Luther was schooled
in the nominalist tradition of the via moderna, following thinkers such
as William of Ockham and Gabriel Biel. While there were indeed nominalists who
are Augustinian, such as Gregory of Rimini, the school of nominalists who
trained Luther was not. From Biel’s textbook, Luther learned that the sinner
was not so far gone that they could not do what lay within them and respond to
God with some small moral effort. These influences can be seen in the beginning
of Luther’s lectures on the Psalms in 1513. It was during these lectures on the
Psalms when Luther encountered the concept of “the righteousness of God.” Biel
and the nominalist scholars with whom Luther was acquainted all understood iustitia
Dei as a subjective genitive referring to God’s own retributive justice,
whereby he punishes those who break divine law.
Luther had great
distress over, even hatred for, this phrase “the righteousness of God” because
it seems to him that Paul talking about the gospel revealing the righteousness
of God in Romans 1:17 was a further revelation of God’s retributive justice.
Luther found it impossible to see how the retributive justice of God could be
“good news” for sinners. Sometime in the Autumn of 1514, Luther found his
solution. He saw the righteousness of God not as a quality of God but as a gift
from God. For Luther, the righteousness of God is that righteousness God gives
to us to receive passively by faith. The righteousness that God’s justice
demands of us is the very thing that God freely gives to us. So, Luther saw it
as an objective genitive, not a subjective genitive. To his delight, Luther
found precedent for his interpretation in St. Augustine’s anti-Pelagian work On
the Spirit and the Letter.
Far from a simplistic
reading, if one looks at how Luther understood the righteousness of God in
other passages in Romans, it becomes clear that his view is a bit more nuanced.
In effect, Luther thought that God’s gift of righteousness and his free justification
of the sinner exhibits God’s own righteousness. God demonstrates that he is
righteousness not because he punishes the wicked but because he gives
righteousness to sinners as a gift. Chester further notes, “The point for
Luther is not to deny that the phrase ‘the righteousness of God’ means God’s
being righteous in God’s self, but rather to insist that this subjective
genitive sense is true for us only on the basis of the objective
genitive sense” (Chester, Reading Paul with the Reformers, 209). This connection
between the subjective genitive sense and the objective genitive sense for
Luther is made chiefly by means of union with Christ by faith. For Luther,
faith in God is directly connected to God’s righteousness because faith
ascribes righteousness to God. Additionally, faith and participation with
Christ are intimately connected, as Christ “is present in the faith itself.” As
Vainio points out, for Luther, the righteousness of God is the righteousness of
Christ, and through faith we participate in Christ (Olli-Pekka Vainio, “Luther
and Theosis: A Response to Critics of Finnish Luther Research,” in Pro
Ecclesia 24, no. 4 [2015]: p. 63).
What is new in Luther
is not necessarily his reading of the text, but how Luther applies this text to
the salvation of sinners. Luther places a complete emphasis upon the saving
action of God through Christ for the sake of the sinner. (Matthew Fenn,
“Defending God’s Honor: The Righteousness of God in Light of
Honor and Shame,” in Jordan Cooper and Matthew Fenn, eds., The Doctrine of
Justification: Theological Essays from the Weidner Institute [The Weidner
Institute, 2021], 221-68, here, pp. 225-28)
