'The Doers of the Law Will Be Justified': The Exegetical Origins of Martin Bucer's Triplex Iustificatio

This essay seeks to sketch the profile of Martin Bucer's viewson the doctrine of justification as developed in his 1536 commentaryon Romans, focusing in particular on his idiosyncratic languageof ‘threefold justification’ in his comments onRom. 2:13. This text is taken as a vantage point from whichto survey the history of interpretation of the Pauline conceptof justification within the Augustinian tradition, giving extendedconsideration to exegesis by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Bucer'sinitial discussion of the Pauline usage of o in the praefatato his commentary is examined next, and it is concluded thathis understanding of justification falls more or less withinthe trajectory charted by previous medieval interpreters. Turningthen to Bucer's comments on Rom. 2:13, it is argued that thenotion of ‘threefold justification’ arises as anattempt to integrate the early evangelical appropriation ofthe Scotist language of ‘divine acceptation’ withina traditional Augustinian account of justification as both eventand process. The resulting formula collapses predestinationinto justification, making the latter the unifying concept inBucer's soteriology. It is hoped that this essay will contributeto deepening our understanding of an oft-neglected reformerwhile at the same time broadening our understanding of earlyevangelical teaching on a central doctrinal locus.