The Challenge of Listening to the Whole of Scripture

Within the space of two short chapters in Romans, Paul declares, “It is not the hear- ers of the Law who are righteous before God, rather those who do the Law shall be justified” (Rom 2:13); and, “According to our evaluation, a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the Law” (Rom 3:28).

One can find no indication in the text that Paul was embarrassed by the seem- ing incongruity of these affirmations. Nor is it likely that he fell unawares into inconsistency, when we consider that the letter to Rome is carefully constructed and composed by the apostle in his maturity. We must assume that in some way these two widely different perspectives on the momentous matter of our standing before God cohere with one another. It is this point of cohesion that I would like to consider.

It is worth reminding ourselves at the outset that in seeking a biblical synthesis, we must take care to listen to all the bibli- cal evidence and guard ourselves against diluting either one of the Pauline state- ments we have just cited. We should remember that it was the rediscovery of Paul’s latter affirmation, that justification is a gift given to faith, which prompted the Protestant Reformation in a Church that had grown dull of hearing. The Reformers, whether Lutheran or Calvinist, came to understand that believers shall stand at the final judgment by a righteous- ness given to faith alone as a gift. In other words, the righteousness that saves us is found outside us in Jesus Christ, incarnate, crucified and risen. In taking this position, the Reformers were making a conscious break with traditional under- standings of justification, according to which the initial gift of justification had to increase and grow internally in order for the believer to attain salvation. Their disagreement with their contemporaries was not over whether salvation was a divine gift. Everyone at that time was a follower of Augustine, or at least thought themselves to be. The distinctive of the Reformers was that they went beyond Augustine and back to the Scriptures. They preserved Augustine’s insight that justification is the work of God alone in their rediscovery of the biblical and Pauline understanding of grace: “If [salvation] is by grace, it is no longer by works, otherwise grace is no longer grace” (Rom 11:5). The reformational insistence on “sola fide” was inseparable from its equally firm affirmation of “sola Scriptura.” It is well beyond our scope here to explore the ways in which the Reformers appealed to Scripture to sup- port their position. We may simply observe that although Paul was a primary Scriptural witness to this truth, he was by no means the only witness. Whether or not the Reformers’ reading of Scripture is right on the matter of justification is another issue of course.  (restul acestei preleferi fascinante îl găsiți aici)