Content area
Full text
Justification by grace through faith alone has become for many Protestants the articulus stands et cadentis ecclesiae-the article by which the church stands or falls. Martin Luther never used this phrase, although it does capture the importance that he gave the doctrine. Luther wrote, "We must learn therefore diligently the article of justification, as I often admonish you. For all other articles of our faith are comprehended in it: and if that remain sound, then are all the rest sound."' Without going into the technical problems involved in discerning what Luther meant by this statement, I quote him here only to note the importance that justification has been granted in the Lutheran tradition and, to an extent, in other Protestant traditions as well. In the light of this importance, many welcomed the signing of the recent Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (31 October 1999) by the Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation with the hope that a renewed, ecumenical understanding of the doctrine could be achieved. Some, however, have been somewhat disappointed that the Declaration did not proceed much beyond negotiating sixteenth-century conflicts. In particular, the Declaration reveals the lack of a role for the Holy Spirit in justification beyond the limited confines of the individual life of faith, despite the affirmation of a trinitarian foundation for the doctrine in Article 15. If justification is to offer a liberating word in an increasingly graceless world, the doctrine must be reworked precisely at its point of neglect, namely, at the relationship between justification and the work of the Spirit as the giver of new life. What follows is an attempt at outlining the directions that such a rethinking of justification may take to open the doctrine to the full breadth of the Spirit's work in and through Christ to make all things new.
THE FORENSIC MODEL IN LUTHER AND BEYOND
Luther was a child of the Middle Ages, convinced that God burned with holy wrath against sinful humanity. The gracious God seemed out of reach for Luther, because the reality of sin was inescapable, even for believers. How can believers escape God's wrath? The answer came from Christ as mediator who provided the basis on which God would accept sinners. Luther stated the fundamental...