Grading Finals: Justification by Works?

You may be wondering what finals and justification have to do with each other, and why I’m writing about either of those things at this point in the academic and church years. Well, I teach for 12 months out of the year, and I have 2 final exams to administer next week. Plus (as you will see next week or the week after), Advent is eventually coming, so August is the perfect time to prepare for that! Predictably, I will zoom out from the immediate phenomenon of final exams to explore the larger topic of justification, since the two phenomena have some parallels.

Final Exams: My Context and COVID

As a relatively recent student, I’ve taken my share of final exams, primarily pre-COVID. So, I’ve used paper, Scantron forms, and online routes for taking these exams. While I never got exceedingly stressed about any particular final, I can safely say that writing and grading and revising exams on the teacher end is more of a mental hurdle, especially in early career.

Personal Context

For a number of years, I've been interested in study strategies and have used many of them myself. The more I made sure to prepare daily, actively, and incrementally (especially by testing myself more than just re-reading notes), the more free time I would have during finals week each semester. In the PhD program, the bulk of which I completed pre-COVID, there weren't exams but rather projects and presentations. Grades were never an issue except for one or two classes I didn't take to; I preferred letter grades to pass/fail courses, for whatever reason.

Societal Context

In a larger context, one ongoing discussion that was highlighted during COVID is the best system of evaluating learners' work. A blog post from March 2020 is characteristic of this discussion viewing the assignment of letter (percentage) grades as fundamentally unjust, advocating a pass/no pass system for as many college-level courses as possible. Here's the run-down:

• Assumptions guiding the article: (1) grades are recent and not objective/precise; (2) grades hinder learning without helping decision-making; (3) grades highlight context > skill; (4) grades dehumanize both parties
• A pass/no pass system would take out the widening uncertainty bars that surround a student's actual ability versus a teacher's assessment of that ability, trust one's students to make the "right" amount of effort for them and their priorities (assuming that people are basically good/well-intentioned), and potentially reduce the pressure to cheat (have open-book higher-level assignments)
• The main problems with a pass/no pass system would be impact on sports eligibility and graduate school application, both of which require letter grades on one's transcript

Assorted Views on Justification

Now let's hop over onto a theological track. I promise that the discrepant ideas do connect! These are roughly in historical order.

Roman Catholicism

The predominant Roman Catholic view (Catholic Encyclopedia) hearkens back to the Council of Trent (1547). Thought process in bullet points: original sin has weakened free will, but mankind still can't free self from sin's bondage. To effectively receive the grace of Christ, one must be regenerated (i.e., justified--note that this is a key equivocation). So, justification = change of soul "identity" from original sin to sonship. Only possible through Baptism. Adults baptized must prepare morally. Detailed process described. Dogma that grace-that-sanctifies can't coexist in the same soul as original-and-mortal sin.

Reformed (Not Lutheran)

Since the Reformation took place over a number of years, with several key players including Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, and John Calvin, different branches of doctrinal variation came about. Therefore, I differentiate Reformed/Protestant (which currently takes after Calvin) from Lutheran. Indeed, a source from Reformed.org espouses a specifically Puritan perspective. Justification, in this view, is "the establishment of a sinner in a righteous standing before God." It contains elements of pardon (for all sin) and imputed righteousness (vicarious satisfaction theory of atonement). This is different from Roman Catholicism in saying that justification isn't a process but an act, permanent, irreversible, and non-repeatable, received by faith.

Lutheran/Anglican

Justification by faith has been cited as the central doctrine of Christianity from a Lutheran perspective (which many Anglicans also take). Per a good summary in Encyclopedia Britannica, this means that (1) humans don't participate actively in justification, and (2) righteousness is imputed to the individual in a legal sense.

Baptist/Evangelical

For greater context, please note that there are many varieties of Baptist as well as many varieties of Evangelical churches and smaller denominations. From what I looked at as one potentially representative view, justification is defined as God fully acquitting sinners. This seems to lean toward penal substitution theory of atonement, which has its own theological issues.

N. T. Wright ("Fresh" Anglican)

I've written a number of posts about N. T. Wright, former bishop of Durham and current author of over 80 scholarly and popular-level books about the New Testament. (I learned the other day that he has made an entire translation of the New Testament, which is pretty neat.) Currently, I just finished The Day the Revolution Began (one review here) and will reference this 25-page paper of his from 2016 for this portion of the post.

What did Paul mean by "justification"? Wright looks at Dead Sea Scrolls for fresh insight., fragment 4QMMT particularly. Here, the law-court analogy of a ruling for any party is used (which does not correspond to how the NT word for it is typically translated). Another part of the fragment indicates that "doing right" will "justify" Jews in the sight of YHWH (!).

Second-Temple Judaism background (based on several scholarly sources cited about this fragment): Paul was probably indifferent about the regular Jewish calendar (feasts). The "works of the law" he opposed were just the circumcision of Gentile converts and ongoing Jew-Gentile segregation in the Christian church. He's not opposed to works at all!

Justification's context: eschatological, covenantal perspective--following the law ("works of Torah") marks one as within the covenant now to anticipate the end of days. Premise 4 succinctly states this "hinge": "Paul's doctrine, like that of MMT, was not about 'getting in' but about community definition." The rest of the paper expounds on evidence for this argument.

How do Teaching/Grading and Justification Relate?

If you've stayed with me this long, thank you! I see the grading and justification pieces connecting in two points: (1) current debates about the role of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in Christian education and academic integrity more broadly, and (2) how this is lived out each day as a Christian professor at a Christian university.

DEI/DIE: A Can of Worms?

Academic integrity has long been an expectation for students, teachers, and scholars alike. The research on the concept has been around since at least the 1920s, though it took off around 1992 when the International Center for Academic Integrity was founded. Currently, some researchers think that a lack of academic integrity is more a developmental issue than a misconduct issue (topic for another post?). Regardless of the underlying mechanisms, the ICAI defines integrity as "a commitment, even in the face of adversity, to six fundamental values: honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage. From these values flow principles of behavior that enable academic communities to translate ideals into action."

How does that relate to DEI (abbreviated DIE by some parties whose stance on any of the component concepts is pretty clearly conveyed by the different arrangement of letters)? Going back to original definitions again, the history of the DEI movement began particularly during the civil rights movement in the 1960s, where a higher value was placed on people who were diverse in race or ethnicity within the United States, thus working toward fuller equity (equality of opportunity . . . or outcome--two very different concepts) and inclusion of diverse individuals in all realms of society.

The definitions link above does have current (2020s), formalized definitions that envision a much broader base of groups to which DEI concepts are considered relevant, especially splitting the ideas of gender, sex, and sexual orientation. It's worth your while to go over all of the operational definitions and note any discrepancies between them (especially terms referencing "identity").

• "Diversity: Socially, it refers to the wide range of identities. A broad view includes race, ethnicity, gender, age, national origin, religion, disability, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, education, marital status, language, veteran status, physical appearance, etc. It also involves different ideas, perspectives, and values"
• "Equity: The fair treatment, access, opportunity [emphasis mine], and advancement for all people, while at the same time striving to identify and eliminate barriers that have prevented the full participation of some groups. The principle of equity acknowledges that there are historically underserved and underrepresented populations and that fairness regarding these unbalanced conditions is needed to assist in the provision of adequate opportunities to all groups."
• "Inclusion: Providing equal opportunity [emphasis mine] to all people to fully engage themselves in creating an environment and a cultural attitude whereby everyone and every group feels accepted, has value, and is supported by a foundation based on trust and mutual respect."

Given the definitions above, I do not see a conflict between academic integrity (as defined by ICAI) and valuing equal opportunity for diverse groups in an academic setting.

Christian Professor, Christian University

A more specific way in which the conjunction of grading and justification hits home for me is in one of my vocations as a professor. In addition to grading justly and fairly (based on the quality of the work and depth of knowledge/understanding, which typically reflect the quality and amount of effort expended by the student), I am also understanding of the need to incorporate grace. In an academic context, "grace" connotes thoughtful lenience, patience, and recognition that students (like me) are frail humans.

Given that working definition of grace in grading, that means that I have the discretion to extend individual deadlines for extenuating circumstances, provide remedial opportunities, and otherwise allow students to learn at their own pace as much as possible within a very time-structured program in which I teach. Much more broadly, I am working through navigating a specific Christian identity as it relates to meeting accreditation standards for professional programs. Within the university as a whole, this means inter-departmental tension, plus a less-rigid view of Christian (denomination-specific) identity in departments with more denominational diversity among faculty and students.

Within similar universities to mine, some groups tend to claim that any use of the terms or concepts of DEI is automatically Marxist. This, I believe, is philosophically dishonest or at the very least incomplete. While I do affirm the fact of Marxist roots being at the core of most popular manifestations of DEI as a whole (especially if the term "equity" is sneakily substituted for "equality"), I think the jump in 100% of cases is fallacious (specifically, genetic fallacy and parallelomania).