Is Justification a "Legal Fiction"?
The current evangelical debate over justification has been on my mind lately. This morning I was prompted (by someone's comment yesterday) to revisit Bruce McCormack's essay, "What's at Stake in Current Debates over Justification? The Crisis of Protestantism in the West," which we published in Justification: What's at Stake in the Current Debates (IVP, 2004). This is the volume derived from the 2003 Wheaton Theology Conference and edited by Mark Husbands and Daniel J. Treier. It's a conference I regrettably missed!
I discovered a paragraph that I had marked in a previous reading. McCormack is responding to the charge that the typical Protestant understanding of justification is a legal fiction, and he is commenting on how justification relates to regeneration. Here is what he says:
My own answer would be that justification and regeneration are conceptually distinguishable "moments" in a single act of God. The term "justification" has its home in the judicial sphere. In justification, God pronounces a judicial verdict upon the sinner. But God's verdict and the divine word pronounced in it are not at all that of a human judge. The human judge can only describe what he hopes to be the real state of affairs. The human judge's judgment is in no sense effective; it does not create the reality it depicts. It seeks only to conform to an already given reality. God's verdict differs in that it creates the reality it declares. God's declaration, in other words, is itself constitutive of that which is declared. God's word is always effective. When it goes forth, it never returns to Him void. So a judicial act for God is never merely judicial; it is itself transformative. (p. 107)
I've said this many times myself, but not as well as McCormack. He says much more, of course. It's a rich essay. But I'll leave you to explore that on your own.
Posted by Dan Reid
at December 6, 2007 9:30 AM
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