[Ernst] Käsemann sees the possibility of
overcoming the tension, at the centre of the justification debate, between God’s
‘declaring righteous’ and his ‘making righteous’ the sinner. He explains,
albeit in somewhat actualistic terms, that ‘according to 1 Cor 12;2f., God’s
power, contrast to the power of the false gods, is not silent but bound up with
the Word. It speaks to us in love and judgment so that we experience the
pressure of its will, and by means of the Gospel, sets us in the posture (which
it alone determines) “before the face of Christ” . . . This righteousness is
the possibility of the access to God, in which we have peace . . . and are reconciled
with God . . . But a Lord that is no
assured possession and is not subordinated to our arbitrary disposal . . . The
status of a Christian under such lordship is no fantasy or ideological
programme . . . Thus the divine presence posits reality. But whether or not
this remains a living reality and whether or not the Christian status in the
eyes of God . . . . is preserved by obedience-these things are bound up with
the actualization of the promise.’ (E. Käsemann, ‘”The Righteousness of God” in
Paul’, pp. 176f.)
‘Forensic’ and ‘effective’
justification. Thus no
contrast or contradiction need be posited between ‘forensic’ and ‘effective’ justification
between declaring just and making just. In the words of Kertelge,
‘the value man must have before God as a condition of salvation, is not
constituted for Pal by the moral rank of man, but is created by a divine decree,
that is by God himself . . . Divine
judgment contains creating power. The justification of the sinner does not only
have a forensic value, but, as forensic, also an “effective” power’. (K. Kertelge,
‘Rechtfertigung’ bei Paulus, p. 123) In brief terms, ‘God's righteousness
is his acting out of the obligation [the covenant] which he took upon himself
in creating the world and in choosing Israel to be his people’. (J.D.G. Dunn
and A.M. Suggate, The Justice of God, p. 37) (Paul O’Callaghan, Fides
Christi: The Justification Debate [Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1997], 193-94)
On
the difference between declaring and making just:
The same point is made by P. Bovati, Reestablishing
justice: legal terms, concepts and procedures in the Hebrew Bible,
Sheffield 1994 (original Italian, 1986). Bovati, after a thorough research into
the legal terminology employed in the Old Testament, distinguishes between two
kinds of judgement: rib and mishpát. The first, usually
translated as ‘quarrel’ or ‘controversy’, refers to the re-establishment of a
broken relationship between two sides through the conceding of pardon and an
act of mercy, which mitigates anger of the offended party. Often a mediator or
intercessor is present on the side of the one guilty. The second procedure mishpát,
usually translated as ‘judgement’, is a specification of the first , in which a
completely impartial third party dictates sentence between the litigants. In
the Old Testament, God at times is presented as the judge between the
conflicting parties; more commonly he is the accuser, insofar as he is
personally involved. St. Paul, logically, works within these coordinates, for
him the process of justification always refers to rib, never to mishpát.
On other words, justification is never a simple remission or absolution of the fault,
but always the re-establishment of interpersonal relationship between two
estranged parties. The notion of pure ‘forensic imputation’ is unknown.
Justification on the contrary involves regeneration, renewal of a broken
relationship. (Ibid., 193 n. 223, emphasis in bold added)
