on the doctrine of justification

On the Doctrine of Justification

EBERHARD JUNGEL*

Translated by John Webster

Abstract: The doctrine of the justification of the ungodly is central to theChristian confession. Justification is to be understood through the fourReformation exclusive particles: Christ alone, grace alone, word alone andfaith alone. Justification addresses the relationlessness which is produced bysin as limitless self-realization. Related in himself as Trinity, God in Christ andSpirit continues in relation to the godless, thereby establishing a wealth ofrelation which is righteous. This account of justification is illuminating bothfor fundamental issues in anthropology and ethics, and for current ecumenicalcontroversies concerning salvation, sacraments and ministry.

I

At the centre of the Christian faith stands the confession of Jesus Christ: of JesusChrist who as truly human was and is at the same time God himself in person; ofJesus Christ who as truly divine was and is able to be a true and therefore a trulyhuman person. From confession of him there arises the confession of God the creatorand the confession of the creative power of the Holy Spirit and his operations. Fromhim arises the confession of the triune God. But the confession of Jesus Christ itselfhas a centre, a living centre without which the Christological statements of, forexample, the Apostles’ Creed – about the only begotten Son, who was conceived bythe Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified,died and was buried, descended into hell, rose again on the third day, ascended intoheaven, is seated at the right hand of the Father, will come again to judge the livingand the dead – have an air of being lofty archaeological specimens, before which wemay certainly bow respectfully, but which are ofabsolutely no existential concerntous. The living centre which brings the confession of Jesus Christ into a dimensionthat unconditionally concerns my own existence, and thus the centre of the Christianfaith, is faith in the justification of the ungodly through him ‘who was put to death forour trespasses and raised for our justification’ (Rom. 4.25).

International Journal of Systematic TheologyVolume 1 Number 1 March 1999

Published by Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1999, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UKand 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

* Evangelisch-theologisches Seminar, Liebermeisterstraße 12, D-72076 Tu¨bingen, Germany.

In faith in the justification of the ungodly, the confession of Jesus Christ comesto be a truth that illuminates human existence. That truth is eminently critical,leading human self-understanding, and therefore the whole of human existence,into an elemental crisis, a crisis which decides between life and death. On accountof its highly critical character, the gospel of the justification of the ungodly hasfrom the beginning been a cause of offence, and continues to be so even today.Faith in the justification of the ungodly gives the confession of Jesus Christ thecharacter of a ‘dangerous memory’.1 To evade the danger of this memory is tomake the earnestness of the good news proclaimed in the Bible into somethinginnocuous, and so to trivialize its joy. And this is time and again the case bothoutside and inside the Christian church. It was and remains true that the spiritsdivide over the confession of the God who justifies the sinner.

II

In a confession, faith expresses itself and binds itself to that which it believes. In theact of confession, faith formulates its certainties, making the claim of the mostbinding force, namely the claim to truth. More precisely, at the centre of Christianfaith stands the truth that in the person of Jesus Christ the eternal God has come tothe world as a mortal human being, to share our life and death in such a way that weobtain a share in his eternal life. The centre of the Christian proclamation is that thehistory of Jesus Christ is not a private history, but that, in that history, God’s historywith the whole of humanity takes place, and that in this one, unique history thereoccurs a liberating change of direction in the deadly fate of sin-dominatedhumanity, a fate for which we ourselves are responsible. Out of a life marked bydeath has come a life which overcomes death; out of an existence which has falleninto the hands of the deceptive powers of corruption and which completelydeceives itself, has come a being unrestrictedly open to the future, showing that theobvious successes of the powers of deception are a Pyrrhic victory and that thedespotic claims to power of the past are hopeless: ‘the old has passed, behold, thenew has come’ (2 Cor. 5.17b). Thus God has created in our world the ‘ministry ofreconciliation’ (2 Cor. 5.18), namely the ‘dispensation of righteousness’ (2 Cor.3.9), and with it has established the word of Jesus Christ which addresses all: ‘Forour sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might becomethe righteousness of God’ (2 Cor. 5.21). And this took place in the history whichinvolves all people in itself, and which procures for each person a community oflife with God which is both glorious and blessed, so procuring for them the truth oftheir own life and liberating them from their living falsehoods. A communion oflife with God which is victorious over sin and death, a liberation from the slavery ofself-wrought living falsehood, a human life which enters into its very own truth –

1 J.B. Metz,Faith in History and Society. Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology(London: Burns and Oates, 1980), pp. 88ff.

On the Doctrine of Justification 25

ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1999

all this is the concern of the justification of the ungodly, which brings faith in JesusChrist to its real point.

III

Time and again Western theology has accorded a very particular status to the articleof faith concerning the justification of the ungodly. Although in the Apostles’Creed it seems to be one of many truths of faith – only in the third article are wereminded of the gospel of justification by the phrase ‘I believe... in the forgivenessof sins’ – nevertheless time after time it is pointed out that this truth of faith has anespecial importance and that by it all other truths of the faith must be weighed.

In particular, Augustine, and then centuries later Luther, emphasized theincomparable significance of this truth of faith. In this, they allowed themselves tobe guided by the apostle Paul’s letters to the Romans and the Galatians, for, morethan any other of the biblical witnesses, he bore testimony to the truth of the gospelas a truth which justifies the sinner. Thus Augustine maintained that thejustification of the ungodly is an even greater work than that of creating theheavens and the Earth and all that is in them. And that is not only because ‘heavenand earth will pass away whereas salvation and the justification of the elect willendure’. Much more, according to Augustine, is it intrinsically ‘a greater work tomake righteous the ungodly than to create righteous beings’.2 Likewise, Lutherindicates the superiority of God’s act of justifying the sinner over the divine workof creation when he says of the article on justification: ‘Nothing in this article canbe given up or compromised, even if heaven and earth and things temporal shouldbe destroyed.’ And the appended statement shows that for the Reformer this alsoinvolved a dispute with the Roman church of his day: ‘On this article rests all thatwe teach against the pope, the devil, and the world.’3

In their high esteem for the article on justification, Augustine and Luther, as wehave seen, appeal to the apostle Paul. In his apostolic proclamation and the teachingwhich is inseparable from it, the gospel of the justification of the sinner through gracealone not only has a central function but also a critical, discriminating function. Paullays great emphasis on the fact that the Old Testament’s talk of the righteousness ofGod can only be properly understood as the righteousness which makes the sinnerrighteous. For God is righteous in justifying the ungodly. This, however, is revealed inthe gospel alone, and that means in ‘the word of the cross’ (1 Cor. 1.18) whichproclaims the death of Jesus as saving event. Thus the gospel is no mere informationabout particular facts or states of affairs. Much more is it a word of penetratingeffectiveness, an expressly creative word which itself effects that of which it speaks.

2 Augustine,Tractates on the Gospel according to St John72.3, NPNF vol. 7 (GrandRapids: Eerdmans, 1956), p. 331.

3 M. Luther, Smalcald ArticlesI, in T.G. Tappert, ed.,The Book of Concord. TheConfessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1959), p. 292.

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In the gospel God speaks of himself in such a way that he communicates himself,opens himself, gives himself. As such, however, the gospel is sharply to bedistinguished from God’s law, which makes demands of humanity and makesexorbitant demands of the sinner. Thus Paul asserts ‘But now,’ – namely, after thedeath and resurrection of Christ – ‘the righteousness of God has been manifested apartfrom law’ (Rom. 3.21) and, indeed, in the gospel, which is ‘the power of God forsalvation to everyone who has faith’ (Rom. 1.16). Thus in the same way that the gospelexcludes the law, so also faith excludes all human activity in relation to God. Inrelation to God, the believer is one who does not work (Rom. 4.5). Hence the apostlejudges ‘a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law’ (Rom. 3.28). Andhence it is a matter of drawing a distinction – not only within the history of humanityas a whole but within the life-history of each particular human person – between thesituation in which the law makes its demands, a situation in which it is fitting to dosomething, and the situation of the gospel which is given to us, a situation in which it isfitting to receive – and to receive, not just something, but the God who comes to us andthe new life which proceeds from him, the life which renews our old existence.

IV

The fundamental biblical statements about the justification of the ungodly are to befound in the letters of the apostle Paul. In its explicit statements, Paul’sproclamation presents itself in a reflective form. It is not immediately accessible.Within the New Testament there are already clear voices expressing theirdifficulties with this form of the apostolic proclamation (cf. 2 Pet. 3.15f.). And tothe modern person it seems to present quite specific problems. However, this oughtnot to obscure the fact that the gospel of the justification of the ungodly causesoffence to every generation. Already Paul himself writes that the word of the crossis folly to the Greeks and a stumbling block to Jews (1 Cor. 1.23), for in this gospel– as Nietzsche aptly diagnosed – there occurs ‘a revaluation of all antique values’.4

We must therefore distinguish between the scandal which the proclamation ofjustification presents to every age, and the difficulties in understanding which itpresents to the contemporary person, who, whilst not the first to experience thesedifficulties, experiences them more acutely, and so may be caused to think of thewhole matter (with Goethe) as ‘a trashy muddle... a daily burden’.5 Yet whoever isoffended by the gospel of the justification of the sinner and would dismiss thisgospel as scandal and folly, must nevertheless understand what is being repudiated.And so a bit of theological clarification is indispensable.

Even the terminology of justification strikes us as strange today. Its meaningand function yield themselves only to patient reflection. It is advisable to make

4 F. Nietzsche,Beyond Good and Evil(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), p. 57.5 J.W. von Goethe, ‘Brief an C. von Knebel’ inGoethes Werkevol. IV/28 (Weimar:

Bohlau, 1903), p. 227.



some connections with experiences which can make possible a pre-understandingof what we are to understand by justification of the ungodly through faith alone.

V

To justify something, to justify oneself, to be justified – these are primary life-processes that occur daily. They are certainly not immediately connected with themystery of the Christian faith, but they mediate a pre-understanding of that whichtakes place as the justification of the sinner.

We normally try to justify something when it is not understood of itself. Wejustify our behaviour, our action, for example, if it is not plausible or even if it isscandalous. Above all, we justify our failings, which we excuse by saying theywere necessary, precisely so that we do not need to exonerate ourselves for ourfailings. We declare ourselves free by excusing our behaviour as necessary. Notinfrequently we even justify our own being – that we are still where, at least at themoment, we seem to be out of place. But the justification of my own being can,however, be related in a much more basic way to the simple fact that I am and amnot. In that case, I am no longer justifying something or other; in the mostfundamental sense I justify myself. But to justify not just something or other inone’s life but one’s life, one’s being as a whole and, therefore, to justify oneself, isthereby to assert that one’s life has a meaning. Along with my being I justify themeaning of my being. Meaningless being has no justification. Only apparentlymeaningless being can be justified – namely as, despite everything, meaningful.Yet: meaningful before whom?

Justification always takes place before some authority or other. I justify myselfbefore others, before a human institution (for example, before a court of law) or beforemyself. These are worldly life-processes, through which I am justified before theworld. Not unrelated to them, but transcending and relativizing them, there takes placethe justification of the human person before God. But in all cases, justification is anevent which summons me before a forum. We always exist before some such forum,sometimes before several at once: child before parents (and vice-versa!), friend beforefriend, worker before colleague or boss, patient before doctor, minister beforeparliament, suspect before investigator, accused before judge, and so on. In the eventof justification, this existence before... becomes explicit. For there I experience myselfas one ordered to appear before someone. And thereby, moreover, it may also be that Ihave to appear before myself. If this happens, if I justify myself before myself, thenthe tribunal before which I am summoned is my conscience.

To want to justify oneself is one thing, to have to justify oneself is another. Thefact that we want to justify ourselves, our actions and our behaviour, our past lifeand our right to further life in the future, is bound up with the fact that we desireapproval. Approval is essential to the human person; human personhood dependson it. As persons, we demand approval of ourselves. According to Hegel,personhood is defined precisely through the fact that we demand that others

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approve us.6 This is why we strive to find approval. The will to justify ourselvessprings from this fundamental anthropological need for approval.

That we must justify ourselves, that we can be required to justify ourselves,points to a further fundamental definition of humanity: to be human means to haveto be responsible for oneself. For no one can be there only for him- or herself. Wealways exist in relation to others – even when we stand in relation to ourselves. Asliving beings rich in every kind of relation, we exist in responsibility before others.And precisely for this reason we can, if necessary, be summoned to responsibility.Then we must justify ourselves.

If we have to justify ourselves, of course, we appear to be in the wrong.Certainly, living essentially in responsibility we are usually only summoned toresponsibility when we cannot or seem not to be able to defend ourselves, that is,when we are accused or indicted. If we can justify ourselves, we are acquitted; if wecannot, we are accounted guilty. If we can justify ourselves, then we are shown tobe in the right and declared free; if we cannot, we are condemned.

But it can also happen that we may not be able to justify ourselves, even though weare in the right. Before the law, this can lead to grotesque misjudgments, to say nothingof terrorist tribunals. Subsequent events and better insights can acquit those who havebeen accused and condemned, without them having to contribute anything to their ownjustification. In that case, they are justified without any help of their own. Yet they arejustified because they are in the right. But can we also justify those who are not in theright? Can we, without perverting the law, pronounce freedom to the guilty? Thegospel of the justification of the sinner affirms that it is precisely this that God hasdone. What this means will first of all be set out in a rather compact and formal way,explained in the context of our experiences and the contemporary problems of whichwe are aware, and then the existential consequences will be opened up.

VI

At the centre of the Christian faith stands the massive assertion that the one who isrightly accused, the one who is completely in the wrong before God, and whotherefore deserves to be called a sinner or ungodly, is justified by God and so findsapproval with God. But to be approved by God is to be approved irrevocably anddefinitively, without being able to do anything towards that, without being able tojustify oneself, without in any way deserving one’s approval by God. One who is inthe wrong before God is incapable of any such things. Before God, no wrong can bemade right. Before God, all ‘making right’ is excluded.

Over against this, the justification of the sinner takes place solely because Godis gracious to the sinner despite the sinner’s sin; it takes place to the exclusion of allhuman merit, by grace alone. It happens solely because God loves the creaturewhom he has created and affirms despite the creature’s ungodliness. In the

6 cf. ‘Person’,Historisches Wo¨rterbuch der Philosophie,vol. 7, p. 311.



justification of the ungodly, God’s affirmation of humanity occurs afresh. And thistakes place solely through the gracious judgment of God and, therefore, to theexclusion of every mediating religious authority, solely through the effective wordof grace which is then visible in the sacraments. But the effective word of grace isonly effective where it finds trust and faith. And so sinners can do absolutelynothing for their justification, but only entrust themselves to the word of God whichaffirms them. They can only give consent to and delight in this gracious judgment.Hence we are justified by faith alone. And all this takes place solely because JesusChrist was given over to death because of our sins and raised again for ourjustification. The ground of justification is Christ alone.

Christ alone, by grace alone, through the word alone, in faith alone: these fourexclusive particles act as a safeguard to ensure that the truth of the gospel of thejustification of the ungodly makes itself felt unadulterated and unabridged. Whatthese exclusive particles mean more precisely remains to be explained. In doingthis, it is indispensable to understand from the inside what has so far only beensketched in a very superficial way, by clarifying why and to what degree humanityis in the wrong before God, and why this is a life-threatening situation. And,moreover, it must be above all clarified in what ways God’s justification of theungodly is itself righteous, and not an act of supreme, that is, divine,unrighteousness. Is not the very righteousness of God itself called into questionby the justification of the sinner? What does righteousness mean, when it ispredicated of God? What is God’s righteousness? And what does God – at oncerighteous and gracious – will, when he wills the justification of the sinner?

The answer to these questions is utterly simple. God for the ungodly, the peaceof heaven for a world without peace, eternal life for those condemned to death, the‘immediate presence of whole undivided being’ for those whose existence has beentorn apart, freedom and uprightness for those ensnared in the sins of others andbowed down under their own sins, an open future in a glorious and blessedcommunion with the life of God for those pursued by their past – this, at its mostsimple, is the proclamation of the justification of the sinner. But thinking what issimple is always the most difficult of all things. Understanding the simple, not onlywith the heart but also with the head, requires a certain conceptual exertion. If werequire that of ourselves, thereafter that which is simple becomes truly simple.

VII

‘Neither evening nor morning star is so wonderful’ as righteousness. It is the greatestof virtues (jqasi*rsg sxm a$ qesxm), indeed a complete virtue (a$qesg+ sekei* a). Theone who possesses it can exercise this virtue not only in relation to himself but alsoin relation to others. And so ‘the best person is not the one who exercises virtuetowards him- or herself, but towards another; for this is a difficult task.’7 Aristotle

7 Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics1129b25-1130a8.

ˆ ˆ

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gave voice to this little eulogy on righteousness long ago. And many great mindscould join with him – and not only great minds, but also the so-called sound commonsense of the so-called common person would agree: a righteous person, a righteoussociety has greater beauty than the evening and morning star. And we would alsoreadily agree with the ancient philosopher, that it is the law-abiding person who isrighteous (o< de+ mo* lilo| di* jaio|), from which Aristotle deduces that ‘all lawful actsare in a sense righteous acts’.8 To the eulogy on righteousness as more praiseworthythan the evening and morning star, there might be compared similar eulogies on thelaw.

The Bible, too, has some impressive words of praise for righteousness, and theOld Testament preaches love for the law. Through law and righteousness, therelations of life are ordered in such a way that all who are included in theserelations come to have their right, without having to take it for themselves – usuallyat cost to the right of others. Righteousness is that regulation of the wealth ofrelations in life, guaranteeing the success of human life. Where righteousnessreigns, shalom comes into being.

Righteousness is required where persons wish to or must live together. Certainlythe most ancient philosophers also spoke of righteousness in the context of non-personal being. Thus, for example, Anaximander affirmed that all things coming tobe in time are in a legal dispute with those things which have not yet come to be:‘they pay penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice’, which consists inthe fact that, over against those things which have not yet come into being, they havetoo much being; hence, ‘according to the assessment of time’, they must return tothat from which they originated. Thus Anaximander conceived of time as the judgein a legal dispute, in which that which is coming to be is punished with transience forits greed. ‘To the Greeks, for whom the just is the equal, this pleonexy, or taking-too-much, is the essence of injustice.’9 And everything which exists in time is subject tothis righteousness understood as equality. It ‘demands complete allegiance, for it isnothing less than the divine justice itself... Anaximander’s explanation of nature is...the first philosophical theodicy.’10 Contemporary philosophy connects with theseancient conceptions in so far as it, too, calls for a right relation to non-personalnature. In this it indicates a problem to which theology also must return, though ofcourse without abandoning the insight that righteousness can only be required wherepersons live together and get on with each other. But this does not mean thatrighteousness does not go beyond personal communion, for it is of the essence ofrighteousness to seek to extend itself.

The term ‘righteous’ refers to that good order of life-relations without whichcreaturely life finds no peace. The New Testament also shares this conception. Bythese relations and connections which fundamentally determine life, it is thinkingabove all of (1) the human person’s relation to God, (2) the human person’s relation

8 Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics1129b11f.9 W. Jaeger,The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers(Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1947), p. 35.10 W. Jaeger,The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers, p. 36.



to his or her social and natural environment, and (3) the human person’s self-relation.These are fundamental relations, within which a further wealth of life-relations canbe established. For its part, however, this richness in relation, this multiplicity of life-relations, lives from the fact that God for his part remains devoted as creator to thisrichness and affirms it. Then righteousness and peace reign.

VIII

The opposite to this occurs when, instead of mutually fostering each other,fundamental life-relations begin to compete with and damage each other to thepoint of mutual destruction. This happens when we activate our relation toourselves in such a way that it becomes ruthless self-realization. Relation to Godthen becomes callously subordinate or even completely sacrificed to self-realization. Then we come to worship idols: ‘idols’, because we employ them,make use of them, for our own advantage, utilizing them for our purposes,dependent on them like an addict. We can even deal with God in such a way. Then‘everything divine’ becomes ‘serviceable’, and ‘all the powers of heaven... areconsumed’.11 Idols are never interesting for their own sake. God is interesting forhis own sake. And when God is that no longer, then begins idol-worship, which isonly an instrument of ruthless human self-realization.

And in the same way that this ruthless human self-realization perverts ourrelation to God, so also it perverts our relation to our social and naturalenvironment. Instead of being likewise interesting for his or her own sake andtherefore an end in itself, the other person, the image of God, becomes a means tothe accomplishment of my own interests and purposes. Thou becomes It. Then eventhe I–It relation12 which constitutes our relation to the natural environment is soruthlessly subjected that the non-human creation becomes raw material in ourhands. Nothing is any longer significant of itself. Its only significance is what wecan make with it or out of it. And in its relation to the natural environment, thebeing of humanity is reduced to the being of a maker.

In this way, the wealth of relations in creaturely life is damaged, indeedoverturned, by ruthless human self-realization: righteousness is perverted intounrighteousness, and the wealth of relations is replaced by growing relationless-ness. The drive to this kind of relationlessness, which originates in theabsolutization of self-relation, is what the Bible calls sin. And since with theseconnections life also dies, the Bible sees death at work wherever connections arebroken and disconnectedness increases. ‘The wages of sin is death’ (Rom. 6.23).Indeed, even life is then a life marked by death:media in vita in morte sumus, in the

11 F. Holderlin, ‘Dichterberuf’ in F. Beissner, ed.,Samtliche Werke II (Stuttgart:Kohlhammer, 1953), p. 48.

12 cf. M. Buber,Eclipse of God. Studies in the Relation between Religion and Philosophy(New York: Harper, 1952), pp. 44f.

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midst of life we are in death. Such is the Bible’s judgment, and also the judgment ofmore than a few non-biblical voices.

However, over against the Old Testament and the many extra-biblical voiceswho judge similarly, the judgment of the New Testament is that we cannotescape from this situation of fundamental unrighteousness which we havebrought on ourselves by any deed demanded by the law. Even what Kant calledthe ‘intelligible act’ of a ‘revolution in the... disposition’ demanded by ‘the morallaw within’ cannot do this.13 Observance of the law (which in other respects isaffirmed throughout as constitutive for the establishment of righteousness)cannot, according to Paul, effect human righteousness before God. For the lawmakes demands of us, demands our works and so with our works refers us to theworld. We are to shape the world. We are to act in the world. But in relation toGod we are totally incapable of being agents. In relation to God, we are alwaysrecipients.

It is for this reason that the apostle Paul affirms that no human being will bejustified by works required by the law (Rom. 3.20). We cannot do this. But in noway do we need to do what we cannot do. For now, as has already been stated,God’s righteousness has been revealed, indeed, revealed in the gospel (Rom. 1.16f).This distinction between law and gospel is of decisive significance for ourunderstanding of the justification of sinners, since it equally defines how theexpression God’s righteousness is to be understood.

IX

When in old age Luther looked back on his decisive reformation discovery, hedescribed it as a discovery of the true meaning of biblical talk of God’srighteousness. ‘I hated that word ‘‘righteousness of God’’, which, according to theuse and custom of all the teachers I had been taught to understand philosophicallyregarding the formal or active righteousness, as they called it, with which God isrighteous and punishes the unrighteous sinner... Nevertheless, I beat importunatelyupon Paul at that place [Rom. 1.17], most ardently desiring to know what St. Paulwanted. At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to thecontext of the words... There I began to understand that the righteousness of Godis... the passive righteousness with which merciful God justifies us through faith, asit is written, ‘‘He who through faith is righteous shall live.’’ Here I felt as if I hadbeen altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates... AndI extolled my sweetest word with a love as great as the hatred with which I hadbefore hated the word ‘‘righteousness of God’’. Thus that place in Paul was for methe gate to paradise.’14

13 I. Kant,Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone(New York: Harper, 1960), p. 43.14 M. Luther, ‘Preface to the Complete Edition of Luther’s Latin Writings’ inLuther’s

Worksvol. 34 (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1960), p. 337.



Luther’s ‘discovery’ was without doubt a rediscovery of biblical truth. Veryplainly, it consists of taking seriously the place of the revelation of God’srighteousness. God’s righteousness is not revealed in the law but in the gospel, saysPaul, and Luther repeats the point. If God’s righteousness were manifest in the law,then God would be the righteous God who condemned and punished us for notfulfilling the divine demands made of us. In that case, God’s righteousness wouldbe – as the Roman jurist Ulpian formulated it in agreement with Aristotle15 – theconstant and permanent will to give to each his or her due, so that the righteouswould be acquitted and the unrighteous condemned:iustitia est constans etperpetua voluntas ius suum cuique tribuendi. If it were revealed in the law, then, inview of the incontestable fact that no human being is righteous before God (Rom.3.9ff) God’s righteousness would be nothing other than God’s unwavering will toapportion to humanity the damnation which is our due. God would then berighteous in judging and damning the unrighteous, that is, giving them up to thedeadly relationlessness that they have brought upon themselves. For it is not Godbut we ourselves who bring about hell for ourselves, a hell from which we may notescape by ourselves.

However, the discovery that God’s righteousness is not revealed in the lawbut in the gospel gives a meaning to the expression ‘the righteousness of God’which, if not wholly different, is nevertheless quite differently oriented. For inthe gospel, the God who in the law stands over against me, alien anddemanding, comes close to me in a new way, closer than I may be to myself.Now for the first time I realize clearly what it means to be a sinner. A sinner isone who is closest to him- or herself, in such a way that wholesome closeness toGod or others is wrecked or instrumentalized and thereby destroyed. But if inthe gospel God comes closer to me than I may be to myself, then I am no longerthe one closest to myself. And if God’s righteousness which is revealed to me inthe gospel blesses me by coming near, indeed closer to me than I may be tomyself, then it is manifestly not the righteousness which damns the unrighteousbut that which affirms the unrighteous despite their unrighteousness andestablishes them in the face of their unrighteousness. It is the righteousnesswhich makes the unrighteous to be righteous; thus in the gospel there occurs thejustification of the sinner.

X

The righteousness of God consists, however, in the fact that it declares andmakes the unrighteous to be righteous. And it does this without the sinner havingeven the slightest entitlement to it or being able to do the slightest thing towardsit. God’s justifying action is caused by the grace of God alone. But what kind ofGod is it whose righteousness consists in declaring and making the unrighteous

15 Aristotle,Rhetoric1366b9f.

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to be righteous? The question immediately forces itself upon us, showing that inthe article on justification God himself is at stake. Who or what is God, if Godaffirms himself to be righteous in declaring and making the unrighteous to berighteous?

If it is said that God himself is righteous, then for Christian faith this meansthat God affirms and fosters the wealth of relations in life, not first of all inrelation to his creation but already in his self-relation. But according to theconfession of the Christian faith, God exists in relation to himself in that he existsas Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and relates to himself in this three-fold existencein such a way that Father, Son and Spirit reciprocally affirm each other in theirotherness. This is the decisive viewpoint from which to consider God’srighteousness: God does not exist in splendid isolation as a solitary being, but inGod otherness is and is affirmed – not the otherness of different beings, but theotherness of distinctive modes of being or persons of the same being.

In this sense a very early rule of faith, which we call theFides Damasi,16

explains that God is nosolitarium, not a being in himself alone. Rather, he exists indifferentiation as Father, Son and Holy Spirit:alius, alius, alius.17

The Father and the Son affirm each other in their mutual personalotherness and in just this way form the most intimate community: thetrinitarian community of reciprocal otherness. Consider: in relation to theWord who became human, the heavenly Father is other, in that he, theeternal origin and creator of life, sent the Son into the sinner’s world, andthere affirmed him as his beloved Son (Mk 1.11) in the depth of transienceand death. And in relation to the Father, the Son is other in that he consentedobediently to this sending and so affirmed the Father: obedient even to deathon the cross (Phil. 2.8). The personal otherness of Father and Son impliesnothing less than the antithesis of life and death. We can scarcely think of amore extreme form of mutual otherness. And yet, rather than turningdestructively against each person, in the power of the Holy Spirit thisotherness is creatively united into a community of mutual otherness. It is inthis way, not excluding otherness from himself but affirming it in himself,that God accords with himself, is ‘true to himself’, precisely in the midst ofthis ever greater differentiation corresponding to himself. ‘This harmony withHimself is the right of God... This the backbone of the event of justification...‘‘For the righteous Lord loveth righteousness’’ (Ps. 11.7): this is... anontological statement and therefore one which is... unchangeably valid. Godis just in himself.’18 God corresponds to himself.19

16 cf. H. Denzinger,The Sources of Catholic Dogma(St Loius: Herder, 1955), p. 10.17 cf. Gregory of Nazianzus,First Letter to Cledonius20f, PG 37, 180.18 K. Barth,Church DogmaticsIV/1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956), pp. 530f.19 cf. E. Ju¨ngel, The Doctrine of the Trinity. God’s Being is in Becoming(Edinburgh:

Scottish Academic Press, 1976), p. 24.



XI

The decisive assertion of the proclamation of justification can be understood fromthis presupposition: that God declares and makes the sinner righteous by gracealone. The proclamation of justification does not – as it is often expounded – saysomething like ‘God’s grace is lenient’. At no point at which the Bible talks ofgrace or mercy is any such thing said. God’s justice serves his grace; it is the justiceof his grace. God’s grace is by definition in the right. But if God is righteous inaffirming otherness in himself and in just this way accords, corresponds, withhimself, then he is also above all righteous in that, over and above that, he affirmsthe creation which is quite other than himself. Yet God cannot be compelled toaffirm his creation. He affirms it out of grace. But when he affirms the otherness ofthe creation and so is gracious to it, he remains in the strictest accord with himself.And thereby in being gracious he is completely righteous.

In this, then, God is the gracious God, this is his grace: that he does not will tobe for himself, but rather realizesad extrathe community of reciprocal othernesswhich he is as the triune God, by creating a creaturely reality over against himselfand keeping steadfast faith with this his creation. The creation is therefore an act ofdivine grace. And even more is the election of Israel and with Israel the election of‘all people’ to be God’s covenant partners an act of divine grace, in which Godexercises his righteousness. In that God’s righteousness gives to the other its due,thereby issuing in a community of mutual otherness, it comes to have thecharacteristic of gift, so that the old Roman saying ‘Let righteousness flourish,though the Earth perish’ is for Christian faith quite impossible.

The point is not that when God judges the sinner he is righteous, but when hejustifies the sinner, declaring the sinner righteous by grace alone, he subtracts fromhis justice and righteousness in some way, letting clemency hold sway and showingleniency. Quite the opposite is the case. ‘God does not need to yield Hisrighteousness a single inch when He is merciful. As He is merciful, He isrighteous.’20 With his grace, God is in the right.

This, however, means that the judgment with which God carries out hisrighteousness is an act of grace. Theology and church have fallen into the falsehabit of thinking of judgment and grace as alternatives. But we must learn that it isprecisely in the act of judgment that God shows himself to be the gracious God.Only a God without grace would let injustice take its course. God would not begracious if he were not the judge. For then the history of the world would be theworld’s judgment; then murderers would triumph over their victims. If there is ajustification of the sinner, it does not bypass God’s judgment but passes through itsgrace.

20 K. Barth,Church DogmaticsII/1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957), p. 383.

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XII

This aspect is of considerable significance, not the least because it leads to thecentre of the gospel of the justification of the sinner. At its centre, the gospel is theword of the cross (1 Cor. 1.18). And the cross is a gallows. The cross means deathand perishing. If the gospel of God’s grace is identical with the word of the cross,then that means that God’s righteousness makes no compromises with theunrighteousness of this world, but in the person of Jesus Christ has condemned it topass away. In this way, his death is the death of the sinner. In him who knew no sin(2 Cor. 5.21) we also are crucified (Gal. 2.19; Rom. 6.6), we also have died (Rom.6.8) – that is the one side of the New Testament’s affirmation that Christ died thesinner’s death for us, that is, in our place. God’s righteousness does not pass overthe sin of the world as if it were somequantite negligeable; rather, God’srighteousness prevails against unrighteousness by judging it and condemning it toperish in the death of Jesus Christ. The crucified vouches for the fact thatunrighteousness will be put out of the world. On the cross, its condemnation ispromulgated. And that is grace indeed.

However, this negative end to human unrighteousness and guilt is positivelydirected towards a new beginning. As we have seen, God’s righteousness is thesubstance of a well-ordered wealth of relations, which God does not reserve forhimself – as it were in a fit of divine egoism – but rather shares with his people bychoosing them as his covenant partners. The extrabiblical idea of justice has thetask of guaranteeing equality among equals.21 By contrast, God’s righteousness isshared with those who are completely unlike him. God’s righteousness is nometaphysical divine attribute reserved for God alone, but a communicable attribute:God is righteous in that he makes others righteous.

What the Bible calls sin is, by contrast, as we have already clarified, the exactopposite: namely, the drive to establish one’s own right at cost to others, therebybeing the closest to oneself. We have understood righteousness to mean thegoverning of the wealth of relations of those who exist with each other in such away that all who are included within it come to have their due, without having totake it by force. Over against this, sinners, those who are unrighteous before God,are characterized by the fact that they suppose themselves to have to and to be ableto take their due,22 in precisely this way breaking out of the well-ordered wealth of

21 This is true also for recent theories of justice, which fully recognize and allow for theinequality of the social relations of individuals, but on the presupposition that in respectof elementary fundamental freedoms, there exists an equality among citizens. Thus J.Rawls states: ‘Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both(a) reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and (b) attached to positions andoffices open to all’ (A Theory of Justice(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 60).

22 The fundamental human outlook in Western liberal societies has been diagnosed in notwholly dissimilar fashion by ‘communitarian’ social critics. Against a liberalunderstanding of society it is objected that the members of liberal societies no longerbelieve in anything other than, perhaps, justice, in the sense that they themselves have



relations in which God has included them. Thereby we destroy the good order oflife and, with that, life itself. The sinful drive to relationlessness anddisconnectedness ends in death; sinners reap what they have sown, namely thecurse of ruthless self-relatedness which gives birth to relationlessness and finallydestroys even our relation to ourselves. If we seek to be closest to ourselves, wewill not find but lose ourselves; if we seek ruthlessly to realize ourselves, we willforfeit ourselves (Mk 8.35). That is our fate.

It is the deepest mystery of God, that he has taken this fate of ours uponhimself. In the person of the crucified Christ he has exposed himself in our place todeadly relationlessness, in order with his love to make a new beginning at preciselythe point at which sinful life ends. For where everything loses all relatedness, whereconnections are broken off for ever, where relationlessness and disconnectednessare complete, new relations and therefore new life can only be created by love, bythe God who is himself love. It was just this which took place when in the person ofJesus Christ God endured in himself our relationlessness and the deadly curse ofsin, in order to establish for us the wealth of relation in his own for life (a wealth ofrelation which affirms others), in order that thereby new relations, new life-connections may come into being among us, and that we may become justifiedsinners. Thus ‘for our sake God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in himwe might become the righteousness of God’ (2 Cor. 5.21).

Luther called this event a ‘happy exchange’.23 The expression is, indeed, apt;but it should not be forgotten that he is describing an exchange of death for life. The

particular rights, for the fulfilment of which they will struggle always and everywhere.This situation is the consequence of a liberal view of society, which renounces acommon concept of public welfare and limits the common convictions of the membersof a society to a few elementary fundamental freedoms. Thereby, according to the‘communitarians,’ not only does the solidarity of the entire society disintegrate, but alsoin a liberal society no partial communities thrive, indeed, the bonds of people to others,to traditions and values, slacken. (Cf. M. Sandel,Liberalism and the Limits of Justice(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).) Against the liberal view, commu-nitarian social critics set an understanding of humanity in which the individual person isfrom the beginning one who exists in relations, institutions and communities, and anunderstanding of social community which conceives of it as the presupposition andgood of social activity. (Cf. M. Walzer,Spheres of Justice. A Defense of Pluralism andEquality (New York: Harper, 1983), p. 65: ‘The signers [of the social contract] owe[one another] mutual provision of all those things for the sake of which they haveseparated themselves from mankind as a whole and joined forces in a particularcommunity. Amour social is one of those things.’ Thus ‘the common life issimultaneously the prerequisite of provision and one of its products.’) Justice, then,in the sense of ‘complex equality,’ consists in the fact that in the different spheres ofsocial activity the life-prospects of the members of the society will be distributedthrough socially established rules (cf. Walzer,Spheres of Justice,pp. 20ff). In this,political participation and social engagement of the citizens in the differing spheres ofthe distribution of goods and possibilities form a decisive presupposition in hinderingthe dominance of a sphere of social power.

23 M. Luther,Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen, WA7 (Weimar: Bohlau, 1897), p.25. (Jungel refers to the German text ofThe Freedom of a Christian, which contains the

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new beginning which becomes reality in Jesus Christ is thus a beginning which canonly be compared with a new birth or a resurrection from the dead. Indeed, in thisbeginning there really occurs a being born again, the beginning of the new life ofthe one raised from the dead. ‘For the love of God controls us, because we areconvinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, thatthose who live might live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sakedied and was raised’ (2 Cor. 5.14f).

XIII

We have tried to understand in what way God is at stake in the article onjustification, in what way it is determined here who or what is the God in whomChristians believe. God is the love which selflessly stands by the ungodly. Butequally, humanity is at stake in the article on justification. Here we also determinewhat human being means. The relation of God and humanity is determined asprecisely as possible in the event of justification. The function of the so-calledexclusive particles through Christ alone, by grace alone, through the word aloneand in faith alone is to accomplish just this. The truth of the article on justificationhangs on this indispensable four-fold alone.

To say alone is to exclude something else. What is to be excluded in each caseis to be sought in the horizon of human being and action. It is a very specific aspectof the human person which is excluded in the matter of justification – though weare excluded in order that we may be included in the event of justification in theright way. This is a process well known to us in daily experience. A personcelebrating a jubilee must be excluded in the right way from the preparations forthe jubilee celebrations, in order to be included properly in the celebration itself.Similarly, it is for our good to be excluded in very specific ways from the event ofjustification. Each of the four exclusive particles brings out one of these specificways.

XIV

We must insist uncompromisingly on Christ alone,solus Christus, since JesusChrist and he alone is the person in whose history and death the power of sin isbroken, condemned to pass away and brought to nothing. He is this person,however, since only in him are divinity and humanity so united with one anotherthat they have a common history, in which the creator allows himself to beburdened with the sin and guilt of his human creation. And since Jesus Christ is theone in whom God and a human person, creator and his human creature, are one

wordsfrohlicher Wechsel(‘happy exchange’); the Latin text of Luther’s work, which istranslated inLuther’s Works, does not contain this phrase – TR).



person – ‘one and the same... in two natures’, according to the ChalcedonianDefinition – then he alone is the one who in the power of the divine love can die inthe sinner’s place, bearing and resolving the complete relationlessness which thesinner has brought about. Love resolves the total relationlessness of death in that itcreates new relations and therefore new life where all connections break down andall relations end in relationlessness. Only the one who is God’s love in person canmake the old to pass away and generate new being. Only he can die for our sins andbe raised for our justification. And so the New Testament – followed by earlytheology – calls him the onemediatorbetween God and humanity (1 Tim. 2.5).

With this, all other ‘mediators of salvation,’ all other mediating religiousauthorities between sinful humanity and the justifying God, are excluded. Thisincludes not only all non-christian mediating authorities; primarily here it is amatter of aberrations within Christianity. The so-called saints are excluded asmediators of salvation; Mary and the church are also excluded. A formulation suchas that which states that Mary is ‘the cause of salvation’ (causa salutis), indeed,‘Mediatrix’, is strongly to be repudiated, even when to such excessive statements itis immediately added that this does not ‘take away from nor add anything to thedignity and efficacy of Christ the one Mediator’.24

All such claims to human mediation of salvation, which trespass upon JesusChrist, are not excluded, however, in order in some way to disparage humanity. It israther to our benefit not to have to effect our own salvation. For to do that we wouldhave to be abased to a depth which we could not endure. It is intrinsic to theuniqueness of Jesus Christ that only he can plumb the depths of human suffering.According to worldly judgment, this depth is only that of the debased death of acriminal; according to spiritual judgment, however, it is the depth of thatgodforsakenness in which the one who knew no sin was for our sake made to be sin.

His death is the foundation of his exclusivity. And this exclusiveness consistsprecisely in a universal inclusivity, in that in his death the sin of all sinners iscondemned to pass away and brought to nothing. Thus those who believe in thiseffect of the death of Jesus Christ are justified. Those who believe in this effect ofthe death of Jesus Christ are certain that in Jesus Christ, God in person was presentfor us in the one ‘who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned creature, deliveredme and freed me from all sins’.25 And since in Jesus Christ God himself waspresent for us and at work in this liberating way, then ‘to believe in him’ means ‘tobelieve in him alone’.26 To believe in Jesus Christ is to give glory to God alone. Inthe exclusive particle ‘Jesus Christ alone’ we get to the bottom of what it means toascribe to God alone what it is in the power of God alone to do.

The other three exclusive particles have basically no other function than to setout and secure the truth of the exclusive particle ‘through Christ alone’.

24 Vatican II,Lumen Gentium56, 62.25 M. Luther,Small CatechismII.4, in T.G. Tappert,The Book of Concord, p. 345.26 cf. G. Ebeling,Dogmatik des christlichen Glaubens,vol. 3 (Tubingen: Mohr, 19822), p.

220.

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XV

We have to take an unyielding stand on the exclusive particle ‘by grace alone’,solagratia, since everything which God has bestowed upon humanity in, through andbecause of Jesus Christ, is an unconditional divine gift. So it is all the more true thatthe justification of the sinner is – as Luther already formulated the matter in lookingat the article on creation – an event which happens to the sinner solely ‘out of hispure, fatherly, and divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness onmy part’.27 Grace is not to be understood as a legal relation in which the act ofgrace remains external to the one acting out of grace, only having engagingexistential significance for the recipient of grace. Grace means that God has mercyon the one to whom he is gracious. And God’s mercy takes place in his own innerbeing. God’s grace moves him completely and utterly, deeply determining not onlythe recipient of grace but the one who is gracious. He is gracious from the heart.And he is gracious from the heart since God’s heart is ruled wholly by love.

But love cannot be earned. It occurs unconditionally – or it is not love. When ithas mercy on sinners, God’s love does not turn to those worthy or deserving oflove, but to those who have deformed themselves, those unworthy of love, thosefirst made worthy of love through God’s love: ‘The love of God does not find, butcreates, that which is pleasing to it.’28 There is absolutely nothing ‘good in thesinner’ which can contribute to the event of justification.29 Even if we wish to,sinners cannot earn the love of God. That love occurs to us through grace alone.

Just as surely as grace is not a (in this case, divine) performance, it alsoexcludes categorically any performance on the part of humanity (Rom. 4.4). Onboth sides the concept of grace excludes the concept of performance: not only onthe part of humanity to whom grace is shown, but also on the part of the graciousGod. Once again, even on the part of God, grace should not be misunderstood as apower which restores humanity to all possible performances. Grace cannot beconceived on the model of performance.

Thus through the exclusive particle ‘through grace alone’ all human efforts,performances and merit are excluded. And it is to our benefit, furthering ourhumanity, that prior to all efforts, performances and merit we are recipients, thosepresented with ourselves. To receive, as well as to give, makes us joyful. Whengrace happens, no performance is demanded, but mutual joy is made possible – joytogether and joy on each side: on the side of the God who justifies and on the sideof justified humanity. The justifying God takes joy in humanity to whom he turnswith his grace. And humanity, the recipient of grace, takes joy in the God who

27 M. Luther,Small CatechismII.2 (Tappert, p. 345).28 M. Luther,Heidelberg Disputation, thesis 28, inLuther’s Worksvol. 31 (Philadelphia:

Muhlenberg Press, 1957), p. 41.29 According to the documentation in K. Lehmann, W. Pannenberg and M. Ko¨hl, eds,The

Condemnations of the Reformation Era: Do They Still Divide?(Minneapolis: Fortress,1986), that is nevertheless supposed to be Roman Catholic teaching.



justifies. But joy sovereignly excludes any kind of calculation and reckoning up.Joy excludes any idea that grace could somehow be calculated – an extraordinarilyimportant point for a correct understanding of penance. Where grace occurs,calculation ceases, for grace is always grace in abundance (Rom. 5.15,20; 2 Cor.5.15).30

XVI

The exclusive particle ‘through the word alone’,solo verbo, is absolutelyindispensable because the justification of the ungodly which takes place in Christalone through grace alone is enacted through a divine judgment, through an act ofdivine justice which is verbal.

The New Testament already says of the crucified that he was ‘justified in theSpirit’ (1 Tim. 3.16). By this is meant the act of the resurrection of the crucifiedthrough the Spirit of God the Father (cf. Rom. 8.10), which occurs through thecreative word which raises the dead. Paul understands the act of resurrection byanalogy to the creative act of God as a speech-act (Rom. 4.17). And hecharacterizes the act of Jesus’ resurrection as an act of justification in which, alongwith the crucified Christ who died in the place of the ungodly, the ungodlythemselves for whom he died are justified: he was raised for our justification (Rom.4.25).

The act of divine justice is therefore an act of the creative word of God whocalls into being that which is not (Rom. 4.17). This creative word of God whicheffects both the resurrection of Jesus and our own justification Paul calls the gospel.In it, God’s righteousness is revealed: God does not keep his righteousness tohimself, but addresses it to the sinner. In pronouncing the sinner righteous – in thisway alone – God makes the sinner righteous. The word which pronounces usrighteous is thus to be conceived as a highly efficacious word, a word whichsummons new being. We are righteous when God pronounces us righteous. In sofar as it concerns the judgment of God the Father and therefore an act of divinejustice which is equally an eminently creative act, the event of justification iswholly a word-event.

For the justified this means that they are justified by a word which encountersthem from outside, a word which addresses them concerning an event that takesplace without their co-operation, outside them. Sinners can no more say tothemselves that their sins are forgiven than they can do anything at all for theirjustification. Certainly the event of justification which takes place in the history ofJesus Christ needs to be brought close to the sinner – we may even say, in hushedtones, needs to be internalized by the sinner. It needs to be (to use an Augustinianturn of phrase)interior intimo meo. But this must happen in such a way that from

30 From this point of view, Bonhoeffer’s talk of ‘cheap grace’ ought also to be criticallyexamined – not Bonhoeffer’s intention, but certainly his formulation of the matter.

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the inside outwards I am now orientedeccentrically, wholly oriented towards thatwhich is outside me, the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus, there to findmyself anew.

There, illic et tunc, I come to myself. There I am in the right. If there is aChristian mysticism, then it must be a mysticism of the setting together of internaland external, in which the God who addresses me in the act of justification comescloser to me than I can be to myself – namely to call me out of myself intocommunity of life with him, and that means a community of direction with him.Unio mystica?Yes, but in the sense of a uniting of internal and external, in thesense of a community of direction in which the world is not excluded but broughtinto the picture in a new way. Along this path our senses are not set aside butsharpened, so that we are given eyes to see with amazement and ears to hear withastonishment. This would be a mysticism of opened eyes (for which J.B. Metz andD. Solle have called) and of opened ears.

There, we are to emphasize, there I am righteous:extra me. But outside me insuch a way that there I really come to myself, that there is realized the most propertruth of my life, which consists in the fact that I am entitled constantly to receivemyself anew from God, in order to be completely free precisely in such dependenceupon God. Dependence upon God and the independence of the creature are directlyproportional.31 But this also confirms that, in so far as I do not abandon myself butfix myself on myself, I exist in contradiction to my justification and thereforeremain a sinner in need of justification. And since this is always the case, MartinLuther said that the Christian is equally both righteous and sinner,simul iustus etpeccator.32

The fact that, in so far as I do not abandon myself in order to let myself bebound up with the history of Jesus, I remain a sinner in need of justification, is trueto a greater degree when, instead of allowing myself to be transformed intoeccentric existence by the grace which reaches to my most inner life, I treat it as mypossession or as a divine capacity which is effective in me. Grace understood in thisway ceases to be God’s grace. The exclusive particle ‘through the word alone’ thussecures the right understanding of the grace of God.

On this basis, the scholastic talk of created grace (gratia creata), possessed bythe human person as a sacramentally infused grace (gratia infusa) is an almostunsurpassably mischievous category mistake. This is also true for the Council ofTrent’s talk of ‘grace and love which is poured in [human] hearts by the Holy Spiritand remains in them’.33 Let it be understood that it is not the language of thespreading abroad of the love of God in our hearts that is problematic; that is biblical

31 cf. K. Rahner,Foundations of Christian Faith. An Introduction to the Idea ofChristianity (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1978), p. 79.

32 cf. M. Luther, ‘Lectures on Romans’ inLuther’s Works, vol. 25 (St Louis: Concordia,1972), pp. 63, 260f; ‘Lectures on Galatians 1519’ inLuther’s Works, vol. 27 (St. Louis:Concordia, 1964), pp. 229f.

33 H. Denzinger,The Sources of Catholic Dogma, p. 259.



(see, for example, Rom. 5.5). But talk of the ‘inherence’ (inhaerere) of love andgrace, according to which the divine love and grace become a power which enableshumanity to perform in certain ways, is an intolerable nostrification of the love andgrace of God, which never cease to be God’s love and grace, and which showthemselves to be divine love and grace precisely in that they address us and enterinto our innermost being in such a way that they set us outside of ourselves. It is notGod who comes to himself in us – as a brazen mysticism dares to claim – but wecome to ourselves outside ourselves, in Christ. All true Christian mysticism canonly be the mysticism of such existential uniting.

The exclusive particle ‘through the word alone’ is, consequently, indispensableboth for the divinity of God and for the external relatedness of Christian existence.Through it, all false Christian mysticism is excluded. But also excluded is any kindof religious mediation between God and humanity which presents a confusion ofhuman and divine action.

This last statement occasions a comment on the relation of word and sacrament.In view of what we might charitably call certain complications which have beengenerated recently on this point,34 it may be opportune to point out that there is noway in which the exclusive particle ‘through the word alone’ can mean ‘to theexclusion of the sacraments’. Without saying anything of the problems which arebound up with the expression ‘sacrament’, we have to say, by contrast, that preciselythat which God effects ‘through the word alone’, which this word promises, isvisible in Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The sacraments are not activities whichare concurrent with the divine word-act, but they are sacraments only because thedivine word-act joins itself to a worldly action (eating and drinking in the case of theLord’s Supper, the use of water in the case of Baptism) in order to make itself visiblein this worldly action. ‘It is not the water that produces these effects, but the Word ofGod connected with the water, and our faith which relies on the Word of Godconnected with the water. For without the Word of God the water is merely waterand no Baptism.’35 Faith does not trust itself to the water but to ‘the word of God inthe water’. Thus Luther readily took up Augustine’s statement:Accedit verbum adelementum, et fit sacramentum, etiam ipsum tamquam visibile verbum,36 adding theexplanation that ‘this means that when the Word is added to the element or thenatural substance, it becomes a sacrament, that is, a holy, divine thing and sign’,37

or, as the Wu¨rttemberger Confirmation Book puts it, ‘a divine sign-word’. Thus theLutheran confessional writings insist that the sacraments are only ‘administeredrightly’ when they are administered ‘according to the Gospel’.38 In the same way,

34 cf. Th. Dieter, ‘Eine erste Antwort auf neuere Kritiken an der ‘‘Gemeinsamen Erkla¨rungzur Rechtfertigungslehre’’ ’,epd-Dokumentation1/1998, pp. 1–13; U. Ku¨hn, ‘Identitats-krise des deutschen Protestantismus?’,Materialdienst des KonfessionskundlichenInstituts Bensheim6/1997, pp. 101f.

35 M. Luther,Small CatechismIV.9, (Tappert, p. 349).36 Augustine,Tractates on John80.3,NPNF vol. 7, p. 344.37 M. Luther,Large CatechismIV.18, (Tappert, p. 438).38 Augsburg ConfessionVII.1, (Tappert, p. 32).

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indeed, preaching is only true proclamation when ‘the gospel is preached in itspurity’.39

There can therefore be no sense in which maintaining the exclusive particle‘through the word alone’ means scrapping the meaning of the sacraments. Quite theopposite is the case: only where the justifying God is understood as the God whoacts ‘through the word alone’ are the sacraments rightly understood.40

But if they are ‘according to the Gospel’, then in the sacraments there is setbefore our eyes the fact that the justifying external word encounters us in ourinmost being in such a way that we do not come to be ourselves on our own, but ‘inChrist’. In Baptism we are incorporated into the body of Christ. And in the Lord’sSupper the faithful gather at the table of the Lord whose body was given for themand whose blood was shed for them. In both cases we are called out of ourselvesthrough the sacrament in such a way that our existence becomes decidedlyeccentric.

So once again it holds true that it is for our good to be justified through theword alone. For only the word is capable of making an event which happens outsideus reach into our inmost being, so that our inmost being is completely turned to theoutside. Only the word can mediate immediacy: the immediacy of relation to God.

XVII

The exclusive particle ‘through faith alone’,sola fide, is thus the high point of thearticle on justification, since it brings out the positive value of the fact that humanpersons who are in a very precise way excluded from the event of justification bythe three exclusive particles ‘through Christ alone’, ‘through grace alone’, ‘throughthe word alone’, are now included in the event of our justification through a life-actwhich we ourselves accomplish: as believers and only as believers we participate inour own justification.

One could also say that it is as believers and only as believers that we areactive, at work in our justification – if the expressions ‘active’ and ‘at work’ did notgive rise to the misunderstanding that sinners could still do or achieve somethingtowards their justification and so serve God with their faith. In that case, faithwould be nothing other than a human work. Yet the point of the three other

39 Augsburg ConfessionVII.1, (Tappert, p. 32).40 cf. I.U. Dalferth, ‘ ‘‘Bitte keine weitere Antworten dieser Art!’’ Offener Brief an das

Institut fur Okumenische Forschung in Straßburg’,epd-Dokumentation1/1998, p. 31:‘The point of solo verbois not a restriction of the sacraments, but a pointer (whichsecures thesolus Christusand, with it, thesolus Deus) to the fact that preaching andsacraments do not generate faith as such, but only through the fact that God himself inhis word works in, with and under them. Faith depends wholly and exclusively on Godhimself, not only some or other means or mediations of grace; it is faith in God, notfaith in preaching or sacraments; and it is faith in God, as God makes himself present inhis word through the means that he has himself appointed for that task.’



exclusive particles is to exclude all that as a possibility which is to be ruled outabsolutely. If we understand faith as a human deed and therefore as human activity,such ways of talking are only in order when they simply state that faith is a life-actwhich believers themselves undertake and in which their entire existence isconcentrated. But this life-act is quite different from a human work.

Over against works which we produce, the life-act of faith is characteristicallynot produced by believers, and cannot be generated out of ourselves by ourselves.My works are generated out of myself by myself. Faith, however, is generated bythe word with which God addresses me. Thus Paul says that faith comes fromhearing:fides ex auditu(Rom. 10.17). And thus the apostle can also even say thatfaith comes to (and not somehow out of) the human person (Gal. 3.23–5). On thisbasis the old Protestant divines designated faith asfides adventitia, faith whichcomes.41

We need to hold on to the fact that the act of faith is certainly completely myown act, a fundamental act of my own existence. But this act is made possible forme through the word which addresses me and the Spirit of God who speaks out ofthis word. Or, put more simply: my faith is my share in a gift.

This becomes plain to us when we clarify what ‘faith’ really means. In biblicalusage, faith is primarily and above all trust. ‘I believe’ means ‘I trust.’ But I canonly trust one who is trustworthy. Because of this, my trust is not really generatedout of myself by myself, but evoked by the one who is worthy of trust. ‘I believeyou’ means ‘I rely on you.’ But no one trusts themselves to someone notoriouslyunreliable. If I rely on another person, it is because they have impressed me as aperson on whom one may rely. In this sense, my faith is not generated by me, butby the one whom I believe or in whom I believe.

Of the many more precise definitions of the concept of faith, we now callspecial attention to those which as it were with a single stroke make clear why weare justified by grace alone.

First, we need to stress that faith is an answer to God’s word of affirmation whichGod declared in the sentence of justification and with which God has pledged himselfto the ungodly. This divine word of affirmation has been taken to heart by theungodly and has evoked the answer of a human word of affirmation from the heart. Inso far as we say yes to our justification by God, justification reaches its goal. To ourjustification, we should and can contribute nothing other than this grateful yes.Through this yes alone, in which faith is expressed, we are justified.

With this is excluded everything which might be considered a contribution toour own justification over and above this yes. All well-intentioned deeds, all trulygood acts are excluded, as are also human works of love – a point of view to whichthe Reformers deliberately gave strong emphasis.

Faith is certainly active in love, as Galatians 4.6 puts it. But faith does notjustify the ungodly by generating works of love; rather, believers produce –spontaneously and heartily – works of love since in faith they are relieved of all

41 J.A. Quenstedt,Theologia didactico-polemica(1696) IV.viii.1, thesis 2.

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activity and transposed into a creative passivity. Such creative passivity is for ourgood. In the same way that sleep transposes busy persons into a creative quiet,enabling them on waking once again to do fruitful work, so the ceaselessly active Irests from its works in order to receive itself afresh as a person before God. And theI receives itself afresh from God in that it consents and delights in this creativeaffirmation and for its part in a human way says yes to God’s yes.

As the human yes which comes from the heart, faith is, then, the mostconcentrated expression of human existence. In the heart, the whole person is atstake. In the heart, a decision is taken about my existence as a whole. In faith in theGod who justifies, this decision is put into effect in such a way that God’s decisionfor me and about me is repeated by me. The faithful heart is not a heart in which Idecide about myself, but one in which God decides about me. (In this, faith is likelove, which also comes upon us and decides about us before we ourselves are ableto decide. When we love, we are so moved by the beloved that we can say toourselves, ‘I was simply beside myself, carried away.’ Whether we will remain trueto the love which comes upon us and decides about us is then the decisiondemanded of us.) In faith I disclose myself to be one whom God has alreadydiscovered. In faith I discover that God’s word has already captured my heart inorder to make a new person out of me. Like Mary, faith says:fiat mihi secundumverbum tuum(Lk. 1.38).

The yes of faith is therefore a trustful yes. With this yes we abandon ourselvescompletely to God. We do well to take the word ‘abandon’ (verlassen) literally:believers abandon themselves, leaving themselves behind, or better, lettingthemselves be called out of themselves. As a yes to God’s judgment which comesfrom the heart, faith is the fundamental act of an expresslyeccentricexistence. Infaith we let ourselves be transferred to that place which is our true place, the placewhere as human beings we are in our place – namely with God and hisrighteousness, with the God who is gracious to us and out of grace towards us hassuffered the sentence of the sinner condemned to death, in order that out of thedarkness of this death he might bring to light new, justified life. In faith we exist ina very precise senseeccentrically, having the centre of our existence not inourselves but outside ourselves with God. And there, with God, we are certain ofour own salvation and also of our election.

As trust in God, justifying faith is thus certainty of salvation, certainty ofelection: the certainty that we are children of God, provided with all the rights ofthe children of God. Faith in justification presupposes certainty of election andexcludes ideas of reprobation. ‘To believe in reprobation would be a self-contradiction.’42 Thus certainty of election is not a supplement which could bedistinguished from justifying faith. Certainty of election is not something added tofaith, but faith is this certainty.

The certainty of faith is nothing other than the certainty of being accorded aright before God: the right as a child to be steadfastly together with God as Father.

42 G. Ebeling,Dogmatik des christlichen Glaubens,vol. 3, p. 235.



The believer ‘has the right of a son in relation to God as God has the right of aFather in relation to him – the right to a being with Him, the right to immediateaccess to Him, the right to call upon Him, the right to rely upon Him, the right toexpect and to ask of Him everything that he needs. The right of sonship is theessence of every right of man. And the promise of this right is the completion of thejustification of sinful man.’43 Faith means being unshakably certain of and makinguse of this ‘right of sonship’ which is the essence of every human right.

In that faith is the human yes to God which comes from the heart, by which wego out of ourselves and are free of ourselves to the point of self-forgetfulness,human personhood is newly constituted – not immediately through faith, butthrough the word of God which faith follows, and so only mediately also throughfaith. Since, like Mary, faith also saysfiat mihi secundum verbum tuum, then it canalso be said of faith:Fides facit personam, faith constitutes the person.44 Thisstatement does not, of course, ascribe some creative power to faith. That would be agrotesque misunderstanding. Rather, the statement says simplyquod persona sitfacta per fidem a deo.45 But in that it says that the person is constituted by God andtherefore also by the faith which relies on God, it contradicts the idea that our actsor works constitute our personhood:opus non facit personam.46 We do not becomerighteous persons because we act righteously. Justifying faith is thus the permanentdistinction of persons from their works. In faith, persons are interesting for theirown sakes, and not for the sake of their successes or failures.

In this sense we must once again emphasize that it is through faith alone that weare justified, that we become justified and therefore new personssola fide. Under thisaspect the exclusive particlesola fide sums up in a very elementary way theapparently highly complex doctrine of justification, for it gives concise expression tothe fact that we cannot contribute to our justification by any human activity. Therighteousness which is received in faith cannot be maintained or enhanced by anygood work. For the justified, good works are rather to be understood in their ownright. Without any supplement, faith is the yes and amen to God’s own yes and amenwhich took place in the event of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 1.19f). And such a yes and amenexcludes any maintenance or enhancement through human works.

As the human yes and amen to God’s yes and amen, faith is the essence ofgratitude. To believe is to be thankful, not simply for this or that but for one’s newidentity as justified sinner. Very simply and precisely, to believe means to givethanks for oneself. Believers owe themselves to God; believers are persons whogive thanks to God for themselves. And because in faith we give thanks to God,then it is faith alone which justifies.

One last matter. Through the external relatedness of faith, we are so closelyrelated to Jesus Christ that we come to participate directly in his being. We come to

43 K. Barth,Church DogmaticsIV/1, p. 600.44 M. Luther,Die Zirkulardisputation de veste nuptiali, WA39/I, p. 283.45 Die Zirkulardisputation de veste nuptiali, WA39/I, p. 283.46 Die Zirkulardisputation de veste nuptiali, WA39/I, p. 283.

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share in Jesus Christ the King, through whom we now become kings and the freelords of all things. We come to share in Jesus Christ the High Priest, so that allbelievers are priests. Thus the article on justification is the basis of the commonpriesthood of all believers. The gospel of the justification of sinners relies uponpriestly service. None of us can say to ourselves that Jesus Christ was given up forour sins and raised for our justification. Nor can faith say to itself that faith alonejustifies. This must be said to us. Faith comes from hearing, from hearing alone.Without the exclusive particlesolo verbothe exclusive particlesola fidehangs inthe air, in the same way that withoutsolus Christus, solo verbohangs in the air. Theapostle’s argument is unequivocal: faith comes from the hearing of preaching, butpreaching comes from the word of Christ (Rom. 10.17).

Faith therefore depends upon there being one who proclaims the word of thejustification of the ungodly. Where this happens, priestly service takes place. Faithis dependent upon this priestly service.

However, one of the fundamental theological insights which are bound upwith the exclusive particle ‘through faith alone’ is that every believer mayundertake this priestly service – not towards him- or herself, but towards everyother person. The justification of the sinner through grace alone is the basis of thecommon priesthood of all believers. Wherever the priesthood of all believers iscalled into question through some kind of theological constructions – whether itbe an ideology of episcopal office or an ideology of apostolic succession thatcheats the faithful of their priesthood – then the article on justification itself iscalled into question. Agreement on the priesthood of all believers must be aconstitutive part of consensus with the Roman Catholic church on the doctrine ofjustification.

In the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justificationput out by theLutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Promoting ChristianUnity, one cannot find a single word on this topic. And it is nothing short ofgrotesque that at the same time that the Protestant synods are supposed to judgewhether theJoint Declarationsets out a consensus in the fundamental truths of thedoctrine of justification, at the very same time the Vatican released an ‘instruction’on some questions concerning the involvement of the laity in the ministry of thepriesthood, which fundamentally disavowed the Protestant understanding of thepriesthood of all believers.

At the close of this explication of the article on justification we recall a remarkof Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s. Bonhoeffer reports a conversation with a young FrenchCatholic priest, in which they asked each other the question what their real purposein life was. The young Catholic answered the question with the statement ‘I wouldlike to become a saint.’ That is a good Catholic answer. Bonhoeffer, who was muchimpressed by this answer, nevertheless disagreed, and for his part answered ‘Ishould like to learn to have faith.’ Only later did he become aware of the deepdivide between the two answers. He had first to understand that ‘learning to havefaith’ means completely renouncing ‘any attempt to make something of oneself,whether it be a saint or a converted sinner’. When we have grasped that, then ‘we



throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our ownsufferings, but those of God in the world... That, I think, is faith.’47

There is indeed a deep gulf between the two answers. The distinction canperhaps be most sharply expressed by recalling a New Testament expression,according to which believers are alreadya% cioi. Thus, to say ‘I would like to learnfaith’ is to be a saint. And if one wishes to be a saint, one must learn faith. For thetrue saint is one who is aware that holiness does not mean sinlessness but gratitudefor the suffering of God and the justification of the sinner which results from thispassion. Out of such gratitude grows the readiness to pray afresh each day: Forgiveus our trespasses. And this prayer is the only human act in which the sinnercollaborates in justification and is co-operatively included.48

XVIII

By now it should have become clear why and in what respect faith in thejustification of the ungodly is the living centre at the midst of Christian faith. It isnot that the contents of the great statements of the confession of Jesus Christ, ofGod the creator and of the Holy Spirit are dead truths, which have to be awakenedto life through the article on justification. Rather, the proclamation of justificationis grounded in that fact that there is a God who is active in creation, who became ahuman being in the person of Jesus Christ, lived a unique human life, for our sakesdied the death of a criminal on the cross and was raised from the dead, in orderhenceforth to be at work among us through his word and his Spirit. But in thearticle on justification, all these statements are given an emphatic, criticalsharpening, from which it is decided who this God really is, what it really means forhim to be active in creation, what is the significance of dying in our place andbringing about new life in the midst of death – a life which in the power of theSpirit shares itself with our transient world in such a way that there arises a newcommunity of life in the form of the Christian church. The article on justificationconcerns in the most focused way the truth of the relation of God and humankind,and so the proper understanding of God’s divinity and our humanity. Martin Luther

47 D. Bonhoeffer,Letters and Papers from Prison(London: SCM Press, 1967), pp. 201f.48 Hence the appeal for the forgiveness of our sins is the best confession of sin. It calls

upon God to come closer to us than we can ever possibly be to ourselves. But if thejustifying God is closer to me than I am able to be to myself, then I am no longer the oneclosest to myself, and the dreadful assertion ‘We are each of us closest to ourselves’ isfalsified, and a new dimension of closeness is made possible. So it was the most foolishthing that Peter could do to entreat the Lord who encountered him: ‘Depart from me, forI am a sinful man, O Lord!’ (Lk. 5.8). This is beginning at the wrong end of things. Theoverflow of divine grace into the excess of human need and guilt instead teaches us topray: ‘Lord, come here to us, for we are sinners.’ Where such prayer is made, therearises in the midst of a world full of death and darkness the Christian church which livesfrom and imparts new closeness.

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thus declared that the proper subject of theology is man guilty of sin andcondemned and God the justifier or saviour, stating that whatever is discussed intheology outside this subject is error and poison.49

Out of the article on justification it becomes clear that the creator is no maker,and his creation no bungled product, but rather that the divine act of creationpresupposes a loving affirmation of that which is to be created, and that the creationowes itself to the loving affirmation of God. Out of the article on justification itbecomes clear why and in what respect God is gracious and with his grace elects,rejects and judges. Out of this article it becomes plain what it means to say thatJesus Christ did not live his life for himself, but that living and dying he was – andin the power of his resurrection for the dead – is for us. Out of the article onjustification is manifest what eternal life is, and why and in what respect we alreadyparticipate in the eternal life of God in faith, love and hope. And in all that itbecomes plain what God’s word, the gospel and the law are, and how gospel andlaw are correctly to be distinguished.

The article on justification thus has the function, as Ernst Wolf put it, of‘expressing nothing less than the entirety of the word of God which brings aboutlife’. 50 Hence, according to Gerhard Gloege, it is not that ‘in the doctrine ofjustification’ we ‘are handed one doctrine alongside other doctrines, but rather weare entrusted with the ‘‘category’’ which defines all our thinking, speaking andacting ‘‘before God’’ ’. It ‘sharpens... all statements, by straightening them andgiving them definite outline from start to finish’. Hence ‘it gives all statementsradiance, clarity and power’, and has a falsifying function with respect to allstatements which deny it or talk at cross purposes to it, and thereby has a ‘catalytic’function for the whole of theology.51

In this way, the doctrine of justification is the one and only criterion for alltheological statements. And it amounts to a hindering of consensus in the truth inmatters of the doctrine of justification, if the Roman Catholic church, whilstrecognizing a ‘particular function’ – and one ought certainly to add, a particularlyweighty function – to the doctrine of justification, beyond that sees itself as ‘boundby several criteria’.52 No: here it is a matter of either – or,aut – autand not both –and. Or evennon solum aut – aut, sed etiam et – et.

Without the doctrine of justification, Luther asserted, the world would be fullof death and chaotic darkness. The proclamation of resurrection decides about lifeand death, about whether the light of life or the darkness of death will prevail in thisworld. This character of deciding about life and death makes the article onjustification into master and prince, lord, ruler and judge over all kinds of teaching,

49 cf. M. Luther, ‘Psalm 51’ inLuther’s Worksvol. 12 (St Louis: Concordia, 1955), p. 311.50 E. Wolf, ‘Die Rechtfertigungslehre als Mitte und Grenze reformatorischer Theologie’ in

Peregrinatiovol. 2 (Munich: Kaiser, 1965), p. 14.51 G. Gloege,Gnade fu¨r die Welt. Kritik und Krise des Luthertums(Gottingen:

Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1964), pp. 26, 37ff.52 Lutheran World Federation and Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity,Joint

Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification 1997, Final Proposal, no. 18.



which guards and enhances all church teaching and lifts up our consciences beforeGod.53 To let oneself be, alongside that, responsible to other masters, princes, lords,rulers and judges is to relativize the distinction between life and death. And fromsuch relativization it is always death that profits.

The gospel of the justification of sinners proclaims the victory of life at just thepoint where death appears to triumph. In an Easter hymn, Luther put it thus:

Jesus Christ, God’s only SonInto our place descending,Away with all our sins hath done,And therewith from death rendingRight and might, made him a jape,Left him nothing but Death’s shapeHis ancient sting – he has lost it.

That was a wondrous strifeWhen Death in life’s grip wallowed:Off victorious came Life,Death he has quite upswallowed.The Scripture has published that –How one death the other ate.Thus Death is become a laughter.54

53 cf. M. Luther,Die Promotionsdisputation von Palladius und Tileman, WA39/I, p. 205.54 Luther’s Worksvol. 53 (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1965), p. 257.

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on the doctrine of justification

Documents

confession of god

thechristian confession

account of justification

christ andspirit

person ofjesus christ

living centre

human existence

ungodly hasfrom