Justitia Dei: The Cross and the Righteousness of Faith
We are now in the midst of Holy Week, during which time Catholics are called to reflect upon the core spiritual and moral truths surrounding the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ. As I’ve studied and prayed many of the liturgical texts connected with Holy Week, one thing I’ve noticed was that one important theme that suggests itself is the reality that Christ’s Death is intimately connected with a specific spiritual reality, namely Divine Justice.
By this, I do not mean simply the notion that God is angry with us for our sins, and that punishment must be meted out; rather, I am understanding justice in a broader sense. In this first reading for the Monday in Holy Week, the Church reflects upon the words of Isaiah 42:1-7, which states, in part,
Here is My servant whom I uphold, My chosen one with whom I am pleased. Upon him I have put My Spirit; He shall bring forth justice to the nations. … He will not grow dim or be bruised until He establishes justice on the earth; the coastlands will wait for His teaching. (Isaiah 41: 1, 4)
The Servant of God, the future Messiah sent to fulfill God’s Plan of Salvation, is the One Who will establish justice upon the earth. What sort of justice is this? Traditionally, Catholic theologians have interpreted the term “justice” as referring to that virtue whereby we maintain rightly-ordered relations with others. Christ does call for this in His teachings, most notably in His (sometimes strongly-worded) commands to love our neighbor and care for the poor (see Mark 12:30-31, Matthew 25:31-46). Yet, such elements of the Christian way of life, as important as they are, are but external expressions of a more internal spiritual state. True holiness implies right order within the soul, and thus rightly ordered relationships with others are the result of a rightly ordered state of the soul. Note, for example, how St. Thomas Aquinas describes the state of the human race prior to the Fall as a state of “original justice”, saying the following:
Therefore, the sin of our first parent had a formal element, namely, turning away from the Immutable Good [God], and a material element, namely, turning toward a transient good. And our first parent lost the gift of original justice because he turned away from the immutable good. And his lower powers, which should have been elevated to reason, have been dragged down to lower things because he inordinately turned toward a transient good. Therefore, even regarding those who came from his [Adam’s] stock, both the higher part of the soul lacks the requisite ordination to God, which it had through original justice, and the lower powers are not subject to reason. … And so the lack of original justice regards the will, and the proneness to desire inordinately, which we may call concupiscence, regards the lower powers moved by the will. (De Malo, Q. IV, A. 2, respondeo)
For Aquinas, the soul is that which makes a living thing, well, living. Since everything that makes a being physically alive exists only because of the soul, every physical quality is rooted in some power or faculty of the soul. For rational creatures, there are two broad categories of powers: the passions (sub-rational desires whereby we desire some physical good) and reason. The soul, prior to the Fall, was in what Aquinas calls a state of “original justice,” with the term “justice” here meaning “right order.” To say that the soul was rightly ordered is to say that each of the powers of the soul related to one another, and to man’s ultimate end, as they ought to have. In a state of original justice, the passions were subject to reason, the highest faculty in man, and reason remained firmly focused on God, Who, being the Highest Good and the Source of all goodness, was man’s proper end. Reason therefore governed all our lower faculties in such a way so as to order them towards man’s final end. Yet, when Adam sinned, he allowed his reason to focus its attention primarily on material goods, and therefore be controlled by the passions instead of controlling them. Adam’s sin corrupted his nature in such a way so that not only did his soul lack the proper moral order at the time in which he sinned, but now had a proclivity towards such a state. Thus, when Adam and Eve had children, human nature as passed on to their descendants was not human nature as it was created by God, but human nature as it was corrupted by the effects of their sin. It is for this reason that humans fall into sin so frequently: human nature lacks internal justice; although by nature it is oriented towards union with God, he is rendered too weak to actually to what by nature he should do, and feels a strong urge to act in a manner contrary to the attainment of this end.
Original sin is thus a negation of original justice, and therefore a weakening of our capacity to attain perfect union with God. St. Augustine, writing in the early A.D. 5th century, speaks similarly, quoting from a teaching attributed to St. Ambrose, “To be spotless from the beginning is an impossibility to human nature,” which Augustine interprets in the following manner: “In this sentence the venerable Ambrose does undoubtedly predicate feebleness and infirmity to that natural ‘capacity,’ which Pelagius refuses to faithfully regard as corrupted by sin, and therefore boastfully extols. … For through the sin of the first man, which came from his free will, our nature became corrupted and ruined; and nothing but God’s grace alone, through Him Who is the Mediator between God and men, and our Almighty Physician, succors it.” Augustine was here responding to the early heretic Pelagius, who asserted that it was possible for man, by his own power, to strive towards salvation even without the assistance of Divine Grace. Augustine affirms that human nature is so corrupted by the effects of the Fall that it is impossible for him to strive towards salvation without his nature being healed by Grace, this Grace being mediated to man by Jesus Christ, the God-man.
The primary goal, and effect, of what Christ accomplished on the Cross was, therefore, to reestablish justice (right order) in the soul. It is for this reason that the term often used in Scripture of the sinner being made righteous in the sight of God is “justification.” Now, many Christians of the Protestant tradition, or those sympathetic towards the theological positions of Protestantism, that justification, as used in Scripture, has no bearing on out internal spiritual state, but is used solely or primarily with how we relate to God, our status before God. For example, if one were to look at Romans 5:1 (“Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God…”), or Romans 5:9 (“How much more then, having been justified by His Blood, will we be saved through Him from the wrath.”), the term used here fore “justified” in the original Greek is Δικαιωθέντες (dikaiothentes), which was a variant of the word δικαιόω (dikaioo), meaning “to render just or innocent.” This term was was, in the ancient world, seen as primarily legal in nature; it made no claims about the depths of our inner moral or spiritual state, but rather had to do solely or primarily with our status before the law or the State: Did we do anything wrong? Were we innocent or guilty of the crime we committed? We see this in the fact that the word δικαιόω is derived from the Greek word δίκη (dike), meaning “justice,” which was often interpreted as referring to a legal decision or the execution thereof, or to the guiding legal or moral principles of such a decision. This can be seen in the fact that a secondary meaning of the word δίκη is “to punish” or as a referent to the act of taking vengeance on another for a wrongdoing.
Thus, in the standard Protestant reading, Christ on the Cross paid the price of our sin on our behalf, and justification is that whereby God declares those who trust in Christ’s death as the sole means of salvation to be innocent, no longer held accountable for, their sin. Yet, the reason why the Catholic Church rejects the traditional Protestant reading of St. Paul’s teachings on justification is because it separates one specific element of the Pauline view on salvation from its larger spiritual context.
For St. Paul, there is no separating acquittal of sin from the broader concept of spiritual renewal. St. Paul believes that at the moment of Baptism, that moment in which we are initiated into the Christian way of life, we die and rise with Christ, something that changes or renews us in some way. As St. Paul writes,
We know that our old self was crucified with him, so that our sinful body might be done away with, that we might no longer be in slavery to sin. For a dead person has been absolved from sin. If, then, we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him. We know that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more; death no longer has power over Him. As to His death, He died to sin once and for all; as to His life, He lives for God. Consequently, you too must think of yourselves as [being] dead to sin and living for God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, sin must not reign over your mortal bodies so that you obey their desires. (Romans 6:6-9)
Baptism includes being united to Christ in His Death and Resurrection. One of the effects of this is being absolved from sin; nonetheless, Baptism also sets in motion that process by which we participate in the Resurrection of Christ, and therefore overcome death, as well as being freed from slavery to sin, slavery to sin being something which St. Paul, like Aquinas after him, sees as having our actions motivated by the passions rather than love of God and neighbor. Therefore, the starting point of the Christian life includes a renewal of the human person as well as the forgiveness or acquittal of sin.
Augustine testifies to this fact when he applies St. Paul’s belief that justification, that is, righteousness before God, comes apart from the Old Law to his debates with the Pelagians:
Wherefore, says the apostle, “the law was our schoolmaster in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:24). Now this very thing is serviceable to proud men, to be more firmly and manifestly concluded under sin, so that none may pre-sumptuously endeavour to accomplish their justification by means of free will as if by their own resources; but rather “that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Because by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.” (Romans 3:19-21) How then manifested without the law, if witnessed by the law? For this very reason the phrase is not, “manifested without the law,” but “the righteousness without the law,” because it is the righteousness of God; that is, the righteousness which we have not from the law, but from God — not the righteousness, indeed, which by reason of His commanding it, causes us fear through our knowledge of it; but rather the righteousness which by reason of His bestowing it, is held fast and maintained by us through our loving it — “so that he that glories, let him glory in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:31) … What object, then, can this man gain by accounting the law and the teaching to be the grace whereby we are helped to work righteousness? For, in order that it may help much, it must help us to feel our need of grace. No man, indeed, is able to fulfil the law through the law. “Love is the fulfilling of the law.” (Romans 13:10) And the love of God is not shed abroad in our hearts by the law, but by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us (cf. Romans 5:5) Grace, therefore, is pointed at by the law, in order that the law may be fulfilled by grace. … Although there are many who appear to do what the law commands, through fear of punishment, not through love of righteousness; and such righteousness as this the apostle calls “his own which is after the law” — a thing as it were commanded, not given. When, indeed, it has been given, it is not called our own righteousness, but God's; because it becomes our own only so that we have it from God. These are the apostle's words: “That I may be found in Him, not having my own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Philippians 3:9). So great, then, is the difference between the law and grace, that although the law is undoubtedly of God, yet the righteousness which is “of the law” is not “of God,” but the righteousness which is consummated by grace is “of God.” The one is designated “the righteousness of the law,” because it is done through fear of the curse of the law; while the other is called “the righteousness of God,” because it is bestowed through the beneficence of His grace, so that it is not a terrible but a pleasant commandment, according to the prayer in the Psalm: “Good are You, O Lord, therefore in Your goodness teach me Your righteousness”; that is, that I may not be compelled like a slave to live under the law with fear of punishment; but rather in the freedom of love may be delighted to live with law as my companion. When the freeman keeps a commandment, he does it readily. And whosoever learns his duty in this spirit, does everything that he has learned ought to be done.
The Old Law was something meant to prepare us that whereby we are justified - namely the saving mission of Christ - but could not, in itself, bring about righteousness. When one realizes the role the Old Law plays in God’s Plan of salvation, one realizes that it was meant to do away with pride, which leads sinners to believe that through the proper use of free will alone, without any external or higher source of spiritual assistance, we can attain righteousness and therefore approval from God. No matter how hard man tries, he can never be righteous through obeying the Law by his own power alone, since man, while still contaminated by the effects of sin, obeys the Law of God out of self-interest, more specifically a fear of punishment. Yet, while one who obeys the Law out of fear of punishment fulfills the letter of the Law, he fails to fulfill the true intention of the Law, for the most general reason why God reveals His commands is to facilitate love of God and neighbor. We become righteous before God when we obey the Law out of love, and this is possibly only through grace. Through grace, the Holy Spirit indwells the soul of the believer, and through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we are filled with the Divine Love, which in turn enables us to act out love, thereby getting to the heart of what the Law is all about.
To say that we are justified apart from the Law means that we are justified by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, not by our own attempts to obey the Law. But note that Augustine says that the righteousness that comes through the Spirit makes us a partaker in the Divine Love, thereby enabling us to love God and neighbor as we ought. Thus, for Augustine, one of the most influential figures of the Western Christian tradition, justification includes, in part, a radical reorientation, habituating man to obey God out of love rather than out of fear, and enabling us to live in accordance with the virtue of charity, whereby we can fulfill the Divine Commands. St. John Chrysostom speaks of justification along broader terms: in his Seventh Homily on Romans, he quotes from Romans 3:24-25, which state in part that we are justified because God “declare[s] His Righteousness.” Chrysostom writes,
What is declaring His righteousness? … [T]he declaring of His righteousness [is] not only that He is Himself righteous, but that He doth also make them that are filled with the putrefying sores of sin suddenly righteous. … Doubt not then: for it is not of works, but of faith: and shun not the righteousness of God, for it is a blessing in two ways; because it is easy, and also open to all men. Be not abashed and shamefaced. For if He Himself openly declareth Himself to do so, and He, so to say, findeth a delight and a pride therein, how comest thou to be dejected and hide thy face at what thy Master glorifieth in?
The righteousness of God is not only that whereby God is righteous in Himself, but is also that whereby God declares repentant sinners to be righteous. Yet, what does it mean for God to declare us righteous? Chrysostom compares the soul of the sinner to a body covered with sores, which implies something about the fundamental ontological state of the soul of the sinner. In his Tenth Homily on Romans, Chrysostom, commenting on Romans 5:14-16, notes that prior to the fulfillment of God’s Plan of salvation, the human person is a slave to the passions. The revelation of the Old Law tells is in clear and direct terms what man ought to do and what he ought to avoid, but was unable to empower us to actually live in accordance with the Will of God. There is thus a contrast between what happens in the revelation of the Law and what happens in Baptism: “[T]he Law convinceth of transgression,” Chrysostom preaches, “but grace undoes transgression”; yet, Chrysostom goes on to say that grace undoes transgression “by forgiving [our sin].” The Law underscores our spiritual weakness and creates guilt for sin; grace brings about the forgiveness of sin. There is thus an element of justification that includes acquittal of sin. Yet, Chrysostom goes on to say, “For it is promised them crowns after toils, but this (i.e., grace) crowned them first, and then led them to the contest.” That is to say, God crowns us with His Grace in order to prepare us for spiritual battle. Those who remain loyal to God amidst the spiritual battle that defines the life of the Christian remain in a state of righteousness, but those who fall into sin fall into spiritual death. Here, Chrysostom creates a contrast between righteous and spiritual death.
Thus, Chrysostom equates justification with the forgiveness of sins, spiritual purity, and spiritual life. Considering this broader ideological context, it makes sense that the Council of Trent, in responding to the Protestant understanding of justification, defines justification in the following manner: “[J]ustification…is not only a remission of sins but also the sanctification and renewal of the inward man through the voluntary reception of the grace and gifts whereby and unjust man becomes just, and from being an enemy becomes a friend, that he may be ‘an heir according to the hope of life everlasting.’ [cf. Titus 3:7]” Justification includes the forgiveness or acquittal of sin, the sanctification of the individual, the establishment of right order in the soul, and the establishment of friendship with God, as a result of which we become heirs to the Kingdom of Heaven. Justification is merited for us by grace by Christ, Who, through His Passion and Death, made satisfaction for our sins and, in doing so, merited grace for us. God the Father is both the efficient and formal cause of our justification, the Council declares, insofar as it is through His free gift of Grace that the Holy Spirit is sent to indwell the soul of the believer, thereby producing righteousness in us, righteousness in man being the result of the Holy Spirit enabling us to participate in the justice of God (thereby making Divine Righteousness the form of human righteousness). Yet, God declares us righteous on the merits of what Christ has done for us. Thus, the Council Fathers can continue, “…[W]e are therefore said to be justified gratuitously, because none of those this which precede justification, whether faith or works, merit the grace of justification.” And again, “If anyone says that man can be justified before God by His own works…without Divine grace through Jesus Christ, let him be anathema.”
Thus, in the final days of Lent, and as we enter into the Easter Season, we are entering into a time in which we are called to reflect upon the core events surrounding our salvation with ever more intensity. As we do so, let us realize that what Christ has done, both in terms of its initial effects and in terms of its long-term consequences, is ordered not only towards something external, but towards something internal, namely the radical transformation of the sinner. Christ died in order to restore justice within the soul, the external effect of which is the establishment of justice in our relationship with others. Therefore, the external elements of our salvation (how we relate to God and neighbor) and the internal element (the state of our soul) cannot be separated, but rather changes in one necessarily entail changes in the other.
Sources
James Strong, A Concise Dictionary of the Words in the Greek New Testament (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1890) pg. 23, entry #1344 and 1349
St. Thomas Aquinas, De Malo, Q. 4, A. 2, edited by Brian Davies, translated by Richard Regan (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
St. Augustine, On the Grace of Christ and on Original Sin, Book IX and XIV, translated by Peter Holmes and Ernest Wallis, accessed on: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/15061.htm
St. John Chrysostom, “Homily VII on Romans,” in Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, edited by Paul A Böer, Sr., translated by Rev. J.B. Morris (Edmond: Veritatis Splendor Publications, 2012)
“Decree Concerning Justification,” chapters 7 and 13, canon 1, in The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, translated by Rev. H.J. Schroeder, O.P. (Charlotte: TAN Books, 1978)