John William Baier's
                       _Compendium of Positive Theology_
                          Edited by C. F. W. Walther
                                 Published by:
                  St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1877

         [Translator's Preface. These are the major loci or topics of
           John William Baier's _Compendium of Positive Theology_ as
          edited by Dr. C. F. W. Walther. These should be seen as the
         broad outline of Baier-Walther's dogmatics, but please don't
         assume that this is all. Each locus usually includes copious
           explanatory notes and citations from patristics and other
                            Lutheran dogmaticians.

      Chapter Five

      On Justification

      1. Justification, which closely follows conversion, has a legal
      significance and it indicates that act, by which God the judge
      pronounces a human guilty of sins and so also a criminal of guilt
      and punishment, but the ones believing in Christ, he pronounces
      righteous; about which it is not established from reason, but from
      the evangelical Scriptures.

      2. Granted however that justification does not bring in a real and
      inward change in a human; however because through it a human from
      unjust things is made just judicially and thus the status of a human
      is changed in truth, therefore the goal from which and to which are
      not recognized from the thing.

      3. The goal from which is the state or condition of wrath and
      punishment not only in time, but also in eternity, deprivative and
      positive punishment; which through justification is judicially
      removed from the subject.

      4. The goal to which of justification is righteousness, not indeed
      inhering in us, but ours, by which we are held just before God, as
      if the law of God himself was most fulfilled and for our sins was
      most satisfied.

      5. And thus to this same process of justification pertains, that God,
      as a judge of a human accused by the law and convicted of sin,
      however at the same time by believing in Christ thus he recognizes a
      cause, so that indeed special justice catches one to be left both to
      death and to eternal damnation, however he judges to pertain to him
      or he imputes to him the merit of Christ received by faith, so that
      therefore he does not fully hold for the sinner, but he absolves
      from the accusation and obligation to punishment.

      6. The efficient cause of the act of justification is the triune God.

      7. The internal impulsive cause is the goodness or free grace of God.

      8. The external impulsive cause, and the principal and meritorious
      cause, is Christ the mediator, by reason of his active and passive
      obedience.

      9. The lesser principal impulsive cause is faith in Christ.

      10. Besides this faith truly nothing else is able to be held on our
      part as part of the cause of justification.

      11. The form or the formal reason of justification is the
      forgiveness or the non-imputation of sins.

      12. The subject of justification is the human sinner, but converted
      or reborn.

      13. The goal of justification on the part of humans who are
      justified, is their eternal salvation, on the part of the justifying
      God it is his glory.

      14. The effects of justification are peace of the conscience with
      God, adoption into the sons of God, the gift of the Holy Spirit,
      sanctification and rebirth, the hope of eternal life.

      15. It is possible to define justification, that it is an act of the
      divine will, by which the triune God by his free grace on account of
      the merits of Christ apprehended by human sinners through faith,
      reborn or converted, forgives sins - the cause of the following
      eternal salvation.

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         This text was translated by Rev. Theodore Mayes and is copy-
       righted material, (c)1996, but is free for non-commercial use or
          distribution, and especially for use on Project Wittenberg.
         Please direct any comments or suggestions to: Rev. Robert E.
        Smith of the Walther Library at Concordia Theological Seminary.

                        E-mail: smithre@mail.ctsfw.edu
         Surface Mail: 66000 N. Clinton St., Ft. Wayne, IN 46825 USA
       Phone: (260) 452-3149                       Fax: (260) 452-2126
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