Jan 18 2010
Sin and Justification
Reading this:
The piety and devotion of Augustine is largely unquestioned by Orthodox theologians, but his conclusions on the Atonement are (Romanides, 2002). Augustine, by his own admission, did not properly learn to read Greek and this was a liability for him. He seems to have relied mostly on Latin translations of Greek texts (Augustine, 1956a,
p. 9). His misinterpretation of a key scriptural reference, Romans 5:12, is a case in point (Meyendorff, 1979). In Latin the Greek idiom eph ho which means because of was translated as in whom. Saying that all have sinned in Adam is quite different than saying that all sinned because of him. Augustine believed and taught that all humanity has sinned in Adam (Meyendorff, 1979, p. 144). The result is that guilt replaces death as the ancestral inheritance (Augustine, 1956b) Therefore the term original sin conveys the belief that Adam and Eve’s sin is the first and universal transgression in which all humanity participates.
Augustine famously debated Pelagius (c. 354-418) over the place the human will could play in salvation. Augustine took the position against him that only grace is able to save, sola gratis (Augustine, On the Predestination of the Saints, 7)4. From this a doctrine of predestination developed (God gives grace to whom He will) which hardened in the 16th and 17th centuries into the doctrine of two-fold predestination (God in His sovereignty saves some and condemns others). The position of the Church of the first two centuries concerning the image and human freedom was abandoned.
The Roman idea of justice found prominence in Augustinian and later Western theology. The idea that Adam and Eve offended God’s infinite justice and honor made of death God’s method of retribution (Romanides, 2002). But this idea of justice deviates from Biblical thought. Kalomiros (1980) explains the meaning of justice in the original Greek of the New Testament:
The Greek word dikaiosuni ‘justice’, is a translation of the Hebrew word tsedaka. The word means ‘the divine energy which accomplishes man’s salvation.’ It is parallel and almost synonymous with the word hesed which means ‘mercy’, ‘compassion’, ‘love’, and to the word emeth which means ‘fidelity’, ‘truth’. This is entirely different from the juridical understanding of ‘justice’. (p. 31)
Reminded me of this:
Justification by faith itself is a second-order doctrine: to believe it is both to have assurance (believing that one will be vindicated on the last day [Rom. 5.1-5]) and to know that one belongs in the single family of God, called to share table-fellowship without distinction with all other believers (Gal. 2.11-21).â€Justification†is thus the declaration of God, the just judge, that someone is (a) in the right, that their sins are forgiven, and (b) a true member of the covenant family, the people belonging to Abraham. That is how the word works in Paul’s writings. It doesn’t describe how people get in to God’s forgiven family; it declares that they are in. That may seem a small distinction, but in understanding what Paul is saying it is vital.
(CC) 2010
Renaissance literary scholarship and the Reformers came to realize that Jerome’s Latin translation of the Greek from [i]dikaiosuni[/i] (“to legally declare/reckon as righteous”) to [i]iustificare[/i] (“to make righteous”) was mistaken, and St. Augustine as well as the Western church had used iustificare as the working translation of Paul’s dikaiosuni. Even Roman Catholic and Renaissance humanist scholars who didn’t follow the Reformation, like Erasmus, said that Luther and Calvin and the rest were right on this point. And even today Roman Catholic New Testament scholars like Joseph Sitsmeyer, on justification, say that there is no way to see dikaiosuni as moral transformation.
That is one reason the Latin church since Augustine followed the trajectory of “being made righteous” or, essentially, moral transformation as the essence of salvation. The Reformers caught this and thereby distinguished justification as God’s recognition and declaration of us as righteous (like a legal finding) as a matter of his own work and not our effort at all, and our sanctification that constitutes our collaboration with God’s will to live out the law of love. So, the Protestants insisted that we are “justified” through another’s righteousness (Christ’s imputation) while we are still wicked, not holy. This changes the role of the Latin church as dispenser of meritorious grace and a whole range of things. The Reformed tradition thus stresses salvation as our covenantal union with Christ in his death and resurrection, and God’s objective declaration of our righteousness and calling (predestination) to a redeemed humanity.