parlance of the slave market, from those masters, only to be made slaves to the perfect Master. Freedom in this sense is not won through violence, coercion, or forcing others to submit themselves to our will, but rather by surrendering our will to the One who demands it. The idolatry we make in this country of political freedom as an end unto itself misses the point of the gospel entirely. Justification in this sense is enslavement to God, in whom lies the most amazing freedom imaginable. Or as Gorman summarizes, “True freedom, in Paul’s experience, is belonging to the right master.”
Another major theme in Paul’s letters is justification and salvation as participation in the resurrection of the dead. The great treatise on the resurrection found in 1 Corinthians 15 makes this abundantly clear. What is frequently missing from discussions of justification and salvation as regards the resurrection however, is that the resurrection is both future, and present! Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are given a foretaste of what is to come in the future, when death is “swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:54) and we will experience “a transformed bodily existence in the presence of God.” But justification also entails present resurrection as well. Paul clearly asserts that the Church (as well as individual believers) experience present resurrection from the old life. This is made abundantly clear in Romans 6:4, which declares that “we were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”
Another implication of justification for the people of God as a whole is the restoration of shalom with God and with one another. As partakers of the New Covenant, the Church’s relationship with God is healed and restored to shalom, the way it was meant to be. This is also true of corporate relationships within the Body of Christ. The new ethic of love taught and lived out by Jesus Christ is God’s gift to us through justification by the faith of His Son. True peace with God and neighbor (as opposed to the bare absence of conflict and violence proposed by worldly schemes) is among the blessings of the gospel for all who would embrace it.
These corporate benefits of justification for the Church as a whole do not quite cover the entire scope of the term in Pauline thought. There are also many personal implications of the polyvalent terms “justification” and “righteousness.” It should be noted however, that these benefits are, as Gorman puts it, personal, but not private, in that they are not a matter of some private, subjective “religious experience,” but rather concretely individual, life-transforming applications that affect the believer’s entire being, which are offered to all humanity, to all creation to experience as individuals, but in community with one another.
For the individual Christian, justification carries with it the meaning of acquittal from guilt. In a Jewish court of law, to be “justified” is to have the judge rule in your favor, particularly if you were the defendant, perhaps on trial for your life. In Paul’s correspondences, to be justified means for God, the holy and righteous judge, to find you not guilty. Gorman points out that this has particularly strong implications in Paul’s discussions about the apocalyptic Day of Judgment. We are each to “give an account of (ourselves) to God on that day (Romans 14:2), and the one who is justified by the faith of Jesus Christ need not fear on that day.
One of the powers from which justification also saves us is from the tremendous worldly power of shame. In a society as concerned with honor and shame as first century Jews, following a Messiah who suffered the shameful death of a common criminal would have been all but unthinkable- yet somehow the gospel persists. It is a “stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:23), but it commands an unimaginable power over the lives of believers who have been delivered from all types of shame by the One who took up their shame and nailed it to the cross. As a result of justification says Paul, “anyone who trusts in Him will never be put to shame” (Romans 9:33, 10:11).
Finally, justification enables the sanctification of the individual believer. Sanctification is the clearest way Christians experience the power of justification as a process that transforms their lives to conform to that of Jesus. As Gorman notes, “Christ, for Paul, enables believers to embody the sanctified (“holy”)- i.e. distinctive or countercultural- lifestyle appropriate for the people of the covenant. Christ is believers’ holiness.” Justification enables us to grow into Christ, to conform our lives to his in perfect obedience over the course of our lives. It is through justification that we are sanctified and enabled to follow Jesus in a life of obedience, carrying our own crosses, ready and willing to live or die for Him as we seek not be served, but to serve Him; not to kill, but to be killed with Him; not to live for ourselves, but to die with Him. The life of suffering servanthood is that for which all who would name the name of Jesus Christ are called, and we are sanctified through this life of faith.
This discussion of justification may now be drawn to a close now with a note from Gorman on the costliness of our justification through faith that is all too frequently overlooked by Christians of all stripes in this popular era of “cheap grace.” Gorman writes: “For Paul and the communities to which he writes, then, cruciform faith is costly. It costs Jesus his life, it yields relentless suffering and persecution for the apostle, and it frequently brings affliction to believing communities. ‘This is what we are destined for’ (1 Thess. 3:3).” We were bought for a price, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:20 and 7:23, and the price of our justification is higher than we could ever imagine. Jesus’ costly faith is now our own. Let us now live as the justified people of God in order to share the good news of that justification with this starving and broken world.
Works Consulted
Gorman, Michael. Apostle of the Crucified Lord. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2004.
Gorman, Michael. Crucifirmity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2001.
McClendon, James Wm., Jr. Doctrine: Systematic Theology, Vol. II. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994.
Wright, N.T. “Justification.” New Dictionary of Theology, eds. David F. Wright, et al. Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988. Accessed from: http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_NDCT_Justification.htm
Wright, N.T. “Righteousness.” New Dictionary of Theology, eds. David F. Wright, et al. Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988. Accessed from: http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_NDCT_Righteousness.htm
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Sorry, I'm too lazy to format all the footnotes and titles and stuff from the Word Document to Tweb code, but I hope you enjoy nonetheless.