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Course 12 · Lesson 6.1

Luther and the question of justification

12 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 12 outline

Module 1: The Apostolic Fathers and the Early Apologists

  1. Who the Apostolic Fathers were: Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp and the Didache
  2. Church order, worship and martyrdom in the second century
  3. Why Christians wrote apologies: charges, persecution and public defense
  4. Justin Martyr, philosophy and the Logos

Module 2: Irenaeus, Tertullian and Origen

  1. Irenaeus against the Gnostics: the rule of faith and apostolic succession
  2. Tertullian and the beginnings of Latin theology
  3. Origen: biblical scholarship, allegory and speculation
  4. Heresy and orthodoxy: the scholarly debate about early diversity

Module 3: Creeds and Councils: Nicaea to Chalcedon

  1. From baptismal confession to creed
  2. Arius, the Council of Nicaea (325) and Athanasius
  3. The Cappadocian Fathers and the Council of Constantinople (381)
  4. Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451): one Christ, two natures
  5. The seven councils and how the churches receive them

Module 4: Augustine, Chrysostom and the Desert

  1. Augustine: life, conversion and the Confessions
  2. Augustine on grace, the Pelagian controversy and the City of God
  3. John Chrysostom: preacher, pastor and critic of wealth
  4. The Desert Fathers and Mothers: Anthony, Macarius and Amma Syncletica

Module 5: The Medieval Church and Scholasticism

  1. The medieval setting: monasteries, cathedral schools and universities
  2. Anselm and the method of scholasticism
  3. Thomas Aquinas: life and the structure of the Summa Theologiae
  4. Aquinas on faith, reason, nature and grace
  5. East and West: the growing divide and the schism of 1054

Module 6: The Reformation and the Counter-Reformation

  1. Luther and the question of justification
  2. Zwingli, Calvin and the Reformed tradition
  3. The Radical Reformation and the English Reformation
  4. The Council of Trent and Catholic reform
  5. Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant readings of the Reformation

Module 7: Modern Theology and Tracing a Doctrine

  1. The Enlightenment and its challenges to inherited doctrine
  2. Schleiermacher, liberal theology and Karl Barth
  3. Vatican II, Orthodox renewal and the evangelical and Pentecostal movements
  4. How to trace a doctrine: development, change and corruption

All courses

Program / Course 12: Patristics and Historical Theology / Lesson 6.1

What you will learn

  • Describe the main events of Luther’s early career, from the monastery to the Diet of Worms.
  • Explain what Luther meant by justification by faith alone.
  • State the Catholic understanding of justification as set out at the Council of Trent.
  • Summarize the 1999 Joint Declaration and what it did and did not settle.

The big idea

Justification is the question of how a sinner comes to stand right before God. Martin Luther, an Augustinian friar and professor, came to teach that God declares sinners righteous for the sake of Christ, received by faith alone and not earned by works. Catholic teaching, as defined at Trent, held that justification is a real making righteous by grace, in which faith works through love. The dispute helped split Western Christianity. In 1999, Lutherans and Catholics declared that on the basic truths of justification they no longer condemn each other, while differences remain.

Key terms

Justification
The act by which God puts a sinner into a right relationship with himself. Traditions differ on whether this is declaring righteous, making righteous or both.
Sola fide
Latin for by faith alone. The Reformation teaching that faith, not works, is how sinners receive justification.
Forensic
From a word for a law court. In this context, justification understood as a declaration of righteousness made by God as judge.
Indulgence
In Catholic teaching, a remission before God of the temporal punishment due for sins already forgiven. Abuses in selling them provoked Luther.
Simul iustus et peccator
Latin for at the same time righteous and a sinner. Luther’s description of the believer.
Imputed righteousness
Righteousness counted to a believer as a gift, from Christ, instead of being the believer’s own achievement.
Sola scriptura
Latin for Scripture alone. The teaching that Scripture is the final authority in matters of faith.

Background

Martin Luther was born in 1483 in Eisleben, in what is now Germany. His father intended him for law, but in 1505 Luther, caught in a thunderstorm, vowed to become a monk and entered the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt. He was a conscientious friar who confessed often and struggled with a sense of his own sinfulness. In 1512 he became a doctor of theology and professor of Scripture at the University of Wittenberg.

In 1517, a preacher named Johann Tetzel was promoting a special indulgence in nearby lands, the proceeds of which helped to pay for the rebuilding of St. Peter’s in Rome and a debt of Archbishop Albert of Mainz. Luther wrote Ninety-Five Theses, a call for academic debate, and sent them to the archbishop around October 31. The traditional story says he nailed them to the church door at Wittenberg. Historians doubt that account, and the evidence for it is late, though they agree that the theses spread across Germany in print within weeks.

In 1521, Luther was summoned to the Diet of Worms before the emperor Charles V and asked to recant. He refused unless convinced by Scripture or plain reason. He was declared an outlaw and hidden by Frederick of Saxony at the Wartburg, where he began translating the New Testament into German.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Luther’s question

Luther was troubled by the phrase the righteousness of God in Romans 1:17. He took it at first to mean the justice by which God punishes sinners, and he hated it. Later, he said, he came to see that the righteousness of God is a gift that God gives, by which the just person lives by faith. He described this as being born again and entering paradise.

When this happened is debated. Luther’s own account came decades later, and scholars place his discovery anywhere between about 1513 and 1519. They also debate how new it was, since Augustine and others had spoken of righteousness as a gift.

Step 2: What Luther taught

For Luther, a sinner cannot earn righteousness by any work, even a good one, because sin reaches the heart. God, out of mercy, declares the sinner righteous for the sake of Christ, who bears the sin and gives his own righteousness. This is received by faith, which is trust in Christ’s promise. The righteousness is, in Luther’s phrase, an alien righteousness, belonging to Christ and counted to the believer.

Luther did not say that works are unimportant. In The Freedom of a Christian (1520), he wrote that a Christian is a free lord of all and a servant of all. Good works follow from faith as a good tree bears good fruit, but they do not earn justification. He also said that the believer remains at once righteous and a sinner, still struggling against sin.

Step 3: The Catholic response

The Council of Trent, in its sixth session in 1547, answered at length. It taught that no one can be justified by their own works apart from grace, and that the beginning of justification comes from God’s grace. But it taught that justification is not only a declaration. It is a real renewal of the inner person through the gift of grace and the infused virtues of faith, hope and charity. Faith is the beginning, but faith works through love (Galatians 5:6), and justification can grow through cooperation with grace. Trent condemned the view that faith is nothing but confidence that sins are forgiven.

Catholic teachers say that this is not a doctrine of earning salvation. Merit, in Catholic teaching, is itself God’s gift. Reformation writers replied that the Catholic view did not give enough assurance and made the sinner depend in part on their own achievement.

Step 4: What the dispute was and was not

Historians stress that both sides held that salvation depends on grace and that human beings cannot save themselves. The dispute was about how righteousness is related to the believer: as a declaration or a transformation, as the whole or the beginning, and about the role of the church, the sacraments and works. The two sides also talked past each other at times, using words such as faith, merit and justification in different senses.

Luther’s other disagreements, with the pope’s authority, with the sacraments and with the status of monastic vows, quickly joined the debate on justification.

Step 5: Toward agreement and a hard legacy

In 1999, the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation signed the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. It states a common understanding of basic truths: that sinners are justified by faith in the saving action of God in Christ, and that good works follow. It says that the condemnations of the sixteenth century do not apply to the teaching described in the Declaration. Some Lutheran and Catholic theologians criticized the document, and it did not resolve all issues, such as the nature of the church. The World Methodist Council joined in 2006.

Luther’s legacy also includes serious faults. In his later years he wrote violently against Jews and against peasants who rebelled in 1525. Lutheran churches in recent decades have repudiated his anti-Jewish writings. A fair study includes both his contribution and these failures.

  1. What does it mean to say that a person is righteous before God?
  2. How would you tell the difference between being declared righteous and being made righteous?
  3. Why did Luther find the idea of earning righteousness a burden?
  4. How does the statement righteous and a sinner at the same time describe your experience?
  5. Why might it matter that both sides said grace is needed?
  6. How should a church treat the faults of a founder?

Examples

Two ways to describe a pardon

A judge pardons a prisoner and declares him free. A doctor treats a patient and heals him. Luther stressed the first picture, Trent stressed that the second was also true. Many modern writers say that the Bible uses both pictures.

A friar’s anxiety

Luther later said that he confessed for hours and still could not be sure he had named every sin. His discovery that righteousness is a gift came as relief. This does not prove the doctrine, but it explains why it was so important to him.

A joint declaration

At Augsburg in 1999, Catholic and Lutheran leaders signed a document stating that both hold that sinners are justified by faith in Christ. They did not say they agreed on everything, but that the old condemnations no longer applied to what each now taught.

Different perspectives

Lutheran and Protestant

Lutheran churches teach justification by faith alone as the article by which the church stands or falls. Reformed churches share the teaching in a similar form, and most Protestants hold that the believer is counted righteous in Christ. They stress assurance of salvation and the freedom of the Christian.

Catholic

The Catholic Church teaches justification by grace through faith, with faith working through love, and affirms the renewal of the person. It rejects the view that humans earn salvation. The Catechism and the Joint Declaration express the teaching in a way many Lutherans can acknowledge.

Orthodox

Orthodox theology does not frame salvation in the language of justification used in the West. It speaks of healing, illumination and union with God, called theosis. Orthodox writers usually see both the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation as products of a Western legal frame, while agreeing that grace is central.

Scholarly views

Historians and theologians debate what Luther meant, whether the Reformation doctrine was truly new, and how far the Catholic and Protestant positions differ. Some New Testament scholars, in what is called the new perspective on Paul, argue that Luther read Paul through his own struggles. Others defend the traditional reading.

Why it matters

The question of how a person is made right with God is one of the central questions of the Christian life, not just of history. The Reformation answers continue to shape the preaching, worship and assurance of hundreds of millions of Christians. Understanding what Luther and Trent each said, and the recent agreement, makes it easier to hear both sides fairly.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Luther rejected good works.

Correction: He taught that good works are the fruit of faith but not the cause of justification. He wrote much about the Christian life.

Misunderstanding: Catholics believe that people earn their way to heaven.

Correction: Catholic teaching holds that justification begins with God’s grace, that merit is itself a gift, and that salvation cannot be earned apart from grace.

Misunderstanding: Luther nailed the Ninety-Five Theses to the door as a protest against the church.

Correction: The nailing is doubtful, and the theses were an invitation to a scholarly debate, aimed at abuses in indulgences. The break came later.

Misunderstanding: The 1999 Declaration ended the division between Catholics and Lutherans.

Correction: It declared a consensus on basic truths of justification and lifted the mutual condemnations on that point, but the churches remain separate and differ on other issues.

Knowledge check

What was Luther’s central claim about justification?

Luther taught that sinners cannot earn righteousness by works but are declared righteous by God for the sake of Christ, received by faith alone. The righteousness belongs to Christ and is counted to the believer. Good works follow as the fruit of faith, and the believer remains at once righteous and a sinner.

What did the Council of Trent teach?

Trent taught that justification begins with God’s grace and is not earned, but that it is a real renewal of the inner person through the infused virtues of faith, hope and charity. Faith works through love, and justification can grow. It rejected the view that faith is merely confidence in forgiveness.

Why do historians doubt the story of the door?

The earliest evidence of Luther posting the theses on the church door comes from later accounts, not from his own letters. What is certain is that he sent them to the archbishop and that they spread quickly in print. The theses were an invitation to debate.

What did the Joint Declaration of 1999 say?

The Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation declared a common understanding of basic truths of justification: that sinners are justified by faith in Christ’s saving action and that good works follow. They said that the condemnations of the sixteenth century do not apply to the teaching described. Differences remain on other matters.

Think it through

  1. What would it mean for your sense of peace with God if righteousness were a gift?
  2. Why might some people hear an emphasis on grace as permission to be careless?
  3. Is it fair to judge Luther by his later writings or his earlier ones?
  4. How could Catholics and Lutherans say the same thing in different words?

Independent assignment

Two statements side by side

Read Luther’s Small Catechism on the Creed, and the first chapters of Trent’s decree on justification in the library. In your notebook, write what each says about how a sinner is justified, in two columns. Then write 200 words on which differences are of words and which are of substance, in your judgment. Aim for 400 to 600 words.

Further study