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Justification still matters (Thomas Schreiner)

Over at Southern News, Thomas Schreiner talks with Andrew Smith about his new book Faith Alone: The Doctrine of Justification, which is the first book to release in The 5 Solas Series, edited by Matthew Barrett. Here is the start of that conversation:

It’s been nearly 500 years since the start of the Protestant Reformation and the doctrine of justification is just as important as ever, writes Thomas R. Schreiner in Faith Alone, which released Sept. 15. Treasured doctrines of the Reformers like justification and imputation are still worth defending, despite criticism from Catholics and evangelicals alike.

faithalone_comp_loresSchreiner, James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament Interpretation at Southern Seminary and associate dean of the School of Theology, contributed Faith Alone as the first in Zondervan’s “Five Solas” series to coincide with the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation in 2017.

In recent years, scholars have raised numerous arguments against key Protestant theologies: Douglas Campbell’s critique of “justification theory,” Roman Catholic Frank Beckwith’s synergistic understanding of salvation, and the New Perspective’s criticism of the doctrine of imputation. These doctrines not only remain thoroughly biblical, Schreiner says, but pastorally vital.

“Pastorally, it’s of huge comfort to people,” Schreiner said during an interview. “Because when we stand before Christ, if we need a perfect righteousness — and I think we do — then it’s only going to come from the righteousness of Christ that’s credited to us, counted to us.”

Despite attempts from both Catholics and evangelicals to find common ground, Schreiner says as long as Catholic teaching about the doctrine of justification remains unchanged, the Reformation must continue. As long as Catholic doctrine affirms the Council of Trent, during which the Catholic Church condemned key teaching of the Reformation, reconciliation remains impossible.

When the ecumenical statement “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” released in 1999, Catholic scholar Richard John Neuhaus countered evangelical criticism of the document by writing justification wasn’t important enough to cause schism. Schreiner said that begs the question, since Protestants from the beginning have claimed justification is critically important. Other attempts at unity are no more successful in Schreiner’s eyes. …

Read the rest of this interview.

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