Matthew Thomas: Righteous-ed by faith: Justification as factitive in the pre-Augustinian tradition

It is a common notion that the patristic understanding of justification as factitive — being “made righteous” — originates with Augustine’s Latin misreading of the underlying Greek verb. This paper examines the conception of justification in Greek and Latin patristic sources prior to Augustine, and shows that this notion appears to be ill-founded, with the factitive understanding being widely found in earlier centuries. Having demonstrated the widespread presence of factitive justification, this paper concludes with brief reflections on how such an understanding relates to forensic conceptions of justification in patristic theology.