Quote of the day: What is the meaning of the word imputation? Let me explain how I think of “imputation” . Not that I care about that word. Use count, credit, reckon, declare, as you like, but the meaning comes down to two ideas. One, a simple analytic (forensic) declaration. We count God as just because God is just. God counts what Phinehas did as righteous because it was righteous. So all “imputing” has this “declaring what it is” idea to it. But two, in some cases, there is the idea of God ‘s sharing what belongs to one person or persons with another person or persons. Notice, I say, in some cases. In all cases, there is forensic declaring. But in some cases, God creates (appoints, constitutes) a legal solidarity between two persons, so that what one person has also gets used to arrive at a declaring about the second person. So it’s not only judge and defendant, but a third party. In the case of Christ’s righteousness, the righteousness is the wages due to Christ for his work. The righteousness of Christ is God’s analytic declaration about what was accomplished in Christ’s death and resurrection. I don’t care if you call this metaphorically Christ’s treasury of wages. The metaphor doesn’t bother me. Salvation is by work, not our works, but by Christ’s work. I don’t care if you accuse this of being “contract talk” and “legalism” (as the Barthians like the Torrances do). But it’s not only two parties, but a third party. God imputes sin to all humans when they are born (Christ the God-man excepted). God. Humans. The third party is Adam. And there are not only two parties (God and the elect) but Christ the third party, when His righteousness is imputed to the elect. Romans 4:6 just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: Romans 4:6 does not say the righteousness of Christ, does it? And maybe “to whom counts righteousness” only means “ counts righteous” and maybe that only means “justifies”, so there is no legal sharing with a third party. Others, along with Vickers, have effectively debated against these two objections, and I have nothing to add. If you are “new perspective” enough to say that Christ’s death and resurrection have nothing to do with the counting in Romans 4, you can simply deny the third party. But I want to stay focused on my objection to the very common idea repeated by Vickers that God DOES count faith in the third party as the righteousness. It leaves us with an “as though” version of imputation. As I suggested before, imputation is always, in every case, analytic declaration, God judging according to truth. Even in the cases in which there is a third party, and a legal sharing with the third party, the relationship is not “as if”. For example, between Christ and the Trinity, in the imputation of the sins of the elect to Christ, the imputation does not cause an internal change in Christ (God forbid), but Christ really (legally, not fictionally) became guilty (under the law) until Christ died once and thus is no more under the law (Romans 6). And if you think this is ‘contract talk” and “legalism” and a bad metaphor over-used, I simply don’t care. I do wish that more of the debate about “imputed righteousness” would focus on “imputed guilt”, both from Adam to humans, and from elect humans to Christ. God is the imputer, and sometimes there is merely forensic analytic declaration: you are guilty, you are righteous. But in some cases, there is a third party, and legal sharing. (You can say “transfer”, but in the case of Adam, Adam is still guilty. And in the case of Christ, Christ Himself is still righteous and His righteousness (shared) still belongs to Him based on His work. And in the even more complicated case of the “transfer” of sins from the elect to Christ, Christ no longer has that guilt either, because by His satisfaction, the guilt of the elect is neither His nor belongs to the elect anymore.)
Posted on: Tue, 23 Jul 2013 14:14:30 +0000
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