Proponents of requiring a belief of the Imputation of the Active Obedience of Christ at the Westminster Assembly asked if being restored to the position of Adam in the garden was sufficient to inherit eternal life. Gataker, who opposed IAO, agreed that it was not sufficient. But he claimed that it was adoption, not justification, that covered the gap between the two positions.

When Turretin covered “Adoption” in his Institutes of Elenctic Theology he insisted that Adoption was really nothing else but the positive aspect of justification, related to the imputation of Christ’s active obedience.

And it seems to me that, even if we disagree with Turretin’s classification, we would still have to see imputation as the explanatory mechanism for adoption–Christ’s status as son of the resurrection is imputed to believers.