Monday, September 2, 2019

E.M.B. Geen on Transformative Justification in Acts 4


Commenting on Peter’s speech in Acts 4, Protestant E.M.B. Green wrote the following where he is forced to recognize that justification is not a mere declaration:

The uniqueness of Jesus's salvation is nowhere more clearly emphasized than in Acts 4.12. It is, as the context shows, a salvation which concerns the whole man (sōzein is ambivalent in 4.9, 12, as it is so often in the Gospels). It is made possible through Jesus of Nazareth, crucified, risen and active in his disciples. He was “the stone set at nought by your builders”, says Peter courageously (as he uses the text from Ps. 118.22 which his Master had used before him, Mk. 12.10), and through God’s action he “is become the head of the corner”. This verse became an important one among the early Christians. It comes from a psalm sung at all the festivals, and Jewish Christians would never be able to forget its words, and the striking light they shed on the fate of Jesus. There are, in fact, many verbal links between this psalm and the whole incident of the healing of the lame man to which this speech is the sequel. “The gate of the Lord” which “the righteous enter” (Ps. 118.20) corresponds with “the gate of the temple” (Acts 3.2) which the restored cripple (now made “righteous”?) “enters” (3.8). “This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes” f the psalmist (118.23) is matched by Peter’s insistence that the healing is God’s doing (Acts 3.12, 16), and by the repeated statements that the crowd “marvelled” (3.10, 11, 12). (E.M.B. Green, The Meaning of Salvation [London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1965], 144, emphasis in bold added)

Elsewhere in his book, to try to salvage belief in the Protestant understand of justification, he follows Leon Morris’ misinformed comments about δικαιοω and –οω verbs:

Nowhere in Greek literature does δικαιοω means “to make righteous”. In common with other verbs in –οω denoting moral qualities, the causative element (often to be found in –οω verbs) is absent. Thus αξιοω means “to account worthy” not “to make worthy”; δικαιοω means “to account righteous” not “to make righteous”. (Ibid., 163 n. 3)

To see why Green (and Morris who he is getting this from) is dead-wrong, see: