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THE PROBLEM OF THE ATONEMENT
THE LATIN TYPE OF THE ATONEMENT
TERTULLIAN
The Latin type of the atonement misunderstands the death of Christ legalistically. This legalistic misunderstanding of the death of Christ has its origin in the penitential system which was introduced into Christian theology by Tertullian (160?-230? A.D.). He had introduced the whole legalistic scheme of salvation with its idea of merit in reference to penance or repentance. God cannot disregard good deeds. Tertullian said.
“God, we may be sure, will not sanction the reprobation of good deeds, for they are His. Since He initiates and preserves them, so also must He needs approve them; since He approves them, so also must He reward them … A good deed has God as its debtor and a bad deed, also, because every judge settles a case on its merits. Now since God presides as judge in order to exact and safeguard justice, something so precious in His sight, and since it is for this that He establishes every single precept of His moral law, can it be doubted that, just as in all our actions, so, too, in the case of repentance justice must be rendered to God?” [1]
Although Tertullian teaches that God helps man perform good deeds, [2] in the strictest sense of the word man has to merit salvation. [3]
“Faith is established in the Rule. There it has its law and it wins salvation by keeping the law.” [4]
Associated with the idea of merit was the idea of satisfaction.
“What folly it is, what perversity, to practice an imperfect penitence and then to expect a pardon for sin! This is to stretch forth one’s hand for merchandise and not pay for the price. And the price which the Lord has set on the purchase of pardon is this — He offers impunity to be bought in exchange for penitence. If, then, merchants first examine a coin, which they have stipulated as their price, to see that it be not dipped or plated or counterfeit, do we not believe that the Lord, also, pre-examines our penitence, seeing that He is going to give us so great a reward, to wit, life everlasting.” [5]
Penance is satisfaction, the payment of a temporal penalty to escape eternal loss. It is a compensatory work of satisfaction which propitiates God.
“Herein [in some external act] we confess our sin to the Lord, not as though He were ignorant of it, but because satisfaction receives its proper determination through confession, confession gives birth to penitence and by penitence God is appeased.” [6]
Tertullian did not apply this term to the death of Christ, but after he had introduced the legalistic vocabulary and concepts into Christian theology, the way was prepared for their application to the death of Christ. Cyprian (200/210?-258 A.D.), the Bishop of Carthage, in the third century was the first Christian writer to interpret Christ’s death as a satisfaction. [7] He also began to apply the idea of merit to the work of Christ.
Tertullian had already introduced the idea of merit; that is, associated with the performance of that which is commanded, the observance of the law, there was merit. Each man by his good works earns merit which may counterbalance the demerits of his evil or bad deeds. For most men this is all that is necessary. But some exceptional individuals may earn more merit than is necessary to balance the demerits of their evil acts. This overplus of merit may be earned by acts that are supererogatoria, that is, go beyond what is strictly obligatory. Tertullian considered such acts as fasting, voluntary celibacy, martyrdom, etc. as going beyond what was required and thus earning for the doers of them an excess of merit. Cyprian introduced the principle that this superfluous merit may be transferred from one person to another, and he began to apply this principle to the overplus of merit earned by the work of Christ as well as the saints and martyrs. Thus the way was prepared for the Anselmic theory of the atonement and the reformation theory of justification as the imputation of Christ’s righteousness or merits earned by His active obedience to the believer’s account.
Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.) summed up the theological insights of the Latin West about the death of Christ, and passed them on, with the impress of his genius and authority, to the Middle Ages. Firstly, Augustine emphasizes Christ’s function as the mediator between God and man. He writes,
“He is the one true mediator, reconciling us to God by the sacrifice of peace, remaining one with Him to Whom He made offering, making one in Himself those for whom He offered it, Himself one as offerer and sacrifice offered.” [8]
Augustine claimed on the authority of I Tim. 2:5 (“And there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”) that Christ exercises His activity as the mediator exclusively in His human capacity. He states,
“In so far as He is man, He is mediator, but not in so far as He is Word, for as such He is coequal with God.” [9]
The whole purpose of the Word’s incarnation was that He might act as the mediator and as the Head of the Church. It is through His humanity that Christ exalts us to God and brings God down to us. The point of this line of reasoning Augustine did not intend to eliminate the role of the Word, Who is the subject of the God-man’s Person, but rather to emphasize that Christ’s humanity, in contrast with His divine nature, is the means of our restoration to God. While Augustine says, [10]
“Christ is the mediator between God and man as man, not as God”,
he also says: [11]
“We would never have been delivered by the one mediator … were He not also God.”
By this doctrine, Augustine seeks to establish that it is in Christ’s humanity that fallen man and his Creator have a common meeting-ground where the work of reconciliation and restoration can take effect.
Secondly, in expounding what the Mediator actually accomplished, Augustine uses several ways of explaining it. He sometimes speaks of deification as the goal of the incarnation, when he says,
“We are reconciled to God through the our Head, since in Him the God-head of the Only-begotten participated in our mortality
so that we might participate in His immortality.” [12]
and when he remarks that, “He Who was God became man so as to make those who were men gods.” But this is a secondary motif; for deification is a corollary to but not the primary purpose of the incarnation. Much more frequently Augustine speaks of redemption as our release from the Satan’s bondage.
But Augustine represents our release from the Devil’s dominion as consequent upon and as presupposing our reconciliation; the Devil is conquered precisely because God had received satisfaction and had bestowed pardon. The essence of redemption lies in the expiatory sacrifice for us by Christ in His passion. This is the principal act performed by Christ as the Mediator. Using II Cor. 5:21, Augustine says,
“Him Who knew no sin, Christ, God made sin, i.e. a sacrifice for sins, on our behalf so that we might be reconciled.” [13]
A sacrifice in its effect is expiatory and propitionary:
“By His death, that one most true sacrifice offered on our behalf, He purged, abolished and extinguished … whatever guilt we had.” [14]
By this sacrifice the wrath of God is appeased and we are reconciled to Him:
“He offered this holocaust to God; He extended His hands on the cross … and our wickednesses were propitiated …. Our sins and wickednesses having been propititated through this evening sacrifice, we passed to the Lord, and the veil was taken away.” [15]
This means that Christ is substituted for us, and being Himself innocent, Christ discharges the penalty we owe. Augustine writes,
“Though without guilt, Christ took our punishment upon Himself, destroying our guilt and putting an end to our punishment.” [16]
And again,
“You must again confess that without our sin He took the penalty owing to our sin upon Himself”; [17]
and,
“He made our trespasses His trespasses, so as to make His righteousness ours” [18].
It was precisely His innocence that gave value to His sacrifice, for
“We were brought to death by sin, He by righteousness; and so, since death was our penalty for sin, His death became a sacrifice for sin.” [19]
Thus Augustine anticipates the satisfaction theory of the atonement,
Anselm of Canterbury (1033?-1109) in the eleventh century A.D. gave classic expression to the satisfaction theory of Christ’s death. In his famous work Cur Deus Homo (1098) [Why God Became Man], Anselm interpreted the death of Christ as that by which the obligation of the broken law, the debt man owed, was paid. Anselm defines sin as failing to render to God His due. The law sets forth these obligations.
“He who does not render this honor which is due to God, robs God of his own and dishonors him, and this is sin … it will not suffice merely to restore what has been taken away, but considering the contempt offered, he ought to restore more than he took away.” [20]
Anselm argues that man cannot make satisfaction for his own sins. For he already owes God complete obedience, and he has nothing left over to pay God for his sins. [21] Also man cannot make satisfaction for his own sins because sin against an infinite God requires an infinite satisfaction. To the suggestion that human repentance can make satisfaction for sin against an infinite God, Anselm replies with those famous words, “You have not as yet estimated the great burden of sin.” [22] So Anselm sees the problem of the atonement.
“Man as a sinner owes God for his sin what he is unable to pay, and cannot be saved without payment.” [23]
Satisfaction can only be paid by God because the price paid to God for the sin of man is “something greater than all the universe besides God.” [24] And since “it is necessary that he who can give God anything of his own … must be greater than all else but God himself,” none but God can make this satisfaction. [25] But yet man must make the satisfaction for he is the one who has committed the sin and ought to make the satisfaction.
“No one but God can make the satisfaction, but no one but man should make it, since it is man who sinned.” [26]
Thus if man is to be saved, satisfaction must be made and it must be made by a God-man, one who is perfect God and perfect man.
“For God will not do it, because he has no debt to pay; and man will not do it, because he cannot. Therefore, in order that the God-man may perform this, it is necessary that the same being should be perfect God and perfect man, in order to make this atonement.” [27]
Anselm then proceeds to explain that the one who is to make satisfaction must be born of Adam, since it is Adam’s race who has sinned. [28] The Son of God, through his voluntary death, obtained excess merit, requiring a reward from God, the Father.
“No man except this one ever gave to God what he was not obliged to lose, or paid a debt he did not owe. But he freely offered to the Father what there was no need of his ever losing, and paid for sinners what he owed not for himself.” [29]
This gift freely given by the Son deserves a reward from God. But since all things belonging to the Father were his, the Son having need of nothing, the reward can not be directily paid to the Son. Thus the reward is given in the form of salvation to those for whose sake the Son became man and suffered death. [30]
“What is more proper than that, when he beholds so many of them weighed down by so heavy a debt, … he should remit the debt incurred by their sin, and give them what their transgression had forfeited.” [31]
In the incarnation and the death of the Son, the mercy as well as the justice of God is shown. [32] Anselm’s theory of the death of Christ is clearly built on legalistic presuppositions; his whole theological structure is built on the penitential system. The key term in Anselm’s concept of Christ’s death is “satisfaction.” [33] According to Anselm, the problem of the atonement is either satisfaction or punishment. A third alternative of God putting away sins by compassion alone, without payment or punishment, is unfitting and improper for God.
“To remit sin in this manner is nothing else than not to punish; and since it is not right to cancel sin without compensation or punishment, if it be not punished, then is it passed by undischarged …. It is not fitting for God to pass over anything in his kingdom undischarged … It is, therefore, not proper for God thus to pass over sin unpunished.” [34]
To freely forgive without satisfaction or punishment is from the legalistic point of view impossible.
“Everyone knows that justice to man is regulated by law, so that, according to the requirements of law, the measure of award is bestowed by God … But if sin is neither paid for nor punished, it is subject to no law … In justice, therefore, if it is canceled by compassion alone, is more free than justice, which seems very inconsistent.” [35]
Justice demands that God’s honor be upheld.
“If there is nothing greater or better than God, there is nothing more just than supreme justice, which maintains God’s honor in the arrangement of things, and which is nothing else but God himself … Therefore God maintains nothing with more justice than the honor of his own dignity.” [36]
Therefore, sin which dishonors God must either receive satisfaction or be punished.
“Does it seem to you that he wholly preserve it, if he allows himself to be defrauded of it as that he should neither receive satisfaction nor punish the one defrauding him … Therefore the honor taken away must be repaid, or punishment must follow; otherwise, either God will not be just to himself, or he will be weak in respect to both parties; and this is impious to think of.” [37]
The free forgiveness of sins cannot be allowed, and the order of law and justice must not be broken by such an infringement. Moreover, if God freely forgave sins without satisfaction or punishment, it would mean that sin is not treated seriously and so would amount to moral laxity. Hence the payment of satisfaction is required as a safeguard of moral earnestness.
But no sooner had Anselm completed the formulation of the satisfaction theory of the atonement than it was criticized by his younger contemporary from Pallet, Brittany, Peter Abelard (1079-1142 A.D.). Abelard in formulating the moral influence theory of the atonement in criticism of satisfaction theory began a controversy which has continued ever since. According to Abelard’s moral influence theory of the saving death of Christ is directed toward influencing man to turn away from his sin by the example of God’s love for sinful man in Christ. Anselm’s theory made little reference to the love of God as the reason of Christ’s death and man’s love of God as the response to it. Abelard wanted to correct this omission. And in his formulation of his theory, Abelard attacked the basis of the satisfaction theory. He rejected the Augustinian doctrine of original sin, denying that all men are guilty of Adam’s sin, and asserting that man has a tendency for good as well as for sin. Abelard also rejected Anselm’s view of God that justice required a satisfaction of God’s honor before sin could be forgiven. There was nothing in the nature of God that hindered the free exercise of forgiveness and the only obstacle to it was in man, not in God. [38]
Abelard raised a number of objections to Anselm’s theory. But he never objected to legalistic basis of the theory and scheme of merit. In fact he treated the love awakened in men by God’s love in Christ as meritorious. Also he saw the merits of Christ as completing the merits of man by virtue of Christ’s intercession for them. [39]
The main objection to the moral influence theory is to its purely subjective interpretation of Christ’s death. If the death of Christ is regarded only as a demonstration of God’s love and as doing nothing objectively about man’s sin, then this theory fails to answer the question of the “must”, the necessity for Christ’s death. It does not tell us why it was necessary for Christ to suffer and die such an awful death, why it had to be. If Christ did not have to die, then could not God have demonstrated His love some other way? Why does the death of Christ demonstrate the love of God? Also the theory seems to ignore the great body of scriptural teaching concerning Christ’s death as a redemption and propitiation. It truly emphasizes the subjective effect of Christ’s death but at the expense of the objective work accomplished.
John Calvin (1509-1564 A.D.) and Reformed theology modified this Anselmic satisfaction theory of the atonement. They said that God’s justice, not his honor, needs to be satisfied by Christ’s death. This view is called the penal satisfaction theory of the atonement. Christ’s death paid the penalty of the sins of mankind and thus satisfied the justice of God. This view of the atonement is also called the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement because Christ died in the place and instead of man, the sinner. Calvin says,
“Thus we perceive Christ representing the character of a sinner and a criminal, while, at the same time, his innocence shines forth, and it becomes manifest that he suffers for another’s and not for his own crime.” [40]
Christ is punished instead of and in the place of the sinner. This is a theory of the satisfaction of God’s justice through vicarious punishment. It differs at this point from the Anselmic theory which sees the atoning act as the payment of a debt rather than a penalty.
After the reformation most Protestant theologians interpreted Christ’s death and salvation from within a legalistic framework. Man needs salvation because he is guilty sinner. He is guilty not only of his own sins but also because of the sin of Adam. God appointed Adam to be the federal head or legal representative of the whole human race. [41] God then entered into a covenant with the whole human race through Adam as their legal representative. [42] This covenant is known as the Covenant of Works. According to the terms of this covenant God promised to bestow eternal life upon Adam and his descendants, the entire human race, if he, as federal head, obeyed God. On the other hand, God threatened the punishment of death, that is, condemnation and a sinful corrupt nature, upon the whole human race, if he, as their federal head, disobeyed. Now since Adam sinned, God reckons his descendants as guilty, under condemnation to eternal death. Adam’s sin is imputed to each member of human race as their own guilt. [43] And because of this imputation of guilt, each member of the race has received by inheritance a sinful or corrupt nature. [44] This sinful nature, which is itself sin, leads invariably to acts of sin. And each man in addition to the racial guilt is also guilty for his own personal sins. Thus men carry a double burden of guilt, of both objective and subjective guilt and condemnation. This relationship of Adam’s sin to the rest of the human race is known in Christian theology as the federal headship theory to distinguish it from the natural headship theory of Augustine. [45] But in spite of the difference between them, these two theories lead to the same view of man’s need for salvation. Man is a guilty sinner because of Adam’s original sin and also because of his own personal sins which he commits because of an inherited sinful nature. Both theories view man’s relationship to God as a legal relationship and sin as a violation of that relationship as well as intrinsic to human nature. They are both basically and essentially legalistic.
From this legalistic point of view, the need for salvation is understood as the need for someone to pay the penalty of man’s sins so that man can go free and not have to be punished eternally. Being guilty, man needs somebody to pay the penalty of his sins. Christ’s death on the cross is accordingly interpreted as a vicarious payment of the penalty; that is, Christ on the cross underwent the execution of the penalty of the broken law in the place of man who sinned. Christ, acting as a legal representative for the whole human race, bore the guilt and paid the penalty for the whole human race as their representative. [46] God thus entered into a New Covenant with the whole human race through Christ as their legal representative; this is a covenant of grace, whereby Christ would pay the penalty of their sins and earn for them eternal life. Since it is not enough just to be declared not guilty, man must have a positive righteousness which merits eternal life. That is, if man is to escape eternal punishment for his sins, he must not only not have any sins (demerit) against him on his record, but he must have a righteousness (merit) on his record or account. Since man cannot earn this righteousness himself (because of his sinful nature, he is not able not to sin and not able to do righteousness), someone must earn this for him. Thus Christ not only paid the penalty of man’s sin by his sufferings and death on the cross in passive obedience, but he also provided a righteousness, the merits of Christ, which Christ earned during His life on earth before His death on the cross, by active obedience in fulfillment of the law. [47] This merits of Christ, the righteousness of Christ, is placed on the account of and imputed to the believer who puts his faith in Christ’s death. [48] According to this legalistic point of view, salvation is vicarious law-keeping and vicarious paying of the penalty for breaking the law and the vicarious satisfaction of the demands of the justice of God. Christ’s life of active obedience to the law earned for us the required righteousness and His passive obedience of death on the cross paid for us the penalty of the broken law and satisfied for us the demands God’s justice. Therefore, the one who receives in faith Christ’s work for him is declared not guilty, and Christ’s righteousness is imputed to his account. He is legally justified. Salvation is thus understood to be a legal transaction.
The reformed theologians who held this view of salvation denied the Roman Catholic (and essentially Augustinian) view that the believer receives grace for the purpose of being able to earn eternal life by his good works done subsequent to his reception of this grace at baptism and its renewal by the sacraments. [49] Grace, the reformed theologians said, is God’s unmerited favor, not the infused or imparted something (grace) which made man able not to sin and able to keep the law. Christ alone was able to earn eternal life by his active obedience; salvation was vicarious law-keeping and the vicarious paying the penalty of man’s sins and the satisfaction of the justice of God by Christ’s passive obedience of death on the cross. Salvation is by grace through faith, not by works. Not by our works, but by the works of Christ. According to this theology, salvation is still basically by works even though done vicariously by another; salvation is still something that has to be earned by meritorious works, even if the good works are Christ’s and not ours. Salvation is by grace because the grace of God (the unmerited favor of God) provides the meritorous good works by which salvation is earned for us vicariously.
The penal satisfaction theory is clearly legalistic. It assumes that the order of law and justice is absolute; free forgiveness would be a violation of this absolute order; God’s love must be carefully limited lest it infringe on the demands of justice. Sin is a crime against God and the penalty must be paid before forgiveness can become available. According to this view, God’s love is conditioned and limited by his justice; that is, God cannot exercise His love to save man until His righteousness (justice) is satisfied. Since God’s justice requires that sin be punished, God’s love cannot save man until the penalty of sin has been paid, satisfying His justice. God’s love is set in opposition to His righteousness, creating a tension and problem in God. How can God in His love save man from sin when His righteousness demands the punishment of sin? This is the problem that the death of Christ is supposed to solve. And according to this legalistic theology, this is why Christ needed to die; he died to pay the penalty of man’s sin and to satisfy the justice of God. Accordingly, the necessity of the atonement is the necessity of satisfying the justice of God; this necessity is in God rather than in man. And since this necessity is in God, it is an absolute necessity. If God is to save man, God must satisfy His justice before He can in love save man.
It is not surprising that in the popular mind this abstract problem of the seeming contradiction between love and justice in God is reduced to a concrete opposition between God the Father who wants to punish sin and God the Son who wants to forgive sin. That this is not true is clear from Scripture: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” (John 3:16). But this is the way the popular mind has seen this abstract problem in God of His love and justice.
This legalistic theology misinterprets the righteousness of God as justice, that is, as that principle of God’s being that requires and demands the reward of good works (comformity to the Law) because of their intrinsic merit (remunerative justice) and the punishment of every transgression of the law with a proportionate punishment because of its own intrinsic demerit (retributive justice). According to this view, for God to do otherwise He would be unrighteous and unjust. Absolute justice, which according to this legalistic point of view is the eternal being of God, is said to require and demand, of necessity, the reward of meritorious good works and the punishment of sin.
Now the righteousness of God is not the justice of God, but is God acting to set man right with God Himself and is synonymous with salvation. Very often in the Old Testament the righteousness of God is the action of God for the vindication and deliverance of His people; it is the activity in which God saves His people by rescuing them from their oppressors.
“In thee, O Lord, do I seek refuge; let me never be put to shame; in thy righteousness deliver me!” (Psa. 31:1)
“In thy righteousness deliver me and rescue me; incline thy ear to me, and save me!” (Psa. 71:2)
“11 For thy name’s sake, O Lord, preserve my life! In thy righteousness bring me out of trouble! 12 And in thy steadfast love cut off my enemies. and destroy all my adversaries, for I am thy servant.” (Psa. 143:11-12)
Thus the righteousness of God is often a synonym for the salvation or the deliverance of God. In the Old Testament, this is clearly shown by the literary device of parallelism which is a characteristic of Hebrew poetry. [51]. Parallelism is that Hebrew literary device in which the thought and idea in one clause is repeated and amplified in a second and following clause. This parallelism of Hebrew poetry clearly shows that Hebrew poets and prophets made the righteousness of God synonymous with divine salvation:
“The Lord hath made known His salvation: His righteousness hath he openly showed in the sight of the heathen.” (Psa. 98:2 KJV)
“I bring near my righteousness, it shall not be far off, and my salvation shall not tarry; and I will place salvation in Zion
for Israel my glory.” (Isa. 46:13 KJV)“My righteousness is near, my salvation is gone forth, and mine arms shall judge the people; the isles shall wait upon me,
and on mine arm shall they trust.” (Isa. 51:5 KJV)“Thus saith the Lord, keep ye judgment and do justice [righteousness]: for my salvation is near to come, and my righteousness to be revealed.” (Isa. 56:1 KJV; See also Psa. 71:1-2, 15; 119:123; Isa. 45:8; 61:10; 62:1)
From these verses, it is clear that righteousness of God is a synonym for the salvation or deliverance of God. The righteous acts of the Lord, or more literally, the righteousnesses of the Lord, referred to in Judges 5:11; I Sam. 12:7-11; Micah 6:3-5; Psa. 103:6-8; Dan. 9:15-16, means the acts of vindication or deliverance which the Lord has done for His people, giving them victory over their enemies. It is in this sense that God is called “a righteous God and a Savior” (Isa. 45:21 RSV, NAS, NIV) and “the Lord our righteousness” (Jer. 23:5-6; 33:15-16).
There is a difference between the righteousness of God in the Old Testament and that in the New Testament. In the Old Testament the righteousness of God is the vindication of the righteous who are suffering wrong (Ex. 23:7). God vindicates the righteous who are wrongfully oppressed. In the Old Testament the righteousness of God requires a real righteousness of the people on whose part it is done. In Isa. 51:7 the promise of deliverance is addressed to those “who know righteousness, the people in whose hearts is my law.” Similarly, in order to share in the promised vindication, the wicked must forsake his ways and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and return unto the Lord (Isa. 55:7). In the New Testament, the righteousness of God is not only a vindication of a righteous people who are being wrongfully oppressed (this view is in Jesus’ teaching in Matt. 5:6; 6:33; Luke 18:7), but also a deliverance of the people from their own sins; it is also the salvation of the ungodly who are delivered from their ungodliness (trust in a false god) and unrighteousness. The righteousness of God saves the unrighteous by setting them right with God Himself through faith (Rom. 1:17a).
The righteousness of God is not opposed to the love of God nor does it condition it. On the contrary, it is a part of and the proper expression of God’s love. It is the activity of God’s love to set right the wrong. In the Old Testament, this is shown by the parallelism between love and righteousness.
“But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon those who fear him, and His righteousness to children’s children.” (Psa. 103:17). (See also Psa. 33:5; 36:5-6; 40:10; 89:14.)
God expresses His love as righteousness in the activity by which He saves His people from their sins. In His wrath, God opposes the sin that would destroy man whom He loves. In His grace, God removes the sin: the grace of God is the love of God in action to bring salvation.
What is the grace of God? The grace of God is God’s love in action. God’s grace is more than His favor; it is His love acting to do something good for us. And because He loves us, God has acted to save us.
“4 But God who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our failures, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)” (Eph. 2:4-5 ERS).
“8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that [salvation] is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, 9 not as a result of works, that no one should boast.” (Eph. 2:8-9 ERS; see also Titus 2:11)
Thus the grace of God may properly be called the righteousness of God. For in His righteousness, God acts to deliver His people from their sins, setting them right with Himself. And since the grace of God is God’s love in action, then the righteousness of God is God acting in love for the salvation or deliverance of man. This righteousness of God has been manifested, that is, publicly displayed, in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
“21 But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets; 22 even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction;”
(Rom. 3:21-22 NAS).
The righteousness of God, as we have just seen, is God acting in love to set man right with God Himself and is synonymous with salvation (Ps. 98:2; 71:1-2, 15; 119:123; Isa. 45:8; 46:13; 51:5; 56:1; 61:10; 62:1). Now this righteousness of God has been manifested (phaneroo), that is, publicly displayed, in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God was active in Jesus Christ, particularly in His death and resurrection, for our salvation (Acts 4:12; I Thess. 5:9; I Tim. 2:10; 3:15; Heb. 5:9). And because He is this act of God for our salvation, Jesus Christ is the righteousness of God (I Cor. 1:30). Now the gospel tells us about God’s act of salvation in the person and work of Jesus Christ; the gospel is the gospel of our salvation (Eph. 1:13). And since the gospel or good news is about Jesus Christ, who He is and what He did (Rom. 1:3-4; I Cor. 15:3-4), the gospel is about this manifestation of the righteousness of God.
But the gospel is not only about the righteousness of God manifested in the past on our behalf, but in the preaching of the gospel the righteousness of God is being continually revealed (apokalupto) in the present.
“For in it [the gospel] the righteousness of God is being revealed from faith unto faith” (Rom. 1:17a ERS).
The revelation that is spoken of in this verse is not just a disclosure of truth to be understood by the mind, but it is a working that makes effective and actual that which is revealed. Hence, the revelation of the righteousness of God is that working of God that makes effective and actual that which is revealed, that is, the righteousness of God. [52] In other words, the revelation of the righteousness of God is the actualization of God’s salvation. And the righteousness of God is revealed when the salvation of God is made actual and real, that is, when salvation or deliverance takes place. Thus in the preaching of the gospel there is taking place continually an actualization of the righteousness of God. In other words, salvation or deliverance is taking place as the gospel is preached. This is the reason that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation (Rom. 1:16. Compare Rom. 1:16-17 with Isa. 56:1 which is, no doubt, the source of Paul’s concepts and words in these verses.)
The gospel not only tells us about this manifestation of the righteousness of God, but also in the gospel the righteousness of God is being continually revealed or made effective and actual (Rom. 1:17a). When the gospel is preached, God is acting to set man right with Himself. The result of God’s activity of righteousness is the righteousness of faith, the righteousness from God, since it has been received from God by faith. God in His righteousness sets man right with Himself and through faith man is set right with God; faith rightly relates man to God. The righteousness of God is what God does and the righteousness of faith is what man does in response to God’s activity. The righteousness of faith is the righteousness from God because faith, which is man’s response to the word of God, comes from God (Rom. 10:6-8, 17); that is, in a sense, faith is “caused” by the word of God, even though it is man who does the believing and trusting.
Faith is the actualization of the righteousness of God or the salvation of God. This is expressed by Paul in Romans 1:17a in a twofold way: “from faith unto faith”. These prepositional phrases modify the verb “being revealed”, not the words “the righteousness of God.” The revelation is “from faith unto faith.”
1. Faith is the source of the revelation of the righteousness of God: “from faith”. The revelation of the righteousness of God arises out of or comes out of faith. That is, the actualization of the deliverance of God is the faith which the righteousness of God produces. The righteousness of God is revealed only when the one to whom the revelation comes has faith. Without faith there is no revelation, and only when there is faith is there a revelation, an actualization, of the righteousness of God. In this sense, faith is the source of the revelation of the righteousness of God.
2. Faith is goal of the revelation of the righteousness of God: “unto faith”. The revelation of the righteousness of God moves toward and is accomplished in faith. When a man has faith, the deliverance of God has reached its goal. Faith then is the goal of the revelation of the righteousness of God.
Faith is not the means nor the condition of salvation but is the actualization of salvation. Salvation is not a thing which is received by faith but is God’s activity of deliverance which produces faith and is accomplished in that faith. In salvation, God does not give us something but gives us Himself, and faith is not receiving of something but is the receiving of Him. In salvation God does not just reveal something about Himself but reveals Himself. Apart from this personal revelation, faith is impossible, but when this revelation take place, faith is possible. Since “faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17), faith is the product of God’s activity of the revelation of Himself. And this revelation takes place in the preaching of the gospel.
The Protestant Reformation actually began, not when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses upon the door of the Wittenburg church on 31st of October, 1517, but when Martin Luther rediscovered the meaning of the righteousness of God in Paul’s letter to the Romans. This discovery was made at the end of a long and troubled search which began when at the age of 21, on July 17, 1505, Luther applied for admission to the monastery at Erfurt of the Augustinian Friars known as the Black Cloister because of their black habit. They were also known as the Augustinian Hermits. Having recently been made a Master of Arts at the University of Erfurt, Martin had gone home to Mansfeld on a vacation during the month of June, 1505. On July 2, when returning to Erfurt from Mansfeld, at a distance of about five miles from his university, close to the village of Stotternheim, he was overtaken by a thunderstorm. When one of the lightning bolts nearly struck him, he cried out in terror, “Help, St. Anne, and I’ll become a monk.” Later, in his DeVotis Monasticis (“Concerning Monastic Vows,” 1521) Luther explains his state of mind at that time.
“I was called to this vocation by the terrors of heaven, for neither willingly nor by my own desire did I become a monk; but, surrounded by the terror and agony of a sudden death, I vowed a forced and unvoidable vow.” [53]
Accordingly, he sold his books, bade farewell to his friends, and entered the monastery. Luther observed the canonical regulations as prescribed in the constitution of the Observatine section of the Augustinian Order of Mendicant Monks. He says:
“I was an earnest monk, lived strictly and chastely, would not have taken a penny without the knowledge of the prior, prayed diligently day and night.” [54]
“I kept vigil night by night, fasted, prayed, chastised and mortified my body, was obedient, and lived chastely.” [55]
The purpose of it all was justification, being righteous with God.
“When I was a monk, I exhausted myself by fasting, watching, praying, and other fatiguing labors. I seriously believed that I could secure justification through my works …” [56]
“It is true that I have been a pious monk, and followed my rules so strictly that I may say, if ever a monk could have gained heaven through monkery, I should certainly have got there. This all my fellow-monks who have known me will attest.” [57]
But all these observances did not bring peace to his troubled conscience. He says:
“I was often frightened by the name of Jesus, and when I looked at him hanging on the cross, I fancied that he seemed to me like lightning. When I heard his name mentioned, I would rather have heard the name of the devil, for I thought that I had to perform good works until at last through them Jesus would become merciful to me. In the monastery I did not think about money, worldly possessions, nor women, but my heart shuddered when I wondered when God should become merciful to me.” [58]
Later in 1545 in the famous autobiographical fragment with which he prefaced the Latin edition of his complete works, Luther thus described his feelings:
“For however irreproachably I lived as a monk, I felt myself in the presence of God to be a sinner with a most unquiet conscience, nor could I believe that I pleased him with my satisfactions. I did not love, indeed I hated this just God, if not with open blasphemy, at least with huge murmurings, for I was indignant against him, saying, ‘as if it were really not enough for God
that miserable sinners should be eternally lost through original sin, and oppressed with all kind of calamities through the law of the ten commandments, but God must add sorrow on sorrow, and even by the gospel bring his wrath to bear.’ Thus I raged with a fierce and most agitated conscience …” [59]
These inward, spiritual difficulties were intensified by a theological problem. This was the concept of the “righteousness of God” (justitia Dei). His religious background made him intensely aware of the judgment of God, and he learned the Greek concept of justice as found in book 5 of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Thus encouraged by the use of justitia in Gabriel Biel and other nominalists, he thought of God’s justice as being primarily the active, punishing severity of God against sinners as he explains in his exposition of Psalm 51:14 in 1532:
“This term ‘righteousness’ really caused me much trouble. They generally explained that righteousness is the truth by which God deservedly condemns or judges those who have merited evil. In opposition to righteousness they set mercy, by which believers are saved. This explanation is most dangerous, besides being vain, because it arouses a secret hate against God and His righteousness. Who can love Him if He wants to deal with sinners according to righteousness?” [60]
This conception blocked his understanding of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans.
“All the while I was aglow with the desire to understand Paul in his letter to the Romans. But… the one expression in chapter one (v.17) concerning the ‘righteousness of God’ blocked the way for me. For I hated the expression ‘righteousness of God’ since I had been instructed by the usage custom of all teachers to understand it according to scholastic philosophy as the ‘formal or active righteousness’ in which God proves Himself righteous by punishing sinners and the unjust …” [61]
But God used this passage to change his understanding of the righteousness of God and to solve his inward, spiritual difficulties.
“Finally, after days and nights of wrestling with the difficulty, God had mercy on me, and then I was able to note the connection
of the words ‘righteousness of God is revealed in the Gospel’ and ‘just shall live by faith.’ Then I began to understand the ‘righteousness of God’ is that through which the righteous lives by the gift (dono) of God, that is, through faith, and that the meaning is this: The Gospel reveals the righteousness of God in a passive sense, that righteousness through which ‘the just shall live by faith.’ Then I felt as if I had been completely reborn and had entered Paradise through widely opened doors. Instantly all Scripture looked different to me. I passed through the Holy Scriptures, so far as I was able to recall them from memory, and gathered a similar sense from other expressions. Thus the ‘work of God’ is that which God works in us; the ‘strength of God’ is that through which He makes us strong; the ‘wisdom of God’ is that through which He makes us wise; and the ‘power of God,’ and ‘blessing of God,” and ‘honor of God,’ are expressions used in the same way.” “As intensely as I had formerly hated the expression ‘righteousness of God’ I now loved and praised it as the sweetest of concepts; and so this passage of Paul was actually the portal of Paradise to me.” [62]
This discovery not only brought peace to Luther’s troubled conscience but it was the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Luther’s protest against the errors of the Roman church stems from this discovery. But his discovery was lost by those who came after him, the Protestant scholastics. Luther’s use of the scholastic distinction of active and passive righteousness tended to obscure the Biblical concept of the righteousness of God. Luther obviously rejected the active sense; but the later Lutheran protestant scholastics interpreted Luther as accepting both senses. Because their explanation of the death of Christ was still grounded in the legalistic concept of justice, that is, that Christ died to pay the penalty for man’s sin which the justice of God requires to be paid before God can save man, they had to retain the active sense also. Thus Luther’s discovery of the Biblical understanding of the righteousness of God was obscured and eventually lost.
By identifying the righteousness of God with the passive sense, Luther also gave the impression that the righteousness of God is the righteousness from God, that is, the righteousness that man receives from God through faith. But the righteousness from God is not the righteousness of God. These are different though related ideas and must be carefully distinguished. Paul writes in his letter to the Philippians,
“8b For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, in order that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith, the righteousness from [ek] God that depends upon [epi] faith, …” (Phil. 3:8b-9).
Thus the righteousness from God is the righteousness of faith (Rom. 4:13) which is that right personal relationship to God that results from faith in the true God (Rom. 4:3). Paul writes in his letter to the Romans,
“3 For what does the scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.’ 4Now to one who works, his wages are not reckoned as a gift but as his due. 5And to the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness …. 13The promise to Abraham and his descendants, that they should inherit the world, did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith.” (Rom. 4:3-5, 13)
Faith in God is reckoned as righteousness (Rom. 4:5). That is, to trust in God is to be righteous. This is the righteousness of faith (Rom. 4:13) and the righteousness from God (Phil. 3:9). The righteousness of God, on the other hand, is God acting to set man right with God Himself and, as we have seen above, it is synonymous with salvation.
This Biblical concept of the righteousness of God must be carefully distinguished from the Greek-Roman concept of justice. The righteousness of God in the Scriptures is not an attribute of God whereby He must render to each what he has merited nor a quantity of merit which God gives, but God acting to set right man with God Himself. Luther’s apparent identification of the righteousness of God with the righteousness from God lead eventually to the equating of the righteousness from God with Christ’s righteousness, that is, the merits of Christ, which Christ earned by His active obedience before He died on the cross and is imputed to the believer’s account. Righteousness is misunderstood as merits and the righteousness of God as the justice of God. The idea that the righteousness of God is the justice of God, that is, that attribute of God which requires that God punish all sin and reward all meritorious works, is a legalistic misunderstanding of the Biblical concept of the righteousness of God. This legalistic misunderstanding reduces and equates the righteousness of God to justice, that is, the giving to each that which is his due to them with a strict and impartial regard to merit (as in Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics). It is this concept of righteousness that gave Luther so much trouble.
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END NOTES
[1] Tertullian, On Pentence, 2;
William P. LeSaint, Tertullian,
Treatises on Penance: On Penitence and On Purity,
in Johannes Quasten and Walter J. Burhardt, eds.,
Ancient Christian Writers: The Works of the Fathers in Translation
(Westminter, Md.: The Newman Press and
London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1959), pp. 16-17.
[2] William P. LeSaint, Tertullian, footnote 29, p. 142.
[3] Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros,
trans. Philip S. Watson
(New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1969), p. 348.
[4] Tertullian, Prescription Against Heretics in
Library of Christian Classics, vol. 5,
Early Latin Theology, ed. S. L. Greenslade
(Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1956), p. 40.
[5] William P. LeSaint, Tertullian, p. 24.
[7] Gustaf Aulen, Christus Victor
(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1951), p. 82.
See also J. S. Whale, The Protestant Tradition
(Cambridge: The University Press, 1954), pp. 59-61.
[8] De trin. 4, 19. Footnote 6 in
Kelly, Early Christian Doctrine, 390.
[9] Confess. 10, 68: cf. tract. in ev. Ioh. 82. 4. Footnote 7 in
Kelly, Early Christian Doctrine, 390.
[10] Serm. 293, 7. Footnote 4 in
Kelly, Early Christian Doctrine, 391.
[11] Enchir. 108. cf. de civ. dei 9, 15, 1. Footnote 5 in
Kelly, Early Christian Doctrine, 391.
[12] Ep. 187, 20. Footnote 6 in
Kelly, Early Christian Doctrine, 391.
[13] Enchir. 41. Footnote 3 in
Kelly, Early Christian Doctrine, 392.
[14] De Trin. 4, 17. Footnote 1 in
Kelly, Early Christian Doctrine, 393.
[15] Enarr. in ps. 64, 6. Footnote 2 in
Kelly, Early Christian Doctrine, 393.
[16] C. Faust. Manich. 14, 4. Footnote 3 in
Kelly, Early Christian Doctrine, 393.
[17] Ib. 14, 7. Footnote 4 in
Kelly, Early Christian Doctrine, 393.
[18] Enarr. 2 in ps 21, 3. Footnote 5 in
Kelly, Early Christian Doctrine, 393.
[19] De Trin. 4, 15. Footnote 6 in
Kelly, Early Christian Doctrine, 393.
[20] Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, I, 11, in
S. N. Deane, Saint Anselm: Basic Writings
(LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court Publishing Co., 1962), p. 202.
[25] Ibid., II, 6, p. 244-245.
[26] Robert H. Culpepper, Interpreting the Atonement
(Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1966), p. 84.
[27] Anslem, Cur Deus Homo, II, 7, p. 246.
[28] Ibid., II, 8, p. 247-248.
[30] Ibid., II, 19, p. 283-284.
[33] Aulen, Christus Victor, p. 86, and
Robert H. Culpepper, Interpreting the Atonement
(Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1966), p. 86.
[34] Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, II, 12, in
S. N. Deane, Saint Anselm: Basic Writings
(LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court Publishing Co., 1962), p. 203.
[37] Ibid., II, 13, pp. 206-7.
[38] Robert H. Culpepper, Interpreting the Atonement
(Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1966), p. 88.
[39] Gustaf Aulen, Christus Victor
(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1951), p.96.
[40] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion,
translated by Henry Beveridge
(Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1957), II, xvi, 5.
[41] Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. II
(Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1970), pp. 197-198.
[43] Ibid., pp. 194-196.
I have made no attempt to review the long, technical debate over the federal headship theory that developed during the 17th and 18th centuries A.D. among reformed theologians. Neither have I tried to distinguish from each other the different theories that developed during this debate. For an excelllent discussion of this debate, see G. C. Berkower, Sin, chapters 12-14, pp. 424-465.
[45] A. Hopkins Strong, Systematic Theology
(Philadelphia: Judson, 1907).
[46] Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. II, pp. 470-479, 489-494.
[47] Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology
(Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1949),
pp. 401-403, 405, 412, questions 1, 4, and 12.
[48] Ibid., pp. 500-501, questions 12 and 15.
[49] Ibid., pp. 509-512, questions 32, 33, and 34.
[51] Edward J. Young, An Introduction to the Old Testament
(Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1950), pp. 281-282.
See also Gleason L. Archer, Jr.,
A Survey of Old Testament Introduction,
(Chicago: Moody Press, 1964), pp. 418-420.
[52] Burton on Galations in the ICC in contrasting phaneroo and apokalupto points out that
“for some reason apokalupto has evidently come to be used especially of a subjective revelation, which either takes place wholly within the mind of the individual receiving it, or is subjective in the sense that it is accompanied by actual perception and results in knowledge on his part:
Rom. 8:18; I Cor. 2:10; 14:30; Eph. 3:5.”
Ernest deWitt Burton,
A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galations, in
The International Critical Commentary
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1896), p. 433.
He goes on to say that
“phaneroo throws emphasis on the fact that that
which is manifested is objectively clear, open to perception.
It is thus suitably used of an open and public announcement, disclosure or exhibition:
I Cor. 4:5; II Cor. 2:14; 4:10-11; Eph. 5:13.” Ibid.
The use of the word apokalupto by Paul in Rom. 1:17 thus seems to place an emphasis on something happening to the individual receiving the revelation. The word “subjective” is probably not the right word to use to describe this event because it suggests that the source of revelation is from within the individual, the subject. Clearly the revelation that Paul is speaking of is from without the individual, and from God. But it does make a difference, a change; a response does take place in the person receiving the revelation. It does bring about that which is revealed, salvation.
[53] Quoted in Albert Hyma, New Light on Martin Luther
(Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1958), p. 16.
[54] Luther, Commentary on the Gospel of John
Weimer ed., XXXIII, 561. Dated 21, 1531, quoted in Hyma, p. 28.
[55] Luther, op. cit., dated October 28, 1531, p. 574,
quoted in Hyma, p. 28.
[56] Luther, Exposition on Psa. XLV, p. 29.
[57] Luther, Answer to Duke George’s Latest Book
quoted in Hyma, pp. 28-29.
[58] Luther, Sermon on Matthew XVIII-XXIV, pp. 29-30.
[59] Library of Christian Classics, Vol. XV,
Luther: Lectures on Romans
(Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1961), pp. xxxvi-xxxvii.
[60] What Luther Says, Vol. III,
Complied by Ewald M. Plass
(St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1959), p. 1225.