FORENSIC JUSTIFICATION? LUTHER AND
MELANCHTHON IN THE 1530s
During the 1530s, Luther’s Wittenberg colleague Philipp
Melanchthon developed a forensic or declarative approach to justification.
Luther had laid the groundwork for such an approach in the late 1510s, arguing
that justification was to be seen as the enfolding of the believer in the
“alien righteousness [iustitia aliena] of Christ.” Yet at this time, Luther tended to see this
as a protective external shield or garment, which enabled the believer to grow
in faith and holiness.
Melanchthon took this idea in a somewhat different
direction, arguing that justification is to be understood forensically,
as the declaration that the believer is righteous on account of the alien
righteousness of Christ. Justification thus comes to be understood primarily as
“pronouncing righteous.” Although Luther was not opposed to this theological
move, his own thought remained focused on the indwelling Christ as the agent of
transformation. This, in the view of many scholars, allowed the declarative and
transformative aspects of justification to be held together, anticipating John
Calvin’s idea of the “double grace” of justification and sanctification,
grounded in the believer’s union with Christ.
It could be argued that incorporating the notion of
theosis into a Lutheran account of justification would counter the limitations
of its impersonal, transactionalist, or declaratory emphases. Yet Luther’s own
account of justification is not vulnerable to such criticisms, in that his
clear emphasis on the believer’s transformative union with Christ is capable of
accommodating both declaratory and effective accounts of justification,
providing a theological bridge between them. Although many would argue that
Calvin’s more rigorous analysis of the grounds and consequences of the
believer’s union with Christ provides a more satisfactory intellectual
foundation for the correlation of the declarative and affective aspects of
justification, Luther’s account, particularly in his later writings, is
perfectly adequate to secure this connection. (Alister E. McGrath, “Deification
or Christification: Martin Luther on Theosis,” in Transformed into the Same
Image: Constructive Investigations into the Doctrine of Deification, ed.
Paul Copan and Michael M. C. Reardon [Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2024],
120-21)
WHAT ABOUT THE THEOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF
THE FORENSIC ASPECT OF JUSTIFICATION?
Although the rediscovery of the centrality of union,
participation, and adoption as controlling metaphors has helped contemporary
Finnish Lutheran theology to establish a more satisfactory and integral account
of justification, an account of that materially approximates deification, the
downplaying of the forensic element (particularly in the Mannermaa school) also
calls for reconsideration. It does not do—nor is it necessary—to put union
against forensic justification; that was the valid critique of the Council of
Trent against the Protestant Reformers. In this respect, Lutherans have had a
chance to correct themselves as in that joint declaration with the Roman
Catholics they affirm justification as both forgiveness of sins (forensic) and
making righteous (effective).
Those interpreters who advocate the effective
understanding of justification (that is, justification includes also the inner
change) understandably have undermined the idea of imputation (of Christ’s
righteousness), a key mainstream Protestant idea. The reason is self-evident:
in Protestantism at large, imputation has been seen merely as a forensic act.
But does it have to be so? I do not think so. Only if justification as
imputation is understood exclusively as a forensic act that blocks the
way for making righteous is the opposition justification. But what if, as the
most recent research has allowed us to understand, the concept of imputation of
Christ’s righteousness does not have to be solely (or even primarily) forensic
but could also include the process of change and renewal?
Indeed, as argued above, Luther’s own concept of “Christ
present in faith” (in ipsa fide Christus adest) is just that: the
imputed Christ’s real presence in the believer also instantly brings about the
lifelong process of change. Even semantically, imputation has a number
of meanings, from commercial exchange and accounting (the primary meaning in
Protestant orthodoxy), to personal (not to count the friend’s mistake as a
reason for breaking relationship), to hermeneutical (to consider one’s own
experience as the key to understanding), and so forth. What clearly comes into
the fore in Luther’s theology is the personal orientation. As Mannermaa’s
successor in Helsinki, Risto Saarinen, importantly argues: whereas in Augustine
righteousness could be imputed to the believer in a nonpersonal manner (as a
liquid is poured into a container), in Luther it is always a matter of personal
trust, personal relationship. That justification is more than forgiveness
(forensic declaration, “favor”), however, should not hinder us from lifting up
its significance in a proper manner. (Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, “Justification as
Union and Christ’s Presence: A Lutheran Perspective,” in Transformed into
the Same Image: Constructive Investigations into the Doctrine of Deification,
ed. Paul Copan and Michael M. C. Reardon [Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic,
2024], 286-87)
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