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216 Bruce D. Marshall 12 Beatus vir Aquinas, Romans 4, and the Role of “Reckoning” in Justification Transformation and Imputation Since the sixteenth century it has often seemed that the theological reading of Scripture yields two quite different ways of thinking about the justification of the sinner. One centers on holiness, the other on forgiveness; one on God’s interior work, the other on his exterior word; one on love, the other on faith; one is Catholic, the other Protestant. These two different ways of looking at justification go by various names. The one focusing on holiness is often called an “ontological” account of justification, the one focusing on forgiveness a “forensic” or “juridical” account. It might be more helpful to call the former a “transformational” theology of justification, and the latter a “dispositional ” theology. The one centers on God’s loving transformation of sinners into saints, the other on God’s merciful disposition to forgive sinners who daily prove that they are not saints. Both views of justification can and do appeal to the teaching of St. Paul, especially that of the letter to the Romans. Each, moreover, is clearly aware that Paul’s teaching contains both “transformational” and “dispositional” elements . From the time of the Reformation, however, each view has tended to play one element off against the other. So the Council of Trent, for example, defines the formal cause of justification as the righteousness or justice of God (iustitia Dei). “Formal cause” here means whatever quality or characteristic makes it possible correctly to attribute to a person the righteousness sufficient for salvation. This is not, Trent observes, the iustitia by which God himself is formally just, that is, the divine attribute of justice that makes God just and is the supreme measure of all justice . This is unique to God, an aspect of the divine nature, and so can never be The Role of “Reckoning”   217 possessed by a creature. The formal cause of our justification is that iustitia by which God makes us just or righteous, the justice he gives us rather than the justice he himself has and is.1 So far the two views are on the same page, but Trent immediately goes on to say that having received the gift of this righteousness from God, “we not only are reckoned to be just, but truly are just, and are rightly described as such.”2 Consequently, as the relevant canon later insists, any claim that human beings are justified “by the imputation of Christ’s righteousness alone, or by the forgiveness (remissione) of sins alone .  .  . or that the grace by which we are justified is merely the favor of God,” must be rejected as against the Catholic faith. God’s imputation, forgiveness, and favorable disposition toward us are not enough for justification. They have their place, but there is no justification of the ungodly “without the grace and love which have been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, and inhere therein”—an invocation of Romans 5:5, one of the favorite Pauline texts in transformational theologies of justification .3 Trent evidently grants that justification must include dispositional or juridical elements, but it does so mainly by insisting that these are not sufficient for justification. What positive role this part of the Apostle’s teaching on justification might play is not explicitly discussed. It is, in other words, left open or undecided, a subject for further theological reflection, of which there has been much. By contrast, Romans 4 belongs among the favorite texts of dispositional or forensic ways of thinking about justification, with its extended treatment of the faith of Abraham, prompted by Genesis 15:6. Faith was “reckoned to him as righteousness” (4:3, 9, 22) without any works, entitling us to believe that we, like Abraham, will be counted righteous before God not as the reward due our works, but by faith in him who justifies the ungodly (cf. 4:5, 23–24). Thus the Augsburg Confession teaches that we are not justified “by our own 1. Session VI, Decree on Justification, ch. 7: “Demum unica formalis causa est iustitia Dei, non qua ipse iustus est, sed qua nos iustos facit.” Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, ed. Heinrich Denzinger and Peter Hünermann, 40th ed. (Freiburg: Herder, 2005), 1529 (hereafter DH). This thought stems from Augustine, and had also been invoked regularly by the Protestant reformers: “Dicitur etiam iustitia dei non solum illa qua ipse iustus...

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