Justification in Earlier Medieval Theology by Charles P. Carlson, Jr. (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 461 Justification in Ear.lier Medieval Theology. By CHARLES P. CARLSON, JR. The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1975. viii + 149 pp. Guilders 35. This book is an outgrowth of its author's doctoral dissertation (1964) at the University of Colorado, presumably in medieval history. Of its two principal sections, the first examines the theology of justification as it is set forth in the major medieval commentaries on Romans (those available in printed editions); the second investigates it as an object of speculation for theologians and canonists. The type of theological literature surveyed in the latter section is quite varied: the standard compendia of theology and canon law, but works on the sacrament of penance and penitentiaries as well. Indeed, Carlson's title suggests a field of inquiry more modest than he has in fact laid out, for his survey of justification-theology spans the period from Ambrosiaster to Scotus and the Nominalists, closing with a discussion of the impact of the received doctrine of justification upon the young Luther. To state Carlson's thesis is by no means an easy task, for he is attempting to sustain at least three theses at different levels of inquiry. The thesis closest at hand is that medieval theologians, with a large measure of homogeneity and continuity, treated the theology of justification as a sort of appendix to their theology of the sacrament of penance. A droplet in Ambrosiaster supposedly reflecting such a connection becomes a floodtide in the Nominalists. The second thesis is more ambitious: the history of medieval theology is the story of the loss of authentic Paulinism until its recovery by Luther, inasmuch as the Apostle's doctrine of justification can be taken as the touchstone of true Paulinism. The third thesis is still more global. It is associated with Reiko Oberrnann's thesis that in knowing and rejecting late medieval Nominalist theology, Luther can truly be said to have known and rejected an authentic and valid account of Catholic belief. Carlson seems to be submitting his study as a sort of prolegomenon to Oberrnann's thesis: what Luther learned from and rejected in Nominalism had been going on all along. The Nominalist doctrine of justification and penance developed in continuity with medieval justificationthcology as a whole. Several general comments are in order. First of all, Carlson seems to think that Paul's doctrine of justification vis-a-vis "works of the Law" is completely uniform in all its contexts of use. The author has no sense of the diverse Sitzen-im-Leben of Paul's letters: that the justificationdiscussion and the " works of the Law " in Galatians, for example, might have been conditioned by different factors than the discussion of these same themes in Romans. Secondly, the elusive "evangelical sense" of justification which Carlson takes as his measure is never fully defined. One is left with the impression that it is Luther's account of justification 462 BOOK REVIEWS which he means to identify with Paul's, although recent Pauline scholarship (e.g., E. Kiisemann) has made this identification less than totally congruent. Thirdly, Carlson lacks a sure grasp of technical terms in the history of theology. Frequently (pp. 40, 69, 85) he refers to the" forensic" character of medieval justification-theology without appreciating that it was Luther who hardened the judicial metaphor into a literal description rather than the pre-Nominalist medieval tradition (cf. Summa Theologiae I-II, 113, 2 ad 2). Similarly, Carlson is uncertain what" semi-Pelagianism" means. He taxes Giles of Rome with this charge (p. 62) , although in the text in question Giles is not considering the role of the will or of works in the initium fidei (the crux of the semi-Pelagian controversy). A fourth untoward general feature is a sectarian bias that rears its head from time to time: e. g. Pseudo-Raymo of Halberstadt is charged with " strident ... narrow sacerdotalism" (p. 40), although the cited texts make no direct mention of the ministry of priests. His footing is unsteady even on friendlier Reform ground, however, as in his assertion that medieval theology was completely ignorant of Luther's imputational theory of justification since it relied on a " divine acceptation " theory...