The Healing Gift of Justification

 

Dr. Guillermo Hansen

 

 

Is it worth it?

 

Perhaps we sometimes wonder about the reason for living, about the worth of it. We may have wondered about it at the edge of the grave of a loved one or when working the fields under a scorching sun. It may have emerged with a groan from the bottom of our conflicted soul or with the rage of losing a job. No matter how much we want to repress it, the question can emerge with any breath that we take, any leaf that falls, any birthday that we celebrate, any morning we wake up, any time our stomach growls with emptiness, or at tragic sights such as of children scavenging through rubbish.

 

The question surfaces with new impetus in the face of the tremendous contrasts separating peoples on our planet. To be able to consume, to carry on a life-style in tune with contemporary trends, to enjoy time for leisure in the company of loved ones, to have even a meal a day, becomes a great question mark in the ocean of poverty in which we really live. Is it worth it? Does it matter? And some of those excluded may have lost any horizon, any hope, any foothold to even ask the question: are we worthy of anything?

 

The words that philosophers weave, the colors and strokes on canvasses that artists create, the poignant dramas that actors embody, the daring novels that writers craft, are all attempts to express and make sense of the crisis of the worth of human civilization and our place in nature. So with the space that we take up with our bodies, the air that flows through our nostrils, the sun that bathes us with unsolicited light, the pain and joys of the relationships that weave us into communities, the time that passes by imperceptibly until it is time to die -- all carry the question:  what is the worth of it all? Do we have any right to be? The question is always there, but must be seized, articulated, freed from the drowsiness of our poverty and the illusions of our wealth. 

 

What happens when that question arises? Will we be able to patch up the gorge or mend the rift that opens? Are we able to stabilize the quake that it unleashes? When things begin to open, break, shake and slide, what do we hold on to? We can become incredibly destructive when no answer seems to loom on the horizon. We begin destroying ourselves, then the neighbor, and finally nature. Or it may be the other way around. The illusion of seeking  worth by destroying the “other” is a constant theme in the human drama. 

 

 

The message of justification

 

In the face of questions such as these, the Lutheran tradition has always held fast to the testimony of God’s saving action in Christ, usually referred to as justification by grace through faith. Luther himself spoke of this doctrine as the article by which the church stands or falls. It carried a vibrant message for a world on the brink of its collapse. But today, when our churches speak of justification, there often is a dull drone. People who still listen to the church and its sermons keep wondering about what we have to be justified from or for.  It is not that they expect that the doctrine of justification will answer all the questions that trouble them. But it may often be the case that the manner in which we typically speak of justification doesn’t even come close answering the most radical question of all: is it worth it?  The answer about justification by grace through faith seems to come as a “bolt out of the blue,” an unsolicited answer to a non-existing question, a piece of history with no anchor in our present.

 

The richness of the message of this doctrine flourishes when addressed to the struggles in our human attempts to live faithfully -- from the doubts that crop up in the face of modern biotechnologies, to the wounds that we have inflicted upon the mountains, forests, rivers and seas, to the hurt of hunger and unemployment, to the increasing doubts about our place in a globalized economy that exalts the successful instead of rescuing the failing. The many concerns that we hear daily on the radio, TV,  or in casual conversations are undergirded by questions that strip naked the human venture.  What are we doing? What gives us the right? How far should we go?  Why is this happening to us?

 

We should not assume that the doctrine of justification will answer all the questions that we have today. It can only help us to search for an answer that has to come from somewhere else. The point is, can we as a community of faith grasp the powerful yet hidden presence of God in the midst of all this?  This requires us to give a name to the modern crosses that we experience. For only at the foot of the cross is the message of justification intelligible at all.   

 

Can we grasp that the question about God and salvation is the critical matter undergirding our different experiences in today’s pluralized world? God is the redeemer of life, but also the creator and sanctifier. The experience of God, as Luther knew well, conceals itself in and through other experiences, most of the time, in what appears as the opposite of God’s majesty and glory. This means that God can speak to us in the midst of doubts about the “truth” of our faith, in our loneliness and lack of self-esteem, in our despair over a broken marriage, in our impotence in the face of powerful economic forces, in our frustration with an unfaithful church. All these moments and places have the potential to open up space where God is acting, working unceasingly to make all of us integral participants in God’s own creation. God is particularly present where creation hurts most.  Suffering is a sign that healing is required, not a temporary cure, but the everlasting healing of God’s gracious presence.

 

How can we spell out our questions today from these places that hurt the most, from these experiences that seem pointless, from all these moments in which we have felt worthless, from the turbulence of our lives shattered by forces far beyond our responsibility and control?   Some of us may conceal these experiences out of shame or fear. Others may embrace today’s popular causes in order to gain a bit of prestige or to placate the guilt from how we live. Still others may sincerely recognize and face the wounds in their lives and in those around them, yet expect to be quickly restored and “propped up” so as to continue enjoying a full, rich life. But the question is whether we are willing to let God touch us in the core of our being, in the marrow of our bones, in the shadows of our minds, the crevices of our feelings, in the web of our relationships.

 

To be healed is nothing less than to let Christ take shape in and among us. It is to let the Holy Spirit enter into our lives, healing all that hinders us from being whole, integral and grateful creatures of our Creator. This is another way to talk about the core of the gospel, namely, that God sets creation aright in Jesus Christ, the savior and redeemer of all creation. To speak openly of what needs to be set aright gives a clearer picture of what God intends for creation.  But to do so, our language about justification also needs to be transformed or healed.

 

 

Healing our understanding of justification

 

The usual way the doctrine of justification has been formulated has been blamed for many things: from being an outdated formulation intelligible only to medieval Christians, to an open apology for doing nothing; from being a dead symbol today to promoting spiritual apartheid from other faiths; from unilaterally reducing the biblical richness to being oblivious to worldly issues.

 

There is some truth in these allegations, caused in part by the shortcomings in the witness of Lutheran churches. For example, during the ghastly and torrid times of Nazi Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer denounced a pseudo-lutheranism that preached forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptized without regard to discipline, and distributed communion without confession of sin. He called this “cheap grace,” a grace without discipleship, without the cross, a grace without Jesus Christ, the source of grace. The corollary was that the central and liberating message of the Reformation, the justification of the sinner, degenerated into the justification of sin and of the fallen world with all its injustices. Costly grace without discipleship equals cheap grace.[1]

 

Yet this type of critique also renewed the realization that the central tenet of the Reformation contains the heart of what Christianity is all about. Bonhoeffer insisted that the problem is not the doctrinal formulation as such, which is a radical formulation that goes to the core of our relationship with God. Rather, the problem lodges in ourselves, in the tricks we play to make God’s saving act in Christ as innocuous as possible. We do this, for example, by subtracting from the reality of justification our vital involvement in what God is doing. It is as though we want to be varnished with a declaration, but not transformed by an incarnation. Fortunately we have learned that the doctrine of justification is not a dispensation from following Christ.  Discipleship is an integral dimension of the saving act of God in Jesus Christ. Grace and discipleship belong to the very dynamism of God’s triune life. 

 

Bonhoeffer’s criticism also raises a further question.  Are our Lutheran difficulties with the doctrine of justification closely related to the systematic attempt to sever every conceivable connection between creation, good works and salvation?  Why this obsession? Why divorce nature and discipleship from its vital connection with God’s saving action? There are necessary distinctions here, but justification often appears as a boulder crushing everything underneath. So much weight has been put in the formula that we have forgotten what it stood for, the spirit and ethos that it once expressed.[2]

 

The doctrine of justification must be relocated if we are to appreciate, for example, how the praxis of Christians is relevant not only for society, but also for God’s plans for the world. Caring for creation is also caring for God’s reign. The search for this relocation expresses itself through efforts today to combine justification with other terms --  justification and justice, justification and sanctification, justification and liberation, justification and creation, and in this Assembly, justification and healing. A dry forensic language is insufficient for speaking of God’s love and concern for creation. The conjunction seems to be necessary to provide some relevance to the doctrine, a point of contact with the experiences of our lives. The “and” has become as critical as the doctrine itself. The issue may not so much what it unites, but the fact that it is united with something! It opens the window for spelling out what justification means for our lives, for the life of the whole of creation. Further, it points to how we believe our lives should be transparent to the message of justification. Still more important, it expresses that once the language of justification is relocated it opens up with power to disclose what did not seem to be there before.

 

Luther’s own thought never collapsed under the solitary weight of the doctrine of justification. His rich biblical view had a more wholistic ring.  Justification was employed as the indicative voice of what God has done for us through Christ: God has made us participants of Christ’s righteousness.[3]  The doctrine of justification was a formula employed to express the Word that comes from God, not the word about God.[4]  Luther was precisely able to put such a stress on justification because this was central to a radical re-conception of God and God’s intimate involvement with creation. Luther’s formulation of the theology of the cross, which stands at the center of his understanding of the trinity, is what gives such power to our justification in Christ.

 

Our participation in this Word, what Luther called “faith,” places us ecstatically “in Christ.”[5]  This integral, wholistic and trinitarian understanding contrasts with a classical Lutheran forensic interpretation.. It is the very Christ and his work that believers receive  through faith, and not primarily some convictions, beliefs or assertions regarding God and salvation.  (These, however, are present in how we understand the nature of faith.)  In other words, faith signifies an entire life that is oriented and accompanied by the Holy Spirit. The faith that justifies also unites and conforms us to Christ in such a manner that we can no longer speak of salvation or justification as our own achievement. As Paul reminds us, “it is no longer I who live but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20).

 

Our good works, therefore, are not “ours”, they belong to God. In fact, they are part and parcel of what God does in the world for the benefit of God’s creation. This is the most radical assault upon the claim of private property, in this case, the private property of one’s own works. Justification “raptures” us from the clouds of our own “righteousness” into the only real world that God has made for us. Created life itself is given back to us as a total gift, not as a toiling burden. In this sense, it restores faith in creation and seeks to deliver creation from its bondages and wounds.[6]

 

The doctrine of justification conveys the Word from God rather than about God. Thus, it depends both on a triune perspective of God’s being and action as well as on a view of creation that sees it as the future abode or dwelling place for God in communion with all of God’s creatures.[7]  In this way, justification becomes a powerful message for transforming lives. Further, it opens up our experiences and engagements as places that “are worth it,” places  claimed by the sacred for our life in the world. The doctrine of justification is located within the triune dynamism that makes God “God.” Otherwise, as Bonhoeffer warned decades ago, we may correctly repeat the classical and orthodox formulation, but at the cost of cheapening the costly grace signified by Christ’s incarnation.  Whatever leads to a cheapening of this grace needs to be rectified, healed.

 

 

 

Helsinki, the Joint Declaration and the voices of plurality and contextuality

 

This “healing” is an important aspect of today’s lively debate. The debate is no longer over the centrality of justification, but the way in which its relevance is spelled out in daily life. Lutherans continue to ponder the nature and scope of this doctrine, and have reached important consensus with other ecumenical partners. The signing in 1999 of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification between the Roman Catholic Church and the LWF, for example, stands as a critical milestone in the ecumenical world. But it has also served to spur a renewed discussion about the relevance of the doctrine of justification within as well as among our churches. It is known that a main objective of this Declaration was to lift the 16^th century condemnations by spelling out the consensus that both traditions have reached regarding this doctrine. But in the Official Common Statement it also calls for ongoing attempts to “interpret the message of justification in language relevant for human beings today…with reference both to individual and social concerns of our times.”[8]

 

This is an important task for the ecumenical agenda.  Lutherans have much to contribute here because of how we have struggled deeply with this issue in our history. The 1963 LWF Assembly in Helsinki, for instance, attempted to reexamine, reformulate and restate the doctrine of justification vis-à-vis the new reality signified by the experience of “modern man” (sic) in a secularized world. At that time the document N° 75, entitled “Christ Today,” was preceded and followed by a passionate debate that showed different interpretations of the doctrine of justification and its relevance for that time [day]. This lively discussion, however, did not result in adoption of this document.  Instead, it was received and sent to the Commission on Theology for further consideration, formulation and publication, which occurred a year later, under the title “Justification Today.”

 

The debate in Helsinki set forth the basic agreement existing among Lutheran churches on the centrality of the doctrine of justification.[9] At the same time, it revealed the difficulties in defining the modern experience and its relation to the message of justification. In other words, no common or unified language with which to express the content of justification in language that speaks to the hearts and minds of “the man of today” was agreed upon. One problem was that this “man” was defined in a thoroughly Western and male-centered way, reflecting the perceived challenges of only some of those who compose the LWF.  A second problem was that  neither contextuality nor plurality was sufficiently recognized as a dynamic component of the theological reflection.

 

The Helsinki Assembly did signal although not yet realize the beginning of a paradigm shift, of a widening search for language relevant to contemporary experience.  Furthermore, it encouraged other Lutheran voices, particularly from the South, to introduce social-analytical tools for discerning the experiences that had to be critically correlated with the doctrine of justification.  The accent fell not only on discerning the preconceptions that we bring to the interpretation of the doctrine, but also on clarifying the different social locations and experiences from which different interpretation arise. The first signs were looming for a genuine pluralism and a wider comprehension of the human situation and predicament. After Helsinki, the traditional “sages” of Western academia, with their particular understanding of the human experience, began to be considered as one voice among many in the ongoing process of LWF theological reflection.[10]

 

One of the new vistas opened up at Helsinki was pursued in the sixties and seventies by the LWF through the study of the relation of justification and justice in relation to the doctrine of the two kingdoms. The eighties and nineties saw more explicit attention to the linkage between God’s justification of the sinner and the pursuit of justice.  This involved an effort to restate how the doctrine of justification is spelled out in concrete social and economic situations in different contexts. The encounter in Brazil in 1988, published under the title Rethinking Luther’s Theology in the Context of the Third World, was a first visible attempt to connect justification and justice, taking seriously the contextuality of any theological interpretation. Similar efforts were reflected in a seminar held in connection with the Council of the LWF in Madras in 1990, published under the title Justification and Justice.

 

The theme was picked up again in a consultation held in 1998 in Wittenberg, Germany, under the title, Justification in the World’s Contexts.  Here there was a clearer focus on the pluralization of experiences that include, yet goes beyond, the socio-economic aspect. The aim of the diverse presentations was to examine the meaning of justification today in the light of our globalized and plural experiences and societies. Most recently, the LWF concern to explore further the distinct and contextual understandings of justification was pursued in the ecumenical symposium held at Dubuque, Iowa, in 2002. This event was an intentional follow-up to the recommendations of the Joint Declaration on Justification calling not only for a relevant interpretation of the doctrine, but relating it to both the individual and social concerns of our times.

 

In sum, the reception of the Joint Declaration in different contexts and ecumenically must be seen as critical developments after Helsinki.  It has also been a time of identifying the critical fields and tension points of justification with regard to the personal experience and social realities of today. Between 1963 and today there have been two simultaneous trends. On the one hand, interest in the doctrine of justification has widened, not only among Lutherans, but ecumenically.  This also uncovered problems inherent in the formulation of the doctrine as such. On the other hand, there has been increasing pluralization pertaining to the socio-ethical consequences to be drawn from the doctrine of justification.[11]  Regarding the latter, the matter is not the tension existing between contextuality and theology, for this is the only relevant way in which we can cast any significant theological word. Rather, it is the tension proper to different appropriations of what the “context” is all about. Contexts are always socially construed and respond to different understandings of what are the central issues.[12] In sum, we have come to understand that our experiences are plural, and therefore the places from which we understand the meaning of justification varies.

 

But diversity is the threshold for new vistas and understandings. In effect, through this plurality we also are reaching new consensus regarding the healing dimension contained within the formula of justification by grace through faith. The concerns derived from different contexts are tied to the central core of the Lutheran tradition. We may disagree about the appropriateness of the juridical and forensic language, we may quarrel about the outdated demands of the medieval situation compared with ours, we may even doubt the convenience of keeping the traditional formula. But what is clear, whatever our different experiences and contexts may be, is that the doctrine of justification underscores the unmerited salvation, restoration and healing of the human condition. In other words, it make of us worthy people living in a worthy environment. There needs to be ample room for discussing the extent and scope of this healing. But “healing” seems to be one of the words today with the ability to convey a wide spectrum of longings, and God’s overall intent for the whole of creation.

 

 

 

Justification and healing

 

Exploring new language appropriate for new contexts is a faithful way to pursue the central Lutheran concern to interpret the gospel. This Assembly represents a very important step forward for it relates the gospel in an explicit way to the theme of healing. “Healing” helps to bring out important dimensions of God’s actions and God’s salvation which traditional language tended to leave out: the whole reality of persons, both bodily and spiritually, and their relationships in the world with the whole network of creation. God’s salvific action involves wholeness and healing, and is also the means through which we receive God’s healing.

 

The language of healing in relationship to justification was actually employed by Luther himself. He relates the reality of justification with the parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk.10:29-37). In this story, with its vividly bodily references, Luther saw the nature of God’s saving activity in Christ portrayed as a God that becomes our neighbor. The wounded man is reborn through the gratuitous help of the Samaritan (Christ).  He was approached and taken up in his condition as a wounded and hopeless case. In this regard, the wounded man represents humanity in general, and Christians in particular. To be justified and to be healed are used as practically synonymous. “Everyone who believes in Christ is righteous, not yet fully in point of fact (in re), but in hope (in spe),” Luther writes. The Christian “has begun to be justified and healed (sanari), like the man who was half-dead (semivivus).”[13]

 

A further point in Luther’s account is that this new work of creation, this healing of the wounded, will be completed in the coming of God’s kingdom. In this life we don’t see magic cures, a complete healing of our bodies.  Our skin still wrinkles, our flesh hangs ever more loosely on our frames, our eyesight eventually begins to fade. But it is the promise of the physician that already initiates a process of healing in us.[14] To be justified in Christ, to participate in God’s righteousness, is something we await to occur fully at the end of time.  Yet God grants to us anticipations of this “new” time, even amid the old time. We are beginning to experience a process of healing, a healing that for Luther begins in the church as a “hospital,” where the Spirit daily cleanses our wounds.[15]

 

Relating justification to healing is a critical correctives in how we understand, speak and live out our Christian existence. Used in connection with justification, it corrects a subjectivist, private and anthropocentric understanding of salvation. The doctrine traditionally has referred to our terrors of conscience, our desire to be included and accepted, our need to be forgiven, our longing to have a new spiritual beginning. These still today are critical places to which the word of justification comes as the only balm that enables us to keep on living. But while these continue to be constants in the human situation, today our spectrum of experiences have widened considerably.

 

Our knowledge and self-understandings have expanded and undergone significant shifts.  “Conscience” has acquired more integral connotations. As a species we have new awareness of

      the ways in which all existing matter and energy participate of a common field-force,

      the inextricable link of our minds and bodies with the rest of nature,

      the different levels of our identities, much of them belonging to the realm of the unconscious,

      the complex ways in which sexual and gender identity is lived out,

      the intricate way in which power flows either lifting people up or excluding them,

      how our socio-political and economic systems are a component of the larger bio-ecological self-organizing and self-regulating environment, which may favorably or unfavorably impact upon a given dynamic.

 

There are many more different places from which we raise the question of what is worthy and valuable in relation to this diverse tapestry of life. We, our families, our communities, our wider societies, our fragile planet, our galaxy and the whole universe --  all are precarious and contingent configurations that claim for an answer as to their worth and destiny. Is it worth so much effort, so much sacrifice, so much struggle? Does it justify so much consideration?          

 

In this light, the issue of healing is set on a new and different plane. Our contemporary experiences and sensitivities shape a new set of questions as to the scope of the healing that we await. Indeed, the healing that we seek and need, the healing that makes everything worthy, is increasingly perceived as a communal, ecological and systemic healing. Such a sensitivity is not foreign to central Christian symbols. As the Spirit of God weaves the whole of creation, healing is that openness to the Spirit that makes us integral sharers and partakers in the whole. From a Christian point of view, nothing can be really healed if it is not received as a gift from the divine love that has created everything. To be healed is to receive and to participate, to stand and to follow, to await and to pursue. It is to become an integral and responsible member of this circuitry or web that sustains us.

 

The scalpel that cuts the flesh to remove disease within our body, the hospital that nurses us back to health, the drill that excises the decay to restore our teeth, the psychiatrist who walks our mental labyrinths with us, the scientist who seeks new ways to improve life – all indeed are signs of the full healing we await. When lives are set aright they appear as signs of the fullness of life that has been promised to us in Christ. The Holy Spirit rejoices with these, it heals through these means, it reminds us that our lives are worthy. But bodily or psychological healing without the promise of God’s final healing for us and all of creation is like oars without a boat. Our partial healings are important signs of God’s benevolence, but they acquire their full significance in the light of what God intends to do with the whole of creation. The healing we receive through all the means at God’s disposal – through other human beings, institutions, plants and minerals, art and literature, stories and lore--- are also means by which God again makes us integral and wholesome participants of God’s creation. God constantly surprises by the new ways through which this healing work is carried on.

 

It follows that a life renewed by God is a life lived in responsible and caring relationships with nature and other human beings. We are called to do so through the different institutions, systems, policies, alliances that shape our lives. No place is exempt from this  renewed living that we receive through what God does for us. We must continually struggle with the tendency to curl up into ourselves and to challenge the different criteria by which worthiness and status is determined in this world. In other words, we struggle with God’s judgment but are also transformed in the midst of struggle with those forces that oppose renewal. Yet in spite of hardships and failures, this still is a life in which our existence, our struggles, our commitments are worthy on account of what happened to and through the wounded man on the cross.      

 

Justification places healing as the realization of koinonia or communio among human beings and among all creatures. If we confess that Christ is the foundation and savior of the world, its alpha and omega, the healing that we receive can never become something that we possess, a cure that we have achieved, a good that we own. It opens us up to others,  connects with our social and natural environments. Furthermore, we receive God’s blessings through a renewed creation, which becomes our real place of belonging. There may be truth in many modern techniques of self-cure and self-help, but they are also plagued by the illusion that one is the maker of one’s salvation, that we can live whole and integral lives apart from others and against nature. We are promised instead a healing for the whole, not just a temporary relief of its parts.

 

The Lutheran understanding of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, is an important reminder of the nature of the healing that we proclaim. It is our most wholesome rite of healing, the place where our unworthiness is exchanged for Christ’s worth. The sacrament conveys that we are true creatures to the extent that we constantly receive our being anew from outside, from the wholesome presence of the Spirit. Through them elements of nature become means of grace. The community that it creates, as we symbolically share the same cup and bread, signifies that everything that we are and possess belongs to the other. Finally, it also speaks about the object of this grace, our entire person. Life eternal is promised not to a part of but to the whole of us – to all our the relationships that knit together our bodies, minds, and lives. We cannot be saved without these, we cannot be healed if these are not healed. Other human beings, families, friendships, the economic systems that we erect, the woods, rivers, oceans and mountains which surround us, are all an intrinsic part of what we are and will be.

 

We began by speaking about the worthiness of existence in the midst of today’s experiences and questions. Is there any worth? Is it worthy to live?  The doctrine of justification points to the root-answer. It indeed knits the symbols by which our worth is once and for all settled -- to the ultimate symbol of belonging, God becoming an integral participant in creation through the cross. This is a radical expression of a God totally committed to our world.  God becomes especially present in the meanest, lowest and most marginalized corners of creation. Indeed, it is from this cross that we learn that God is truly the creator and redeemer of the world, because if this wounded man is declared worthy, then our wounds, our separations, our sins can be healed, breeched, forgiven. Indeed only a marginalized God can save us, only a wounded God can heal.[16]

 

Clearly we do not achieve our worthiness through what we do, through the institutions that we create, not even through our churches. But we live out our worthiness in all of these places. Furthermore, we are also affirmed as worthy people of God through the healing that God does to and through us. A right relationship is worthy, a healthy engagement with nature is worthy, development which doesn’t condemn anybody to poverty is worthy,  research into new methods of curing is worthy, the liberation of women is worthy, the struggle against exclusion from socio-political decisions is worthy, sound ecological policies are worthy, a peaceful and safe environment within a family is worthy. They are worthy because God laces through these a wholesome creation. The declaration of worthiness is the chance to receive our created life as a sheer gift, as a promise of wholeness, as a place for the beginning of the fulfillment promised in Christ. 

   

 

 

Additional Bibliography

 

Anderson, George, ed. Justification by Faith: Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue VII. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985.

González Faus, J. I. et al. La justicia que brota de la fe (Rom 9:30). Santander: Sal Terrae, 1982.

Mortensen, Viggo. Justification and Justice. Geneva: LWF, 1992.

Tamez, Elsa. Contra toda condena: La justificación por la fe desde los excluídos. San José: DEI, 1991.