Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification [Hardcover]

Alister E. McGrath (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 28, 1998 | ISBN-10: 0521624266 | ISBN-13: 978-0521624268 | Edition: 2

The doctrine of justification was of major importance at the time of the Reformation, and continues to be of immense significance in ecumenical dialogues. This book, which appeared in its first edition in 1986, is the only major study of the doctrine since 1870. Its many acclaimed features include an assessment of the concept of justification in the thought world of the ancient Near East, a thorough examination of the development of the doctrine in the medieval period, and a careful analysis of the sixteenth-century debates. This revised and updated edition brings together in one volume the material from the two volume first edition, while adding new sections dealing with recent developments in Pauline scholarship and ecumenical debates over the doctrine. It will be an essential resource for anyone wanting to understand historical theology, sixteenth-century church history or the modern ecumenical debates between Protestants and Roman Catholics.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'No seminary, divinity school or graduate research library should be without this contribution to scholarly interpretation of the historical and theological aspects of the doctrine of justification. The first major study since Albrecht Ritschl's Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versohnung (Bonn, 1870), this work is impressive in its comprehensiveness and quality. Not only does it span twenty centuries, it also covers many lesser-known figures alongside the acknowledged 'greats' of Christian thought. Its analyses are consistently precise, carefully attentive to detail and nuance, and its conclusions both circumspect and challenging.' Religious Studies

'No major work on the subject has appeared for over a century ... McGrath reviews and revises, overhauls and extends all previous studies ... A first class, scholarly, authoritative, balanced, informed study ... unique value as an historical and theological analysis.' Scottish Journal of Theology

'An admirable work ... an invaluable source and should be recognised as a standard work on the subject.' Heythrop Journal

'An impressive study ... it will undoubtedly be consulted by students of the doctrine of justification for a long time to come.' Journal of Theological Studies

'Indispensable' Epworth Review 'A valuable and important study' Theology 'A more than ordinarily useful scholarly tool ... With an admirable economy of expression that brooks no loss of clarity, McGrath provides skilful introductions to notoriously difficult and controverted positions, both historical and theological ... A book the clarity and conciseness and utility of whose expositions cannot be conveyed in a review.' Guy Mansini, Theological Studies 'This is an impressive study. It is both a valuable reminder of an important branch of the common stream of Christianity, and an invitation to further evaluation and fresh development.' George Newlands, Journal of Theological Studies

Book Description

An updated and expanded version of Alister McGrath's definitive study of the history of the Christian doctrine of justification. It brings together into a single volume the enormous amount of material from the first edition, while adding new sections dealing with recent developments in Pauline scholarship and ecumenical debates over the doctrine.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 550 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 2 edition (November 28, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521624266
• ISBN-13: 978-0521624268
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,116,089 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Alister E. McGrath is a historian, biochemist, and Christian theologian born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. A longtime professor at Oxford University, he now holds the chair in theology, ministry, and education at the University of London. He is the author of several books on theology and history, including Christianity's Dangerous Idea, In the Beginning, and The Twilight of Atheism. He lives in Oxford, England, and lectures regularly in the United States.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Comphrensive presentation on the doctrine of justification, August 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification (Paperback)

Combined from two volumes of the first edition, this second edition not only give you a comprehensive and continuous historical development of the Christian doctrine of justification, McGrath adds two more articles on his responses to "New Perspective on Paul" in recent Pauline scholarship and the recent agreement of Catholic church and Lutheran church on the understanding of "Justification" in this second edition. If you are interested in understanding more the rich meaning and implication of this crucial doctrine to Christian life both from the side of Catholics and Protestants, this book definitely meet your needs. It helps me a lot in making sound judgment on the issue whether there's really no fundamental difference between Karl Barth and the council of Trent (in general between Protestant tradition and Catholic Church) on the teaching of Christian doctrine of justification by faith, as Hans Kung had calimed that over thirty years ago.

22 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Faith in Justification Alone, August 31, 2006

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benjamin (USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification (Paperback)

This volume is one of those rare, indispensible works of historical theology that not only successfully delineates the history of a particular doctrine (that of Justification), but points to the weight of the debates that are its history (or, perhaps, histories) without any discernible polemic. That it relates to the Protestant Reformations goes without saying; that it contains a number of implications for ecumenism must, for some, be consciously remembered. This, the third edition, is a substantially re-written version of the two-volume first edition (the "second" edition contained the two volumes of the first in a single volume with no editorial changes). It comes across, then, very much as a potential work-in-progress; it does not seem strange, in reading the conclusion, to conceive of McGrath coming up with a fourth edition some years down the road - one that might, at the very least, smooth out some of the more disjointed facets of McGrath's 421 page narrative.

The book begins and ends in a historiographical context that is entirely appropriate for current debates about Justification: the state of current scholarship on the Bible, particularly St. Paul the Apostle. McGrath seems to concur with the thought of the most eminent of scholars that the Apostle not only never wrote a systematic work about justification, but that his doctrine seems to envision justification as three distinct, but related things: our past justification, our current state of being justified, and the promise of our future justification. Above all, it is in the context of evangelism to the Gentiles that the Apostle discusses "justification by faith"; to take this phrase and read into it late-medieval and Reformation-era debates is without warrant.

There is a danger in reading this book, for Justification is a doctrine that was not at the center of Christian reflection until the Protestant Reformations. When McGrath moves from St. Paul to St. Augustine, then, he discusses the place of justification within Augustine's work by labeling Augustine "the fountainhead". On the one hand, it makes sense to see Blessed Augustine as a fountainhead, for he truly is the father of all Western Christian thought; on the other hand, if McGrath means that Augustine is the fountainhead of the doctrine of justification, this contention is nowhere explained. Rather, it seems at odd with McGrath's statement that "the early Christian writers did not choose to express their soteriological convictions in terms of the concept of justification" (33).

Augustine appears to have held to the Apostle's teaching that we are justified by faith working through love (Gal. 5:6) and it is the centrality of love in Paul's own letters that is reproduced in Augustine's teaching on justification. However, unlike later medieval thinkers, Augustine's understanding of justification appears to be organically united with his understanding of the sacraments (especially baptism) and the nature of the Christian life as the path to deification (becoming by grace what God is by nature). McGrath is explicit that any understanding of Augustine's understanding of justification must note the centrality that deification holds in Augustine's thinking about the Christian life. Justification *is* deification for Augustine: the process of a past act, a present reality, and promise yet to come.

Ironically, the second chapter of the book (which is the longest at just over 150 pages) is titled "The Middle Ages: Consolidation". However, in reading this very long (and very dense) chapter, one gets a sense that the medieval era never reached any point of consolidation at all but that, as time went on, debates about justification became increasingly confined to academics in medieval universities and were conducted without reference to liturgy or Christian living - although the idea of extra-sacramental justification was by-and-large repudiated. Thus, justification appears to be a doctrine that developed in abstraction from the life of most Christians. This is in rather glaring contrast to a doctrine such as the Trinity, which was intimately tied up with evangelism, liturgy and the sacrament of baptism in the early Church. Justification, as the middle ages draws to a close, appears to be a doctrine without roots.

The Reformation continued the trend and, if anything, furthered it. Not only is justification finally divorced from the sacraments (whether or not one is justified in baptism appears to be anyone's guess), but the appeals by Protestants made to the Christian past during the Reformation debates are just plain wrong. Without even batting an eye, McGrath notes that the Protestant contention concerning justification as a legal fiction - that one is declared justified without being changed by God - was a complete novelty that had been explicitly repudiated by the early and medieval Church. He does a fine job surveying Luther's theology of justification - which is far more medieval than any of his Protestant counterparts (all of whom Luther considered heretics, save the developing Lutheran church) - and notes with approval the current work of the "Helsinki School" of Finnish Lutheran scholarship that has sought to readdress the anti-mystical tendencies of much Lutheran scholarship. This does not clear Luther from the charges of novelty, but it does present him as a more historically grounded figure than the other Reformers. In a thoroughly researched chapter, McGrath shows that the Council of Trent ultimately towed the line on this issue and held far closer to Augustine's and Paul's understandings of justification than any of the Protestant Reformers (or Catholic Reformers - it appears that "justification by faith alone" was actually in discussion among Catholics before it was brought to the fore by Luther!).

The history of Protestantism is touched upon in many ways by noting the various ways that Protestant groups looked at the question of justification. It is worth noting that Luther's contention would not only be blunted by Lutheranism, but that other Protestants would reject his understanding as entirely erroneous. It is here that McGrath most falters, however, by becoming intensely personal in his discussion of John Henry Newman's Lectures on Justification. McGrath is generous in his critiques of Newman's shortcomings (and cites Rowan Williams in support of his critiques), but repeatedly uses the personal pronoun "I" when discussing Newman's thoughts. Out of nowhere the reader suddenly becomes privy to what appears to be a long-standing personal wrestling that, even as it is conducted civilly, clearly reveals a tremendous level of personal engagement on McGrath's part. It's almost embarassing. And, it causes me to wonder whether or not at the end of the day, the polemic against Newman isn't a sign of McGrath's own spiritual wrestlings: the history of justification points to the validity of the Catholic view more than the Protestant view, yet McGrath in other writings is quite insistent on the validity of Protestantism. Newman, however, was a figure that tried to mediate between the two for a short time before ultimately deciding that Roman Catholicism was the true Church. Perhaps McGrath feels this same struggle? Regardless, his exploration of Newman's thoughts is unnecessarily personal and entirely out of place in this book.

There are other things to quibble with, such as McGrath's tendency to see the few areas of agreement between Lutherans and Calvinists in the 16th century concerning justification as "the orthodox doctrine of justification". Given the difficult history of this doctrine, naming these points of agreement feels more than a bit arbitrary. But, no book is perfect. Neither is any author. This dense tome stands, however, as a witness to ways in which Christians have, over the ages, in complete disagreement with one another, sought to attach a level of meaning to a word - "justification" - that points ultimately to the fact that our own failures are neither the beginning nor the ending of the Christian story. That such a history might be so magnanimously recorded by a first-rate historian such as Alister McGrath is more than enough of a reason to give thanks.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding Resource but Check the Primary Sources, October 20, 2010

By 

Quentin D. Stewart - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification (Paperback)

This is an extremely helpful resource, especially since the last attempt at an historical review of the doctrine of justification was done by Albrecht Ritschl approximately one hundred years ago and Ristschl has one two many axes to grind to be that helpful for modern readers who do share his late 19th century liberal Protestant German viewpoints. I offer the caveat, however, that even as McGrath is a one man publishing house who wrote this work in about 2 years it is not always reliable. For one thing McGrath will relie on secondary sources and scholars rather than primary sources. I myself noticed that McGrath relied on Robert D. Preus's assesment of justification for the age of Lutheran Orthodoxy rather than doing the very hard work of checking the primary sources. In this case Preus is one of the few English speaking experts of that age, otherwise one would have to read German to benefit from scholars such as Theodor Mahlmann or Latin for the primary sources. I myself questioned his description of Luther's understanding of justification and found it a bit dubious when McGrath claimed that Calvin's view of justification came closer to what Luther really intended. Such a statement given Calvin's unique view that justification and sanctification occur simultaneously as the "two principle graces" would strike any Lutheran as unlikely and biased towards a Reformed view of justification. Roman Catholics have complained that McGrath is not fair to St. Augustine as he argues that Augustine misinterprets "iustificatio" as "to make righteous" rather than "to declare righteous." This is key to McGrath's work since he then asserts that this fundamental misunderstanding of Augustine led to medieval Catholicism's misunderstanding of justification. Leading Cranmer scholars complain that McGrath was not correct regarding his description of Cranmer's understanding of justification as it developed mistakenly asserting that Cranmer too believed justification was "to make righteous" rather than "declare righteous." I am less inclined to criticize McGrath's interpretation of Augustine's understanding of justification as Roman Catholic scholars, but his assertions regarding Luther, Cranmer and the Caroline divines are questionable and these are just a few instances where I could provide substantial proof that McGrath has not done his homework. It is also unusual that McGrath begins with Augustine despite Origen's clear elaboration of a discussion of justification in his famous Romans commentary as well as Ambrose's oft and frequently quoted references to justification so fondly quoted by the Reformers of the 16th century. Nevertheless, despite some chincs in the armor the overall discussion is helpful as an overview, but should not be relied upon for scholarly work. Still a fascinating read and makes one wonder why the key doctrine of Protestantism has not received more comprehensive treatment earlier.