Episode 16: The Early Church on Justification

Lutherans teach Sola Scriptura, Scripture alone. This means that only the Bible is the source and norm of all Christian doctrine. We call this the formal principle. We do not determine what we teach based on church councils, popes, or church fathers. We teach that a sinner is justified by grace through faith alone apart from his works when he believes that he is received into favor and that his sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, not because this is taught by any man, but because it is the clear teaching of Holy Scripture. That a sinner is justified by grace through faith alone in Christ alone is the material principle, that is, the chief teaching of all of Scripture.

However, the writings of the church should not be ignored. We treat the writings of the church fathers as helpful witnesses of Holy Scripture. The reason for this episode is that I have been increasingly seeing claims by those in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church that their respective denominations were founded by Jesus Christ, while the Lutheran and Protestant churches were founded in the sixteenth century. And as we just a few years ago celebrated the 500^th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation, clarification is in order. Is the Lutheran Church only five centuries old? Meaning, is the doctrine of the Lutheran Church that a sinner is justified by grace through faith alone apart from works an invention of Lutheran theologians, or does this doctrine predate the Lutheran Reformation in the Church? I recently read a chapter from Martin Chemnitz’s Examination of the Council of Trent, which compiles a number of quotes from early church fathers, which proves that the doctrine of the Lutheran Church that a sinner is justified before God by grace through faith alone apart from works for the sake of the innocent bitter sufferings and death of Jesus Christ was taught in the Church long before the sixteenth century. And in fact, it is the doctrines of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches that teach that justification is not only the forgiveness of sins through faith, but the renewal of the interior man, that is a new (manmade) teaching within the church.

Martin Chemnitz, Examination of the Council of Trent vol. 1, translated by Fred Kramer, CPH, St. Louis. Pgs. 514-522.

Basil the Great: 330-378 AD

Origen: 185-253 AD

Hilary: 310-367 AD

Ambrose: 340-397 AD

Augustine: 354-430 AD

Jerome: 340s-420 AD

Gregory the Great: Pope from 590-603

Bernard of Clairvaux:1090-1153

Posidonius (Friend of Augustine)

Anselm of Cantebury: Archbishop from 1093-1109

Bonaventura: 13c

Gerson: 14-15c