# Bucer on Justification?



## CharlieJ (Jun 7, 2009)

I'm reading Alister McGrath's _The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation_. In one place, he writes about Bucer's view of justification; I'm not sure what to make of it. I don't really know anything about Bucer, so somebody more knowledgeable will have to direct me to sources. Oh, and a Latin translation would be helpful.

"Erasmus's influence upon Bucer is at its most evident in his moralism.... For Bucer, as for Erasmus, Scripture bears witness to the _lex Christi_, understood as an ethical pedagogical principle: '_Nam et sacra doctrina proprie moralis est, ars nimirun recte et ordine vivendi.'_ [112] The obvious difficulty in accomodating sentiments such as these with Luther's doctrine of justification (which seemed to the humanists to destroy the foundations of morality) led to Bucer radically modifying that doctrine, resulting in a strongly ethical conception of justification that prefigures that of later Pietism. [113]"

[112] Koch sees this maxim as the key to Bucer's theology. _Studium Pietatis_, 8.

[113] F. Kruger, _Bucer and Erasmus; McGrath_, "Humanist Elements in the Early Reformed Doctrine of Justification," 10-14; McGrath, _Iustitia Dei_, 221-2.


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## Poimen (Jun 8, 2009)

I don't know if it will help Dr. Scott Clark explains Bucer's view here: Westminster Seminary California clark

From the article: 



> For his part, Bucer had already been teaching a rather different doctrine of duplex iustitia in which sinners are said to be justified by the imputation of Christ's righteousness (iustificatio impii). Having been declared righteous, the justified man will necessarily manifest this righteousness by obedience. For Bucer, "God never imputes righteousness without also imparting it." Bucer called this secondary justification the "justification of the pious" (iustificatio pii). Nevertheless, he was explicit throughout his teaching that sanctification was no part of the ground of our justification, but the result of it. Therefore, his two types of justification were not synonymous but correlates. Bucer's doctrine of duplex iustitia was part of the development of Reformed theology from the earliest Protestant expressions of justification and the later Reformed forms. His doctrine of "double justice" was, in fact, virtually what Luther taught in 1518-19, and merely an early transitional form in the development of the Reformed doctrine of justification. What he actually meant to teach is that Christ's benefits are twofold: justification and sanctification. The latter follows and manifests the former.


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