Is Justification by Faith Alone Nominalist?

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:01]Greetings everybody. Welcome back to another episode of ATP, Ask the Pastor.

[00:00:05]Although it really should be welcome back to me because I took a hiatus for a while. Uh but we're back and making videos. Although we won't be making videos every single week as we had in the past. Probably looking about two a month for a while. But regardless, it's good to be back. Thanks for watching.

[00:00:26]Today's question, somebody writes, "In a number of Orthodox and Catholic apologists stressed that in the Lutheran paradigm of justification, God acquits sinners rather than actually transforming them into righteous individuals."

[00:00:40]They nearly always attribute this to Luther's supposed foundation in nominalism.

[00:00:45]Some smarter pmicists claim he simply adopted the works of Peter Abalard.

[00:00:50]Essentially, they claim that the Protestant conception of justification is the same as OJ Simpson being acquitted in the courtroom. Uh, though clearly guilty by the evidence, the judge simply declares the guilty innocent. I find this troubling in light of Nahm 13, where God states that he will by no means acquit the wicked.

[00:01:09]Could you please discuss what nominalism is and how it relates to Lutheranism?

[00:01:15]This is a great question. Thank you for asking this. So before we dive into what nominalism is and whether Luther's doctrine of justification was nominalist, I want to address what you brought up about Peter Abalard. I have never heard anyone claimed that Luther adopted the theology of Peter Abalard. U they are as different as night and day on the doctrine of the atonement, merit, justification, and sin. Uh, frankly, the only way that someone could make that claim is if they have never read Peter Abalard, especially his commentary on Romans. So, I want to simply brush that one aside. The nominalism uh claim though that Luther got his justification by faith alone from nominalism. That claim is worth addressing. So, what is nominalism? Nominalism was a school of thought in late medieval scholasticism.

[00:02:10]was called the Via Maderna, the modern way and it was a reaction to the via antiqua, the older way uh in which the school of this that was a school of thought associated with men like Albert Aquinus and Duncatus.

[00:02:25]Nominalism is chiefly known for its position on universals that they don't exist at all but are simply mere names or nommen which is why then it's called nominalism.

[00:02:36]Uh nominalists held that the realms of God's word and human reason are to be distinguished not conflated. Um all philosophical speculation for the nominalist, all philosophical speculation about the world in which we live, it had to be tested by means of experience and and reality based reason.

[00:02:57]Now in the realm of theology, all speculation had to be tested uh by the authority of scripture as it was interpreted by the church.

[00:03:06]So nominalism was a forerunner of empirical science in its requirement that claims be tested by experience. It was also a forerunner of postmodernism in its detaching language from reality.

[00:03:23]Now there's no doubt that Luther was influenced by nominalism. In fact, he was trained as a nominalist at the University of chiefly through the works of Gabriel Beal. And nominalists uh nominalism's influence can be seen in Luther's sharp division between theology and theology. U God as person rather than God as being. Uh his belief that everything has to be tested by scripture and its authority. U his distinction between God hidden and God revealed. Now I say influence in this because while Luther was influenced by nominalistic thought he also severely critiqued nominalism throughout his life. U so I think it's best to say he was trained as a nominalist but he himself was not a nominalist and this becomes clear when we look at the doctrine of justification.

[00:04:17]Uh so what was the nominist teaching on justification? First we have to understand the power of God. William of aam uh with Duncotus before him held that God can do things by his absolute power or his regulated power. U so God uses his absolute power when he does things miraculously when he does things without means. So an example of this would be uh when he fed Israel in the wilderness with mana and quail. Those are extraordinary means. God uses his regular power when he works through means such as when he gives people their daily bread by means of farmers, ranchers, truckers, grocery store employees, etc. Now, what does this distinction have to do with justification for the nominalist?

[00:05:06]Well, according to the idea of the regular power of God, God working through means, justification consists in the gift of his grace that God bestows upon the man who has known how to prepare himself for it or right.

[00:05:23]Grace in this case abolishes sin, sanctifies the man uh and then when we are just we are justified then in consequence of that new inner condition that grace has created in us.

[00:05:36]Now, that's just typical late medieval Roman theology. Man can prepare himself for God's grace. God then infuses his grace into the sinner which justifies him and makes him righteous so that he begins to do righteous works which then continue to earn and merit justification and everlasting life.

[00:06:00]Now, Luther rejected that nominalist idea that man could prepare himself for grace by doing what was in his power.

[00:06:08]That's semipolagianism.

[00:06:11]He also rejected Rome's unbiblical understanding of the word justify because Rome was taking the word justify to mean to make one righteous rather than to pronounce or to declare one righteous. So Luther will say uh Paul says that the righteousness is imputed to us. Therefore to justify means to impute.

[00:06:33]And this is why then sin remains in the believer but it's not imputed to the believer. What is imputed to the believer is Christ's righteousness which he then earned in his innocent life, bitter sufferings, and death.

[00:06:48]When Luther's detractors claim that he was influenced by nominalism, what they have in mind is a justification according to God's absolute power. So nominalists could conceive of justification as the fact that God declares us righteous solely on the grounds that he freely accepts us without regard uh to what we bring with us by the by way of either an inherent grace or holiness. This is sometimes at least for William called the doctrine of acceptance.

[00:07:20]Now I cannot stress this enough. This is not Luther's doctrine of justification in nominalism. This is a justification by fiat accomplished uh by accomplished arbitrarily by God's power. It's not the imputation of Christ's righteousness to the sinner, but it's a justification that declares a sinner righteous simply because God's all powerful. It has nothing to do with Christ's prom or with God's promise to be merciful. It has nothing to do with Christ's fulfillment of the law, nothing to do with his merits, nothing to do with grace whatsoever. It's a justification in regard to nothing more like Calvinian predestination than biblical justification.

[00:08:06]So Luther rejected this especially very early in his career in his disputation against scholastic theology. He said it is not true that God can accept man without his justifying grace.

[00:08:20]So Luther did not teach this nominalistic u empty declaration devoid of any content that when believers or excuse me when sinners believe that that they are received into favor that their sins are forgiven for Christ's sake who by his death has made satisfaction for our sins God imputes Christ's righteousness to them and Christ's righteousness his merits that's credited to the believer so this isn't a legal fiction as if God simply looks the other way and dismisses the charges. U when God justifies a sinner, that is when he declares him not guilty, he is applying what Christ as the sinner's substitute acquired for him. So the believer truly possesses Christ's righteousness as his own. And being declared righteous, the believer then is reconciled to God, has the forgiveness of sins, God's grace, sunship, and the Holy Spirit. so that the believer begins to live righteously and grows in that not to merit justification but because that's God's will and because the believer um rejoices in God's will.

[00:09:30]Finally then when scripture says that God will by no means justify the wicked it means the wicked who don't repent of their sin and flee to Christ. Paul writes in Romans 4:5-8, "To him who does not work, but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted, reckoned, or imputed for righteousness."

[00:09:53]Just as David describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works, blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered.

[00:10:02]Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin.

[00:10:06]The ungodly and the wicked whom God will by no means justify are those who refuse to use the mediator, who refuse to trust in Christ's merits and the promise of the gospel.

[00:10:21]So bottom line, while Luther was certainly influenced by nominalism, his doctrine of justification by faith alone is not that of the nominalists, but rather it's that of scripture and St. Paul in which God does not impute the sin uh to those who believe in him and the gospel but instead imputes Christ's righteousness to him again as we confess when he believes the gospel.

[00:10:49]Hope this helps. As always, if you have something you would like to ask the pastor, shoot me an email at Holy Crossgmail.com.

[00:10:57]I will get to it as soon as I'm able.

[00:11:00]Until next time, God bless.