Justification By Faith Alone: An Exposition in Defense of Reformed Theology

By: Benjamin P. Harmon

It was this doctrine – justification by faith alone – believed and preached by the Christians of the first century that
turned the world upside down. It was this doctrine – justification by faith alone – that ended the dark millennium of
Roman Catholic religious superstition in Europe in the sixteenth century when God caused Reformers to believe and
preach it again. And it is the doctrine of justification by faith alone that will turn the world upside down again when
God causes his people to believe and preach it once more.
--Charles Hodge1

Luther speaks as Paul would have spoken had he lived at the time when Luther gave his lectures.
--Hans Dieter Betz2

A quick perusal of modern Pauline scholarship illuminates the strenuous debate that

currently surrounds Paul’s theology of justification. It is rare to find a modern Pauline

commentator who doesn’t mention E.P. Sanders’ seminal 1977 text Paul and Palestinian

Judaism and the subsequent debate. Revisiting the work of 19th century Princeton theologians

Charles Hodge and Horatius Bonar is a rather refreshing review of the Reformed orthodox

theology of justification, and, if we are to be relevant, it is imperative that we ask how the voices

of Bonar and Hodge fit into the current Pauline debate. N.T. Wright and James D.G. Dunn are

two major proponents, among many others, of a new understanding of Paul, commonly called

the “New Perspective,” that challenges the orthodox understanding of justification and Second

Temple Judaism. It is important that we return to the scriptural texts as we compare the

theologies of Bonar and Hodge with those of scholars such as Wright and Dunn. Thus, I will

begin by exploring what is meant by the term justification, then discuss Luther’s understanding

of Paul. Finally, I will move to an examination of both the “old perspective,” that of Hodge and

Bonar, and the “New Perspective,” that of Wright and Dunn, analyses of a few biblical passages

1
Charles Hodge and Horatius Bonar, Not What My Hands Have Done: The Everlasting Righteousness of
Justification by Faith Alone (Unicoi: The Trinity Foundation, 2005), 147.
2
Hans dieter Betz, Galatians: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Churches in Galatia (Philadelphia: Fortress,
1979), xv.

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concerned with the topic. Such an analysis should attempt to answer the question of how Paul

would respond to contemporary discussion, just as Luther aimed towards that goal during his

time. It is crucial that we, as Christians, gain a proper understanding of this doctrine that stands

at the heart of Christendom.

It is easy to confuse justification with other theological terms such as atonement or

regeneration, and it is apparent that across the denominational spectrum the term appears in

different hues, depending on the particular tradition. Tom Wright points out that a

misunderstanding of this fundamental doctrine, however slight, can lead to harmful

consequences within the life of the church. He references the charismatic movement and its

current experiential focus, a focus that hinges on religious emotion rather than the concrete

doctrine of justification.3 If justification becomes a term defined as a “relationship with God,” as

Rudolf Bultmann has emphasized, then no assurance exists during periods when God seems

distant. Horatius Bonar has pointed out that God has given us the gift of faith, but it remains an

imperfect faith. “The slightest imperfection in our faith, if faith were our righteousness, would be

fatal to every hope.” 4 Therefore, if we are to have any assurance of our standing before God,

both as individuals and as the people of God, we must relax, even if we have but little faith to do

so, in the righteousness of Christ. This is justification: to be declared in the right. Charles Hodge

put it aptly: “To ascribe righteousness to anyone, or to pronounce him righteous, is the Scriptural

meaning of the word ‘to justify.’” 5

Even if it is erroneous to confuse justification with atonement, it must be recognized,

contra Wright, that the two go hand in hand. Wright accuses the Reformed camp of having

3
N.T. Wright, “Justification: The Biblical Basis and its Relevance for Contemporary Evangelicalism,” in The Great
Acquittal: Justification by Faith and Current Christian Thought, Ed. Gavid Reid, (London: Collins, 1980), p. 13ff.
4
Hodge and Bonar, 81.
5
Ibid., 151.

2
merged the two doctrines in an effort to, “stress the objectivity of justification, the fact that it

concerns the total achievement of Jesus Christ.”6 For clarification, I will define Atonement as

the process by which two or more parties, who were once at odds with one another, are

reconciled by a certain means. In the context of our discussion, Christ’s death is obviously the

means by which our sin is expiated and we are reconciled to God. Wright is correct in his being

careful not to confuse the two, but it is harmful to separate them, as he does, to such an extent

that they are seemingly unrelated. Because Christ atoned for our sins, we are justified; we are in

the right before God because Christ has repaired the once irreparable gulf of sin that remained

between God and sinners. It also remains true that we must not forget the larger scheme of

salvation history and our new membership within the people of God, but it is a result of the

atoning blood of Christ that Jews and Gentiles alike are justified and able to participate in such a

membership. Horatius Bonar was also concerned with clarifying that justification remains a

distinct “external” act: “That which is internal, such as our quickening, our strengthening, our

renewing, may be connected with resurrection and resurrection power; but that which is external,

such as God’s pardoning, and justifying, and accepting, must be connected with the cross

alone.”7

Charles Hodge methodically describes what, in effect, justification is: “…an act of grace

to the sinner. In himself he deserves condemnation when God justifies him.” But at the same

time, “It does not effect a change of character…..That is done in regeneration and

sanctification.”8 I think it particularly important to pay special attention to Hodge’s emphasis on

justification as an act of grace. For Wright accuses Luther of having made faith the principle

6
Wright, Justification, 13ff.
7
Hodge and Bonar, 85.
8
Ibid., 189.

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condition for our receiving God’s grace,9 thus rendering faith a work. This misunderstands the

way that Luther thought about faith. Certainly Luther made faith central in his understanding of

human action as either possessing, “righteousness, if faith is in it,” or, “sin, if faith is lacking.”10

But he understood that, “the righteousness of faith comes by grace, without the law.”11 Surely,

Luther would not have placed faith in a position of merit after having labored so ardently to

abolish the position that salvation could be achieved by any certain human endeavor. He

understood faith as the immediate result of grace. Faith in the atoning work of Christ is the

instrument of our justification, but it is a gift from God, not a meritorious work.12 For as Hodge

points out:

“The meritorious ground of justification is not faith;...The ground of justification is the

righteousness of Christ, active and passive, that is, including his perfect obedience to the
law as covenant, and his enduring the penalty of the law in our stead and on our
behalf.”13

Following the 1977 publication of Sander’s Paul and Palestinian Judaism, New

Testament scholars have been forced to reexamine the Pauline texts. For Sanders claimed that

for quite some time NT scholarship has incorrectly understood the nature of Second Temple

Judaism to be antithetical to Paul’s thought, and it was this misunderstanding that he intended to

repudiate.14 Sanders argues, as Stephen Westerholm so clearly elucidates, that the Jewish people

were not preoccupied with obedience as a method of salvation.15 Rather, they understood that

God had elected them as His covenant people by means of grace, and obedience was only

9
Wright, Justification, 13ff.
10
Martin Luther, Bondage of the Will, trans. J.I. Packer & O.R. Johnston (Grand Rapids: Fleming H. Revell, 1957),
290.
11
Ibid., 289.
13
Hodge and Bonar, 189.
14
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), xi.
15
Stephen Westerholm, “The ‘New Perspective’ at Twenty-Five,” in Justification and Variegated Nomism: The
Paradoxes of Paul, ed. D.A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004), 2.

4
required for “staying in”16 the covenant. Since second temple Jewish thought recognized that

salvation is by grace, the only flaw that Paul found with Judaism was that, “it is not

Christianity.”17 Again, Westerholm points out the importance of recognizing Sanders’ claim that

Paul did not find fault in the law for precipitating boastful attitudes: “The only Jewish ‘boasting’

to which Paul objects is that which exults over the divine privileges granted to Israel and fails to

acknowledge that God, in Christ, has now opened the door of salvation to Gentiles.”18

Thus, it is easy to see how some scholars have now arrived at the conclusion that Paul

had no critique of Judaism at all.19 It is important for us to examine these alternative positions

on Pauline thought, however different from our own interpretations they might be, in order for us

to better defend and understand what it is that we ourselves believe. Luther, Calvin, and the rest

of the Reformers had much to say on the topic of justification, and modern ‘Reformed’

theologians, such as Hodge and Bonar, have taken much from their words. But it is exactly the

line of thought of these scholars that the New Perspective calls into question. Thus, we must

closely scrutinize all positions on the topic of justification, and although it is impossible to

completely abandon all theological presuppositions, we must earnestly attempt to search the

scriptures concerning these matters.

Although different in their analyses and certainly short of Sanders’ conclusions, Tom

Wright and James Dunn have been among those who have reexamined the texts and found what

they consider to be some post-Augustinian and post-Lutheran presuppositions incorrectly

brought to the biblical texts. Bonar, speaking of Luther, praises the, “conscious justification,”

16
Sanders, 17.
17
Ibid., 552.
18
Westerholm, 3.
19
Cf. Neil Elliot, The Rhetoric of Romans: Argumentative Constraint and Strategy and Paul’s Dialogue with
Judaism (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1990). See also Stanley K. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews,
and Gentiles (New Haven: Yale University, 1994).

5
that, “started the man upon a happy life because relieved from the burden of doubt and the gloom

of uncertainty, it made his religion bright and tranquil.”20 Accordingly, scholars have tended to

highlight Luther’s emphasis on the individual’s standing before God. Contrarily, Wright argues

that, “‘Justification in the first century was not about how someone might establish a relationship

with God. It was about God’s eschatological definition, both future and present, of who was, in

fact, a member of his people.”21 As a result, scholars claim Luther got it wrong. Paul does not

speak to guilt laden individuals in order to answer their questions about how one is justified.

Timothy George, in his essay Modernizing Luther, Domesticating Paul: Another

Perspective, has attempted to rescue Luther from modern scholarship that misunderstands the

development of Luther’s thought. 22 While agreeing with Wright that, “we cannot go back to

Martin Luther as though he solved all our problems,”23 he argues for a fair presentation of

Luther’s theology. George points out that that it was Krister Stendahl, who also argues that Paul

should be read primarily with regards to the overarching theme of salvation history, who claimed

that Paul’s conscience was different than that of Luther. While Luther was morbidly

preoccupied with self, Paul was boisterous and un-assuaged by shame. Thus, Luther allowed his

personal struggles to become integrated with his exegesis of the Pauline texts. Dr. George

claims that this is not at all true:

Luther’s fear of divine righteousness was not the result of a maladjusted individual for
which we must concoct a psychotheological explanation; it was rather the normal
reaction of any serious medieval Christian well versed in the nominalist understanding of
salvation.

20
Hodge and Bonar, 104.
21
N.T. Wright, What St. Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1997), 119.
22
For this paragraph see Timothy George, “Modernizing Luther, Domesticating Paul: Another Perspective,” in
Justification and Variegated Nomism: The Paradoxes of Paul, ed. D.A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A.
Seifrid (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004), 437-447.
23
Wright, St. Paul.

6
Thus as Luther juxtaposed the nominalist thought of his day with Holy Scriptures, there existed a

constant dichotomy between the two. This prompted Luther to a paradigm shift of “biblical

theology over scholastic methods and assumptions.” Kierkegaard, not Luther, invented the

gospel whose aim was primarily to deal with conflicted consciences. Luther merely responded

to a dichotomous relationship between the claims of the scholastics and the line of thought set

forth in Holy Scripture. He responded in the classically Reformed manner: sola scriptura.24 With

the following quote from Luther’s works, Dr. George makes it clear that while Luther’s theology

was intimate, it was not egocentric:

This is why our theology is certain: it snatches us away from ourselves and places us
outside ourselves, so that we do not depend on our own strength, conscience, experience,
person, or works but depend on that which is outside ourselves, that is, on the promise
and truth of God, which cannot deceive.25

Just as Luther devoted himself to rigorous study of the scriptures, so shall we invoke the

scriptures to help us understand justification by faith. This will be a sort of dialogue between

Hodge and Bonar on the one hand and Wright and Dunn on the other, although I will make

reference to Calvin and Luther when necessary. For the purposes of brevity, only a few

important passages from Romans will be discussed, as it would require many volumes to

thoroughly discuss all of the relevant passages.

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone

who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is

revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’” Romans 1:16-17

makes the proclamation of the effect of the gospel that is to be the focus of the entire epistle; so it

24
For a witty exposition on the subject of Luther and the current NPP debate see: Stephen Westerholm, Perspectives
Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004).
25
LW 26:387; WA 40/2:589: Ideo nostra theologia est certa, quia point nos extra nos: non debeo niti in conscientia
mea, sensuali persona, opera, sed in promissione divina, veritate, quae non potest fallere.

7
is important to see how these verses fit into the current debate. Dunn here defines righteousness

as “covenant faithfulness,” thus understanding God’s acting righteously as the fulfillment of his

promises to his people, in effect, mending His own and bolstering them in the covenant. Thus,

the ‘righteous’ are not righteous on an individual level, but rather in conjunction with their

communal standing. 26 Wright has a similar understanding, and he renders the translation thus:

The gospel – the announcement of the lordship of Jesus the Messiah – reveals God’s
righteousness, his covenant faithfulness, his dealing with the sin of the world through the
fulfillment of his covenant in this Lord Jesus Christ. He has done all this righteously, that
is, impartially. He has dealt with sin, and rescued the helpless. He has thereby fulfilled
his promises.27

He then denies that this passage is related to justification by faith, in opposition to Jewish

legalism or moralism. The problem with the views of Wright and Dunn is not necessarily that

they are totally wrong. In fact, they help us gain a broader picture of the result of salvation. God

has kept his promises and maintained his covenant in the form of Jesus Christ, and we are to

rejoice in these facts. But this explanation avoids the question of how one participates in this

larger picture of salvation history. Horatius Bonar hints at the answer to our imperative question:

“Therein is the righteousness of God, which is by faith, revealed to be believed.” Therefore this

verse demonstrates the effect of having believed in the proposition of the gospel (Romans 1:3-4),

the effect of having been justified by faith. John Calvin explains that, “for righteousness is

offered by the gospel, and is received by faith.”28 Similarly, Luther states that, “…only the

gospel reveals the righteousness of God (i.e., who is righteous and how a man can be and

become righteous before God) by that faith alone by which one believes the word of God.”29 It

26
James D.G. Dunn, Romans 8-9, Word Biblical Commentary 38A (Dallas: Word, 1988), 41.
27
Wright, St. Paul, 126.
28
John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries Volume XIX, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 65.
29
Martin Luther, Luther: Lectures on Romans, The Library of Christian Classics Vol. XV, ed. Wilhelm Pauck
(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961), 17-18.

8
is easy to see that the focus of Wright and Dunn is the larger collective view of salvation and the

question of who exactly are the people of God. For Wright, to explain justification is to explain

the language of the covenant.30 For Bonar, Luther, and Calvin the emphasis is on a gospel

proposition to be believed by the individual. In order to fully grasp the grand picture of the

gospel, one cannot avoid the individual question of faith, which is inextricably bound up in the

larger question of who is in the covenant. Thus, when Paul says that, “God’s righteousness is

revealed in it [i.e. the gospel],” we must agree with Bonar that this is a righteousness “to be

believed.” The method by which God fulfills the promises of the covenant is causing sinners to

believe, by faith, the righteousness of God set forth the gospel of Jesus Christ.

“Not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law.” (Romans 2:13)

Wright claims that Paul approvingly makes mention of justification by works in order to prove

his latter point that, in an eschatological sense, God’s people will finally have his Torah

inscribed on their hearts and thus be ‘doers’ of the law.31 This interpretation is a neat scheme

which Wright uses to bolster his thesis that eschatology remains the principle concern here, but it

simply doesn’t make sense within the context of this verse. Paul does here concede that those

who do the law will be justified, but it is not until verses 26-29 that he clarifies who is actually

capable of such an achievement: none. Much time is spent in Romans 2 exploring the sinfulness

of Israel in order to convince them that they are equally as sinful as the Gentiles. Mark Seifrid

argues against those who purport that Paul’s arguments in Romans 2 are in an effort to chastise a

few Jews for their distinguishable sin. In stead he claims that Paul, “intends that his readers find

30
Wright, St. Paul, 117.
31
Wright, St. Paul, 126-127.

9
themselves in his words.” 32 He is making the point that Jews as a whole are in the same sinful

state as the Gentiles. Thus, in light of the fact that the, “hearers of the law,” are found to be

sinful, Charles Hodge’s words ring true:

“Could the law pronounce righteous, and thus give a title to the promised life to those
who had broken its commands, there would have been no necessity of any other
provision for the salvation of men; but as the law cannot thus lower its demands,
justification by the law is impossible.”33

Thus the fault of the Jews was not ethnocentrism, but rather an inability to perceive their

complete sinfulness. They, like the man in Luke 18:9-14 could not see their own sin, and, unless

Paul could help them to perceive it, they would not be justified.

The doctrine of penal substitution, whereby Christ’s righteousness is imputed to sinners

and human sin is imputed to Christ, began taking shape in Anselm’s theology, upon which

Luther heavily relied. This doctrine is what Hodge and Bonar have in mind as they listen to Paul

declare that God, “justifies the ungodly.” (Romans 4:5) Hodge makes a distinction between God

declaring an ungodly person to be godly, and God’s declaration that, in spite of a person’s sin, he

is declared to be in the right on account of what Christ has done for him.34 “Blessed is the man

unto whom the Lord imputes not iniquity” (Psalm 32:2) “Unto whom God imputes

righteousness without works.” (Romans 4:6) Imputation of righteousness is not the “legal

fiction” that Wright claims it to be,35 for it is true that we remain poor sinners even after we are

justified. But this is only half of the story; God as judge has, because of Christ’s work on the

32
Mark A. Seifrid, “Unrighteous By Faith: Apostolic Proclamation in Romans 1:18-3:20,” in Justification and
Variegated Nomism: The Paradoxes of Paul, ed. D.A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid (Grand
Rapids: Baker, 2004), 122.
33
Hodge and Bonar, 152.
34
Ibid., 193.
35
Wright, Justification, 13ff.

10
cross, enabled us to say with Bonar, “The sin bearer and I have exchanged names, robes, and

persons!”

Wright claims that this entire chapter [i.e. Romans 4] seeks to define, “covenant

membership,” that Abraham’s faith, “that God would give him a worldwide family despite his

extreme age – is the true badge of covenant membership.”36 Dunn, seeks to redefine what is

meant by ‘ungodliness.’ He claims that the Jews Paul was addressing would have understood a

person who is ‘ungodly’ to be a person who had no general regard for the law in its basic form.37

Thus, they would have understood Paul as saying, “God justifies the ungodly, i.e. the Gentiles

who have no regard for the law, because of their faith.” This, then, is what is meant when Paul

states that God’s righteousness is extended to all, apart from works of the law. A new era of

salvation history has come into play, the era of justification by faith, thus allowing Gentiles to

participate in covenant membership.

Like Luther and the scholastics, a dichotomous relationship exists between the claims of

Hodge and Bonar, and those of Wright and Dunn. Hodge explains very clearly that Paul is

speaking of God’s justification of inwardly sinful people, Jew and Gentiles alike. Dunn has

made it clear that Paul’s goal is to argue for the inclusion of the Gentiles, the ungodly on account

of their disregard for the law, in God’s ultimate plan of salvation. Simon J. Gathercole sheds

some light on this issue as he points out that in the OT, God chooses to bless David despite his

blatant sins of adultery and murder.38 Even so:

He is reckoned as righteous “without works.” The works here cannot refer merely to the
badges that positively mark out Israel as the people of God or the boundary markers that
negatively define Israel over against the other nations. Rather the reckoning of

36
Wright, St. Paul, 129.
37
Dunn, Romans, 228.
38
Cf. Thomas R. Schriener, Romans (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 219.

11
 righteousness without works here refers to the divine declaration of righteousness despite
the fact that David has acted un-righteously.39

Ungodliness cannot be understood to be the nature of those persons who have no general regard

for the law. As is stated above, Paul spent much time in Romans 2 urging his Jewish audience to

feel the weight of their sin and to realize that no justification is possible by adhering to Torah.

Therefore, ungodliness must be understood, as David’s ungodliness was understood, as inherent

inward sinfulness. This makes sense of Luther’s claim that saints have a constant realization of

their inward sinfulness, and they are therefore justified in light of Christ’s righteousness;

hypocrites are inclined to profess a basic inward righteousness, and they are therefore always

sinners before God.40

The few above passages have served to present the basic views of justification as posed

by the Reformed orthodox theologies of Charles Hodge and Horatius Bonar and those who

purport the “New Perspective on Paul,” namely Tom Wright and James Dunn. Hopefully, I have

made it clear that my espousal to the much criticized “Lutheran,” Paul, the Paul of Bonar and

Hodge, most closely synchronizes with scripture. Also, I hope that it is clear that although I do

not claim most of the positions of Wright and Dunn, I do think it important to recognize the

ecclesiological and eschatological ideas present in Paul’s writing. It is important to recognize

that I am a sinner, justified by faith in the righteousness of another, namely Christ Jesus, and that

this faith is a gift from the God who justifies the ungodly. But it is equally important to

recognize my place in salvation history, a history that begins to take shape in Genesis 15 and will

39
S. J. Gathercole, “Justified By Faith, Justified By His Blood: The Evidence of Romans 3:21-4:5,” in Justification
and Variegated Nomism: The Paradoxes of Paul, ed. D.A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid (Grand
Rapids: Baker, 2004), 159.
40
Luther, Romans, 124.

12
consummate when I stand amidst the people of God, all of whom will be clothed in the

righteousness of Christ, savoring the presence of God for all eternity.

13
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