One of the most important sources for our
understanding of this radical alteration in Luther’s doctrine of justification
is the 1545 autobiographical fragment in which Luther records the intense
personal difficulties he experienced at an early stage in his career over the
concept of the ‘righteousness of God’. (WA 54.185.12-186.21)
I had certainly been overcome with a
great desire to understand St Paul in his letter to the Romans, but what had
hindered me thus far was not any ‘coldness of the blood’ so much as that one
phrase is the first chapter: ‘the righteousness of God (iustitia Dei) is
revealed in it.’ For I had hated that phrase ‘the righteousness of God’, which,
according to the use and custom of all the doctors, I had been taught to understand
philosophically, in the sense of the formal or active (as they termed it) righteousness
by which God is righteous, and punishes unrighteous sinners.
The modern preoccupation of scholars
with this autobiographical fragment dates from 1904, when the historian Henrich
Denifle argued that Luther’s discussion of the term iustitia Dei
indicated an ignorance of its use in the western theological tradition. (Denifle,
Luther und Luthertum in der ersten Entwickelung, especially 392-5,
404-15. See also Denifle, Die abendländischen Schriftausleger bis Luther über
Iustitia Dei) Denifle produced a detailed analysis of the exposition of Romans
1:16-17 by some sixty doctors of the western church, indicating that not one of
them, from Ambrosiaster onwards, understood iustitita Dei in the sense
Luther notes in the above citation. However, the conclusion which Denifle drew
from this demonstration—that Luther was either ignorant of the Catholic tradition,
or else deliberately perverted it—was clearly unjustified. With the benefit of
hindsight, Denifle’s contribution to the discussion lay largely in having precipitated
more detailed scholarly discussion of the issue.
It is quite clear that Luther intended
to make no global reference to the western tradition of interpretation of
Romans 1:16-17 but was referring specifically to the doctors who taught him—an
unequivocal reference to the moderni at Erfurt, under whom he received
his initial theological education. Luther here refers to the specific concept
of iustitita Dei associated with the via moderna: God is
righteous in the sense that God rewards the person who does quod in se est [“to
do what lies within you”] with grace, and punishes the person who does
not. In view of Gabriel Biel’s unambiguous assertion that individuals cannot
know for certain whether they have, in fact, done quod in se est, there
is clearly every reason to state that Luther’s early concept of iustitia Dei
was that of the righteousness of an utterly scrupulous and impartial judge, who
rewarded or punished humans on the basis of an ultimate unknown quality. (Alister
E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of
Justification [4th ed.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020], 194-95,
emphasis in bold added, comment in square brackets added for clarification)
