§ 17. It has been impossible to define justification without taking into account its relation to the subjective consciousness of guilt. In order, however, to determine with complete accuracy the place of this thought within the Christian religion, it is necessary both to know the Subject or Author of justification under the corresponding predicate, and to estimate the characteristic note of faith which is to be found in the objects of justification along with, and apart from, their consciousness of guilt. Then we shall be able to consider the scope and the definite sphere within which the Divine judgment of justification must be conceived as operative, in order to hold good as the special basis of the religious quality in the Christian subject.
The attribute of God through which the older theology seeks to understand justification is that of Lawgiver and Judge. It is precisely in ascetic representations of the doctrine that this preconceived idea of God receives special and intentionally strong emphasis.1 The conception of God as Lawgiver and Judge, it is true, has no direct bearing on the general idea of pardon, or the forgiveness of sins: it belongs rather to the special means by which the older school attempted to solve the contradiction between the grace and the justice of God, in order to explain the forgiveness of sins which is received in Christianity. But we meet the same preconceived idea of God also in Tieftrunk (vol. i. p. 462), although his idea of the way in which Christ mediates the forgiveness of sins departs from orthodox lines. The special influence which works on Tieftrunk is the Kantian estimate of the moral law. Recognising the facts of the transgressor’s consciousness of guilt before the law, and his feelings of awe and shame in presence of the Lawgiver—feelings which are not removed by moral reformation—he explains the bestowal of pardon by the Judge as the chief need of the guilty person. Here, therefore, we find a ground for the common assumption in a quite different motive from that assigned by the orthodox theology.
This assumption, however, when compared with the ideas with which it stands connected, is, to say the least, incomplete. We may at the outset concede to the orthodox theology that the imputation of the double obedience of Christ to the law, for the purpose of judging sinners as righteous, may be represented as a special instance of the application of law by the Judge. We cannot, however, represent this act as isolated from the antecedent gracious purpose of God, His purpose, namely, to bless sinners; nor must we lose sight of the fact that God has Himself brought into court the Righteous One, Whose obedience to the law, according to the presupposition, He judicially imputes to sinners. On these two accounts, God, in executing the judicial act of imputing the righteousness of Christ to sinners, cannot be conceived as Lawgiver and Judge, but as the Dispenser of grace and love to men. The act of imputation, moreover, when placed in its true connection with the whole, is only the means to an end. The judicial quality in God, therefore, can be admitted only as a co-operating element in the act of justification, or as a subordinate trait in the conception of His character as the Author of justification. Even the above-quoted writers are compelled either to supplement their own representations by saying that ” in this work ” God reveals Himself in the character of love, or, by actually designating justification as an ” act of grace,” to indicate the real principle of the matter. One may, of course, insist upon the fact that, in ascetic representations, paradoxes are used as means of stimulating the attention. But the above-quoted expressions are not to be regarded as mere harmless exaggerations. Their effect is really the dislocation of one member of an organism, the isolation of one proposition, which, we maintain, can only be rightly represented in connection with quite different propositions.
But if we fix our attention more closely on this analogy of the power of the State, which has been applied to explain God’s method in bringing about the remission of guilt and punishment, we find that justification cannot possibly be represented as a judicial act. For the right of bestowing pardon, which is vested in the head of the State, is no prerogative of his power as lawgiver and supreme judge; it is a right, altogether independent of these attributes, explicable from an entirely different aspect of the idea of the State. As lawgiver, the head of the State unites the various members thereof for the purpose of common organised action; and as holder of the power of punishment, he defends the legal order of the community, preserving it against the violations to which it is exposed. The right of pardon, on the other hand, follows from the fact that the legal order is only a means to the moral ends of the people, and that consequences of legal action are conceivable, which are incongruous with the respect that is due to public morality, as well as to the moral position of guilty persons. In order to prevent such incongruous results of judicial condemnation, the right of pardon is exercised by the authority to which the case of the moral well-being of the community is officially entrusted. The bestowal of pardon thus appears, it is true, always in the form of a judgment of the head of the State—not, however, a judicial, but an extra-judicial judgment. This relation of different functions has remained for the most part hidden from the older theologians,2 partly because they were not accustomed to determine accurately the meaning of the symbols they used, and partly because they combined two different ideas in the act of justification, namely, the vicarious satisfaction of the law, and the pardon of sins through imputation of the righteousness of Christ. A conception of justification was thus formed, which should correspond, not with the simple idea of pardon, but also with the judicial act of the execution of punishment. By means of this conception, therefore, it appears as though justification could be represented as at least as much a judicial as an extra-judicial judgment. The apparent contradiction was explained through the peculiarly Divine character of the judgment, which transcends the analogies derived from the notion of the State. But these two ideas which have thus been brought into relation in the judgment of justification are not co-ordinate. The extra-judicial bestowal of pardon can alone be regarded as the specific form of the judgment of justification, the judicial acceptance of the satisfaction of the law through a substitute being but the presupposition of that judgment. In this way, therefore, we cannot arrive at the conclusion that justification is judicial in character. We should then have to decide, with the Reformed theologians (vol. i. p. 302), that the imputation of Christ’s obedience to those for whom, as their Head, He rendered that obedience, is an act of Divine justice. But this view of the matter would be least of all able to escape the force of the argument which Faustus Socinus urges in refutation of the orthodox doctrine (vol. i. p. 326), namely, that the ideas of satisfaction and forgiveness are absolutely self-contradictory. If, as is assumed, justification be held to be an act of Divine justice, then it cannot conceivably be regarded as an act of grace. But the scope of this argument extends even further; for it raises the question whether the judicial recognition of the satisfaction and the merit of Christ can possibly be the ground of their extra-judicial imputation in the act of pardon. For in the penal law absolutely no provision is made for the transference of punishment and personal obligations to other persons than those under such obligations. If such a procedure on the part of God be admitted in the mediation of justification, then the recognition of vicarious satisfaction as such would have of necessity to be understood, not as the act of the Judge, or the Executor of the law, but as an antecedent act of grace. And, finally, the formula directed against the Catholic doctrine, namely, that Divine justification is to be understood sensu forensi, is anything but complete and accurate. Justification, it is true, has the form of a judgment, not of a material operation; but the judgment in this case is the synthetic judgment of a resolution of the will. On the other hand, every judicial judgment is an analytic judgment of knowledge. The consequent decree of punishment or acquittal is equally an analytic judgment, being a conclusion from the prohibitive or permissive law involved and the knowledge of the guilt or innocence of the person accused. Therefore in whatever way we view the matter, the attitude of God in the act of justification cannot be conceived as that of Judge.