Justification,Judgment,and Participation: A Reply to Michael Horton

I am grateful for Michael Horton's appreciation and critical response to my book, A Pauline Theology of Justification (hereafter PTJ). I am also grateful to the editors of Pro Ecclesia for seeing here an opportunity for response and dialogue. It is not quite true that my book's “goal is to defend a Tridentine view of justification” against non-Catholic perspectives (410). I am a Catholic Christian, and my reading of Paul fits within my confession, but I did not set out with an apologetic agenda. My main goal was to bring my more technical work on the legal metaphor of justification into theological conversation about the things that people actually care about when they talk about justification, things like atonement and grace, faith and the law, and assurance. This goal brought me into dialogue not only with Augustine or Aquinas but also with Luther, Calvin, Wesley, and others who have set their minds to the same topics (esp. PTJ, 168–87). Attention to the big questions befits our object as Christians studying our Scriptures within and across our traditions. If my book can provide helpful “kindling for further ecumenical conversation,” as Horton states (416), that is one of the most welcome compliments I could have hoped to receive.

Horton has raised a number of points that invite clarification, defense, reflection, or further inquiry. Thankfully, as he says, we share agreement on many matters. We agree that justification is a legal metaphor of divine activity, and Horton appreciates my way of describing God's “contention” against sin in the cosmos and in individuals. We agree that Paul cares not only about sociology but about anthropology in his discussion of the “works of the law.” We also agree that participation or “union” with Christ and being conformed to the image of God's Son constitute an important part of the Pauline witness to the good news. Nonetheless, we differ as to the interrelation between the elements of this saving union and about what belongs in our description of “justification” proper. It seems to me that in this brief response, the most fruitful topics to address are, first, Paul's language of “justifying” (dikaioō, δικαιόω) in relation to divine judgment and, second, the question of how to understand justification within Paul's theology of salvation in Christ.

Justification and Divine Judgment

Horton notes that I do not employ the common gloss for dikaioō as “declare” righteous, representing the judge's verbal delivery of a verdict as a speech act, ultimately arguing that I have confused the verb's connotations with its denotation. He also takes issue with my reading of some passages in which dikaioō occurs in the context of the final judgment and the way that I factor these into Paul's theology. “The solid lexical work of recent Roman Catholic exegetes like Joseph Fitzmyer is taken seriously but finally collapses back into a theological interpretation that conflates” justification and sanctification. “At the end of the day, justification for Prothro means ‘to make righteous’” (411). I have to agree and disagree here. I also value solid lexical work. But that is why I devoted over two hundred published pages in a technical study of dikaioō and biblical legal language on which my perspective in this book draws (see PTJ, ix, 17, 22). ¹ And it is on the basis of that analysis that I—along with many Protestant scholars—find the common gloss imprecise.

The use of dikaioō in both common and official contexts suggests “consider right” as the best gloss with impersonal objects. In the most common phrasing, one considers an action (with the infinitive) to be right. When kings or judges justify a person, in Paul's Greco-Roman contexts, it usually indicates condemnation or punishment—a bit like the English phrase “bring someone to justice,” which we use only to speak of punishment for the guilty. But in the Septuagint, its more impersonal use indicating “consider right” came to be used to indicate the opposite of condemnation for personal objects, and this perdured in Jewish (and then Christian) usage at least in theological contexts. But the verb there is used in unofficial as well as official juridical contexts to indicate holding someone to be “in the right” in a contention or conflict, and in neither context does dikaioō necessarily or even prototypically denote a “declaration” or performative speech-act. A solid regular gloss, if that is the kind of “denotation” one is looking for, is “consider righteous,” but what such justifying signifies within the dynamics of the contention is affected by who justifies whom in the conflict. If two parties contend with each other over a perceived wrong, the accused can “justify” the accuser by admitting wrong and submitting to the other's claims (thus acknowledging that the other is right). The accuser can “justify” the accused by forgiving the offense or perhaps agreeing to a more manageable penalty, thus ending his enmity and opposition to the accused (hence, reconciliation). And either party can, in the back and forth of argument, “justify” themselves and refuse to submit, which escalates the conflict. If the case is submitted to a third-party judge or king, the king can “justify” whichever party he chooses by granting them victory and penalizing the other party. But this “justifying” can be realized by various verbal and non-verbal actions—to utter the phrase “you are righteous” or “so-and-so is righteous” is not a formalized part of juridical proceedings.

My books illustrate the way such dynamics recur in the Jewish Scriptures, pseudepigrapha, and especially in Paul. In God's contention against sin in the cosmos and in his people, God is both the almighty judge and the aggrieved party. All who are under sin and serve sin (to borrow language from Romans 6) stand under God's judgment and God's accusation, and they will be condemned along with sin and death when the contention reaches its end at the final judgment. But, as often is the case in the prophets, God's accusations and warnings intend to call people to repent and submit to God's mercy. And in Christ, God has himself brought about a means for resolution in Christ, so that those under sin might be reconciled to God and indeed be “justified” by God and receive forgiveness. Justification is, thus, closely paralleled with forgiveness and reconciliation in Paul (Rom 4:1–9; 5:1–10; 2 Cor 5:17–21). This occurs, as I argue at length (PTJ, 76–107), as part of the redemptive transfer in Christ by which sinners come to participate in Christ's atoning death and life and are put in the right, identified with God's side in the ongoing contention. The wrath of God is still coming against sin and those who ally with sin (e.g., Rom 5:9; 16:20). But those in Christ are set at peace with God and are called and empowered, in Christ and by the Spirit, to employ themselves in God's service, using their bodies no longer in sin's service but against sin as weapons of righteousness (cf. Rom 6:12–23; 8:3–17). When God brings the contention to its end, those who have remained under God on the side of righteousness will receive the judge's final approval and will join God in his victory when believers and the cosmos itself will experience the final condemnation of sin and defeat of death that have already happened in Christ's death and resurrection (cf. Rom 8:3; 1 Cor 15:26).

To the chagrin of some Catholic (and Protestant) friends, I have maintained explicitly that Paul's dikaioō “seems to retain its sense of God holding one to be in the right within the contention” (PTJ, 91)—though since sinners incorporated into Christ are not righteous by anything prior in themselves, and since God is the one who acts in Christ and by the work of the Spirit to put them on his side, I am happy also to speak more causatively of “putting” us in the right (PTJ, 87–92). “It would be too much to telescope the entirety of the transfer, participation, and final glorification into the verb dikaioō and say that this entire soteriology is denoted when Paul says God ‘justifies’ someone” (PTJ, 88, cf. 137). Nonetheless, I do not think that a denotative gloss for the verb is a sufficient description of justification in Paul. “We need to distinguish between Paul's broader ‘theology of justification’—the contention framework, participatory union with Christ, the reality of transformation and new life on God's side—and the act of justifying, ascribed to God at specific moments within this process” (PTJ, 88).

To be sure, as Horton maintains, justification is a distinct legal metaphor while redemption or adoption are different ones. But justification's metaphorical home is in the world of the contention. This includes its relational aspects of forgiveness and reconciliation. It also includes the final judgment and vindication at the contention's end. Space constraints preclude an account of my reading of Romans 2 within the letter, which I do not offer in the book and to which Horton reasonably calls attention. ² But in brief, while Romans 2 forwards Paul's charge that the presumptuous (especially as related to circumcision) are also under sin, this does not invalidate the principle of divine judgment to which he appeals. God will “repay” “eternal life” to those who seek glory, honor, and incorruption (aphtharsia) by “endurance” in “good work” (ergou agathou), to everyone who does what is good (tō ergazomenō to agathon), Jew or gentile (Rom 2:7, 10). Possessing the law makes no difference (Rom 2:12): “For it is not the hearers of the law that are righteous in God's sight; rather, the doers (poiētai) of the law will be justified” (dikaiōthēsontai, Rom 2:13). Is this an empty category? Considering fallen humans apart from grace, it must be. Yet the stakes and promises here do not sound so different (note the poi- and erg- terms) from Paul's exhortations to the Galatians:

the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption (phthora), but the one who sows to the Spirit will reap from the Spirit eternal life. Let us not grow weary in doing good (to de kalon poiountes), for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. So then, as we have time, let us do good (ergazōmetha to agathon) to all, especially to servants in the household of faith. (Gal 6:8–10)

In Romans 2, there are gentiles who “do” the law or “keep” its statutes and show its work on their heart (Rom 2:14, 26–27). They possess a circumcision of the heart in the Spirit, and they will live before God at the judgment and receive God's “praise” (epainos) at the judgment (Rom 2:29), “on the day when God judges people's secrets, according to my gospel, through Christ Jesus” (Rom 2:16). Paul's contrast between human and divine judgment of apostles in 1 Corinthians 3–4 seems to appeal to this same “day” on which God will judge human “secrets” and “hearts” (1 Cor 3:13; 4:3, 5): those who destroy God's church in whom the Spirit dwells will suffer “corruption” (phtheirei, 1 Cor 3:17), while those who build on the foundation of Christ will be “saved” (1 Cor 3:15) and receive “praise” (epainos, 1 Cor 4:5) and indeed “justification” (dedikaiōmai, 1 Cor 4:4). Paul has a category for people who are not under the law but who “do” it, neither in an atomistic sense (the binary in Romans 2 is between doers and mere hearers) nor in the “letter,” nor by their own power apart from Christ. But they do not live by their own power. They live by Christ's own life (Gal 2:19–20). These are “no longer in the flesh” that cannot submit to God's law but rather “in the Spirit” (Rom 8:7, 9). The law is fulfilled in them as they endure in the Spirit and keep God's commands in love (cf. Rom 8:1–11; 13:8–10; 1 Cor 7:19; Gal 5:14, 22–23). And they will be approved and “justified” and share in God's victory when God's contention reaches its end.

The final pole of divine judgment and vindication is integral to the framework of this legal contention. In my view, it therefore belongs in our account of Paul's theology of justification precisely as a legal metaphor. It also invites consideration of how the present–past and future moments of judgment fit together within Paul's theology.

Participation, Transformation, and Paul's Theology of Justification

Paul speaks of justification in contexts of God's judgment both as a future event and as a present–past one. But whereas believers’ initial moment of justification before God is entirely unmerited (on their part), a gift given to the unworthy that sets them in the right despite their sin, God's final approbation accords with their lives as transformed by grace. The next question is how to understand their relation. In my view, the best way forward is to focus on participation in Christ as the basis and means of the person's initial justification, transformation, and final approbation. Horton and I agree that union with Christ is integral to salvation, but we differ again in how these elements relate. For Horton, “The forensic is the basis for the transformative and consummate work of grace” (416). He asks why it is so “difficult” for interpreters to see justification as a forensic act of “‘no condemnation’ that ushers us into adoption, reconciliation, friendship, and glorified immortality?” (417). He writes that

classic Protestant systems insist that Christ's righteousness is really imputed, which means that believers are really righteous—not because of their inherent holiness or the indwelling Spirit but also not because it is an “as-if.” Christ fulfilled the law, which means that God sees believers not only “as-if” they were righteous but as those who are as truly fulfillers of the law as if they had accomplished this themselves when they have not. (412, I have removed his italics and added mine)

I do not entirely understand the statement that believers are justified not “as if” they were righteous but rather “as if” they had fulfilled the law, but Horton and I agree in principle that one's righteousness before God is always in Christ. However, for precisely that reason I would not exclude the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Among other reasons, I find it “difficult” to describe justification as a prior decree ushering in union, because Paul seems to speak of participation in Christ as the mechanism and foundation of believers’ being held to be in the right before God. ³ The situation of “no condemnation” obtains “for those in Christ Jesus” (tois en Christō Iēsou, Rom 8:1). Further, the ways through which Paul says a person receives justification—faith and baptism—both have participatory value in Paul by the indwelling of Christ and the Spirit. ⁴ Faith in Christ receives the Spirit, and the Spirit is the one who makes Christ present within (cf. Rom 8:9–10; Gal 3:2–5; Eph 3:16–17). Baptism, which is also connected with justification (cf. Rom 6:7; 1 Cor 6:11; Titus 3:5), forges a relationship of real participation by the power of the Spirit in which believers are crucified with Christ and Christ lives and dwells in them. One's identity is drawn into the reality of Christ and who he is, and he is himself God's righteousness for us (1 Cor 1:30). His death and resurrection, to which we are joined in baptism and in which we live by faith (Rom 6:3–5; Phil 3:9–11), constitute the definitive manifestation of God's righteousness (Rom 3:21).

In receiving Christ in the Spirit, joined to his death and resurrection, believers receive the very righteousness of God. They are identified with the righteous one and with the side of God in the contention, being held to be in the right and forgiven. Their righteousness in God's sight is in Christ and always by participation, and this remains true as they are conformed to the righteous Christ both ethically and in hope of bodily resurrection. In Christ and by the Spirit they are conformed to Christ's suffering, to Christ's love and righteous obedience, so that they “become the righteousness of God in him” and bear fruit to eternal life (cf. Rom 8:12–17; Gal 2:19–21; 6:8–10; 2 Cor 5:17–21; Phil 3:9–11). And they will, in accord with their continued conformation to Christ, their “endurance” in doing good as they heed the Spirit's leading, receive God's final approval and finally be conformed in their own bodies to the Christ in whom sin is condemned and death defeated.

We will continue to converse together in faith as we seek understanding, but one need not reject all aspects of “classic Protestant systems” or answer all questions in a Catholic or Orthodox way to resonate with this account. Jonathan Edwards wrote that “what is real in the union between Christ and his people, is the foundation of what is legal” (quoted in PTJ, 91 n. 39). According to many, Luther's understanding of imputation operates within such a robustly participatory account of faith and baptism. ⁵ In any case, such an account seems advantageous, not only because it fits the data on dikaioō (“consider righteous”) and within the metaphor of contention, but because of the way it explains God's initial justification of the ungodly apart from works and their final approbation (or “justification”) according to works by a single, transformative union with Christ. For, while these are distinct moments of God's approbation, with different entailments based on where they fall within God's contention (one tied to forgiveness and reconciliation and the other to final vindication and victory), both indeed have the same basis. “It is not a matter of two separate justifications … but of one participation in the righteous Son” (PTJ, 138), the Christo-centric heart of Paul's soteriology.