The significance of this for justification lies in the fact that, prior to the advent of the via moderna, the assumption was that God’s declaration that someone was righteous needed to be based upon some intrinsic righteousness in the particular individual. Justification was, in other words, a divine response to prior divine activity in infusing righteousness. With the via moderna the connection between the two was dramatically weakened: reality became what God declared it to be. Thus, the necessity