Justification

This paper was originally presented at the Oxford Patristics Conference in 2019, and is being published in Studia Patristica in 2021. It has been commonly held by Pauline scholars and theologians -- myself included! --  that the factitive understanding of justification (i.e. being "made righteous") originated with Augustine’s Latin misreading of the underlying Greek verb. This paper presents a brief overview of the the conception of justification in Greek and Latin patristic sources prior to Augustine, which surprisingly finds the factitive understanding to be widely attested in earlier centuries.

This chapter is a contribution to the philosophy of human rights and in particular to the vital issue of how to justify them. In the first and second part, I give a brief depiction of the nature of human rights and examine four different approaches to justifying human rights: the natural rights approach, the divine rights approach, the fundamental interests approach, and the personal autonomy approach. The third part broadly outlines and examines a novel approach, which can be called the rational rights approach to human rights, and is based on a modified version of Kant’s notion of rationality and Rawls’ idea of the veil of ignorance. The final part defends the rational rights approach against some main objections.

On reproche souvent au référendum d'être très peu délibératif. En opposition avec la « force non coercitive de l'argument meilleur » qui habite l'idéal délibératif, le vote sanctionne un rapport de force : la loi du plus grand nombre. Le secret du vote n'incite pas non plus à une attitude délibérative. Cet article met en avant une pratique – le vote justifié – susceptible de rendre l'acte de vote et les référendums plus délibératifs en promouvant une attitude plus délibérative dans l'isoloir et en stimulant le débat public. Combinée à l'usage de mini-publics, elle ouvre des perspectives nouvelles à la participation démocratique référendaire.

I Januar 2016 vedtog Folketinget lovaendringen L87, som indebar en stramning af Udlaendingeloven. L87 indeholder 34 tiltag, der på en raekke områder begraenser og besvaerliggør flygtninges adgang til asyl i Danmark. Der herskede stor uenighed om retfaerdigheden af disse tiltag, og den offentlige debat om lovaendringen var ophedet og polariseret. Men hvilke moralske overbevisninger ligger til grund for de forskellige argumenter i debatten? Hvilke forestillinger om retfaerdighed bygger stemmerne i debatten deres udsagn på? Igennem en analyse af kronikker, debatindlæg og læserbreve i danske aviser om stramningen af Udlændingeloven med udgangspunkt i Luc Boltanski og Laurent Thévenots sociologiske teori om kritik og retfærdiggørelse, forsøger kapitlet at besvare dette spørgsmål og herved bidrage til at skabe overblik over de modsatrettede retfærdighedsforståelser, der præger Danmarks indre splittelse i spørgsmålene om flygtninge- og asylpolitik.

In this article I provide the first systematic investigation of the justification of Somali pirates. Drawing on a practice theoretical perspective I show how piracy is justified by a grand narrative that projects piracy as quasi-state practice of the protection of sovereignty against foreign intruders. Paying attention to narrative provides an explanation for the persistence of piracy and assists us in understanding the phenomenon. Relying on publicly available interviews with pirates, I deconstruct this grand narrative, show which elements are aligned and detail the different functions of the narrative in the light of the situation in which it is told. The article develops an alternative perspective on piracy based on the study of practice, narrative and situation which will also be useful to understand other forms of illicit or violent practices.

This is an author-approved manuscript (AAM) of the article published in Intertexts. Please contact the author with questions or requests.

Like the unmapped globe, the individual has no borders until identity categories delineate political lines dividing up what was previously a unique, unified whole. Gloria Anzaldúa describes this imposition of borders on an intact “me,” whom “[o]nly your labels split.” The labels are imprecise, ill-fitting identity categories of gender, race, class, and politics that belong to someone else. She rejects the suggestion that such an identity assemblage makes her “confused” or “[a]mbivalent,” because the borders are foreign to her otherwise unbroken self: label confusion does not imply identity confusion. Identity categories are the kinds of concepts that those with political and epistemic power use to draw borders on individuals and maps, to impose distinctions and hierarchies suiting their objectives, to “create worlds” with words to “order dominant discourses,” as Timothy Fitzgerald explains. The powerful can then apply those concepts and the worlds they create to discursively justify their beliefs: repeated enough, the words and their worlds begin to sound natural, and then epistemically powerful, so that audiences trust the speakers who invoke those words and believe the knowledge from those conceptual worlds. ‘Religion’ is one powerful example of such a word that creates a naturalized category whose epistemic privilege makes it, as Barack Obama and Frederick Douglass observe in the epigraphs, a dangerous weapon.

This chapter provides a descriptive and analytical examination of the requirement for lay jurors to give reasons for their decisions. In the 2010 case of Taxquet v. Belgium, the European Court of Human Right announced a new right for criminal defendants “to understand verdicts.” This jurisprudence has prompted a number of Council of Europe countries to overhaul their criminal procedure, including France, which now requires that its mixed courts, in which professional and lay judges deliberate collectively, justify their decisions on guilt or innocence. Descriptively, the chapter presents the Strasbourg court’s position as well as the French response to it, which have both been heralded as moral advances for criminal defendants. Analytically, the paper considers the values and purposes of reason-giving. What is this turn to heightened reason-giving trying to achieve?

I argue that while both the European Court of Human Rights and French lawmakers depict reason-giving as an individual human right belonging to criminal defendants, in practice, reason-giving functions as an accountability device primarily designed to solve systemic issues within the criminal justice system. More specifically, as the French case illustrates, the European interest in reason-giving can be tied to hopes for tighter control over trial judges. The chapter concludes that it is hard, if not impossible, to disentangle two facets of reason-giving, namely, reason-giving as a way to achieve fairness to defendants and reason-giving as a way to provide checks on legal actors who might otherwise enjoy unfettered discretion.

John Calvin’s understanding of works-righteousness is more complex than is often recognized. While he denounces it in some instances, he affirms it in others. This study shows that Calvin affirms works-righteousness within the context where faith-righteousness is already established, and that he even teaches a form of justification by works. Calvin ascribes not only a positive role to good works in relation to divine acceptance, but also soteriological value to believers’ good works. This study demonstrates such by exploring Calvin’s theological anthropology, his understanding of divine-human activity, his teaching on the nature of good works, and his understanding of divine grace and benevolence. It also addresses current debates in Calvin scholarship by exploring topics such as union with Christ, the relation between justification and sanctification, the relation between good works and divine acceptance, the role of good works in the Christian life, and the content of good works. https://www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com/themen-entdecken/theologie-und-religion/systematische-theologie-religionsphilosophie/56952/john-calvin-and-the-righteousness-of-works

L’objectif de cet article est de clarifier les relations qu’entretiennent trois théories de la justification des croyances, toutes considérées comme des théories internalistes 1 : la conception déontique (le déontologisme), la conception accessibiliste (l’accessibilisme) et la conception mentaliste (le mentalisme). Nous expliquerons qu’en dépit de ce que l’on pourrait penser à première vue l’adoption de l’accessibilisme n’implique pas celle du mentalisme. Dans un second temps, nous montrerons pourquoi on ne peut être un défenseur de la conception déontique de la justification sans être également un partisan de l’accessibilisme.2 L’intérêt de ces démonstrations réside principalement dans le fait qu’elles nous permettent de délier —ou, au contraire d’unir— le sort de ces différentes conceptions de la justification vis- à-vis des objections qui leur sont adressées. Faire la preuve de l’autonomie du mentalisme vis- à-vis de l’accessibilisme, par exemple, c’est établir l’immunité du premier vis-à-vis des objections que l’on peut faire au second.
L’examen proprement dit des relations qui rattachent ces trois conceptions internalistes de la justification occupe les sections 4 et 5. Les sections 1, 2 et 3 sont des sections introductives. Elles sont, pour leur part, consacrées à la description de ces conceptions.

Most scholars have contended that early Catholic responses to the Reformers showed deep misunderstandings. In this essay, I examine More's reading of Luther, as can be gleaned through his subtle "Dialogue Concerning Heresies," and contend that More substantially gets Luther right. I make one major qualification that only redounds to a further critique of Luther, while appreciating the loftiness of his vision that nonetheless founds his own misconceptions.

In a time characterized by wars, students and employees being shot at their desks, and corporate executives raiding pension funds, aggression has taken on considerable prominence in our society. Aggressive people capture our interest because they are the ones who desire to harm others. Considerable progress has been made in recent years in understanding the aggressive personality. Psychology now has a much better idea of the defensive cognitive processes that aggressive people use to create a false sense of rationality for their aggressive acts. This knowledge of defensive processes was used to design a new measurement system to identify aggressive individuals. The new measurement system is based on a ‘‘cover’’ task in the form of an inductive reasoning problem. The use of reasoning to cover the measurement of aggression is made possible because aggressive people use the illusion of rational analyses to create defenses for their harming of others. The measurement system builds on this process by constructing answers to inductive reasoning problems that are grounded in the same defensive, self-illusionary thinking that aggressive people use to rationalize harming others. Aggressive people tend to be drawn to these answers (the answers in the previous sentence). This is because people who habitually engage in creating falsely rational defenses find reasoning based on the same types of protective thinking to be logically compelling.

Axel Honneth draws a distinction between three types of recognition: (1) love, (2) respect and (3) social esteem. In his The Struggle for Recognition, the recognition of cultural particularity is situated in the third sphere. It will here be argued that the logic of recognition of cultural identity also demands a non-evaluative recognition, namely a respect for difference. Difference-respect is formal because it is a recognition of the value of a particular culture not ‘‘for society’’ or ‘‘as such’’, but for the social group involved. Yet, although it is formal, difference-respect cannot be reduced to respect for personal autonomy and its preconditions, as Honneth wrongly suggests in Redistribution or Recognition? It is argued here that difference-respect is oriented towards another dimension of the person, namely social attachments. This kind of respect entails a separate register of formal recognition with a corresponding concept of personal identity and a parallel category of social disrespect. What morally justifies difference-respect from a recognition-theoretic approach is the practical relation-to-self that thus becomes possible, namely self-respect as a sense of belonging. The formal conception of the good life that Honneth articulates should include the insight that this sense of belonging is as much a necessary condition for the good life as is personal autonomy.

The standard view of reasons for action, commonly called the guise of the good thesis, is that they count in favor of an action by highlighting the good there is in performing it. In recent decades, attempts to reject the view have focused largely on counter-examples. I argue that in order for a genuine alternative to the standard view of practical reasons to emerge, the view must meet two criteria, derived from the virtues of the standard view. I suggest that an explanation based view of practical reasons is the most viable alternative, and use two incomplete versions to develop lessons for a filled out view. I conclude by using these lessons to outline how a pragmatic account of explanation can serve as a genuine alternative to the standard view, going beyond the placeholders that have thus far overly focused on rejecting rather than replacing the status quo.

Until very recently all wholesale energy trades in the Romanian market were conducted on the centralized markets operated by OPCOM SA (“OPCOM”). This meant that bilateral agreements concluded outside the centralized Romanian market were banned, with the exception of small electricity producers. With the new changes of the Romanian legislation, as of 19 May 2020, producers of electricity are allowed to conclude bilateral agreements outside the centralized markets, “at negotiated prices and with the observance of the competition rules, in order to trade the electricity from the new production capacities put into operation after 1 June 2020.” Nevertheless, even after such change, the CJEU is faced with a case concerning a restrictive interpretation of the Romanian legislation which turned to be against Article 35 and 36 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (“TFEU”).

This case note analyzes the opinion of Advocate General (“AG”) Campos SánchezBordona and the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) on Case C-648/18 between Autoritatea Naţională de Reglementare în Domeniul Energiei (“ANRE”) and Societatea de Producere a Energiei Electrice în Hidrocentrale Hidroelectrica SA (“Hidroelectrica”). Section 2 briefly establishes the factual background and the legal issue. Section 3 and 4 describe the AG opinion and the decision of the CJEU respectively. Section 4 entails some comments and briefly discusses the role of the CJEU regarding the admissibility, focusing more on the indistinctly applicable measures having equivalent effect to quantitative restrictions (“MEQR”) on exports, and transparency and ensuring supply as justifying grounds.

This study is a response to a colleague's paper comparing the published views on Justification by John Piper and Tom Wright.
It outlines the key feature of Paul's doctrine before treating briefly the views of the two writers concerned, especially on those points where they differ significantly from Paul.

This paper provides a typology of the main interpretations of Romans 10:4 ("Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes") and argues for a teleological interpretation. On this view, Christ is the one in whom the law's aim is realized, resulting in a legal status of righteousness for all who believe.

This is an appendix to the final paper of the course “DM872 - Hebrews: Exegesis, Theology, and Ministry”. It reconsiders the two types of believers mentioned by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount , the true believers living a God-centered life and the deceived believers a man-centered life. These are two completely different ways of living the Christian life. The purpose of this appendix is to examine the beliefs and principles making up these two ways.

This appendix answers questions brought up by the original essay.

For the original essay, see https://www.academia.edu/11547550/Perseverance_and_Saving_Faith

Free sample! Available from Brazos (http://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/gospel-allegiance/395830) or Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1587434296/)
Is faith in Jesus enough for salvation? Perhaps, says Matthew Bates, but we're missing pieces of the gospel. The biblical gospel can never change. Yet our understanding of the gospel must change. The church needs an allegiance shift. Popular pastoral resources on the gospel are causing widespread confusion. Bates shows that the biblical gospel is different, fuller, and more beautiful than we have been led to believe. He explains that saving faith doesn't come through trust in Jesus's death on the cross alone but through allegiance to Christ the king. There is only one true gospel and one required response: allegiance. Bates ignited conversation with his successful and influential book Salvation by Allegiance Alone. Here he goes deeper while making his acclaimed teaching on salvation more accessible and experiential for believers who want to better understand and share the gospel. Gospel Allegiance includes a guide for further conversation, making it ideal for church groups, pastors, leaders, and students.

Analytic philosophy has seen a surge of interest in the relationship between reasons and responsibility. Against the bulk of this literature Emmanuel Levinas raises a cutting and comprehensive critique: The orthodox explanatory order, which explains our responsibility to one another in terms of normative reasons, is backwards. For while such such reasons may explain what we are responsible for in a given case, they do not explain why we are responsible to begin with. Worse: we seem to have a standing responsibility to have reasons with which to justify our acts and attitudes. But the general responsibility to have justificatory reasons isn’t itself something reasons could justify. Levinas’s suggestion: Stop trying to explain interpersonal responsibility in terms of reasons. Start explaining reasons-giving as an expression of a responsibility-relation. We will then see we are not, first, responsible to others because of reason, or because there are we have reasons we ought to be. On the contrary: we are first responsible to others one another, and only this explains why and how we have reasons.
Levinas’s insistence on the primacy of responsibility with respect to reasons is clear. Less clear is his argument for this primacy. I will here attempt to re-construct Levinas’s argument, such that it is at once plausible in its own right and also plausibly his. The heart of the argument is a Strawson-inspired analysis of reasoning, consistent with the idea that, before and beneath the particular reasons we give, there is a prior responsibility-relation Levinas calls facing. I will conclude that it is plausible to suppose our responsiveness to reasons is what Levinas says it is: a disguised and derivative form of responsibility to persons-- and that Levinas’s unusual account of reasoning recommends an equally unusual answer to the question “What is a reason?”

Karl Popper lamented the prevalence of dogmatic argument in philosophy and commended the kind of critical argument that is found in the sciences. David Miller criticises the uncritical nature of so-called critical thinking because of its attachment to dogmatic arguments. I expound and clarify Popper’s distinction between critical and dogmatic arguments and the background to it. I criticise some errors in Miller’s discussion. I reaffirm the need for philosophers to eschew dogmatic arguments in favour of critical ones.

Few issues have been as divisive for the contemporary church as the doctrine of irre- sistible grace. In the debates surrounding this doctrine, there has been an overwhelm- ing tendency for theologies of grace to focus on the effects that grace has on particular human beings. Alongside this tendency, there has arisen a danger that we forget that God’s grace is God’s grace; that it is God’s free, personal, and beneficent disposition and action. In this article, I turn to Karl Barth to consider a way forward for interpreting the irresistible nature of grace that does not focus on its effectuality but on its theocentric, participative, and covenantal character.

Free sample! Sample and the book are also available from Baker Academic  (http://www.bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/salvation-by-allegiance-alone/380521). Or preview/purchase from Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0801097975/)

We are saved by faith when we trust that Jesus died for our sins. This is the gospel, or so we are taught. But what is faith? And does this accurately summarize the gospel? Because faith is frequently misunderstood and the climax of the gospel misidentified, the gospel's full power remains untapped. While offering a fresh proposal for what faith means within a biblical theology of salvation, Matthew Bates presses the church toward a new precision: we are saved solely by allegiance to Jesus the king. Instead of faith alone, Christians must speak about salvation by allegiance alone. The book includes discussion questions for students, pastors, and church groups and a foreword by Scot McKnight.

This paper describes some of the most important theological distinctions of the so-called "New Perspective on Paul" drawn from the writings of three of its most well-known advocates: E. P. Sanders, James D. G. Dunn, and N. T. Wright.  After this summary, each of these distinctives is critiqued, with special attention paid to how the "New Perspective" threatens the centrality of the traditional Reformation doctrine of justification.

Celem badań było wstępne zbadanie związków między deklarowaną częstością oszukiwania podczas sprawdzianów wiedzy a samooceną i tendencją do usprawiedliwiania zachowania. Badanie objęło 141 studentów, wykorzystano w nim skalę SES Rosenberga oraz własną ankietę i zadania w których studenci oceniali zachowania ściągającego studenta oraz przedstawiali swoją propozycję reakcji wykładowcy w sytuacji przyłapania studenta na ściąganiu. Wyniki badań nie potwierdziły związku pomiędzy samooceną a tendencją do usprawiedliwiania oszukiwania. Ze względu na ograniczenia dotyczące możliwości uogólniania wyników przeprowadzonych prób konieczne wydają się dalsze, pogłębione badania. Jest jednak możliwe, że ogólna samoocena nie odgrywa w procesach związanych z usprawiedliwianiem i samousprawiedliwianiem nieuczciwego zachowania kluczowej roli. Stwierdzono natomiast istotne statystycznie korelacje dotyczące związku między częstością ściągania a usprawiedliwianiem tego zachowania (wraz ze wzrostem częstości ściągania zwiększa się tendencja do usprawiedliwiania ściągania), oceną szkodliwości ściągania (wraz ze wzrostem częstości ściągania zmniejsza się ocena szkodliwości ściągania), dotkliwością sankcji proponowanych wobec ściągających (wraz ze wzrostem częstości ściągania zmniejsza się dotkliwość sankcji proponowanych dla osób przyłapanych na ściąganiu) oraz oceną własnej uczciwości (wraz ze wzrostem częstości ściągania obniża się samoocena w aspekcie związanym z uczciwością).
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The research project was conducted in order to preliminarily probe into possible relations between the declared frequency of cheating during knowledge tests, self-esteem levels and the propensity to justify own behaviors. It covered 114 students, was based on Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale, the questionnaire developed by the author and tasks deployed for students to assess the behavior of those who cheated and to present the suggested response to be adopted by the lecturer who spotted cheating. Research results have not confirmed that there might be a relation between the self-esteem levels and the propensity to justify cheating. Considering the limited possibility of generalizing the results obtained on the said study sample, it would seem advisable to conduct further, more in-depth studies. However, it may also be possible that the general self-esteem levels do not impact significantly the process of justification and self-justification of dishonest behaviors. At the same time, the study has shown some statistically significant correlations between the frequency of cheating and the justification of such behavior (the more frequent the cheating behavior, the higher the propensity to justify the behavior), the assessment of cheating as harmful (the more frequent the cheating behavior, the less frequent assessment of cheating as harmful), the severity of sanctions suggested for individuals caught cheating, and the assessment of own honesty (the more frequent the cheating behavior, the lower levels of honesty self-assessments).

This article shows how in its postmodern “development”, a major part of Christianity has shifted away from the biblical justification by faith and the theology of the cross. Justification is sought from experiences and works, and it is believed to happen inside human being. This has moved the Christian world to the unbiblical Roman Catholic teaching of infused righteousness and justification by sacrament/creation. For example, the joint declarations of the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church, and theologies of Karl Barth and Ivan T. Blazen (a Seventh-day Adventist theologian), are studied.* This research paper argues that (1) the postmodern theology is based on communal focus, experiential focus, and deconstruction of the basis on Scripture; (2) justification and sanctification need to be demerged; (3) the Christian postmodern world has gone back to Roman Catholic teaching of infused righteousness; (4) the postmodern view believes in justification by human works; and (5) the postmodern theological thinking unbiblically merges justification and sanctification.

* The author of this paper is a Seventh-day Adventist, and he argues that Blazen's teaching about justification does not represent the whole view of Seventh-day Adventists. See for example: Richard Davidson, "Justification by Faith According to the Old Testament: In the Footsteps of the Reformers," Andrews University Faculty Publications 859 (2017), https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/pubs/859/.

This select bibliography on the evangelical doctrine of salvation is a work in progress. It lists key works, mostly by evangelicals, that are generally representative of a broad cross-section of evangelicalism or traditional, conservative Protestantism. This bibliography does not give attention to issues disputed within evangelicalism, such as debates between Arminians and Calvinists over predestination and election (though a few works here do have some relevance to such debates). Rather, the purpose here is to identify key publications that represent evangelical thinking about the doctrine of salvation in contrast to views taught in non-evangelical traditions in Christianity.

Since the Reformation, James 2:24, ‘justified by works and not by faith
alone’, has been the source of special controversy within an already contested
epistle. But in the patristic and medieval period it was almost
entirely unemployed and ignored, despite the widespread use, both approvingly
and critically, of the expression sola fide. This article offers a
pre-Reformation reception history of James 2:24. It begins with Origen
and Augustine’s broader interpretation of James 2, then turns to the key
pre-Reformation references to James: the earliest references (fifth–seventh
century), Bede the Venerable (eighth), the Glossa Ordinaria (twelfth),
Nicholas of Gorran (thirteenth), John Wyclif and Ps-Jan Hus (fourteenth),
and Dionysius the Carthusian (fifteenth). Surprisingly, James 2:24 is at
times explicitly harmonized with the expression sola fide, and only rarely
used to critique it, because most read the Vulgate’s language in James
2:24 (non ex fide tantum) to refer solely to the need for later good
works. At the same time, ‘justified by works’ was generally interpreted as
referring to a confirmation or manifestation of justification until the scholastic
period, when we find the earliest instances of interpreting ‘justified
by works’ as a further justification. These results provide a theologically
rich historical perspective on the reception of James 2:24 with respect to
the development of sola fide and the scholastic interpretation of ‘justified
by works’ as a subsequent increase in justification.

While there is no shortage of philosophical literature discussing knowledge by acquaintance, there is a surprising dearth of work about theories of epistemic justification based on direct acquaintance. This paper explores a basic framework for a thoroughly general account of epistemic justification by acquaintance. I argue that this approach to epistemic justification satisfies two importance aspects (objective and subjective) of justification. After sketching how the acquaintance approach can meet both objective and subjective aspects for epistemic justification, I will outline how this general account of justification by acquaintance can be applied to the analysis of justification for many types of beliefs (e.g., non-inferential, inferential, a priori, empirical justification, etc.). Finally, some of the objections to the acquaintance approach will be considered and answered.

The modern Protestant Christian trusts in personal faith rather than Christ for the impetus of justification. Reformed Theology has influenced Protestantism in defining both justification and faith in such a way as to implicitly teach fideism. An understanding of this claim will be demonstrated through a survey of books on systematic theology, topical books relating to justification and faith, and commentaries on supporting proof texts. This paper will include the historical development of understanding the relationship of faith to justification. Focus on the language and expansion of the doctrine of justification by faith in John Calvin’s 1536 Institutes and his 1559 final version will be compared. Examining the major confessions and catechisms of Reformed Theology will demonstrate what is presently taught is consistent with the modern understanding of justification by trusting in one’s faith. Finally, this paper will articulate the doctrine of justification by faith in light of the research.