Iustitia Dei: Volume 1, A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification (v. 1) Book

This book is a history of the Christian doctrine of justification. The purpose of this book is to show that the development of the Reformation doctrine of justification as a legal imputation of righteousness was a fundamental shift from the Catholic view of justification. It also shows the separation of sanctification from justification resulted in a paradigm shift in the Church.

McGrath begins with the assertion that medieval theology was thoroughly Augustinian, and the primary aim of medieval theology was to expand and refine his theologies. Not surprisingly, McGrath’s fist major section is an exposition of Augustine’s doctrine of justification. Augustine’s theory of justification was tied up with the Sacraments. Augustine believed that justification was a change in a man’s being and not a change in his status. Justification is God restoring the relationship between man and God as it was pre-Fall, not in the category of legal or forensic categories.

McGrath went on to describe the development of the doctrine of justification in the medieval period. He first described the nature of justification in medieval theology and the righteousness of God. Here his primary argument is that justification includes the Protestant categories of justification, sanctification, and regeneration. McGrath maintains that the inclusion of regeneration with justification precludes a Protestant understanding of justification from the outset. McGrath goes on to detail how medieval scholars viewed the righteousness of God, and included Aristotelian ideas in their theology.

One fundamental point which McGrath includes is the medieval discussion of will, both the free will of man and the sovereign will of God. McGrath asserts that the Augustinian position had become dominant by the medieval period, with few exceptions, so that most scholars held to the view that man is able to freely respond to God’s offer of salvation through prevenient grace. McGrath begins his discussion of the will of God with Augustine’s understanding. Here the fundamental difficulty was that a view of prevenient grace requires that man accepting God’s grace requires God to save him. Augustine held that this could only be the case if God were voluntarily allowing himself to be placed under requirement because of a pact he freely made with mankind. Medieval theologians continued on this path by viewing God as being completely free and completely reliable.

The final topic which I will it is important to view is the medieval conception of the relationship between justification and predestination. Logically following Augustine, some argued that his view of predestination entails double predestination. Catholic understanding of this topic was all over the map in the medieval period. For example, Scotus believed that the Fall and the Cross are essentially independent of one another because Christ was predestined first. Nobody could understand Ockham’s view, and those who followed Pelagius could not hold to a meaningful view of predestination.

McGrath does a good job overall of defending his thesis, namely that the Protestant view of justification was a fundamental paradigm shift from all previous thought. He does this by methodically developing the thoughts of the great theologians prior to Luther, and showing how their views of justification include the idea of sanctification. McGrath also does not do as good of a job of proving his second thesis, namely that Catholic beliefs on justification were disunited. He succeeds in the discussion of predestination, but in general there was a Catholic consensus in the means, manner, and result of justification and the role of the Sacraments in that justification.

My only complaint with this book was its inclusion of block quotes in Latin, which made it very hard to read!