Reflections on salvation and justification in the New Testament

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Dec 1997 by Carson, D A

D. A. CARSON*

(FOREIGN TEXT OMITTED): UMI

I. INTRODUCTION

This subject is impossibly vast for a brief paper. To make sense of the treatment that follows, three assumptions must be appreciated, for they determine the focus.

1. This is not an attempt at a comprehensive and representative treatment of salvation and of justification in the NT prepared for, say, a catechizing class in one of our churches, or for a class of seminary students. It has been prepared specifically for this Catholic/evangelical dialogue.1 That means the points of historical difference between Catholicism and evangelicalism, in the light of what the Bible says, receive more attention than they might in some contexts.2

2. We live and think within a particular historical setting. We can no more return to the patristic period and ignore the disputes of the Reformation than we can ignore the Enlightenment. This does not mean we should not listen to the early-Church fathers (or, for that matter, to Thomas or Calvin). It does mean we must frankly recognize our historical location. We cannot retreat to an earlier period and pretend later disagreements have not occurred. They must be either resolved or dismissed as unimportant (which of course implies that it was a mistake to fight over them at the time). That is part of the responsibility of speaking from our own place in history. Similarly we must eschew formulations that mask honest divisions (e.g. formulations in which different parties quite knowingly mean opposing things, which is of course no genuine agreement at all). For evangelicals the return to Scripture, however much we recognize that all interpretation of Scripture cannot entirely escape the historical contingency of the interpreter (as some wag has put it, "There is no immaculate perception"), is foundational.

3. As there is considerable diversity of opinion among evangelicals, so is there considerable diversity of opinion among Catholics-a fact sometimes overlooked because of Catholicism's institutional oneness. The views of, say, Billy Graham are not the same as those of R. C. Sproul. The views of the current pope are not isomorphic with those of Edward Schillebeeckx. I enter this observation not to stir up strife but to acknowledge that dialogue is more difficult where the partners are shifting. As erstwhile confessional Protestantism has produced many scholars who have drunk deeply at the wellsprings of naturalism, so Catholicism now follows a similar course. In what follows I try to stick with evangelical opinion widely regarded as near the center of the movement and extend the same courtesy to dialogue partners by citing, for the most part, Catholic sources with which few Catholics would take umbrage.

In the following sections I first draw brief attention to substantive common ground in Catholic and evangelical conceptions of salvation and then outline four problem areas that we should not trip over. The succeeding section is the longest and most substantive and attempts to summarize some of what the Bible says about salvation, drawing attention not only to points of convergence but to the most important points of divergence in the respective understandings of Scripture by Catholics and evangelicals. The concluding section attempts to indicate, rather hesitantly, that the issues that divide us are tied to broader doctrinal structures: Candor compels us to recognize that disputes over, say, justification are themselves tied to larger structures of thought, and the attempt to resolve divergences of interpretation in the one area are probably somewhat naive unless they are frankly acknowledged to belong to a broader framework.

II. SOME COMMON GROUND

That brings us to two huge areas of common ground between Catholics and evangelicals so far as our respective understandings of salvation are concerned.

1. We share the Bible's story line. Fifty years ago, even thirty years ago, that would not have been saying much. But in a nation as religiously pluralistic as this one, it is an important observation. We are theists-that is, those who believe in a personal, transcendent God, who is not to be identified with the created order but who is the Creator of all. Further, we are trinitarian in our understanding of God. Human beings have been made imago Dei. History does not simply turn in circles but pulses onward under the hand of our providential God, toward the final judgment. There is a heaven to be gained and a hell to be feared. The heart of the human dilemma is not our material existence, still less a morally neutral quest for authenticity, but rebellion, sin, transgression that alienates us from our Maker and attracts his just judgment. Certainly there can be no shared vision regarding a solution to a problem if there is no shared vision as to the nature of the problem. We concur that the heart of the problem, the heart of what it means to be lost, is bound up with our sin. What we need is to be reconciled to God. On countless important points we may disagree on our understanding of Scripture (e.g. as to how far the effects of sin corrode our reason), but this largescale vision of God, the universe, our place within it, and the nature of our alienation from our Maker is, by and large, common ground. In short, the framework established by the Bible's metanarrative constitutes a shared worldview.