MetaCatholic

There’s been a sudden spate of posts about justification. In one strand Michael Pahl stirred up some comments with his post “Justification is the heart of the gospel”? which he also followed up here. In the other strand Michael Bird draws attention to a post by Paul Helm on justification and sanctification. Mike follows Helm in seeing this as an important logical distinction (not a temporal or causal one) but both are taken to task for making it by Andrew the Theo Geek.

I’ve made some of my own initial observations about bringing the New Perspective on Paul (NPP) to bear on the Anglican doctrinal tradition. It’s a theme that will run through several of my posts on the 39 articles. But I can’t resist the temptation to make a few more observations in the light of some of these posts.

I think the debate over the heart of Paul’s gospel is a fairly sterile one. It’s at its most sterile (and tedious), I think, in Douglas Campbell’s Quest for Paul’s Gospel –a whole book devoted to creating and defeating a false opposition (false for Paul, not necessarily false in the doctrinal tradition). For what it’s worth, I’d sum up the heart of Paul’s gospel as saying something like “God in Christ has triumphed over sin, evil and death, and made it possible for us and all people to share the holy and eternal life of new creation in the Spirit.” Paul’s language of justification by faith is simply one (a very important one) of the varied ways in which he expresses and develops his thought about that triumph, chiefly in seeking to overcome the divide between Jew and Greek. I think some versions of the NPP actually make it much easier to see Paul’s thought as a whole.

Trying to create logical doctrinal distinctions (rather than verbal and rhetorical distinctions of emphasis) between “justification” and “sanctification” is similarly mistaken. Such distinctions depend on the concept of “imputed righteousness” so beloved of the reformers, but alien to Paul. (Wow, I’m really nuancing my statements here!) In what sense is there any logical distinction in Paul? He can treat the words as, if not synonymous, at least as having the same fundamental (past) referent:

“But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified — ἀλλὰ ἀπελούσασθε, ἀλλὰ ἡγιάσθητε, ἀλλὰ ἐδικαιώθητε (1 Cor 6:11)

That past use of “sanctified” recalls his salutation:

To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, — τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ τοῦ θεοῦ τῇ οὔσῃ ἐν Κορίνθῳ, ἡγιασμένοις ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ, κλητοῖς ἁγίοις, (1 Cor 1:2).

Against the Corinthians current lack of holy behaviour, he stresses their already given sanctification as something they need to live out of and up to. (See also 1:30) That use is relatively rare in Paul, but it can’t be ignored. Not only does it prevent a temporal distinction, but it prevents a logical one as well. The same event, their being made Christ’s, is in view. It’s just that Paul chooses different language according to his rhetorical strategy to refer to it. Both have a future eschatological completion or fulfilment. Both have a past anchored in God’s work in Christ crucified and raised. Both need working out in the present, as the Spirit conforms us to the image of Christ, righteous and holy and perfect.