A. Justification by grace alone

Note: This list is a work in progress, and may change at any time both in the selection of quotations and the content of the annotations. In the meantime, feel free to offer any suggestions.

IGNATIUS

“From Syria even unto Rome I fight with beasts, both by land and sea, both by night and day, being bound to ten leopards, I mean a band of soldiers, who, even when they receive benefits, show themselves all the worse. But I am the more instructed by their injuries [to act as a disciple of Christ]; “yet am I not thereby justified.” (Epistle to the Romans, chap. 5)1

“Let us not, therefore, be insensible to His kindness. For were He to reward us according to our works, we should cease to be” (Epistle to the Magnesians, chap. 10).

BARNABAS

“Therefore He hath circumcised our ears, that we might hear His word and believe…” (Epistle of Barnabas, chap. 9)2

Augustine

“…but he says, “Him who knew no sin,” that is, Christ, God, to whom we are to be reconciled, “hath made to be sin for us,” that is, hath made Him a sacrifice for our sins, by which we might be reconciled to God. He, then, being made sin, just as we are made righteousness (our righteousness being not our own, but God’s, not in ourselves, but in Him); He being made sin, not His own, but ours, not in Himself, but in us, showed, by the likeness of sinful flesh in which He was crucified, that though sin was not in Him, yet that in a certain sense He died to sin, by dying in the flesh which was the likeness of sin…” (Enchiridion, chap. 41)3

John Cassian

“So then as they know by experience that through the hindrance of the burden of the flesh they cannot by human strength reach the desired end, nor be united according to their heart’s desire with that chief and highest good, but that they are led away from the vision of it captive to worldly things, they betake themselves to the grace of God, ‘Who justifieth the ungodly,’ and cry out with the Apostle: O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ.’” (Third Conference of Abbot Theonas, chap. 10).

  1. Similarly to Paul in Philippians 3, when listing his accomplishments only to disavow them for the righteousness of Christ, Ignatius here gives a very weighty list of good works that he has done, being on the way to a glorious martyrdom; but he explicitly denies to those good works any value for his justification.
  2. An early testimony against the Pelagian/Semi-Pelagian/Arminian doctrines that faith comes from anything but the sovereign grace of God.
  3. Augustine here teaches unequivocally that our justification is not due to any righteousness that God works in us, but it is rather on the basis of a righteousness wholly outside of us, that is, God’s own righteousness, that we are reconciled to God.

Leave a Reply