Justification By Faith In The Age of Authenticity

Last updated on: June 7, 2018 at 12:04 am by Scot McKnight

Justification By Faith In The Age of Authenticity 2018-06-02T13:10:31-05:00 Scot McKnight

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

In Andrew Root’s Faith Formation in a Secular Age, he sketches three kinds of Secular:

Secular 1: Sacred versus Secular Planes
Secular 2: Religious versus A-religious Spaces
Secular 3: The Negating of Transcendence

What happens to justification by faith in Secular 3? If Secular 2 is more negotiated space, what about Secular 3? Bigger one: if justification tends to be expressed at times as a legal fiction (only a standing, only a declaration, only judicial), can justification be valued in Secular 3 when experience matters deeply? Can justification be connected to the experience of transformation?

Here we go.

Root’s opening contextual description as well as the summary claims of the chapter: the age of authenticity values experience; justification by faith alone is a disposition open to God’s ministering to us in Christ through the Spirit; faith then is openness to God’s person indwelling our person; ministry then is about this kind of faith-alone-justification-experiencing of God. It is transformative.

Now Root:

The age of authenticity allows us all to continue to seek a sense of “fullness”—for experiences that feel like transformation, giving us meaning and purpose. There becomes a nova effect—all sorts of new ways to seek this transformation, like new therapies, spiritualities, sexual expressions, fashions, and more. Oddly, while Secular 3 claims that existence is only material and natural, we cannot live with this, and the age of authenticity cannot stand for it, pushing us into seeking all sorts of transformations that might give us a sense of fullness.

This propensity in the age of authenticity gives us again the opening to make a case for divine action that is bound to justification. This makes “faith alone” not solely the epistemological submission to the rule of a sovereign but an encounter with the real presence of Christ, who transforms us (theosis) through a (hypostatic) union bound in our death experience (kenosis). Justification, then, must also be imagined as the very act of ministry.

To be justified by faith alone is to see faith alone as the human disposition that opens itself to the ministerial being of God, who through the personhood of the Son joins our persons by overcoming our deaths through the transformational power of the Spirit. We are made into Christ (theosis) by experiencing the ministry of Christ, who gives us his life out of our deaths. Justification is not simply a picture of a sovereign, ruling God but the articulation of the depth of God’s own ministry. Justification begins with the divine proclamation that we are lost in sin and death and therefore always need the ministry of the Father to the Son (through the Spirit) to transform our very being from death to life. It is ministry itself, I contend, that is the power of transformation in the world. All forms of transformation that bring life, wholeness, and healing take the shape of ministry. Even articulations of such transformation outside the church often claim ministry (without using the word) as the catalyst of transformation (e.g., “If it wasn’t for Laura, I’d still be drunk, killing myself with every shot,” someone might say). To see how justification is the ministry of transformation, we must return to Paul and righteousness.

For Root, God is not a scorekeeper as God is for so many today; rather, God is a minister.

Then who this God is, revealed in justification, is not an accountant or a scorekeeper but a minister who comes to your dying person with a personhood (hypostasis) that enters your death experiences as an act of ministry (kenosis) so that you might be free from serving death and be (not a clairvoyant shaman but) a minister to your neighbor (theosis). You need not the idea of a foreign righteousness that changes your attitude but the personhood of a minister who can transform your very being, leading you through death into union with a new being who has overcome death so fully that you are now free to reenter death as a minister who loves persons. “Justification, then,” as Gorman says, “is about reconciliation, covenant, community, resurrection, and life. And this reality is brought about by death—Christ’s death for us in the past and our death with Him in the present.”

Too often sin and justification and faith are shaped entirely into a negative; Root reframes:

It’s not that you suck or that when God looks at you, God only sees Jesus. Rather, you are invited to recognize and admit your places of isolation, rejection, loneliness, and fear and to find that Jesus is there with you—through your brokenness you find yourself loved by a minister and sent into the world to minister to your neighbor.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

June 6, 2018

Asking The Church To Forsake Violence For the Nonviolent Jesus

Next Post

June 7, 2018 Errant or Inerrant ... By What Standard? (RJS)

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Acts of the Apostles Adam Advent Anabaptism Angels Anglican Apologetics Atonement Baptism BCP Prayers Bible Biblical Studies Birds Blogging Bloglossary Bonhoeffer Books Calvinism Christianity Church Church History Coffee Colossians Commentary Recs Conversion Creation Creeds Culture Death Ecclesiastes Economics Education Embracing Grace Emergent Emerging Movement Eschatology Essays Ethics Eucharist Evangelicalism Family Fasting Fathers Fellowship of Differents Footsteps Tour Fun and Whimsical Gospel Grace Happiness Heaven Hell Holy Spirit Irenaeus James Jesus Jesus Creed Job Justification Kingdom of God Law Lectures Lent Liberalism Love and Marriage Mabanteneni Manhood Mary Miracles Missio Alliance MissioLife Missional Missional Jesus Movies and Film New Perspective Northern Seminary OneLife Origins Project Orthodox Parables Pastor's Spouse Pastoring and Leading Pastoring and Preaching Patristics Paul Paul-John Tour Pharisees Pietism Political Theology Prayer and Formation Preaching Problems for Faith Psalm 119 Psalms Public Issues Purgatory Religions Resurrection Revelation Romans Rule of JCreed Science and Faith Sermon on the Mount Sports Ten Commandments Theology Third Way Top Ten Lists Translations Uncategorized Universalism University Ministry Way Out Weekly Meanderings Wisdom Women and Ministry Work Worship Writing & Blogging Youth Ministry

Select a Month July 2021 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 0000

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

In the Parable of the Wedding Banquet, who accepts the invitation?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Unexpected guests Priests Nobles Only the king