Iustificare
A remarkable point of clear
continuity in Augustine's theology of justification is his interpretation of iustificatio
(justification) fundamentally as "making righteous." For Augustine,
justification makes the recipient righteous before God. The Latin term iustificare
(to justify) has no classical precedents but arises in Latin Christian texts -
first the Vetus Latina (Old Latin) used by Augustine and others, and then the
Vulgate - to translate the Greek dikaioun. Augustine consistently
interprets iustificare as a compound of iustum (righteous) and facere
(to make), that is, "to make righteous," just as vivificare
means "to make (facere) alive (vivum)" and mortificare
means "to make (facere) dead (mortuum)." It is almost a
tautology to call Augustine's understanding of iustificare factitive
given its root in facere. Augustine does at some points recognize that
Scripture uses iustificare to mean "to count righteous," such
as when interpreting Romans 2:13 ("those who observe the law will be
justified"), but even in these rare instances he explains the declaration
by presupposing a prior transformation, thereby reinforcing his factitive
understanding of justification. That Augustine is aware of but does not hold
to a declarative sense of justification shows that he should not be thought of
as blinded into his exegesis by a faulty Latin translation. Augustine's overall
reading of justification in Paul as iustumfacere is a considered
theological position rather than a philological accident.
Augustine's understanding of
justification corresponds with his interpretation of the iustitia dei
(the righteousness of God). The iustitia dei is not a property of God in
the sense of God's own righteousness but names an outpoured gift into the
justified: "not that righteousness by which God is righteous but that
righteousness with which he endows a person when he justifies him." In
characterizing this endowed righteousness, Augustine does not use the
distinction of inherent vs. imputed righteousness, the flashpoint of later
disputes about the nature of justification. On the one hand, Augustine clearly
understands righteousness to be a property given to the justified, one
"imparted (impertita) by God;" on the other hand, Augustine
affirms that righteousness "consists in forgiveness, " which is the
non-imputation of sins. Together, the imparting of righteousness and the
forgiveness of sins point to the holistically restorative nature of
justification in his thought, which one reader has nicely coined
"ontological and sanative." Because Augustine understands human
righteousness to be real and appropriate to this life, albeit incomplete and
consisting in forgiveness, there is no evidence of a duplex iustitia
(double righteousness) in his thought. In fact, that Augustine understands iustificare
as synonymous with transformation and iustitia (righteousness) as an
inward gift was well recognized (and critiqued) even among many
sixteenth-century Protestant admirers of Augustine.
The recurrent efforts by some
scholars to relativize Augustine's universally factitive understanding of
justification, or to introduce an imputation of Christ's righteousness, simply
misunderstand his texts and insert false dichotomies; at the same time, these
readers are right to note that Augustine's account is not exclusively factitive
(even if it is universally so). Even if the word iustificare is
understood factitively, the surrounding theology encompasses declarative
elements. Many distinctions commonly treated as irreconcilable - process vs.
event, declarative vs. transformational, participatory vs. inhering,
forgiveness vs. renewal – can both be found in Augustine.! For him, justification
is forgiveness of past sins as well as renewal in love, participation in Christ
from whom one’s righteousness inheres, a declaration on the basis of a
transformation, and an event which expands into a process. Rather than seeing
Augustine as a partisan of transformation vs. declaration, infusion vs.
non-imputation, perhaps the most fruitful way to receive Augustine is as a
reconciler of these oft-sundered ideas and biblical texts.
If righteousness is imparted into
humans in justification, how does Augustine interpret the reckoning or
imputation of righteousness in Scripture, as in Romans 4:5: “his faith is
counted (Aug. deputatur; Vulg. reputatur; Gk. logizetai)
as righteousness”? While Augustine reads iustificare as synthetic –
creating what is not previously there – he interprets deputare (to
count) as analytic – God’s analysis of the reality of what he has created.
Faith reckoned (deputatur) as righteousness is God’s reasoned assessment
(existimare) of what he has already created in justification. Commenting
on Psalm 119:119, Augustine equates these terms: “‘I have counted (deputavi)
or considered (putavi) or judged (existimavi) all sinners on
earth as violators of the law.’ Our translators have had recourse to various
words to represent the one Greek verb elogisamēn. In justification, God creates the conditions of
righteousness which are simultaneously the grounds for his judgment or
analysis. For Augustine, to reckon a sinner to be righteous by sheer force of
declaration alone – to count someone righteous who is not – does not describe a
divine act but an all too human one. Such false reckonings call to Augustine’s
mind precisely what the person does who wishes to “justify himself” (Luke 10:29),
asserting that one is righteous despite the opposite reality. Counterfactual
declarations describe the tendency of human judgments to declare some to be
just or sinners who are really the opposite in the sight of God, as when
ignorant or corrupt human beings acquit the guilty or condemn the innocent.
God's "reckoning" is often contrary to human estimations, but it is
never contrary to the reality; in the case of justification the reality
"reckoned" is the very one God has re-created: "believing in him
who justifies the impious' (Rom. 4:5), that is, who makes (facit) the pious
from the impious with the result that 'faith is counted (deputetur) as
righteousness' (Rom. 4:5)." God makes the unrighteous righteous and then
rightly "counts (deputatur)" them among the righteous. (Christopher
R. Mooney, Augustine’s Theology of Justification by Faith [Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2026], 13-17, emphasis in bold added)
