The Justification Reader

內容簡介

Introduction -- The promise -- The heart of the gospel -- A. The special comfort of God's free grace -- The unique blessing of justification -- Basic definitions -- B. The centrality of justification in Christian teaching -- The decisive baseline of evangelical teaching -- Why is it a comforting doctrine? -- The limits of our powers of restitution -- C. Why a justification reader? -- It provides a model for classic Christian reasoning -- Why is justification teaching especially pertinent today? -- Simplicity -- On the genre of the "reader" -- Why have these texts remained shockingly inaccessible elsewhere? -- A welcoming note for Orthodox and Catholic readers -- Part One: Justification -- Chapter One: The ancient fathers on evangelical justification -- A. Typical misconceptions of classic Christian teaching on saving faith -- Peacemaking among the divided faithful -- My simple thesis -- Why the classic Christian consensus is not properly described as either European or Western -- Why this presentation of evidence is so urgently needed amid uncharitable polemics among Evangelicals, liberals, Catholics, and Orthodox today -- How both evangelical and liberal assumptions have tilted the perception of ancient Orthodox Christian salvation teaching -- Liberal misconceptions -- B. The unexplored connection: The fathers were not ignorant of the Pauline teaching of justification -- What is meant by "patristic"? -- The unity of the first five centuries contrasted with the conflict of the last five centuries -- Remembering the fathers' continuous immersion in the written word -- The practical impact -- Why dangerous? The alarming consequence of the rediscovery of the unity of the Body of Christ -- Why does this recognition have a painful edge for Protestants? -- Can Christian teaching be trusted if it lacks scriptural grounding and an Orthodox historical textuary? -- Ecumenical duologue needs these arguments -- Assessing the joint declaration -- The growing hunger for greater evangelical unity in the gospel -- The search for balance and the hazard of presenting too little evidence or too much -- Fairly assessing the evidence. Chapter Two: Justification defined -- A. Rehearsing the classic consensus on justification -- What is justification? -- The way to consensus -- Representative Reformed confessions on justification -- The Lutheran formula of Concord -- Baptist confessions -- Anglican tradition -- Wesleyan traditions -- Pentecostal traditions -- Arguing consensuality -- B. Introducing locus classicus patristic texts on justification -- Early Eastern voices on justification -- Early Western voices on justification -- A case in point: Consensual interpretation of Ephesians 2 -- Whether these voices harmonize: Modest objectives on doctrinal concurrence -- C. God's costly way of reestablishing a right relation with the sinner -- Comparing Old and New Testament interpretations of justification -- Old Testament anticipations -- Why do we so fiercely resist hearing this good news? -- White you were yet ungodly -- D. How divine love brings sinners into an uprighted relation with divine justice -- Unpacking the courtroom metaphor -- The judge and the law -- Elements of the courtroom drama -- Our advocate -- How clemency comes late int he trial -- The acquittal -- There is now no condemnation -- Behavioral righteousness distinguished from juridical righteousness. Chapter Three: Receiving righteousness from God -- A. Justified by His blood -- In what sense is Christ "made to be sin for us"? -- Expiation -- Justified by His blood -- Much more are we saved by His blood -- What is redemption? -- The exchange -- B. How righteousness is revealed -- Righteousness belongs to God -- Righteousness revealed in creation and conscience -- Righteousness revealed in the gospel -- Giving account on the last day -- C. Our appropriation of God's righteousness -- Christ is our only righteousness -- Sin made apparent by the law -- Works righteousness rejected -- is the law overthrown? -- Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision yields advantage -- Counting all loss for Christ -- The power of His resurrection. Part Two: Grace alone -- Chapter One: Why imputed grace dislodges all boasting -- A. Defining grace -- Scriptural terms for God's unmerited mercy -- The wooing of sinners -- B. The nurture of gracious ability -- The demeanor of grace -- God's own gift of Himself -- The gift -- Life as unearned gift -- Works and grace contrasted -- C. How grace grounds justification: By free grace we have full satisfaction -- We are justified as a gift -- Four related metaphorical arenas: Forgiving, pardoning, accounting, and reconciling -- Forgiving and pardoning: Are they distinguishable? -- Distinguishing pardon and justification -- Only God can justly forgive sin -- Who can pardon? -- Forgiveness as given -- D. Imputed righteousness -- The bookkeeping analogy -- Discharging sin and crediting righteousness -- The new accounting -- Remission of debt -- Summarizing the confluence of biblical metaphors -- E. The fathers teach the unmerited grace of the Triune God -- The grace of the Triune God -- The Spirit is the gift -- The God of all grace -- F. Receiving grace, growing in grace, living under grace -- Receiving grace -- Growing in grace -- Living under grace -- G. How Protestant definitions of grace confirm the patristic consensus -- Standard Lutheran confessions -- Reformed confessions -- A Congregationalist standard -- A Baptist standard -- Anglican standards -- Wesleyan standards -- Contemporary Evangelicals speak together -- Conclusion: Whether there is a consensual Protestant teaching of grace -- Chapter Two: Let the fathers speak for themselves on Sola Gratia -- A. By grace you are saved -- The fathers teach that we are freely justified as a gift -- The fathers teach that faith alone saves -- The fathers teach that grace is unsearchable -- The fathers teach that grace enables freedom -- B. The fathers teach that all boasting is out of place -- No room for boasting -- Glorifying God, not human works -- The strength of grace works precisely through human weakness -- The grace of resurrection -- C. Grace in action -- How grace works -- Grace can only be received -- D. The gift of faith and human agency -- Faith is a gift requiring a response -- Grace and active willing -- Receptive faith and its activity; active faith and its receptivity -- E. The grace of effectual calling -- Preparing grace leads to calling -- Sufficient grace -- F. New life under grace -- Dying to sin, living to God -- Dead in trespasses, raised up with Christ -- A special grace is given to the humble -- Freedom undiminished by grace -- Using without abusing grace -- The grace that is coming. Part Three: By faith alone -- Chapter One: Justifying faith -- A. What is faith? -- Faith defined -- Personal trust -- B. Faith classically defined in Hebrews 11:1 -- The certainty of what we do not see -- The simplicity of faith -- Risk-taking trust is required to learn of faith -- Faith's evidences -- Trusting beyond sight without doubt -- The condition for receiving justifying grace -- C. Justifying grace received only by faith -- The gift requires a response -- Without faith it is impossible to please God -- The power of faith -- D. How faith is congruent with justification -- Justifying faith -- Does faith as such justify apart from grace? -- Whether faith is a condition of salvation -- Faith requires renunciation, freely resolving to live a life of righteousness -- Chapter Two: Faith in God's righteousness -- A. Approaching God with grounded confidence -- Faith is the work of the Spirit -- Faith and the means of grace -- Gaining confidence in approaching God -- Confess with the lips what is believed in the heart -- Whether there is a patristic consensus -- B. Biblical examples of faith -- Faith as exemplified by Abraham -- Righteousness was accounted to Abraham due to his faith alone -- Distinguishing implicit from explicit faith -- C. Classic distinctions regarding faith -- Saving faith distinguished from general human faith -- General faith and the history of religions -- The possibility of faith -- Faith as believing and believed -- Contending for the faith -- how saving faith may be studied -- Historical faith and intellectual assent -- D. An act of mind, will, and heart -- Faith assents with the mind to the truth of the Word -- Faith consents with the whole will to surrender to the Word -- Faith trusts with the heart in the living Word.