Justification by Faith. 109 a judgment seat. To use a technical term, it is a forensic word, a word of the law-courts (which in old Rome stood in the forum). In regard of “us men and our salvation” it stands related not so much, not so directly, to our need of spiritual revolution, amendment, purification, holiness, as to our need of getting, somehow—in spite of our guilt, our lia bility, our debt, our deserved condemnation—a sentence of acquittal, a sentence of acceptance, at the judgment seat of a holy God. Not that it has nothing to do with our inward spiritual purification. It has intense and vital relations that way. But they are not direct relations. The direct concern of Justifi cation is with man’s need of a divine deliverance, not from the power of his sin, but from its gu il t) MISTAKEN INTERPRETATIONS. Here we must note accordingly two remarkable instances of misuse of the word Justification in the history of Chris tian thought. The first is found in the theology of the School men, the great thinkers of the Middle Ages in Western Chris tendom—Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas, and others.* To them Justification appears to have meant mûch the same as regeneration, the great internal change in the state of our na ture wrought by grace. The other instance appears in the sixteenth century, in the Decrees of the Council of Trent, a highly authoritative statement of Romanist belief and teach ing. There Justification is described (vi. c. 7) as “not the mere remission of sins but also the sanctification and renovation of the inner man.” In this remarkable sentence the Roman ist theologians seem to combine the true account of the word, though imperfectly stated, with the view of the Schoolmen. It is not too much to say that a careful review of the facts sum marized above, as regards thé secular use of the word Justi fication, and the Scriptural use of it in the doctrine of salva- *See T. B. Mozley, “Baptismal Controversy,” Chap. VII.
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