why justification is not nominal

God's word, I say, effects what it announces. This is its characteristic all through Scripture. He "calleth those things which be not, as though they are," and they are forthwith. Thus in the beginning He said, "Let there be light, and there was light." Word and deed went together in creation; and so again "in the regeneration," "The Lord gave the word, great was the company of the preachers." So again in His miracles, He called Lazarus from the grave, and the dead arose; He said, "Be thou cleansed," and the leprosy departed; He rebuked the wind and the waves, and they were still; He commanded the evil spirits, and they fled away; He said to St. Peter and St. Andrew, St. John, St. James, and St. Matthew, "Follow Me," and they arose, for "His word was with power;" and so again in the Sacraments His word is the consecrating principle. As He "blessed" the loaves and fishes, and they multiplied, so He "blessed and brake," and the bread became His Body. Further, His voice is the instrument of destruction as well as of creation. As He "upholds all things by the word of His power," so "at the Voice of the Archangel, and at the trump of God," the visible world will dissolve; and as His "Voice" formerly "shook the earth," so once more "the Lord shall roar out of Zion, and utter His Voice from Jerusalem, and the heavens and the earth shall shake." [Joel iii. 16.] (Newman Lectures on Justification "Primary Sense of the Term Justification," 9, 81-82)