Paul Helm doesn't like a similarity in Richard Baxter and Tom Wright's theology of justification. He says that both believe "Justification is not a change of status, but of persons.". This may or may not be true, but consider Kolb and Arand on Martin Luther's theology of Justification:
Those who see this form of forensic justification as merely a legal fiction do not share Luther’s understanding of the power of the Word of God. The reformer knew that from the beginning of the world, God determined reality by speaking. Therefore, he was certain that God’s word of forgiveness created a new reality in the life of the sinner.
(I heard something similar in audio from them, but this is from their book, HT Shephard's Scrapbook)
So for Luther the key thing is not whether justification is a declaration or regeneration. It is both. The question is which comes first in priority.
There is a book out there by Lowell Green that argues that Melancthon "helped Luther discover the Gospel", by which he means forensic justification (or so I understand). In the Apology to the Augsburg Confession Melancthon states that:
by faith alone we obtain the remission of sins for Christ's sake, and that by faith alone we are justified, i.e., of unrighteous men made righteous, or regenerated.
Some connections could be drawn here with speech-act theory. Unsurprisingly though Anthony Thiselton got there first. He has an article called 'Justification by grace as legal fiction? : "language-games and 'seeing as' : a fresh approach to justification by faith in Paul and James"' (in Thiselton on Hermeneutics). I'll have to see if I can get hold of it.
