ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CONFESSIONS 1 CON1-Q031 JANUARY 2005 CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY: CAPTION FIRST, INC. P.O. BOX 1924 LOMBARD, IL 60148 * * * * * This text is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communications Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. * * * * >> JOSHUA: Lutherans have made the doctrine of justification the decisive concept and criterion for evaluation of faith and practice. How with the Augsburg Confession respond to that? Is there a key to unlocking the message of the Augsburg Confession. >> DR. KLAUS DETLEV SHULTZ: Joshua, the doctrine of justification by Jesus Christ through faith is probably the most important article in The Book of Concord. I mean, it is the most important article, and I would like to say that it is the backbone or the integrating principle of our theology. That means that whenever we look at each individual article in The Book of Concord, and here in our Augsburg Confession, we see a thin thread or a red line going through all of that. And I would say that this clearly the doctrine of justification. When we look, for example, at God in Article 1, we have to say this is a God who has the purpose of saving us by instilling in us that *solific faith that receives forgiveness of sins. We then look at our negative state, namely, that of natural man in Article 2. We then go to Article 3 and speak about Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the person whose work on the cross, His resurrection, His death and His suffering serves as the basis for our justification today. Some call it objective justification. Article 4 makes a clear account of that by saying that we are saved *propter Christum, that means from Latin, because of Jesus Christ. We rely on his work so that we don't make faith or any other things, those things that are earning our salvation, we have to detract nothing from the merits of Jesus Christ. The doctrine of justification forms part of our ministry. In order for us to obtain that faith, that *solific faith, God installed and gave the church the ministry, that of preaching the word and the sacraments so that this faith may be given to us. Article 6 speaks about our new obedience. That means that we must keep a clear distinction between that what we believe and that what saves us and the new obedience that flows out of it and the good works that we have to do. Article 7 and Article 8 define church as an article of faith. That means we are all believers who make out this church. And then when it comes to the sacraments, we understand clearly baptism as a visible affirmation of the doctrine of justification. That means the sacrament of baptism brings to us Christ's righteousness. It is the visible enactment of our justification. And Holy Communion is no different. It gives to us that forgiveness which we receive through faith. For example also, the article on civil righteousness. It�s very crucial that we understand that we have a role to play in this world. That we must see to it that we fulfill all our duties. Our vocation calls us to do so. So the Augsburg Confession does understand a kind of a righteousness that is promoted in the kingdom on the left. But at the same time, the doctrine of justification reminds us of the righteousness given to us within the church through the preaching activity and through administration of the sacrament. That righteousness is different to that to the kingdom on the left. And so we can progress through the entire articles of the Augsburg Confession, and we'll see therein this thin thread, this red line, that reminds us that the doctrine of justification is really an integrating principle. We may not forget that fact. When the ecumenical discussions on the doctrine of justification ensued, and in the year 2000, the Augsburg Confession was jointly signed by Lutherans and Roman Catholic representatives, I think they forgot the very fact that the doctrine of justification may not be isolated as a single individual article apart from all others. One still has to ask the Roman Catholic Church why it maintains the status of the pope, or for example, why it continues to have indulgences and pilgrimages that detract, in a way, from the doctrine of justification. Luther showed us in 1523 and 1526 when he addressed the Mass and the liturgy of the church, and therein he made clear that everything that goes against the doctrine of justification should be taken out. And so we can see that the doctrine of justification permeates also the church life itself, those traditions and practices that we do. These practices and traditions are measured against the doctrine of justification, and they hold water if they do not go against the ideal of not being saved through works but through faith. Now, what exactly does the doctrine of justification say? The two articles that we must look at in order to clarify this question would be Article 3 on Jesus Christ and Article 4 on our justification through faith. The Article 3 on Jesus Christ speaks in the words almost of the Apostles' Creed as to what Jesus Christ did. And then it goes on in Article 4 to say that this Jesus Christ, what he did, is a satisfaction. Now, that is a very important word, the idea of satisfaction, because it relates the ministry of Jesus Christ to the demands of God himself. God demanded obedience of the law from us human beings. We did not fulfill that demand. God thus demands it from Jesus Christ himself that through his ministry, he obeyed everything that is demanded by God and fulfilled the will of God. Jesus also passively suffered and endured the wrath of God that extended over all us humans, thereby taking on the substitutionary position between us as humans and God Himself. That satisfaction that Jesus performed on our behalf is an important element to understand our doctrine of justification. It serves as the basis or the backbone, as I have already said. But 2000 years ago are enacted today for every believer. That means Article 4 is closely connected to Article 3. We are saved on account of Christ, today as well. That means that the doctrine of justification draws attention to our state today and then delivers to us that righteousness of Christ. Let us go through the Article 4 a little closer. I will try to read a few statements here in this article and then comment on them as I go along. First of all, the understanding here is that we are justified before God, not by our own powers, merits, or works. That means we are rejecting all understanding that tries to bring in, as the Roman Catholics did at that time, that we are saved for our own merits. That clearly these are the merits of Jesus Christ that we are saved by. And so, justification is a gift. It says here that we are saved by the grace of God, *sola gratia, as we know it on account of Jesus Christ. And the medium that receives that righteousness of Christ is faith itself. Faith can often be misinterpreted as a work. But in this sense here, faith is a gift that is given to us. We receive it, and thereupon, it serves as the means to be given that forgiveness of sins. You see, Article 4 refers to justification as the forgiveness of sins. It is identified with the very moment where God comes to us and declares us righteous. It speaks here in the article that we are imputed righteous. That means that God comes to us by way of a verbal proclamation and declares us righteous. Perhaps an example could be made by using the imagery of a tribunal. That is, that we as unbelievers stand before God himself in the tribunal, and we point to Jesus Christ and say, *propter Christum, on account of Jesus Christ. That is now why I am declared free. And God looks at Jesus Christ, and then He looks at us, and us having our faith in Him, will declare us righteous. We make a great point of this forensic declaration. We try to understand it as a momentous point. We do not believe, as the Roman Catholics at that time, that justification is a process. No. It occurs when God declares us righteous through the word. This means that all the subsequent events, such as those of good works, the fruits of faith, as Article 6 addresses them, do not belong to the doctrine of justification. The fruits of faith are a consequence of justification. The Roman Catholics had an understanding that faith becomes active through love, *fides caritata formata. That means a faith having been formed by love. We consider that a result of justification, in fact, a result of that declaration of being imputed righteous in front of God and by God. This distinction is very crucial, I believe, because as soon as we take our eyes off God and Jesus Christ for being reliant on him for our justification and start focusing internally on ourselves, seeing whether we actually have this love before we can be considered righteous, already is attracting our attention from God himself. It's a very crucial point that we should make continuously. The doctrine of justification, as we have just enunciated here, remains pertinent today as well. It is impossible to consider the dialogue between the churches today that it has erased the forensic and imputed character of justification. In fact, there are some attempts today to speak of a *theosis, that we understand justification as a giving of Jesus Christ apart from this forensic declarative statement that God makes. Yes, there is an indwelling of Jesus Christ in us. But that is also a consequence of having been forgiven and declared righteous first. Although we don't believe in a sequence, there is a sequence of logic that we have to maintain when we speak of the doctrine of justification. That sequence is given to us by the articles themselves. Go first to Article 3 where it talks about the objective effect of our justification, namely the work of Jesus Christ, his satisfaction of God's wrath. We then proceed to Article 4. There it speaks of how we today are made righteous by apprehending that forgiveness of sins for our salvation. And then we go to Article 6. There it speaks of this new obedience of the good works. That is kind of a sequence that we should maintain. Although this all occurs at the same time, logically speaking also. We cannot stand in front of God, been declared righteous, and at the same time harbor sinful sentiments. However, there is one important statement that we still have to integrate here when we speak about Article 4. And that is that the Lutherans have always understood that we are both sinner and saint at the same time. What do we mean by this? Well, one important insight that the reformers had is that we can never earn our salvation. It has to be given to us. However, at the same time, we can lose it. That means that if we look at ourselves and at that concupiscent character that we have, that evil inclination that still consistently adheres to us and is with us, we still have that tendency to sin, that proclivity to it. It means when we are declared righteous, we do not lose that proclivity. We are not outside the realms of sin, but throughout our entire life, we have to show fourth that repentance of which Article 12 of the Augsburg Confession speaks of. So looking at God and his declaration, we must consider ourselves 100 percent righteous. At the same time, looking at ourselves, we also see that we are continuously sinning against God. These are two realities throughout our entire life. We have the comfort of God's forgiveness. At the same time, we do not have a total assurance that we will not fall again away from that salvation. But our Christianhood is marked by the external mediation of God's word, those that give to us that forgiveness and that righteousness. And our belief that they are the signs of our salvation and of our comfort. And to find the comfort, we need to go continuously to the word as it is being proclaimed to us and hear from them the forgiveness of our sins. Another important point I believe needs to be made when we refer to the nature of faith. Article 20 on faith and good works relates to that question. Faith is understood as trust. We have spoken in Article 2, the negative aspect of our human being; namely, that we are without fear and trust in God. This fear and trust in God really marks faith. It means faith is more than just merely a historic wisdom about who Jesus Christ is. Admittedly so, many people in this world today do know about Jesus Christ, but faith itself is more than that. It is also more than just merely an ascent to something that is being said to them. It is a trust, a total giving in to the hands of God saying that what you are giving me is something that I need. It is a trust that children show forth when it comes to trusting their parents and their father. That does not mean that we have to have a certain knowledge also of who God is. The confessions base themselves on a faith that is also willing to confess and understand and to stand for the proper understanding of scripture and its statements. So it is a huge component that is embraced by the concept of faith. But ultimately, it has to come down to the concept of it being a trust that apprehends the forgiveness of our sins unconditionally without infusing in it any thought of our own merits, but giving itself totally into the hands of God.