"The gift of salvation": Its failure to address the crux of justification

If, however, we derive our understanding of the human being and the human condition from the cross and resurrection of the incarnate Son of God, it becomes clear that the judgments of God, his pronouncement of condemnation and his verdict of justification, determine all that we are and shall be. Here the justification of the sinner is simultaneously the justification of God in his wrath against the sinner. Here we are reduced to nothing (redigi ad nihilum) without remainder in Christ's death. Here Christ's life is our life and justification. Here, in the ultimate sense, there is no transformation in our person, but rather a replacement of persons: "I have been crucified with Christ, I live, yet no longer I, but Christ lives in me" (Gal 2:20). This statement from Galatians is no isolated or incidental comment on Paul's part. It is central to his Gospel, and appears in varying forms elsewhere in his letters: we have been baptized into Christ's death to sin, and raised with him to a life of service to God (Rom 6:1-11); one died for all, therefore all died (2 Cor 5:14); if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation (2 Cor 5:17); God has raised us and seated us in heaven in Christ Jesus (Eph 2:6). The list could go on. Such statements are not to be swept away as mere picturesque speech on the part of the apostle. Nor are they to be relativized by meaningless qualifiers such as being "positionally raised with Christ" or other forms of Protestant mysticism. Paul predicates them of persons who still were subject to sin, in whom the old Adam was all too present, and who have not yet been raised from the dead. Taken in their contexts and taken seriously, these Pauline affirmations lead inevitably to the recognition that we are simul iusti et peccatores, at once righteous and sinners. Of course, if we loose this confession from the context of faith and hope, it becomes blasphemous. Rightly understood, this acknowledgment of our present condition, which I take to be the central theme of Romans 7, does not at all allow laxity or indifference. Just the opposite: it exposes the true character of the battle in which we are engaged. By the work of the Spirit, the cross reenacts its triumph in us again and again. We wage war against our very conquered selves. This, after all, is what Paul means by "the flesh" and "the Spirit" being opposed to one another (Gal 5:16-26). Consequently, as an affirmation that the whole of our salvation has been accomplished in Christ outside us, the simul is absolutely essential.

I am not of the opinion, then, that the recent response of the Vatican to the Joint Declaration of Lutherans and Catholics is irrelevant to the statement known as the "Gift of Salvation." 17 The Vatican statement singles out in particular the debate as to whether the justified person is still a sinner, reiterating the traditional Catholic positions that (1) the concupiscence which remains in the baptized is not truly sin; (2) that the mercy of God enables the cooperation of the human being in justification. For these reasons, "it remains difficult to see how, in the current state of the presentation, given in the Joint Declaration, we can say that this doctrine on 'simul iustus et peccator' is not touched by the anathemas of the Tridentine Decree on original sin and justification."18 This directness is refreshing, and must be taken into account.