Justification – Marquart, Section 2 – Continued

Allow me to post a few more quotes from Section 2 of Marquart’s essay on justification. He says here what he will repeat several more times throughout the essay. The objective/subjective distinction is intended to be a distinction between forgiveness acquired by Christ once for all and truly offered in the Gospel, and forgiveness received by and applied to the one who believes in Christ.

[Begin Marquart quote]

Calov’s classic commentary on the Augsburg Confession (1665) put it like this:


[Justification] is the object of faith in that it is offered by God in the Gospel; it is the effect [of faith], to put it thus, in so far as grace having been apprehended by faith, the forgiveness of sins happens to us by that very act.

John Benedict Carpzov’s Introduction to the Symbolical Books of the Lutheran Churches spells this out in greater detail:


The forgiveness of sins is considered in a twofold manner. First, as it has been acquired by Christ and is offered as a benefit promised and intended by God for sinners, to be sought and had in the Word and Sacraments. Afterwards [forgiveness is considered] as it has already been accepted by faith, has been applied, and is possessed. . . In the first manner the forgiveness of sins is the object of faith insofar as it justifies. . .

It is this necessary and fundamental distinction, without which it is not possible to explain “faith alone” and the proper function of faith in justification, which was always the point of all standard Lutheran talk about “objective” or general, and “subjective” or personal justification. The terms may be recent, but they express and safeguard nothing other than “the catechismal doctrine plain”:


The work is finished and completed, Christ has acquired and won the treasure for us by His sufferings, death, and resurrection, etc. But if the work remained hidden and no one knew of it, it would have been all in vain, all lost. In order that this treasure might not be buried but put to use and enjoyed, God has caused the Word to be published and proclaimed, in which he has given the Holy Spirit to offer and apply to us this treasure of salvation (Large Catechism, Creed, 38).

Although the work was accomplished and forgiveness of sins was acquired on the cross, yet it cannot come to us in any other way than through the Word. . . Now, the whole Gospel and the article of the Creed, “I believe one holy Christian church, the forgiveness of sins,” etc., are by the Word placed into this Sacrament and set before us. . . The treasure is opened and placed at everyone’s door, yes, upon everyone’s table, but what goes with it, is that you also attend to it and with certainty assent to it, as the words give [it] to you (Sacrament of the Altar, 31, 32, 35, slightly correcting Tappert’s text, p. 450).

[End Marquart quote]

This is how we should speak of forgiveness and justification: as a treasure that has been won for all sinners, not as something that has already happened to all sinners. This is why statements like “All people have been forgiven” are ambiguous and misleading. It directly (and wrongly) implies the reception of forgiveness by all people. It directly (and wrongly) implies that the atheists of the world have a status of “forgiven/righteous” before God, even while they openly curse the name of Christ, which is the very “place” where forgiveness is offered. To be sure, their sins have been paid for. But their status does not become “forgiven” except through faith in Him who is the Mercy Seat of God.