Clement of Rome and the Question of Justification

Clement of Rome is traditionally identified as a leading presbyter of the Roman church in the late first century, commonly dated to the reign of Domitian (c. AD 90–100). He is widely regarded as the author of 1 Clement, a letter written from the church of Rome to the church at Corinth to address internal disorder and restore ecclesial harmony. The letter is among the earliest extant Christian writings outside the New Testament and was held in exceptionally high esteem by the early church, with some communities reading it publicly alongside Scripture.

Because of its early date and pastoral purpose, 1 Clement provides valuable insight into how key theological concepts; especially justification, faith, obedience, and reward; were understood in the immediate post-apostolic period.

Clement’s most direct and theologically significant statement on justification appears in Chapter 32, page 11 of the attached PDF. The core passage reads:

“And we, too, being called by His will in Christ Jesus, are not justified by ourselves, nor by our own wisdom, or understanding, or godliness, or works which we have wrought in holiness of heart; but by that faith through which, from the beginning, Almighty God has justified all men.”

Several observations follow directly from the text.

First, Clement explicitly denies justification by works. The negation is comprehensive: justification is not by “ourselves,” not by wisdom or understanding, not by godliness, and not by “works which we have wrought in holiness of heart.” This last phrase is especially significant, as it excludes even religious or morally sincere works from the ground of justification.

Second, Clement presents faith as the sole instrumental means of justification. The construction is deliberately exclusive: “not by … but by.” Faith is not listed among other contributing causes; it is the means “through which” God justifies.

Third, faith is not described as a meritorious act. Clement does not say faith earns justification, but that God justifies through faith. The emphasis remains on divine action rather than human contribution.

Fourth, Clement places justification within a redemptive-historical framework: this mode of justification has operated “from the beginning.” This closely parallels Paul’s argument in Romans 4, where Abraham serves as evidence that justification by faith precedes and excludes works.

On the question of justification itself, Clement’s language is clear, direct, and unqualified.

The Role of Good Works (Chapters 33–35)

Following Chapter 32, Clement turns to a sustained exhortation concerning good works, love, and moral obedience. These chapters are often cited as a counterbalance to his statement on justification. However, careful attention to context and language shows that Clement does not revise or qualify his earlier claim.

Chapter 33: Ethical Exhortation, Not Justification

Chapter 33 begins with the rhetorical question:

“What shall we do, then, brethren?”

This transition mirrors Paul’s movement in Romans 6:1 and signals a shift from doctrine to ethical consequence. Clement does not readdress the means of justification; rather, he warns against moral sloth and exhorts believers to active obedience.

Good works are presented as:

Obedience to God’s will

An imitation of God’s own activity as Creator

The appropriate response of those already called by God

At no point does Clement state or imply that good works justify, contribute to justification, or secure acceptance before God.

Chapter 34: Reward According to Works

In Chapter 34, Clement introduces the theme of reward:

“Behold, the Lord cometh, and His reward is before His face, to render to every man according to his work.”

This language is drawn directly from Scripture and reflects a biblical doctrine of recompense. Two distinctions are essential.

First, reward is not equated with justification. Clement never uses justificatory language in this context. He speaks of recompense, not of being declared righteous.

Second, Clement explicitly rejects human boasting:

“Let our boasting and our confidence be in Him.”

This undermines any interpretation that views reward as strict merit or as something owed by God due to human achievement.

Chapter 35: How the Reward Is Obtained

Chapter 35 clarifies Clement’s framework:

“But how, beloved, shall this be done? If our understanding be fixed by faith towards God; if we earnestly seek the things which are pleasing and acceptable to Him; if we do the things which are in harmony with His blameless will…”

The structure is important. Faith is foundational: it “fixes” the understanding toward God. Moral transformation follows as the outworking of that faith. Clement then lists vices to be cast away, not as a means of justification, but as incompatible with life oriented toward God.

Faith precedes obedience; obedience flows from faith.

When his argument is followed carefully, it becomes evident that he distinguishes between justification, moral obedience, and reward or inheritance, treating them as related but non-identical realities. These categories are not collapsed into one another, and each answers a different theological question.

Justification, for Clement, concerns the basis upon which human beings are accepted by God. It answers the question of how a person is declared righteous before Him. Clement addresses this directly and unambiguously when he states that believers are not justified by themselves, nor by their own wisdom, understanding, godliness, or works done in holiness of heart, but by faith through which God has justified humanity from the beginning. The structure of this statement is exclusive and contrastive. Works are not merely subordinated to faith or placed in a secondary role; they are explicitly excluded from justification altogether. Faith is presented as the sole instrumental means through which justification occurs, while God remains the acting subject. Justification is something God does, not something humans achieve or cooperate in as a causal agent. Clement’s language is declarative and God-centered, and he gives no indication that justification is a process, that it admits degrees, or that it can be increased, preserved, or completed by obedience. Nor does he suggest that justification depends upon moral performance either before or after faith. By situating this mode of justification “from the beginning,” Clement also places it within a continuous redemptive framework that closely parallels the Pauline argument concerning Abraham.

Moral obedience and sanctified living occupy a different category in Clement’s thought. Here the question is not how one is justified, but how those who are already called by God ought to live. Clement repeatedly exhorts believers to pursue good works, love, humility, and righteousness. These exhortations are strong and uncompromising, and moral obedience is clearly required of believers. However, Clement consistently presents obedience as submission to God’s will rather than as a means of securing acceptance before Him. God is the exemplar whose works are to be imitated, not a debtor who must reward human effort with justification. Faith is placed logically and temporally prior to obedience, as Clement states that the understanding must first be fixed by faith toward God before one earnestly seeks what is pleasing to Him. Obedience flows from faith as its expression and evidence. At no point does Clement describe moral obedience as the ground, cause, or instrument of justification. The absence of justificatory language in these exhortations is as significant as the presence of explicit exclusion in Chapter 32.

Reward and inheritance form a third distinct category in Clement’s framework. When Clement speaks of God rendering to each according to his works, he is not redefining justification but addressing eschatological recompense. Reward is consistently portrayed as something God gives, not something humans earn in a strict or contractual sense. Although Clement affirms that reward is “according to works,” he also insists that boasting and confidence belong to God alone. Works function here as the criterion by which God evaluates the lives of believers, not as the meritorious cause that obligates Him. Reward presupposes justification rather than producing it. Clement never equates being rewarded with being justified, nor does he collapse future inheritance into the initial declaration of righteousness. Even here, the framework remains grounded in divine promise and grace rather than in human desert.

The importance of these distinctions cannot be overstated. Many later theological disputes arise precisely from collapsing these categories into one another, treating obedience as a cause of justification, or identifying final reward with justification itself. Clement does neither.

When Clement is read carefully and in context, several conclusions follow with logical force. He explicitly teaches that justification is by faith and not by works. He emphatically teaches that good works are necessary in the Christian life. He does not teach that works contribute to, preserve, increase, or complete justification. He does not articulate a doctrine of justification by faith formed by love, nor a synergistic model in which justification is partly grounded in human obedience. Although Clement writes pastorally rather than systematically, his material claims align closely with the Pauline teaching of Romans and Galatians. His concern is not to redefine justification, but to warn against moral negligence among those who have already been justified by God’s gracious act. This makes I Clement a crucial text for evaluating later doctrinal developments and an especially important baseline for comparison with the formulations that emerge in the post-patristic period, including those articulated at the Council of Trent.

The Council of Trent’s doctrine of infused righteousness and the increase of justification through merit represents a decisive conceptual shift from both the biblical witness and the earliest patristic framework, including Clement of Rome. What must be examined is not merely whether Trent uses biblical words, but whether the conceptual structure it introduces exists in Scripture, in the creeds, or in the early church at all.

Trent teaches that justification is not merely the forgiveness of sins or the declaration of righteousness, but a process in which righteousness is infused into the soul. According to Session VI, Chapter VII, justification consists not only in remission of sins but also in “the sanctification and renewal of the inward man,” accomplished by the pouring forth of charity through the Holy Spirit. On this basis, Trent further teaches that the righteousness received can be preserved and increased through good works, and that such works are truly meritorious, deserving of an increase of justification and eternal life.

The first issue is terminological and theological: the phrase “infused righteousness” itself. This expression does not appear in Scripture. Nor does Scripture ever describe righteousness as a substance, habit, or quality injected into the soul that constitutes justification. Biblical righteousness, especially in Paul, functions in a relational and judicial framework. To be righteous is to be in the right before God, not to possess a measurable internal quality that grows or diminishes. When Paul speaks of righteousness being “reckoned,” “counted,” or “imputed,” he is using legal language, not metaphysical language. Even when Scripture speaks of renewal, transformation, or sanctification, it does not identify these realities with justification itself.

Equally important is the fact that the Nicene Creed, which functions as the universal doctrinal boundary-marker of orthodoxy, contains no reference to infused righteousness, inherent righteousness, increasing justification, or merit. The Creed speaks of Christ “for us and for our salvation,” of forgiveness of sins, resurrection, and life of the world to come. It does not define justification at all, let alone define it as an ontological infusion capable of increase. This silence is not accidental. It reflects the fact that the early church confessed salvation christologically and soteriologically without constructing an internal metaphysics of righteousness.

This brings us to the deeper conceptual problem. Trent defines justification in such a way that it absorbs sanctification into it. Once this move is made, justification necessarily becomes a process rather than a declarative act. But if justification is a process, then it must admit degrees. If it admits degrees, then one must ask by what mechanism it increases. Trent answers: by merit, through good works performed in grace. This introduces a logical chain that is extremely difficult to sustain without contradiction.

If righteousness is infused at justification, then the believer is already righteous in the relevant sense. If that righteousness must increase, then either the original justification was incomplete or the increase is unnecessary. Trent attempts to resolve this by speaking of an initial justification that is real but capable of growth. However, this creates a tension that Scripture never addresses because Scripture never frames justification this way. In the biblical texts, one is either justified or not justified. The category does not admit of partial status.

The concept of merit exacerbates the difficulty. Trent insists that works performed in grace truly merit an increase of justification. But merit, even when carefully qualified, implies proportionality between act and reward. If works truly merit an increase in righteousness before God, then justification is no longer grounded solely in God’s declarative act but partly in human performance. The claim that these works are done “in grace” does not remove the problem; it only relocates it. Grace becomes the enabling condition for meritorious action rather than the sole ground of acceptance.

At this point the question becomes unavoidable: how does one distinguish this system from a refined form of works-based righteousness? The answer given by Trent is conceptual, not biblical. It depends on carefully constructed distinctions, technical definitions, and controlled terminology rather than on explicit scriptural teaching. This is precisely where Blaise Pascal’s critique of the Jesuits becomes illuminating.

In the Provincial Letters, Pascal accuses the Jesuit theologians of inventing phrases, distinctions, and technical formulas not to clarify truth but to protect predetermined conclusions. His charge is not that words are useless, but that new language is being created to shield theological systems from contradiction and moral scrutiny. When applied here, the concern is whether “infused righteousness” functions as a descriptive biblical category or as a protective construct designed to preserve a particular ecclesial synthesis.

See my previous post on Blaise Pascal's Letters

https://www.rebuildspirit.com/post/the-gospel-and-the-empire-when-rome-crowned-itself-christ-s-successor

There is no evidence that the apostles, the Nicene fathers, or the earliest Christian writers ever used the idea or language of “infused righteousness.” They did not describe justification as a substance or quality poured into the soul. Instead, they consistently treated justification as God’s act of accepting and declaring a person righteous, and sanctification as the moral change that follows in the believer’s life.

Clement of Rome shows this clearly. He can say that people are justified by faith and not by works, and at the same time strongly urge believers to live holy lives. He does not confuse these two things, and he does not need technical or philosophical language to keep them distinct.

Trent, on the other hand, merges justification and sanctification into a single process. Once that distinction is lost, a complicated system has to be built to explain how righteousness is received, increased, and preserved. That system is not found in Scripture or the early church; it is created to solve problems that only arise after the original distinction has been removed.

So....

If justification is something that can increase or decrease, then it cannot be something you ever fully possess. If it can grow, then it can also fall short. That means a person can never be certain where they stand before God at any given moment.

If good works are said to merit an increase in justification, then confidence before God can no longer rest entirely on Christ. Part of that confidence must rest on how well one has lived, how much one has progressed, or how successfully one has cooperated with grace. Even if grace is said to enable those works, the believer is still forced to look partly at himself to know where he stands.

Because Trent teaches that justification is an ongoing process that depends on continued obedience, it cannot allow believers to be fully sure that they are justified. If someone could be certain, it would mean justification is already complete and does not depend on future merit. That is why Trent says a person cannot have certainty of justification unless God gives special revelation.

All of these positions depend on one another. You cannot have increasing justification without merit, you cannot have merit without uncertainty, and you cannot have uncertainty without shifting confidence away from Christ alone. The entire structure works only if all these ideas are accepted together.

The problem is that none of these ideas; justification as a process, merit increasing justification, or the denial of assurance; come from Scripture or the early creeds. They arise later as part of a system built to support itself, not from the original sources of the Christian faith.

Infused righteousness, like later practices such as the veneration of relics, is not defended by showing a clear apostolic text that teaches it. Instead, it is defended by an appeal to authority: it is said to be apostolic because the Church, through the magisterium, declares it to be apostolic. The claim does not rest on Scripture functioning as an external check, but on ecclesial assertion.

That is the key point of comparison.

In the apostolic and early patristic method, a doctrine is apostolic because it can be shown to come from the apostles, either explicitly in Scripture or implicitly through universal, ancient, and consistent teaching traceable to them. Clement, for example, does not say “this is true because we in Rome teach it.” He says “look into the Scriptures.” Apostolicity is demonstrated, not declared.

With infused righteousness, the logic is reversed. The doctrine is not first established from Scripture and then received by the Church; it is defined by the Church and then read back into Scripture. Its apostolic status depends entirely on the authority that declares it.

That is the same logical move used to defend practices like the veneration of relics. The argument is not “the apostles taught this,” but “the Church has the authority to teach this, therefore it must be apostolic in substance.” But if, as the Nicene fathers make clear, the canon of faith is received and fixed, and no new doctrine may be added to it, then the question immediately arises: from where does Trent, or the Roman Catholic Church more broadly, derive the authority to define doctrines that were neither taught by the apostles nor confessed in the creed?

If the creed functions as a boundary that guards the apostolic faith rather than as an open framework for doctrinal expansion, then later dogmas cannot appeal to Nicaea for their legitimacy. They must appeal instead to a different source of authority altogether. In practice, that source is the Church’s own claim to doctrinal competence. The Church asserts that it possesses the authority not only to preserve the faith, but to define its content beyond what was originally confessed.

This is the decisive shift. Authority no longer operates under the canon; it operates above it. And once that shift is made, the test of apostolicity is no longer conformity to Scripture and the received confession, but submission to ecclesial definition. That is why doctrines like infused righteousness or the veneration of relics can be declared apostolic without being demonstrable from apostolic teaching itself. The authority that defines them is the same authority that declares them binding.

See my post on velic veneration

https://www.rebuildspirit.com/post/apostolic-christianity-and-the-question-of-relics

Seen in this light, the issue is not simply whether particular doctrines are persuasive, but whether the Church ever possessed the authority to introduce them at all. Clement, Scripture, and Nicaea all assume that it did not.

In summary, neither infused righteousness nor the increase of justification through merit is taught in Scripture, confessed in the Nicene Creed, or articulated in the earliest patristic sources. Clement of Rome shows that one can affirm the necessity of good works, the reality of transformation, and the seriousness of judgment without redefining justification itself. Trent’s system, by contrast, depends on redefining justification and then defending that redefinition through increasingly elaborate conceptual distinctions. That is why it must be tested not only biblically, but logically; and when it is, its internal coherence proves deeply problematic.

Clement’s letter not only presents a doctrine of justification grounded in faith; it also reveals a clear epistemological posture regarding authority. Throughout 1 Clement, Scripture functions as the final and decisive norm by which doctrine, ethics, and ecclesial order are judged. Clement does not appeal to an evolving body of unwritten dogma, nor does he introduce novel theological categories and then demand submission to them. Instead, he repeatedly and explicitly directs the Corinthian church back to the written Scriptures as the voice of the Holy Spirit and the fixed standard of truth.

This posture is not incidental. Clement introduces Scripture not as illustrative material but as determinative authority. One of the most explicit statements occurs when he exhorts the Corinthians to resolve their dispute by returning to the biblical text: “Look carefully into the Scriptures, which are the true utterances of the Holy Spirit” . The force of this statement is difficult to overstate. Scripture is not merely inspired; it is “true” and it speaks by the Holy Spirit. Clement further insists that within Scripture “nothing of an unjust or counterfeit character is written,” thereby asserting its sufficiency and reliability as a doctrinal standard .

Clement’s method throughout the epistle reinforces this claim. When addressing repentance, humility, faith, obedience, church order, or justification, he does not appeal to ecclesiastical innovation or theological development. He consistently introduces his arguments with phrases such as “for thus it is written” or “the Scripture saith,” treating the biblical text as the final court of appeal. His long chains of citations; from Genesis, Psalms, Isaiah, Job, and other texts; are not decorative. They function as proof. Clement assumes that once Scripture has spoken, the matter is settled.

This is particularly significant for the doctrine of justification. When Clement reaches his most explicit doctrinal statement in Chapter 32, he does not reason abstractly or philosophically. He grounds his claim in the scriptural history of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, explicitly citing Genesis 15:6: “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness” . The authority of this doctrine rests not in Clement’s office, nor in Rome’s prestige, but in the written text itself. Clement understands himself as transmitting what Scripture already teaches, not as defining a doctrine that Scripture must later be interpreted to accommodate.

This has direct implications for later doctrinal developments such as infused righteousness and merit-based increase of justification. Clement nowhere suggests that Scripture contains implicit metaphysical categories that require later ecclesial clarification. Nor does he hint that doctrines essential to salvation may exist in an unwritten form, awaiting formal articulation centuries later. On the contrary, his confidence rests in the clarity, sufficiency, and finality of the scriptural witness.

The Nicene fathers operate with a sharply defined distinction between what is received and what is regulated. This distinction is foundational to their entire conciliar logic. The canon of faith is treated as something already given, fixed, and authoritative, whereas disciplinary canons exist only to preserve order and guard that faith. The excursus on the word canon is therefore not a peripheral note but a hermeneutical key. When it states that canon “represents the element of definiteness in Christianity and in the order of the Christian Church,” it is defining canon not as a creative principle but as a boundary principle. A canon does not generate new content; it demarcates what has already been handed down.

This is decisive for the question of doctrinal development. The Nicene fathers do not conceive of the Church as possessing an ongoing authority to introduce new dogmatic categories concerning salvation. The very concept of canon presupposes closure at the level of doctrinal substance. The Church may clarify, defend, and regulate, but it may not add.

This understanding directly aligns with Clement’s posture toward Scripture. Clement treats the Scriptures as the “true utterances of the Holy Spirit” and insists that nothing false or defective is written in them. He does not appeal to an evolving doctrinal consciousness of the Church, nor does he suggest that later generations may articulate salvation in ways that materially exceed or transform the scriptural witness. His repeated injunction to “look carefully into the Scriptures” presupposes that Scripture already contains what must be known for faith and obedience. Clement’s ecclesiology presumes a Church under the canon, not a Church above it.

When the Nicene fathers speak of guarding the faith, they are guarding something already possessed. This is why the councils distinguish so carefully between doctrinal confession and disciplinary regulation. Canons governing bishops, penitential practice, liturgical order, or jurisdiction are corrective responses to historical circumstances. They do not redefine the content of salvation. The creed, by contrast, fixes the faith itself. The Nicene settlement does not invite further metaphysical elaborations of justification, grace, or merit. Its silence on such matters is not an oversight; it reflects the conviction that the faith once delivered is sufficient and complete.

This makes later doctrinal constructions such as infused righteousness and merit-based increase of justification deeply problematic at the level of conciliar logic, not merely at the level of biblical exegesis. These doctrines are not disciplinary clarifications. They are not regulatory canons. They are substantive redefinitions of how salvation works internally. As such, they do not fit within the Nicene understanding of canon at all.

Once canon is understood as a received rule rather than a mechanism for innovation, the burden of proof shifts decisively. The question is no longer whether later doctrines can be harmonized with Scripture through sophisticated interpretation, but whether the Church ever possessed the authority to introduce them in the first place. Clement’s answer is no. The Nicene fathers’ answer is no.

Canon exists precisely to prevent that move.

This brings us back to Pascal’s insight with greater force. What he perceived in Jesuit casuistry was not simply moral laxity but a deeper methodological problem: the invention of technical language to preserve systems that could no longer rest transparently on Scripture or the received rule of faith. Once a doctrine cannot be stated in the language of Scripture or confessed in the language of the creed, it must be protected by conceptual scaffolding. That scaffolding then becomes self-perpetuating. “Infused righteousness” is a paradigmatic example. It is not a term arising from the canon; it is a term constructed to stabilize a post-canonical theological architecture.

Therefore, when later councils introduce doctrines that materially alter the structure of justification, they are not merely developing doctrine; they are transgressing the very logic of canon as understood by the early Church. The issue is not continuity of language but continuity of authority. Clement stands under Scripture. Nicaea guards Scripture’s rule. Trent, by contrast, assumes the authority to go beyond both.

ecf01.pdf

Download PDF • 1.95MB