Charles Hodge was one of the best Reformed theologians of the past couple of centuries. He was brilliant and perceptive, and his ideas often have nuances and insights that are unique and very helpful. Therefore, it is not surprising that one of the most interesting defenses, in my view, of the Protestant doctrine of justification should be found in his writings. Catholics have historically criticized the Protestant doctrine of justification (understood in an "anti-Augustinian" way) as being absurd because it teaches that, in justification, God regards us as righteous not because we are actually righteous, but because Christ is righteous for us and his righteousness is counted ours by a legal imputation. Catholics have typically regarded this view as a kind of "legal fiction," for it seems to involve God pretending that we are something we're not. God can see that we're not righteous, and that our moral character is actually hateful to him and deserving of his displeasure, but, by a kind of legal trick, he decides to treat us as if we were perfectly righteous, completely morally pleasing, and worthy of pleasure and acceptance. To get a sense of this, picture, for example, someone trying to pretend that Adolf Hitler was Mother Teresa and treating him as if he were. This doctrine seems to involve God acting as if he is blind, playing games with the truth, etc.
Well, here is one of Hodge's responses to this objection:
Another standing objection to the Protestant doctrine has been so often met, that nothing but its constant repetition justifies a repetition of the answer. It is said to be absurd that one man should be righteous with the righteousness of another; that for God to pronounce the unjust just is a contradiction. This is a mere play on words. It is, however, very serious play; for it is caricaturing truth. It is indeed certain that the subjective, inherent quality of one person or thing cannot by imputation become the inherent characteristic of any other person or thing. Wax cannot become hard by the imputation of the hardness of a stone, nor can a brute become rational by the imputation of the intelligence of a man; nor the wicked become good by the imputation of the goodness of other men. But what has this to do with one man’s assuming the responsibility of another man? If among men the bankrupt can become solvent by a rich man’s assuming his responsibilities, why in the court of God may not the guilty become righteous by the Son of God’s assuming their responsibilities? If He was made sin for us, why may we not be made the righteousness of God in Him? The objection assumes that the word “just” or “righteous” in this connection, expresses moral character; whereas in the Bible, when used in relation to this subject, it is always used in a judicial sense, i.e., it expresses the relation of the person spoken of to justice. Δίκαιος is antithetical to ὑπόδικος. The man with regard to whom justice is unsatisfied, is ὑπόδικος, “guilty.” He with regard to whom justice is satisfied, is δίκαιος, “righteous.” To declare righteous, therefore, is not to declare holy; and to impute righteousness is not to impute goodness; but simply to regard and pronounce chose [sic] who receive the gift of Christ’s righteousness, free from condemnation and entitled to eternal life for his sake. (Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology: Volume III [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1940], 175, found here on the website of the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.)
The fundamental problem with Hodge's response is that he tries--with a good degree of rhetorical effectiveness, certainly--to separate and distinguish what cannot be distinguished: "legal righteousness" and "moral goodness." But, while it is true that one can look at moral goodness from the vantage point of different aspects of it, sometimes emphasizing its intrinsic nature, sometimes emphasizing its evaluation according to a standard of law, ultimately "legal righteousness" and "moral goodness" are the same thing. There's no reasonable way to construe them to be something ultimately or fundamentally distinct. This can be shown by looking both at Scripture and at reason.
If we look at Scripture, we find that God has a moral law which is the ultimate standard of "righteousness" and "sin." We also find that the righteousness which meets the demands of God's moral law boils down to love--love of God supremely, and then following from that love of one's neighbor. Christ himself, of course, sums up the law in these two greatest commandments (Matthew 22:35-40). St. Paul, likewise, makes love the summary of the law (Romans 13:9-10). And this idea, of course, is rooted in the Old Testament (see, for example, Micah 6:8). And this makes perfect sense if we look at how righteousness and sin are viewed throughout Scripture. The moral law determines what brings God's wrath and what brings God's pleasure and acceptance (Ephesians 5:1-10, and throughout Scripture). And the subject matter of the moral law is obviously of supreme importance to God, since it determines whether a person receives eternal life or eternal death. Righteousness is that of which the moral law approves and to which it pronounces the reward of eternal life. Sin is that of which the moral law disapproves and to which it pronounces the punishment of eternal death. And the moral law reveals what God loves (what pleases him) and what he hates (what brings his wrath). So what is righteousness? What is it that God loves so much as to make it the determining factor between eternal life and eternal death? It is an attitude of love to God and neighbor. It involves outward actions (works), but the outward acts are important only as an indicator of inward attitude. For ignorance diminishes culpability (Luke 12:47-48; John 9:41; etc.) Why? Because ignorance implies less evil will involved. And bad actions that involve no will at all (like simple accidents) have no culpability. Actions done by inanimate objects are not subject to the moral law--because there is no will. So it is the attitude of the will that matters. At the judgment, we will be judged according to our works. It is not our outward actions that are being judged by themselves; it is we who are being judged for doing them. If I commit murder, it is not the event of someone being killed which is judged--for a tornado can kill a man, but this is not a matter of moral guilt--but it is evil will manifested which is being judged (which is why, for example, the Law of Moses does not condemn a person who kills purely accidentally). This is why, when we repent of our sins, put them to death, and turn to God, seeking to make up for what we have done and restore our right relationship with him, he takes that into account in his judgment of us. Repentant sinners are fundamentally different from unrepentant sinners, because the former have renounced sin and embraced supreme love to God, and this fundamentally changes God's judgment of them. (See Ezekiel 18:26-30, for example.)
But if the righteousness that is the concern of the moral law--which is what justification is all about--is an attitude of love to God, this is indistinguishable from moral goodness. Scripture nowhere makes any distinction between "righteousness" and "moral goodness." This is simply a fiction of Hodge's imagination. All that Scripture describes is a kind of attitude--leading to actions--that pleases God, that he considers good and worthy of reward, and a kind of attitude--leading to actions--that displeases him, that he considers bad and worthy of censure or punishment. Justification, in Scripture, is all about getting out from under the wrath of God and becoming morally acceptable to him. But this involves moving from being in a condition that he finds displeasing to being in a condition he finds pleasing. And what conditions are these? They are attitudes of the will--supreme love to God, or lack of supreme love to God (and loving something else supremely instead, which is idolatry).
This is how Scripture talks about "righteousness" or "moral goodness." And reason agrees. Remember, when we talk about righteousness, we're talking about something that is of the utmost importance to God, since it results in eternal life or eternal death. Well, what could be that important to God? God loves himself supremely, since he is the Supreme Being. He is the fullness and source of all goodness and happiness. Therefore, he is going to love love to himself supremely and see that attitude as fit and worthy to receive ultimate happiness, and a lack of supreme love to himself, which involves loving something else supremely, he is going to see as fit and worthy to receive ultimate misery. This fits with what Scripture says--supreme love to God is the heart of the moral law, of what truly pleases God.
And reason also points out to us that, while we can talk about legal categories, ultimately nothing exists besides that which is real. If a legal category is going to have any ultimate reality or meaning, it must be rooted in something real. Hodge talks about money as something that can be transferred from one person to another, and he asks why we can't just impute someone's righteousness to someone else just like we impute money from one person's bank account to another person's bank account. But this ignores the crucial difference between money and righteousness (or moral goodness). Money in a bank account may be a mere conceptual reality--a sort of practical decision to say that a person can make purchases of a certain amount. When money is transferred from my bank account to someone else's, the reality is the conceptual transfer itself. Nothing physical is necessarily actually being moved. The reality is simply the conceptual number attached to my bank account and the other person's. A transfer of money means simply that we've transferred the abstract number from one account to the other. So there's the reality in that case. (Although, even here, the abstraction is rooted in the reality of what the society will allow a person to buy or not buy--the social interaction is the true reality.) But other things are more concrete and less abstract. If I have brown hair and someone else has blond hair, I can't "impute" my brown hair to the other person simply by changing things on a sheet of paper (or in a computer spreadsheet). The only way for someone to get brown hair is by their actually coming to have brown hair. Mere "imputation" won't cut it. It would be simply a legal fiction. But righteousness is like hair color in this sense. As we've seen, it is an attitude of the will, an attitude of love to God, as both Scripture and reason testify. So we can't simply "legally impute" one person's righteousness to another person. The only way for God to see me as righteous is if I am actually righteous--that is, if I have an attitude of supreme love to God. That's what God loves most, and the only thing he sees as warranting eternal life. The will, good or bad, is the ultimate reality that legal categories of "sin" and "righteousness" are getting at. In a financial judgment, the reality that the judgment is interested in is simply the number that occurs in our bank account (and the social meaning such a number has). In moral judgment, the reality the judgment is interested in is the attitude of will that we have inside (and which is manifested by the course of our lives, by the record of our works--and not just individual works by themselves but the whole trajectory of our lives, including our repentance from sin and restoration to goodness, moving from an evil attitude at odds with God to a loving attitude which seeks supremely to please him).
The great Reformed theologian Jonathan Edwards understood this:
The thing which makes sin hateful, is that by which it deserves punishment; which is but the expression of hatred. And that which renders virtue lovely, is the same with that on the account of which it is fit to receive praise and reward; which are but the expressions of esteem and love. But that which makes vice hateful, is its hateful nature; and that which renders virtue lovely, is its amiable nature. It is a certain beauty or deformity that are inherent in that good or evil will, which is the soul of virtue and vice (and not in the occasion of it), which is their worthiness of esteem or disesteem, praise, or dispraise, according to the common sense of mankind. (Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, Part IV, Section 1)
If Edwards is right, then there is no real distinction, ultimately, between "righteousness" and "moral goodness." But Edwards's view is the view of both Scripture and reason.
So Hodge's argument here fails because he tries to distinguish what cannot be distinguished. Scripture, reason, as well as the general concept of "morality" as the idea occurs in the general discourse of the human race, do not allow any kind of real, ultimate distinction between "righteousness" and "moral goodness." And they agree that moral goodness is not simply a legal abstraction like money in a bank account, but is ultimately an attitude inherent in the will of a person and therefore an inward moral character trait.
For more thoughts on why we can't separate the legal from the real when it comes to righteousness and justification, see here. For a couple of articles addressing further how our repentance from sin plays a positive role in God's judgment of us according to his moral law, see here and here. For more arguments for the Catholic, Augustinian doctrine of justification in general and against the anti-Augustinian Protestant view, see here and here.
Published on the feast of St. Eusebius of Vercelli and St. Peter Julian Eymard
ADDENDUM 8/30/21: A couple more thoughts to add:
1. Hodge's attempt to distinguish between "legal righteousness," which has to do with our justification, and "moral goodness" as an internal trait, which has to do with our sanctification, is problematic for the Anti-Augustinian doctrine of justification. According to that doctrine, the thing which makes us right with God is fully and only the imputed righteousness of Christ--the "legal righteousness" Hodge describes above. We're supposed to be fully acceptable to God and to merit heaven by means only of imputed righteousness. But if this is the only thing that makes us right with God and his moral law, then what is the point of this other thing, "moral goodness," which Hodge distinguishes from legal righteousness? Does God have two moral laws, one of which is concerned with "legal righteousness," and the other of which is concerned with internal moral goodness? If that is the case, then it seems to call into question the idea that imputed righteousness is all we need to be right with God. Apparently, being right with God involves two parts and two different kinds of righteousness--one legal and imputed and the other internal. Or is imputed righteousness indeed all we need to be fully right with God? If so, then internal moral goodness would seem to have no moral point. If the moral law doesn't care about it, then it's not really a moral entity at all.
2. Hodge might respond to some of my comments in the article by pointing out that, in terms of the moral evaluation of one's moral status, one's internal moral condition is not enough. One cannot commit a crime in the past, causing great harm, and get out of paying up on the consequences of that act simply by having an internal moral conversion. Thus, there is a real distinction between "legal righteousness"--which includes what we owe to the moral law for things we've done in the past--and "internal moral goodness." The latter category doesn't fully cover the former one.
It is true that, in the moral system God has created, there is a need to "satisfy" for previous offenses and acts. This is evident to human moral intuition as well. If I did something to hurt someone by my past acts, when I come to repent of the evil will that led to those acts, I also feel myself responsible to try to fix and make up for the harm I previously caused. And we wouldn't think my repentance genuine if I wasn't concerned to fix the harm of my previous acts. And God has designed things so that repentance and internal conversion involve a facing up to what one was previously and one's previous acts. In the Catholic system, an essential part of repentance is the willingness to make "satisfaction" for one's past sins. However, this does not imply that "legal righteousness" is something ultimately distinct from "internal moral goodness" in the way Hodge envisions. While God takes into account my attempts to satisfy for or make up for or fix my previous evil acts, it is still the internal will that he is evaluating, not something external to the will. "Satisfaction" is simply part of the process of conversion that turns a previous evil will into a good will. God's design requires that that conversion involve a facing of what went before (which makes sense, since we are temporal beings whose lives are a narrative). But, in terms of God's moral evaluation of us, it is our will to satisfy for our past acts that matters, not how successful we are in actually making up for particular things. We reject our sins and put them to death, hating our previous life and choosing a new life. This involves trying to fix the particular harms caused by past acts, but these acts are not always fixable. We can't restore a life taken, or always recover a lost friendship or a destroyed reputation, or pay back all that was stolen. But, reason says, if we choose to do what we can, our moral status is the same, regardless of what we are able to successfully accomplish. I am not a worse moral person if I try to restore a ruined reputation and fail than if I try equally to do so and succeed. And Scripture nowhere indicates that success at repairing past harms is, in addition to the conversion of the will, a requirement for making us right before God's moral law. Scripture rather focuses on the conversion of the will, our sorrow for past sins, our choice and effort to put our previous evil life to death and be reborn to new life, our repentant heart, as that which matters. (Again, see, for example, Ezekiel 18:26-30.) It is always the will which is the dwelling-place of moral guilt or virtue. Again, even though tornadoes are often more destructive than people, we don't say that therefore there is more moral blame. There is no blame at all, because blame lies only in the will. And it's the same with moral virtue. Even if a tornado could somehow fix all the destruction it caused, there would be no moral satisfaction or virtue, because there is no will. When a person makes up for past errors, it's in the repentant will that the moral virtue lies. The moral evaluation is entirely concerned with the condition of the will, and outward acts are only important insofar as they manifest that.
So, again, there is no basis for the idea of "legal righteousness" as something fundamentally distinct from the internal moral character of the will.
ADDENDUM 3/11/22: Following up with #2 in the previous addendum, I would note that Catholic theology gives us a perfect system for combining the two observations we've been discussing--that 1. there is no ultimate distinction between "legal righteousness" and "moral beauty of will," and 2. that there is a kind of satisfaction required even for converted beings who did evil previously. It's the Catholic distinction between the eternal consequences of sin and the temporal consequences of sin. When you are in a state of mortal sin, you are at enmity with God. Your will is evil fundamentally. You've rejected the Supreme Good. This condition puts one on a road to hell, and hell will be the destination unless there is repentance. The will is evil, and in that state it is morally ugly to God and deserving of punishment and misery (both the moral and the natural or logical consequence of a will that has rejected and opposed the Supreme Good). And it will remain that way until it is converted and ceases to be morally ugly. Mortal sin deserves and leads to eternal punishment. But when a will is converted to a state of friendship with God, the moral ugliness is removed. God now finds the will pleasing, and thus deserving of reward and happiness. It no longer belongs in hell but in heaven, for it is full of God's goodness. Nevertheless, there is a narrative continuity between the converted will and the previous unconverted will; the same person used to be at enmity with God and is now in friendship with God. And therefore the converted will must own up to and face the consequences of that narrative continuity. The will must sorrow for its previous sins and repent of them, putting them to death. Only through that death can it rise into its new life. The person must acknowledge his previous sins, ask forgiveness for them, and seek to satisfy for them, to make up for them, as best he can. (And, although I'm oversimplifying here and imagining the converted will as if it were perfect in every way, in reality conversion is a lifelong process where the person, now in friendship with God, must unlearn bad habits, learn new good habits, grow in the practice of the virtues, and in general learn to overcome the effects of sin and the Fall upon himself, and this is all part of learning to live a holy life.) Catholic theology calls these remaining consequences of sin and the need to face up to and work to satisfy for them the "temporal consequences of sin."
There is a fundamental difference between the temporal consequences and the eternal consequences of sin, or between temporal "punishments" and satisfactions and being out of friendship with God and under condemnation of eternal punishment. The temporal consequences of sin do not indicate that God still finds the will morally ugly, as being under a sentence of eternal punishment does. Nor is God treating the converted will as if it itself is evil. Rather, these temporal consequences and the need to satisfy for them are simply an expression of the narrative continuity between the old state of the will and the new state of the will and are necessary for the new will to come into its own. They do not indicate that there is some kind of righteousness or unrighteousness distinct from the actual moral beauty or ugliness of the will. There is a parallel here to the concept of original sin. The whole human race inherits the consequences of Adam's sin, and yet no one but Adam is actually blamed for Adam's particular sin. God does not view my will as responsible for Adam's sin as if it was the source of it. As a descendent of Adam, I simply inherit the consequences of his choice because of the narrative continuity between Adam and myself as I am a descendent of Adam. (And this sort of thing manifests itself all over the place in human life, as we see people receiving the good or bad consequences of what other people have done--especially children inheriting good or bad from their parents or ancestors.) The parallel breaks down somewhat in that there is an even stronger narrative connection between my later life and my earlier life, since both parts of my life are part of the narrative of me personally and are thus part of my larger identity, and yet the parallel is instructive, for it shows how a person can carry the baggage of previous choices and actions without being seen as the morally ugly source of those choices and actions. My later converted will (especially when perfected in heaven) is not morally ugly but morally beautiful, and God does not attribute the moral ugliness of my unconverted will to my converted will, and yet my converted will carries baggage from its previous state of being and must deal with that.
In short, while eternal punishment for mortal sin involves God seeing fundamental moral ugliness in the will and treating it accordingly, temporal consequences and satisfaction for sin imply no such thing, but only a need to deal with baggage due to the narrative continuity between the old state of the will and the new state of the will. Thus, the concept of temporal consequences and satisfaction for sin does not imply any ultimate distinction between "legal righteousness" and "moral beauty of the will." In the (Anti-Augustinian) Protestant view, however, even the will in heaven perfected by grace is seen as still meriting eternal punishment in hell in itself apart from an additional legal, imputed righteousness. This does imply that God still finds even the perfected will morally ugly--unless, as Hodge tries to do, we will make an ultimately meaningless and incoherent, and rationally and biblically groundless, distinction between "legal righteousness" and "moral beauty of will." But this is meaningless, since both the biblical and the rational and intuitive concept of "righteousness" simply means nothing other than "moral beauty of will." An ultimate distinction between "legal righteousness" and "moral beauty of will" is just as absurd as trying to make some ultimate distinction between being legally accounted physically beautiful and actually being physically beautiful. Being legally accounted physically beautiful can have no real meaning apart from a reference to actual physical beauty, and so, if the former is separated entirely from the latter, it becomes nothing but a meaningless and absurd legal fiction.
ADDENDUM 6/4/22: Another problem is that if we owe something to justice in terms of being sorry for and trying to make up for (repair the damage of) our past sins, this debt, by its very nature, is something that cannot be paid by someone other than ourselves. It is not something someone else can do for us in place of our personally doing it. If I have an obligation in justice to be sorry for my sins and to try as best I can to make up for them, precisely because they are my past sins personally, this is not going to be satisfied by someone else being sorry for my sins and trying to make up for them for me. Imagine if I were to get to the seat of God's judgment, and God were to say, "Well, he wasn't himself actually sorry for his sins, nor did he try to make up for them, but Jesus did these things in his place, so that's OK. His debt is fully paid." This is absurd, because we recognize that the whole point is that my will--the actual will of the person who actually committed the crimes--has the obligation to face up to what it has done, be sorry, and try to make amends. This is all about me, personally, acknowledging and facing up to the consequences of my actions and the harm I've done, personally hating and being sorry for those actions as my own past actions, and trying to fix what I have messed up precisely because I was the one who messed them up in the first place. It's that attitude in my will that is important, because it is an essential part of moral goodness that we hate our past sins and try to distance ourselves from them and fix them. Again, as we pointed out above, this is not really about what we can fix objectively, since we cannot always repair all the damage we've caused and this is not fully under our control. What this is about is an attitude required in a converted will that has an evil past. Jesus cannot have this attitude for me, because the whole point is that the person who committed the crimes must own up to them and take responsibility. If I myself don't have this attitude, I'm not paying the debt I owe in justice. So the aspect of "satisfaction" that comes along with conversion can no more be transferred from one person to another purely legally than can the moral goodness of the will in general.
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