Justification by the Faithfulness of Jesus Christ
Throughout their history, evangelical Christians have strongly maintained a salvation that is by Christ alone. To an outsider it may appear as if the prodigious amount of ink spilt to protect this truth is excessive. However, I believe that evangelicals have rightly perceived the threats that such a truth will always be exposed to. If our salvation is built upon a synergistic foundation we will have no cause for hope or assurance. No superstructure built upon such an alloyed basis can survive long. If any aspect of our salvation ultimately rests upon anything other than God’s free grace in Jesus Christ we might as well abandon all hope.
Unfortunately, having strongly defended the fact that salvation is by Christ, through faith alone evangelicals have been decidedly less able in their definitions of what this ‘faith’ actually is. This has led to painful and continual introspection for many. It is an unparalleled tragedy that the truth of justification by faith alone that illuminated many benighted hearts in the days of the Reformers with the new dawn of assurance has become, in the hands of many of their successors, one of the greatest barriers opposing the reception of this blessing. What is it about the faith that saves that enables us to have confidence in God’s presence?
One of the most popular misunderstandings of the nature of the faith that saves is that it consists of believing true propositions about Christ. Many people think that God thought that works were too hard and so He decided that He would save people on the more lenient basis of their belief in particular propositions. For others the faith that saves is a particular ‘psychological disposition’ (as Hays terms it). These views are, of course, wrongheaded. The faith that saves cannot be a surrogate ‘work’ (as the term is generally used).
Many respond to such challenges by arguing that faith is not so much man’s work as it is God’s work in man. This view generally fails to take into account the fact that exactly the same claim can be made regarding man’s works (e.g. Ephesians 2:10).
These approaches lead to many problems down the line, particularly as we try to construct a consistent
ordo salutis. However, there are two chief problems with such approaches that I would like to draw attention to. The first problem common to all of these views of faith (whether psychological or intellectual) is that the necessary connection between faith and Christ is left unclear. Christ is often seen as little more than the passive object of our personal faith.
It is also far from clear from Paul’s arguments in Galatians and Romans (as they are commonly read) why Christ needs to be the object of our faith. As Richard Hays points out, Christ was not the direct object of Abraham’s faith (I think that Hays is right to argue that John 8:56 should not be employed as a means to avoid this very real problem). It seems strange that Paul should bring Abraham forward as an example in Galatians and Romans if he is arguing for faith
in Christ. Whilst most Christians could demonstrate why Christ is the object of faith, Paul does not seem to be arguing for this position very cogently in His epistles.
A further problem arises when our attention is drawn away from Christ to our own faith. Whether we like it or not, this has often been an effect of the general reading of Paul’s teaching on salvation. If Paul’s argument is that faith, rather than meritorious works provides the precondition for salvation, we will always be tempted to look for faith in our hearts, rather than looking to Christ.
The ‘Pistis Iesou Christou’ debate
In recent years there have been considerable changes in the field of NT scholarship. Following the advent of the New Perspective many aspects of the old understanding of Paul and his relationship to Judaism were seen to be untenable. The quiet alley of Pauline scholarship has been transformed into a noisy thoroughfare of ideas. Traditional readings that had stood virtually unchallenged for centuries suddenly found themselves overturned. The interpretation of Paul has been thrown into a degree of flux that probably exceeds anything that has occurred since the Reformation. An ideological earthquake has changed the contours of our understanding of Pauline theology forever.
As the dust begins to settle we recognize the far-reaching effects of the changes that have taken place. There are a number of positions within Pauline theology that have been taken for granted for so long that most have adopted them without question. Such positions are now being re-evaluated.
One thinks of the interpretation of the phrase ‘the righteousness of God’ in Romans. In most evangelical commentators, this phrase as it occurs in Romans 1:17 and elsewhere is treated in the light of Martin Luther’s conversion experience. Even if Luther is not mentioned (he often is), it is Luther’s question that is brought to the text. God’s own personal righteousness is clearly (according to this position) a threat to the sinful human being. It demands perfect legal obedience and so we must interpret this phrase to refer to a righteousness that is given to the sinner (by imputation).
After a significant upheaval in the church’s understanding of Scripture, it will always take a while before a new consensus begins to emerge. Luther’s understanding of the phrase ‘the righteousness of God’ soon gained the hegemony in evangelical circles, despite the fact that amongst the early Reformers a number of different understandings of the phrase existed. If the text of Romans was designed to answer Luther’s question — How can I find a gracious God? — then Luther’s understanding of ‘the righteousness of God’ was certainly the most cogent.
Whilst there once was a consensus in evangelical circles that Luther’s way of framing the problem was generally correct, this consensus no longer exists. A number of middle courses can be charted between Luther’s dichotomy between righteousness imputed to the believer and God’s own righteousness requiring perfect obedience. We can often forget how greatly the questions we bring to the text can determine the answers that we receive.
The legitimacy of the questions that most evangelicals have been accustomed to bring to books such as Romans and Galatians have been severely challenged by recent scholarship. They are the wrong questions to bring to the text. As people have taken for granted for so long that Paul is answering the question of how an individual can get right with a holy God, they are very disturbed by the idea that Paul may have been answering questions about God’s keeping of His covenant and about how Christians should relate to each other within the church. For most evangelicals the first is an OT question and the second is not very significant as evangelicals generally have little more than a ‘functional ecclesiology’ (as Wright puts it).
When different questions are brought to the text, our reading of the text will take a very different form. We have already seen this to some degree with the understanding of Paul’s usage of the terminology of righteousness.
For many centuries people have read the Greek term
pistis Iesou Christou to mean ‘faith
in Jesus Christ’. If Romans and Galatians were written to answer Luther’s question, this reading is obvious. How does an individual get right with a holy God? By believing in Jesus, not by moral effort. However, if Luther’s question is the wrong one, our understanding of this phrase is thrown into some confusion. If the correct question is more along the lines of ‘How has God kept His covenant promises and set the world to rights?’ the answer ‘by faith in Jesus Christ’ simply does not make sense.
In one of the latest translations of the Bible, the New English Translation (NET), Romans 3:21-26 reads as follows:—
But now apart from the law the righteousness of God (which is attested by the law and the prophets) has been disclosed—namely, the righteousness of God through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. God publicly displayed him as the mercy seat by his blood through faith. This was to demonstrate his righteousness, because God in his forbearance had passed over the sins previously committed. This was also to demonstrate his righteousness in the present time, so that he would be just and the justifier of the one who lives because of Jesus’ faithfulness.
Most people reading this translation will be struck by the translation of verses 22 and 26; we are used to the reading ‘through faith in Jesus Christ’. The NET translators went to great lengths to determine how to render these verses.
Having spent much time trying to ascertain the direction of the best of NT scholarship, they opted for the reading above.
The debate on the meaning of the
pistis Iesou Christou has ‘decisively turned’ (Luke Timothy Johnson’s words) in favour of the reading ‘the faithfulness
of Jesus Christ’. While many still argue for ‘faith
in Jesus Christ’, they are rapidly finding themselves in a minority in academic circles. The NET represents a significant milestone in the development of the debate.
Claims for reading
pistis Iesou Christou as ‘the faithfulness of Jesus Christ’ are by no means new. Little attention was given to writers such as Johannes Haussleiter (1891) and Gerhard Kittel (1906) when they argued for the reading. The ‘objective genitive’ reading (which treated Christ as the object of faith) was so entrenched that it sensed little challenge from such positions. Kittel himself was pessimistic about the possibility of his position being accepted. It all seemed far too radical.
Kittel and others were, of course, well aware that the language of ‘faith in Christ’ lay at the very heart of the Protestant understanding of the gospel. Any claim that it should be understood differently would have met with a very frosty reception. Should the understanding of the term be changed, many others things would have to be changed to fit in with it. There was little chance of this happening.
The debate was revived in the 1950s by Gabriel Hebert and Thomas Torrance, who argued for the subjective genitive reading. Unfortunately they argued that Paul’s uses of
pistis carried a ‘Hebrew’ rather than a ‘Greek’ meaning. James Barr’s book,
The Semantics of Biblical Language powerfully attacked their misguided use of etymology as a support for their position. Had Hebert and Torrance built their position more clearly upon contextual or theological grounds their arguments might have met a better fate.
The debate did not end at this point; there were too many good reasons to adopt the subjective genitive reading. In the late seventies, the world of Pauline scholarship was rocked by the work of E.P. Sanders and others as the New Perspective emerged. Terms such as ‘the righteousness of God’ were being re-evaluated by authors like Ernst Käsemann. A mainstream reconsideration of
pistis Iesou Christou was bound to follow.
In 1981, Richard Hays wrote his seminal Ph.D. thesis on the faith of Jesus Christ. This work, later published by the Society of Biblical Literature, has served to focus the debate and is largely responsible for the widespread acceptance of the subjective genitive reading today. Recent years have seen numerous works on the subject. Since Hays’ thesis,
Ian Wallis and others have done extensive research in the place of ‘Jesus’ faith’ in the thought of the early church.
The debate is by no means over. However, the subjective genitive reading can no longer be casually dismissed now that a general consensus favouring the objective genitive no longer exists. The subjective genitive reading is supported by many major scholars, among them N.T. Wright, R.N. Longenecker, L.T. Johnson, B. Witherington III, S.K. Williams, J.L. Martyn and M.D. Hooker (objective genitive supporters include J.D.G. Dunn, F.F. Bruce, M. Silva, S. Westerholm).
It is important that we appreciate that the subjective genitive reading is not being followed for novelty’s sake. There are compelling reasons to adopt it. Even some opponents of the reading are willing to admit that the theology of the subjective genitive reading is ‘powerful, important and attractive’ and is ‘wholly compatible with Paul’s theology’ (James Dunn). I hope to lay out some of the reasons why someone would adopt the reading in my next post.
The general consensus that once existed on the meaning of
pistis Iesou Christou was reached more on the basis of theological presuppositions taken to the text than on the basis of exegesis. Few commentaries of the past give much attention to the meaning of the phrase. It was taken for granted that Paul was contrasting two human actions: believing in Jesus or earning merit by the law.
Scholarship has challenged many of assumptions that once governed the understanding of the text. Nowadays, it is very hard to argue either from the Pauline epistles, or from Jewish texts of the same period, that the Judaism Paul was engaging with was Pelagian in the manner that has previously been assumed. We have been forced to re-examine the text.
None of these things should surprise the person weaned on the theology of authors such as Ridderbos and Gaffin. In a soteriology that places the emphasis upon the
historia salutis and salvation by participation or recapitulation, the concept of ‘the faithfulness of Christ’ seems far more natural than it does within a soteriology that absolutizes the forensic aspect of salvation.
I am convinced that as we read about
the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, we will be able to see certain neglected aspects of our salvation more clearly. These will in turn serve to clarify and flesh out many of the aspects which we already know and treasure. Against the claims of those who would claim that this is a ‘revolutionary’ reading, I would like to stress the constructive role that it plays within our theology. It does not overthrow anything that Reformed theologians have held dear. It does, however, have many positive truths to teach us and can contribute much to our understanding of Christ’s role in our salvation. It sharpens our focus upon soteriology and can serve to protect us against a number of errors, not least that of separating Christ’s benefits from His Person.
This is a very, very sketchy introduction to the
pistis Iesou Christou debate. My next post will present some of the reasons why I believe that the subjective genitive interpretation of the phrase is to be preferred.
