‘The article of justification lost its commanding place in Lutheran theology because it gave way to a preoccupation with the subjective conditions required to motivate God’s decision to justify sinners. When regeneration is placed logically and causally prior to justification, the focus of interest shifts from God’s unmotivated decision to justify the ungodly to the restoration of their human capacity to apply themselves to grace, to repent and believe, and thereupon to be justified. The priority of regeneration over justification removes the article of justification by faith alone from the center to a marginal role in the doctrine of salvation.’ Carl E. Braaten, Justification: The Article by Which the Church Stands or Falls (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 22.