Even Taylor Marshall has his uses. For example, posting this:

Man’s righteousness, effected in justification, is regarded by Augustin as inherent rather than imputed, to use the vocabulary of the sixteenth century. A concept of ‘imputed righteousness’, in the later Protestant sense of the term, would be quite redundant within Augustin’s doctrine of justification, in that man is made righteous in justification. The righteousness which man thus receives, although originating from God, is nevertheless located within man, and can be said to be his, part of his being and intrinsic to his person. An element which underlies this understanding of the nature of justifying righteousness is the Greek concept of deification, which makes it appearance in the later Augustinian soteriology.

So wrote, Alister McGrath in his Iustitia Dei – A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification. Of course, for someone like Taylor (“like” because he probably has his own nuances I might be missing) this is pretty much proof that the Protestant doctrine of justification can’t be true. Augustine read the Bible. He knew what Paul wrote. He and others did the exegesis. How could Luther come up with something entirely novel and expect anyone to listen to him?

So what are the Protestant (or alleged Protestant) replies to this?

ONE: Not Done Cooking; Timer went off in the early 1500s (or the mid-1640s or…)

Justification was being tasted while still half-baked in Augustine’s day. The Biblical ingredients weren’t ready to come out of the oven of Church History until Luther heard the time go off. Now that we have everything perfectly baked, the unclear Scriptural ingredients are not really necessary. We have our perfect dish. We don’t touch it. Just keep it under a heat lamp forever after. Just like those who mocked Luther for inventing a new doctrine, we can mock anyone who even proposes investigating what the Bible says about it. It was wrong then when people were appealing to 1500 years of church history and the ancient Church, but it is just fine now when people are only appealing to 500 years of history since then.

TWO: You’re Not Understanding the Recipe because it actually cooks the same dish that Luther made; Augustine Actually Affirmed Orthodox Doctrine

I think James Buchanan might try to do this. The lie is exposed when you compare the gyrations people are willing to go through to prove Augustine orthodox (or worse, “saved”) to the efforts they will produce in the other direction to condemn someone like Norman Shepherd or Daniel Fuller or N. T. Wright. If their trace ingredients are poison, then Augustine was serving Napalm on a plate.

THREE: The customers have actually been ordering off-menu; Luther didn’t make anything new but publicized the secret family recipe

Hidden Christians on the margins believed the true Gospel while the main Church, the whore of Babylon, opposed it.  This is pure invention from beginning to end as is seen by the skanky sects which are proposed as the rag-tag band of true believers surviving through history (“skanky” as in the fact that the Brit word “buggery” comes from the Bogomils).

If you read Turrettin, to name one Protestant source, you find someone who doesn’t need these explanations.  For Turrettin, the dish is served up with the ingredients of the Apostle’s creed.  The Reformation confessional distinctives regarding forensic justification are simply some cookbook notations set out to help protect against some contamination that has begun causing problems in the kitchen.

And what about the Apostle Paul?  He is able to write a circular letter to the churches that sets out the work of Christ and the salvation of sinners without once speaking of justification.  He could set out his Gospel without even mentioning the word.