Denominating “Justification” and “Faith”: Catholics,Lutherans,and a North American Baptist's Response to the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification

Perhaps only surpassed by the Filioque Controversy and the subsequent Great Schism of the Church in 1054, the division of the Western Church in the sixteenth century was one of the most unfortunate outcomes of significant theological and ecclesial dispute. The interpretation of justification by grace alone through faith alone by Martin Luther and other Protestant reformers, like the disagreement on the filioque clause nearly five centuries before, was not its only theological point of conflict. Certainly the division of the Western Church in the early modern era also came about over sacramental and ecclesial matters as well as issues pertaining to authority and the appropriate roles of scripture and tradition. Nevertheless, Luther himself admitted, “if this article [of justification] stands, the church stands; if this article collapses, the church collapses.” ¹ Whether it is viewed as “indispensable criterion” ² for such matters or used merely as a synecdoche for all that comprises the contested doctrines between Catholics and Protestants, the doctrine of justification has maintained a central place in the disunion among Western Christians for five centuries.

That in the late twentieth century the Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Unity attempted a joint declaration on this historically contentious issue is worthy of commendation on its own. However, the resulting documents, both the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ) and the subsequent “Official Common Statement” to enhance ecclesial support and shared understanding for the initial declaration, constitute some of the best contemporary efforts at ecumenical dialogue and mutuality in the biblical spirit of Christian union.

Other scholars have capably outlined the history and progression of the JDDJ from conversations in the mid-twentieth century through its drafting, intra-ecclesial discussions, and ultimate signing by both traditions, and to the subsequent concurrence to the declaration by other world-wide Christian Protestant traditions. This essay, instead, will outline the development of both medieval Catholic and later Protestant conceptions of justification, review the initial points of division on the doctrine during the era of Reformation, and analyze the original points of departure between Lutheran Protestants and Catholics in the sixteenth century in order both to grasp more fully the ecumenical feat of the JDDJ and to clarify what issues appear to remain unsettled, unclear, or unresolved in the document. The article will also outline something of the history of how Baptists in America have understood and appropriated the doctrine of justification through the centuries in order to consider how Baptists in North America might perceive the promise and potential lingering challenges or questions regarding the joint declaration.

Thomism, Aquinas, and Deification

Although Thomism significantly declined in influence among theological schools in the West through the fourteenth century, ³ its reversal of fortunes by the advent of the fifteenth century following concessions by its adherents, especially on their former denial of the immaculate conception, can be seen as one of the greatest resurgences of a school of thought in Christian history. By the fifteenth century Thomism had experienced a “renaissance,” growing to become one of the most prominent schools of late medieval thought ⁴ and climaxing as a norming school of influence for the Council of Trent's response to Lutheranism and the Reformation. ⁵ That this school of thought served as a theological framework for so many Catholic scholars in the era of the Reformation (not to mention in the centuries to follow) necessitates a review of Thomas’ theology of justification and faith as precursor, medieval milieu, and ultimately a counterpart to Luther's Protestant principles.

In his Summa Theologica, especially Question 113 in the First Part of the Second Part (I-II), Aquinas reasons that sin “implies a kind of disordering of the mind,” ⁶ a mind no longer subject to God, and therefore a condition which consigns human beings to a place of injustice. Thus, “the removal of any sin is called justification.” ⁷ Therefore, Aquinas reasons, justification is to be equated with the forgiveness of sins. This action of grace initiates the sinner into the process of becoming just, whereby one is restored to a “rightness of order” in one's actions (i.e., justice as a virtue) and in one's “interior disposition” (subjugating the human being's higher powers to God and the lower powers to the higher power of reason). This process is not only instantaneous but also progressive, “a movement toward justice, just as heating implies a movement toward heat.” ⁸ The human being is transformed “from the state of injustice to the state of justice,” that is, from unrighteous sinner to one now forgiven. Such a transition is caused instantaneously by the infusion of divine grace, causing the sinner to accept God's grace by her own free will. For Aquinas, “the movement of the free will which contributes to justification of the ungodly is meritorious.” ⁹ Yet, since all merit must be elicited by grace, this virtuous human act of free will has its origins in divine grace. And since grace must initially be infused prior to this act of the will it might seem that “justification is not entirely instantaneous.” ¹⁰ Nevertheless, justification of the ungodly comes by the grace of the Holy Spirit, who moves human minds suddenly (Acts 2:2). This divine infusion of grace is the origin of justification. Therefore, the unrighteous can only be justified when God moves the person to justice (Rom. 3:24), yet this is by means of “the condition of [a person's] human nature,” that is, by use of her own free will to accept the gift of justifying grace. ¹¹ “But,” as Thomas maintained, “the mind turns to God in the first instance by faith,” here citing Hebrews: “Whoever draws near to God must believe that he exists” (Heb. 11:6). ¹²

Yet simultaneous to one's mind changing through free will, the movement of faith is formed also by charity, causing the person to exchange the love of sin for the love of God. Consequently, Thomas understands God's grace on the premise that gratia non tollit naturam sed perficit (literally, “grace does not remove nature but perfects it”). ¹³ Thus, as humans are justified by God's grace, initially conveyed in baptism, they are “called into a relationship with God which progresses toward eternal, unmediated union” ¹⁴ between God and each faithful person, as an adopted son or daughter of the Father. This is a process or journey of progressive divinization from a state of sin through grace which justifies the recipient and makes meritorious action possible. Commencing at baptism, justification is the intrinsic work of grace granted in the sacrament and through all subsequent graces given by God to transform the Christian. Thus, the baptized Christian, as Francis Beckwith observes of Thomas, “literally partakes in the Divine Nature as a consequence of being infused with sanctifying grace.” ¹⁵ To be clear, however, Aquinas argues that the positive response through human free will “which is the consent to abhor sin and adhere to God” ¹⁶ is both casual of but also non-meritorious in bringing about justifying habitual grace, as the soul is moved by God (quo anima movetur a Deo), who remains the agent of salvation, for the remission of sin. ¹⁷

Gabriel Biel and the Via Moderna

As complex as was Aquinas’ theology of justification—as also in the subsequent Thomistic school—the doctrinal development of justification was no less intricate in the diverse medieval scholastic school of Occamism, named for William of Ockham. This school is sometimes labelled “nominalism” or the via moderna, although such terms are imprecise synonyms because they label overlapping movements. While not every theologian categorized as a “nominalist” would concur with Ockham's optimistic view of human capacities, ¹⁸ leading representatives of the movement such as Pierre d’Ailly and Gabriel Biel promoted a brand of justification that critics perceived as suggesting a form of Pelagianism. ¹⁹ And Biel, whom the early Luther studied assiduously, ²⁰ particularly emphasized human responsibilities in the economy of salvation in the covenant between God and humanity. Justification, Biel argued, was granted contingent upon people facere quod in se est (literally, “doing what is within them”). Thus, as the old medieval maxim put it, facienti quod in se est Deus non denegat gratium (“God will not deny grace to those who do what is within them”). For Biel, doing what is in one included the repudiation of iniquity and the pursuit of virtue. ²¹ Even as human efforts were, in reality, of little weight when weighed in the balance with the disproportionate significance of divine reward, God graciously recognized such work as sufficient merit, exercising divine righteousness by punishing unrepentant sin while magnanimously rewarding good works. And unlike the Thomists, a number of Occamists did not see such merit as necessarily being initiated by God's previous gift of grace but as something which could be accomplished ex puris naturalibus (“out of purely natural powers”). ²² Said Biel: “Thus God has established the rule [covenant] that whoever turns to him and does what he can will receive forgiveness of sins from God. God infuses assisting grace into such a man, who is thus taken back into [his] friendship.” ²³

The framework for this cooperative grace is found in the sacraments, most vividly depicted in and mediated through the sacrament of penance. Salvation is conveyed primarily through the “medicinal sacraments” of Christ, but the human being bears a covenantally essential, even if ontologically minor, part in this cooperative enterprise. Biel explained:

Granting that the passion of Christ is the principal merit on account of which grace, the opening of the kingdom and glory, are conferred, yet it is never the sole and entire meritorious cause. This is evident because some work, such as the merit of fitness or of worthiness of the one receiving the grace or glory, always concurs with the merit of Christ. ²⁴

In the case of penance, the initial element of the sacrament is contrition—a movement of the soul which is a work or disposition on the part of the sinner. While God could have chosen to infuse grace in the person without any initial condition of cooperation, God ordained that humans do “what is in them.” ²⁵ Observes Theo Dierks, “by doing what is in him, man merits grace by a merit of fitness, and through the reception of grace he merits salvation by worthiness.” ²⁶ As with Biel, so for the later scholastics who painted the theological backdrop at the advent of the Reformation, the sacraments in general and penance in particular served as the point of reference for the doctrine of justification. ²⁷

Luther's Understanding of Justification

Only after the publication of his most famous treatise, Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences in 1517, and in the context of a medieval setting of theological ambiguity regarding the means of salvation, ²⁸ did the young monk and Wittenberg professor Martin Luther arrive at what Protestant scholars often identify as his “breakthrough” regarding justification by grace alone through faith alone by means of Christ's imputed righteousness alone. Formerly Luther believed and taught that justification was an ongoing practice of spiritual restoration by which a person became righteous. ²⁹ The medieval theology of Luther's training generally assumed, as Mark Mattes observed,

Yet Luther searched in vain for assurance in his own modernist theological training and its popular scholastic axiom regarding salvation, “God does not deny grace to those who do what is in them.” ³¹ As a young monk, and despite his often extraordinary efforts to discipline his flesh, Luther could never determine when he had sufficiently done what was within his own power to receive divine grace. In a state of spiritual crisis, sometime between 1518 and 1519, Luther came upon a new understanding of Romans 1:17 (“the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith, as it is written, ‘the one who is righteous will live by faith’”) in which righteousness is not an active pursuit but a passive reception of God's own imputed righteousness: “Through faith in Christ, therefore, Christ's righteousness becomes our righteousness and all that he has becomes ours; rather, he himself becomes ours.” Such a divine gift granted by grace alone is “set opposite of original sin, likewise alien.” ³² Subsequently, Luther separated the divine gift of “alien righteousness” from the following, divinely prompted human response of the believer in “proper righteousness,” disentangling all human effort from the act of justification.

Nevertheless, Luther was quick to denounce those who subsequently attempted to interpret this new Lutheran theology as a form of antinomianism, ³³ and Luther underscored the importance of proper righteousness as “that manner of life spent profitably in good works” through the love of neighbor, which is the “product,” “fruit,” and “consequence” of Christ's imputed righteousness and brings it to completion. ³⁴ Thus, although rejecting the Thomistic view that works of love confer upon faith its form and worth before God, ³⁵ Luther still concluded:

We say that justification is effective without works, not that faith is without works. For that faith which lacks fruit is not an efficacious but a feigned faith. ‘Without works’ is ambiguous, then. For that reason this argument settles nothing. It is one thing that faith justifies without works; it is another thing that faith exists without works. ³⁶

Nevertheless, to be sure, Luther understood justification as God's action to “reckon” a sinner righteous by faith alone.

However, a secondary question arises regarding Luther's proposition: that is, what did the reformer mean by “faith”? Early in his teaching, Luther had moved past the understanding of faith as intellectual assent to a general proposition, to faith as personal appropriation. In other words, for Luther, a person does not have true faith merely by believing in the broad notion of the death and resurrection of Christ, but by trusting that this death and resurrection is also “for me.” Said Luther: “Accordingly, that ‘for me’ or ‘for us,’ if it is believed, creates that true faith and distinguishes it from all other faith which merely hears the things done. This is the faith that alone justifies us.” ³⁷ Justification then occurs only when one accepts the implications and promises of the gospel found in God's Word. “Faith is the creator of the Deity, not in the substance of God, but in us,” ³⁸ he explained. Thus, one moves not simply to apprehend that God forgives sin, but that God has forgiven me. “Faith is the living daring confidence, in God's grace,” he said, “so sure and certain that the believer would stake his life on it a thousand times.” ³⁹ True faith then produces a passive righteousness not achieved by doing things but by receiving this confidence that we are the recipients of God's unconditional love: “We do not perform it; we accept it by faith.” ⁴⁰

Good works, Luther held, can only be properly understood as a consequence of God's grace and this gift of faith. Only after a person understands herself as God's own is she freed from the law, but then paradoxically becomes liberated to submit herself to the law and thus to her neighbor—now not as a task forced upon her but as one she desires. But to be clear, Luther noted that “works are acceptable not for their own sake but because of faith.” ⁴¹ In short, faith is the acceptance of God's divine promises for the individual. Those promises are located in Scripture and are normatively dispensed in preaching and through the sacraments, to which the Scriptures testify. Luther then concludes, “Christ [should] be preached to the end that faith in him may be established that he may not only be Christ, but be Christ for you and me, and that what is said of him and is denoted in his name may be effectual in us.” ⁴²

Cardinal Cajetan, the Council of Trent, and the Codification of Thomistic Soteriology

While a number of Catholic theologians responded to Luther in his day, the Thomistic theologian Tommaso de Vio or Thomas Cardinal Cajetan arguably best understood Luther's concerns and countered, as Luther had requested of his opponents, by using Scripture as the basis of his argument. Cajetan concurred with Luther that justification by faith was central to understanding the gospel. However, drawing upon Thomas, Cajetan believed that grace alone was but the first step in a four-fold concept of justification which made the remaining steps of moving toward God and away from sin possible. ⁴³ For Cajetan, God next operates on the free will so that a person seeks God and abhors sin. Nevertheless, Cajetan held a place for the human as a cooperative actor following God's initial grace. As Colberg explains: “God moves so that human beings can freely move with God; that is, as healed and elevated through operative graces, human actors can now freely choose and do works of surpassing good that merit rewards.” ⁴⁴ This is not to suggest that humans earn reward from God in a proper sense, as something God actually owes to them. But the cardinal believed that God allowed such potential for merit proportionately instead of ontologically, that is, “God is made a debtor to himself, and by rendering reward to us, he satisfies his own ordination.” ⁴⁵ However, for those who remain in a state of mortal sin, their works cannot be meritorious to eternal life, even if these works “lead to attaining forgiveness of sins.” ⁴⁶ Instead, God's love precedes and encourages human action relating to justification, thus allowing the sinner's actions to be the result of grace rather than, as with Biel and his breed of Occamists, “doing what is in him.” ⁴⁷ Yet, moving beyond Thomas, who saw the sinner as incapable of advancing her justification but moved in it, Cajetan maintained that such works, though not meritorious, can nevertheless “impetrate” (impetrare or ‘bring to pass’) such justification. Consequently, as Colberg noted, “for Cajetan, sinner's actions—such as pilgrimages, hardships, or continence—seem to cause the sinner's justification insofar as God receives such actions prevenient to it.” ⁴⁸ Cajetan himself explained:

Good works of sinners are not only of importance toward the forgiveness of sins, but when they stem from the heart of one turning to God, God's generous love so accompanies them that they do lead to forgiveness of sins and impetrate this as if an agreement had been made. God is truly generous towards us, arranging that in spite of our inability in the state of sin to merit the forgiveness of sins, we are capable of impetrating this by prayer, fasting, alms, and other good works. ⁴⁹

From these qualifications, Denis Janz observes, “Luther's suspicion of Pelagian tendencies in Thomas would have found confirmation in Cajetan. . . .” ⁵⁰

Furthermore, Cajetan argued that Luther had misunderstood the nature of faith. In his 1532 treatise, On Faith and Works, Cajetan noted that Lutherans “enlarge the term ‘faith’ so as to include that conviction by which the sinner approaching the sacrament believes he is justified by the divine mercy through the intercession of Jesus Christ,” so that, by believing in the promise in God's Word that he is justified, he is then truly justified. ⁵¹

For Cajetan, this simple notion of faith is incomplete, as it does not include the role of charity. Acts of love, including works of satisfaction for sin, are what ultimately complete forgiveness and attain God's grace for the believer. Thus, Cajetan concluded, “‘Faith’ means one thing when the Scripture refers to that which justifies men, and means something else when it refers to that conviction by which one believes he is justified by Christ and the sacraments.” ⁵² Believing in the particular principle that one “is justified as he here and now receives this sacrament [or believes in God's promise] by the merit of Christ, is much different from [that general principle of] faith taken in the first way.” ⁵³ Thus God allows human agency to contribute to eternal life for those in a state of grace, that they may freely cooperate with God and earn proportional reward through divine grace. ⁵⁴ While he affirmed that trusting in the merit of Christ and inwardly and outwardly receiving the sacrament correctly does justify one by grace, Cajetan held that the believer still cannot be certain that in this particular case, on this day, in this host, and by this celebrant that one receives the grace promised. Thus, Cajetan rejected both the notion of faith as apprehension without acts of charity (I Cor. 13:2) and the measure of assurance one may appropriately hold by the subjective appropriation of faith. “Faith is the cause inchoatively, but charity is the cause completing the forgiveness of sins,” ⁵⁵ he said.

Fifteen years later, the Council of Trent affirmed much of Cajetan's understanding in its “Decree and Canons on Justification” (1547). Here the council rejected Luther's notion of imputed righteousness by affirming that “justification … is not only a remission of sins but also the sanctification and renewal of the inward man.” ⁵⁶ In fact, while adults can find the beginning of justification through the predisposing grace of God “without any merits on their part,” God's action serves as a “helping grace to convert themselves to their own justification by freely assenting to and cooperating with that grace” (“Turn to me, and I will turn to you,” Zech. 1:3). ⁵⁷ Thus, the council rejected Luther's subjective appropriation of confidence that believers may have in their own salvation, concluding “no one can know with the certainty of faith, which cannot be subject to error, that he has obtained the grace of God.” ⁵⁸ In turn, the council anathematized both Lutheran and Reformed understandings of justification, predestination, and assurance. Among its canons, the council affirmed that justification is not merely received but must also be preserved and increased through good works (Canon 24) and that Christ came not only as a redeemer but also as a legislator (Canon 21). ⁵⁹

The Seventeenth-Century English Baptist Reception of Lutheran and Protestant Principles

As a Protestant Separatist movement predicated on establishing a regenerate church, it is unsurprising that the Baptist movement would, for the most part, simply assume much of what Luther and subsequent Protestant reformers taught regarding the declarative justification by God's grace through faith alone, the priesthood of all believers, and the centrality and authority of Scripture for church practice, “even when no specific acknowledgement was made to Luther” ⁶⁰ by most early Baptists. At times, this theological assumption was made manifest in various iterations of the Lutheran notion of the imputation of Christ's righteousness to believers (alien righteousness). So commonplace was this foundational Protestant thought that various Baptist confessions or theological treatments would often not make mention of the doctrine, as it was likely superfluous, because justification did not appear to be a topic of intermural controversy. ⁶¹

The most glaring exception was found, ironically, within the theology of the Baptist tradition's first leader: John Smyth. Smyth, an erstwhile Cambridge-trained unlicensed Anglican preacher turned Separatist minister, famously led a band of followers to Holland in 1607/08 to avoid the religious persecution of James I. There Smyth—along with the capable layman and English lawyer Thomas Helwys—established the first Baptist congregation around 1609. ⁶² Though originally moderately Reformed in theology, Smyth journeyed from Anglican to Puritan to Separatist to Baptist to would-be Waterlander Mennonite, and he began to manifest unusual theological positions that were sometimes critiqued as heterodox, ⁶³ including his understanding of justification. In his Short Confession of Faith in Twenty Articles, he wrote

So extraordinary was Smyth's articulation of justification from the standpoint of both the accepted Protestant tradition and what would become standard within the Baptist movement that the Baptist historical theologian Thomas Nettles argues that on this point Smyth “lays to waste all the gains of the Reformation” ⁶⁵ with his understanding of justification as both imputed and inherent righteousness. And whether Smyth arrived at this position from Peter Baro at Cambridge, from Arminian influences, from the Dutch Mennonites, or from his own study of Scripture is a matter of debate among historians. ⁶⁶

Yet, again, Smyth appears to be the exception that proves the rule for the Baptist tradition. Smyth's own associate, Thomas Helwys, rejected Smyth's subsequent move to join the Waterlander Mennonites and returned with a remnant of the original Separatist congregation to England to found the first Baptist congregation on British soil in 1611 in Spitalfield, a section of London. That same year, Helwys—sounding much more like a theological descendant of classical Protestant principles than Smyth—would write: “Man is justified onely by the righteousness off CHRIST, apprehended by faith.” ⁶⁷

As with Helwys, so with countless other early English Baptists regarding justification. In 1644, seven Particular Baptist churches in London issued one of the Baptist tradition's most influential confessions of faith, the First London Confession. Resembling Luther's theological development, combined with a strongly Reformed influence, this famous Baptist confession underscores the passive nature of receiving faith as a gift of God:

That faith is the gift of God wrought in the hearts of the elect by the Spirit of God, whereby they come to see, know, and believe the truth of the Scriptures … as they hold forth the glory of God. … That faith is ordinarily begot by the preaching of the Gospel or Word of Christ, without respect to any power or capacity in the creature, but it is wholly passive, being dead in sin and trespasses, doth believe, and is converted by no less power than that which raised Christ from the dead. ⁶⁸

Likewise, the confession makes plain that “those who have union with Christ are justified from all their sins, past, present, and to come, by the blood of Christ; which justification we conceive to be a gracious and free acquittance of a guilty, sinful creature, from all sin by God, through the satisfaction that Christ hath made by His death and this applied in the manifestation of it through faith.” ⁶⁹ Hence, Christ's work accomplishes justification through the gift of faith alone.

Eleven years later, another seven congregations, now in four Midlands counties, likewise wrote a brief sixteen-point confession likely modelled on the 1644 London Confession. Here again, faith is called “a free gift of God, and the mighty work of God in the soul,” and justification comes by Christ through this same faith, so that believers may in turn “abound in” good works. ⁷⁰

So also The Orthodox Creed (1679), perhaps the most important General Baptist confession of faith, stipulated that justification was a

and through Christ's righteousness he mediated or “imputed, or reckoned unto us through faith” this justification. ⁷¹ Hence, both General and Particular Baptists, those of Arminian and Calvinistic stripes respectively, held to iterations of the basic Reformation doctrines.

Beyond formal confessions, numerous writings of early English Baptist theologians and ministers bolster this point. The famous Baptist pastor of Bedford, John Bunyan, maintained that God's covenant of grace must precede the divine covenant of works, only the former granting the believer assurance. Likewise, Bunyan argued that the imputation of Christ's righteousness was bequeathed “to the ungodly while they are still ungodly,” thus presenting the Christian life as a pilgrimage of understanding and living into that declaration in his famous The Pilgrim's Progress. ⁷² So also the “Somerset Confession” of Thomas Collier emphasized the importance of good works only as the outcome of justification by faith, ⁷³ and Benjamin Keach reiterated and expanded on the notion that justification comes by the imputation of Christ's righteousness through Christ's active obedience (fulfillment of the law) and his passive obedience (death as penal substitution) through faith. ⁷⁴ And later, Hyper-Calvinist Baptist theologians such as John Brine and John Gill removed all possibility of human cooperation from justification by stressing, in supralapsarian consistency, the eternal nature of the justification of the elect of God. ⁷⁵ Thus, the vast majority of early English Baptists held tightly to the general understanding of justification by grace through faith set forth by Luther a century prior. ⁷⁶

Baptists in North America on Justification

As Protestants, then, Baptists were and are to some degree theologically related to the Reformation in Germany and Switzerland, with Luther as a significant influence on various doctrines held dearly by Baptists, the North American Baptists being no exception. Baptist theology has historically shared with sixteenth-century Protestantism the centrality of personal faith in the Christian life, and, like other subsequent Protestant traditions, Baptist perceived their project as taking the Reformation to its logical conclusion, structuring the sacraments and their overarching ecclesiology on the principle of voluntary confession of personal faith. ⁷⁷ Although Baptists have utilized a number of terms alongside justification (e.g., salvation, redemption, reconciliation, etc.), justification by grace alone through faith alone still features prominently in any number of Baptist confessions of faith as formal evidence of the interpretation of Scripture shared by various Baptist bodies. It is important to note that most historic Baptist confessions were intended less to accentuate Baptist differences from other Christian traditions than to highlight their commonalities with them. ⁷⁸ Following the English Baptist statements of the First London Confession (1644) and the Orthodox Creed (1679), the subsequent North American Baptist confessions stressed views consistent with classical Protestant understanding of justification. The Philadelphia Confession of 1689 (rev. 1720) articulated justification as

By 1777, the Kehukee Association in Virginia and North Carolina articulated their own confession, maintaining that according to divine ways and timing the elect would be “called, justified and sanctified.” ⁸⁰ So also the New Hampshire Confession (1833) defined justification as “the great gospel blessings which Christ in His fullness bestows on such as believe in Him.” ⁸¹ Here, justification is defined as consisting of a divine

Here the New Hampshire Confession seems strongly to be maintaining Luther's notion of alien righteousness as the sole means to salvation. Almost simultaneously, the General Conference of Freewill Baptists in 1832 authorized a sixteen-article Treatise on the Faith of the Freewill Baptists, diverging in soteriology from the strict Calvinism of the two London Confessions and the arguably more soteriologically ambiguous New Hampshire Confession, while maintaining the generally accepted Protestant doctrines of regeneration, justification, and sanctification as distinct but essential concepts within soteriology. ⁸³

Two nineteenth-century Baptist catechisms further demonstrate these classical Protestant understandings of justification, forgiveness, and faith in America during this period. In 1848, Robert Ryland, who then served as pastor of the First African Baptist Church of Richmond, VA and would later serve as president of Virginia Baptist Seminary (now the University of Richmond), wrote “A Scripture Catechism for the Instruction of Children and Servants.” While focused on tutoring Black children in the substance of the faith, Ryland also intended the catechism more widely for Sabbath Schools and Bible classes. ⁸⁴ The catechism asks and answers:

Lesson XXX—Justification

Q. 4: Does [justification] proceed then from [God's] pure favor?

By the twentieth century, the famous pastor, theologian, and seminary president E.Y. Mullins wrote in 1912 that Baptists interpret justification as “a divine act, in and by which God declares the sinner free from condemnation. It takes place when the sinner turns from sin and trusts in Jesus Christ and his atoning work for salvation.” Yet, Mullins elaborated, justification should not be conflated with regeneration or sanctification. Instead, “in justification the sinner is not actually made just or holy, but is simply given a new standing with God according to which the sinner's faith is imputed to God for righteousness since that faith terminates in and upon Jesus Christ the righteous, who is the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. … Justification is the change of the sinner's standing by a declarative act of God in which sins are remitted and the sinner is freed from condemnation.” ⁸⁷

The Baptist Faith and Message (BFM) of 1925 reiterated the New Hampshire Confession's article on justification with few modifications. And the 1963 revision of the BFM continued to observe that: “Justification is God's gracious and full acquittal upon principles of His righteousness of all sinners who repent and believe in Christ,” ⁸⁸ a statement which remained fully unchanged in the 2000 revision of the BFM. Herschel Hobbs, the chair of the 1963 BFM committee, later underscored in a commentary on this statement that faith served as the only prerequisite for justification: “believing what is written about Christ, trusting in him and his work for salvation, and committing one's self to him.” Hobbs then explained, “In Romans 1:17 Paul says that man's justification is ‘from faith to faith’ or a matter of faith from beginning to end. In chapter 4 Paul contrasts faith and works, showing that by faith alone can one be justified (v. 5; cf. also 5:1; Eph. 2:8-10).” ⁸⁹ Thus, Baptists in America tended, at least formally, to reflect both the Lutheran notion of imputed righteousness and the declarative act of God in justification by grace through the gift of faith alone.

These consistent principles, alongside a number of others, have led contemporary Baptist historians to identify Baptists as a “Reformation people,” ⁹⁰ “the people who took Reformation principles to their ultimate conclusion,” ⁹¹ or, as the nineteenth-century Philadelphia-born Baptist pastor John Quincy Adams would opine, as “the only thorough religious reformers” of Christianity. ⁹²

Conclusions Regarding the JDDJ

As fellow descendants of the Protestant reformers, Baptists might then be both curious and pleased to read the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification between the LWF and the PCPCU, and be pleasantly surprised both by the concurrence of apparent theological understanding reached on such formerly divisive doctrines and especially by the spirit of desired unity that undoubtedly precipitated this declaration. Nevertheless, questions still remain. Among these are those that return us to the points of the original dispute and separation: While Catholics and Lutherans (along with other Protestants) now may agree that justification comes “by grace alone, in faith in Christ's saving work,” ⁹³ one might still legitimately ask how this apparent new concurrence on the part of Catholics affect their view of penance and the purpose of sacraments in general; what now is the function of Purgatory in their eschatology; to what extent human merit still has soteriological value, and to what degree Catholics now actually share a similar understanding of justification in its order and timing with regard to regeneration and sanctification, and approve of the teaching that it is entirely a divine work and gift of salvation. The implications of these corollary theological questions matter significantly and deserve further scrutiny so as to assess fully whether Catholics and Protestants do now share at least a general belief in God's grace and divine justification. Do Protestants and Catholics have a similar understanding of what constitutes “faith”? To what degree is the JDDJ document an accomplishment of theological mutuality and to what extent is it only an accomplishment in rhetoric, a shared agreement in turns of phrase?

Both the Lutheran and Catholic parties are forthcoming in the document to acknowledge that they are not in full agreement regarding justification, and the notes at the conclusion of the declaration outline the nuance and sometimes honest differences that still separate them from one another. ⁹⁴ As other scholars have noted, the subsequent “Official Common Statement” included vocabulary and clarifications absent in the original document. Nevertheless, it should be underscored that the declaration itself notably does not utilize the word “alone” for faith under the descriptions of shared agreement, as it does for grace. Moreover, Catholic contributors to the document noted further that, for Catholics, justification and sanctification are more connected than they are for Lutherans, and that faith, though “fundamental” to justification, includes for them the attributes and actions of hope and love. ⁹⁵ Likewise, Catholics maintain significant differences from Lutherans (and other Protestants) regarding hamartiology and anthropology (e.g., Catholics do not accept Luther's simul justus et peccator), and they understand assurance of salvation differently from the Lutheran notion of certitudo in Christ. ⁹⁶

Regardless of these ongoing theological dissimilarities and the significant questions that remain, what seems a most praiseworthy outcome of this declaration is the shared sentiment to remove the historic condemnations of the counterpart's understanding of justification based upon this new consensus. To the degree that such a statement may not only mitigate rhetorical condemnations and diminish the continuing potential of persecution between and among Christian traditions in regions of the globe but also increase recognition of a shared faith, gospel, and mission amongst believers throughout the world, the JDDJ serves not only as a theological accomplishment by Christian scholars of two traditions but as a spiritual gift to Christ's Church.

Undoubtedly, as the declaration itself states, further open-hearted conversation and clarity are needed. But the declaration is more than a triumph in theological rhetoric, a shared understanding in a “turn of phrase.” While less than a full concurrence on the notions of justification and faith, it is a remarkable step in ecumenical dialogue not only for Lutherans and Catholics but for the Church Universal. One may then recognize the JDDJ for not only being an achievement in itself, but also, and more importantly, for its potential to be only the beginning of a theological conversation among Christians through God's Spirit toward the goals of understanding, mutuality, and spiritual union.