Let me say that I am at least equally bored with those who make everything to be about “union with” the resurrected Christ so that we Christians “can and will” now do what Christ did.It's all right here and worth reading > Is the Law/Gospel Antithesis Boring?
I don't think so...
Lutheran Carl Braaten (Justification; the Article by which the Church Stands or Falls) quotes Mcgrath:
ReplyDelete“One of the most significant developments in seventeenth-century dogmatics was the affirmation that faith was itself a cause of justification…it was stated that faith was logically prior to justification.
“This affirmation was interpreted to mean that justification was dependent on a change in man. Although justification is still defined forensically, it is understood to be predicated upon a prior alteration within man—namely, that he believes. Where Luther had understood justification to concern the unbelieving sinner, orthodoxy revised this view, referring justification to the believing sinner.” (2:48)
The question whether they are in Christ because they are justified, or whether they are justified because they are in Christ, would have no meaning for Luther. Christ is our justification…We must not make a merit of one’s believing or a virtue of one’s faith… The gospel is the glad tidings of the divine love, not motivated from the outside, not caused by any human action, and certainly not characterized as a response of God contingent on human repenting and believing.
If faith is logically prior to justification, then justification would be conceived of as a synthesis of two factors, one divine and one human, with the priority always of course reserved for the divine, but the all-decisive finality conceded to the human.
The essential element in all false religion, Luther perceived is: “If I do this, God will be merciful to me.” It is misleading to say that, if I believe in Christ, God will be gracious to me, as if my believing is not already evidence of God’s grace, as if my faith is not itself created by the forgiving grace of God while I am still a sinner.
The publican may be the greatest Pharisee of them all by exchanging the humility of his faith for the justifying grace of God.
Justification is not procured by faith as a human attitude or virtue (inner works) in lieu of justification by external works of piety. There is nothing at all that faith contributes in the way of completing a subjective process which culminates finally in justification.
The relation between grace and faith is the other way around. Grace creates faith. It creates the means by which it shall be received. We need to become new creatures because we have no remaining capacity to trigger off the event which effects our justification.
If faith is the prior condition of justification, how does a person get that necessary faith? The sinner’s will has inherently only the ability to resist, and is in fact converted while it is resisting