As a popular level, the Reformation is
often portrayed as a rediscovery of the Bible, particularly of the Pauline
corpus. Although there is some truth in this description, it is more accurate
to see the Reformation as emphasizing a particular reading of Paul’s epistles,
set in a context of a selective appropriation of Augustine’s theology of grace.
This renewed interest in August is characteristic of the sixteenth-century.
Renaissance as a whole; what is distinctive about the Reformers is their critical
theological assessment of Augustine, which included explicit divergence from
his views on three issues relating to the doctrine of justification. The most
accurate description of the doctrines of justification associated with the
Reformed and Lutheran churches from 1530 onwards is that they represent a
radically new interpretation of the Pauline concept of ‘imputed righteousness’
set within an Augustinian soteriological framework.
It is clearly of importance to account
for this new understanding of the nature of justifying righteousness, with its
associated conceptual distinction between justification and sanctification.
Attempts on the part of an earlier generation of Protestant apologists to
defend this innovation of a recovery of the authentic teaching of Augustine,
and of their Catholic opponents to demonstrate that it constituted a vestige of
a discredited and ossified Ockhamism, can no longer be taken seriously. It is
the task of the historian to account for this new development, which marks a
significant breaks with the tradition up to this point. (Alister E. McGrath, Iustitia
Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification [4th ed.;
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020], 185)
