Justification and the Holy Spirit

Anglican Theological Review, Summer 2001 by Fuller, Reginald H

Over half a century ago the well-known Anglican liturgiologist Gregory Dix reminded us that the Reformation was not all about incense, vestments, or other externals-the Lutherans anyhow kept most of those things-but about the doctrine of justification. In a nutshell, the issue was whether God's righteousness is imputed (thus the Lutherans) or imparted (thus Rome). The Reformers could appeal to the Old Testament and Hebrew background of the relevant terms, righteousness and justification, and to Paul's argument of Romans 4:6-12, which is based in part on Psalm 32:2, "Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity." Rome could base its argument, at least in part, on the literal meaning of the Latin justicare, meaning literally to make rather than declare righteous. While the Reformation understanding is exegetically correct as far as it goes, it often has had unfortunate consequences in practice. Luther maintained, correctly enough, that the message of justification by the grace of God, made available through the saving act of God in Christ and received by faith, is the heart and soul of the gospel, the doctrine by which the Church stands or falls (articulus tantis vel cadentis acclesiae). He was even exegetically correct, though questionably paraphrasing, when he added the little word allein to his translation of Romans 3:28, despite its absence from the Greek: "Thus we hold that the human being becomes righteous without the works of the law through faith alone" (my translation from the German, emphasis added). Our Anglican Reformers agreed with Luther on this point:

We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, by Faith and not for our works or deserving. Wherefore, that we are justified by Faith only, is a most wholesome Doctrine, and very full of comfort (Article XI of the Articles of Religion, emphasis added).

There can be no doubt that Anglicans/Episcopalians are committed to the Reformation position. But in other contexts this crucial Reformation doctrine can have questionable consequences. It has been used, for instance, though not by Luther himself, by the more radical Reformers, to downplay the necessity of the sacraments, to give them a purely symbolic significance, or to abandon them altogether. This is what happened with the Socinians, the Quakers, and the Salvation Army.

Justification by faith only can also be interpreted in such a way as to neglect the importance of good works in Christian life. In fact, one sixteenth-century Lutheran theologian went so far as to assert that good works were harmful for salvation (!). Perhaps that was merely a piece of rhetoric for a particular situation, and not meant to be taken as a general truth. A third effect, particularly evident in seventeenthcentury Lutheran orthodoxy, was an excessive concentration on right doctrine (rechte Lehre), to the neglect of devotional life and of moral effort. Despite the legitimate reaction in German pietism, some of the consequences of this neglect have persisted to this very day. Bishop Stephen Neil, probably the only Anglican to have held a professorship in a German theological faculty, once remarked that his students there never seemed to say their prayers. I can vouch for that from my own experience in the Evangelical Stift (Seminary) in Tabingen just before World War II. It led me to coin the expression Biergartentheologie (beer garden theology). There seemed to be little appreciation for the principle lex orandi lex credendi (what you pray determines what you believe). This impression was reinforced for me some years later while lecturing at the Ecumenical Institute of Bossey to an international conference for students. I was invited as an Anglican to conduct a quiet day. The students from the Reformed traditions welcomed what for them was a new experience, but the German Lutherans protested. Keeping silence all day was looking for justification by the works of the law! While pietism, whether in its German or Anglo-Saxon forms (Anglican Evangelicalism and Methodism), rightly insisted that justification, or conversion as they preferred to call it, must be followed by lifelong growth in sanctification or holiness of life, popular piety has concentrated too much on the initial moment of conversion. It often seems to get no further than the beginning of the Christian life. Some readers may remember the story of the Victorian bishop of Durham, Brooke Foss Westcott. One day, when he was still a professor at Cambridge, he was traveling by train to London when a Salvation Army lass got into the carriage at Hitchin. Taking her seat opposite him, she asked him: "Are you saved?" To which he replied, "Do you mean so their, sozomenos, or sothisomenos?" (saved at some moment in the past, in the process of growing into salvation, or hoping for salvation at the Last Day). There is more to the Christian life than its initial moment.

In his Anglican days John Henry Newman proposed a middle way of interpreting the doctrine of justification, seeking to do justice to the truth in both Protestant and Catholic positions while avoiding their pitfalls. Justification, he agreed with Luther, begins when God imputes to the believer the righteousness of Christ. God grants his grace to the believer as a free gift, consequent upon Christ's redeeming work, through the operation of the Holy Ghost, and it is appropriated by faith alone. Thus far Luther is correct. But that is not all. Justification initiates a process in which the Holy Ghost enables the believers to perform good works. This growth reaches its completion at the Last Day. Thus righteousness, initially imputed, is increasingly imparted, and results in good works. This is the truth in the Catholic position. Moreover "faith alone" does not eliminate the sacraments, for it is through baptism that righteousness is initially imputed, and through the eucharist that it is increasingly imparted. Believers, however, must cooperate with the Holy Spirit in performing good works: they cannot do them by their own unaided effort. Thus the Catholic view follows St. Augustine. Here Newman supports his argument with three quotations from the Pauline writings: