Bicknell on Article XI: Of the Justification of Man

In its present form this dates from 1563 and is much fuller than the corresponding Article of 1553. Many of its phrases are borrowed from the Lutheran Confession of Wirtemburg, others from the earlier Con- session of Augsburg. Hence the avoidance of Lutheran exaggerations is

remarkable.

himself to be justified. N.B. ‘by’ =‘ through’ (Latin per). The real title is a ‘ Homily of Salvation.’

no ‘ Homily on Justification.’

§ 1. ‘ Justification by faith.’

It avoids saying that a man is justified when he believes

There is

(a) The source of such words is to be found not in any abstract theological attempt to analyse the spiritual life but in -

the living experience of St. Paul.

(i) He uses such words as ‘justified by faith’ in order to describe to others the change that had taken place in his own - life. As a pious Jew he had striven for years to win peace with

God by his own efforts. He had tried to fulfil God’s will by a complete obedience to the Jewish Law as the revelation of that will. Outwardly he had succeeded. He can write ‘if any other man thinketh to have confidence in the flesh, I yet more… a Hebrew of the Hebrews ; as touching the law a Pharisee … as touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless’ (Phil. 3*8, cp. Gal. 114). But he did not find peace. The more earnestly that he strove to earn God’s favour, the more conscious he became of his inability to satisfy the demands of an all-holy God. A perfect obedience to the law of God required absolute holiness not only in outward act but in inward motive and thought. The law could not help him to attain but could only convict him of not having attained it (cp. Ro. 778). God seemed to him to stand over him as a taskmaster or judge, whose just demands he could never satisfy. He felt himself always condemned as coming short of God’s standard. Just because he was honest with himself and unwilling to be content with a low standard, he felt that through the law God was bringing home to him the fact of his sinfulness (Ro. 52°, Gal. 319). However hard he tried, his best endeavours fell short of what God commanded (Ro. 31920 415 79 ff). After his conversion an utter change came over his life. Through his surrender to Jesus Christ and his acceptance of His free offer of salvation, he found peace with God. ‘ There is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus ’ (Ro. 8”) was an echo of his own experience. He felt himself no longer condemned by God but ‘justified’ or acquitted. He no longer strove to earn or deserve his own salvation by ‘ works of the law,’ but accepted it as a free gift of God’s grace won by Jesus Christ and offered freely to all who would commit themselves to Him (Ro. 5414, 8! 17, Gal. 216). He knew himself to be no longer a slave toiling at the impossible task of attaining a perfect holiness, but a son of God (Gal. 428-51). His acceptance rested not on his own efforts but on the work of Christ. His religion was based not on what he had done and was to do for God, but on what God in Christ had done for him. There was no waiting. God accepted him just as he was: he had closed with God’s offer of forgiveness. His pardon was not made conditional on future improvement. His acceptance was free and immediate and com- plete. Henceforth it was his duty to live up to the position that had been bestowed upon him.

The best illustration of the experience that St. Paul wishes to express is the parable of the Prodigal Son (Lk. 15” ff). The Son is not only received back but freely forgiven and treated with all honour. He is not placed in any ambiguous position until it is seen whether his repentance is genuine and lasting. The Father assumes that it is both, because that is the best means of ensuring that in actual fact it will be both. What matters is the change of attitude on the part of the son: his willingness to return, to trust himself to his father’s mercy and to close with his offer. He is restored to the position of son and called to live up to that position. He has not to earn it, but the restoration is the free act of his father’s love. In St. Paul’s language the son is ‘justified,’ ze. forgiven and accepted, acquitted and treated as righteous.

(i) We may now turn to examine the actual language used by St. Paul. In the opening words of the Article it is assumed that to ‘justify ’ (ducaovv) means to account righteous. It is properly a legal or ‘ forensic ’ term, to ‘acquit’ and in itself says nothing about the actual state of the person acquitted. He is ‘treated as righteous’ whether in point of fact heis righteous or not.

(a) In the Lxx duaovy is used to translate a Hebrew word which means ‘to do justice for a person,’ ‘to treat him with justice ’ (e.g. 2 Sam. 15*), and so, on the assumption that he is in the right, to ‘acquit,’ e.g. in Exod. 237 God says ‘ I will not justify,’ 2.e. acquit, ‘the wicked.’ In Is. 5% the prophet reproves those ‘ which justify the wicked for a reward,’ 1.e. receive bribes to acquit the guilty. It is also used in a wider meaning of showing or proving righteous. In Jer. 31 ‘Israel has shown herself more righteous ’ than Judah (cp. Ezek. 165152),

(8) So, too, in the New Testament the word is used with the same meaning, e.g. in Mt. 1119 and Lk. 7 ‘ Wisdom is justified of her children’ or ‘her works’ = wisdom is vindicated or proved to be righteous by them. In Mt. 12” ‘ By thy works thou shalt be justified ’ is opposed to ‘ By thy works thou shalt be condemned.’ In Lk. 107° the lawyer wished to ‘justify ’ himself, z.e. to vindicate his position. In Lk. 18 the word is used almost in a Pauline sense. The publicaa goes home ‘justified,’ z.e. forgiven by God and accepted.

(vy) The word is most common in St. Paul, being used, as we have seen, to express his own inner feeling of acceptance with

God as contrasted with his former feeling of condemnation. In . his Epistles there is no instance where the word must mean ‘make righteous ’ and several where the context proves that it means ‘acquit’ or ‘treat as righteous.’ Thus, in 1 Cor. 44 he writes, ‘I know nothing against myself, yet am I not hereby justified : but he that judgeth me is the Lord.’ Again, in Ro. 45 we find: ‘ But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteous- ness.’ Here it is expressly stated that the person justified has nothing to show in the way of meritorious acts: bis one asset (so to speak) is faith, and this faith is taken as an ‘ equivalent for righteousness.’

So then from the point of view of scholarship the meaning of ducardw is quite clear.* It is a forensic term, used to express the initial act by which God pardons and accepts a man.

Yet at the time of the Reformation the meaning of to justify was hotly disputed, and to-day the official theology of the Church of Rome holds it to mean ‘to make righteous.’ The words of our Article show that the Church of England on this point takes sides with Luther against the Council of Trent. ‘ Weare accounted righteous before God ’ is taken as the equivalent of ‘ We are justified by faith.’ In the earliest days of the Church no controversy arose about this point. The question of justification first came into prominence in the Pelagian controversy. St. Augustine, writing against Pelagius, asserted that all man’s holiness was due to the free grace of God. He used justification to mean not only man’s forgiveness and acceptance with God, but also an actual infusion of righteousness. ‘It is true… that St. Augustine in one place admits the possibility of interpreting it either as “‘ making just ” or “reckoning just” (De Spiritu et Intera, § 45). © But though he admits the two interpretations as far as concerns the words, practically his whole theory is that of an infusion of the grace of faith, by which men are made just.’ This erroneous view was no doubt assisted by the form of the Latin word

• We may add that while verbs in -ow that are derived from adjectives with a physical meaning, have the sense of ‘ making,’ as e.g. xpvcdw=I make golden, verbs derived from adjectives with a moral meaning, have the sense of ‘accounting as’ or ‘treating as,’ e.g. désw, I account worthy, not I make worthy. ‘Thus the sense of d:caidw is naturally I account righteous

• Sanday and Headlam, p. 150.

‘justifico.” In mediaeval theology justification was regularly taken to include an infusion of grace, and this view was confirmed by the Council of Trent. So in the interpretation of the Church of Rome justification includes not only free acceptance by Ged but also the first stage of sanctification, an imparting of actual righteousness. Our contention is that in Scripture it simply means being placed by God im a right relation to Himself. This is no doubt only a beginning. It is to be followed by sancti- fication, the actual impartation of holiness. It may be argued with truth that justification and sanctification can only be separated in thought rather than fact : that in actual experience God’s word of pardon coming as an unspeakable surprise and striking home to the soul does quicken the possibilities of good that a man possesses. But the distinction is not only theo- logically sound but practically valuable. The moment that we open the door to the idea of a man’s own actual righteousness having any place in God’s act of forgiveness we are preparing the way, as mediaeval theology shows, for a return of those ideas of earning salvation by good works against which St. Paul’s language is a protest. We are making God do what the Prodigal’s Father did not do, give a place to some actual! attainment of righteousness, however small, as a condition of acceptance.

(ii) Again, what does St. Paul mean by faith? The Greek word zictis may be used either in an active or passive sense. It may mean either ‘trustfulness, the frame of mind which relies on another ’ or ‘ trustworthiness, the frame of mind which can be relied on.’ * In the Lxx the verb qwictevew is used to translate the Hebrew verb ‘to trust,’ as e.g. in the text often quoted by St. Paul ‘Abraham believed in the Lord : and he counted it to him for righteousness’ (Gen. 15°), while zictis is used in the passive sense as = trustworthiness. It is not used in the active sense, as Hebrew possessed no corresponding word for trustfulness. Only in St. Paul’s other favourite text ‘The just shall live by his faith’ does the active idea seem to become blended with the passive. ‘Constancy under temptation or danger with an Israelite could only spring from reliance on Jehovah.’ f In the New Testament though the passive sense is found, the active predominates. It is used in many shades of meaning, just as 7icTevew may be used in different senses. With

an accusative (wiTevew 7) it means to believe that a thing is so. With a dative of a person (zicTevew Twi) it means to believe what a man says. With evs or éwi (micTevew els Twa or ert Twt) it means to believe in a person.* So wiotuw may have every shade of meaning between bare intellectual assent to a proposition and unconditional self-surrender to a person. In St. Paul’s own writings it has many meanings. In its highest sense it means not only belief in God’s promises but enthusiastic self-committal to a person. It is above all a personal relationship, the attitude of a child to his father. The true son not only believes his father’s promises, but, accepting all that his father has done for him in the past and relying upon the same love for the future, desires to respond to all the claims that his father’s love makes upon him. That was the attitude of Abraham towards God (Ro. 4%) and of the Saints of the Old Covenant (Heb. 11° ff.). In the case of the Christian it is mediated by Jesus Christ. St. Paul calls it either ‘ faith in Jesus Christ,’ Ro. 32% 26 (cp. 1 Jn. 518, etc.), or faith in God the Father who raised Him from the dead, Ro. 4%4, Eph. 17° (cp. 1 Pet. 14).

We can see now why St. Paul speaks of being justified by (7.e. through) faith. Religion is a personal matter between the soul and God. ‘Faith’ is the one possible attitude for inter- course between the soul and God, just as it is for intercourse between the child and his father. It involves the looking towards God in Christ, the trustful acceptance of His free pardon and the desire to live a life of fellowship with Him. It is far more than the assent by the intellect to certain truths. It involves the whole man. It demands a venture of the will, the readiness to throw in our lot with Christ ‘ to be ruled as well as to be saved by Him.’ By our act of self-surrender we are placed in the right relation to God, that of sonship. From another side, faith is, so to say, getting into correspondence with Christ, reaching out the hand to receive the gift that He has won and is waiting to bestow. It is like the action of the woman with the issue of blood (Mk. 5%-*4), The healing power was there but it needed her own act to get into touch with it. It was an act of belief in Him. So it is in virtue of this turning to Christ, this personal relation to Him begun by our act of surrender that we are justified or accounted righteous.

(b) The objection may be raised : ‘if we are justified by faith, if God treats us as righteous though we are in real fact far from righteous, is not there a touch of unreality about it. Is not our salvation made to depend on a legal fiction ?? We must remember in the first place that though ‘justification ’ is no doubt a legal term in origin, it is only used by St. Paul because it corresponded with an experience common to himself and to his converts. They felt that through Christ they had passed from the darkness of God’s condemnation into the sunshine of God’s favour. Again, it may be said that all forgiveness contains an element of fiction. Forgiveness means that the man who forgives treats the offender as better than he really is. It also rests on the assumption that the person forgiven can be changed. The moment that we pass from the relation between persons as it is felt to be in actual life, aud try to express the act of forgiveness in legal or any other language, it tends to appear unreal if not actually immoral. Further, the sense of unreality in ‘ justification ’ tends to disappear when we bear in mind that justification is only the beginning. The new relationship to Christ begun by our act of self-surrender is not any passing or momentary fact. It is a relationship that we are to maintain all through our lives. We have by a deliberate act of our whole being put ourselves into touch with the one Saviour, the one cure for our disease. Justification through faith might with equal accuracy be styled justification through union with Christ. So long as we remain in union with Him our pro- gress in holiness is assured. Through Him we shall one day become all that we ought to be. But—and here comes the grand news of justification—God does not wait till all this has been accomplished. He accepts us here and now, just as we are. He treats us as righteous in anticipation of the day when we shall be righteous. He sees us not as we are but as we are becoming. ‘Deus patiens quia aeternus.’ Justification is only the beginning, but since it is God who begins, the result is assured and only human wilfulness can hinder it. So it is that St. Paul after dealing with justification in the first chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, passes on to the ‘ mystical union’ of the Christian with Christ in chapter 6. The story of the Prodigal Son closes with the readmission of the wanderer to his home and his restor- ation to all the privileges of sonship. But we cannot suppose that the Father is indifferent to his son’s future behaviour. It

is assumed that he is to live and grow in that home life to which he has been readmitted. ‘There is no condemnation to them that believe and are baptized,’ as Art. IX says, even though they are far from holy, not because God has favourites or passes over in one man what He condemns in another. It is rather that penitence and faith represent a new attitude of the person to God. If we have repented of our sins and are honestly trying in dependence upon Christ to overcome them, we have done all that we can. Our dependence on Christ is the guarantee that we shall one day be perfect. The merits of Christ could have no possible influence on God’s view of us, if we were separated from Him. But so long as we are living ‘in Christ,’ 2.e. in vital union with Him, His merit has everything to do with us. He is in a real sense responsible for us: we have handed ourselves over to Him.

This doctrine is, as the Article says, a most wholesome doctrine and very full of comfort. If our acceptance with God depended upon our having attained to a certain standard of holiness, we could never be quite sure that we had reached it: God would always seem to be standing over us as a critic and ajudge. But the knowledge that God justifies us saves us both from hard thoughts of God and from morbid brooding over our own weakness and failures. It bids us look not at our very unsatisfactory selves, but at God and God’s love and mercy as manifested in Christ. This attitude is the only sure foundation of a joyous and happy faith. Much of the gloominess of religious people is due to a neglect of ‘justification by faith.’

For a vigorous statement of this doctrine see : Simpson, Christus Crucifixus, p. 231 ff. What is the Gospel, c. 5.

(c) Our Article states that we are justified ‘by facth only.’ The exact phrase is not in Scripture, but it means just what St. Paul means when he says that men are justified by ‘ faith apart from works of the law’ (Ro. 38). We have indeed an apparent contradiction between the teaching of St. Paul and St. James on this point. St. James can write ‘What doth it profit . .. if a man say he hath faith, but have not works ? can that faith save him 2’ (24), ‘Faith if it have not works is dead in itself’ (v. 17). ‘ By works a man is justified and not only by faith ’ (v. 4). Both argue from the same text (Gen. 15°) with

apparently opposite conclusions. St. Paul finds in Abraham an example of one who was justified by his faith in God: St. James the example of one ‘ who was justified by works in that he offered up his son Isaac upon the altar.’ There is evidence that the text about Abraham was a standing subject for debate in Jewish schools. But when we get below the surface it is clear that the real difference between them is small. They were in temperament and outlook very different types of character, as the whole tone of their writings shows. Further, they were dealing with different types of error from a practical point of view. Thus to St. James ‘faith’ meant ‘intellectual assent.’ ‘Thou believest that God is one: thou doest well, the devils also believe and shudder ’ (27%). Faith here corresponds to what St. Paul calls knowledge in 1 Cor. 81. But faith to St. Paul means, as we have seen, personal adhesion. Again, when he speaks of ‘ works,’ St. James is thinking of Christian activities, what St. Paul calls ‘good works’ (e.g. in Eph. 21). St. Paul is always ready to admit that faith if genuine will show itself in acts of love and service. He speaks of faith as ‘working’ or ‘active through love’ (Gal. 5%). On the other hand, when he speaks of ‘ works,’ St. Paul means ‘ works of the law,’ 2.e. works done to earn God’s favour and viewed as deserving a reward. Again, both use to ‘justify ’ in a forensic sense, but St. James has in view the final judgment (e.g. 214), St. Paul the initial act by which the soul is placed in right relation to God. Both have a practical end in view. St. James wishes to rebuke a barren orthodoxy, divorced from life; St. Paul is opposing a Jewish legalism, the spirit of the Pharisee who supposed that by the excellency of his works he could earn God’s favour. In view of the familiarity of the question as a subject of discussion among the Jews, we cannot be sure that either had read the other’s epistle. It is not certain which is the earlier. Hither might quite well be rebuking a perversion of the other’s teaching. There is no rea] contradiction between them.

This doctrine of justification by faith, almost forgotten during the middle ages and rediscovered at the time of the Reforma- tion, was inevitably exaggerated and distorted in the reaction from mediaeval theology. The Janguage of our Article is most cautious and avoids all exaggerations.

(i) There was a tendency on the part of the Lutherans, in their

desire to exclude all human merit, to fall into what is known as ‘solifidianism,’ and to argue that man is saved by ‘faith only ’ in the sense that good works are not only unnecessary but positively harmful. They stated that a man was justified if he believed himself to be justified. To louk for any fruit in a changed life was to deny the truth. That this is not the meaning of ‘sola fide’ in Article XI is shown by the following Article. This declares that ‘ good works… do spring necessarily of a true and lively faith ; in so much that by them a lively faith may be as evidently known as a tree discerned by the fruit.’

(ii) Again, we must notice the careful distinction in prepositions. Faith is the instrument or means of justification. We are justified per fidem or fide. But we are justified propter meritum Christi ; the work of Christ is the ground of our acceptance with God. The doubled preposition (propter meritum Christi non propter opera et merita nostra) makes it clear that the Article contrasts the merit of Christ with our own works. Luther pushed his teaching so far as to say we are justified, ‘ propter fidem.’ But God does not account us righteous as a reward of our faith any more than as a reward for any other excellency that we display. That would be to return to salvation by works. The saving power of faith resides not in the man who believes, but in the object of the faith, namely, Jesus Christ, the Almighty Saviour on whom it rests. Further, St. Paul teaches us that faith itself is God’s gift (Phil. 17°), and we should thank Him for it (Cols? 2).

(ui) The mediaeval theologians had distinguished between fides informis, i.e. a bare intellectual belief, and fides formata, i.e. a faith informed or quickened by love. Accepting the distinction Luther argued that the first was sufficient for justification : the Council of Trent naturally argued for the latter. The Article ignores the whole question. The moment that we grasp that faith is faith in a person the difficulty disappears. In actual practice as between persons, we can hardly separate faith and love (cp. Gal. 5°). Faith brings out more fully the side of trust and dependence. But in actual life we cannot trust ourselves wholly to a person whom we do not love, and love must involve trust.

(iv) Again, Luther in his attempt to explain justification spoke of ‘an imputed righteousness.’ God, he laid down, can treat us

as righteous because Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us and our sins are imputed to Him. This is a ‘legal fiction,’ and happily our Article like Scripture is silent about it. Language is still used, e.g. in some of our hymns, that speaks of us as ‘ clothed with Christ’s righteousness ’ as with a garment. The metaphor is an attempt to picture the truth that at any moment in our lives we fall short of God’s perfect holiness ; we must trust not in our own achievements, but in God’s mercy through Christ. He represents what we still wish to be rather than what we actually are. The metaphor expresses a real truth, but is far too external. We cannot put on righteousness like a garment.

Notes

• Lightfoot, Galatians, pp. 152-3. { Lightfoot, Galatians, pp. 152-3.
• See Moulton, Grammar of N.T. Greek, pp. 67-68.