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Why isn't faith a work? An examination of Protestant answers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2015

Mats Wahlberg
Mats Wahlberg*
Affiliation:
Department of Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Umeå University, SE-901 87 Umeå, [email protected]
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Abstract

Protestant critique of the Catholic idea of inherent righteousness has, since the time of the Reformation, given rise to counter-questions about the status of faith in Protestant theology. Is faith a human condition for justification (that is, a human act or inherent property which is necessary for justification), and why should not faith in that case be counted as a kind of work? Many Protestant theologians, however, view it as very important to dissociate faith from works. This article examines a number of Protestant attempts to explain why faith is not a work. The examined explanations rely on a number of ideas, for example, that faith is not a work because faith is a gift of God, or because faith is non-voluntary, or because faith is not a condition of justification, or because faith does not merit justification, or because faith is union with Christ. The problem with many of these Protestant answers to the question of why faith is not a work is that they can equally well be used to explain why the supernatural virtue of love is not a work. The Reformers, however, strongly associated love with ‘works of the law’, and wanted to keep love out of the doctrine of justification. For Protestants who share this view of love, the present article poses a challenge. Is it possible to dissociate faith from works without at the same time dissociating love from works, thereby legitimising the Tridentine understanding of justification? The author concludes that this is indeed possible, but only if an important identity marker for much Protestant theology is given up, namely the purely forensic understanding of the doctrine of justification.

Keywords

doctrine of justificationfaithFinnish Luther interpretationProtestant theologyunion with Christworks of the law
Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 68 , Issue 2 , May 2015 , pp. 201 - 217
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2015 

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References

1 Root, Michael, ‘Aquinas, Merit, and Reformation Theology After the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification’, Modern Theology 20 (2004), p. 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Or ‘Christ's faith(fulness)’, which currently is a popular interpretation of pistis christou, see e.g. Hays, Richard B., The Faith of Jesus Christ: The Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1–4:11 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002)Google Scholar.

3 Dunn, James D. G., ‘New Perspective View’, in Beilby, James and Eddy, Paul Rhodes (eds), Justification: Five Views (Downer's Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2011), p. 194Google Scholar. This interpretation is also common among patristic and medieval theologians, see Eno, Robert B., ‘Some Patristic Views on the Relationship of Faith and Works in Justification’, in Anderson, George, Murphy, T. Austin and Burgess, Joseph A. (eds), Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue VII: Justification by Faith (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1984), p. 114Google Scholar.

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5 According to mainstream medieval theology as well as modern Catholic theology, there is a close communion (if not identity) between the sanctifying grace which is the formal cause of justification and the supernatural virtue of love or charity.

6 Denzinger, Heinrich, Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, 43rd edn, ed. Hünermann, Peter (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), §§ 1528–30, 1561Google Scholar.

7 Kolb, Robert and Wengert, Timothy J., The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000), p. 145Google Scholar. Melanchton also says: ‘From among these results of faith the opponents single out only one, namely, love, and teach that love justifies. From this it is clear that they teach only the law’, p. 143. Luther also connects love and works: ‘Therefore the Christ who is grasped by faith and who lives in the heart is the true Christian righteousness . . . Here there is no work of the Law, no love’: Lectures on Galatians (1535), Luther's Works, vol. 26, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1963), p. 130.

8 Even an ecumenical document such as the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification by the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church says that justification, according to Lutherans, ‘is not dependent on the life-renewing effects of grace in human beings’: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_31101999_cath-luth-joint-declaration_en.html (accessed 8 Jan 2015), § 23.

9 Quoted in Elert, Werner, The Structure of Lutheranism (St Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1962), p. 100Google Scholar. See also Althaus, Paul, The Theology of Martin Luther (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), p. 233Google Scholar.

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12 McCormack, Bruce L., ‘What's at Stake in Current Debates over Justification? The Crises of Protestantism in the West’, in Husbands, Mark and Treier, Daniel (eds), Justification: What's at Stake in the Current Debates (Downer's Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2004), p. 108Google Scholar. Outside Protestantism it is not hard to find theologians who do not mind thinking of faith as, in some sense, a work. ‘Most patristic authors simply refused to construe “works” as engaged in causal competition with grace’: Gavrilyuk, Paul L., ‘The Retrieval of Deification: How a Once-Despised Archaism Became an Ecumenical Desideratum’, Modern Theology 25 (2009), p. 653CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 There are different views about how Luther's attack on medieval doctrines of justification relates to the Tridentine doctrine. According to one school, Luther's main target was the kind of nominalist theology represented by Gabriel Biel rather than the broader medieval tradition. Others contend, however, that Luther ‘attacked the whole medieval tradition as it was later confirmed at the Council of Trent’: Oberman, Heiko A., ‘“Iustitia Christi” and “Iustitia Dei”: Luther and the Scholastic Doctrines of Justification’, Harvard Theological Review 59 (1966), p. 19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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15 Martin Luther, The Disputation Concerning Justification, p. 160.

16 As Melanchton does in the Apology (Kolb and Wengert, Book of Concord, p. 121).

17 Kolb and Wengert, Book of Concord, pp. 386–7.

18 Faith can be commanded even though it is a gift of God. Love is a gift from God but also commanded.

19 Peura, Simo writes about Luther's view: ‘The first commandment . . . demands trust and faith solely in the Trinity’: ‘What God Gives Man Receives: Luther on Salvation’, in Braaten, Carl E. and Jenson, Robert W. (eds), Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), p. 80 (my emphasis)Google Scholar.

20 Ibid., p. 84. According to Paul Althaus, ‘faith becomes [for Luther] the real fulfillment of the first commandment’: The Theology of Martin Luther, p. 233.

21 The argument of this section is, of course, also effective against a view which identifies ‘works of the law’ with ‘prescriptions found in . . . the whole Old Testament’: Fitzmyer, Joseph A., ‘Justification by Faith in Pauline Thought: A Catholic View’, in Aune, David Edward (ed.), Rereading Paul Together: Protestant and Catholic Perspectives on Justification (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), p. 88Google Scholar.

22 E.g. Martin Luther, The Disputation Concerning Justification, p. 160; McCormack, ‘What's at Stake in Current Debates’, p. 108.

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24 Epistolae 194.5.19, CSEL 57.190. Quoted in McGrath, Iustitia Dei, p. 44.

25 McCormack, ‘What's at Stake in Current Debates’, p. 108.

26 Luther sometimes distinguishes ‘works of the law’ from ‘works of grace’, the latter being the works of the regenerated believer, see Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, p. 241, nn. 77 and 78.

27 See e.g. Heidelberg Disputation (1518), Luther's Works, vol. 31, ed. Harold J. Grimm (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1957), p. 40Google Scholar.

28 At least much of what Luther says about free will points in this direction. However, for a different interpretation, see Placher, William C., The Domestication of Transcendens: How Modern Thinking about God went Wrong (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Know Press, 1996), pp. 124–5Google Scholar.

29 Kolb and Wengert, Book of Concord, pp. 556--7. According to McGrath, the Formula of Concord does not endorse the monergist position: Iustitia Dei, p. 247.

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31 Even Luther seems, at least for the most part, to assume that free will exists with respect to matters with no direct relation to salvation.

32 This may not matter, of course, if faith is non-voluntary.

33 Preus, Robert, ‘Perennial Problems in the Doctrine of Justification’, Concordia Theological Quarterly 45 (1981), p. 176Google Scholar.

34 McCormack, ‘What's at Stake in Current Debates’, p. 94.

35 Maybe McCormack can reply that faith is a direct consequence of justification while good deeds are an indirect consequence (following faith). Whether this makes an essential difference, I leave for the reader to determine.

36 McCormack, ‘What's at Stake in Current Debates’, p. 108.

37 Olli-Pekka Vainio, Justification and Participation in Christ: The Development of the Lutheran Doctrine of Justification from Luther to the Formula of Concord (1580) (Leiden: Brill, 2008), p. 5.

38 Tuomo Mannermaa, ‘Justification and Theosis in Lutheran-Orthodox Perspective’, in Braaten and Jenson, Union with Christ, p. 28.

39 Mannermaa, Tuomo, Christ Present in Faith: Luther's View of Justification (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2005), p. 4Google Scholar. There are, however, different views within the Finnish school about the relationship between the Formula of Concord (and later Lutheranism in general) and Luther's theology, see Vainio, Olli-Pekka, ‘The Doctrine of Justification in the Book of Concord – Harmony or Contradiction?’, Dialog 48 (2009), pp. 380–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Mannermaa, Christ Present in Faith, p. 5.

41 Ibid., p. 22.

42 Vainio, Justification and Participation, p. 33.

43 Ibid., p. 227. Ted Peters argues in a similar way: ‘The Heart of the Reformation Faith’, Dialog 44 (2005), pp. 6–14.

44 Vainio, Justification and Participation, pp. 40--41.

45 Ibid., p. 227.

46 Ibid., p. 41.

47 Vainio, ‘The Doctrine of Justification’, p. 386 (my emphasis).

48 See e.g. Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), III.XI.7Google Scholar.

49 Kolb and Wengert, Book of Concord, p. 129.

50 Melanchton writes: ‘The righteousness of the Law is that worship which offers God our own merits’: Kolb and Wengert, Book of Concord, p. 128.

51 Aquinas, Thomas, The Summa Theologica (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1990), hereafter ST, I-II, q. 114, a. 5Google Scholar.

52 Aquinas, ST II-II, q. 2, a. 9.

53 Denzinger, Compendium of Creeds, § 1546. See also J. Pohle, ‘Merit’, in The New Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen (accessed Jan. 2015), section ‘Conditions of Merit’.

54 It does not help to change the definition slightly by speaking of ‘salvation’ instead of ‘justification’. There are indeed, according to Trent, acts which are meritorious in relation to salvation (eternal life). Possession of the virtue of love, however, is not meritorious in relation to anything (as shown above).

55 I am aware that some Lutherans think that it is crucial to deny free will in relation to salvation, e.g. Forde, Gerhard O. and Paulson, Steven D., The Captivation of the Will: Luther vs. Erasmus on Freedom and Bondage (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005)Google Scholar.

56 Medieval theology is, of course, not monolithic in this respect. Peter Lombard claimed that charity is the Holy Spirit himself, and hence a divine entity. Lombard's view was, however, rejected by the great theologians of the high Middle Ages, and the debate occasioned by the proposal led to the formulation of a distinction between created and uncreated grace: McGrath, Iustitia Dei, p. 68. In modern Catholic theology, however, ‘participationist’ interpretations of created grace imply that the distinction between divine and non-divine is less clear cut than the solution that I have suggested above might require.

57 It should be noted that the Finnish construal of faith as a human-Christic entity is compatible with – but logically distinct from – the traditional Protestant view that faith is a non-meritorious ‘instrument’ of justification.

58 Robert W. Jenson, ‘Response to Tuomo Mannermaa, “Why is Luther So Fascinating?”’, in Braaten and Jenson, Union with Christ, p. 21.

59 Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti, ‘Salvation as Justification and Theosis: The Contribution of the New Finnish Luther Interpretation to Our Ecumenical Future’, Dialog 45 (2006), p. 75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 There is also, as we saw, the (unattractive) possibility of totally denying free will in relation to salvation.