Under a section entitled "The Charge of 'Legal Fiction,'" Robert Sungenis wrote that:
During the Reformation, the Catholic Church charged that the Protestant conception of justification was a "legal fiction." The Church maintained that if justification is only a legal category into which God places a man without being truly just in his own person, then the justification is not real. A "declared" justification (which is another term for a forensic justification) without a just object in view is merely a legal label, hence a "legal fiction." (Robert A. Sungenis, Not By Faith Alone: The Biblical Evidence for the Catholic Doctrine of Justification [2d ed; Catholic Apologetics International Publishing inc., 2009], 349)
The footnote for this (pp.349-50, n. 434) also adds further insight into this rather blasphemous tenet of Reformed soteriology:
R. C. Sproul misses the point when he says: “The forensic declaration of justification is not a legal fiction. It is real and authentic because the imputation upon which it is based is no fiction. It is a real imputation of real righteousness of a real Christ” (Justification by Faith Alone, op. cit., p. 39). Geisler and MacKenzie attempt the same argument with a little more subtlety: “Our status is not merely legal (as in forensic justification) but also ontological (real) for we become the actual children of God at the initial moment of salvation… ([Evangelicals and Catholics: Agreements and Differences]., f. 67, p. 239). Catholic theologians have no contention with Protestants if they desire to think of their imputation as “real.” The Counter-Reformation charge of “legal fiction” referred rather to the forensic justification’s theory that the individual was still said to be unjust, though justified. This infringed on the integrity of God, who was put in the position of calling something just that was not really just. Analogously, a gold-plated coin is real but that does not mean that the metal underneath is real gold. Thus, for someone to call the coin a genuine gold coin would be a lie. George Eldon Ladd refutes the charge by saying that the justification is relational as opposed to ethical. He writes: “The forensic righteousness of justification is a real righteousness, because a man’s relationship to God is just as real as his subjective ethical condition. A man’s relationship to God is no fiction” (Ladd, [A Theology of the New Testament]., pp. 439-30). Though Catholic theology would not deny that there is a definitive relational change between God and man in justification, limiting the exchange to relationship is neither biblical noir logical. It would be analogous to a bachelor who marries claiming only that his marital status (i.e., his relationship with the woman) has changed but who ignores the fact that he desired to marry her because he loved and admired her for who she was as a person (i.e., her ethical and other virtuous qualities). The formal moment of marriage is analogous to baptism, which defines the relational change. However, just as a man marries only because he loves his fiancé for who she is before the wedding ceremony, so God seeks and begins an ethical change in the individual prior to his baptism. That prebaptismal ethical change, initiated by the grace of God , is called “repentance” (cf. Mt 3:6-8; 4:17; Mk 1:5; 6:12; Lk 3:3-8; 5:32; 24:47; Ac 2:38; 3:19; 10:1-4; 17:30; 20:21; 22:16; 26:20; 2Pt 3:9). From another vantage point, Douglas Jones attempts to escape the charge of legal fiction by first asserting that “…God justifies those who have the real, ontological property of corporate righteousness. No legal fiction. No imperfect individual righteousness.” Although corporate righteousness is certainly part of the righteousness God gives to the Church at large, yet God still requires the individual to have and obtain his personal righteousness from the corporate entity. This is precisely why Catholicism insists that individuals obtain justification and infused righteousness from the graces given to the Church, e.g., sacraments, communion of saints, etc. Justification is both corporate and individual and it is therefore erroneous to elevate the former at the expense of the latter. Jones also claims that Catholicism by not attributing man’s guilt of sin to Christ engages in a “legal atrocity” which, he claims, makes God a slayer of the innocent, i.e., Christ (“Non Est” in Credenda Agenda, vol. 8. No. 3, p. 23, emphasis added). First, Catholicism does not speak of the death of Christ in “legal” terms. It is a personal decision by a loving Son to obey his Father in order to provide grace to mankind. Second, Jones ignores the appeasement motif throughout Scripture, wherein Christ offers himself in death to appease God’s personal anger against sin. God is not “slaying the innocent,” rather, it is Christ who voluntarily offers himself up to the Father as an act of love for mankind. There is quite a difference between shedding the innocent blood of a involuntary victim (e.g., Dt 19:10; 1Sm 19:5; Ps 106:38) and offering oneself up voluntarily in love for others (Jn 10:18; Hb 7:27; Ph 2:6-8).
The theology espoused by our Reformed opponents is one that makes God a liar, declaring something to be “righteous” when in reality they are not. This is a violation of the integrity of God’s character, something summarised by the Apostle Paul in Titus 1:2 thusly:
In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began.
Reformed theology preaches a false God; a false Christ, and a false salvation. It is my prayer that advocates of such a theology will reconsider their faith before it is too late.
