Factitive Justification

There was a consensus among the theologians of Trent, McGrath argues, that justification was “factitive,” a view that excluded that “a sinner may be justified solely as a matter of reputation or imputation, while remaining a sinner in fact.”

But of course that raises the question, What exactly is a fact?

The Tridentine objection appears to rest on the assumption that there is some brute fact of sin that remains undisturbed by God’s re-definition, re-interpretation. The sinner remains sinner in spite of the fact that the Creator who names all things has named him “righteous.” And this seems to rest on the assumption of some zone of pure nature impervious to God’s naming.

But if (as Van Til says) facts and interpretations are inseparable, and if facts are what they are because of God’s interpretation of them, then a sinner who is reputed by God to be righteous is in fact righteous (this is what I take Murray to mean by saying that justification “constitutes” us as righteous). A Protestant doctrine of justification is a factitive one; it just assumes a different – a more biblical – notion of fact than the Tridentine view.

That Protestants have not always recognized this is another matter, perhaps a sign that Protestantism have not innoculated themselves from notions of brute facticity.