Monthly Archives: November 2007

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One way to explain imputation is to say it is the based on a “legal union” between the believer. This seems problematic to me because it is merely a restatement of the basic fact, not an explanation. What is legal union? Why it is a relationship that justifies imputation.

For legal union to work, it needs to be presented as having a basis.

Would it have been perfectly OK for God to simply declare Adam the legal representative of Gabriel? Would it have been just of God to impute Adam’s sin to him? Think of it. Gabriel arrives back in heaven after completing a reconnaissance mission in the Deneb star system and finds a legion of seraphim with flaming swords barring his path. “What is going on?” he asks.

“Get back, sinner!” cries the commanding seraph. “No sinner is permitted beyond this threshhold.”

“But I’ve never sinned!” Gabriel says. “You are unjustly accusing me.”

“No, no,” replies the commander. “We’re not simply accusing you? Adam sinned while you were gone and God effected a legal union between him and you. So you are guilty and there is nothing unjust about it because of imputation.

“Wow,” exclaims Gabriel. “That explains everything. I was wrong to accuse you of injustice. Please forgive me.”

“Can’t. You’re a sinner. Sinner’s can’t be forgiven.”

A sticking point in explaining the need for and role of imputation in the salvation of sinners is that it is supposed to have apologetic value. It is supposed to explain how a just judge can declare the guilty to be righteous. God cannot, we say, simply forgive sinners without any other consideration. Something must happen to make the transaction truly just and right.

But, if imputation itself is portrayed in a way that seems arbitrary and imaginary then it ceases to have any apologetic value. How is God’s simply forgiving sinners less problematic than His imagining that one person’s righteousness belongs to another who is unrighteous in himself? And when considering the imputation of Adam’s sin, and stripping out any importance to the organic connection of Adam as source and root of humanity in favor of a “strictly” federal union, how is this less problematic than simply saying that God created a sinful race?

The Bible, the history of Christian doctrine, and the Reformed heritage in particular has much more to offer to explain Adam’s and then Christ’s representational role. Neglecting this will tend to leave those who do so with an arbitrary and nominalistic view of how God deals with us.

The printing presses were the first servers

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Following up on my mention of my new reading, I should mention I am reading about the “pamphlet revolution” right now. Awhile back I made this off-the-cuff remark about Luther as the first blogger. Reading about the new market for exciting pamphlets that sprang up at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th century, I suspect my label “web 0.0” might be more apt than I was willing to admit.

I was also surprised at how low literacy rates really were in the 1520s. But that didn’t stop the pamphlets from being valued. The fact that the culture was predominately oral simply meant that they were read out loud a lot. Also, much of the mass-produced propaganda consisted of illustrated satirical cartoons. So they could be appreciated by the non-literate.

I almost feel sorry for the authorities in the various German and Swiss provinces and cities. In their fathers’ day, when you had to deal with a “miscreant,” you only needed to banish him and the problem was forever solved. Now you banished a guy and, the following week, his latest attack on you was being read aloud in every tavern in the area. And the next week more brand new material was being circulated.

Ozment at one point claims that the Reformation could have happened without the printing press at all. I have a hard time believing this. This is especially true of the academic revolution that took place. I remember some awesome lectures by Hughes Oliphant Old on the history of the Reformation. I don’t think we can emphasize enough how much the printing press altered the situation for schools. At one time, consulting the works of Augustine, involved learning which monastary housed a copy of the writing in question and traveling for days and weeks and months to go read it.

Within a few decades that was all done. These works were being printed up and sent everywhere.

The first Internet was made of paper and ink.

No justice, only pieces

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The Ward Churchill wing of FV Criticism

A Bayly Brother on the Asst Prosecutor blog

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A Gollumish twist at Greenbaggins

I’m thankful to be reading

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Actually, I freely confess I’ve been dozing off a lot. And tearing up like a baby during the Anne of Green Gables marathon.

But I’ve also been reading something other than business books and fiction (actually, I need to warm up my fiction before it stalls on me and sits in my driveway all winter leaving me afraid to try to start it again because I’m worried that I’ll discover something seriously wrong with it).

Today I got a good start on Protestants by Steve Ozment and I am really liking it.

I would say more, but the above-mentioned dozing is getting in the way.

But, frankly, my taste for non-fiction reading has gone into a deep coma for quite awhile. I sometimes felt like I had changed into a different person. But not lately. I’ve been much more like what I like to think about as my “true self.”