Paul's Concept of Justification: God's Gift of a Right Relationship

The Greek family of words characterizing the doctrine of "justification by faith" (as it is known in English) is most prominent in the writings of the Apostle Paul. It was this doctrine that lay at the heart of the sixteenth-century Reformation; Martin Luther and his followers considered it to be at the very center of the gospel. Protestants came to understand "justification" differently from the Catholic Church they had left. Instead of the Catholic "realist" view, in which God makes a sinner righteous, they came to a "forensic" understanding, by which God, as judge, declares a sinner righteous. During the nineteenth century a third, "relational" view began to emerge: it viewed "justification" as God's gift of a right relationship to a sinner. This monograph examines Paul's concept from three perspectives: the New Testament data; the way the doctrine has developed historically; and how the doctrine has been expressed in English translations of the Scriptures. The author concludes that it is the relational view that most accurately depicts Paul's concept of "justification."

Author: Richard Kingsley Moore
Publisher: Wipf & Stock Publishers
Published: 02/11/2015
Pages: 234
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9781498202824

About the Author
Richard K. Moore (BA, MA, DipEd, BD, PhD) was head of the New Testament department of the Baptist Theological College of Western Australia (now Vose Seminary) from 1979 to 2002, and a lecturer at Murdoch University (1986-2002). His previous publications include Rectification ("Justification") in Paul, in Historical Perspective, and in the English Bible (2002-3) and Under the Southern Cross: The New Testament in Australian English (2014). He is currently a research associate at Vose Seminary.