Hoffmann applies these features to the Roman Catholic–Protestant
controversies on the theology of justification. As a Roman Catholic
theologian, she wants to represent the Catholic position with the help
of the gift of recognition. From this perspective, she discusses the
strictly unilateral Protestant position defended by Eberhard Jüngel
critically. The Protestant doctrine aims at showing that the individual
cannot give anything to God, criticizing the Catholic position for
interpreting the human response as achievement.^76 For Hoffmann,
however, such strict unilateralism remains within the narrow con-
fines of economic thinking. If Jüngel assumes that everything is either
passivity or achievement, then his thinking proceeds from the‘eco-
nomic perspective’.^77
Hoffmann wants to reinterpret the Catholic doctrine of justifica-
tion in terms of a gift of recognition. When God recognizes human
beings, a certain reciprocity can be assumed. This reciprocity does not
express any moral or economic achievement, but does manifest the
‘receptive capacity’of people as people. This‘symbolic mediation’is
not covert Pelagianism, but affirms the relationship as an interper-
sonal reality.^78
The Protestant concept of forensic justification proceeds from the
view that God cannot simply accept sinners; the forensic act must
therefore contain some kind of imputation or reckoning by which the
sinner is considered as righteous. This is important for Jüngel.^79 In
order to cope with the forensic dimension of justification, Hoffmann
employs Thomas Bedorf’s idea of recognition as a three-place con-
cept in which the act of‘recognizing as’plays the role of the gift that is
transferred from the giver to the recipient. We saw above that, for
Bedorf, this act always contains a‘misrecognition’, as the identity of
recipient is changed when the gift of recognition is transferred.
Hoffmann gives Bedorf’s idea a new twist when she considers that
God’s act of forensic reckoning or‘considering as’is an act of‘creative
misrecognition’. In the gift of recognition, God considers the sinner
as righteous. This act of reckoning does not follow the logic of
economy or morals, but exemplifies the logic of creation since God
sees in the sinner something‘more’than the sinner actually is. Thus,
God performs a misrecognition in recognizing the sinner as right-
eous. Because of thisfirst gift andfirst recognition, the individual can
(^76) Hoffmann 2013, 296–7. (^77) Hoffmann 2013, 301.
(^78) Hoffmann 2013, 315, 336–7. (^79) Hoffmann 2013, 291.
Introduction 23