The Justification Reader (Classic Christian Readers) [Paperback]

Thomas C. Oden (Author)

Book Description

Series: Classic Christian Readers | Publication Date: July 2002

Oden uses a broad brush to paint his narrowly focused subject---salvation by grace through faith. Athanasius, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Basil, Jerome, and Augustine are just some of the figures Oden cites---church fathers whose teachings were restated nearly verbatim by 16th-century Reformers. An accessible and detailed search for the core of this theological linchpin.

Product Details

• Paperback: 163 pages
• Publisher: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company (July 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802839665
• ISBN-13: 978-0802839664
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #399,095 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Thomas C. Oden (Ph.D., Yale University) recently retired as Henry Anson Buttz Professor of Theology at The Theological School of Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. He is general editor of the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture and author of numerous theological works, including a three-volume systematic theology.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Promising but also disappointing, May 2, 2003

By 

Alvin Kimel (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Justification Reader (Classic Christian Readers) (Paperback)

...

Oden sets himself the task of demonstrating that during the first five centuries of the Church there existed a clear consenual teaching on justification that looked very much like the teaching of the Reformers. Unfortunately, I do not believe that he has accomplished his task. Specifically, I am not persuaded that he has shown that the imputation of righteousness is a consensual patristic understanding.

My big disappointment is that this book is so very Protestant. Oden ends up quoting Reformation and Protestant sources almost as much as he cites the Fathers. It's as if he could not make up his mind as to what he wanted this book to be.

Oden presents a good summary of the Reformation understanding of justification, with which I find myself in strong personal concurrence. But I wanted to hear the voice of the Fathers interpreted on their own terms, not filtered through Reformation conceptuality and distinctions. Can one really say that St. Augustine held the same view on justification as Luther, when the former understood justification/sanctification as a process? Can one say that the Eastern Fathers understood justification as an imputation of righteousness, when they understood salvation as our incorporation into the risen humanity of Christ, as theosis? I'm trying to keep an open mind. Indeed, I want to be persuaded that Oden's interpretation is true. I just don't think he has made his case yet.

So I do not think that Oden has accomplished the goal that he explicitly sets out for himself. And so I am disappointed. On the other hand, I am grateful and delighted to have before me now the patristic texts that he does cite. I suspect that many of them have been ignored by everyone, whether Orthodox, Catholic, or Protestant. I just wish he had given me more of the Fathers, and much, much less of the Reformers and their heirs.

Our harsh reviewer criticized Oden for not interpreting the cited patristic texts in their historical context. But I do not think this is a fair criticism. What Oden is doing is in fact very Patristic. He is providing us the words of the Fathers, on the assumption that the Holy Spirit has inspired the Fathers and that they therefore all speak, despite differences in language and vocabulary, with one voice. This hermeneutic is quite different than the historical-critical hermeneutic that we moderns typically operate from. The latter is not necessarily superior to the former.

I recommend this book. It is worthwhile to read and to have in one's library. You will find in it an excellent presentation of the Protestant understanding of justification. I'm not sure, though, that this Protestant understanding is identical to the Patristic understanding.

19 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Starting Point For Evangelicals, June 26, 2003

By 

Charles P. Huckaby "tnhuckaby" (South Central TN, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Justification Reader (Classic Christian Readers) (Paperback)

This is an excellent starting point for evangelicals
who are "gun shy" regarding the Early Church. Read
this work, and I believe you will be more willing to
actually pursue other studies in the realm of the
doctrine of the Early Church.

Many evangelicals fear the teachings of the Early
Church. In my experience this is due to a class of people
who claim to represent the "historic church" and
who use the the claim of following in the footsteps
of the fathers as a bludgeon to pummel evangelicals into submission.

Usually these are former evangelicals themselves who
have the new found zeal of former smokers. Such folks
are now on a crusade to save the world from tobacco.
These former evangelicals end up end up ridiculing
everything in their evangelical heritage in an almost
pathological manner.

But even these zealots have a good point.

To be quite honest, the Protestant Reformers in the
Reformed, Anglican, and Lutheran camps were dedicated
students of the Early Church and believed themselves to
be restoring the primitive Christian teaching.

Their followers in the modern era have distorted
the teachings of these reformers (and the scriptures)
with a modern proof text mentality that takes some
verses as "gospel" while shunning "inconvenient"
texts.

As a minister who has been blessed to be raised
in the evangelical church and who has now found a home
in the historic reformed church, yes, the New Testament church I
was always encouraged to seek, I say you will value this
book.

It shows how the Early Church affirmed the doctrine that
came to be known as Justification by Grace through Faith,
shows how the fathers of the church held the doctrine, and
yet shows how they did so in a way without modern evangelical
distortions of the biblical evidence.

Thomas Oden is to be thanked for his efforts. I wish the
readings had been republished in an appendix without his
commentary - only subject headings. But still this is a fine
work despite the detractors he has managed to create!

Thank you, Dr. Oden.

Once you have read this work, I encourage you to go on to
learn more about the teaching of the Early Church with the
conviction that it will help you go more DEEPLY into the
Holy Scriptures, not AWAY from them. And where you DIFFER from the teachings, at least you will be forced to justify your faith biblically. And isn't that what we who were raised in the evangelical church were raised to do anyway?

Pastor Chuck Huckaby - ...

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Fathers and Justification, April 25, 2009

By 

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

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This review is from: The Justification Reader (Classic Christian Readers) (Paperback)

It is very difficult to make the fathers sound "Protestant" when it comes to forensic righteousness. Imputed Righteousness, i.e, the alien righteousness that God imputes to us on account of Christ through faith due to NO merit of our own is a Reformation concept developed by Luther and Melanchthon over a period of years. The fathers tended to speak more about what we would call inherent righteousness, i.e., a righteousness that inheres in us by virtue of the work of the Holy Spirit. (And so Augustine described justification as "faith working itself out through love.") If Alister McGrath is correct, then fathers such as Augustine focused more on "being made righteous" as opposed to being "declared righteous" and so the patristic understanding of justification operated within the parameters of an inherent righteousness, rather than an alien one imputed to us. The medieval Scholastics, in turn, built their theology upon that of the fathers and so the notion of a forensic/imputed/alien righteousness appeared as a novelty during the Reformation era. That makes it difficult to agree entirely with Oden's arguments, but his book is useful in bringing more attention to the fathers' understanding of grace and justification, though they were certainly not Protestants.

Many of the fathers spoke wonderfully regarding grace and how we are saved by grace. Sometimes they were merely parroting the words of the apostle Paul, but that is certainly not always the case. It was not until the Pelagian heresy arose in the West that the fathers spoke ever more cautiously about how important the grace of God is to our salvation. In that sense there is doctrinal development in the early church as heresies compelled the Church to speak ever more clearly about hot topics. It is also safe to say from a Protestant perspective that certain forms of late medieval thought had lost sight of the fathers' works and words on grace. That would explain why those who began to read Ambrose and Augustine in their entirety during the late Middle Ages began to see themselves at odds with the scholastic theologies of their day. And so while the Fathers are not as Protestant as Oden would have them be, there is still good cause to provide citations that demonstrate the fathers' emphasis on grace. Ambrose, for instance, held a concept of justification that was close to that of Augustine and one even sees a gradual theology of grace developing as early as the third century. It is more difficult, however, to make the Greek fathers sound Protestant given their penchant for describing salvation with the metaphor of "deification," rather than the legal one St. Paul uses in his epistles. (Justification itself is a legal metaphor that was not so readily apprehended by the Greek mind with its platonic mindset. The Latin mind of the West found it easier to grapple with a legal metaphor given the Roman penchant for law and order.)

The fathers are sui generis. Neither fully Protestant nor Roman Catholic. They should be understood on their own terms, but I still recommend this work as a source of patristic citations on a much debated topic.