the phrase‘God’s truthfulness’in Romans 3:7. The righteousness of
God is not commended through my wicked acts, but rather because
I acknowledge (agnosco) having done them and cease to act in that
way. In this manner, I embrace the righteousness of God.^162 When
God justifies me, Luther goes on to say, God alone is justified in the
sense that he is acknowledged to be righteous (iustus esse agnoscitur).
In this sense justification concerns both God and humankind. While
Luther is here particularly interested in the‘justification of God’, the
verses Romans 3:4 and Psalm 51:4 (50:6) define this for all Christian
authors.
As truth and lies belong to the vocabulary of Romans 3:4–7, they
offer a platform from which Luther can generalize his view of sub-
jective acknowledgement:
We must speak the same way about truthfulness, for the truthfulness of
God is not glorified because I am a liar but because I recognize (agnosco)
that I am a liar and cease being one by embracing the truth which comes
from God, so that through it and not through my own (non per meam)
truthfulness I may be made truthful...for God alone has verified me or
made me truthful (verificavit me sive veracem fecit), because even my
truthfulness (veritas mea) is a lie before Him.^163This quote shows how subjective acknowledgement serves the consti-
tution of a heteronomous religious identity. Luther does not emphasize
subjective appropriation in order to make it a basis of one’sown
religion. Quite the contrary, the appropriative acknowledgement shifts
the focus from one’s own capacities to the constitutive powers that lie
beyond one’s own personality. This dynamic shapes the understanding
of justification, but it appears in a generalized fashion in speaking about
truthfulness. In the event of appropriative recognition, the person
renounces his or her own powers, handing them over to a lord who
then performs the act of‘verifying’the person in a new manner.
A little later, Luther criticizes other people who‘establish their own
truthfulness’ (suam statuunt veritatem).^164 He considers that the
basic truthful recognition is similar to the behaviour of a patient
who affirms that he is in need of a doctor.^165 A doctor cannot perform
the‘commendation of his art’(commendatio suae artis) unless the
patient affirms this need. Some echoes of the mutual contract of
(^162) WA 56, 216, 12–15. (^163) WA 56, 215, 18–23.
(^164) WA 56, 217, 4. (^165) WA 56, 217, 8–15.
The Latin Traditions 91