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IN A THEOLOGY OF GRACE
KATHRYN TANNER
The issue is not to discover gratuitousness and forget the demands of justice,
but to situate justice within the framework of God's gratuitous love." "God
makes the ethical demand that every believer practice justice, but this demand
is not in any way inconsistent with the free and unmerited initiative of God.
On the contrary, it acquires its full scope and vitality only when located within
this gratuitousness.1
It is noteworthy that all the commentators [on Romans] . . . lay out and
juxtapose heterogeneous elements: judicial justice and grace; punishment and
fidelity to promises; expiation and mercy. But can the properly juridical
subsist simply alongside the moment of mercy, without undergoing a transformation .. .?2
A BIBLICAL THEOLOGY OF JUSTIFICATION?
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3
For the connection Paul makes between a putative justification by works and the
restriction of God's covenant relations to the Jews, see Rom 2:17; 3:27-9. For Paul's worries
about God's continued faithfulness to the covenant with Israel in light of justification by
faith, see, for example, Romans 9-11. The contrast between Paul's concerns and later
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Doing biblical theology on the basis of Christian theological traditions
with this sort of relative autonomy from the Bible would mean using the
Bible to shed new light on them, using the Bible to alter the way in which
the distinctive concerns of these theological traditions are addressed.
Historical-critical investigation of the Bible is important for this task;
historical criticism can free biblical texts from immediate assimilation to
the concerns of later Christian theological traditions and thereby enable
those traditions to be questioned anew by the Bible.
This essay sketches in very broad strokes a biblical theology in this third
sense for Christian theological traditions that concern justification. Avoiding Catholic and Protestant polemics, one could say, most generally, that
justification in later Christian theology concerns God's free and unconditional initiative of saving grace in Jesus Christ, which has as its ultimate, if
not immediately obvious, consequence the transformation of human life
for the better, in virtue of a changed relationship with God and/or in virtue
of altered human dispositions and capacities. To do biblical theology on the
basis of this Christian tradition of talk about justification is to provide a
certain slant on the content of the terms of the account (which especially in
my very general formulation of this tradition seem otherwise virtually
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gratitude, and love for God liberate the individual for genuinely good
deeds towards others. A biblical theology of justification will, I contend,
modify this kind of individual focus.
The second modification promoted by biblical theology has to do with
the way mercy and justice are woven together in Christian theologies of
justification. Mercy and justice will no longer be merely juxtaposed but
will instead be brought to bear on one another to produce a radically altered
sense of both but especially a radically altered sense of justice. The relation
of mercy and justice is at issue at two points in Christian accounts of
justification. First, how is God's justification of usan act of mercy since
it is free, unmerited and undeservedto be understood in light of God's
righteousness and justice? Second, how is God's justification of us, which
is a show of mercy, to be related to our own putative justice and righteousness
now that we are God's children in Christ? In the usual Christian accounts,
mercy and justice often merely alternate. For example, God's mercy in
Jesus Christ replaces the wrath of God under the law, which follows a strict
canon of justice (Luther). Or, mercy and justice are commonly kept
separate: God's mercy enables us in some sense to keep the law, to be just,
but God's mercy does not substantially modify the nature of that law or
justice; it seems a mere condition of its fulfillment (Calvinism). Here, too,
on these questions of the relation between mercy and justice, I contend
biblical theology makes a difference.
JUSTICE, RIGHTEOUSNESS, AND JUSTIFICATION IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
The biblical evidence I use to modify a Christian theology of justification comes from the Old Testament. Although Christian theological traditions concerning justification refer most often to the New Testament
(especially Paul and James), attention to the Old Testament makes sense
for the enterprise of biblical theology as I imagine it. Historical-critical
scholarship finds that New Testament uses of justification/righteousness/
justice language often take their setting from the Old Testament. Those
background notions from the Old Testament that are not simply repudiated
in the New Testament use of comparable terms serve to pull New
Testament texts away from the reading they are usually given in later
Christian theology.
One could try to reconstruct a New Testament theology, say, Paul's
theology in Romans and Galatians, in order to use it to throw new light on
later Christian theologies of justification appealing to New Testament texts.
To the same end one can, however, turn directly, as I do here, to the Old
Testament background for the use of justification, righteousness, and
justice language in the New Testament. Because it was so often overlooked
in later theological reflection on New Testament themes, that background
helps make clear the way that New Testament understandings of justification differ from later Christian ones. Besides having the advantage of going
straight to one source of such differences, this tactic has the added
advantage of allowing the concerns of later Christian theologies to retain
their integrity even while subjecting them to modification in light of the
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Bible. That is, unlike what the use of the biblical theology of Paul to
modify later Christian theologies might suggestthat those theologies
become more biblical by becoming more like Paul's own theology, by
sharing more of Paul's theological concernsmy procedure allows later
Christian theologies to retain their own concerns while modifying them
from within, so to speak, by making the use of their central terms
(justification, righteousness, and justice) more biblical. One looks back to
the Bible for illumination from the standpoint of someone properly
working within post-biblical theologies of justification that are designed to
respond to later histories of controversy.
Three features of the use of justice andrighteousnessterminology in the
Old Testament seem important for my purposes, as influences on the New
Testament that have been unduly neglected in later theological treatments
of justification.4 First, justice and righteousness are understood in the
context of relationship. Second, they are not often opposed to mercy. And
third, human justice and righteousness are often supposed to be modeled
on, or to correspond to, God's own justice and righteousness. I will now
explore these three features, on the way towards developing their import
for a Christian theology of justification in the next section.
The first feature of the use of justice and righteousness language in the
Old Testament that I mentioned is an appropriate place to start since it
helps makes sense of the other two. It is now quite common for biblical
scholars to maintain that justice and righteousness in the Old Testament
should be understood in the context of relationshipspecifically, the
special context of covenant relations that Yahweh sets up with Israel.5
Thus, both Yahweh and the people of Israel are righteous to the extent that
they remain faithful to the covenant that Yahweh freely institutes and
faithfully maintain the rights and responsibilities that such a relationship
entails. To justify someone is to restore that person to his or her proper or
rightful place within the relationship, and thereby it involves the restora
tion or reconstitution of the relationship itself. Justice is that way of life,
that body of ordinances or directives, set down by Yahweh, by which Israel
is to exhibit its faithfulness to the covenant. Being true to the covenant, in
other words, requires Israel to do justice by meeting the expectations and
Justification
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Furthermore, God's judgment in favor of oppressed persons, while it
may seem simply to be restoring them to what they are due according to
God's ordinances or justice, is at the same time the institution of relations
of mercy. God executes justice for the poor, the prisoner, and the slave, by
canceling their debts; they no longer have to give back what they owe. The
land and freedoms that were taken from them because of a failure to pay
are to be returned to them; the obligations to hand over property or one's
person that accrue because of one's poverty are canceled. This, indeed, is
the highest form of justice that the covenant with Yahweh demands: the
social relations to be instituted on Jubilee years, social relations of mercy in
which one forfeits what one is owed and gets back what one no longer
deserves, what one no longer has a title to, in virtue of debts incurred.6
Now the third characteristic of the use of righteousness and justice
language in the Old Testament should make sense: the correspondence
between Israel's righteousness and justice and God's. The people of God
are to act towards other human beings as God acts towards themwith a
comparable sort of righteousness and justice. For example, God opposed
their oppression by Pharaoh, and raised them up to a new life in fellowship
with their God; so Israel is to oppose oppression in its midst and become a
society in which special care is given to the dispossessedthe stranger,
widow, and orphan. Running through these familiar prescriptions from the
Old Testament, we now see a subtler kind of structural correspondence
between the activity of justice and righteousness on the part of both
Yahweh and Israel. The odd way that mercy and justice are to be brought
together in Israel imitates the odd way that mercy and justice are brought
together in Yahweh's own dealings with Israel. The peculiar justice that
faithfulness to the covenant requires of God's peoplethe peculiar justice
in which giving each person his or her due involves the merciful gift of
what is undeserved and the failure to get a return on what one gives
corresponds to the character of God's own free faithfulness to a covenant
with Israel. Israel is required by faithfulness to its covenant with Yahweh to
break social codes based on a law of do ut des; Israel is required, that is, to
break social codes based on the premise "I give on the condition that you
will give me back" or the expectation that "I will receive what is due me,
what is appropriate to my own effort and expenditure." In much the same
way, Yahweh, without any obligation to do so, established in the beginning
a special covenant with people who in themselves exhibited no special
worthiness for such treatment. And in much the same way now, too,
Yahweh, without any obligation to do so, continues to maintain covenant
relations, works to restore their proper character, and to fulfill their
promise, even in cases where Israel seems to fall away from its own
responsibilities as God's covenant partner.
6
See Moshe Weinfeld, Social Justice in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East
(Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress, 1995) for this sort of account of the social relations
implied by justice.
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What happens when one takes these uses of justice and righteousness
language in the Old Testament and interjects them within later Christian
traditions of talk about justification? Theological creativity is required for
this. My account of what happens is therefore simply one interpretation
but a cogent one, I think.
(1) Justification as the Continuation of God's Free Faithfulness to the
Covenant. First, one can set one's understanding of God's righteousness
and mercy in Christ in the context of covenant relations. The free grace of
God in Christ can be talked about as a continuation of the unobligated
faithfulness to relations with human beings that the Old Testament discusses as God'srighteousness.God is shown to be righteous in this sense,
in Christ. In Christ, God justifies God's putative covenant partners by
restoring them to the rightful place which they seem otherwise to have
forfeited through violation of God's directives; in Christ, God continues to
claim God's people as God's own despite acts on their side that seem to
make such a status void. As a natural consequence of their restitution as
God's faithful covenant partners, they should now keep the law, that is, do
justice in the sense discussed earlier. Doing justice in this sense is how
covenant faithfulness is expressed in human social relations.
In Christ, however, the same sort of divine faithfulness that the Old
Testament discusses is manifest in a new way. In Christ God maintains the
covenant, heals and reinstates it, by stepping in to perform and undergo
what human beings should by rights do as God's people and suffer
themselves as violators and victims of a broken covenant. God in Christ
does what human beings should dobe God's people and follow God's
strange directives in which mercy and justice are reconciled. Christ in his
life and death suffers the ultimate distress that comes from separation from
God, the rejection and death that should come byrightsto human beings as
the natural consequences of their having voided their relationship with
God, the creator and provider of all good gifts.7 In raising Christ, God takes
the place of human impotence and vindicates the innocents wronged by
those who violate God's Torah, knowingly or unknowinglyJews and
Gentiles alike.
Though God's acts in Christ display the same character of free faithfulness to the covenant discussed in the Old Testament, their operations, so to
speak, are different. Here in Christ, God does not merely work by loving
inducements and corrective judgments to bring human beings back to their
proper place in covenant relations with God and so restore themefforts
that never seemfinallyto bring Israel back to faithfulness, human faithful7
Here I am rendering the idea of divine punishment metaphorical as Riceour does in his
Conflict of Interpretations, 371: "if sin... is the expression of... separation, then the wrath
of God can be another symbol of the same separation, experienced as threat and active
destruction... punishment is nothing more than the sin itself... it is not what a punitive will
makes someone undergo as the price of a rebel will . . . punishment for sin is sin itself as
punishment, namely, the separation itself"which the Old Testament often discusses in
terms of suffering and death.
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ness seemingly ever being followed by rejection of the covenant (see the
repetition of confessional and intercessory prayers for forgiveness in Exod
32:11-14; Deut 9:25-29; 1 Kings 8:46-53; Dan 9:3-19; Ezra 9:6-15). In
Christ, God takes the initiative to intercede for human beings, and so
justifies them, actually setting them back in their proper place as God's
faithful covenant partners, despite themselves.
The clear impression of gracious divine faithfulness, of God's free
mercy, that is part of the Old Testament understanding of God's righteousness is heightened here by God's own doing of everything that human
beings are obligated to do as partners in the covenant. The covenant's
remaining in force therefore no longer appears conditional in any way on
human performance. Human failing not only does not put God's faithfulness in doubt; it fundamentally cannot even alter human standing in the
covenant. Despite the fact of human failing, in virtue of God's saving
initiatives in Christ, human beings are yet God's people. There is no
mistaking, then, that the covenant is a pure covenant of mercy, as much
after being set up by God, as it was before, when out of simple love God
chose Israel. It is a covenant of grace not simply because God keeps the
covenant in force by dint of sheer persistenceever calling, cajoling and
threatening human beings with the dreadful consequences of separation
from God, awaiting human beings return to faithfulness and suffering
disappointment anew. It is a covenant of grace even more because God
keeps the covenant in force through God's own fulfillment of human
responsibility in the man Jesus Christ.
A number of conclusions can be drawn from this heightened impression
of unconditional covenant in Christ, conclusions that address the concerns
of post-biblical Christian theologies of justification to combat works
righteousness and yet maintain the importance of good works in human
life. Because this is an unconditional covenant of grace, set up and
maintained as it is in all respects by God, human faithfulness to it is
essentially just belief in such an unconditional act of divine faithfulness
and mercy. Human beings do their part to keep the covenant in force, not
by doing anything but simply by believing in what God does for them
despite themselves. Works of the law that correspond to God's own
initiatives with respect to human community are still, however, the way
faithfulness to the covenant, even in the form of belief in God's unconditional mercy, isexhibited in the course of human life.8
8
In the discussion here of the importance of works, I am limiting myself to the question of
moral directives. However, conforming to directives that, unlike moral ones, distinguish one
social group from another (e.g., Jews from Gentiles) may also be an appropriate way to
express faithfulness to the covenant. Although presumably moral directives that correspond
to God's own free graciousness would be shared, covenant faithfulness would then be
expressed in different ways by different social groups; different covenant directives would
exist for Jews and Gentiles respectively. Conforming to non-moral directives would only,
however, be an appropriate expression of faithfulness to the extent it was not used to claim
exclusive rights as God's people and to boast of one's advantage over other groups before
God. Such claims would suggest that God's covenant relations with human beings are
conditional, dependent for their validity on human ability to perform certain actions. It
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execution of judgment and justice, on the one hand, are reconciled with
God's mercy and free grace, on the other, without, however, mitigating the
character of either side. Instead, both righteousness and mercy are given
their proper senses; they are redefined, by exploring what God's righteousness must mean if it is expressed in a merciful way and what God's mercy
must mean if it is expressed in a just way.
Thus, in the Old Testament, God's patience with Israel is an expression
of God's righteousness, of God's own faithfulness to the covenant broken
by Israel. God, moreover, is patient with Israel for the sake of justice, so
that Israel might regain its rightful place as God's people and conform to
justice in relation to God and in human affairs. Conversely, God's renewed
demand that Israel be righteous and perform justice is an expression of
God's gracious and merciful refusal to consider the covenant broken
because of human apostasy. God's chastisement is also an expression of
such a merciful God's refusal to void the covenant to the extent it is
designed to bring Israel back to righteousness and justice and does not
finally lead to Israel's destruction.
Although God is said to covenant also with Gentiles in Christ, God's
actions in Christ can be interpreted according to these same patterns of
relating God'srighteousnessand mercy in the Old Testament. Thus, justice
is done in a merciful way when God's own Son suffers the consequences of
separation from God that should properly be born by human beings. Justice
is done in a merciful way when Christ takes on the human faults put to
death on the cross, when Christ, rather than human beings, bears for us the
death of sin, sin that must be eradicated in some way or other if justice is to
be restored. Opposition to God perishes on the cross to restore justice, but
mercifully, without the perishing of the human beings who oppose God.
Conversely, the merciful and gracious acts of God in which Christ takes
our place are done in a just way. In Christ, all that we owe and deserve by
rights is indeed donejust not by us. Moreover, the merciful and gracious
acts by which God in Christ performs what we owe and suffers what is our
due are acts for the sake of a restored human righteousness and justice. A
mercy without justice would not restore the covenant but leave the
unreliable partners of God as they are.
Putting this all together in order to define righteousness, justice, and
mercy anew, we can say, on the one hand, that God's righteousness and
justice mean the merciful effort to maintain the rights and reinstitute the
responsibilities of those parties who seem to have forfeited the one and
abnegated the other. God'srighteousnessand justice, in short, involve gifts
of what is not due. God's mercy, on the other hand, does not meanin
either the Old Testament or now after God acts in Christthat God simply
ignores or overlooks human fault. Such a form of mercy would be
incompatible with justice. Justification in a Christian sense should not
therefore be reduced to mere forgiveness (as it is in many Protestant
theologies). God's mercy means primarily that God works to eradicate
human fault and restore the relations violated by it.
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common Christian account, even when the problem that Christ addresses is
identified, as it is in this paper, with a failure to keep the covenant, that
failure is usually defined as imperfect obedience on the part of each
individual to divine directives, an imperfect obedience ultimately tied to
dispositions. In order to defend the importance of Christ, the theologian
needs to deny the possibility of perfect obedience under the law, a denial
that leads the theologian ultimately to impugn the character of every
individual's dispositions apart from faith in Christ: Someone might be able
to perform the law perfectly but never with the right attitudes; no one then
can ever really be righteous or innocent under the law. In my account,
however, human failing need not be pushed to these extremespushed, in
particular, in this direction of definition in terms of individual dispositionsin order to show a need for Christ. God's saving initiatives in
Christ, like all God's actions for the sake of a broken covenant, serve to
remedy a failure of community, the failure to maintain the sort of just social
relations that faithfulness to the covenant requires. Such initiatives may
therefore be necessary even if the social relations that God demands are a
temporary achievement in some times and places and even if failed social
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relations include both genuinely righteous efforts on the part of some
individuals and innocent wronged parties.
The second reason my account of Christian responsibility does not focus
on individual dispositions has to do with the fact that those responsibilities
are to be defined by a correspondence with God's saving activity in Christ.
This, one recalls, is the third characteristic of righteousness and justice
language in the Old Testamentnow transposed into a Christian context.
Such an account of Christian responsibility would naturally focus on the
human relations that Christians are to institute, focus on what Christians
are to do and specifically on the social consequences of those actions and
not on the dispositions or attitudes with which Christians are to do them.
Christian action is to correspond to God's action in Christ in virtue of its
relationality: Our relations with one another are to mirror the way God
relates to us in Christ.
It is not unusual for Christians to use a demand for correspondence with
the character of God's actions in defining Christian responsibility. For
example, in the Lord's prayer and the parable of the wicked servant in
Matthew 8:23-35, forgiving those in debt to you or those who trespass
against you mirrors God's forgiveness of your debts and trespasses. To take
the case of a single Christian theological text, according to Luther's treatise
on Christian freedom, we should come to the aid of the needy, just as we
were needy before God and God came to our aid. And again, according to
Luther in the same text, God gives freely to us out of therichesto be found
in Christ; so full of those riches we should give freely to others (2 Cor
9:6fif).10 Commonly, however, in Christian theology the social and extradispositional character of these responsibilities is not very well developed.
The graciousness of Christian action that corresponds to God's gracious
initiatives in Christ is defined attitudinally (for example, as giving selflessly without expecting a reward or without anxiety about the precariousness of one's own circumstances), and therefore change in social relations
is not explicitly prescribed along with it. But in the account I have given,
the mercy of God that we are to imitate is always for the sake of reinstating
justice; human graciousness and mercy can hardly therefore leave sinful
social relations as they stand (as acts of Christian charity so often do).
Moreover, the justice of Christian action is as radically reconceived as
mercy when it is brought into correspondence with the character of God's
gracious initiatives towards us; just social relations take on a character not
often affirmed in Christian accounts of justification's effects on human life.
The justice to be reinstated in human life can be properly executed only in
human acts of unconditioned mercy that imitate the way God in Christ
gives all that we do not deserve according to the usual codes of do ut des
justice.
Thus, Christians are obligated by the way God acts in Christ to execute
justice in a merciful fashion, to execute justice by reinstating the rights of
those who do not seems to merit such concern because of poverty,
10
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