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  • From: Don Garlington <dgarlington AT ica.net>
  • To: corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Matter for Concern: Salvation/Justification
  • Date: Fri, 11 Jun 1999 17:39:07 -0400


Dear Mr. Blaisdell,

Thank you for your call for a discussion of justification/salvation,
etc. The whole matter, of course, is exceedingly complex; but may I get
the ball rolling with a preliminary suggestion?

I have come to the conclusion that “salvation” and “justification” are
virtually coextensive. I recall B. F. Westcott’s famous answer to the
question, “Are you saved?” He replied (in Greek): “I have been saved, I
am being saved, and I shall be saved.” In other words, salvation
transpires in three tenses. A good definition of “salvation,” I think
can be found in Cranfield’s Romans, 1.89:


"The gospel is God’s effective power active in the world of men to bring
about deliverance from His wrath in the final judgment and reinstatement
in that glory of God which was lost through sin - that is, an
eschatological salvation which reflects its splendour back into the
present of those who are to share in it."


I would submit that just as “salvation” comes in three tenses, so does
“justification.” The past-historical dimension of justification in Paul,
of course, is to be taken for granted. However, there is a growing
consensus that even in Paul there a future aspect, most conspicuously in
Rom 2:13 (especially in context) and all of the judgment according to
works passages in Paul (e.g., 2 Cor 5:10) and elsewhere. I have
discussed Rom 2 in particular in my Faith, Obedience, and Perseverance:
Aspects of Paul’s Letter to the Romans (WUNT 79; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck,
1994).

Moreover, my reading of Jas 2 leads me to believe that far being in
contradiction to Paul, James affirms that there is a present, if you
will, on-going dimension of justification too. If we accept that
justification is vindication, then James’s point is that Abraham’s
faithfulness to Yahweh was vindicated when he sacrificed Isaac. He
remarks that Gen 15:6 was “fulfilled” by Abraham’s action in Gen 22. In
other words, his covenant fidelity was proven when he made the ultimate
sacrifice of his son. This is not so far removed from Rom 4:18-25, which
stresses the persevering quality of Abraham’s faith.

I would compare the perspective of James with the Lords’ Prayer in Matt:
“Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the *Evil One*” (not
evil in the abstract). This, in turn, stems from the testing of Jesus in
the wilderness, so that when the disciple prays not to be led into
temptation, he/she requests not to entrapped in testing/temptation so as
to apostatize. If this comparison is apt at all, the resultant meaning
is that at various points along the way believers are confronted with
temptations to apostasy, and when they resist, they are vindicated as
God’s faithful ones, as Abraham and finally as Jesus himself.

It seems to me that all of this can be worked into a rather neat
biblical-theological schema, whereby justification/vindication in its
three tenses is more or less commensurate with salvation it its three
tenses. The latter is normally considered to be the broader concept -
and it probably is. However, if once we are able to extricate ourselves
from a Lutheran one-dimensional understanding of justification,
“justification” as a theological concept can be seen to expand its
circumference so as to become almost as expansive as “salvation.”

I don’t know if this is the kind of thing you were looking for, but I
thought I would respond to your plea and at least give it a shot.

Yours,

Don Garlington
Toronto Baptist Seminary
Toronto, Ontario







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