Calvin on Justification

Craig Carpenter offers a careful comparison of Calvin and Trent on justification in an article in WTJ (2002). A few specifics:

1) He summarizes the Tridentine position by following Robert Godfrey’s analysis, but perceptively suggests that Godfrey illegitimately collapses everything into an opposition of infusion/imputation: “His focus on the language of imputation and infusion . . . does not permit him to seize upon the ideas of ‘ingrafting,’ ‘union,’ and ‘membership in Christ’s body’ at work in Trent’s statement on justification. Perhaps Godfrey equates them with the concept of infusion, yet it is not clear that the ideas of union and ingrafting are strictly synonymous with infusion. The latter appears to culminate in the former; ingrafting into Christ ostensibly occurs along with justification after the requisite preparation. To be united with Christ as a living member of his body by formed faith seems to be integral to Trent’s conception of justification and the sinner’s resmission of sins. It needs to be pointed out, then, that the question concerning disparate views of justification between Rome and Protestants may not turn wolely on the question of infusion or imputation, as is usually thought (and fought!), but perhaps rather, or at least also, on the question of how and when one is united to Christ.” The statement from Trent that he is commenting on is: “Although no one can be just, but he to whom the merits of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ are communicated, yet is this done in the said justification of the impious, when by the merit of that same most holy Passion, the charity of God is poured forth, by the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those that are justified, and is inherent therein: when, man, through Jesus Christ, in whom he is ingrafted (cui inseritur) receives, in the said justification, together with the remission of sins, all these gifts infused at once, faith, hope, and charity.”

This is very helpful in specifying the dividing lines between Catholic and Protestant views on justification, which, I’ve suspected, is not felicitously summarized by a simple contrast of infusion/imputation. Various background issues are more controlling.

2) For instance, one of the background issues has to do with the redemptive-historical correlation of the Son and Spirit. Citing a passage from Calvin’s Reply to Sadoleto, Carpenter writes, “For Calvin, but not for Rome, the presence of Christ cannot be separated from His Spirit. Because Rome gives the Spirit an assisting role in the regeneration/sanctification of the believer, which much occur prior to, and as a condition of justification, the believer possesses the Spirit and his benefits but may not possess Christ and his benefits.” Trent agrees with Calvin that “he who has obtained justification possesses Christ,” but do not agree with Calvin that “Christ and his righteousness are present where his indwelling and regenerating Spirit is.”

3) Because Calvin distinguishes but does not separate union with Christ and the gift of the Spirit, he can say that “when we have been reconciled to God by the sacrifice of Christ, also at the same time we are righteous, and indeed we are reckoned in him [ En ut Christi sacrificio reconciliati Deo, simul etiam iusti, et quidem in ipso censeamur ].” Carpenter points out that “Calvin temporally coordinates (” simul “) the application of reconciliation to the believer and the actual possession of righteousness (” iusti “), both of which lead up to a emphatic statement (” quidem “) that we are ‘reckoned in him’ – a reckoning, by the way, which is not fictive but actual as it points to the vital union between believers and Christ.” Calvin “distinguishes imputation from actual possession of righteousness through the language of union, but this distinction does not admit a separation.” This is not justification as a judgment unto deliverance (what I’ve described as a “deliverdict”), but it is a favorable judgment accompanied by a simultaneous work of the Spirit to renew. Calvin teaches both a declaration of being righteous and a becoming righteous, rooted in union with Christ, and entirely sola fide .