Seifrid on Luther on Justification

Seifrid on Luther on Justification February 3, 2005

Mark Seifrid has an important article contrasting Luther and Melanchthon on justification in the Husbands and Treier volume on the subject. He examines a private discussion between the two Reformers that took place in the home of Johannes Bugenhagen in 1536. A number of differences emerge, in their assessment of Augustine (neither is a pure Augustinian on justification), imputation, works and faith. Seifrid ends by noting that, despite their differences, Luther and Melanchthon did not part ways over the issue, and suggests that this is a lesson for recent debates (he’s thinking mainly of the furor caused by Robert Gundry’s work on imputation).

The most revealing portion of Seifrid’s discussion follows a quotation from Luther’s 1535 Galatians commentary, where Luther argues that “faith, Christ, and acceptance or imputation” must be joined. He goes on, “Faith takes hold of Christ and has him present, enclosing him as the ring encloses the gem. And whoever is found having this faith in the Christ who is grasped in the heart, him God accounts as righteous. This is the means and the merit by which we obtain the forgiveness of sins and righteousness. ‘Because you believe in me,’ God says, ‘and your faith akes hold of Christ, whom I have freely given to you as your Justifier and Savior, therefore be righteous.’ Thus God accepts you or accounts you righteous only on account of Christ, in whom you believe.”

As Seifrid comments, for Luther, saying that we are righteous because of the present Christ and saying that we are righteous because of faith are two ways of stating the same reality: “Luther happily alternates between speaking of righteousness imputed because of the Christ who is present and because of faith. He understans faith simply as the work of God through the Gospel. It is the new creation, the present Christ, and not a quality or virtue in the human being. Luther does not define faith simple as a ‘means and instrument’ as do the later Formula of Concord and Westminster Confession. He is thus free to develop his powerful reading of the first commandment as a call to faith. Christ’s role in justification is likewise different for Luther [ie, different from Melanchthon]. While Luther thinks in terms of union with the crucified and risen Lord, Melanchthon thinks primarily of the cross, and that as a past transaction, the benefits of which are mediated to the present by faith. The later Protestant formulatic description of justification as ‘the imputation of Christ’s righteousness’ was a development of the Melanchthonian view. Althought this sort of language appears occasionally with both Luther and Melanchthon, it appears to come into prominence only after Luther’s death, in the Osiandrian controversy (1550-1551), when it served as a means of Protestant self-definition over against Osiander’s claim that only the indwelling, divine presence of Christ justifies. It was apparently also Osiander, the ‘heterodox father of Protestant orthodoxy’ who first assigned Christ’s active obedience and passive obedience different roles in justification. None of these developments, although they had their legitimate ends, can be made to fit into Luther’s understanding of justification . . . . he speaks of the imputation of righteousness. In many other contexts he speaks of the non-imputation of sin. But he does not speak of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness — or does so only rarely — because he regards Christ himself as present in faith. ‘Imputation’ functions somewhat differently in Luther’s thought from the way it does in Melanchthon’s. For the latter, ‘imputation’ is necessary in order to mediate Christ’s cross-work to the believer. But for Luther, Christ’s saving benefits are already mediated in the union of faith, the ‘blessed exchange’ between the sinner and the justifying Savior. ‘Imputation’ therefore appears in Luther’s usage as the divine approbation of the crucified and risen Christ, and of the faith that grasps him (and in which he is present) . . . . for Luther ‘imputation’ remains ‘exceedingly necessary,’ since our own righteousness is only incipient, and sin remains with us. Yet for him it is not merely the initial act by which God imparts salvation, but rather the continuing way in which God governs and purifies the life of the justified.”

Seifrid draws a few consequences from Luther’s “dynamic” understanding of justification. First, ‘to insist that one define justification in terms of ‘the imputation of Christ’s righteousness,’ is to adopt a late-Reformational, Protestant understanding. As we have seen, it is impossible to force Luther into this paradigm. Melanchthon tried and failed. Shall we then declare Luther outside the Reformation? Shall we say that the great Reformational insight came in the 1535 Loci and not in the summer of 1518?” Second, in Luther’s view, justification is not “construed as a pronouncement upon a human quality,” since the faith that justifies is created by God and since faith grasps and clings to the Righteous Christ for justification. It appears that Luther’s emphasis on faith as something awakened and created by the word of promise might help rebut the charge that faith is simply a “lesser work,” that justification by faith is simply justification by Law, lite. Finally, he notes that Luther’s understanding maintains the necessary connection between mercy and judgment: “God’s mercy is granted only in judgment.” Maintaining this insight helps to avoid the instabilities that have plagued some Protestant soteriology: “In that God’s saving righteousness includes his wrath and his love, simultaneously and without diminution of either, this understanding of justification guards us from playing one off against the other. God’s ultimate wrath is found nowhere but in his ultimate love, and vice versa. By construing divine justice within the framework of bare legal conceptions, Protestant thought separated love from justice, and quite contrary to its own intent, arguably prepared the way for the totalization of love in modern theology.”


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