Claiming that imputation is based on legal union may sound rhetorically convincing, but it logically boils down to saying that imputation is based on a relationship in which it is right and appropriate that the status of one person, whether righteous or sinful, is imputed to another. “And what is the nature of that union?” Well, it is a union that involves imputation!
The entire statement is incredibly narrow and circular.
Keep in mind that imputation is supposed to actually explain something–how a holy God can justly grant pardon to sinners and accept them as righteous in his sight. Even people who think they are simply expounding what the Bible says, usually spend a great deal of time setting up a theodicy-dillemma: If God is altogether perfect then how can he overlook sin? The whole point is to appeal to justice to show that God must not forgive arbitrarily.
Imputation is supposed to answer this dilemma. But claiming that God simply counts one person’s obedience, suffering, and death as the fulfillment of the his righteous requirements of a multitude of sinners, is just as arbitrary and unjust. If God can just pretend that we are righteous with Christ’s righteousness (if imputation is just God doing math in his head) then how is that not just as arbitrary and unjust as simply forgiving them in the first place, without demanding anything from Jesus or anyone else to provide a “basis” for it? Imputaton, rather than explaining the basis, becomes a way of saying no basis is necessary.
Of course, if this was what the Bible presented to us, we would be required to accept it. We would be required to be satisfied with this answer and simply admit that it does not appear adequate to many people, including those who try to justify the doctrine as a vindication of how God can justly forgive sinners.
But in fact, the Reformation never taught this version of imputation. Both in the case of Adam and in the case of Christ, imputation was grounded in union. This eventually got obscured in some nominalistic strains of the Reformed Tradition so that the traditional view had to be defended in the nineteenth century.
Whether or not this settles all arguments with possible accusations against God’s justice is impossible to say. What I do know is that it is what the Bible teaches, as is witnessed by the Reformed heritage, and thus it is the final word God has given in his own defense of his just, gracious, and non-arbitrary character. If He is satisfied with it than Christians should be satisfied with it as well.
We are conceived as sinners because we all come from Adam and are born in Adam by an organic unity. We receive the imputed righteousness of Christ by faith because we receive Christ by faith and, being clothed in Christ, are clothed in his righteousness.
All nominalistic versions if imputation whereby it becomes a mental operation in God’s mind will lead to hypercalvinism and (since we tend to image the god we worship) unconfessional definitions of “faith” which make it nothing more than a convert doing math in his head.
The Reformed Faith is richer than this, more Biblical than this; and if that were not so, then it would be a minor deviancy in Christian history rather than a true apostolic witness in the power of the Holy Spirit.
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Rev. Horne,
Excellent points.
And I love that paper you wrote on the Nevin/Hodge debate on this issue. I actually found it to be one of the most helpful resources in wrapping my mind around the issues involved in the Nevin/Hodge throwdown, and it was also instrumental in stirring up my desire to write my MA thesis on the debates between the two men.
Well I’ve been arguing something like that, based on my reading of Wright and understanding Messiahship. Guys like Matthew Henry emphasize that Adam and Christ were “public persons” and thus their actions adhere to their representatives.
Its not a “mere” legal union, and needs to be described as more than just arbitrary legal connection via contract. For instance, Jesus had to have a real incarnation to be a properly qualified messiah. God couldn’t pick a very nice angel as our legal representative.
I am wondering if immediate imputation advocates will just suddenly notice that imputation because of messiahship (family membership) is a form of legal union, though not arbitrary.
You need to read Robert L. Reymond’s Lamb of God.
Having read your post a few times now I can see you’re conflating the ground of justification (the righteousness of Christ) with the imputation of that righteousness, and further with a result of justification (union with Christ).
I.e. it’s like you’ve taken several terms involved in the doctrine of justification and used each as if each meant what one or the other terms means, and then you’ve written the whole thing down in a tone of exasperation giving the reader the impression that something big was wrong, when all that is wrong is you are messing around with terms and their meanings.
Alexander: How can the righteousness of Christ become ours for the purpose of justifying us?
Alexander, I’ll try not to sound exasperated because I don’t want to present you with unnecessary obstructions: Your claim that union with Christ is the result of justification is exactly backwards. The Westminster Confession explicitly lays down an ordo salutis that says union with Christ by faith (at the same time giving faith) results in justification, sanctification, and adoption. This is faithful to Calvin and, much more importantly, faithful to the Word of God.
Any other view makes nonsense of justification by faith since faith is not necessary to receive a bare verdict. If a judge convicts you of a crime you don’t need faith to receive it for it to be true of you. Likewise, no one needs faith to receive the imputed (un)righteousness of Adam.
Deny the primacy of union with Christ and you will lose justification by faith altogether. Faith will become a discovery that you are already justified.
pduggie wrote: “Alexander: How can the righteousness of Christ become ours for the purpose of justifying us?”
Faith. Faith as the gift of God and the appropriating nature of faith.
Mark wrote: “Alexander, I’ll try not to sound exasperated because I don’t want to present you with unnecessary obstructions”
Again an FVist with the “Allow me to speak slowly for you, later I’ll draw a picture in crayon”… Fine. FVists are really smart and stuff, ok.
“Your claim that union with Christ is the result of justification is exactly backwards. The Westminster Confession explicitly lays down an ordo salutis that says union with Christ by faith (at the same time giving faith) results in justification, sanctification, and adoption. This is faithful to Calvin and, much more importantly, faithful to the Word of God.”
You havn’t said anything here. Saying union with Christ is a result of justification is the same as saying it’s the result of faith. And any first year student of biblical doctrine knows the ordo salutis is not a concrete display of temporal manifestation in the believer of each grace, in so many words.
“Any other view makes nonsense of justification by faith since faith is not necessary to receive a bare verdict. If a judge convicts you of a crime you don’t need faith to receive it for it to be true of you. Likewise, no one needs faith to receive the imputed (un)righteousness of Adam.”
God bless, Mark, but this analogy is not even something I’d expect to come across in the most amateur of RC apologists.
“Deny the primacy of union with Christ and you will lose justification by faith altogether. Faith will become a discovery that you are already justified.”
All you write is the confusion, or intellectual blindness, of a person who insists on running away from the fact of God’s sovereignty in the act of regenerating souls.
Faith is how we receive the righteousness God imputes, but on what just basis does God impute righteousness from him to us?
Why is Christ a valid object for our faith to be put in him for salvation in the first place?
“Again an FVist with the ‘Allow me to speak slowly for you, later I’ll draw a picture in crayon’… Fine. FVists are really smart and stuff, ok.”
Alexander you accused me of sounding exasperated and it seemed to be an obstruction. The comment has nothing to do with your intelligence. I can sound bad in ways that make it harder to bear what I say.
Since I am advocating the Reformed Faith, it doesn’t surprise me that you never heard what I say from a Roman Catholic source. But I have written for professors in grad school (and one a national denominational contest) and have received positive responses. Having made sense to myself and a cross-section of others, I am not going to accept from you that my straightforward presentation of Reformed soteriology is unclear or confused. I’m not confused. I’m telling you the straight truth. As can be confirmed by any number of Reformed witnesses. We are justified by faith when the Spirit applies Christ to us; we united to Christ by faith in our effectual calling and thereby receive justification, sanctification, and adoption.
Since I never said the priority was temporal I’m not sure why you bring that up.
“Saying union with Christ is a result of justification is the same as saying it’s the result of faith” No it is not. Justification is a declarative and forensic verdict while faith is trusting. They are not the same thing. Furthermore, while faith unites us to Christ, justification is a manifestation of that union (along with sanctification).
“Faith is how we receive the righteousness God imputes, but on what just basis does God impute righteousness from him to us? Why is Christ a valid object for our faith to be put in him for salvation in the first place?”
Read Robert L. Reymond’s Lamb of God.
Speaking of Reymond, This excerpt from p. 739 of his New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith (2nd Ed.) is noteworthy:
“Union with Christ is the fountainhead from which flows the Christian’s every spiritual blessing — repentance and faith, pardon, justification, adoption, sanctification, perseverance, and glorification. Chosen in Christ before the creation of the world, and in the divine mind united with Christ in his death and resurrection, the elect, in response to God’s effectual call, are through God’s gift of faith actually united to Christ. Their union with Christ is in no sense the effect of human causation. “The union which the elect have with Christ is the work of God’s grace, whereby they are spiritually and mystically, yet really and inseparably, joined to Christ as their head and husband” (Larger Catechism, Question 66). By virtue of his actual union with Christ the Husband in his death and resurrection, the Christian, as Christ’s “bride,” is forgiven of his sin and liberated from the law — his previous “husband” — and made capable of doing that which he could never do before, namely, “bear holy fruit to God” (Rom. 7:4-5). To the degree that the Christian “reckons himself dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:11), that is to say, to the degree that the Christian takes seriously the reality of his Spirit-wrought union with Christ, to that degree he will find his definitive sanctification coming to actual expression in his experiential or progressive sanctification. The holiness of the Christian’s daily walk directly depends upon his union with the Savior.”