essay justification luther sin

The Lutherans of the sixteenth century consistently maintained that their cultus and confession were truly catholic: “.nothing has been received among us, in doctrine or in ceremonies, that is contrary to Scripture or to the church catholic”;1 “.No novelty has been introduced which did not exist in the church from ancient times.”;2 “.our churches dissent from the church catholic in no article of faith but only omit some few abuses which are new and have been adopted by the fault of the times.”3 According to the Lutherans it was Rome, and not Wittenberg, that had departed from the authentic catholic faith of the apostles and Fathers of the Church. One of the most significant assertions of the Lutheran reformers was that sinners are justified before God by grace through faith alone, and not by human works or merits of any kind. In regard to the Lutheran doctrine of justification, the Apology of the Augsburg Confession makes the following statement: We know that what we have said agrees with the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures, with the holy Fathers Ambrose, Augustine, and many others, and with the whole church of Christ, which certainly confesses that Christ is the propitiator and the justifier.4 Was this claim valid? Was the Lutheran doctrine of justification truly catholic, or was it (as the Pope and his followers claimed) a sectarian innovation? Since the Lutherans appealed explicitly to the ancient Father St. Ambrose (among others) as one who taught what they were teaching, it will be helpful to examine Ambrose’s writings on justification to determine if the Lutherans really understood his position and if his teaching did in fact confirm theirs. St. Ambrose (c.338-397), Bishop of Milan, has always been remembered as a courageous churchman, an able teacher, and a faithful shepherd. Christendom has also counted him as one of the eight “Doctors of the Church,” and.
The theology of Martin Luther was instrumental in influencing the Protestant Reformation, specifically topics dealing with Justification by Faith, the relationship between the Law and the Gospel (also an instrumental component of Reformed theology), and various other theological ideas. Although Luther never wrote a systematic theology or a summa in the style of St. Thomas Aquinas, many of his ideas were systematized in the Lutheran Confessions. Contents 1 Justification by Faith 2 Law and Gospel 3 Universal priesthood of the baptized 4 Simul justus et peccator 5 Sacraments and the Means of Grace 6 The Two Kingdoms 7 New Finnish School 8 See also 9 Further reading 10 Notes Justification by Faith[edit] A painting by Lucas Cranach on Lutheran teachings, Lutherhaus This one and firm rock, which we call the doctrine of justification, insisted Luther, is the chief article of the whole Christian doctrine, which comprehends the understanding of all godliness. [1] Lutherans tend to follow Luther in this matter. For the Lutheran tradition, the doctrine of salvation by grace alone through faith alone for Christ's sake alone is the material principle upon which all other teachings rest.[2] Luther came to understand justification as being entirely the work of God. Against the teaching of his day that the righteous acts of believers are done in cooperation with God, Luther asserted that Christians receive that righteousness entirely from outside themselves; that righteousness not only comes from Christ, it actually is the righteousness of Christ, imputed to us (rather than infused into us) through faith. That is why faith alone makes someone just and fulfills the law, said Luther. Faith is that which brings the Holy Spirit through the merits of Christ.[3] Thus faith, for Luther, is a gift from God, and..a living, bold trust in God's grace, so certain of God's favor that it.
Some Evangelicals and Catholics think they have reached agreement on this issue, but they’re overlooking some essentials.   Norman R. Gulley         Paul says, “They are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24, RSV), for “a man is justified by faith apart from works of law” (vs. 28, RSV), with even faith a gift. Humans are “justified by His blood” (5:9, NKJV). Calvary was the “one act of righteousness” that “leads to justification and life for all men” (5:18, ESV). “God made him [Christ] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21, NIV).         Justification is found in Christ, and is received by faith. This has nothing to do with Christ’s faithfulness in the covenant that continues human membership in the covenant, as proposed by “New Perspectives on Paul” (NPP) scholarship. The NPP “movement” rose in the latter part of the 20th century as a challenge to long-held Lutheran and Reformed interpretation of Paul’s writings.         Justification explains how one gets in (not how one stays in) the covenant. Justification is an entry-level reality, having to do with how one is saved.         The word justify in Hebrew and Greek “never refer to the infusion of righteousness, that is the transformation of someone from being ungodly to being virtuous.”1 Justification is the same throughout human history, in old and new covenant periods, because it is about the one eternal gospel. Hence, “‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’” (Rom. 4:3, RSV), or “counted” to him (ESV). The word translated as reckoned or counted is mentioned nine times in the chapter. This is a forensic term. It is about the great exchange that takes place in justification: Humans become members of the covenant on the basis of Christ’s substitutionary death for all.
(The Relation of Faith to Justification) Dr. Joel R. Beeke Justification by faith alone was Martin Luther's great spiritual and theological breakthrough. It did not come easily. He had tried everything from sleeping on hard floors and fasting to climbing a staircase in Rome while kneeling in prayer. Monasteries, disciplines, confessions, masses, absolutions, good works-all proved fruitless. Peace with God eluded him. The thought of the righteousness of God pursued him. He hated the very word righteousness, which he believed provided a divine mandate to condemn him. Light finally dawned for Luther as he meditated on Romans 1:17, For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith. He saw for the first time that the righteousness Paul had here in mind was not a punitive justice which condemns sinners but a perfect righteousness which God freely grants to sinners on the basis of Christ's merits, and which sinners receive by faith. Luther saw that the doctrine of justification by grace alone (sola gratia) through faith alone (per solam fidem) because of Christ alone (solus Christus) was the heart of the gospel and became for him an open door into paradise. a gate to heaven. The phrase justification by faith alone was the key which unlocked the Bible for Luther.1 Each of these four words he came to understand in relation to the others by the light of Scripture and the Spirit. Elsewhere this volume deals with three words of Luther's four-word rediscovery: justification, faith, alone. My task of expounding by may appear at first glance to be elementary, but around this deceptively simple preposition the heart of the Romanist-Protestant debate has raged. Let's ask and answer several pertinent questions with regard to this critical preposition which will serve to highlight the relationship of faith to.
Justification: The Joint Declaration Volume 9, Number 1 (Winter/Spring 2002): 108-119. Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J., S.T.D., is Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society at Fordham University, Bronx, New York. His latest book is The New World of Faith (Our Sunday Visitor, 2000).* On October 31, 1999, the date annually celebrated by Lutherans as Reformation Day, a historic event occurred. Gathered at Augsburg, Germany, the city where Lutherans and Catholics first divided in 1530, representatives of the Catholic and Lutheran churches, commissioned by the highest authorities in their respective communions, signed a Joint Declaration on the subject of justification.(1) The two culprits responsible for splitting the unity of the Church in the West saw fit to publish a common statement speaking to the key issue that provoked the division in the sixteenth century: justification. For Lutherans the doctrine of justification is the very heart of the gospel. Luther himself is frequently quoted as calling it the article on which the Church stands or falls. Catholics agree that justification is of central importance, because it means being rightly related to God, being on the road of salvation. Without having been justified, no one can be saved. The common action at Augsburg has very broad ecumenical implications, since the theme is of interest to Christians of every tradition. Most Protestant churches hold positions heavily influenced by Luther, if not quite the same as his. Generalizing, we may put the differences between Protestants and Catholics very simply. Protestants generally look on justification as a forensic act by which God imputes to sinners the righteousness of Christ, while Catholics maintain that justification is a transformative act by which God imparts to sinners a share in the righteousness of Christ. Protestants hold that justification is received.
The Christian article of the sinner’s justification before God is explained in countless tomes of theological writings, and with good reason.  This chief article of the Christian faith is the thick trunk of the tree that is the Christian faith.  Like the deeds of Christ Himself, the points of doctrine that sprout from this tree and the applications of it are so numerous that, “if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (Jn. 21:25). And yet, the article of justification itself has been condensed down to a single (divinely inspired) Volume for us.  It is further encapsulated, both eloquently and abundantly, in the first of the Pauline Epistles to grace our Bibles.  And it can be summarized so briefly and so simply that a child can grasp it. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (Jn. 3:16-18 – NKJV). The Lutherans from the age of orthodoxy[1] understood the simplicity of the article of justification.   While that understanding did not curtail their verbosity, all of their writings on the chief article were nothing more than elaborations on a common theme, the fleshing out of a few points of a common outline that remained unchanged from the time of Luther through the time of Gerhard. The problem in the Lutheran Church in our age is not that too little has been said since the age of Lutheran orthodoxy, but too much.  The outline has, in some cases, been supplanted; the concept, blurred.  I hope to demonstrate in this essay the.