Jungel on Justification

Eberhard Jungel�s 2001 volume, Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith (T&T Clark) has a lot of useful material (and some not so useful material). I found Chapter 3, �The Justification Event�Eto be the most useful. Below, I�ve summarized his arguments from that chapter.

1) Jungel starts with the Aristotelian observation concerning the connection of justice and law: �evidently all lawful acts are in a sense just acts,�EAristotle said. The OT shares this view: �For life�s relationships are so ordered through law and justice, that all people included in those relationships come into their rights without having to take them . . . . Justice here means guiding the wealth of life�s relationships in such a way as to guarantee that people�s lives are successful. Where justice rules, peace �Eshalom �Eflows forth�E(p. 53).

2) These relationships are primarily those of man to God, of man to the social and natural environment, and of man to himself. Injustice occurs when one�s relationship with self is taken to the point of �reckless self-actualization,�Eso that others, including God, become simply means for the pursuit and realization of the self�s projects. This �reckless self-actualization�Edestroys relationships, and this, Jungel argues, is part of what the Bible means by �death�E �the Bible sees death at work wherever relationships break down . . . . Even life itself is marked with the sign of death�E(p. 55). It is also a fundamental teaching of Scripture that death cannot be reversed by law; law itself, central as it is to the understanding of justice, cannot restore the justice of rightly ordered relationships. Nor can any human deed. Death can be overcome only by God, and humans in this transaction are �always receivers, non-actors�E(p. 55).

3) Righteousness or justice is an attribute of God, and in particular a judicial attribute of God (p. 56). But what does this righteousness of God amount to? Jungel starts with Aristotelian/Platonic notions. He makes the interesting observation that for Anaximander existence as such involves one in injustice; injustice is �having too much,�Eand existing things stand in an unjust relation with non-exitents by the fact that they have more being: �the being of existing things as against the non-being of the non-existent is understood as an injustice, the injustice of having too much. So right consists in evening this out: existing things are destroyed so that the non-existent can come into existence. Time brings about this balance�E(p. 57). A more concise statement of an inherently tragic view of history is hard to imagine.

For both Plato and Aristotle, though in different ways, justice is the highest virtue. For Plato, justice involves the �harmonious collaboration�Eof the other virtues (p. 58). For Aristotle, justice means �fairness,�Ewhich quickly translates into equality: �It must be considered unjust when one person �has more�Eat the cost of another�E(p. 60). A judge does justice by restoring equality in a situation of imbalance, and Aristotle is happy to suggest that this restoration is �an absolute arithmetic proportion.�EIn short, for Aristotle (though in the words of Ulpian), �Justice is the constant and perpetual wish to render ever one his due.�E

Applied to God�s attribute of justice, this would mean that God manifests justice in rewarding law-keepers and punishing law-breakers. That God is just this means that human beings �experience the just God as a punishing, wrathful God�E(p. 61). Yet, this is not how Paul uses the term; justice is no longer distributive justice, but something else.

4) What then? Following von Rad, Jungel argues that God�s righteousness is �that covenant faithfulness which God provides and without which neither individuals nor the people as a whole can live.�EGod�s righteousness is also �a power that creates and maintains life. Human beings can only live in the community which Yahweh provides: we can only live as people whom God acknowledges . . . . So righteousness in human beings is the fact of our being acknowledged by God,�Eand it is by this righteousness that we live, the righteousness of faith (p. 62). With regard to the establishment of human righteousness, God and the law are antithetical; attempts to establish righteousness by the works of the law make it impossible for us to receive the righteousness of God which comes by faith.

5) Jungel argues that God is righteous in His dealings with humans only insofar as He grants righteousness. A desire to �win through�Eover all unrighteousness is inherent in true righteousness, whether God�s or ours: �unrighteousness never leaves truly righteous people in peace; righteous people are never satisfied with simply being righteous. Truly righteous people ensure that righteousness happens�E(p. 65). So also God: �God�s righteousness consists for Paul in the fact that God is not righteous for his own sake, but that he is only righteous himself in so far as he is the one who provides righteousness for human beings�E(p. 64). For God to be righteous means that He is devoted to, insists on, universal right, the complete triumph over unrighteousness wherever presents itself. Only God is truly righteous in this sense, and only His righteousness �urges us powerfully towards a universal righteousness, whose righteousness consists in creating global righteousness�E(pp. 65-66).

6) Jungel denies that God�s wrath is a manifestation of God�s righteousness, suggesting that the revelation of wrath and the revelation of righteousness are contrasted in Romans 1:17-18 (p. 66). The reason is that wrath does not stop unrighteousness; on the contrary, by the evidence of Romans 1:18-32, wrath consists precisely in the unleashing of unrighteousness, the �handing over�Eof human beings from evil to greater evil. If God�s righteousness involves His triumph over unrighteousness, then wrath cannot be the means for revealing it. God�s righteousness is revealed �now�E(Romans 1:18), through the events and proclamation of the gospel; it is not revealed in the history of sin and wrath that Paul recounts in the rest of Romans 1. Christ transforms all things, making a new creation, and this involves making a new vocabulary, giving a new meaning to the terminology of �righteousness.�EIn the gospel, �God speaks in favour of human beings, if the gospel is thus not only an informative address, but creative words of encouragement, then the righteousness of God which is revealed in the gospel, as opposed to the legal righteousness which gives each what he deserves, must mean that unrighteous human beings are pronounced righteous by God. The righteousness of God will then by that righteousness by which God makes righteous people out of the ungodly�E(p. 73).

7) But how can God give righteousness and also be righteous? A God who gives righteousness might be merciful and compassionate, but how is He righteous? It will not do to pose justifying righteousness and God�s own righteousness in opposition to each other. Jungel charges that this was a weakness of Augustine�s presentation of justification: �Augustine had explicitly taken the idea of God making or declaring the sinner righteous as the opposite to God�s being righteous.�EBut if that is the case, then there is �a separation between God�s action in making righteous and the fact that he is righteous.�EAnd that would mean that justification tells us nothing ultimately about God�s own character; the gospel of the righteousness of God, the gospel of justification by faith, would not then be the gospel of God, the gospel that reveals God�s character. This cannot be. Citing Karl Holl, Jungel urges us to take �God�s action in justification to the very depths of the thought of God�E(pp. 74-75).

8) The resolution of this issue comes from recognizing that �God righteousness is not simply his own preserve, but his own righteousness, and as his own righteousness it reachs others�E(p. 75). The new sense that Paul gives to �righteousness�Eis that God is righteous in justification, which means that �God is just because he practices grace. Grace and justice are for God not so separate that grace should be enacted before right,�Eas if God first (logical or temporal priority) showed mercy and then set things right. Instead, �God accomplishes his justice in the very fact of practicing grace. As a gracious God, who also remains a faithful covenant partner to ungodly human beings, God acts in keeping with himself, is faithful to himself, is just in himself and behaves rightly toward the ones he has created�E(p. 76). Luther reaches this insight: God�s righteousness in Luther�s understanding is the righteousness �with which he clothes man, when he makes him righteous.�EIt is God�s righteousness because �it is given to us through his grace.�EYet, �it is not to be rejected in every respect that �God�s righteousness�Eis also, in the [new] expression already mentioned, that righteousness by which God himself is righteous, so that through one and the same righteousness God and we may be righteous �Ejust as God through one and the same word creates and we are what he himself is, so that we may be in him and his being may be our being�E(p. 77). God Himself is righteous in making sinners righteous.

9) God�s righteousness in justification is thus a faithfulness to Himself, for �God forfeits nothing by forgiving us�E(p. 78). He remains Lord and God, and the just Judge, in justifying sinners. Jungel expounds on this Christologically, and then in a Trinitarian context. In becoming man, God the Son is not alienated from Himself: �God�s humanity is the clearest expression of his divinity not a contradiction of it�E(p. 79). This means that �the subject of the doctrine of justification is the human God�E(p. 79). God�s self-giving love is not a contradiction of Himself, but is consistent with himself. In his self-giving, God is righteous. Righteousness is an event, and that event is Jesus. (Here, I have some discomfort with Jungel�s rhetoric of �Christ-Event.�E

The righteousness of God is rooted in the eternal relation of Father and Son. God is righteous in �the lack of internal contradiction�Ebetween the Father and the Son, even when that Son enters the world of unrighteousness and suffers death. In fact, it is only through His identification with the Son in His death that God�s righteousness is made manifest: �In Jesus Christ crucified, God is consistent with, in concord with himself by the fact that he himself brings people who are in conflict with him into being in concord with him�E(pp. 79-80). Only in Christ are we righteous with the same righteousness by which God is righteous: �If we become �the righteousness of God�Ein Christ, then we can expect the most heightened form of fellowship. The ultimate, the real meaning of the justification event is to create this fellowship�E(p. 80).

10) God�s righteousness achieves this result precisely because it is a judgment, an interruption of the world�s contented course of ungodliness and unrighteousness. Justification does not mean that things are left as they were; on the contrary: �The justification of the ungodly is anything but the justification of what exists, and certainly not the justification of existing ungodliness. Rather, it means the removal of all that. . . . We must see this interruption as having the goal of making ungodly people into those in concord with God�E(p. 81). Because the gospel is truth, it interrupts the sham existence of the world under sin.

11) Jungel moves a step further to argue that justification is rooted not only Christologically but in the life of the Trinity. Righteousness, he has argued, �advances life�s relational riches.�EThis means that God�s righteousness involves �the relational riches of life, not primarily in relation to his creation, but in his relation to himself.�ETo speak of God�s righteousness is thus to acknowledge the reality of otherness within the life of God, the affirmation of each person of the others in their irreducible otherness, an otherness that is neither annihilated nor reduced to the blank conformity of indifference. In short, �God is in agreement with himself, not excluding otherness from himself but affirming it in himself. Thus is he righteous. This is, as we have demonstrated, the centre or heart of God�s righteousness: that God is in agreement with himself, that God is �just in himself,�Ethat in the midst of such an enormous difference between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God is in the utmost concord with himself�E(p. 83). If He is righteous by His affirmation of the otherness within Himself, �he is also and even more righteous by affirming in addition the creature, which is, in contrast to him, completely other�E(p. 84; an odd turn of phrase, that �more righteous�E this is the full bucket paradox of Van Til). God affirms His creatures out of grace, not out of any compulsion, but in doing so �he remains totally consistent with himself even when he affirms the otherness of his creatures and is thus gracious to his creatures�E(p. 84). God�s grace consists in His desire not to be merely for Himself, but also to be for His creation, by �externaliz[ing] that fellowship of mutual otherness which, as the triune God, he is�E(p. 84). The Roman motto, �let justice reign, though the world perish,�Eis, Jungel argues, nonsensical for Christians, for justice reigns only when the Just Triune God does justice, establishes justice, acknowledges and receives human beings as covenant-partners.

This runs contrary to a common evangelical slogan, namely, that God would be perfectly just if He sent all sinners to hell for eternal punishment. Considered in abstraction from redemptive history, that may be true. But it is not true in the context of redemptive history. Once God has created a world, He has committed Himself to realizing its telos of sharing in the fullness of God�s glory and life. The final cause is the first cause, and the free decision is at the beginning, in the determination to create. Once that decision is realized, the Just God will not fail to bring creation to its completion. The vindication/justification of God will take the form of the establishment of righteousness and the justification/vindication of sinners through Christ.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, March 19, 2005 at 05:10 PM

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