distinction between form and matter. The difference between the formal and the material has to do with the difference between the essential and the existential, the conceptual and the real, the cognitive and the empirical. For the Reformers, believers are formally just in the sense that God considers, counts, or reckons them just when in themselves they are not existentially, really, or empirically just. This does not mean that justification is a “mere formality,” a legal fiction. When God formally