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On Fides Iustificans: The Faith Which Justifies

by Dave Seng



Because justification was the central concern of the Reformation, the focus of this post will be on justifying faith. Most generally, faith is the assent of the mind to something as true on the authority of the one declaring it to be so. The term “faith” comes from the Latin, Fides or Fidere, and has come to mean trust, confidence, and persuasion of the truth of God’s revelation. It also means trust and belief in that truth itself considered as the object or body of belief. For example, confessional Lutherans state agreement with the Apostle’s, Nicene, and Athanasian creeds, and the doctrines found in the Book of Concord because they are in agreement with Scripture. This is that which is called the Evangelical Lutheran faith. As such, those writings are expressions of what Lutherans believe, teach, and confess as a matter of faith.

The Lutheran scholastics (Martin Chemnitz, Mathias Haggenreffer, Leonhard Hutter among others) defined other aspects of faith as well. These may be considered along with their definitions. First, there is temporary faith, a faith which although once accepts the datum of revelation as true, but dissipates into unbelief. Second, historical faith, the kind of faith which accepts revelation as true, but apart from any spiritual effect such as the demons who believe Christ died to save the world from sin. Third, miraculous faith, which accepts the promises of supernatural intervention such as the faith which moves mountains. For the Lutheran scholastics, however, the central concern was saving faith (fides salvifica) or the faith which justifies (fides iustificans). Since justification has been stated as the central focus of the Reformation, the remainder of this essay will explore justifying faith.

As with the sixteenth century, Christians, today, are largely confused about the nature of justifying faith. Just a few examples are in order. I once heard a Lutheran Christian say that Lutherans have the same doctrine of justification as Roman Catholics (just a quick examination of the Book of Concord and the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent will demonstrate that this statement is false). Although I graduated from a Christian high school, I never once heard the foundational teaching of justifying faith (I did, however, hear a lot about what I was supposed to do. Christianity is not a system of ethics.)

Perhaps the saddest or most personal example I can think of that highlights the current confusion over the nature of justifying faith is when I worked for an evangelical broadcasting company as a scriptwriter. I once put the Roman Catholic formula for justification—“fides caritate formata,” (or sometimes just “fides formata”) that is, “faith informed by love,” (I used the English) into a radio program. None of my evangelical colleagues were concerned or seemed to care that I put a false, non-Biblical, law-bound definition of the Gospel into the program and out into the listening audience! One can find many other examples of the confusion regarding the nature of justifying faith. Today, if you were to ask a Baptist, Methodist, Anglican, Lutheran, Roman Catholic, or Presbyterian what the nature of justifying faith is, you are likely to get a variety of conflicting answers.

But why might the phrase “faith informed by love,” be considered problematic? As wonderful as it sounds, this formula is denied by orthodox Lutherans, insofar as it rests on a concept of a created grace (gratia creata) implanted or infused into the individual. For the medieval church, infused grace was an imparted gift (donum) which serves to make the sinner righteous. For it to operate, the sinner must cooperate with infused grace in order to be made righteous.

The Lutheran orthodox would remind us that faith justifies not because of itself, not due to infused grace, and not as a quality found in the individual. If faith were infused, it would be impossible to know how much, or whether or not, one has successfully cooperated with, or done enough, to merit divine forgiveness. As the Lutheran orthodox discovered, justification is a divine forensic act of being declared righteous on account of Christ alone. This is the meaning of imputation as Romans 4:11, 4:22-24, and James 2:23 teach. “God credits righteousness apart from works” – Romans 4:6. This divine declaration is why one can be at the same time sinful and justified—simul iustus et peccator.

The full and complete formula for justification is important to remember—justification is by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone. Faith justifies on account of Christ alone, of whom faith lays hold. Christ’s righteousness is not infused into the believer but, rather, imputed to the sinner’s account through faith alone. Faith, apart from works, is that which apprehends the grace of Christ. Faith is that which connects the sinner to Christ and His righteousness.

The Lutheran scholastics used the term “per fides” or “by faith” with a precise meaning in mind. To them, “by” indicates that faith is the instrumental cause of justification or the means by which it is appropriated. Justifying faith is, then, God’s act of counting or reckoning the sinful individual righteous because of Christ’s atoning death. Christ’s righteousness is imputed to the believing sinner through faith alone. In other words, God forgives sinners and counts them as righteous on the basis of their faith in Christ, and accepts them as His own reconciled children. Christ alone provides the righteousness and faith.

Why does justifying faith matter? For one thing, it is the orthodox doctrine of the Gospel. Justification is the Gospel. This means that the Gospel is not a system of ethics or law-following. A law-bound gospel is no gospel at all and holds no hope for the sinner. Too many in the Christian tradition say that justification is by faith, but can not or will not present or defend the idea that justification is by faith alone. When explicating Romans 1:17, “the just shall live by faith,” Luther says, “For faith grounds us on the works of Christ, without our own works, and transfers us from the exile of our sins into the kingdom of his righteousness. This is faith; this is the Gospel; this is Christ”

(Martin Luther, What Luther Says: An Anthology, ed. Ewald M. Plass, 3 vols. 2:921).

Faith indeed grounds us on the works of Christ. Faith, Christ’s faith, given by Him to the believer through the hearing of the Good News, is the instrumental cause apart from, and without, any human merit or work.

The Biblical doctrine of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone is not an academic matter or a scholastic quibble over semantics. Justifying faith can be such a great source of comfort for those who have grown up under the law (or for anyone who has been convicted of their sin by the law). For those bound up in their fear of the law or conviction of sin, justifying faith brings reassurance, solace, and genuine relief. This Gospel brings freedom, joy, and love and is profoundly existentially meaningful. The Christian justified by Christ’s imputed righteousness can now draw near to the throne of grace confidently and find help in his or her time of need, knowing that every good gift comes from the loving hands of the heavenly Father.

Special thanks go to Dr. Michael Morehouse for reviewing an earlier draft of this essay and offering invaluable advice.

Metaphysics, Philosophy

Final Thoughts on Intuition

by Dave Seng

Hopefully, this will wrap up some ideas from my last three posts. As always, this feels unfinished but that is the nature of philosophy.

The proper understanding of intuition speaks to how we understand reality. Many philosophers (and non-philosophers for that matter) have a deep distrust of intuition. There is good reason for this skepticism, but not if intuition is properly understood and the totality of person-hood is considered. Intuition, rightly understood, is the idea that we all have ultimate presuppositions, basic assertions, and self-evident truths which are known with certainty as the foundations of all other ideas but which themselves cannot be proved. This position is known as foundationalism. From a strictly logical standpoint, not everything can be argued or there would never be an end to arguing. Aristotle still provides the best presentation and defense of foundationalism and is correct to point out that every argument finally rests on something that cannot be proved, and that it is the mark of an uneducated person not to realize that. How strict should we then be when thinking about intuition as foundational? Philosophers are divided over this point. I would argue that we can learn the truth about ourselves and the world around us not only from science but from imaginative literature and the great works of art, music, and history. Ideas are communicated non-rationally as well as rationally. Intuition and the non-rational make a contribution to what we know. To be healthy human beings we need to integrate the non-rational with the rational. (To become unhealthy, all we need to do is embrace the irrational.) As rational beings, and that which distinguishes human beings from animals, we are able to weigh evidence through careful examination and make evaluations either empirically or through intellectual demonstration by way of argument. Intuition, reason, abstraction, and empiricism must be seen holistically in such a way that they work together—not against each other as Bergson and other philosophers of the twentieth century believe.

We develop ontological constancy and perceive self-evident truths (the law of non-contradiction, for example) at a very young age, even when we can not articulate them. Any parent of a young child knows this to be true. Most individuals achieve psychological permanency by the time they are three years old. This means Aristotle is correct when he describes intuition as the inherent human capacity to grasp self-evident truths. Both cognitively and physically we are all part of and directed toward understanding the external physical world. Intuition is part of that human capacity. In various ways, philosophers like Descartes, Berkeley, and Kant have tried to prove the existence of external reality. This is because they made consciousness epistemically autonomous and discarded common sense intuition. The question of external reality, however, is not a philosophical problem at all. It is impossible to say one is having a sense perception and deny that the external object exists. Perception cannot be separated from reality. If that were not the case, there would be no difference between hallucinating and perception. As Aristotle explains, intuition and perception work together to grasp this foundational truth of reality.

As I indicated in my last post and from the comments above, it should be clear that I lean toward a broad intuitive foundationalism. There are many places in human interactions and the world around us that can not be simply reduced to strictly rational premises. Not everything is rationally analyzable. Human love, true friendship, great aesthetic experiences from works of art, literature, music, and various forms of religious illumination, simply cannot be condensed and downgraded to analytic propositions. Reason, however, plays a part in bringing these things together. Finally, it is important to realize that epistemology (how we know reality) and metaphysics (the nature of reality itself) are two different questions. Epistemology should never drive metaphysics—but that will be the topic of another post.

Metaphysics, Philosophy

More Than A Feeling: Metaphysical Intuition in Aristotle and Bergson, Part Three.

by Dave Seng

Part two can be found here.

Aristotle provides a framework for understanding reality based on foundationalism and the idea that the first principles of reality can be known, either through sense perception, empirically, or intellectually through reasonable demonstration. Intuition is the foundational aspect of sense data and non-discursive reasoning because it apprehends immediate self-evident truths. In Aristotle’s epistemology, human beings are hardwired with a latent ability or capacity to apprehend the world around them. Our rational abilities seem to be tuned to comprehending reality. When the mind is functioning correctly, it makes no sense for someone to assert that they are having a perception of an object and claim at the same time that it does not exist. In ordinary human sense experience, it is impossible to separate a perception from actual existence. The Aristotelian premise that the external world is knowable is based on the common sense judgment that perception is awareness of external objects. This human capacity of apprehending immediate self-evident truths is the rational intuition to which Aristotle points us.

Perhaps the Aristotelian position that describes human knowledge and the interaction between the self and the world can be understood as “embodied intuitive rationalism.” (Aristotle points us in this direction throughout his works but especially in his work On the Soul.) His argument suggests that humans have an inherent capacity through memory, imagination, the intellect, and use of sense perception (empiricism) to make meaning and intelligibility out of the world around them. If this is true, then in human cognition, the body and mind work together in a symbiotic relationship. If the nature of human beings is essentially rational, and dependent on and directed toward external reality, then a proper understanding of intuition is an essential element of embodied rationalism. To be embodied means to have an innate capacity of intuitive reasoning which allows one to grasp the fundamental first principles of reality.

If there is a kind of embodied intuitive rationalism that all humans possess, there might be a significant implication for Bergson’s approach to metaphysics. Some concluding thoughts are in order. While Bergson’s text An Introduction to Metaphysics can be read as an extended critique of Kant’s transcendental idealism, his description of metaphysics as the rejection of symbols and analysis is misplaced. If human beings are essentially rational, it is hard to figure out how analysis, reason, and symbols for communication are not helpful when struggling to think critically about the most important questions of life and reality. Language, analytical reasoning, and the examination of evidence are simply the ways human beings rationally make sense out of reality. Analysis and symbols are used in everyday life and it is impossible to imagine how anyone could live a significantly meaningful life without the use of symbols, analysis, and critical reasoning. It is why parents tell toddlers to “use your words.” Words provide meaning and structure to reality. If Aristotle is correct, all things tend towards their nature, including human nature. If the nature of human kind is to be rational then analysis, examination, evaluation, the use of symbols, and intellectual demonstration are essential and must be used to make sense and order out of the world. Reason is what human beings use to explore the ultimate questions and theories of reality. Discarding reason or throwing out the affirmation of rationalism is not the correct approach to metaphysics.

Bergson’s approach to philosophy is similar to Descartes. He starts with the immediate awareness of the self and distrust of sense data in providing a reliable understanding of reality. Bergson goes further than Descartes, however, and demonstrates an even stronger distrust of external reality than did Descartes. Even mental concepts, because they are products of analysis, render an artificial understanding of reality (74). Bergson explains that if metaphysics is to be a serious project, “it must transcend concepts in order to reach intuition” (75). What is clear from Bergson, is that reason, abstraction, concepts, and analytical thought will never allow one to correctly understand reality. Intuition, for Bergson is the rejection of critical discourse, observation, evaluation, and reason in general. Bergson’s understanding of intuition is irrational and he says quite clearly that the correct way to understand reality is not through analysis or reason. On the other hand, Aristotle holds that intuition is that which apprehends immediate self-evident truths which provide the basis for interpreting reality to a very high degree of accuracy. Reason, whether it is understood as the evaluation of empirical evidence or through the cognitive intellectual processes of the mind alone, is an integral part of what it means to be human and should not be thrown out when examining the great questions of existence.

In some ways, Bergson lays the groundwork for the later twentieth century existentialists such as Martin Heidegger. These thinkers believe that human passions and moods are superior to reason in interpreting reality. Heidegger, in his work, What is Metaphysics? claims that the mood of dread is what opens one up to a proper understanding of being and non-being. Some of these philosophers put moods, intuition, and mystical experience into the category of the nonrational—that which is apart from reason, but not necessarily against reason. Even if the nonrational is a valid category for knowledge development, Bergson goes further and ultimately embraces the irrational. For Aristotle, intuition is not in the realm of the nonrational, or irrational, but a pre-discursive starting point for reason and science itself—and really for any body of knowledge that can be discovered, collected, categorized, and developed.

Bergson might be right in the sense that there could be things in life that are not completely rationally analyzable, such as human love, true friendship, great works of art, indescribable aesthetic or religious experience, but he goes astray by rejecting reason and substituting intuition as the only valid way to interpret reality. Bergson’s concept of intuition must be evaluated, checked, or modified by sound reason and empiricism. Many philosophers, including Aristotle, believe that there is an element of intuition in human knowledge. Aristotle’s approach, as it turns out, is correct. Intuition, sense experience, and reason must work together—not against each other—in the quest for knowledge.

Works cited

Aristotle. The Works of Aristotle: 1. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 7. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999.

Aristotle. The Works of Aristotle: 2. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 8. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999.

Bergson, Henri. An Introduction to Metaphysics. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 55. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999

Metaphysics, Philosophy

More Than A Feeling: Metaphysical Intuition in Aristotle and Bergson, Part Two

by Dave Seng

Note: This is the second part of a reflection on Bergson’s understanding of metaphysical intuition read against Aristotle’s position. This part explicates Aristotle’s foundationalism. Next time, we’ll examine embodied rational intuition. For context, part one can be found here.

Aristotle is sometimes typified as the great philosopher of induction and empiricism with no place for non-inferential reasoning. However, his overall approach is much more developed and nuanced. Along with Bergson, Aristotle holds that there is an essential nature—the universal—to each thing, animal, and individual person. Aristotle differs, however, in his definition and understanding of the role of intuition in human understanding and the discovery of the essential nature of things. Aristotle’s approach to intuition is the basis of his emphasis on induction, evidence, and examination in his attempt to understand reality. It is closely related to his epistemological foundationalism, the concept that all knowledge rests on primary truths which are not subject to further proof, and are the foundation of all other truths, and his ontological realism, which is the idea that essences or universals are objectively real. In this sense, intuition is genuinely foundational for Aristotle, and he believes it establishes “science in the sphere of being” (Posterior Analytics, 136). To get there, however, Aristotle says this comes to us in “thinking states” or an epistemological cognitive condition “by which we grasp truth” (Posterior Analytics, 136). According to Aristotle:

“Now of the thinking states by which we grasp truth, some are unfailingly true, others admit of error—opinion, for instance, and calculation, whereas scientific knowing and intuition are always true: further, no other kind of thought except intuition is more accurate than scientific knowledge, whereas primary premises are more knowable than demonstrations, and all scientific knowledge is discursive.” (Posterior Analytics, 136)

Aristotle makes two interesting claims. The first is that scientific knowledge and intuition are always true. The second is that intuition is more accurate than scientific knowledge because scientific knowledge is discursive in nature. These are intriguing ideas especially since they come at the end of a scientific treatise on physical reality. What could Aristotle mean? If intuition is more accurate than scientific knowledge, should one rely solely on intuition? Is intuition, in the final analysis, a means to throw out rational and careful thinking? Aristotle, however, does not throw out reason or make intuition into a kind of mystical method as Bergson does. Having a firm grasp on reality, Aristotle places intuition into an epistemological hierarchy which is the basis for his foundationalism. Aristotle goes on:

“From these considerations it follows that there will be no scientific knowledge of the primary premises, and since except intuition nothing can be truer than scientific knowledge, it will be intuition that apprehends the primary premises—a result which also follows from the fact that demonstration cannot be the originative source of demonstration, nor, consequently, scientific knowledge of scientific knowledge.” (Posterior Analytics 136 – 137)

Much of Aristotle’s project to understand reality is an attempt to discover and explain the primary premises of Being—the principles, axioms, and postulates that make reality intelligible and discernible in the first place. Instead of doing away with analysis, evaluation, and symbols, as Bergson does, intuition, for Aristotle, is the indemonstrable and non-inferential starting point which grounds discursive and rational thinking. Intuition, rightly understood, is that which apprehends the primary premises which lead to discursive reasoning and scientific knowledge. This is why Aristotle says in the Nicomachean Ethics, “… it is intuitive reason that grasps the first principles” (389). This concept of intuition also serves to counter the kinds of circular arguments Aristotle wishes to avoid. Neither scientific knowledge nor demonstration can be originative because that would mean the premise is assumed in the conclusion (circular reasoning). In addition, Aristotle’s concept of intuitive knowledge provides an epistemological foundation which avoids an infinite regress. Aristotle draws this conclusion, “If, therefore, it is the only other kind of true thinking except scientific knowing, intuition will be the originative source of scientific knowledge. And the originative source of science grasps the original basic premise, while science as a whole is similarly related as originative source to the whole body of fact” (Posterior Analytics, 137). Ultimately, Aristotle explains that metaphysics and science are connected. Aristotle seeks to get at the first principles of reality and, intuition, as he explains it, is that inherent human capacity to apprehend these primary truths. In this sense, intuition is the original source which provides the foundation for physical science. Science, then, becomes originative in the sense that it contributes to and expands upon the whole particular body of knowledge. (For Aristotle, “science” is any body of knowledge that can be collected, categorized, and organized.) In the next post, we will make a final analysis of Bergson’s and Aristotle’s approach to intuition and explore what it might mean to be embodied, intuitive, and rational beings.

Note: Foundationalism and realism are not unique to Aristotle, as Plato held similar views, but Aristotle explicates his version of these concepts most clearly in both of his Analytics, On the Soul, and Metaphysics.

Works cited

Aristotle. The Works of Aristotle: 1. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 7. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999.

Aristotle. The Works of Aristotle: 2. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 8. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999.

Bergson, Henri. An Introduction to Metaphysics. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 55. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999