Not much to say about the last part. Garcia provides some pretty solid formulations. But the idea that these exclude someone like Rich Lusk is simply power play (one, I’m not convinced Garcia really wants to make). It has no basis in anything substantial.
Garcia want to safe guard that the righteous verdict we have in Christ is properly Christ’s and not ours. The only problem with this is that the claim that there is danger of confusion on this issue is simply made up. There is no danger. Wright doesn’t do it. Hays, whatever problems he may have, doesn’t do it. None of these poeple are Osiander. Lusk is quite the opposite. In fact, he is quite the Calvinist.
On the top of page 248, Garcia has a nice statement on how the order of union in salvation is not the same as the union of the natures in the incarnation. I’m glad he sees this, but it undermines his paper, in my opinion.
Instead of saying anything more, I will simply close with a really nice piece by Rich Lusk:
This justification requires no transfer or imputation of anything. It does not force us to reify “righteousness” into something that can be shuffled around in heavenly accounting books. Rather, because I am in the Righteous One and the Vindicated One, I am righteous and vindicated. My in-Christ-ness makes imputation redundant. I do not need the moral content of his life of righteousness transferred to me; what I need is a share in the forensic verdict passed over him at the resurrection. Union with Christ is therefore the key.
Note well, this does not downplay the significance of the active obedience. Without it, Jesus’ body would still be in the tomb. But to be precise, I am not justified by a legal transfer of his “obedience points” to my account. I am justified because the status he has as The Sinless One, and now as The Crucified and Vindicated One, has been bestowed upon me as well.
Allow me to illustrate. Suppose a woman is in deep, deep debt and has no means at her disposal to pay it off. Along comes an ultra wealthy prince charming. Out of grace and love, he decides to marry her. He covers her debt. But then he has a choice to make about how he will care for his bride. After canceling out her debt, will he fill up her account with his money? That is to say, will he transfer or impute his own funds into an account that bears her name? Or will he simply make his own account a joint account so it belongs to both of them?
In the former scenario, there is an imputation, a transfer. In the second scenario, the same final result is attained, but there is no imputation, strictly speaking. Rather, there is a real union, a marriage.
I would suggest the first picture (the imputation picture) is not necessarily wrong, though it could leave adherents exposed to the infamous “legal fiction” charge since the man could transfer money into the woman’s account without ever marrying her or even caring for her. It could become, as Wright has said, “a cold piece of business.”
The second picture (the union with Christ picture) seems more consistent with Paul’s language, and for that matter, with many of Calvin’s statements. It does not necessarily employ the “mechanism” of imputation to accomplish justification, but gets the same result. Just as one can get to four by adding three plus one or two plus two, or just as one can get home by traveling Route A or by Route B, so there may be more than one way to conceive of the doctrine of justification in a manner that preserves its fully gracious and forensic character.
For Calvin, the central motif of Pauline theology is not “imputation,” but union with Christ….
In my opinion, this is all the answer that needs to be made.
I’ve been reading along with you, Mark. The first thing I couldn’t get over is the fact that the entire paper is relentlessly passive voice. Wow, it needed some editing; I keep falling asleep reading it. Secondly, it is full of overly complex sentences and unclear pronouns. Anyway, it is the college teacher in me, I think, because the paper reads like a lot of the papers that I have to mark up with a red pen…. I’ll wait to finish reading it before talking about the content…
Mark: why don’t you write up your critique and send it to the WTJ?
Oh, I forgot to say, that if they publish it, they will pay you mountains of money and millions of people will read it around the world.
Mark, did you fail to recognize that it was this very quotation of Lusk that Garcia was challenging? Furthermore, union with Christ making imputation redundant is *precisely* the position that Garcia is challenging. The RCC believes in union with Christ. How does one distinguish between the two? It is the imputation/infusion debate. Lusk is way off here.
I still say that anyone who contrasts theosis against Chalcedon should be sent back to the drawing board. I suppose this indicts some of my heros in the faith as well though.
I never said that Lusk was teaching infusion, Mark. I was saying that without imputation, there is no discernible difference between Lusk’s position and the RCC. Union with Christ is the farthest thing from making imputation redundant. Garcia’s point is that union with Christ keeps imputation from being a legal fiction, or a cold lifeless thing. He is putting imputation in the context of union with Christ, not something you seem to have acknowledged very much.
The accusation that Lusk or anyone else believes in infusion of righteousness is both false and baseless.
Garcia’s challenge is that it leads to confusion of persons. I’m saying Lusk’s marriage analogy works just fine and no one gets confused thinking husband and wife are the same person. Garcia’s challenge is without force.
Lane, you said Lusk was on the wrong side of the imputation/infusion debate.
What Garcia did in expounding Calvin was just fine. But his criticisms are baseless.
Mark, this is what I actually said: “How does one distinguish between the two? It is the imputation/infusion debate. Lusk is way off here.”
To say that Lusk is off and to say that he believes in infusion in justification are two different things. His position is that imputation is redundant because of union with Christ. That is off. He is on the wrong side of the debate. There are several wrong sides of the debate, just as there are many places to go wrong when it comes to justification.
I can see why it might have looked that way.
So then, what I mean is that Lusk, in taking away imputation (saying it is redundant, that is) has taken away what is distinctive from the Reformed position vis-a-vis Rome wrt justification. Rome believed in union with Christ. This is the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church, par 790 (pg. 227): “Believers who respond to God’s word and become members of Christ’s Body, become intimately united with him: ‘In that body the life of Christ is communicated to those who believe, and who, through the sacraments, are united in a hidden and real way to Christ in his Passion and glorification.’ (quote is from Lumen Gentium 7) This is especially true of Baptism, which unites us to Christ’s death and Resurrection, and the Eucharist, by which ‘really sharing in the body of the Lord,…we are taken up into communion with him and with one another’ (quote from Lumen Gentium 7).”
The question that imputation deals with is this: “How does the righteousness of Jesus become mine?” The answer cannot simply be union with Christ, since that does not differentiate us from Rome. Rome would say that the righteousness of Christ comes by way of union with Him and receiving the infusion of Christ’s righteousness. See CCC pars. 2019-2023. The Reformation says that the righteousness of Jesus Christ comes to us by way of imputation, not by infusion. This was the *entire* debate with regard to justification in the Reformation.
Has Lusk dealt with the Rome question of imputation? That is, has he anywhere detailed why it is that saying imputation is redundant does not also take away the barrier to Rome? How does he differentiate his view from Rome? One would presume he would want to do so.
OK, I gladly concede your claim; it just looked to me like there were only two options in your original comment. Thankis for sticking with me until I understood you better.
I think that’s not the question – “how does the righteousness of Jesus become mine” – that’s not what imputation answers. Imputation answers the question “How does the verdict ‘righteous’ become mine.” Thus, the dilemma here is false – it isn’t imputation vs. infusion because the two concepts mark out different things altogether. By union, I share in Christ’s verdict. Thus I get what imputation (in the Reformed sense) gives me via union. Plus, I’ve just gotta say this, it isn’t a good argument to say “If you say X and Rome says X, then you must be wrong.” But again, that doesn’t even come into this one because the reformed world is interested in the verdict.