Justification and Deification

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Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 37:2, Winter 2001

JUSTIFICATION AND DEIFICATIONPROBLEMATICSYNTHESIS: A RESPONSE TO LUCAN TURCESCU

George Vandervelde

By entering sympathetically into the Lutheran emphasis on justification byfaith and by challenging Orthodox theology to take this emphasis far more seriously, Lucan Turcescu makes a significant contribution to the ecumenical discussion. He criticizes Orthodox theology for passing too readily over the notion

of justification by faith by branding it as a forensic notion that is marred by ex-trincicism and juridicism. Turcescu not only points out that the understanding of

justification as the acquittal ofthe guilty sinner is biblical, but he also attemptsto incorporate it into a soteriology that includes both justification and diviniza-tion (theosis). He does so by presenting salvation as a two-stage process, justification constituting the first, and divinization the second and final stage.

Taken at face value, the description of justification and theosis as twostages of the process of salvation seems plausible. After all, Paul clearly presents justification by faith as the point of entry to reconciliation (e.g., Rom. Siil i) . Justification marks the point oftransition, as Turcescu rightly states, fromliving in bondage to sin to friendship with God. The question is whether Paul,or Luther for that matter, sees justification as only a first stage.

Speaking of stages suggests that justification is an initial phase from whichone moves to the next, that is, adoption or divine indwelling. This position isdifficult to maintain. As Turcescu acknowledges, justification places one beforeGod as a forgiven, reconciled person (cf. Rom. 5:6-10). Paul can use the same

verb for adoption as he has for justification. Just as faith is "reckoned" as righteousness (Rom. 4:3-8)/ so a person is "reckoned" or "counted" as a child ofGod byadoption (Rom. 9:8). Moreover, elsewhere Paul explicitly describes the transition effected by justification as one from the position of bondage and slavery tothat of adopted sons (Gal. 3:23-4:7). To be justified is to be adopted as son ordaughter. In other words, through faith in Christ one hears God declare God'slove to a person who by virtue of that love is now a reconciled sinner, a childand friend of God. Justification is thus not a phase but a permanent condition,not merely a passage way but the foundation for all that life with God entails.

Friendship may indeed be distinguished from adoption but only as distinct


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74 Journal of Ecumenical Studies

logical fulfillment (see Rom. 8:18-30). In that sense, too, both are indeed distinct from justification, which is not subject to development. One cannot bemore or less justified, while one can grow as friend and child ofGod. However,

this does not mean that justification is an initial stage. To live more fully as thefriend and child ofGod that one is meant to be is to live ever more fully by faithin God's justifying action in Jesus Christ. To be justified by faith is to become"children of God through faith" (Gal. 3:26), and to be "clothed... with Christ"(Gal. 3:27). Faith connects us to Christ "who became for us wisdom from God,and righteousness and sanctification and redemption" (1 Cor. 1:30). In thewords of the Joint Declaration on Justification, "Justification is the forgivenessof sins . . . , liberation from the dominating power ofsin and death... and from

the curse of the law . . . It is acceptance into communion with Godalreadynow, but then fully in God's coming kingdom... It unites with Christ and withhis death and resurrection..." (para. 11, omitting the scriptural references).2

Justification, one might say, is the sinner's entrance into the communionwith God that was forfeited by sin. Biblically and theologically it would bemore accurate and helpful to understand justification as the abiding foundationof the house in which we dwell as reconciled sinners in the presence of God.That relationship can be characterized as friendship, adoption, sanctification,

or renewal. Justification is neither a foundation buried underground nor an initial stage left behind. Justification is the dynamic suspension of Christian lifethat shapes all that it carries.

If justification by faith is not the first phase of salvation but its ground, thecompatibility oftheosis and justification by faith becomes far more problematic.Now it is not sufficient to show how being indwelt by Christ or being adoptedas God's child, construed as a second stage in the justification paradigm, iscompatible with theosis. Now one must demonstrate how justification by faith

itself is compatible with theosis.A direct confrontation of justification by faith and theosis reveals that theseare the pivots of two distinct discourses. The language of justification by faith isunimaginable without reference to notions such as alienation, guilt, hostility, andsin. Its starting point is the fallen human condition as it stands before God's

judgment and grace. The language of divinization, by contrast, can functionwithout any reference to sin. Its starting point is the created human condition asit stands in contrast with the fullness of life and divinity that exist in God.

Pointing to the contrast between these two paradigms does not mean, ofcourse, that the theosis paradigm leaves sin out of the picture but, rather, that


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Justification and Deification: A Response to Lucian Turcescu 75

the original destiny of human beings, namely, divinization. In the theosismodel the center of gravity lies not in reconciliation but in participation. Again,reconciliation is not at all incompatible with theosis, but it is the pathway to

participation in the divine life or in the divine energies. From the point of viewoftheosis, the ultimate goal of human life, of creaturely life, is participation inthe higher, divine life. The ultimate goal of salvation is to attain "a likeness toGod that transcends the natural relationships given to man in creation, for it isparticipation in divine qualities bestowed by God's grace."3 Dutch Lutherantheologian K. Zwanenpol described the contrast between a justification and atheosis orientation in this way:

In the soteriology of the Greek Fathers and Eastern Orthodoxy we

clearly find different emphases. Central to it is a divinization which mustbridge the chasm between human existence and the life of God. This chasmis considered to be a 'natural' distance between God and humanity, by virtue of which human existence is characterized as 'alienated' or 'perishable.'Of course sin is not left out of consideration, but it is conceived as a doubling ofthe distance by which God and humanity are separatedfromeachother. Accordingly, in this soteriology the forgiveness of sin and the elimination ofguilt has the function of creating a precondition for making divinization possible at all.4

The distinctness of these discourses is confirmed by their correlation withthe distinct ways in which Christ is thought to effect salvation. In a theosis-centered soteriology, salvation is basically accomplished in the incarnation, inthe hypostatic union: "God became man in order that man might become God."Orthodox soteriology, Bishop Mximos Aghiorgoussis has pointed out, "considers salvation as basically given in the person of the Savior, with his workonly completing what is already given at the incarnation of the Word-of-God-

made-flesh: theosis, communion between man and God, and reconciliation ofman (and world) with God."5

Harmonizing the two discourses too quickly obscures more than it clarifies.The problem of meshing the two approaches becomes apparent when Turcescuseeks to demonstrate the fruitfulness of the synthesis by examining the JointDeclaration on Justification's treatment of the role of human activity in theprocess of salvation. Some of his insights are very much to the point, as whenhe points to the untenability of speaking of faith as "passive." At the same time,

a short-circuit occurs, when he introduces the Orthodox notion of synergy to


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address the problem ofan erroneous emphasis on the passivity of faith within ajustification paradigm.

In speaking of the "passivity" of faith, Lutheranism seeks to do justice to

the way in which God liberates a human being who is helplessly entangled insin. The emphasis on passivity is an attempt to do justice to Paul's insistencethat grace confronts a human being who is dead, guilty, hostilean enemy ofGod. Faith comes in the picture not as one "activity" among others but as theuniquely qualified activity of accepting God's sentence of condemnation, hisdisclosure of the closed human situation of enslavement. To speak of "synergy"here is inappropriate. The synergy ofthe dead is a misnomer. The synergy of aperson with her or his back turned in contempt is unthinkable. The synergy of

an enemy is out of the question. In the neighborhood of justification by faith,synergy is a stranger, an interloper.

Such incommensurability does not mean that one cannot learn from an Orthodox understanding of human cooperation. Rather, this incommensurabilitymeans that one cannot incorporate an Orthodox understanding of synergy directly into a soteriology centered on justification by faith. Only by enteringdeeply into the meaning of justification can one come out the other side by insisting that the entire point of justification by grace through faith is to attain to

a fully restored partnership of human beings with God. One may say thereforethat, while justification by faith is meant to yield the synergy of love, justifyingfaith rules out synergy. Or, to make the same point more forcefully: the synergyof love comes folly into its own (sanctification) only when one confesses that

justifying faith precludes synergy.In articulating the complementarity of justification by faith and theosis,

Turcescu acknowledges his indebtedness to the Finnish Lutheran movementthat espouses a similar synthesis. The Finnish school has rightly exposed the

crippling effect of the neo-Kantian interpretation ofLuther. In its opposition tonotions of "substance," which as things-in-themselves are considered to be unknowable, the neo-Kantian school reduced the presence ofGod in Christ to theeffects of God's will on the will ofthe believer. Coupled with a development inLutheranism that understood forensic justification in an extrincicist manner,the neo-Kantian Luther interpretation vitiated the reality of salvation. It is thisshriveled soteriology that the Finnish school rightly repudiates.

In opposing this neo-Kantian approach, it is striking that the Finnish

school tends to perpetuate the extrincicism that easily insinuates itself within aforensic understanding of justification. Time and again, the new Luther inter


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Justification and Deification: A Response to Lucan Turcescu 77

Over against a one-sided emphasis on justification by faith, understood asstrictly extra nos, the Finnish emphasis on the renewal that is rooted in unionwith the present Christ is badly needed and entirely biblical: "So if anyone is in

Christ, there is a new creation" (2 Cor. 5:17). To combat the extrincicist distortion, however, it is not enough to add to it an effective dimension. Compensating for this distortion by emphasizing divine indwelling and union with Christas the effective dimension of justification leaves the extrincicist distortion intactand its deleterious "effect" unchecked. The extrincicist notion of justificationitself needs to be tackled head-on.

The very reality of justification, which, as Turcescu insists, indeed has aforensic, legal dimension, makes it impossible to juxtapose a forensic and an

effective dimension. For Paul, as for Luther, justification is the most radicallyand totally effective act of grace imaginable. By God's justifying act, believersin the radix of their beingsit, stand, and walk as new creation, as children, friends, partners of God. Everything that occurs in justification is true in

Jesus Christ. To be sure, the distinction between justification and sanctificationis entirely legitimate and in fact an indispensable antidote to anything thatwould detract from the purely gracious character of this new relation. Nevertheless, forensic justification is not a dimension next to which one can place union

with Christ as the effective dimension of justification. Rather, union withChrist comes about in justifying grace. Whatever renewal takes place is theeffect of justificationthe purely gracious character of which the notion of"forensic" is designed to capture, however inadequately.

When forensic justification, on the one hand, and indwelling, union withthe present Christ, on the other, have been thoroughly integrated, one can dealmore adequately with the relation of this soteriology to one characterized by thenotion oftheosis. In the first place, there is no need to import the notion of di

vinization to supply the reality quotient for a soteriology based on justificationby faith. One can demonstrate that theosis is not the only, or even the most effective, way to combat the reductionism represented by neo-Kantianism's"quivering, anorexic ontology."7 In the second place, given the integral unity of

justification by faith and union with Christ, the distinction between a soteriology based on justification and one based on theosis comes more clearly intoview. When one respects the distinct discourses of justification soteriology anda theosis soteriology, the issue is not simply whether and how justification by

faith and theosis are compatible but whether and how a notion of renewal thatflows from the Lutheran notion of "forensic" justification is compatible with the


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ness, righteousness, love, adoptiongifts of God that come as the gift of God-self in the person of the present Christ. The hermeneutical question that needsto be posed is this: When Luther speaks at times of"Vergttlichung" and even

of being "vergottet," is the language of righteousness, holiness, love, adoption,and union with Christ to be interpreted in terms of divinization? Or, is the inverse more faithful to Luther's intentions, namely, to interpret the language ofVergttlichungas his way of underscoring the superlative reality of the new lifeof holiness as God's gift, evidence ofGod's being truly present in Christ?

Suppose, however, that Luther taught the notion of divinization; this couldhardly be the end of the matter. Luther would turn over in his grave if his writings were declared to be normative for theology. One must return, as does

Turcescu, to the biblical material, especially to the central passage in debate, 2Pet. 1:4. This text is widely regarded as an unambiguous testimony to theosis.This is hardly the case. As biblical scholar Albert Wolters has argued, the notion ofkoinonoi in 2 Peter is best interpreted as "companions" or "partners."8

The fact that the text speaks of partnership "of the divine nature" does not, assuch, point to the idea of divinization. Even the Orthodox tradition recoils fromtaking this phrase at face value. To do so suggests a partaking of the essence ofGoda notion inimical to orthodoxy of whatever stripe.

Not surprisingly, Orthodox theology, following the lead of Gregory of Pal-amas, speaks of participating in God's "energies." If this hermeneutical move isrequired to avoid heresy, it behooves ecumenical discussion to grant that 2 Pet.1:4 cannot function as a direct support of theosis. Since the notion of partnership,friendship,or companionship with God has solid biblical pedigree, there is atleast as much to commend this interpretation as there is to commend an interpretation that relies on a notion as foreign to biblical narrative and teaching asthe "energies ofGod." This extra-biblical character does not necessarily render

the introduction of "divine energies" illegitimate. The difficulties encounteredin interpreting 2 Pet. 1 demonstrate merely that the move from "partakers ofthe divine nature" in the text to theosis is not self-evident. The acknowledgement that this step entails a hermeneutical decision for which one needs to givecareful hermeneutical account and that theosis is not the only legitimate interpretation would go a long way to promoting an open dialogue about the divergent theologicalframeworksthat inform divergent interpretations.

Turcescu's plea for greater sensitivity to the biblical testimony concerning

justification by faith and for its incorporation into soteriologies that focus ontheosis deserves careful attention. This plea becomes even more compelling


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Justification and Deification

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