What is the doctrine of Justification?

[Johann]

The heart of the gospel.

“The True Doctrine of Justification: Asserted and Vindicated from the Errors of Papists, Arminians, Socinians, and More Especially Antinomians” by Anthony Burgess stands as a robust defense and detailed exposition of the classical Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone. Written during a time of significant theological conflict, Burgess’s work aims to clarify and defend the doctrine that was crucial to the Protestant Reformation and remains central to Reformed theology.

In his comprehensive treatise, Burgess meticulously dissects the multiple errors that had infiltrated the church’s understanding of justification, such as the Roman Catholic reliance on sacraments and works, the Arminian emphasis on human cooperation with divine grace, and the Antinomian rejection of the law’s role in the life of a believer. Each of these, Burgess argues, detracts from the sufficiency of Christ’s atoning sacrifice and the assurance it is meant to provide believers.

Burgess uses Scripture extensively to argue that justification involves both the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the believer and the full remission of sins—themes he elaborates through careful biblical exegesis and theological reasoning. His goal is to present a balanced view that maintains the necessity of faith and repentance without falling into the trap of legalism or license.

This book is particularly notable for its depth and the rigor of its argumentation. Burgess not only addresses theological errors but also pastoral concerns, providing a guide that helps believers understand and appreciate the profound relief and joy that come from being justified by faith. His work is a valuable resource for theologians, pastors, and any serious student of theology seeking to understand the historical and biblical foundations of this pivotal Christian doctrine. It is especially relevant for those interested in the interplay between Reformation theology and contemporary challenges to orthodox Christian beliefs.

900 pages

Anthony Burgess was a prominent Puritan divine and scholar of the 17th century, noted for his erudite theological writings and deep commitment to the principles of the Reformation. Born in 1600 in Watford, Hertfordshire, Burgess attended St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he excelled in his studies and later became a fellow. He served as a vicar in Sutton Coldfield and was actively involved in the Westminster Assembly, where he participated in debates concerning church governance and doctrine, demonstrating his theological acumen.

Burgess was highly regarded among his contemporaries for his profound understanding of Scripture and his ability to articulate complex theological ideas with clarity and conviction. His works, including “Vindiciae Legis,” a defense of the moral law, and “Spiritual Refining,” a series of sermons on theological virtues, were widely esteemed not only for their scholarly merit but also for their practical application to Christian living. His writings contributed significantly to Puritan theology and were influential in shaping Protestant thought beyond his own time.

Throughout his career, Burgess was known for his staunch defense of Reformed orthodoxy, particularly on the doctrine of justification, which he expounded upon in his work “The True Doctrine of Justification.” His works were celebrated for their meticulous scholarship and pastoral sensitivity, earning him a reputation as a key figure in the Puritan movement. His legacy continues to be recognized in theological studies, where his works are cited for their doctrinal precision and their role in the development of Protestant theological thought.

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J.

[Johann]

Paul

Most of the references to justification in the New Testament appear in the Pauline letters. On the one hand, “justification by faith” was part of a common tradition in Jewish Christianity to which Paul and the other apostles subscribed (see Gal 2:15; 1 Cor 15:11). On the other hand, Paul’s teaching on this area was contested by Jewish Christians who insisted that Gentiles should be circumcised and forced to obey the law as part of their salvation and as a basis for fellowship (see Acts 15:1–5; Gal 2:1–14). For Paul, justification by faith was his primary argument for God’s acceptance of Gentiles as Gentiles, without having to first convert to Judaism and take on law observances. Viewed sociologically, Paul was dissolving the differences between a “God-fearer” (i.e., a Gentile sympathizer to Jewish ways) and a “proselyte” (i.e., a Gentile convert to Judaism) by insisting on the sufficiency of faith. Paul was arguing that God accepts as righteous those who have faith/trust/loyalty rather than those who possess or perform the law. The upshot is that one does not have to become a Jew in order to become a Christian, and that kinship is established by faith rather than by ethnicity. Viewed theologically, Paul was asserting that the law is not a means of justification because

1. the law can only point out sin but never set people free from sin (see Rom 3:20; Gal 2:21; 3:21); and

2. justification by works of the law would mean that God has limited His grace to only one people (Rom 3:30).

In summary, Pauline teaching on justification by faith has several discernible characteristics:

1. Justification is eschatological. According to many Jewish sources, God would preside in judgment over both the wicked and the righteous at the end of history, when He would vindicate the righteous and condemn the wicked. By comparison, Paul believed that those who have faith in Jesus have received a verdict of acquittal and been declared righteous in advance of the final judgment. While Paul can still maintain the future dimension of justification, where the verdict will be enacted at the final judgment (e.g., Rom 2:13; 3:30; 5:19; 10:10), he stresses the present side of the declaration, where believers are already right with God and right before God (e.g., Gal 2:15–17; Rom 3:21–26; 5:1, 18; 8:1; 8:30).

2. Justification is forensic. Justification is fundamentally a divine declaration that a believer is in the right with God and righteous before God. It refers to a person’s status before God apart from their moral status. God justifies the ungodly and makes them righteous (Rom 4:5). The forensic sense is attributed not merely to the lexical meaning of dikaioō, which largely means “declare to be just” in the LXX, but also to the context of Paul’s discourse about justification by faith alone. Justification is the opposite of condemnation (Rom 5:16; 8:1, 34; 2 Cor 3:9) and is based on the “gift of righteousness” (Rom 5:17), which comes not from the self but from God (1 Cor 1:30; 2 Cor 5:21; Phil 3:9). This is not a legal fiction, as if God pretends that believers are righteous; rather, God acts to satisfy His justice (Rom 3:25–26) and to prove His faithfulness to His promises (Gal 3:21; Rom 15:8). Justification describes how God establishes a right relationship with believers, and because the relationship is real, so too is their righteous status.

3. Justification is covenantal. While justification is vertical/forensic and pertains to a believer’s status before God, justification is also horizontal/covenantal and pertains to the legitimate place of Gentiles in the church. Paul shows in Romans that Christian Gentiles have experienced the great covenantal renewal that Israel was waiting for and that they are thereby “reckoned” as circumcised, that is, as members of the covenant (Rom 2:25–29). Paul tells the Galatians that Christ was cursed on the cross not only for redemption, but also “in order that the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (Gal 3:13). Similarly, Paul appeals to the story of Abraham, citing Gen 15:6 in Rom 4 and Gal 3, to prove that God can and does justify Gentiles by faith. According to Paul, God’s promise and plan all along was to create a multiethnic family of faith for Abraham. In other words, justification by faith entails fellowship by faith, and Jewish Christians cannot exclude those whom God has justified. This means that what counts is grace, not race, and neither circumcision nor uncircumcision matters, only the new creation (Gal 6:15). Justification is not simply about “What must I do to be saved?” but “Who are the people of God?” Justification by faith is about God’s verdict to save and define a people for Himself.

4. Justification is transformative. Justification (declared to be right) and sanctification (living right) are linked logically rather than conceptually. The basis for being justified is not being sanctified, otherwise justification would not be by grace and through faith (see Rom 3:24). And yet we must remember that Paul teaches that those united with Christ have both the status of righteousness and must thereafter live as slaves of righteousness (see Rom 6:1–23). The Holy Spirit works in the life of believers in order to conform them to the image of God’s Son so that at the final judgment they will be proven to have lived a life in accordance with the grace given to them in Christ (see 1 Cor 6:11; Rom 8:4). No believer is saved by works, but neither is any believer saved without them.

Taking into account these four themes in Paul, we might propose the following definition of justification by faith: Justification is the act whereby God creates a new people, with a new status, in a new covenant, as a foretaste of the new age.

James

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[Johann]

The Christian Doctrine of Justification

In the domain of systematic theology, justification by faith has been the subject of several controversies.

1. The primary debate between Protestants and Catholics is whether justification is a forensic declaration based on the imputation of Jesus’ righteousness to believers, or based on the infusion of righteousness into the believer through the sacraments, enabling them to do works of charity by which they might be justified. Recent studies like that by Hans Küng, who compared Karl Barth and Roman Catholicism, and the Joint Lutheran-Catholic Statement on justification, have attempted to show the similarities between the two positions. While fresh new ecumenical ground has been broken, thus far no consensus has been reached. The Catholic Catechism remains firmly committed to the teachings of the Council of Trent, which remains a barrier to any consensus emerging.

2. The New Perspective on Paul has promoted an intense scholarly debate about the context and content of Paul’s doctrine of justification. Many scholars have argued that Judaism was not a legalistic religion devoid of grace and, consequently, that Paul’s problem with Judaism was not its legalism but its ethnocentrism, that is, its exclusion of Gentiles from salvation. This has led to the New Perspective’s description of God’s righteousness in terms of God’s covenant faithfulness and justification as covenant status rather than one’s standing before God. According to New Perspective advocates, Jewish writings show that authors never forgot the grace and mercy of God as the source of salvation (see 1QS 11.11–15; 4 Ezra 8:20–36; Philo, On the Sacrifices of Cain and Abel 54–57). They also tend to emphasize that Paul is concerned with legitimizing the status of Gentiles within ethnically mixed assemblies (Rom 3:27–31; Gal 2:15–3:28). At the same time, legalistic aspects of justification probably should not be dismissed since legalistic tendencies often emerge:

• in heightened eschatological contexts when there is a concern with what must be done to enter the future age;

• in sectarian contexts where there is a concern over whose interpretation of the law avails for righteousness; and

• in the context of discussions of the criteria for the admission of outsiders into a group. Similarly, Paul’s remarks on justification cannot be reduced to a social epiphenomena, and the acceptance of Gentiles in the church cannot be affirmed apart from God’s acceptance of them by uniting them with Christ by faith.

1. A Finnish interpretation of Martin Luther has attempted to present a new portrait of the German Reformer by placing his theology of justification in coordination to a theology of theosis or deification (e.g., Mannermaa, Christ Present). The comparisons of Luther with Eastern Orthodox themes on participation in the life of God are genuinely illuminating and stimulating where points of contact can be demonstrated. Even so, most of the proposed similarities seem strained and driven more by the ecumenical context of eastern Scandinavia, where the Lutheran and Orthodox churches exist side by side, rather than formed by a faithful rendering of Luther.

Bibliography

Allen, R. Michael. Justification and the Gospel: Understanding the Contexts and Controversies. Grand Rapids,: Baker, 2013.

Aune, David E, ed. Rereading Paul Together: Protestant and Catholic Perspectives on Justification. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006.

Barth, Markus. Justification: Pauline Texts Interpreted in Light of the Old and New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971.

Beilby, James K., and Paul R. Eddy, eds. Justification: Five Views. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2011.

Bird, Michael F. The Saving Righteousness of God: Studies on Paul, Justification, and the New Perspective. Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2007.

Boer, Martinus C. de. “Paul’s Use and Interpretation of a Justification Tradition in Galatians 2.15–21.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 28 (2005): 210–15.

Bultmann, Rudolf. Theology of the New Testament. Translated by K. Grobel. 2 vols. London: SCM, 1952.

deSilva, David A. Transformation: The Heart of Paul’s Gospel. Bellingham, Wash.: Lexham Press, 2014.

Mannermaa, Tuomo. Christ Present in Faith: Luther’s View of Justification. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005.

Martyn, J. Louis. Galatians. Anchor Bible 33A. New York: Doubleday, 1997.

McGrath, Alister. Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

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It is said to lead to Licentiousness

1. The first, most obvious, and most persistently urged objection against the doctrine of gratuitous justification through the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, has already been incidentally considered. That objection is that the doctrine leads to license; that if good works are not necessary to justification, they are not necessary at all; that if God accepts the chief of sinners as readily as the most moral of men, on the simple condition of faith in Christ, then what profit is there in circumcision? in Judaism? in being in the Church? in being good in any form? Why not live in sin that grace may abound? This objection having been urged against the Apostle, it needs no other answer than that which he himself gave it. That answer is found in the sixth and seventh chapters of his Epistle to the Romans, and is substantially as follows:

First, the objection involves a contradiction. To speak of salvation in sin is as great an absurdity as to speak of life in death. Salvation is deliverance from sin. How then can men be delivered from sin in order that they may live in it. Or, as Paul expresses it, “How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?”

Secondly, the very act of faith which secures our justification, secures also our sanctification. It cannot secure the one without securing also the other. This is not only the intention and the desire of the believer, but it is the ordinance of God; a necessary feature of the plan of salvation, and secured by its nature. We take Christ as our Redeemer from sin, from its power as well as from its guilt. And the imputation of his righteousness consequent on faith secures the indwelling of the Holy Spirit as certainly, and for the very same reasons (the covenant stipulations), that it secures the pardon of our sins. And, therefore, if we are partakers of his death, we are partakers of his life. If we die with Him, we rise with Him. If we are justified, we are sanctified. He, therefore, who lives in sin, proclaims himself an unbeliever. He has neither part nor lot in the redemption of Him who came to save his people from their sins.

Thirdly, our condition, the Apostle says, is analogous to that of a slave, belonging first to one master, then to another. So long as he belonged to one man, he was not under the authority of another. But if freed from the one and made the slave of the other, then he comes under an influence which constrains obedience to the latter. So we were the slaves of sin, but now, freed from that hard master, we have become the servants of righteousness. For a believer, therefore, to live in sin, is just as impossible as for the slave of one man to be at the same time the slave of another. We are indeed free; but not free to sin. We are only free from the bondage of the devil and introduced into the pure, exalted, and glorious liberty of the sons of God.

Fourthly, the objection as made against the Apostle and as constantly repeated since, is urged in the interests of morality and of common sense. Reason itself, it is said, teaches that a man must be good before he can be restored to the favour of God; and if we teach that the number and heinousness of a man’s sins are no barrier to his justification, and his good works are no reason why he should be justified rather than the chief of sinners, we upset the very foundations of morality. This is the wisdom of men. The wisdom of God, as revealed in the Scriptures, is very different. According to the Bible the favour of God is the life of the soul. The light of his countenance is to rational creatures what the light of the sun is to the earth, the source of all that is beautiful and good. So long, therefore, as a soul is under his curse, there is no life-giving or life-sustaining intercourse between it and God. In this state it can only, as the Apostle expresses it, “bring forth fruit unto death.” As soon, however, as it exercises faith, it receives the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, God’s justice is thereby satisfied, and the Spirit comes and takes up his dwelling in the believer as the source of all holy living. There can therefore be no holiness until there is reconciliation with God, and no reconciliation with God except through the righteousness imputed to us and received by faith alone. Then follow the indwelling of the Spirit, progressive sanctification, and all the fruits of holy living.

It may be said that this scheme involves an inconsistency. There can be no holiness until there is reconciliation, and no reconciliation (so far as adults are concerned) until there is faith. But faith is a fruit of the Spirit, and an act of the renewed soul. Then there is and must be, after all, holy action before there is reconciliation. It might be enough to say in answer to this objection, that logical order and chronological succession are different things; or that the order of nature and order of time are not to be confounded. Many things are contemporaneous or co-instantaneous which nevertheless stand in a certain logical, and even causal relation to each other. Christ commanded the man with a withered arm to stretch forth his hand. He immediately obeyed, but not before he received strength. He called to Lazarus to come forth from the grave; and he came forth. But this presupposes a restoration of life. So God commands the sinner to believe in Christ; and he thereupon receives Him as his Saviour; though this supposes supernatural power or grace.

[Johann]

Christ’s Righteousness due for Himself

4. It was natural that Socinus, who regarded Christ as a mere man, should object to the doctrine of the imputation of his righteousness to the believer, that Christ was under the same obligation to obey the law and to take his share of human suffering as other men, and therefore that his righteousness being due for Himself, could not be imputed to others. This objection is substantially urged by some who admit the divinity of Christ. In doing so, however, they virtually assume the Nestorian, or dualistic view of Christ’s person. They argue on the assumption that He was a human person, and that he stood, in virtue of his assumption of our nature, in the same relation to the law as other men. It is admitted, however, that the Son, who became incarnate, was from eternity the second person in the Godhead. If, therefore, humanity as assumed by him was a person, then we have two persons,—two Christs,—the one human, the other divine. But if Christ be only one person, and if that person be the eternal Son of God, the same in substance, and equal in power and glory with the Father, then the whole foundation of the objection is gone. Christ sustained no other relation to the law, except so far as voluntarily assumed, than that which God himself sustains. But God is not under the law. He is Himself the primal, immutable, and infinitely perfect law to all rational creatures. Christ’s subjection to the law therefore, was as voluntary as his submitting to the death of the cross. As He did not die for Himself, so neither did He obey for Himself. In both forms of his obedience He acted for us, as our representative and substitute, that through his righteousness many might be made righteous.

As to the other form of this objection, it has the same foundation and admits of the same answer. It is said that the obedience and sufferings of Christ, being the obedience and sufferings of a mere man, or at best of only the human element in the constitution of his person, could have only a human, and, therefore, only a finite value, and consequently could be no adequate satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. Our Lord told his disciples, “Ye are of more value than many sparrows.” If, then, in the sight of God a man is of far greater value than irrational creatures, why should it be thought incredible that the blood of the eternal Son of God should cleanse from all sin? What a man does with his hands, the man does; and what Christ through his human nature did, in the execution of his mediatorial work, the Son of God did. Therefore, men who spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit did not hesitate to say, that the Lord of glory was crucified (1 Cor. 2:8), and that God purchased the Church “with his own blood.” (Acts 20:28.)1 If, then, the obedience rendered, and the sufferings endured, were those of a divine person, we can only shut our mouths and bow down before God in adoring wonder, with the full assurance that the merit of that obedience and of those sufferings, must be abundantly sufficient for the justification of every sinner upon earth, in the past, the present, or the future.

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Piscator

The first conspicuous departure from the Protestant doctrine of justification among the Reformed, was on the part of Piscator, whose denial of the imputation of the active obedience of Christ to the believer, excited for some years a good deal of discussion, but it passed away without leaving any distinct trace in the theology of the Reformation. Baur, indeed, assigns to it more importance, as he regards it as the first step in the downfall of the whole doctrine of the satisfaction of Christ, over which he rejoices. Piscator was a native of Strasburg, and a member of the Lutheran Church, to whose service his first ministerial and professional labors were devoted. It coming to the knowledge of the ecclesiastical authorities that in his exposition of the Epistle to the Philippians he denied the ubiquity of the human nature of Christ, and taught the doctrine of predestination, he was deprived of his position in the Lutheran Church and passed over to the Reformed. He was soon appointed one of the professors of the new Institution of Hebron founded by the Duke of Nassau. He remained in connection with that institution from 1584 until his death in 1625, in the seventy-ninth year of his age. He was a prolific writer. Besides a new translation of the Bible, he wrote numerous commentaries on books of the Old and New Testaments, and conducted many controversies with Lutherans and Romanists, before he embroiled himself with the theologians of his own church.1 He took the ground that the “imputatio justitiæ” and “remissio peccatorum” are identical; the former means nothing more than the latter; and consequently that Christ’s work consists simply in the expiation of sin. His active obedience to the divine law constitutes no part of the righteousness by which the believer is justified before God. He admits that Christ rendered a twofold obedience,—the one to the law of God as a rule of duty; the other to the special command given to Him as Mediator. He came to accomplish a certain work; to do the will of the Father, which was to make satisfaction for sin. In this we are interested; but his obedience to the moral law was for Himself, and was the necessary condition of his satisfaction. He could not have made atonement for others had He not been Himself holy. “Tribuitur morti,” he says,2 “quod ei tribuendum, nimirum, quod sit plenissima satisfactio pro peccatis nostris: sic etiam vitæ obedientiæ tribuitur, quod scriptura ei tribuendum perhibet, nimirum, quod sit causa, sine qua non potuerat Christus idoneus esse mediator inter Deum et hominem.” Although Piscator made some effort to prove exegetically that pardon and justification, the remission of sin and imputation of righteousness, are identical, yet his arguments against the received doctrine, that the obedience of Christ is part of our justifying righteousness, are not Biblical. The question before his mind was not simply, What do the Scriptures teach? but, What is true, logical, and symmetrical? He saw objections to the imputation of the active obedience of Christ, which seemed to him fatal, and on the ground of those objections he rejected the doctrine. Thus, for example, he argues that Christ’s obedience to the law was due from Himself as a man, and therefore not imputable to others. He argues thus,1 “Qui Christum dicunt ubique ut hominem, Christum dieunt non hominem, dum enim dico ubique, dico Deum, qui solus est in coelo et in terra. Similiter cum dico subjectum legi, dico hominem. Qui ergo Christum subjectum legi negant, negant ipsum esse hominem.” Every man as such in virtue of being a man is individually bound to obey the moral law. Christ was a man; therefore He was bound to obey the law for Himself. He did not perceive, or was not willing to admit, that the word “man” is taken in different senses in the different members of this syllogism, and therefore, the conclusion is vitiated. In the first clause, “man” means a human person; in the second clause, it means human nature. Christ was not a human person, although He assumed human nature. He was a man in the sense in which we are dust and ashes. But because we are dust, it does not follow that all that may be predicated of dust, may be predicated of us; e.g., that we have no life, no reason, no immortality. In like manner, although the eternal Son of God took upon Himself a true body and a reasonable soul, yet as He was a divine person, it does not follow that everything that is true of human persons must be true of Him. Piscator also argues that the law binds either to punishment or to obedience, but not to both at once. Therefore, if Christ’s obedience is imputed to us, there was no necessity that He should die for us. On the other hand, if He died for us, there was no necessity that He should obey for us. The principle here assumed may be true with regard to unfallen man.

Out of characters, sorry.

J.