*The best ed. of the 'Decrees' of Trent is that of A. L. Richter and F. Schulte, Leipziir, 1S53.
t For the recent ideas of Catiholic divines on justification see art. in CK.
X For Luther's doctrinal position consult J. Kostlin, TAfe of Luffit'r, Enif. tr., London, 1883, and T. M. Lindsaj', Luther and the German Reformation, Edinburgh, 1900.
JUSTIFICATIOX
JUSTIFICATION
66;
in the Roman system what, so to speak, ' Hebrews' is to 'Komans' * in Pauline thought.
2. The problem of justification. — Justification is a religious problem, the answer to an interior inquiry of Christian experience. The OT cry, ' How is man just with God? 'is deepened in the NT: 'How is God gracious?' and 'How are we sure of His grace ? ' That again is the problem of fellowship with God — the most engrossing of modern quests. Of fellowship with God the very foundation and certainty is justification. In con- sequence modern spiritual philosophy is eagerly interested. It is better equipped to cope with the exquisitely delicate character of the inquiry than any past age. The modern idea of Divine imma- nence in Nature and man adds immeasurably to our perception of the nature of the human spirit, its workings, their relation to the Divine Spirit ; and furnishes a key to the representation and recon- struction of inner soul-2:)rocesses beyond the appar- atus of the older theology. The mystical emotion is its highest form, and is no exceptional super- addition to man's nature ; rather it is his natural consummation. It is not merely the secret action of the mind upon itself ; while an inborn instinct, it comes to distinct form and growth from causes objective to itself, operating on it by the inwork- ing of external and historical circumstance and the exercise and outworking of ethical faculty. Psychologically it is not of the ordinary emotive life ; it is higher, inclusive of all the parts of human nature, gathering up into itself all those inner powers in whose interplay under its guidance and inspiration in one harmonious unity its life consists. In operation it is wholly personal, conscious, ener- getic, intensely individual. Into it enters the force of historic fact, out of it passes the power of moral life ; but itself is a self inbreathing the one, out- breathing the other. The constitution of this self is the modern construction of justification. The life of that self is communion with God ; justifica- tion is its origin and basis.
What is the origin ? — the Divine graciousness t (Luther) or Divine grace (Catholic) ; a ' reckoning righteous,' or a 'making righteous 'J by God? Neither of these alternatives standing solitary is to-day an intelligible concept applicable to the Divine or the human personality ; nor is the one or the other a felt fact of religious experience, the ultimate test of every theory. These are otiose ideas, as useless as absolute ideas. God and His grace cannot be otiose. ' He speaks and it is done.' His grace is at once, as grace, prescient and pre- venient, operans and co-operans, suthc-ient and efficient, and cannot be defined in merely legal or logical terms, or, in fact, in anything short of that ' interpenetration of essence' of God's self or char- acter § with man's self or character, bestowing on man's its profoundest promise and potency ; and instanter translating it into the status and char- acter of life that is being sanctified after His image, and on His initiative. What Protestant thought clumsily encloses within two notions, 'justification ' and ' imputation,' |1 may be regarded under one more modern — 'development.' Then, man's self is appreciated from the Divine standpoint, as God saw creation in its first being, not as it actually is in present attainment, nor as it will be in perfect fruition, but as it is ideally becoming when put upon the right basis and in the right atmosphere,
* See § 3, V. ' Hebrews.'
t This is the sense of ' gjace ' in Luther ; cf. A. 0. McGififert, Protestant Thought before Kant, London, 1911, p. 28.
JThe ffimiliar contrast between Romanist and Protestant ideas.
§ The only adequate phrase to denote the XT conception of the relation of the ransomed soul to its Redeemer.
II Imputation is specially offensive to modern ethical sensitive- ness ; the sense of responsibility insists that each is himself, not another.
the condition we find in ' the stature of a perfect man ' — Christ — the root and direction rather than the end or goal determining the judgment of its character. That appreciation is justification.
The faculty of self by whose exercise the new status and generation are attained is ' faith.' By ' faith ' the Divine Life dwells in man's soul and Divine truth becomes power. Faith here is more than spiritual insight, it is spiritual grasp ; more than a receptive force, it is also the bestowing fact, softening the harsh independence of these two realities. The truth is that every approach of God to man has a true tendency to create the faith without which the approach can never become a real entrance. Faith is man's welcome of Him, created in man's heart, as the face of a fiiend coming towards us reclaims us for his friendship. Faith again is more than assent or trust : it is the soul's entrance into healthy relationship to Him who is its true life; an entrance fuller or weaker according to the soul's capacity, and ever growing with the soul's growth. Faith thus understood widens its mental and emotional constituents. God and man underneath all obscuring media are of like nature ; God is the ' element ' of man's true life.* God is unceasingly solicitous in seeking man, and, finding man reciprocate, apprehends him, but as Life apprehending life, or the ocean refreshing the tide's eddy, or the tree quickening the branch. The term ' justification ' may be technically a juridical one, but that which it aims at expressing is in idea and fact a spiritual trans- action unexpressible in forensic terms, not even conceivable as a process having acts and stages. It may better be compared to a gem t having many facets, simultaneous, not successive, and glowing in enhancing splendour with every further advance into light. This is the essence of the idea in believ- ing experience. It is also the essence of the idea in the apostolic conscience — the love of God seek- ing the love of man and finding it.J