This Month's Colloqium

Colloquia Archive

[The following quotes and notes are taken from the various presentations made at the Aquinas/Luther Conference of November 12-14, 2000. They are meant to be provocative for discussion, not exhaustive as to the points of each presentation. We shall use them as subject matter for our discussion on December 7, 2000, at 4:00 p.m. JLY]

DR. HANS SCHWARZ - "What Kind of God: Martin Luther on Justification Then and Now."

1. "Already at the time of the Reformation there were others who could care less about the doctrine of justification, such as the Anabaptists or the Anti-Trinitarians. Their number has increased considerably by today. Whether Pentecostals or Baptists, reborn Christians or New Agers, Anglicans or members of the Church of God, to none of them the doctrine of justification has a high priority or perhaps any priority at all."

2. "Even Lutherans have noticed a change. The fourth plenary assembly of the Lutheran World Federation in Helsinki, Finland (1963), was supposed to come up with an up-to-date interpretation of the doctrine of justification. Yet in its final resolution it stated: 'Modern humanity no longer asks: How do I obtain a gracious God? It asks a more radical, more fundamental question. It asks about the very being of God: Where are you, God? It no longer suffers under God's wrath, but under the impression of God's absence; it no longer suffers under its sin, but under the meaninglessness of its existence; it asks no longer about a gracious God, but whether God is real."'

3. On "The Human Way of Redemption": "Self-justification is mandatory for survival in public and private life, since failures cannot be tolerated in the society that is geared toward accomplishment and success. Nobody wants to be a sinner and nobody wants to be blamed. Instead people demand encouragement, improvement and positive strokes. This makes them feel comfortable, and has come to be what they expect to find in the pew.... It is not by accident that at least one out of four North Americans and Western Europeans believe in reincarnation of some sort....(a view which suggests that) the ultimate success of each life-cycle depends on us. If we conduct our lives appropriately, we can attain the ultimate goal; unity with the godhead or the entering into nirvana. If we are not successful, we must go through another cycle, attempting to do better this time. The actual efficacious power for salvation rests in the individual. Essentially we work out our salvation. The universe is understood as some kind of school in which we must learn our lessons. Such a view is amenable to a society that is geared toward success. We can earn our salvation and do not need anything from anyone."

4. "One wonders whether the high hopes for human self-development, peace, and understanding are not religious projections on the screen of the beyond in which we believe after some kind of Feuerbachian fashion. Yet the belief in human self-redemption can be quite costly, as Marxist Communism showed us with its dream of an egalitarian society, and National Socialism with its advocacy of a thousand years' Reich. Death always stares us in the face when utopia collapses. The human way of redemption is the way of death. God's way of redemption, however, is the way of life."

5. Luther: "'I believe that by my own reason or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him. But the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, and sanctified and preserved me in true faith.' This statement reflects Luther's own experience. He joined the monastery to find peace with God. The more seriously he pursued his own way of redemption, the more he realized how he fell short of perfection....For Luther it was nothing but a big lie that we could work out our own redemption."

6. "Luther does not advocate some kind of determinism. Humanity is always free to choose whatever it wants in things that pertain to this world. Yet with regard to God, it has forfeited such freedom. Only through God's sovereignty can we be justified by God. But even there Luther remains quite realistic when he comments. 'The saints are always sinners in their own sight, and therefore always justified outwardly. But the hypocrites are always righteous in their own sight, and thus always sinners outwardly. ... Therefore we are righteous outwardly when we are righteous solely by the imputation of God and not of ourselves, or of our own works.' When we are reborn, we do not become saints, walking three feet above ground, but are still entangled in the affairs of this world. But those who justify themselves are blind to sin and think they have made it. The truth, however, is that they still live far from God. Christians are always both sinners and justified."

7. "Christians are not under the law of performance, achievement and success. In our modern rat-race, we overestimate our capabilities. We get so busy and so involved that we never catch up and always fall short of our own expectations. The reason for this obsession with accomplishment is that deep-down we have the feeling that nobody will save us unless we save ourselves. Yet if we know and trust that we have been saved, we can relax and turn to that which really needs to be done. While Martin Luther doubted and objected vehemently to our idea of putting the cart before the horse, he was not oblivious to human actions. ...We cannot work up our way to God. Our works are, however, an indicator of our faith. Therefore Luther said: 'If the works do not follow, it is certain that faith in Christ does not live in our hearts, but only a dead faith.' ... The Christian ethic coming out of the understanding of justification is neither an ethics of duty nor one of a guilty conscience that we have not done enough. It is the creative ethics of our response to the undeserved graciousness of God, which we have experienced and still do so."

8. "As Luther repeatedly stated, success is not the mark of truthfulness. Yet we should add failure is not the mark of truthfulness either. Therefore Lutherans cannot rest content with the conviction that they have the right doctrine. They must also be convinced that by pointed to the sovereign God who has shown himself in his human face of Jesus of Nazareth they can offer something to the present-day world, and, I would even venture to say, to present-day Christendom outside and inside Lutheranism. People everywhere must wake up from the naïve idea that we are in control of affairs. Only if we let God be God and realize that we are human and not divine, can we attain a semblance of hope and refrain from bringing misery upon ourselves and others."

GEORGE TAVARD - "Simul justus et peccator: from Bonaventure to Luther"

9. From a sermon of St. Bonaventure (from AD 1267 or 1268): "'One and the same person cannot be just and sinner, good and evil, a servant of God and a servant of the devil, because no one can serve two masters who give contrary orders.' What ... intrigued me was of course the flat verbal contradiction, if not more, between this sentence and the statement of Martin Luther that became a sort of slogan in Lutheranism, that the Christian who is justified by faith is simul justus et peccator, 'at the same time just and sinful.' ... [Does this illustrate] an academic confrontation between a preacher and professor of the sixteenth century and one of the thirteenth? If so, is the confrontation doctrinal, or merely cultural? Does the verbal contradiction of the two theologians express a fundamental doctrinal divergence? Are we then faced with opposite conceptions of the Gospel and of Christian life, with divergent versions of the theological and spiritual tradition regarding sin and justification?"

10. (Re.: The Principle of Contradiction) "(T)he great scholastics regarded justice and sin as contraries in the area of ethics and morality. They could not therefore admit a coexistence of the two of them as jointly present in the Christian soul. Nevertheless, the reference to the principle of contradiction did not mean ... that faith implies moral perfection. Not all Christians are saints in the ethical sense of the term. The non-coincidence of opposites could not apply to the sinful situation of the believers, who need constantly to struggle with the attraction of the world. ... Freedom from sin is God's gift and can only derive from divine grace."

11. (Re. Bonaventure) "If it appears to be a human action, this is only because the human soul is the subject of it, but it is not the agent. By grace alone and not otherwise can a human person 'do what is in itself,' the famous facere quod in se est of medieval theology coming to fruition in a non-Pelagian way when God 'crowns his own gifts in us and nothing else.' The perspective is admittedly more anthropocentric than christocentric; yet grace implies the mediation of Christ and the agency of the Spirit. At this point Bonaventure looks primarily at what happens in the person who is being justified by God."

12. (Re. St. Thomas) "Contemporary with Bonaventure at the university of Paris, the younger Thomas Aquinas interpreted the impossibility of not being in sin in a mild way, as equivalent to the fact that all have a great difficulty to not sin. He took it also in the sense that the sinner cannot by himself get out of sin. Forgiveness belongs to God."

13. (Again, St. Thomas) "Thomas Aquinas also was quite emphatic in regarding the human will as moved by grace. He nonetheless saw the rermssion of guilt as itself conditioned by the human response to grace. ... For Aquinas, even the sinner can, without grace, by himself, acquire good habits (habitus) that will help him to avoid evil thoughts and actions (Aristotle). The reason for what seems to be an optimistic view of sinful human nature is that concupiscence, the inclination to sin, is itself a habit of the will. Aquinas had already said in De Veritate that since concupiscence results from original sin it is a natural habitus, and to a natural habit the will can learn to oppose a contrary habit. Neither the Thomist methodology, however, nor the conclusions reached by St. Thomas had much effect on Luther, whose acquaintance with Aquinas was certainly minimal, even though he seldom hesitated to criticize the Angelic Doctor."

14. Bonaventure: "'Grace makes one acceptable to God ... because conformed to God.' If God accepts the sinner it is not because God feels somehow moved to it by a new affection for one who is fundamentally unacceptable, it is because God has placed what the Seraphic Doctor calls an 'effect' in the creature, a gift that makes the human, sinful person acceptable. This effect, a new imaging of God by the soul, is of divine origin. It comes entirely from God's inner deifying action and is not a human doing. ... The human creature is not acceptable by itself, its works, and its merits. It is accepted only when it is made acceptable. Acceptance requires acceptability, an acceptability that does not come from the creature, but results entirely from what God does to it. This, the effect of divine doing, is pure grace. Bonaventure would have felt the need, I surmise, to qualify what Paul Tillich said in a sermon entitled, You are accepted. 'Do not seek anything;' Tillich told his auditors at Union Seminary, 'do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!' Bonaventure would have said something like, 'Seek God, though you cannot seek God on your own. And you cannot perform anything good on your own. Only accept God's grace in you; accept the Holy Spirit who alone can make you acceptable. And then you will find that you are accepted.'"

15. On Luther's differences with Bonaventure based on their different views of St. Francis: "Luther's entirely negative judgment on St. Francis was due, it seems to me, to two fundamentalreaaons. Firstly, spiritual elitism was incompatible with his understanding of the role of faith in Christian life. Secondly, medieval and old-fashioned though he was in many areas, including the forms of his piety, Luther was also at times astonishmgly modern." (As regarding Luther's view of the stigmata of St. Francis, from 1535 Commentary on Galatians) "'Even if Francis carried the stigmata on his body, as he is portrayed, these were not printed in him on account of Christ (propter Christum), but he printed them in himself through some sort of foolish devotion, or more likely vainglory, by which he was able to tickle himself (with the thought) that he was so dear to Christ that Christ had even printed His wounds in his body.' The (entirely positive) judgment of Bonaventure on the stigmata corresponded to a theological conviction that Francis had a unique prophetic function in Christian history. In him the Church could glimpse some aspect of its eschatological fulfillment. ....Luther's judgment on the stigmata of Francis was strictly psychological. The modern mind is more likely to lean to Luther's side than to Bonaventure's."

16. On Justification by faith alone: "Luther's simultaneity of sin and justice was ... delicately balanced in a perspective that would have been congenial to the thought of Bonaventure. Justification includes a passage from the old to the new: 'Christ's call is gracious and salvific: it transfers those who are called from the law into the Gospel, from wrath into grace, from sin into justice, from death into life.' Those who are called to life are in transit. But they do not pass from sin to justice as from a point that they leave behind to another where they stop moving. Bonaventure's bold title, Itinerariium mentis in Deum ('The Journey of the Mind into God') seems to find an echo here. The mens, properly rendered as 'the acme of the mind,' does not rest this side of God as at the threshold of the New Jerusalem. It truly enters into God. Similarly, Luther's Christian, justified by faith, does not stop short of the Gospel, of grace, of justice, and of life. The true Christian enters into every one of them. The Believer is not between sin and justice, but in justice. And as one is within the Gospel, within grace, within justice, within life, this is not being distant from the law, from the divine wrath, from sin, from death. Rather the disciple is still, at one level, in them, 'at the same time sinful and just,' not yet beyond what Augustine had called the Christian struggle. It is precisely because contraries are incompatible that there is a Christian struggle."

17. On Luther: "Luther could say not only that 'faith holds Christ,' but also that Christ is in faith 'like a gem in a ring.' This presence of Christ in faith is not a metaphor. It is the reality of Christian life and experience. By the same token the presence is Trinitarian. The Three Persons live and act in the Christian soul. Indeed Luther endorsed the mystical insight of the Gospel of John (6:56) that there is an mutual indwelling, by faith, of Christ and the faithful: 'By faith we are in him and he in us.' Indeed, those who believe 'are similar to God, that is they have the same form in their soul as God or Christ.' (On Galntians) As it has been underlined in the Luther scholarship of Finland, these and other expressions come close to an endorsement of the concept of 'deification' that is at the heart of the Orthodox theology, and that was not neglected in the medieval understanding of the presence of Christ."

18. Bonaventure and Luther, though in verbal contradiction at the point of this lecture's departure, were "also at other points in deep agreement. Luther' reaction to medieval theology, "was not against thejourney into God.... And one may think that he was himself deeply engaged on a similar journey. What they both intended to say concerning Christ and the access to salvation was, I am convinced, really the same thing."

SAMMELI JUNTUNEN - "The Doctrine of Justification in the Theology of Luther, Compared with Later Lutheranism and Thomas of Aquin."

19. "The doctrine of justification is the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae for Lutherans. No wonder it feels quite creepy to claim that the Lutheran doctrine of justification would have changed during the years. Still, the recent Finnish Luther research has insisted that already the early Lutheranism deviated in its understanding of justification from Luther. We have claimed that the idea of Christ's presence in the believer is much more important for Luther's understanding of justification than for later Lutheranism. According to us this fact hasn't been correctly understood in the earlier German mainline tradition of Luther research, because it has had a tendency to read Luther through existential eyeglasses. It has understood the reality of justification being a new personal relation with God, a relation which changes the self-understanding of the person coram deo. This emphasis has neglected Luther's idea that Christ himself is present in justifying faith as that essential reality which makes justifylingfaith that what it is. For Luther justification is not only a new personal relation with God. In the last analysis it consists of the believer's union with Christ. This is not only a matter of new self-understanding coram deo. It is rather a new spiritual being, created by Christ's presence."

20. In Augsburg Confession, Melanchthon is yet close to Luther: (Article IV) 'Our churches also teach that people cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits or works, but are freely justified for Christ's sake through faith when they believe that they are received into favor and their sins are forgiven on account of Christ, who by his death made satisfaction for our sins. The faith God imputes for righteousness in his sight.' "Here justification is on one hand forensic and imputative, i.e., 'outside' of the justified person. It is namely the satisfaction that Christ acquired on the cross and isn't in any way connected with the person's merits or holiness. It consists of the forgiveness of sins done by God. On the other hand, nghteousness is also a new 'inner reality' in the person. God namely imputes as righteousness the faith that he has given the person through the word and the sacraments."

21. In a short annex written by Luther at the end of Melanchthon's May 1531 letter to Johannes Brenz, "Luther doesn't separate the internal aspect of justification, the gift of new life, from Christ as the righteousness of the believer. Christ himself, in his person, is righteousness according to Luther; but this same Christ is also present in faith as the donum of new life. I think Luther's choices of words are directed against Melanchthon's explanation, where the justification in Christ is separated from the new life in the Spirit."

22. In a 1536 disputation between Luther and Melanchthon, "Melanchthon tries to persuade Luther into a clear conceptual division between the extrinsic, imputed righteousness and the intrinsic gift of rebirth (renascentia). He does not succeed. Luther does accept Melanchthon's view that a person is righteous 'on the basis of a free imputation which is outside of us (extra nos), i.e., because of a trust (fiducia) which is grasped from the word.' But Luther stubbornly deviates from Melanchthon in that, for him, this understanding of justification is not an exclusive alternative to the augustinian view, where justification is understood as the gift of rebirth, i.e., as something which is also intrinsic to the justified person."

23. In the Loci communes of 1535, "Melanchthon defined justification exclusively as an imputation outside of the person who is justified. Osiander (1550) argued against this understanding." For him, iustificare means a vivification and justification through Christ and his righteousness, which is present in the believer. He did not deny the imputative aspect, but taught that 'the righteousness of Christ is in fact imputed to us (imputetur nobis), but not without, that it is present in us."

24. "Osiander knew that for Luther justification had not been exclusively a relational imputation, because Christ's presence in the believer belonged into it essentially. Osiander wanted to be a follower of the genuine doctrine of Luther and correct the distortions that Melanchthon had brought into it. He could not (pull this off). ... Osiander's fault was christological, a separation of Christ's divine nature from his humanity. This caused him to say that his redeeming work on the cross was no more the actual righteousness of a sinner, but only its historical presupposition. Luther could not have accepted such a teaching. In his teaching Christ's person and his work are never separated from each other." ... "Osiander's understanding of the oneness of God's essence prevented him from seeing Christ's redemptive work on the cross in connection with his righteousness which is given to those who believe." Melanchthon saw that Osiander's mistakes resulted from his doctrine of God, but did not choose to disentangle Osiander's errors from his insights, because Melanchthon favored a forensic understanding of grace, rather than also the intrinsic perspective. "Here Melanchthon and the Formula of Concord differ from Luther. For Luther the relation of the forensic imputation and the indwelling of Christ is not a matter of two distinct realities, the former being the cause and the second the result. ... Luther can quite well define the forensic imputation as a matter of Christ's indwelling as the 'form of faith."' The Formula of Concord "is based on the Melanchthonian idea of justification being exclusively a relational, extrinsic imputation of Christ's merit. God's indwelling in the believer doesn't belong to justification, since it happens inside the person. It is a matter of sanctification resulting from justification. (see Solid Declaration III, 54)

25. The Melanchthonian strategy caused internal tensions in the Lutheran doctrine of justification. Juntunen cited three: (1) If justification is defined as a forensic happening outside the person, in God's act of imputation, then "faith as an internal, personal reality in the believer is something less than divine. Perhaps in the end a minimum human requirement (is) needed for salvation, namely an accepting of the imputation on my column of sins and merits in God's heavenly account book. An exclusively forensic doctrine of justification is actually exposed to a 'make your decision' type of proclamation, even though Lutheranism on the other hand is very much opposed to such an idea. In order to prevent the idea of conversion as a human decision, it would be necessary to explain in the core of the soteriology itself; how the justifying faith as an inner, personal reality of the believer is something divine and not only a human, receptive state of mind."

26. Second, sanctification "In the 'Lutheranism after Luther,' the intrinsic aspects of salvation, such as regeneration, renewal, and sanctification were separated from justification as stages that follow chronologically or at least logically. A problem results: justification needs something which supplements it, otherwise the salvation given by it remains outside of the justified person. Can the doctrine ofjustification then be the regulative idea governing all teaching? If the intrinsic aspect of salvation needs as an explanation something else besides the free righteousness given in Christ, can it any more be pure, unconditional grace? The answer of Lutheranism is of course: 'Yes, sanctification is also a work of God and therefore unconditional grace.' But the fact that this sanctifying work of God the Spirit inside the Christian is put into another box and the justifying external work of Christ before God into another, makes it difficult to keep this claim in force. Isn't there a real danger, that the Holy Spirit, who is responsible for the renewal and sanctification, becomes something frightening in this kind of teaching'? He namely brings a new, supplementing aspect of internal holiness into my previous, unconditional righteousness, something which is ontologically more than the forgiveness of sins given by Christ."

27. Third, baptism: "Most Lutheran theologians from Martin Chemnitz on had in a way a doctrine of baptism that was in line with Luther's: Baptism is not only a sign or promise of a salvation, which would come later. It is an effective instrument of grace which redeems from sin, regenerates and begins the renewal (renovatio) of the person. Still, differently than Luther, most orthodox Lutherans emphasized this only when they spoke about children. Luther's teaching of the conversion as a return to baptism or baptism as the basis for an adult's personal faith are matters that are traditionally not much discussed in Lutheranism. These shortcomings of the Lutheran doctrine of baptism result from the fact, that in the Melanchthonian line the decisive point in salvation was considered to be the forensic imputation. ... it was not easy to unite baptism with this idea, because according to the Lutheran understanding baptism was something that effected a regeneration and redemption from evil inside of us. And such internal changes in the person were excluded from justification. That is why the regeneration in baptism, faith, and justification could not be united in such an integral way as in Luther's teaching."

28. Aquinas and Trent: "Cardinal Bellarmin claimed that the Protestants did not themselves agree on that important question, what the causa formalis of justification was. (A causa formalis is that which makes something real, makes what it essentially is). According to Bellarmin: 'Luther claims sometimes that faith is the causa formails of justification, sometimes that it is Christ himself who is grasped by faith. Philip says that faith is imputed to us as righteousness, but he adds that it is not because of the virtue of faith but because of Christ's merit that we are reputed righteous in front of God and says that we are justified through faith, because faith grasps God's mercy.' Bellarnin's intention is evidently to say, that according to the tradition of the Protestants themselves justification is not such an entity, whose causa formalis, the way to be real, is exclusively the forensic imputation. If Luther had claimed that the causa formalis of justification is Christ himself, apprehended by faith, then the Lutherans should have more understanding for the Council of Trent, which speaks about the inherent aspects of righteousness. Bellarmin's idea was very good. Here is a point where we can (look) for similarities between catholic teaching and Luther, between Thomas and Luther. It is evident, that for both of them justifying faith is a reality, which is not only a forensic imputation but has also an ontological aspect as a new way of being in the justified person. But the difficulties begin right at the same point. The way how Luther understands the ontological status of justifying faith is very different from Thomas."

29. What Luther criticizes strongly is that in the scholastic model "grace has an ontological status which is too weak. It is an accident, inhering in the substance of man. Grace is a qualitas inhaerens of the human love. Because grace is only a quality, then the substantial organ of a person's relationship with God is her human love. Grace elevates this natural tendencey to get good to a supernatural level, but because this elevation is only an accident, the love stays substantially the same: a tendency towards one's own good. According to Luther this is a subtle form of egoism, where a person tries to buy God's favor with merits that grace enables him to gather. This is, for Luther, a way of the righteousness of the law, not of the gospel."

30. "In Luther's ontological model, "Christus forma fidei" the iustitia formalis is Christ himself. When he is present in faith, he stays as that reality what he himself is. He doesn't become a quality in the believer like the habitual gratia infusa in the scholastic model criticized by Luther. That is why even the present Christ as the iustitia formalis is for Luther always a iustitia aliena. He is in us and we participate in him in faith, but not so that he would become our virtue or merit. In faith God's righteousness becomes very realistically ours through Christ, but still it stays very radically Christ 's own righteousness that we can't affect with our actions or merits."

PAUL HINLICKY - "Disentangiing Lutheranism's Two Models"

31 . The joyful exchange of our sin and Christ's righteousness provides us with the operative model in Luther's mind of how the event of justification transpires to unite the believer with Christ in his death and resurrection. According to this model, forgiveness and renewal are the double-sided aspects of the one saving event of encounter with Christ through the gospel, such that the sinner dies and a believer is born. A generation ago Regin Prenter tried to disentangle this model of justification from the way Lutherans have traditionally thought; he wrote: the "traditional orthodox concept of Luther ... [is] a strongly intellectual, forensic idea of justification, in which Christ himself becomes merely the ideological content of the doctrine of objective satisfaction with its legalistic demand of acceptance in faith, and into a theological formula about the mystical union, which often becomes almost a nonevangelical mysticism of Christ... the real presence of Christ and justification, which in Luther's thinking were a complete unity, become two opposing tendencies which it became a problem to reconcile, that is, the religious interest of the doctrine of justification and the ethical interest of the doctrine of sanctification..."

32. "It is not at all my intention in laying this difference bare to pit Luther and Melanchthon categorically against each other. It is never to be forgotten that in the summary statement concluding the main body of the argument for justfication by faith alone in Christ alone in Apology IV, Melanchthon himself stated in no uncertain terms: 'Up to this point, in order to make the matter very clear, we have demonstrated fully enough both from the testimonies of Scripture and from arguments derived from the Scnpture that by faith alone we obtain the forgiveness of sins on account of Christ  [propter Christum] and by faith alone we are justified that is, out of unrighteous people we are made righteous or regenerated.' With this statement in the confessionally authoritative Apology, Melanchthon is in material agreement with the claim of the recent Joint Declaration that forgiveness and renewal are joined together in justification by faith in Christ. Given the rhetorically decisive status of this statement from Apology I, anyone who on Lutheran grounds would wish to dispute the simultaneity of the declaration of forgiveness of sins and the gift of regeneration in the event of justification by faith prima facie assumes an extraordinary burden of proof (if, that is, the text of the confessional writings is to determine what counts as confessional theology, not theological habits of thought, no matter how hallowed or deeply entrenched).

33. "The Christological focus ... makes a significant difference in how the teaching of justification by faith alone is understood. The Joint Declaration's affirmation "that God forgives sins by grace and at the same time frees human beings from sin's enslaving power and imparts the gift of new life in Christ" has been the object of particularly intense opposition from the side of liberal and existentialist Lutherans in a fashion which is illustrative of my larger claim. In 1997 "A Call for Discussion of the 'The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification: Questions and Reflections," was signed by six leading theologians of the ELCA's Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. This document posed a leading question: "Is 'grace' a progressively transforming power in the soul, and therefore a subtle demand -- are you transformed enough yet? Or is 'grace' simply God's unconditional promise of salvation in Christ?" So posed, the question implies that Lutheran - Catholic convergence on justification is in principle impossible, that we have to choose between a (Lutheran) promise of unconditional salvation as the basis of assured or certain faith and an insidious (Catholic) demand, say, that we die with Christ to sin and rise to newness of life.

34. "For Luther faith justifies because (only because!) faith is faith in the Jesus crucified for us as the present, active Christ who acts and works (is effective) in us. Jesus is the reason faith justifies. Indeed, as Luther here conceives it, the crucified and risen Christ is present in faith as the true subject of faith, that means, as the one who believed and so worked for us once and for all and who now believes and so works in us. The autonomous ego with its will power is crucified with Christ; in its place there arises the new creation, the member of the Body of Christ, in whom Christ himself lives and reigns."

35. For Luther, ... the man Jesus is the saving, self-giving divine righteousness. In comparison with Osiander, Luther speaks of Christ's presence as of that Son of`God who once and for all became man and remains that particular man Jesus forever. The obedience, the achieved righteousness, the vindicated faith of Jesus is what saves, the faith which the friend of sinners gives when he comes in his Gospel and people are wed to him in his church. Justifying faith is faith in Jesus as our righteousness sent from God.

36. "Renewal or sanctification is not to be understood in any moralistic fashion, any individualist striving to make oneself worthy of the grace received. Renewal daily lives in and out of the 'joyful exchange.' As Prenter explains: 'To believe in Christ does not therefore mean merely to have received his righteousness as a transferable act of the law - such a faith would be the work of the law even thought it proclaimed itself ever so much as something wrought by'the Spirit--but to believe in Christ means to live through his reality... Faith unites within itself justification and sanctification because both are a release from the power of law. Justification is a deliverance from the power of the law in the conscience as a religious basis for life.' Sanctification is a deliverance from the power of the law over our works as an ethical basis for life... The new life of the believer in the Spirit is no moralistic, individualistic resolve; it really is the Spirit of Christ working Christ's death and resurrection in the believer, or conversely, Christ bestowing his own Spirit to effect his own life in believers. The ethical life is nothing so paltry as a third use of the law; it is the very life of Jesus, agape incarnate, living itself in the lives of believers."

37. In traditional Lutheran interpretation of faith, Christ in heaven merely makes the infinite treasure of his merit available to God the Father in the transcendent act of the justification of sinful man. According to this understanding, we certamly need to know something about Christ's activity, his function, his acts, his merits, his benefits and things like this, but astonishingly enough, we do not need to know Christ himself. It is as if we could have acts without an actor, salvation without a savior, benefits without a benefactor, righteousness without the triumphant Christ who now lives his own self-giving life in us. Christ becomes merely the occasion or instrument of justification, not the content and subject of justification. The Gospel itself is here understood as a report about an absent Lord who once in the past did something precious for us which testifies to God's grace. Faith understood as a human act then fills up this gap. Faith, whether it is regarded as an existential act of trust or as the intellectual conviction about Christ's merits, is understood as an independent human response from the side of man - no matter how much it gets piously redescribed as a gift and work of the Spirit.

I see great irony m this. Those Lutherans who unconsciously follow Melanchthon's line of thought more than Luther's are inevitably led to synergism when they insist that the faith which justifies is a human act without even a sign of the presence of the Risen Christ and his Spirit. On the other hand, those (gnesio-Lutheran Flacians) who want to avoid synergism are led to the curious stance that radical passivity in Christian life is some kind of paradoxical sign of the sovereignty of grace which must be defended at all costs against creeping Catholicism. I don't know in which of these I see the greater irony. But I do submit that there will never be a renewal of the Lutheran Church, not to mention real progress in overcoming the breach of the 16'" century, until we disentangle the two Lutheran models to justification and find our way forward to the Christ who before us is always present for us and just so, effective in us.

SUSAN K. WOOD - "Lutherans and Roman Catholics: Two Perspectives on Faith"

38. Both traditions affirm justification by faith. Ecumenical discussions frequently focus on the meaning of alone in the phrase 'Ijustification by faith alone." This leads to a consideration of faith in its relationship to good works or to the other theological virtues of hope and charity. Less frequently do we attend to how we may think differently about faith itself. I will proceed by first offering my understanding of a Lutheran perception of faith. I will then look at Roman Catholic statements on faith from the Council of Trent, Vatican I, Vatican II, and the Catechism. Since my interest is how faith functions in the imaginations of those who receive our joint statement, I believe this to be informed more by the catechetical tradition which issues from conciliar teaching than from statements of individual theologians. I will then identify the perspective on faith in the Joint Declaration on Justification. Finally, I will indicate some areas for continuing dialogue between our two traditions."

39. "An example of what I find to be a pretty typical Roman Catholic question about justification by faith...: 'Can a Lutheran who believes be deprived of justification? Is there a sin which cancels out justification?' If so, what can this be if a person is justified by faith and can be justified and sinner at the same time'" Sin does not seem to be an obstacle in the face of the Lutheran doctrine of simul justus et peccator. The Book of Concord in the section on good works states: "We also reject and condemn the teaching that faith and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit are not lost through malicious sin, but that the holy ones and the elect retain the Holy Spirit even though they fall into adultery and other sins and persist in them." (Epitome, Art. IV, Good Works, False Antitheses, 3) Thus there is the possibility of a sin that precludes justification. There is sin which is incompatible with justifying faith..... In Lutheran teaching the person with justifying faith does not keep sinning because the promise of justification creates faith and from faith only good works can follow. Good works are the fruit of justifying faith. Lutherans understand justifying faith as placing one's trust wholly in one's Creator and Redeemer and thus living in communion with them. (Joint Declaration, 26) This affects all dimensions of the person and leads to a life of hope and love. The Lutheran emphasis is to believe in the promise of forgiveness of sin and to leave the condition of the sinner in some kind of apophatic silence."

40. "(Among Lutherans there is a) misinterpretation (that) makes faith autonomous and individualistic. Two characteristics of faith avoid this pitfall. First, Hans Schwarz has rightfully noted that Luther's faith is not autonomous, but rather theonomous. The source of faith is not in the believer, but in the word of God. Faith comes through the word of the gospel, which promises the free gift of salvation to those who believe. Faith comes from the Holy Spirit and the person of faith is subject to God's authority, living for God and from God. Second, although faith is intensely personal, it does not exist in isolation. Faith requires the support of a community of faith. The faith and prayers of others serve to strengthen our faith and we are called upon to mutually strengthen and encourage one another in faith. However, as I will develop later, in the Roman Catholic tradition the community does more than support an individual's personal faith. Nor can we identify a faith community as the collectivity of individuals who first have faith and then join a community of faith. At some level a person is initiated into the faith of the community. There is a communal dimension to faith not accounted for in Luther's doctrine.

41. "The issue between Lutherans and Catholics has never been whether or not we are justified by faith. The Council of Trent explicitly affirmed faith in Christ as the sole source ofjustification: 'we are said to be justified by faith because faith is the first stage of human salvation, the foundation and root of all justification, without which it is impossible to please God and come to the fellowship of his children."' (Trent, Chapter 8)

42. On justification: "While the Lutheran looks at the promise of Christ, the Roman Catholic looks at what may transpire through human freedom. The first is Christocentric in vision, the second anthropocentric. For the Reformers justifying grace is completely identical with God's forgiving love and thus is a reality on God's side alone. Luther says, 'Here, as ought to be done, I take grace in the proper sense of the favor of God--not a quality of soul, as is taught by our more recent writers.' (Antilatomus, WA 8, 106, 10; LW 32, 227) For Roman Catholics justifying grace is a reality in the soul of the human being. The primary difference is the lens through which we view justification, from the side of God or the side of what is effected in the human being. The same difference in lenses affects our perception of faith. For the Reformers faith is theocentric. For Catholics it was a theological habit of soul informed by grace. The anthropocentric view is insufficient for justification as Canon 23 (Trent) states: 'If anyone says that faith which justifies is nothing else but trust in the divine mercy, which pardons sins because of Christ; or that it is that trust alone by which we are jusnfied: let him be anathema.' Trent, from its anthropocentric perspective, condemns fiducial faith understood as a human work. However, as we have seen, this was not the perspective of the Reformers, who understood fiducial faith Christocentrically.''

43. "(T)he Reformers understood faith as the forgiveness and fellowship with Christ effected by the word of promise. It is unconditional trust in the merciful God now and at the final judgment. It is a much more personalistic, or wholistic notion of faith involving the disposition of the whole person, not just intellect and will. Reconciliation with Catholics over the notion of faith was possible because of progress made in New Testament exegesis, by advances in systematic theology, and especially by the Second Vatican Council."

44. "The Second Vatican Council in the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation begins its account of divine revelation by identifying the fullness of revelation with Jesus Christ. Strangely, the Council treats the nature of reception of revelation by faith in this constitution in only one paragraph, largely repeating what had been said about faith at Vatican I

In response to God's revelation our duty is 'the obedience of faith' (see Rm 16:, 26; compare Rm 1, 5: 2 Cor 10, 5-6). By this a human being makes a total and free self-commitment to God, offering 'the full submission of intellect and will to God as he reveals,' and willingly assenting to the revelation he gives. (Dei Verbum, 5)

"The text then notes the necessity of God's grace which both anticipates and accompanies our act of faith, the assistance of the Holy Spirit, and the growth in understanding of revelation that is possible to us. Clearly the act of faith is not a human work, although it engages our whole selves with special mention of our intellect and will. Even though the text places Vatican I's emphasis on the assent of faith by intellect and will in the broader context of total self-commitment, it does not develop the dialogical character of faith. Assent of intellect and will corresponds to the more propositional concept of revelation which prevailed at Vatican I. This is repeated at Vatican II, although it is subordinated to its presentation of Jesus Christ as the fullness of revelation. The Council largely failed to complete its personalistic presentation of revelation with a corresponding personalistic account of faith.

"A more adequate treatment of faith in the Roman Catholic tradition is given in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. (Catechism, 142) Here faith is situated within the personalistic context of invitation and response. It states: By his Revelation, 'the invisible God, from the fullness of his love, addresses men as his friends, and moves among them, in order to invite and receive them into his own company.' The adequate response to this invitation is faith. (142) By faith, man completely submits his intellect and his will to God. With his whole being man gives his assent to God the revealer. Sacred Scripture calls this human response to God, the author of revelation, "the obedience of faith."(143) The text then draws on a personal typology of faith, presenting Abraham and Mary as models of faith. It encompasses the complexity of faith as both personal adherence to God and assent to the truth of revelation in the statement, "Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God. At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed." (Catechism, 150)

45. "The key statement of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification occurs in #15: 'Together we confess: By grace alone, in faith in Christ's saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hears while equipping and calling us to good works.' The emphasis is on justification by grace through faith, a phrase taken from Romans 3:23-25: 'For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.' This statement speaks of being accepted by grace alone through faith rather than being justified by faith alone through grace. This same relationship between faith and grace occurs in another text cited in the JDDJ, Eph 2:8-9: 'For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God--not the result of works.'

"For our purposes, of interest is the comparison of 3.15 'by grace alone,' 4.3.26 'by faith alone,' and 4.6.32 'the mercy of God in Christ... alone.' Catholics and Lutherans are able to confess 'by grace alone,' but the phrase 'by faith alone' is reserved to Lutherans in this text. The JDDJ text only puts 'by faith alone' on the lips of Lutherans. The USA bilateral statement 'Justification by Faith' has already observed that an affirmation of our entire hope ofjustification and salvation resting on Christ Jesus and on the gospel and an affirmation that our ultimate trust is not in anything other than God' s promise and saving work in Christ are not fully equivalent to the Reformation teaching on justification according to which God accepts sinners as righteous for Christ's sake on the basis of faith alone (USA, no. 157). However, it notes that these affirmations express the central concern of that doctrine, namely that reliance for salvation should be placed entirely on God. Ultimately the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone serves as a criterion for church practices, structures, and traditions because its counterpart is "Christ alone" (USA, 160). In other words, our understanding of faith and "faith alone" is conditioned by our claims of salvation through Christ alone.

" Herein lies the weight of the consensus achieved in the JDDJ. Our two communions confess together that we are saved by Christ. Grace describes the effect of Christ's righteousness in us. Faith describes how we enter in communion with Christ, the communion in grace, which results in our justification. The JDDJ affirms justification by faith, but it does not develop any particular understanding of faith, although the context is clearly personalistic. It adopts the perspective of direct address of promise and reception of that promise by stating that sinners 'place their trust in God's gracious promise by justifying faith.' (JD, 26) The document does not describe faith as assent of intellect and will. It says that "such a faith is active in love" so that a Christian cannot and should not remain without works.' (JD, 26) Here faith is primarily viewed from the perspective of how it relates to the other virtues of hope and love. This section also associates faith with the action of the Holy Spirit in baptism through which sinners are granted salvation."

46. "...when Catholics hear the Lutheran doctrine expressed as justification by 'faith alone,' they tend to understand faith differently than Lutherans do. In spite of Vatican II's personaiistic emphasis in Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, which identifies Jesus Christ as the sum of revelation and invites us to enter into a personal relationship with him, we still carry around vestiges of a more propositional notion of revelation and tend to identify faith with an intellectual assent to truth. Thus there is a tendency for Roman Catholics to think that the Lutheran doctrine allows Lutherans to intellectually believe, then do what they will and still be saved. However, Lutherans understand faith as placing one's trust wholly in their Creator and Redeemer and thus living in communion with him.(JD, 26) This understanding of fiducial faith, theocentric and Christocentric in nature, does not reduce a trusting faith to a human work. This faith affects all dimensions of the person and leads to a life of hope and love. Faith is a way of living, not merely intellectual assent to religious truths. The character of faith differs according to one's dominant theology of revelation, a personalistic concept of revelation resulting in a dialogical address/response dynamic of faith. Roman Catholics have moved closer to the Lutheran concept of faith by beginning a theology of revelation with Jesus Christ as the fullness of revelation rather than by beginning with the eternal decrees of God's will. Finally, a forensic theology of justification lies in some tension with our theology of baptism. Both traditions can profit from further reflection on the relationship between faith and baptism in order to recover the ecclesial dimensions of faith."

Notes compiled- JLY- 11.30.00