The New Perspective and Justification

File for future use:Scott McKnight has begun a new series on the New Perspective, the Old Perspective and Justification. Here is his analysis of the historical background:

October 19, 2011
New/Old Perspective on Justification 1
Filed under: New Perspective — scotmcknight @ 12:08 am
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Nothing has rocked the theological world of evangelicals and the Reformed more than the “new perspective on Paul.” In contrast to the “new” perspective is the “old” perspective, but it ought to be observed here that this is mostly an evangelical intramural debate and not a widespread scholarly debate. Ed Sanders got this going way back in the late 70s and he was a liberal Methodist, and Jimmy Dunn was next and he’s a Methodist, and then Tom Wright’s stuff came along, and he’s an Anglican. But it was the conservative evangelicals of the USA who mostly got upset about this new perspective stuff, and they asserted the “old” perspective, which mostly means Reformation/Augustinian theology either in a Reformed or Lutheran key. So let’s not think “New Testament” when we think “old” because both the “new” and the “old” think they are most faithful to the New Testament.

Thanks to the fine efforts of James Beilby and Paul Rhodes Eddy, we now have a new volume that gets major thinkers to interact over the new perspective vs. old perspective on justification. The book is called Justification: Five Views (Spectrum Multiview Books). I’m really glad the first piece is by Michael Horton because I haven’t received his book “For Calvinism” yet and so the blog has tipped toward Roger Olson’s book “Against Calvinism.” But at least we can begin this series on a Reformed note, even if not today. Today we look at the big picture in the history of the church: How has justification been understood? (Next post will examine just the “new” perspective.)

The various authors who define justification and then interact with other views are Michael Horton (traditional Reformed), Michael Bird (progressive Reformed), James Dunn (new perspective), Veli-Matt Kärkkäinen (deification view), and Gerald O’Collins/Oliver Rafferty (Roman Catholic). Well, this is a dream team.

If justification is so central to the gospel, and it surely is for the Reformation, why does it not come up in 1 Cor 15 and only once in the sermons in Acts, and hardly at all in the Gospels? Or, does it come up in those texts? How important is justification by faith to the gospel?

And the editors provide a wonderful sketch of the history of justification theology in the church. Origen, who against Marcion did not separate faith and works as many have done. The earlier Augustine didn’t either, but later in his life Augustine (392, 396 and later) did develop a much more grace-shaped justification. But, Augustine saw justification as transformative and not just forensic. Medieval justification theory is Augustinian. So Aquinas: infusion of grace, movement of free will toward God through faith, movement of free will aginst sin, and remission of sin. Thus, justification is both forensic and transformative process.

The Reformation, which is what most mean by “old” perspective, shows a powerful “newness” when it comes to justification. For Luther, justification is the heart and soul and the article by which the church stands or falls. Here ar three major ideas about justification for the Reformation, and this is what “old” perspective basically believes: it is a forensic declaration about status, it is not the same as either regeneration or sanctification (so transformation is not a part of justification), and it is an alien righteousness (imputed righteousness). (McGrath famously argued that Luther was himself more Augustinian in seeing transformation while it was later Lutherans that developed the forensic stuff so thoroughly.)

Wesley: forensic but not emphatic on imputed righteousness; sanctification differs from justification. John Henry Newman: both declarative and transformative. Trent: declarative and transformative. Same in modern Catholic Catechism: “… not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man.”

Pietism worried about separating the forensic from the transformative, though most were traditional Protestants in this issue. Schleiermacher, a Pietist and a Lutheran, resisted an purely forensic view. Ritschl found a way to move form a Reformation view into a Kantian view, in that justification is a means to an end: communal striving for the kingdom of God. Tillich moved between sin and doubt as conditions of justification. Bultmann sees justification as a forensic judgment by God in the present time, but he emphasizes the confrontation through preaching of the human in order to make a decision (and here Bultmann has a curious likeness to much of contemporary evangelicalism). Karl Barth makes justification profoundly christocentric. Both declarative and “a making righteous.”

Anabaptists have struggled with the prospects of a too-forensic imputed righteousness for it can undo the moral vision they had/have. But JC Wenger’s view is essentially that of the Reformation. Justification has not been central to either liberation or feminist theology. Among the Pentecostals the same wariness about too much forensic is clear enough. It becomes more Trinitarian and Spirit-shaped for Pentecostals and thus leads to transformation. And Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen explores justification through Spirit and the Eastern idea of deification/theosis.

And there has been serious dialogue between Catholics and Protestants about justification.

Der Rosenkavalier Synesthesia

If Der Rosenkavalier is an opera made of crystal and light, this final trio is the prism for the entire work. In an absolutely ethereal combination of soprano voices, Strauss spins and spins three separate melodies until they finally coalesce in a brilliant single ray of sound, then disperse back into their diverse colors. If St. Augustine were here today, I'm sure he would want to include this music in De Trinitate.

What follows are some of the major recent interpretations of the trio with some of the greatest voices of the last three decades. My dream team? Kiri te Kanawa/Renee Fleming (tie), Susan Graham, and Lucia Popp/Judith Blegen (tie).

Munich, 1979
Gwyneth Jones (Feldmarchallin), Brigitte Fassbaender (Octavian), Lucia Popp (Sophie),



Metropolitan Opera, 1982,(subtitled in English)
Dame Kiri te Kanawa as the Marschallin, Judith Blegen as Sophie, Tatiana Troyanos as Octavian.



Met 100 Gala, 1983 (concert version)
Kathleen BATTLE, Elisabeth SODERSTROM, Frederica von STADE)




Salzburg, 1984 (subtitled in Italian)

Tomowa-Sintow (Marschalin),Baltsa (Quin Quin),Moll,Perry (Sophie),Karajan)



Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, 2009 (subtitled in German)
Feldmarschallin: Renée Fleming, Octavian: Sophie Koch, Sophie: Diana Damrau

Mouw, McMullen, Bourke and Augustine

Today Brad refers to Richard Mouw's blog entry, "The Lesson of 'Ancient Seas.'" Mouw writes about evolution, and along the way makes me reflect on the way my own thought has been formed.

How do you get believers to get excited spiritually about the fact that the earth is millions of years old, and that human beings have evolved from lower forms of life?

On this challenge, I was immensely pleased to come across a wonderful paragraph in a scholarly essay, published in the early 1990s in Christian Scholars Review, by Ernan McMullen, who taught in the Notre Dame philosophy department for several decades. Father McMullen affirms that over a period of millions of years, there have been “uncountable species that flourished and vanished [and] have left a trace of themselves in us.” The Bible, he says, sees God as preparing the world for “the coming of Christ back through Abraham to Adam”; but is it too much of a stretch, he asks, “to suggest that natural science now allows us to extend the story indefinitely further back?” And then this wonderful passage: “When Christ took on human nature, the DNA that made him the son of Mary may have linked him to a more ancient heritage stretching far beyond Adam to the shallows of unimaginably ancient seas. And so, in the Incarnation, it would not have been just human nature that was joined to the Divine, but in a less direct but no less real sense all those myriad organisms that had unknowingly over the eons shaped the way for the coming of the human.”

I find that to be an inspiring theme to add to our understanding of the Incarnation. That long process, beginning in “the shallows of unimaginably ancient seas,” was not wasted time. It was preparation for the One who would come with healing in his wings, a healing that will only be complete when the Savior returns and announces, “Behold, I make all things new.” And what he will renew in that act of cosmic transformation is all the stuff that he had carried–in his own DNA!– to the Cross of Calvary.

Wonderful! I love how tightly this binds the story of creation, incarnation, atonement and re-creation. And now I am drawn to consider how the story can move forward; how various teachers leave traces of themselves in us. In particular, I think of my own situation, and I remember Ernan McMullen and Vernon Bourke.

Vernon Bourke looked somewhat like Santa Claus in a glen-plaid suit. Back in the 70's professors dressed up; but Bourke always matched sturdy toffee-colored, hightop work boots with his ensembles. He taught the Medieval Philosophy course, and he was the first person I ever met who could read and write Arabic. It was in his class that I first caught on to the magic of the ontological argument. Gentle, but tough. He lived to be 91.

Father Ernan McMullen is a complex fellow. I remember when we were at Notre Dame, he took aside all the new entering graduate students and told them in in his rich Irish brogue that if they valued their marriages, they would leave immediately. He had seen several divorces in the philosophy department and didn't want to see any more.

Both McMullen and Bourke pointed to St. Augustine as probably the earliest Christian evolutionist, as a result of his theory of rationes seminales. Victor P. Warkulwiz explains why

...St. Augustine’s theory of rationes seminales... develops the idea of trans-species development of organic beings in a way quite different from Darwin or the Neo-Darwinians. Augustine may have believed in far-reaching cross-species development and so proposed an "evolutionist" theory for the origin of species. But he developed a profound metaphysical theory of the causes of such an evolution that is wholly opposed to the atheistic spirit of Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism. Seifert says that the Church too has to separate the "evolutionary" idea of the transformation of species from the idea that Darwinian principles are sufficient to explain the origin of species.

Augustine employs many different terms when speaking of the so-called rationes seminales. He mentions it in at least seven places in three different works, chiefly in his Genesis ad litteram. It is not easy to discern what he means by rationes seminales, but one meaning seems to imply a sophisticated and profound theory of the origin of new species from existing ones. It is clear that Augustine rejects the first two forms of the theory of evolution described above. But he seems to say that God inserted into matter at creation rationes seminales (seminating/germinating ideas or plans) for different forms to be possibly developed in matter. This seems to leave room for the transformation of one species into another. But Augustine replaces the Darwinian principles of "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest" with a principle similar to Aristotle’s entelechy. That is an inner active principle that contains in potency an elaborate form and potentially dynamically unfolding teleological plan that could originate only in a supreme intellect. Thus not mindless "natural selection" but an ingenious creative plan of God "inserted into matter" is the cause of evolutionary development. Augustine did not believe that all living things could spring from any matter. Rather, he held a more restricted view that allowed for the transformation of species subject to limitation by some nature. Augustine also held that living beings are distinct from non-living beings. In living beings the rationes seminales involve a soul that is not reducible to properties of matter. Finally, Augustine sounds as if he meant that the rationes seminales are not principles immanent in matter, but that they are divine creative ideas that exist in God long before the things exist that correspond to them. This is a sign of the influence of Platonic philosophy on the thinking of Augustine.

Three Thoughts:

1) Could it be that the reason evangelicals have had such a troubled time with evolution is that we lack the metaphysical language with which to discuss it, and so make the distinctions necessary that would help us preserve both the faith and the science it involves? Did some babies get thrown out with the Greek bathwater somewhere about 500 years ago?

2) Darwinian evolution assumes that progress is inevitable in evolution, as simpler, lower forms evolve into higher, more complex ones. This principle may be true for the physical world, but does it necessarily apply to the intellectual/spiritual world?

3) Rather than "progress," I believe entelechy/design operates not only in the physical world but also in the intellectual and spiritual world. (cf.Psalm 139). In my own case, God has been preparing for Christ to come to me through the lives of men like Richard Mouw, Ernan McMullan, Vernon Bourke, Augustine and the Apostles. This leads to the unavoidable question: Who He will be coming to through me?
It is an exciting, sobering, humbling thought.