As is well known, Augustine (AD 354-430) held to a factitive view of justification. God makes godly those who were formerly ungodly, and that is the meaning of the Pauline ‘justification of the ungodly’ (Romans 4:5). The Latin verb iustificare for Augustine means ‘to make righteous’, and Augustine held to this understanding throughout all his extant works.[1] Humans are ‘made righteous’ in justification, which involves a real interior renewal by the Holy Spirit who inhabits the soul of the justified sinner. Justification is an ontological change of the human soul, an ethical and spiritual renewal of the sinner, a change of being and not merely a status. This righteousness comes from God and becomes intrinsic to the person justified and inheres within that person.
The renewal of the divine image in man, brought about by justification, may be regarded as amounting to a new creation, in which sin is rooted out and the love of God planted in the hearts of men in its place, in the form of the Holy Spirit.[2]
Such is rightly and commonly understood as the Augustinian doctrine of justification.
What is less well known is that Augustine in his writings that have come down to us, once and once only expressly contemplated a forensic and declarative meaning of iustificare and the underlying Greek verb δικαιόω. He is driven to it by exegetical necessity as he considered Romans 2:13, and despite his strong commitment to the view that justification is the making godly of the ungodly.
Augustine, in his A Treatise on the Spirit and the Letter (AD 412)[3] chapter 45, seeks to expound Romans 2:13, that ‘the doers of the law shall be justified’. At first, he does so by positing a factitive or effective meaning of justification, as ‘make just’ (iusti facti).
But the statement that “the doers of the law shall be justified (factores legis iustificabuntur)” must be so understood, as that we may know that they are not otherwise doers of the law, unless they be justified, so that justification does not subsequently accrue to them as doers of the law, but justification precedes them as doers of the law. For what else does the phrase “being justified” (iustificati) signify than being made righteous (iusti facti),—by Him, of course, who justifies the ungodly man (iustificat impium), that he may become a godly one instead (ut ex impio fiat iustus)?
Here, the Pauline phrase ‘shall be justified’ (iustificabuntur, iustificati) is understood by Augustine as a transformative ‘made just’ (iusti facti), as is usual in Augustine. The process of being made righteous must proceed and go before those who are thereby justified actually doing the law. It is a matter of necessity for Augustine. Justification must precede doing the law. Justification for Augustine is the process of the ungodly man becoming a godly one instead. It is a divine transformative enablement that issues in the faithful doing and performing God’s law. The exegetical process for Augustine clearly involved him bringing his factitive understanding of Romans 4:5 in to explain Romans 2:13.
Now, the question arises, ‘Is that what Paul meant?’ Did Paul mean in Romans 2:13, that the justified will do the law by divine enablement? I think not. Augustine’s exposition did not actually deal with the phrase ‘the doers of the law shall be justified’ (Romans 2:13), but a phrase that Paul did not write, ‘the justified shall be doers of the law’. To say the ‘the doers of the law shall be justified’ is to say something very different to and distinguishable from ‘the justified shall be doers of the law’.
To say that ‘the doers of the law shall be justified’, means that if someone ‘does the law’, then as a consequence and as a result of their ‘doing the law’, they will be ‘justified’ (whatever ‘being justified’ means). Augustine is writing this against the backdrop of the Pelagian controversy. In that context, there is no way that Augustine wants to say that as a result of and a consequence of a person keeping the law, they will receive transformative grace. His purpose, to the contrary, is to show that prevenient grace is necessary to go before and enable the performance of any law keeping by humans.
To say that ‘the justified shall be doers of the law’, in Augustine’s conception, means that if someone is transformed by God’s grace from being an ungodly person to being a godly person (that is Augustinian justification), then that prior transformative justification precedes and causes the subsequent doing of the law, just as the root of the tree causes the fruit of the tree. That is the very thing that Augustine wants to teach. But Romans 2:13 does not actually teach that ‘the ungodly are justified’. That is what Romans 4:5 teaches. What Romans 2:13 teaches is tantamount to saying that ‘the just will be justified’ (iusti iustificabuntur). That is, it is only those who are righteous people, as shown by their lawkeeping, who will be justified, whatever ‘justified’ means. Of course, if that is the case, what Paul is saying here is in complete opposition to what Augustine wants to say, and this would undercut Augustine’s entire argument. He cannot conceive of or contemplate that Paul is positing a basis for justification by the law that no human (except for the Lord Jesus Christ) has ever actually and in reality met (cf Romans 2:12; 3:10-20, 23). Augustine rather wants to show that the grace of God in justification enables the good works, which are the fruit of grace. But if doing the law precedes justification as its cause, then justification does not enable the doing of the law, but is the consequence of and the result of doing the law.
So Augustine then argues that what Paul really meant in Romans 2:13 was ‘the doers of the law shall be created’. I do not joke, I kid you not, for here are his words:
For if we were to express a certain fact by saying, “The men will be liberated,” the phrase would of course be understood as asserting that the liberation would accrue to those who were men already; but if we were to say, The men will be created, we should certainly not be understood as asserting that the creation would happen to those who were already in existence, but that they became men by the creation itself. If in like manner it were said, The doers of the law shall be honoured, we should only interpret the statement correctly if we supposed that the honour was to accrue to those who were already doers of the law: but when the allegation is, “The doers of the law shall be justified,” (factores legis iustificabuntur) what else does it mean than that the just shall be justified (iusti iustificabuntur)? for of course the doers of the law are just persons. And thus it amounts to the same thing as if it were said, The doers of the law shall be created (factores legis creabuntur),—not those who were so already, but that they may become such; in order that the Jews who were hearers of the law might hereby understand that they wanted the grace of the Justifier, in order to be able to become its doers also.
Along the way in his exegetical reasoning, Augustine acknowledges that by the phrase, ‘the doers of the law shall be justified’, what Paul intended was that ‘the just shall be justified’ (iusti iustificabuntur). But after a convoluted set of logical fallacies,[4] Augustine transforms ‘the doers of the law will be justified’ into ‘the doers of the law shall be created’.
D F Wright comments on this passage ‘Augustine succeeds, as only he could, in demonstrating that Paul’s meaning is that “justification does not subsequently accrue to them as doers of the law.”’[5] I cannot tell whether Wright is speaking tongue in cheek, but to my mind, there is no ‘success’ in Augustine’s reasonings. And if you like me feel that Augustine’s is an unsatisfying exposition of Paul’s statement in Romans 2:13, you are in good company, because this outcome was clearly not satisfactory even to Augustine himself, as we shall see.
Another exegetical option was available to Augustine. Augustine could modify his understanding of the meaning of ‘justify’, and accept that ‘doing the law’ is the cause, and not the result, of the divine justification spoken of in Romans 2:13. That is, Augustine could alternatively give ‘being justified’ the meaning of ‘being considered righteous’, and assert that the justification was a divine reckoning based on that persons pre-existing righteousness, shown by lawkeeping. With this adjustment, justification in Romans 2:13 would then be a divine forensic declaration that the law-doer is indeed just. The justification then is based on the person themselves and their law keeping, and thus would be an analytic justification, but it is declarative and forensic.
Augustine seems to have thought that his own reasoning was suspect and that Paul was not talking about a process of ‘making just’ in Romans 2:13. ‘As if sensing that he may not yet be enjoying a standing ovation’, [6] after his tortured reasoning above he immediately says this:
Or else the term “They shall be justified” is used in the sense of, They shall be deemed [just] (iusti habebuntur), or reckoned as just (iusti deputabuntur), as it is predicated of a certain man in the Gospel, “But he, willing to justify himself,”—meaning that he wished to be thought and accounted just (iustus haberetur et deputaretur). In like manner, we attach one meaning to the statement, “God sanctifies His saints,” and another to the words, “Sanctified be Thy name;” for in the former case we suppose the words to mean that He makes those to be saints who were not saints before, and in the latter, that the prayer would have that which is always holy in itself be also regarded as holy by men (sanctum etiam ab hominibus habeatur),— in a word, be feared with a hallowed awe.
Augustine is driven to suggest the possibility that was always there, that the justification spoken of in Romans 2:13 is a forensic attribution, not a factitive transformation. After wrestling to make his preferred view of ‘being justified’ fit the context of Romans 2:13, he sets out the option of what he understands to be the clear meaning of ‘justified’ in Luke 10:29 as ‘reckon’, ‘deem’, ‘account’, ‘regard’ or ‘consider’ righteous.[7] In that case, Romans 2:13 would speak of God justifying the just in that God would make a divine analytic declaration based on the good works of a person done in obedience to the law. That declaration would be that such a law keeping person is indeed righteous.
My suggestion why Augustine introduces this declarative meaning and posits justification as ‘deeming’, ‘regarding’ or ‘accounting’ is because he himself observes how untenable it is to maintain that the proposition ‘God creates the doers of the law’ as the teaching of Romans 2:13. Augustine’s convoluted reasoning does not finally prove convincing even to himself.
Wright observes that ‘Augustine does not apply this alternative reading to his problem text before moving on, but presumably, by implying the meaning “doers of the law will be counted as righteous,” he has secured his goal of avoiding works of law placed before and hence effecting justification.’[8] I do not think this is the correct analysis. Augustine has not avoided the works of the law being the cause of justification. Performing works of the law, on the ‘declarative’ understanding, must precede justification.
In fact, Augustine’s statement, that justification in 2:13 is a deeming or considering righteous, ends up rendering Paul’s proposition ‘the just shall be justified’ analogous to the proposition ‘the doers of the law shall be honoured’. Augustine rightly says of that second proposition, ‘we should only interpret the statement correctly if we supposed that the honour was to accrue to those who were already doers of the law’. That is, only those who beforehand were doers of the law are honoured. The honouring does not bring about the doing of the law, but the doing of the law brings about the honouring. This is true also of the justification of the just in Romans 2:13, on Augustine’s declarative interpretation. Romans 2:13 is about the doing of the law which precedes the process of justification, which here even Augustine sees is best understood as a reckoning, accounting, deeming, or considering.
Wright says ‘I have found no other occurrences in Augustine of this declarative sense of justification’.[9] That is, as to the form or nature of justification, this passage is the only spot in his extant literature where Augustine contemplates the forensic view. However, Augustine did co-locate forgiveness and justification when he says ‘Let each of you, already established in justification itself by having received the remission of sins through the washing of rebirth’.[10] Augustine never took up completing his commentary on Romans, so he never forced himself to consider this forensic possibility for δικαιόω in other places of Romans.
According to Wright, Henninger considered that ‘Augustine here alone entertained an alternative meaning but turned away from it’.[11] If by ‘turning away from it’, Henninger means that Augustine did not develop his own understanding of justification elsewhere in Paul in light of his own insight in Romans 2:13, or modify his general factitive view that ‘to justify’ means ‘to make righteous’, this is true. But if by ‘turning away from it’, Henninger means that Augustine rejected this interpretation as that which has the greatest explanatory power in Romans 2:13, it is not true. Augustine never said that the forensic view in Romans 2:13 was wrong. He himself presented it. His logical difficulties suggested it was the only way out. In this way, Augustine actually turned toward it.
However, it was and is a great shame for both his own exegetical efforts and the churches’ understanding of justification, that Augustine’s insight on the meaning of ‘justify’ in Romans 2:13 remained buried there, undeveloped by Augustine, a mere out-clause for his untenable and torturous exegetical reasoning, and unapplied to the rest the instances of δικαιόω in Romans and Paul. Imagine if Augustine did the work which logically followed his insight, and reconfigured his understanding of the meaning of δικαιόω when it appears later in Romans, in line with his insight that at its first occurrence in Romans that it is a deeming, or a considering, or an accounting. Just as Augustine was the first extant churchman since the Apostle Paul to clearly teach in writing an unconditional predestination to life – a hiatius of testimony for 350 years – so if Augustine had proceeded down the track of a forensic justification beyond Romans 2:13, he would have brought into the churches’ extant literature his own clear testimony to salvific forensic justification a thousand years before the Reformation. Perhaps the Reformation would have come a thousand years earlier; at the same time as the rediscovery of unconditional election, so too would have been the rediscovery of forensic justification.
Perhaps I should be thankful that under the pressure of the Pelagian challenge (or at least co-incidentally with it), Augustine changed his mind so as to apply Romans 7:14-25 to the believer and to teach that predestination is absolute and not according to foreknowledge. But it is also worth contemplating what might have been.
[1] A E McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification (Cambridge: CUP, 1998), 30-31.
[2] Ibid, 31.
[3] Latin text: Augustinus Hipponensis, De spiritu et littera, 26.45 [PL 44:228] online at http://www.augustinus.it/latino/spirito_lettera/index.htm accessed on 10 December 2016; English Translation: Augustine of Hippo, A Treatise on the Spirit and the Letter, ch 45, in St Augustine: Anti-Pelagian Writings, P Schaff (ed), P Holmes and R E Wallis (trs), The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co, 1887) NPNF1-05, at 102, online at https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf105.xi.xlviii.html and http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1502.htm accessed on 10 December 2016.
[4] As best as I can ascertain, Augustine introduces into his reasoning the errors of question begging and false analogy. Augustine assumes what he is trying to prove by likening ‘justification’ to ‘creation’. What he is trying to prove is that justification is like creation, in that before their creation, the men did not exist. So he posits the phrase, ‘the men will be created’ as an analogy to Romans 2:13, and asserts that before the act of creation, the men did not exist. That is simply what ‘to be created’ entails. He then sets up some things that he thinks are poorer analogies for contrast (but really turn out to be better analogies): ‘the men will be liberated’ and ‘the doers of the law will be honoured’. Augustine raises them because the men obviously existed before the action of the passive verb, and the doers of the law clearly do the law so that they can be honoured, again the action of the passive verb. Augustine, however, does not want these things to be the analogy with Romans 2:13. So he then asserts that the true analogy of the ‘the doers of the law shall be justified’ is that ‘the doers of the law shall be created’. This is simply begging the question. The premise of this is that the concept of ‘justified’ shares the quality with ‘created’, that before the action mention by the passive verb, the state of being the verb describes did not exist. The point where Augustine’s process of reasoning breaks down and he tires of his convolutions seems to be when he realizes that Romans 2:13 means not ‘the doers of the law shall be created’ but ‘the just shall be justified’. In that case, the proposition ‘the doers of the law shall be honoured’ or ‘the men shall be freed’ actually provides a better analogy to ‘the just shall be justified’, than ‘the doers of the law shall be created’. That is, in Augustine’s own words, ‘we should only interpret the statement correctly if we supposed that the honour (or justification, as the case may be) was to accrue to those who were already doers of the law’. Under the weight of all this tortured reasoning, he then posits a far better, coherent and simple exegesis, which undercuts his own argument: The law keepers will be deemed righteous because they have previously kept the law. But once Augustine provides this possibility, he has thereby shown all of his previous reasoning to be fallacious.
[5] D F Wright, ‘Justification in Augustine’ in B L McCormack, Justification in Perspective: Historical Developments and Contemporary Challenges (Grand Rapids/Edinburgh: Baker/Rutherford House, 2006), 55-72 at 61.
[6] D F Wright, ‘Justification in Augustine’, 61.
[7] Compare Luke 7:29, 35; 10:29; 16:15, none of which can mean a factitive ‘make just’, and thus support the notion that Luke 18:14 is likewise to be interpreted as ‘considered’ or ‘accounted’ just.
[8] D F Wright, ‘Justification in Augustine’, 62.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Augustine, Sermon 158.4.4; 158.5.5 [PL 38:864-65], cited by D F Wright, ‘Justification in Augustine’, 70-1.
[11] Ibid, 62 fn 27, citing J Henningere, S Augustinus et Doctrina de Duplici Justitia (Mödling, Austria: St Gabriel, 1935), 50.