² E.g. ‘justification is the heart of the Christian message’, Käsemann, Ernst, ‘Some Thoughts on the Theme “The Doctrine of Reconciliation in the New Testament”’, in Robinson, J. M. (ed.), The Future of Our Religious Past: Essays in Honour of Rudolf Bultmann, (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), pp. 49–64 (p. 63)Google Scholar; also Jüngel, Eberhard, Justification. The Heart of the Christian Faith: A Theological Study with an Ecumenical Purpose, Cayzer, Jeffrey F. (trans.), (Edinburgh & New York: T & T Clark, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also McCormack, Bruce L., ‘What's at Stake in Current Debates over Justification?’, in Husbands, Mark and Treier, Daniel J. (eds.), Justification: What's at Stake in the Current Debates, (Downers Grove, Ill/Leicester: InterVaristy Press/Apollos, 2004, pp. 81–117Google Scholar.

³ For example, in an influential paper that he contributed to the US Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogue on justification, Joseph Fitzmyer identified ten other images employed by St. Paul alongside that of justification to articulate the significance of God's action in Jesus: salvation, expiation, redemption, reconciliation, adoption, sanctification, freedom, transformation, glorification and new creation. See Fitzmyer, ‘The Biblical Basis of Justification by Faith: Comments on the Essay of Professor Reumann’, in John Reumann, with responses by Fitzmyer, Joseph A. and Quinn, Jerome D., “Righteousness” in the New Testament: “Justification” in the United States Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue, (Philadelphia & Ramsey, N.J.: Fortess & Paulist, 1982), pp. 193–227Google Scholar; also ‘Justification by Faith and “Righteousness” in the New Testament’, in Anderson, H. George, Murphy, T. Austin and Burgess, Joseph A. (eds.), Justification by Faith: Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue VII, (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1985), pp. 77–81Google Scholar (p. 81); compare Fitzmyer, , Paul and His Theology: A Brief Sketch, 2^nd edn., (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1989), pp. 59–71Google Scholar and ‘Reconciliation in Pauline Theology’, in To Advance the Gospel: New Testament Studies, 2^nd edn., (Grand Rapids, Michigan & Livonia, MI: Dove, 1998), pp. 162–85 (pp. 170–5)Google Scholar. For the incorporation of Fitzmyer's analysis into the 1985 US Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogue statement itself, see ‘Justification by Faith (Common Statement)’, §132 in Anderson, Murphy and Burgess (eds.), Justification by Faith, pp. 13–74 (p. 61).

⁴ See Dunn, James D. G., ‘The New Perspective on Paul’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 65 (1983), pp. 95–122CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Dunn, , The New Perspective on Paul, rev. edn., (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2008 [2005]), pp. 99–120Google Scholar; also ‘The New Perspective: Whence, What and Whither?’, in The New Perspective on Paul, pp. 1–97. Dunn coined the term ‘the new perspective on Paul’ to refer to the paradigm shift in Pauline interpretation variously associated with himself, E. P. Sanders and N. T. Wright, with the earlier, somewhat different yet nevertheless significant work of Krister Stendahl also lying in the background. For Sanders, see Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion, (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977)Google Scholar; also Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1983)Google Scholar. For Wright, see ‘The Paul of History and the Apostle of Faith’, Tyndale Bulletin, 29 (1978), pp. 61–88Google Scholar; and for his full-length treatment of the subject, exploring a somewhat independent line to that of Sanders and Dunn, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology, (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992)Google Scholar; also, Paul, Fresh Perspectives, (London: SPCK, 2005)Google Scholar; and most recently, engaging a number of his critics specifically in relation to his interpretation of justification, Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision, (London: SPCK, 2009)Google Scholar. For Stendahl, see ‘The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West’, Harvard Theological Review, 56 (1963), pp. 199–215CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Paul Among Jews and Gentiles, (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976)Google Scholar.

⁵ In a helpful essay, for reference to which I am grateful to Alec Ryrie, Alister E. McGrath gives qualified approval to the controversial 1975 thesis of Steven E. Ozment to the effect that ‘the popular appeal of Protestantism derived from its doctrine of justification by faith, which offered relief from the psychological pressure of the late medieval Catholic penitential system and an associated “semi-Pelagian” doctrine of justification.’ McGrath, , ‘Justification and the Reformation: The Significance of the Doctrine of Justification by Faith to Sixteenth Century Urban Communities’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 81 (1990), pp. 5–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 7), refers to Ozment, The Reformation in the Cities: The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975)Google Scholar. Daphne Hampson shares something of this analysis in her dogged maintenance of the incommensurability and irreconcilability of the Catholic and Lutheran systems, see Christian Contradictions: The Structures of Lutheran and Catholic Thought, (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 2001)Google Scholar. In essence McGrath accepts the criticisms of Ozment which argue for the relatively greater significance, at least in relation to the reforming agendas of Bucer, Zwingli and Calvin, of the widespread appeal of social, institutional and ecclesial reforming concerns, in turn driven by the key principle of sola scriptura, over Luther's more subjective and more directly spiritual-cum-soteriological focus (pp. 12–17). Accepting this, McGrath maintains that the evidence nevertheless still supports the thesis that in the circles around Luther and Wittenberg at least, a significant, likely primary, factor in promoting support for reform lay in the attraction Luther's thinking held for ‘a religious public weary of the burdens and obligations of late medieval religion, and anxious to be relieved of its oppression.’ (p. 11). Similarly, McGrath holds this to have likely continued as a contributory, if secondary, factor in the broader spread of reforming agendas (p. 15). For McGrath's own magisterial full-length analysis of the history of justification, see Iustitia Dei : A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 2^nd edn., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998 [1986])Google Scholar. For a highly influential counter-blast to any over-easy assumptions about the widespread unpopularity and experienced oppressiveness of late medieval piety in relation to the English context, see Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c.1400-c.1580, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

⁶ ARCIC II, Salvation and the Church: An Agreed Statement by the Second Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, (London: Church House and Catholic Truth Society, 1987)Google Scholar.

⁷ See Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church, Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, (Grand Rapids, MI and London: Eerdmans and CTS, 2000/2001), available at: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_31101999_cath-luth-joint-declaration_en.html. This document is here frequently subsequently referred to as JDDJ. For the Official Common Statement and the associated Annex to the Official Common Statement, see respectively: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_31101999_cath-luth-official-statement_en.html; and http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_31101999_cath-luth-annex_en.html. For the work of the hugely significant United States Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue, see Anderson, Murphy and Burgess (eds.), Justification by Faith, cited in n. 3 here.

⁸ For the notion of ‘differentiated consensus’, of which Harding Meyer was the originator, see Meyer, , ‘Die Prägung einer Formel: Ursprung und Intention’, in Wagner, Harald (ed.), Einheit aber Wie? Zur Tragfähigkeit der ökumenischen Formels ‘differenzierten Konsens’, (Freiburg: Herder, 2000), pp. 36–58Google Scholar; also ‘Differentiated Participation: The Possibility of Protestant Sharing in the Historic Office of Bishop’, Ecumenical Trends, 34 (2005), pp. 10–14Google Scholar. For its application to the JDDJ, see Rusch, William G., ‘The International Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue – An Example of Ecclesial Learning and Ecumenical Reception’, in Murray, Paul D. (ed.), Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning: Exploring a Way for Contemporary Ecumenism, (Oxford: OUP, 2008), pp. 149–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For less positive appraisal, see Nichols, Aidan O.P., The Lutheran-Catholic Agreement on Justification: Botch or Breakthrough?’, New Blackfriars, 82 (2001), pp. 375–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and for a Lutheran judging of it as a fudge, see Nauman, Jonathan, ‘But Is it Justified?’, New Directions, 3.53 (1999), pp. 4–6Google Scholar, cited in Nichols, ibid., p. 378; compare Jüngel, Eberhard, ‘On the Doctrine of Justification’, International Journal of Systematic Theology, 1 (1999), pp. 24–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also id., Justification. The Heart of the Christian Faith, op. cit.

⁹ In this specific regard, as in many others, the JDDJ built upon and assumed work previously pursued in various preceding national and international Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogue processes, particularly here the five-year study conducted from 1981–1985 by the Ecumenical Study Group of Protestant and Catholic Theologians in Germany on behalf of the Joint Ecumenical Commission that was established following the November 1980 visit of John Paul II to Germany. For the formal texts comprising the study, see Lehmann, Karl and Pannenberg, Wolfhart (eds.), The Condemnations of the Reformation Era: Do They Still Divide?, Kohl, Margaret (trans.), (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990Google Scholar). For a collection of essays stimulated by and, in some cases, contributing to this study, see Lehmann, Karl, Root, Michael and Rusch, William G. (eds.), Justification by Faith: Do the Sixteenth-Century Condemnations Still Apply?, (New York: Continuum, 1999)Google Scholar.

¹⁰ See Nichols, ‘The Lutheran-Catholic Agreement on Justification’, op. cit., pp. 375–7.

¹¹ E.g., ‘It is the common use of this method [the historical-critical] by Catholic and Lutheran members of the dialogue which lies at the root of the biblical section of the statement on “Justification by Faith” presented in this volume’, Fitzmyer, ‘Justification by Faith and “Righteousness” in the New Testament’, in Anderson, Murphy & Burgess (eds.), Justification by Faith, op. cit., p. 78. For more extended treatment of this theme, see Aune, David E. (ed.), Rereading Paul Together: Protestant and Catholic Perspectives on Justification, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2006), pp. 77–94 (p. 83)Google Scholar. I am grateful to Jeffrey Gros for drawing my attention to this remarkably useful volume.

¹² See Wright, Justification, op. cit.; compare Dunn, ‘Paul and Justification by Faith’, in Longenecker, R. N. (ed.), The Road from Damascus: The Impact of Paul's Conversion on His Life, Thought, and Ministry, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), pp. 85–101Google Scholar, reprinted in The New Perspective on Paul, pp. 367–80; also The Theology of Paul the Apostle, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998)Google Scholar, §14, particularly §14.7, pp. 371–9; and ‘The New Perspective: Whence, What and Whither?’, in The New Perspective on Paul, pp. 17–23.

¹³ See Dunn, , The Partings of the Ways: Between Christianity and Judaism and their Significance for the Character of Christianity, (London: SCM, 1991)Google Scholar.

¹⁴ A notable exception is David E. Aune, ‘Recent Readings of Paul Relating to Justification by Faith’, in Aune (ed.), Rereading Paul Together, pp. 188–245, esp. pp. 205–219 & 227–31; also pp. 192, 224, 242; also Richard E. DeMaris, ‘Can We Reread Paul Together Any Longer? Joseph A. Fitzmyer's View of Pauline Justification in Context’, in ibid., pp. 95–107 (pp. 102–3).

¹⁵ See McGrath, Iustitia Dei, pp. 4–16, 29–32, 40–3.

¹⁶ Compare ‘The medieval statements concerning justification demonstrate that justification is universally understood to involve a real change in its object, so that regeneration is subsumed under justification’, McGrath, Iustitia Dei, p. 48.

¹⁷ See David M. Rylaarsdam, ‘Interpretations of Paul in the Early Church’, in Aune (ed.), Rereading Paul Together, pp. 147–68, particularly p. 163 where he follows A. M. La Bonnardière's 1954 study in identifying Augustine's most cited Pauline text as Rom 5:5: ‘Love for God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us’. See also Randall C. Zachman, ‘Medieval and Reformation Readings of Paul’, in Aune (ed.), pp. 169–87 (pp. 170–1).

¹⁸ Compare ‘Augustine develops a history of redemptive grace, a process of justification, that stretches … to glorification, the reaching of final perfection in the eschatological city. This history of a person under grace seems equivalent to Augustine's notion of justification, the gracious process by which God restores human beings to justice, that is, to giving to God and neighbour the love that is their due (Matt. 22: 40), to loving God and neighbour for the sake of God.’ Rylaarsdam, ‘Interpretations of Paul in the Early Church’, p. 164. Also, ‘The telos of the saving work of Christ is attained only when the Spirit gives us the ability to will and do what the law requires, so that we might fulfill the law and thereby be made righteous’, Zachman, op. cit., p. 174.

¹⁹ Rylaarsdam, p. 163; see also Zachman, pp. 173, 174; McGrath, Iustitia Dei, pp. 29–30.

²⁰ See ‘By yourself you could only lose yourself. You do not know how to find yourself unless the one who made you searches for you.’‘Sermon 13. At the Shrine of Saint Cyprian, 27^th May 418’, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century. Part III – Sermons, vol. 1: Sermons 1–19, Hill, Edmund OP (trans.), Rotelle, John E. OSA (ed.), (New York: New City Press, 1990), pp. 308–15Google Scholar (p. 310); also ‘For nothing in you pleases God except what you have from God; what you have from yourself displeases God.’ ibid., p. 309; ‘Remove yourself, remove, I repeat, yourself from yourself; you just get in your own way. If it's you that are building yourself, it's a ruin you’re building’, ‘Sermon 169. On the Words of the Apostle Paul, Philippians 3:3–16 … Against the Pelagians, 416’, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century. Part III – Sermons, vol. 5: Sermons 148–183, Hill (trans.), Rotelle, (ed.), (New York: New City Press, 1992), pp. 222–37 (p. 229).Google Scholar

²¹ See ‘“So if it is God who works in us, why does it say Work out your own salvation?” Because he works in us in such a way that we too are enabled to work ourselves. … “But it is my will that is good,” he says. I grant you it's yours. But who was it who gave you even that, who stirred it up in you? Don't just listen to me; ask the apostle: For it is God, he says, who works in you both to will – works in you both to will – and to work with a good will (Phil 2:13)’, ‘Sermon 13’, op. cit., p. 309; also ‘But God made you without you. … So while he made you without you, he doesn't justify you without you.’‘Sermon 169’, op. cit., p. 231. Compare, ‘In the Augustinian reading of Paul, the focus is not so much on what Christ himself does on our behalf to free us from sin but rather the way Christ brings the Spirit, which alone gives us the ability to fulfill the law of love’, Zachman, op. cit., p. 173.

²² ‘Letter 194’ (§19), in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century. Part II – Letters, vol. 3: Letters 156–210, Roland Teske, S.J. (trans.), Boniface Ramsey (ed.), (New York: New City Press, 2004), pp. 287–308 (p. 296). Compare, ‘However, the hope that we will reap what we sow unto eternal life, and will win the crown of eternal life in the race we are running, must always be tempered by the awareness that all this is due to the grace of God within us, and not due to our own power and ability, lest we once again become proud’, Zachman, op. cit., p. 177.

²³ Compare ‘If the grace of God means the gift of love poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, then the work of salvation must be entirely due to the work of God within us, both to will and to work the love that is the fulfilling of the law. However, since we have been given the ability to fulfill the law of God by grace, though with fear and trembling, as we are aware of the weakness that remains even in those given the gift of love for God’, Zachman, pp. 175–6.

²⁴ See Commentary on Saint Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians by St Thomas Aquinas, Lamb, Matthew L. (trans.), (Albany, NY: Magi Books, 1966), p. 95Google Scholar, cited in Keating, Daniel A., ‘Justification, Sanctification and Divinization in Thomas Aquinas’, in Weinandy, Thomas, Keating, Daniel and Yocum, John (eds.), Aquinas on Doctrine: A Critical Introduction, (London & New York: T & T Clark Ltd, 2004), pp. 139–58 (p. 142)Google Scholar.

²⁵ Aquinas, commenting on Eph 2:10, in Lamb (trans.), p. 97, cited in Keating, p. 142.

²⁶ In Lamb (trans.), p. 98, cited in Keating, p. 143.

²⁷ See, for example, ‘It is in this sense that the New Law is inward to man; it not only points out to him what he should do, but assists him actually to do it’, Summa Theologiæ 1a2æ.106.1, as in Summa Theologiæ vol. 30. The Gospel of Grace, Cornelius Ernst, OP (ed.), (London/New York: Eyre & Spottiswoode/McGraw-Hill Book Co, 1972), p. 7. All subsequent references to this edition in the form, for example, ST 1a2æ.106.1 (vol. 30, p. 7); also ‘Now it is clear that just as all physical movements are derived from the movement of the heavenly body as primary physical mover, so all movements, both physical and spiritual, are derived from what is the primary mover simply speaking, which is God’, ST 1a2æ.109.1 (vol. 30, p. 71); ‘By his will man does perform works meriting eternal life; but … for this there is need that man's will should be prepared by God through grace.’ ST 1a2æ.109.5 (vol. 30, p. 87); ‘Man's turning to God does indeed take place by his free decision; and in this sense Man is enjoined to turn himself to God. But the free decision can only be turned to God when God turns it to himself, as it says in Jeremiah, Turn me, and I shall be turned; for thou art the Lord my God [Jer 31:18], and in Lamentations, Turn us, O Lord, to thee, and we shall be turned [Lamentations 5:21]’, ST 1a2æ.109.6 (vol. 30, p. 91).

²⁸ See ‘Augustine says, By his cooperation God perfects in us what he initiates by his operation; since by his operation he initiates our willing who, by his cooperation with us who will, perfects us. … Augustine goes on, It is by his operation that we will; but once we will, it is by his cooperation with us that we bring our action to completion’, ST 1a2æ.111.2 (vol. 30, pp. 129–131), citing Augustine, De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio §17 (PL 44, 901); also ‘God does not justify us without us, since while we are being justified, we consent to God's justice by a movement of free choice. But that movement is not the cause but the effect of grace. Thus the whole operation belongs to grace’, ST 1a2æ.111.2 (vol. 30, p. 131).

²⁹ Commentary on St Paul's Epistle to the Romans, Steven Boguslawski (trans.), (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press)Google Scholar, forthcoming, cited in Keating, p. 146; compare ST 1a2æ.109.2 (vol. 30, p. 75); also ST 1a2æ.111.2 (vol. 30, p. 129).

³⁰ For Thomas as following Augustine also in viewing justifying faith in terms of faith formed by love, see ST 1a2æ.114.5 (vol. 30, pp. 212–13).

³¹ See Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality, Alan B. Wolter (trans.), (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1998); compare Zachman, op. cit., p. 178.

³² Compare Root, Michael, Continuing the Conversation: Deeper Agreement on Justification as Criterion and on the Christian as simul iustus et peccator’, in Stumme, Wayne C. (ed.), The Gospel of Justification in Christ: Where Does the Church Stand Today?, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2006), pp. 42–61Google Scholar.

³³ As Cardinal Walter Kasper writes, ‘Thus, whereas Luther's concern was the sovereignty of grace, the Council [of Trent] was concerned about the effective power of grace, which transforms us and makes us righteous.’ ‘The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification’, That They May All Be One: The Call to Unity Today, (London & New York: Burns & Oates, 2004), pp. 122–35 (p. 123)Google Scholar.

³⁴ Lindbeck, George A., The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age, (London: SPCK, 1984)Google Scholar.

³⁵ The literature discussing Lindbeck's typology and variously criticising, refining, and applying it is voluminous. For a significant recent addition which, whilst sympathetic to Lindbeck's constructive agenda, joins with Kathryn Tanner in finding his understanding of culture – and, by analogy, of doctrine – as too homogeneous and overly defined and regulated, see Volpe, Medi Ann, Rethinking Christian Identity, (Oxford: Blackwell, forthcoming 2010)Google Scholar, particularly Chapter 2, drawing on Tanner, , Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology, (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1997)Google Scholar.

³⁶ For further reading on the 1541 Regensburg Colloquium, see Fenlon, Dermot, Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy: Cardinal Pole and Tridentine Italy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), pp. 45–61Google Scholar. I am grateful to Alec Ryrie for drawing my attention to this volume. See also Lane, Anthony N. S., Justification by Faith in Catholic-Protestant Dialogue: An Evangelical Assessment, (London & New York: T & T Clark, 2002), pp. 46–60Google Scholar. For the text of the relevant Article 5 of the Regensburg Agreement, see ibid., pp. 233–7.

³⁷ See ‘The term justification speaks of a divine declaration of acquittal, of the love of God manifested to an alienated and lost humanity prior to any entitlement on our part. Through the life, death and resurrection of Christ, God declares that we are forgiven, accepted and reconciled to him. … God's declaration is sometimes expressed in the New Testament in the language of law, as a verdict of acquittal of the sinner’, Salvation and the Church, op. cit., §18; also §14.

³⁸ ‘The theologians of the Reformation tended to follow the predominant usage of the New Testament, in which the verb dikaioun usually means “to pronounce righteous”. The Catholic theologians, and notably the Council of Trent, tended to follow the usage of patristic and medieval Latin writers, for whom justificare (the traditional translation of dikaioun) signified “to make righteous”. Thus the Catholic understanding of the process of justification, following Latin usage, tended to include elements of salvation which the Reformers would describe as belonging to sanctification rather than justification. As a consequence, Protestants took Catholics to be emphasising sanctification in such a way that absolute gratuitousness of salvation was threatened. On the other side, Catholics feared that Protestants were so stressing the justifying action of God that sanctification and human responsibility were gravely depreciated’, ibid., §14.

³⁹ §17; also ‘The remission of sins is accompanied by a present renewal, the rebirth to newness of life. Thus the juridical aspect of justification, while expressing an important facet of the truth, is not the exclusive notion in the light of which all other biblical ideas and images of salvation must be interpreted. For God sanctifies as well as acquits us.’§18

⁴⁰ Mannermaa's work was first published in Finnish as In ipsa fide Christus adest. Luterilaisen ja ortodoksisen kristinuskonkäsityksen leikkauspiste, Missiologian ja ekumeniikan seuran julkaisuja 19, (Helsinkis: 1979); subsequently republished in German in 1989, from which text the following English translation derives: Christ Present in Faith: Luther's View of Justification, Kirsi Stjerna (trans.), (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005). The other key names in this Finnish school are: Simo Puera, Antti Raunio, Sammeli Juntunen, and Risto Saarinen. For the first phase of English-language dissemination and reception, see Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (eds.), Union with Christ: the New Finnish Interpretation of Luther, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998). More recently, see Chester, Stephen, ‘It Is No Longer I Who Live: Justification by Faith and Participation in Christ in Martin Luther's Exegesis of Galatians’, New Testament Studies, 55 (2009), pp. 315–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I am grateful to John Barclay for drawing my attention to this essay.

⁴¹ In terms of the direct influence of Mannerma's work on the JDDJ, it is significant that, in the context of laying out specifically Lutheran teaching, §26 draws to a close with a sentence that could have been lifted directly from Mannermaa: ‘Justification and renewal are joined in Christ who is present in faith.’

⁴² See n. 7 here.

⁴³ See Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, ‘Response of the Catholic Church to the Joint Declaration of the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation on the Doctrine of Justification’ (1998), available at: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_01081998_off-answer-catholic_en.html.

⁴⁴ For one example, see ‘It is acceptance into communion with God: already now, but then fully in God's coming kingdom.’ JDDJ, §11.

⁴⁵ See ‘The level of agreement is high, but it does not yet allow us to affirm that all the differences separating Catholics and Lutherans in the doctrine concerning justification are simply a question of emphasis or language. Some of these differences concern aspects of substance and are therefore not all mutually compatible … ’‘Response to the Joint Declaration’, §5.

⁴⁶ See Murray, ‘Receptive Ecumenism and Catholic Learning: Establishing the Agenda’, in Murray (ed.), Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning, op. cit., pp. 5–25 (p. 14).

⁴⁷ As Lash wrote in the context of reflecting on the historically significant discrepancies that occurred between Catholic doctrine and piety in relation to the sacrifice of the Mass: ‘The truth-value of propositions is not to be ascertained simply in the abstract, in isolation from their use and employment in human affairs. If what the Church is doing, in the concrete, can reasonably be said to be significantly different from what she ought to be doing, then the theory according to which she interprets her activity may be calculated to mislead, even if that same theory, when employed as the interpretation of a more adequate state of concrete activity, were irreproachable’, Lash, , His Presence in the World: A Study in Eucharistic Worship and Theology, (London: Sheed & Ward, 1968), pp. 127–8Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ The ‘supernatural existential’ is Rahner's technical shorthand for his recurrent dual conviction that: a) the human person is intrinsically, even if unconsciously, oriented to the infinite mystery of God as a transcendental or existential of the human condition; and b) this intrinsic orientation is de facto – but as a matter of divine will rather than natural right – a graced openness, hence ‘supernatural existential’, to the absolute self-communication of the Trinitarian God in grace and incarnation. See Rahner, , ‘Nature and Grace’ (1959), in Theological Investigations. vol 4. More Recent Writings, Smyth, Kevin (trans.), (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966), pp. 165–88Google Scholar. A criticism that has frequently been levelled against Rahner at this point, as classically pressed by Hans Urs von Balthasar and those who follow him, is that Rahner thereby dulls the challenge and distinctiveness of God's unique approach in Christ and the Spirit and effectively suppresses Christianity's authentic evangelical, missionary dynamic. See Balthasar, , Cordula oder der Ernstfall, (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1966)Google Scholar, ET The Moment of Christian Witness, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994 [1969])Google Scholar. Leaving aside for now the question as to whether a notion of the universal, gracious self-communication of God must necessarily compromise the challenge and distinctiveness of grace – here Rahner's comment is significant that it is erroneous to assume that ‘grace would no longer be grace if God became too free with it’ (‘Nature and Grace’, pp. 30–1) – the line being pursued in the present essay leads to a different, although not entirely unrelated, concern about Rahner's supernatural existential. That is, that unless Rahner's eloquent articulation of the supernatural existential has integrated within it an equally eloquent and consistent articulation of there always being a dynamic, ‘more’ quality to grace then it is in danger of offering a theorised account of the graced character of human existence which, in practice, leaves us with nothing other than our own currently experienced and inadequate resources on which to rely. In short, the potential problem is not in itself that Rahner's supernatural existential universalises the reality of grace but that he gives insufficient attention to the transformative reality of grace and so threatens, in practice, to make a self-frustrating Pelagianism of his graced universalism.

⁴⁹ Barclay, , ‘“By the Grace of God I Am What I Am”: Grace and Agency in Philo and Paul’, in Barclay, and Gathercole, Simon J. (eds.), Divine and Human Agency in Paul and His Cultural Environment, (London & New York: T & T Clark, 2006), pp. 140–57Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ Ibid., p. 156; compare Barclay, ‘Introduction’, ibid., pp. 1–8 (p. 7), drawing on Tanner, God and Creation in Christian Theology: Tyranny or Empowerment?, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), p. 46Google Scholar.

⁵¹ See Barclay, ‘By the Grace of God I Am what I Am’, pp. 153–6, drawing on Martyn, J. L., ‘De-apocalypticizing Paul: An Essay Focussed on Paul and the Stoics by Troels Engberg-Pedersen’, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 86 (2002), pp. 61–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Martyn, , Galatians, (New York: Doubleday, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵² See Rahner, , ‘Current Problems in Christology’ (1954), in Theological Investigations. vol. 1. God, Christ, Mary and Grace, Ernst, Cornelius OP (trans.), (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1961), pp. 149–220 (pp. 162–3)Google Scholar.

⁵³ As noted earlier, N. T. Wright's work's is particularly significant here, see Justification, op. cit.