The Criteriological Meaning of the Lutheran Doctrine of Justification and its Ontological Underpinnings

Abstract

Lutheran authors throughout the XX century have attempted to apply the Pauline doctrine of “justification by faith alone” to the whole of Christian theology, life and spirituality, as a unique determinative, criteriological or hermeneutical principle. Justification would point to the action of God who in Christ saves sinful humans, thus going to the very core of Christian life and identity. However, the fundamental principle needs to go beyond a purely existential reading of the human situation which considers man primordially as a sinner, and God only as his Saviour. It needs to be ontologically founded, on the basis of God’s good creation. It needs to take into account the fact that man, alongside the experience of sinfulness and pardon, truly encounters the goodness of God both through the reality of creation and on account of personal filiation in Christ’s Spirit.