My friend Errol Amey has posted a new article on the soteriology of 1 Clement:
On
the Reformationist Misunderstanding of Justification in Clement of Rome
Errol quoted, in part, the following entry from the Encyclopedia
of Ancient Christianity. I am here providing the entry in full:
JUSTIFICATION. Justification is the focal point of the
problem of Christian salvation, because it contains the grace which saves. It
involves the Scripture, dogmatics, history and spirituality.
In the Scripture the terms just—justice—justify—justification
are rich with different nuances. Especially in St. Paul, where four aspects can
be distinguished:
1. Christological. The justification of humanity is Christ,
“who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and
redemption” (1 Cor 1:30). He merited it and is its model, and is both the
efficient and final cause. For “as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for
all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all”
(Rom 5:18).
2. Charismatic. Justification is a gratuitous gift of
God. “Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now
justified by his grace as a gift” (Rom 3:23–24). “For no man will be justified
in his sight by deeds prescribed by the law,” but “man is justified by faith
apart from works prescribed by the law” (Rom 3:20, 28).
3. Dynamic. Justification is a seed destined to grow
and to bear rich fruits: “Speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every
way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Eph 4:15).
4. Eschatological. Justification begins here on earth and
is interior but will have its fulfillment only in Heaven, after the
resurrection, which will see the destruction also of “the last enemy … death”
(1 Cor 15:26). For we have been saved (Tit 3:5), but “in hope” (Rom 8:24);
adopted (Gal 4:5), but we are waiting for adoption (Rom 8:23); renewed (2 Cor
5:17; Gal 6:5; Eph 4:23), but we must renew ourselves day by day (2 Cor 4:15);
regenerated (Tit 3:5), but we are waiting for the regeneration (Mt 19:28).
Justification, therefore, is a large and complex notion which includes
the present and the future and is essentially, even if not exclusively,
eschatological. It includes both the remission of sins, which is “full and
total,” “full and perfect” (Aug., De
pecc. mer. et rem. 2,7,9) and the interior renewal or “new creation” (Gal
6:15; cf. Eph 2:10). The “new creation” indicates and possesses richness and
profundity which theological teaching has brought out. Among others: the
restoration of the image of the Triune God in humanity, whose image,
“immortally impressed on the immortal nature of the soul” (Aug., Trin. 14,4,6), was discolored, deformed,
obscured, wounded, although not destroyed, by sin: by means of justification it
is “renewed from oldness, reformed from deformation, beatified from
unhappiness” (Aug., Trin. 14,13,18;
14,16,22); the divine sonship: “You have received a spirit of adoption … and if
children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ” (Rom 8:15–17);
the “righteousness/justice of God” (Rom 3:21), “not that with which God himself
is just, but that with which God renders us just” (Aug., Trin. 14,12,15); participation in the divine nature: “He has given
us the precious and very great promises, so that through them you may … become participants in the divine nature” (2
Pet 1:4) through which God becomes the life of the soul just as the soul is the
life of the body (see Aug., Enarr. in ps.
70, serm. 2,3; Serm. 65,5–8; In Jo. Ev.
tr. 19,11–13); deification, which is a concept and expression dear to the
fathers of the church, esp. but not only of the East: “He who justifies is the
same who deifies … and that by the grace of adoption, not by the nature
proceeding from generation” (Aug., Enarr.
in ps. 49,2); indwelling of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 3:16–17; 6:19–20),
through which God, who is everywhere with the presence of divinity, is not
everywhere with the grace of indwelling, but only in those who mysteriously
make up his temple, as is the case with baptized children (see Aug., Ep. 187); friendship with God through
the charity which the Holy Spirit diffuses into hearts (Rom 5:5): the Triune
God (Jn 14:23) is present in the just “as the known in the knower and the loved
in the lover” (St. Thomas, ST, I, q.
43, a. 3); the last effect of justification will be the resurrection of the
flesh when the entire person, like Christ, will be a “new creation,” that is
just and immortal.
In history the nature of justification has been questioned indirectly
by the Pelagians and directly by the Lutherans. The Pelagians, with the
doctrines of an original sin that is spread by imitation (of Adam) and of impeccantia and of grace given acc. to
merits, deformed the Pauline notion of grace. The Lutherans insisted on St.
Paul, but, starting from an opposite notion of original sin, reached the point
of leaving in shadow or denying an aspect, the interior, that is also essential
part of justification. The internal renewal is considered by Lutherans to occur
in the realm of the sanctification of the individual as a result of
justification, which they view forensically rather than as a process.
Catholic doctrine passes between these two extremes. The most solemn
and important document of this doctrine is the Decree on Justification of the Council of Trent, which contains not
only the clarification of the controversial questions but also a synthesis of
the dogmatic and spiritual doctrine of salvation: nature, gift, causes of
justification; preparation, nourishment, observance of the divine commandments;
the possibility of losing it, the obligation of reacquiring it, trust in God,
who “does not abandon if he is not abandoned”; fruits of justification or
doctrine of merits, which are also a gift of God, but do not exclude—but rather,
includes—the free cooperation of humanity, which grace provokes and
accompanies.
Already St. Augustine, at the beginning of the 5th c., had illustrated
this same doctrine in substance when, in the Pelagian controversy, he
maintained that justification was necessary, because we are all born sinners;
is gratuitous, because it is a gift of God which we cannot merit; is interior,
because it forgives all sins entirely; is progressive, because, after the
justification, the mortalitas and infirmitas remain which prevent the
perfection of the just person from being perfect: for perfection will not
arrive until “death has been swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor 15:54).
Justification, finally, is the foundation of the merit of good works, which are
therefore a merit, indeed, but gratuitous, since God, “crowning our merits,
crowns his gifts” (Ep. 194, 6 and
19). (Agostino Trapè, “Justification,” in Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity,
ed. Angelo Di Berardino and James Hoover, 3 vols. [trans. Joseph T. Papa, Erik
A. Koenke, and Eric E. Hewett (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic; 2014], 2:490-91
