Justification is a legal pronouncement made by God in the present, prior to the day of judgement, declaring sinners to be not guilty.
And therefore sinners are acquitted, God pardoning all their sins and reckoning them to be righteous in his sight, on the basis of Christ, their representative and substitute, whose righteousness in life and death is put to their account when in self-despairing trust they look to him alone for salvation.
The evangelical world is not so clear on the subject of justification as it used to be. Indeed, more and more who claim to be evangelicals see no problem over joining with sympathetic Roman Catholics in spreading the gospel.
In the scholarly community, justification has become, once again, a hot potato. There are scholars on the Roman Catholic side who come very close to an evangelical understanding, admitting that the biblical term is a legal declaration made by God. They then muddy the waters by adding that it also contains a transformational idea, whereby the believer is made inwardly righteous. On the other hand, there are Protestant scholars who tamper with the biblical term to allow a Roman Catholic understanding, claiming that justification is based in the present on our faith in Christ and in the future on our works.
One evangelical scholar, whose writings on the subject have been well received in some quarters is N. T. Wright. As an Oxford undergraduate, he contributed with others to a Banner of Truth paperback, The Grace of God in the Gospel, 1972. He is now a recognised authority on New Testament issues. Dr Wright is an able apologist, arguing strongly for the deity and bodily resurrection of Christ. In addition, he is an engaging speaker and has recently been appointed a canon of Westminster Abbey. He is concerned not merely to break new ground in New Testament studies but to apply his insights to the life and ministry of the church.
In a Lion paperback, What St. Paul really said (1997), Wright presents a devastating criticism of A. N. Wilson's claim that Paul not Jesus was the founder of Christianity. He also takes the opportunity of popularising his own views on justification.
Contrary to what evangelical Protestants have always taught, Wright considers that justification by faith alone is not part of the gospel. It is 'implied by the gospel' but it is not the essence of the gospel. He maintains that Paul did not preach justification by faith to the pagan world of his day. It is 'not the message he would announce on the street to the puzzled pagans of (say) Corinth'.
The Wright gospel
What is the gospel according to Wright? It is the announcement concerning the person of Jesus, that he is Lord. The one true God is now known in and through Jesus. In Jesus the decisive victory has been won over the powers of evil on the cross and the resurrection represents the dawn of a new age. The crucified now risen Jesus is Israel's messiah, who has ended her exile and is Lord of the whole world. This announcement is an authoritative summons to allegiance and poses a challenge to all other powers that claim our loyalty.
Is he right?
It is not what Tom Wright affirms that is the main problem but what he omits and denies. I am always wary of those who emphasise the Lordship of Christ and say little or nothing about him as Saviour. The very name Jesus reminds us of what the gospel is about: 'You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.' (Matthew 1:21).
The whole New Testament directs us to Jesus as the suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 and as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Forgiveness, a right legal position before God, as well as deliverance from sin and Satan, are all part of the good news concerning Jesus Christ.
The position of justification in Paul's theology is one that is fiercely debated. Wright relegates it to the status of a polemical doctrine, a teaching that Paul only uses in debate with opponents. But as Mark Seifrid and others have shown, it is an integral part of gospel proclamation. When Paul sets out the substance of the gospel in Romans, which Jew and Gentile need to hear, it includes justification. In the gospel 'the righteousness of God' is revealed (Romans 1.16-17) and this is later explained in terms of Christ's death to effect justification (3.21-26). He speaks of his ministry as a ministry of righteousness (that is, justification) and contrasts it with the ministry of condemnation (2 Corinthians 3.9).
What is the Gospel?
We must also ask what does the term 'gospel' mean when Paul uses it in the letter to the Galatians? It must surely include that Jesus 'gave himself for our sins' and that he 'loved me and gave himself for me' (1.4; 2.20). Contrary to Wright, the gospel is about how 'people get saved' (to use Wright's language). The whole problem in the Galatian churches concerned the true gospel as opposed to the false gospel that was being pedalled. It included justification.
Though Wright quotes 1 Corinthians 15.3-8 as Paul's basic announcement he nowhere mentions in his book what it means that 'Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures'. Instead, we are told that Christ died as Israel's representative and gained victory over the powers of evil. Nothing is said about Christ's penal substitutionary death whereby God in his love appeases his own wrath on account of human sin. This is a serious omission but all of apiece with his refusal to see justification as part of the gospel message.
Wright on justification
He believes that justification defines the church not the gospel. For Wright, justification is God's declaration of covenant membership. Paul, in Galatians and Romans, is not arguing about how individuals are put right with God but about who belong to the covenant community. According to Wright, the apostle was not denouncing those who were teaching and believing in some kind of merit theology. The problem was not so much theological as racial and cultural. His attack was directed at those who confined God's people to one race.
Is he right?
I would agree that one of Paul's concerns in Galatians and Romans is to show who are the true people of God. It would be wrong however to think of this as the only concern and to define justification in terms of covenant membership. Covenant family membership is one of the results of justification. Colin Kruse states that justification is the gateway through which people enter the covenant community.
Paul's teaching on justification in Romans is to be seen against the dark background of God's wrath on all human sin. The whole world stands guilty before God. There is no one righteous, not even one. He is not thinking of national guilt but of individual guilt the world over. Into this sad state of affairs comes the gospel of God's righteousness, which is about putting a sinner in a right legal position before God through faith in Jesus Christ and his propitiatory sacrifice. Gerald Bray has written: 'By failing to give due weight to the importance of the individual ... Wright has distorted the apostle's meaning and produced a scheme which is too abstract.'
Wright on ecumenism
Because justification defines the church not the gospel, Wright argues that justification is an ecumenical doctrine.
He believes that 'Many Christians, both in the Reformation and in the counter-Reformation traditions, have done themselves and the church a great disservice by treating the doctrine of 'justification' as central to their debates, and by supposing that it described the system by which people attained salvation. They have turned the doctrine into its opposite. Justification declares that all who believe in Jesus Christ belong at the same table, no matter what their cultural or racial differences . . . Because what matters is believing in Jesus, detailed agreement on justification itself, properly conceived, isn't the thing which should determine eucharistic fellowship.'
Because justification is not what we thought it was, we are told that we cannot use the doctrine to highlight the error of those who seek to earn their salvation through good works. He does not believe that anyone thinks in terms of earning salvation today never mind the Jews of Paul's day. Wright informs us that he knows of 'no serious theologian, Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox', who thinks that human beings can make themselves fit for God. He declares that one of 'the best expositions of the Augustinian or Lutheran or Calvinist doctrine of justification I have ever heard was given by a Jesuit in an ecumenical meeting.'
Is he right?
Jesuit theologians might very well give a statement on justification that seems very agreeable to Protestants. Alister McGrath can describe Rome's definition of justification at the Council of Trent as 'brilliant'. When you read the small print and the implications of what is said it becomes very obvious that justification is not only by faith, but also by an individual's good works and the good offices of the church. Wright seems to have forgotten that it is characteristic of sinful human nature to promote a works-oriented religion.
While it is true that all who believe in Jesus 'belong to the same table' we are obliged to ask, which Jesus are they trusting? Paul speaks of those who not only preached another gospel which is not a gospel but 'another Jesus' (1 Cor. 11.4). We cannot divorce Jesus from the truth about him in the Scriptures and that includes the teaching on justification. This doctrine cannot be ignored in ecumenical discussions. This is why Luther was right to regard justification as the 'first and chief article' of faith in the church. For Calvin also, the future safety of the visible church depended on this doctrine. 'If the purity of this doctrine is in any degree impaired the church has received a deadly wound' and 'brought to the very brink of destruction.'
In Wright's definition the one great stumbling-block between Protestants and Roman Catholics has been removed at a stroke. No longer is justification the cutting edge of the gospel. We believe Wright is wrong and that the Reformers were right. It was with this truth burning in his heart that Luther opposed the sale of indulgences and other false ideas in the church. These vile practices which deny the sufficiency of God's grace in Christ have not gone away. The religion that invented them is, at this moment, awarding special indulgences to faithful Roman Catholics who do good deeds during this millennium year. We constantly need to hear the full-blooded biblical teaching concerning justification to keep the church as a body and its individual members free from such gross error.
