Is Paul's Doctrine of Justification

Forensic?
W. T. Conner
In my judgment Paul's doctrine of justification has been
badly misinterpreted. We do not refer now to the objec­
tion, always urged by some to the doctrine of salvation by
grace, that this doctrine would encourage people to live in
sin. That objection is raised to the idea of God's gracious
forgiveness of sin. There have always been those who
objected to the Christian doctrine of salvation on the ground
that it was too easy and who held that the only way to
produce moral living was on the basis of law without mercy.
But that method will not produce the highest type of living;
it will lead to despair on the part of sensitive conscience.
The perversion of the doctrine that we refer to is its
perversion by Christian interpreters—orthodox and liberal.
Protestant theologians in general have defined justifica­
tion as a judicial or forensic act on God's part. We are
told that the word translated to justify was a legal term;
that it meant to declare just; that it was equivalent to pro­
nouncing one accused of crime not guilty. Furthermore,
we were often told that to acquit a criminal did not mean
that he had not committed the crime, but that it means that
he was not legally bound after that to answer for the crime
before the law. He was released from responsibility to
the law for the crime before the law. He was released
from responsibility to the law for the crime of which he
had been accused. This, we are told, was done on the basis
that Christ had paid the penalty for the sinner's sin.
This way of interpreting the matter often set justifica­
tion as a "judicial" act over against regeneration or the
new life in Christ. These were distinguished as the legal
and vital aspects of salvation. The more orthodox writers
usually were careful to tell us that God did not stop with
justifying the sinner, but that he also regenerated him as
well; that in justification the sinner was given a new stand-

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 Is Paul's Doctrine of Justification Forensic? 49

ing with God, while in regeneration he was given a new

life, this to be followed with sanctification in which the
new life would be developed to its fulness. Some writers
of a more radical type used this method of interpreting Paul
to discredit his whole interpretation of Christianity, in­
cluding his doctrine of the person of Christ, the atonement
and salvation by grace. Oftentimes the question was dis­
cussed as to which was the dominant factor in Paul's teach­
ing—the legal or the vital. Also liberal theologians took ad­
vantage of such an interpretation of Paul to set him over
against Jesus. Jesus was set out as having taught a religion
in which God was regarded as the Father of all men; all
men were encouraged to come to him in penitence for
their misdeeds; God stood ready to forgive without atone­
ment or mediation of any kind. Over against this Paul
was set out as the originator of dogmatic and superna­
tural Christianity, thus perverting the beautiful and ethical
Christianity taught by Jesus.
This interpretation of Paul's doctrine of justification as
forensic has been the dominant one in Protestant theology.
A good example of this interpretation is to be found in San-
day and Headlam's commentary on Romans in the Inter­
national Critical Series. This work on Romans is one of the
best and sanest and also a work of great scholarship. They
set out that justification is a "forensic" act, that it has refer­
ence to a "judicial verdict, and to nothing beyond"1. They
insist that this construction be put on the matter, although
this should reduce the state effected by justification to a
"fiction." This method of interpreting Romans says that
the apostle gives in chapters 1-5 his doctrine of justifica­
tion and in chapters 6-8 his doctrine of the new life or sanc­
tification.
The same interpretation of justification as a forensic
act is found in Beyschlag's New Testament Theology2. He
says that the attempt to deduce the new life from justifi-

1 Page 36, Elworth Edition, 1906.

2 See New Testament Theology by W. Beyschlag (English Trans­
lation), Vol. 2, pp. 183ff.

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50 Is Paul's Poctruie of Justification Forensic?

cation on exegetical grounds has failed. The expressions

"justification of life" in Rom. 5:18 and to "reign in life" in
5:17, 21 he refers to the "future blessed life, the hope of
which is disclosed to him (the sinner) by justification."
These two are selected as samples of this method of
interpreting Paul's doctrine of justification as forensic.
Many others could be cited. Our position is that the whole
discussion of Paul's doctrine of -justification as legal or
forensic misses the point. He used a legal turn (justifica­
tion, the same is true of adoption), but he did not use it in
a legal sense. Paul had no legal doctrine of justification.
He put a new meaning into the term. In this and in a num­
ber of other instances, Paul and other New Testament
writers adopted a current term but put new life and con­
tent into it. To insist that, because this was a legal term,
Paul used it to describe a legal transaction is to confuse the
form with the substance in interpreting the New Testa­
ment, and to deny that Paul had any originality in his use
of language. It is not a safe method to consult a lexicon to
discover in what sense the Greek language of Paul's day
used this term and then say with finality that Paul used
it only in that sense. Before coming to a final conclusion
as to what Paul meant by this term we need to give close
attention to Paul's whole discussion of this doctrine. His
whole discussion will give us what he means, not the lexical
definition of one term that he uses. Our contention is that
Paul's whole discussion shows that he uses this term to de­
scribe a vital experience, not a forensic translation.
Paul's doctrine of justification as set out in Rom. chapters
1-5 is not a forensic transaction but a vital one. In these
chapters, and elsewhere in his writings, Paul passes from
forensic terms to terms expressing union with Christ and
life without the slightest jar or hesitation. These terms
are so interwoven as to show that in Paul's mind they
express phases of a unitary view of the Christian life,
not a patchwork representation of different (and almost
discordant) views. Now if Paul has a unitary view, it must
be considered vi^al and not forensic. His forensic terms
can be interpreted in a vital sense and as expressing phases

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 Is Paul's Doctrine of Justification Forensic? 51

of a vital interpretation of salvation; but his vital terms can

not be interpreted as phases of a forensic interpretation.
Beyschlag is clearly wrong when he refers such expressions
as "justification of life" and "reign in life" and the bless­
ings of the justified life (in Rom. 5:1-11) to the future world.
Paul is thinking about the justified man as enjoying peace
with God, as rejoicing in hope, as having the love of God
shed abroad in his heart, and as enjoying life, eternal life,
here and now. He is thinking of these blessings as com­
ing through justification. And when we say through justi­
fication we mean that they came as something involved in
justification itself, not as something distinct from it.
Moreover, Paul is setting out in Rom. Chapters 6-8, not
something in addition to justification, but what is involved
in justification. Paul's thought on two sides seems after
this order: sin, condemnation, death; faith, justification,
life. We contend that in Rom. 6:Iff. Paul is not saying that,
in an experience to be distinguished from justification, the
believer dies to sin and rises to walk in newness of life;
but he is saying that justification itself is such an experi­
ence. He is setting out what justification itself means, not
something in addition to justification.
This is also true of what he says in chapter 8. In this
chapter he discusses life in the Spirit. This life in the
Spirit he does not think of as something in addition to
justification but as a privilege belonging to the justified
man. This chapter begins with language that describes the
justified. There is no condemnation for those who are in
Christ Jesus. Justification is the opposite of condemnation;
it is deliverance from condemnation. To be justified, then,
is to be in Christ Jesus; and to be in Christ Jesus is to have
"the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" set us free
from "the law of sin and of death." It is to have a new life;
it is to be delivered from the bondage that belongs to a
servant of sin under the law. All the blessedness of life
in the Spirit belongs by right to the justified man.
Dr. James Denny is right, then, when he says that justi­
fication is a regenerative transaction. He says that justifi-

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52 Is Paul's Doctrine of Justification Forensic?

cation by faith is not a part of Paul's gospel; it is all of it.

According to Dr. Denny, Paul teaches that justification re­
generates, and that nothing else does.3
Justification is God's judgment on behalf of those who
believe in Christ. It means that God takes their part, that
he undertakes their deliverance. He is for them rather
than against them. He is against those who set themselves
against him. But when a man changes his attitude and
gives himself up to God in Christ, then God undertakes for
this man, and puts himself against all this man's enemies.
God sets the whole course of the universe to working on
behalf of such a man.
It has been a baseless charge, therefore, when men have
tried to discredit Paul's gospel by saying that his doctrine
of justification was a legal fiction; that is, that it repre­
sented God as pronouncing a man righteous, when, as a
matter of fact, he was not. It is simply an act in which
God forgives the sinner and receives him into his favor.
It is no more legal fiction than is forgiveness. Nor is it
true to say that it is a forensic tranaction in which a man
is declared righteous without being made so. He is made
righteous in relation to God. He is forgiven as a matter
of mercy. God's displeasure is removed. Such a change in
relation to God revolutionizes one in the deepest recesses
of his being. Such a one is made new. There is in his case
a new creation. All things become new.
The nearest thing in form in the New Testament to
Paul's doctrine of justification is what we find in John's
Gospel about Christ's power to judge and to give life. This
is well brought out in John 5:19ff. Here Jesus says that the
Father has given him power to judge and to give life. A
careful reading of this passage shows that the power to
judge and to give life are two aspects of the same thing.
The believer passes out of death into life. This is also de­
scribed as passing out of judgment or condemnation. To
be delivered from judgment (condemnation) is to have
life. Paul describes this as justification. To be justified is

3 See Expositor's Greek Testament, Vol. 2, p. 575.

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 Is Paul's Doctrine of Justification Forensic? 53

to have a favorable judgment from God. It is to be delivered

from condemnation. (Paul uses a form of the same word
that John uses for judgment.) The idea in both Paul and
John is that a favorable judgment from God means life; an
unfavorable judgment means death. When we say, then,
that Paul's doctrine of justification is not forensic, we mean
that it is not forensic in the sense in which that term has
been used in Protestant theology; that is, a judgment favor­
able to the sinner but a judgment that did not change the
sinner's character or bestow spiritual life. The biblical
idea of judgment is different from this in both Old Testa­
ment and New. God's judgment meant life or death. The
biblical writers knew nothing of a judgment of God that did
not mean life or death. The idea of a forensic transaction
in which God gave a judgment favorable to the sinner, de­
livered him from condemnation, but did not thereby be­
stow life on the sinner—such a conception is out of harmony
with the ethical monotheism of both Testaments and with
Paul's theology. It did not come from Paul except by a
process of abstract thought that misinterpreted Paul. It is
a fundamental fact of Old Testament religion that man
lives by the favor of God. That idea is at the bottom of
Paul's doctrine of justification. When God justifies a man
he makes him right; that is, he makes him right with God.
And in monotheistic religion to make a man right with
God means everything. With the prophets of the Old Testa­
ment, that was the foundation of all religion and of all
ethics. So was it with Paul and all New Testament writ­
ers. With Paul it was also the sum of all blessings. Paul
indicates in Rom. 8:31ff that, if God justifies us and is for us,
we need not worry about anything else. If God is for us,
nobody else can condemn us and nothing can separate us
from the love of God. Who can be against us if God is
for us?
Conservative theologians have tried to prevent the in­
evitable ill results of a forensic doctrine of justification by
hastening to assert that Paul teaches regeneration or the
new life in addition to justification. Nevertheless, those
evil results have followed. The preaching of such a forensic

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54 Is Paul's Doctrine of Justification Forensic?

doctrine, sometimes in popular and one-sided forms, has

led to a superficial spiritual life. It has led people to feel
that salvation was a transaction in which they might be de­
livered from the penalty of sin—be declared just—whether
they were ever made righteous or not. Paul's doctrine of
justification is something more radical than that and should
not be blamed for such superficial results.

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