바울의 법정적인 칭의개념 - 종교개혁적 관점과 ‘바울에 대한 새 관점’의 비교를 중심으로 -

Abstract

This essay is to clarify the juridical meaning of the concept of justification in the doctrine of 'justification by faith,' which has been regarded as the fundamental truth of Christian faith by the theologians of Reformation tradition. Reformation theologians, whose representatives can be considered Luther and Calvin, understood justification in terms of the juristic category. According to their interpretation about Paul’s phrase “being justified”, the sinners were being declared righteous by God's grace before the tribunal of God even though they were still as sinners. For them, justification is not the real transformation of sinners which medieval theologians considered as the meaning of the justification, but 'the imputation of righteousness'(Rom. 4:5), namely regarding the sinners as the righteous on the ground of the substitutionary death of Christ. Also they were assured that the sinners declared to be righteous by faith could enter the eternal life at the final judgement only by the faith in Jesus Christ. For them, the issue of the doctrine of justification is not only the present redemption but also the future one. However, Sanders, who has begun 'the new perspective on Paul', insisted against Reformation theologians that Paul's concept of justification should not be understood in terms of the juristic category, but rather in terms of participatory category in which the unity of the believers with Christ is regarded as the key of divine salvation. Sanders suggested that justification should not be understood in terms of juristic terms by appealing to the fact that ‘repentance’ and ‘forgiveness,’ the two key terms for juristic soteriology in Judaism do not appear in Paul’s doctrine of justification. Also he claimed that the issue of 'justification by faith' could not be on the salvation at the last judgement in the future, but on the entrance into the people of God at present. My thesis is that Paul's texts on the justification support the Reformational perspective which understood the justification in terms of juristic category. It is assured that 'to be justified(dikaiwqh/nai)' was used in juridical context in Rom. 1:18-5:21. Futhermore, it is evident in Rom. 5:9 that justification by faith at present was meant not only entrance into the immediate redemption and the guarantee of the salvation in the future as well, as Reformation theologians had understood it. So Sanders' thesis that justification is related only to present entrance into the people of God but not to last judgement appears to be unavailable. And it is obvious that when Paul said of the cross of Christ as the ground of justification, he thought it in juristic terms, for the term, 'to give up(paradoqh/nai)' which was used to refer to Christ's death should be understood as juristic concept. The fact that Paul thought of the cross in terms of juristic category invalidates Sanders' argument that Paul was supposed not to think justification in juristic terms, since Paul's doctrine of justification lacks a discussion of repentance and forgiveness. We can conclude that Reformational perspective which thought Paul's justification in juristic terms can reveal the real meaning of justification more appropriately than the new perspective which tried to remove the juristic meaning in Paul's soteriology.