Happy Reformation Month! Alister McGrath's "Iustitia Dei" Continues to Vex Protestants

First, in earlier editions of this work McGrath called Luther's solafidianism a "theological novum", meaning it had no basis in anything taught by the Church in its 1,500-year history. I've maintained that "theological novum" is a polite and scholarly way of saying "heresy", because that's what a heresy is by definition.

Now this in his 4th edition:

“One of the more significant aspects of this newly revised version is the treatment of justification in the Greek fathers. Previously, McGrath suggested that a regenerative reading of justification was the result of the emergence of Latin in the Western Christianity. The narrative held that when the Greek term for ‘to justify’ (=dikaioō) was translated into Latin (=iustificare), Christian interpreters came to misinterpret Paul’s teaching. This was because the Latin suggested that justification involved ‘making’ the believer righteous. The notion that ‘justification’ involves a transformative element was viewed as contradicted by the Greek.

For some, this has held a key to unlocking Reformation debates. R. C. Sproul routinely made this point. (Go to 1:29 in the following video): . . . .

In short, in speaking about this ‘linguistic trick,’ Sproul draws on McGrath’s older work. The reason ‘justification’ was thought to involve the believer actually becoming righteous was due in part to misreading Paul in Latin. The Reformed tradition eventually recovered the original meaning of Paul by returning to the Greek, which shows that justification is not only merely juridical, but counterfactual–the believer is declared righteous but remains unrighteous; the righteousness of God is ‘alien’ to the one who is justified.

McGrath’s new volume shows that this version of history is flawed. Here is the problem: McGrath has discovered that the Greek fathers read justification as involving transformation.

For example, writing on Chrysostom, McGrath states,

‘Chrysostom’s account affirms the declaration or manifestation (endeixeis) of God’s own righteousness with its actualisation in the transformation of the nature of humanity.’ . . . .

McGrath writes,

‘It has become a commonplace in some quarters to suggest that the dik group of terms–particularly the verb dikaioo, “to justify”–are naturally translated as being “treated as righteous” or “reckoned as righteous”, and that Paul’s Greek-speaking readers would have understood him in this way. This may be true at the purely linguistic level; however, the Greek Christian preoccupation with the strongly transformative soteriological metaphor of deification appears to have led to justification being treated in a factitive sense. This is not, however, to be seen as a conceptual imposition on Pauline thought, but rather a discernment of this aspect of his soteriological narrative.’”

Read the rest here.

So, it is now not just that sola fide, ”the article by which the church stands and falls” according to Luther, is essentially called a "heresy" by a pre-eminent Evangelical theologian in his magisterial work on the theological history of the Church's teaching on justification.  In his latest edition, he takes the legs out from under the Evangelical argument that dikaioō means "declare righteous" which is absolutely essential to their argument that they have justification right and that accordingly they bear the true Gospel to the world.  They don't get  justification right, and are therefore bearers of an un-apostolic Gospel. 

Happy Reformation Month!

Comments

[Stephen]

I think this is true.

On the other hand, post-Newman Catholics (whether Roman or Anglo-) are not in much of a position to say that something is a "heresy" because it is a "theological novum."

In fact, in a certain sense, the whole idea of worrying about whether something is primitive is nowadays a Protestant ethos, arguably (however wrong they may be that their doctrine of justification qualifies). All too often, Catholics just assume that if the church did it in the twelfth century, then it was a valid development, whatever the evidence may show about the early church's attitude.