It
was during the reign of Henry VIII’s son, Edward VI (1547-53) that the Church
of England adopted unequivocal expressions of the doctrine of justification sola fide as its official doctrine. Without
having to tread quite so warily, the leading evangelicals could finally put
into liturgical and doctrinal expression the faith of which they had become
increasingly convinced. In 1549, the European reformers Bucer and Fagius
reported that in the realm ‘the doctrine of justification is purely and soundly
taught’.[1]
Perhaps this was a little hasty: the basics of the doctrine of justification
were certainly in place, but the English reformers still had not with clarity
answered the question of how whether justification makes a person really righteous or whether it instead
makes it possible simply for God to declare someone righteous.
Nevertheless,
the Forty-two Articles of 1552 declared that justification ex sola fide Iesu Christi was a ‘most wholesome’ teaching for
Christians, but referred readers to the book of Homilies for an explanation of
what that was held to mean:
Article
XI
Of the Justification of Man
We are accounted righteous before
God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by faith, and not
for our own works or deservings. Wherefore that we are justified by faith only
is a most wholesome doctrine, and very full of comfort; as more largely is
expressed in the Homily of Justification.
It
is interesting to note the pastoral concern of the article. As we saw in
Katherine Parr’s testimony, this doctrine is the wellspring of a great
spiritual peace. It produces comfort, because it is the doctrine that reassures
the believer that their sins will not count against them because of the
extraordinary mercy of God in Christ.
But
what do the Homilies say? The Homily on
Salvation, (confusingly called The
Homily on Justification in the Article) traditionally held to be Cranmer’s
work, seeks chiefly to establish the inability of human beings to merit
salvation and that the merits of Christ by contrast, embraced by faith, are the
sure ground for justification.
The
homily takes for one of its key texts Romans 3:21-25. What is interesting about
this Pauline text is the way in which he links the biblical metaphors of
sacrifice, redemption and justification. The justification of sinful human
beings, then, involves the wrath-bearing sacrifice of Jesus Christ on their
behalf. By his death, Jesus made ‘a sacrifice and satisfaction or (as it may be
called) amends to his Father for our sins, to assuage his wrath and indignation
conceived against us for the same’. Jesus’ death is also the payment of a
ransom – but, astonishingly, it is a ransom paid by the one to whom it is owed.
This is how Paul can describe the justification of sinners as occurring
‘freely’: not because it happens without the payment of a ransom, or the
satisfaction of God’s most just wrath, but because these conditions are met by
God himself.
It
is the reason, as the homily explains, that this redemption is so extraordinary:
for in it, God shows that ‘with his endless mercy he joined his most upright
and equal justice’ (p. 25). In justification sola fide we can see that the grace of God has not shut out the
justice of God. Thus:
Christ is now the righteousness of all
them that truly do believe in him. He for them paid their ransom by his death.
He for them fulfilled the law in his life. So that now in him and by him every
true Christian man may be called a fulfiller of the law; forasmuch as that
which their infirmity lacketh, Christ’s justice hath supplied. (p.
27)
To
the Christian can now be ascribed righteousness itself. But this is not at the
expense of justice. This is not a travesty of God’s own declared standard of
righteousness: for Christ’s fulfillment of the law in his life is extended to
the believer – the one who is bound to him by faith.
In
fact, this faith is not so much a thing of interest in and of itself
…as great and as godly a virtue as
the lively faith is, yet it putteth us from itself, and remitteth or appointeth
us unto Christ, for to have only by him remission of our sins or justification.
This
statement is directed at those who might argue in response to the evangelical
teaching that faith had simply been substituted for some other virtue such as humility
or love. Isn’t it the case that ‘faith’ is a virtue of its own sort, a kind of
worthy trust that deserves acknowledgement from God? The homily insists rather
that that is not the nature of faith at all. In the first place, lively faith
is spiritual – that is, it has its origin with God and is a work of the divine
Spirit in a person. Secondly, faith is not something admirable in the way a
virtue is. It ‘putteth us away from itself’, and directs us to Christ. The
shorthand slogan ‘justification by faith alone’ can be misleading if it is
thought to mean that faith is something that merits reward in the way a good
work might be. More accurately, justification is the work of God in Jesus
Christ, whose benefits are received by means of the faith that the Holy Spirit
works. This is captured beautifully in those great verses from Ephesians 2:8-9:
8 For it is by grace you have been
saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9
not by works, so that no one can boast.
In
the Homily on Salvation, and its
companion piece, A Short Declaration of
the True, Lively and Christian Faith, we see a further concern addressed. The
sermons anticipate the criticism that the doctrine of justification by faith
alone gives no account of good works, and may even promote moral laxness. After
all, doesn’t the epistle of James condemn a faith which is alone, without
works?
The
homilies insist in reply that a true and lively faith cannot simply lie
dormant. It must of its nature bear fruit in all manner of good works. But they
go a step further: without this enlivening faith, no good works can be done.
This is a crucial counter-attack against the charge of moral laxity, because it
insists that in fact good works cannot truly appear without faith, though they are not themselves the grounds for
justification. They earn no merit for themselves, but they are the inevitable
consequence of that faith in Christ’s merit which saves. As it turns out, there
is no other path to works that are truly good, for these are works that are
done simply out of the response of gratitude to grace, and not for pride’s
sake. These are works that claim nothing for themselves, but point rather to
the work of the Holy Spirit in the Christian’s life.
Throughout
its various revisions (1549, 1552, 1559 and 1662) Book of Common Prayer was provided as a liturgical enactment of the
doctrine of justification by faith alone. In the first instance, the statements
about the depths of human sin in the confession at Morning and Evening Prayer
ask the congregation not simply to see themselves as transgressors and
offenders, and stray sheep, but to state ‘there is no health in us’. The only
basis on which an approach to God can be made is in this empty-handed way, with
nothing to offer. It is an act of utter dependence, and a moment of extreme
vulnerability. The Absolution which then follows announces to the congregation
God’s forgiveness: ‘He pardoneth and absolveth all them that truly repent and
unfeignedly believe his holy Gospel’.
‘The
Order for the Administration of The Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion’ likewise
begins with an emphasis on the desperate plight of sinners before the holy God.
The reading of each of the ten commandments is followed by the response ‘Lord,
have mercy on us, and incline our hearts to keep this law’ – a recognition on
the one hand that the law is a judgment on all of us, and that without the work
of God on our hearts we have no way
of keeping it. The Prayer of Humble Access, likewise, emphasizes the unworthiness
of the congregation to come to the Lord’s Table; after all, ‘we are not worthy
so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table’. But the character of God
is also on display. He is the one ‘whose property is always to have mercy’. And
that mercy is displayed, and access to the Table itself given, through the
blood of Jesus shed upon the cross.
One
of the most significant ramifications of the doctrine of justification sola fide is that it relativizes the
place of the various churchly practices and rituals that had evolved in the
Church. The emphasis on faith meant faith in
the word of God. That is, the believer received was connected to the divine
by believing the evangelical word of God in Scripture, and not through the
sacramental system of the Roman church. ‘The ears alone’, said Martin Luther,
‘are the organ of the Christian’. What’s more, justification by faith
relativized the institutional monopoly of the Church on salvation, since the
individual believer no longer needed the mediatorial presence of an
ecclesiastical authority. All the evangelical Reformers were agreed that
ecclesiastical institutions and rituals were of secondary significance at best.
They disputed among themselves about how far to take this radical revision of
the Christian life, with some arguing that nothing should be allowed to
compromise the gospel with the suggestion that a human practice could
co-operate with God in the justification of human souls; and others taking a
more relaxed stance. The English church in the Elizabethan era (1558-1603) was
racked by internal strife over these matters – for example, the place of a
distinctive clerical dress, or the role that music might play in a church
service. But all were agreed that these things were not of the same
significance that once had been.
In
particular, the role of the Eucharist was not to be a kind of infusion of
grace, in and of itself an act which (in some automatic way) conveyed a
blessing on the one who participated it. Rather it was to be an enactment of
the gospel Word itself. It was no less dynamic for being so, because of the
promise of God to act on the heart of the believer by faith. It is an act of
remembrance (‘Take and eat this, in remembrance that Christ died for thee’) but
also a present moment in which the Spirit of God acts on the hearts of
believers (‘and feed on him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving’).
VI Sola Fide challenged
The
doctrine of justification by faith alone was certainly planted deep into the
DNA of the Reformed Church of England from the beginning (even though the issue
of the mechanism of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness remained
unresolved). For its part, the Roman Catholic Church codified its teaching on
justification at the Council of Trent (1564) specifically to preclude a
solafidean interpretation. In the Elizabethan period and into the reign of
Elizabeth’s successor, James I, English churchman were virtually uniform in
their condemnation of Trent’s view that justification stemmed a righteous which
was inherent to the believer. Nevertheless,
sola fide came to have its Anglican opponents,
especially from the latter half of the seventeenth century onward (the period
known as the Restoration). What writers such as Jeremy Taylor and George Bull
sought was a balancing of the teaching of Paul and James. For them,
justification included the passage of the Christian life – that is,
sanctification and regeneration were both aspects of justification. This was
justification by faith and works;
with faith being now understood once again as a species of work.[2]
In
the nineteenth century, it was John Henry Newman who renewed this opposition to
justification by faith alone as an authentic expression of an Anglican doctrine
of justification. His influence on subsequent Anglican identity has been
profound, and so his opposition to sola
fide is noteworthy for the impact it had on successive generations of
Anglicans, especially in the Anglo-Catholic movement. In his 1837 lectures on
Justification, Newman sought to chart a via
media between Protestant and Roman Catholic teachings on justification.
That his reconstructions of the history of thought are specious at best and are
made to serve his avowedly polemic ends has been oft noted.[3]
Newman simply caricatured Martin Luther’s position at many points. His own
particular description of the doctrine of justification emphasized the present
indwelling of the Holy Trinity in the soul of the believer. When it comes to
the role of faith, however, Newman was adamant that mere trust alone was not
sufficient to justify. Works and faith together justify, though they do play
different roles. This passage is typical:
..as the presence of the soul changes the
nature of the dust of the earth, and makes it flesh and blood, giving it a life
which otherwise it could not have, so love is the modelling and harmonizing
principle on which justifying faith depends, and in which it exists and acts
The
significance of Newman’s challenge to the doctrine of justification by faith
alone within Anglicanism (the notion of an Anglican-ism being something of a nineteenth century creation in any case)
should not be overlooked. It marks a move to a more ritualistic Christianity on
the one hand, and a more moralistic Christianity on the other – since these
must attend and assist faith. There is appeal in both, of course. The teaching
of a strongly moral form of religion is attractive as a social glue. It offers
a standard to which a society might aspire. A more ritualistic Christianity
offers beauty, mystery and the tangible repeated actions that seem to offer a
comfort to the troubled soul. Particularly since the Enlightenment, both seem
to offer an apologetic for Christianity that can be explained in terms of
social utility alone.
Yet
the attack on sola fide introduces
three grave problems. In the first place, the effects of sin on the human
capacity to respond to God have to be reduced in order to make space for some
inherent righteousness, however small. Second, this has the impact of reducing the
scale of salvation won for us by Christ on the cross, for something, however
small, must be added to it. Characteristically, sanctification is subsumed
under justification. Lastly, the attack on sola
fide usually rests on a redefinition of ‘faith’, either as a work in and of
itself (in which case, it is usually asserted that faith must be added to other
works) or as ‘assent to doctrines’ (in which case, it is repudiated and even
ridiculed).
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