§ 23. JUSTIFICATION or reconciliation denotes the status before God into which sinners are brought through the mediation of Christ within His community. We belong to God as a child does to his father, in spite of the abiding consciousness that, in virtue of the previously dominant tendency of self-will, we used to stand in contradiction to Him as sinners. We know ourselves to be, in our present relation to God, entirely dependent on His purpose of grace openly made known; for the abiding recollection of the pain of the consciousness of guilt excludes not merely every legal claim to the Divine pardon, but also any possibility of our having earned it by any meritorious actions whatsoever. Now, as this status before God comprises none save purely spiritual relations, so also the form of its appropriation, faith, is a purely spiritual function which, as such, can be exercised without any sensible actions whatever being essential to it. Nevertheless the fact still remains, that the opposition between man and God which is solved by justification is not altogether eliminated from the experience of the believer. If in Christianity the range of forgiveness included merely the sins of our past years, or, in addition to that, merely individual transgressions of the Christian life, the felt opposition between the sense of guilt and what God claims from men would no longer normally hold a place among the experiences of a Christian. From this point of view the Socinians assign forgiveness, as remission of punishment, to the accidental side of Christianity. The Evangelical Confessions, on the contrary, in so far as they find in justification the fundamental precondition of Christianity whether personal or social, reckon on the regular continuance of the consciousness of guilt in those who profess adherence to them. If one were to say, as a Christian, that he had no sin, he would make God a liar; for through His promise of the forgiveness of sins, which forms the fundamental characteristic of the Christian community, God affirms the presence of sin in its members (1 John i. 8—10). From this point of view, according to Luther and Melanchthon (p. 7), our knowledge of our own sin is to be drawn directly from the Gospel. That fact makes daily prayer for forgiveness of sin a fitting thing. Such prayer is no more inconsistent with the general assurance of this blessing which has been given to the Christian community, than prayer for Divine gifts is barred by the knowledge we have that God is willing to bestow them. On the other hand, if we did not daily perceive occasion to pray for it, we should lose sight of the importance of forgiveness as the foundation-stone of the Christian religion. Thus the value we set upon this blessing demands the continual confession that every one needs it. The consciousness of this need, however, will in the Christian life normally extend to nothing which is not forthwith covered by the certainty of forgiveness bestowed by God. Now the traditional form of systematic theology leads to the contention that in his daily life every Christian must pass through the whole interval between the need of redemption and the acceptance of grace—an interval the magnitude of which finds expression in the unconnectedness of the doctrine of sin, as traditionally developed, with the doctrine of redemption (p. 5). Such teaching gives special support to the demand of Pietism, that we should compel ourselves to such a comprehensive estimate of our own sin, and should impress upon ourselves our own inborn hatefulness and worthlessness or nothingness to such a degree, that we cannot consistently attach thereto any well-founded assurance of grace, but must wait for some incalculable deliverance from this state of feeling. This monkish method of self-abasement is proved false by 1 John iii. 19—21. Nor can dogmatic theology concern itself with such movements of sentiment: they belong to the province of pastoral theology. For Dogmatics, which has to interpret the normal course of the elements of the Christian life, can affirm man’s permanent need of redemption in no other way than by recognising that the forgiveness of sins is the necessary basis of the Christian religion, both as a whole and in detail. But that is to assert, not to deny, that the need of redemption must be presupposed.
Faith, which, as related to the promise attached to the work of Christ, appropriates forgiveness, is to be understood as trust in God and Christ (§ 19), characterised by peace of mind, inward satisfaction, and comfort. The pain arising from one’s state as a whole, which formed an element of the presupposed sense of guilt, is thereby removed. This pain, however, is an expression of that opposition to God and to the purpose of our being which forms the essence of sin—and that as a personal certainty for the individual mind. Trust in the justification imparted in Christ, therefore, is attended by certainty of an opposite kind. The pain of the sense of guilt is a matter of feeling; the certainty which accompanies trust in the justification assured by Christ can therefore only be interpreted as a feeling of pleasure.1 From the nature of this connection between Divine act and promise and human trust, it follows that the subjective certainty of justification springs only from a vision of the object of faith.2 But although this object of believing and peace-bringing trust is clearly outlined, and fitted by its Divine origin to call forth and to sustain the subjective function of faith, yet experience shows that what we have here is not a mechanically regular process of cause and effect. The certainty of justification, without which faith does not fully satisfy the conception of it as trust, is a characteristic which in many cases is liable to change in quantity; it may increase, just as it is liable to interruptions of uncertainty. Now it is worth noticing that Melanchthon, when forming a judgment on the latter case, does not take the view that the fact of justification is rendered inoperative and invalid by the want of continuous subjective certainty.3 No doubt, as his whole mode of thought moves within the limits of the individual life, it strikes one as contradictory when, on the one hand, justification as a permanent status is brought into relation to believing trust, and conceived as operating only in response to trust; while, on the other hand, justification is held to be valid even when the subjective certainty of it varies. Nor was Melanchthon able altogether to remove this appearance of contradiction in the argument on which I am now commenting. The remark of Luther, indeed, might have been recalled (vol. i. p. 162), that in this struggle of repentance the very feeling of being at an infinite distance from God is a product of His grace; but what is wanted here is that this conviction, felt by an impartial observer of the soul that is passing through repentance, should be appropriated by the latter, and thus his conscience be calmed. Only, the view of the matter taken above offers no ground for this. Therefore the admission that within the domain of justification faith may be uncertain, always depends on the presupposition that the struggle for assurance of Divine grace is only a transition stage, leading in all probability to the goal of that certainty which belongs ideally to actual justification. But as this conclusion is anything but self-evident, a kind of categorical imperative lays on us the task of gaining assurance of justification by faith. This is unequivocally expressed by Melanchthon in a remark quoted above (p. 143), and holds good even when, to aid the endeavour to gain the assurance of faith, we recall the evidences of Divine grace furnished, not merely by the sacraments, but by the good works we do.4 The original view of this matter held by the Reformers, however, can hardly be expressed more accurately or more clearly than in the doctrine de iustificatione hominis, which was formulated by Cardinal Contarini at the Regensburg Conference (1541), and received the adherence of the representatives of both parties.5