I should point out that Catholics do not reject forensic justification. In Catholic soteriology, God declares because He effects it. It is not a legal fiction, but a legal truth, because our hearts have been given agape at that very instant. The Protestant position (if I can speak of it as one position), is simul iustus et peccator, without a distinction between mortal and venial sin, i.e. without a distinction between those sins that destroy/remove agape from the soul, and those that do not.
found in comments here:http://www.creedcodecult.com/did-the-rich-young-ruler-hear-the-gospel/ =
By virtue of the love of God poured into our hearts we possess the very righteousness that God wants, one that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees.
also in comment 17 here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2014/05/trent-and-the-gospel-a-reply-to-tim-challies/#comment-88169
I think one fundamental problem is that a wrong understanding of Justification is imputed on to the text (pun intended). The Reformed tradition understands “justify” to mean something along the lines of “declared to have kept the law perfectly and thus legally entitled to enter Heaven,” but that’s not how the term is ever used in Scripture. The term is often used in a forensic sense, but forensic in the sense of declaring either guilty or not guilty (or even pardoned) – this lawcourt theme does not include the notion of declaring that someone has kept the law perfectly.
What Paul’s main theme is when speaking of getting justified and getting saved is that of having our sins forgiven, given a new heart, given the Holy Spirit, and thus reconciled to God. Now as one of God’s adopted children, we must grow and mature to adulthood to receive our promised inheritance. The Reformed view has mistakenly conflated conversion/reconciliation with the persevering in good works (i.e. finishing the race) to be worthy of Heaven. The two events are distinct.
So any time a Protestant says they want to stand with full confidence before God by faith alone, the problem is that ‘full confidence’ here is only speaking of reconciled back into God’s family, and is not speaking of the final judgement based on our works. Tim and other Reformed first need to properly define “justify,” and it’s not enough for them to say things like “justify is a forensic term” and “justify does not mean to infuse righteousness into someone,” because even if there’s truth to those statements, it’s still a bait and switch of sorts because the fact is “justify” does not ever mean “declare to have perfectly kept the law,” but something more along the lines of vindicate.
Here are some questions and answers concerning the reformed view found in 152 ::http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/06/reformed-imputation-and-the-lords-prayer/#comment-50566 :
You wrote:
I guess I had conceived of imputation as transfer of sins, guilt, and punishment, such that one’s ‘account’ of sins was erased because of the transfer of them off of one’s account onto Christ. But really you’re saying that the sins are still on one’s account, just covered by Christ’s righteousness, and the guilt for those sins is gone, giving one a status as innocent and acquitted due to the transfer of the passive obedience. Correct?
As soon as you use the term ‘account,’ you are already speaking sf something relational, and extrinsic. And thus (according to Reformed theology) you’re already speaking of guilt/punishment, and not the sin proper, which is in one’s heart. The “account” and one’s heart are not the same thing (in Reformed theology). When Horton says “even on a good day, the average Christian is wicked,” he is speaking of the heart. But, for Horton (and Reformed theology), even on a bad day, every regenerate person’saccount is not only perfectly free of sin (as if the person had never sinned), because of the imputation of all the [guilt/debt of punishment] of one’s past, present and future sin to Christ’s account, but is also perfectly righteous, as if one had perfectly fulfilled the law, because of the imputation of Christ’s perfect obedience to one’s account.
I have another related question; why would one need Christ’s passive obedience transferred to one’s account to give one an innocent status, if one’s guilt had already been transferred away?
In Reformed theology Christ’s passive obedience is the obedience by which one’s guilt is transferred away, as you put it. But in Reformed theology (or at least a dominant strand of it) that in itself would leave one merely innocent, not righteous. Righteous and innocent are not the same. Innocence is merely not having broken the law. Righteousness is having perfectly fulfilled the law. So in Reformed theology the imputation of the active obedience of Christ is necessary for making us *righteous,* and not just innocent. Watch the five minute Sproul video in comment #219 of the “Imputation and Paradigms” post. He presents that distinction quite clearly there.
Interesting article here http://pontifications.wordpress.com/justification/ HERE ARE A BUNCH OF DIFFERENT QUOTES< BUT THE LONG ARTICLE IS MORE DETAILED AND WORTH THE READ:
Justification and sanctification are two aspects of the same divine act (1 Cor 6:11). This does not mean that justification is a reward for faith or works: rather, when God promises the removal of our condemnation and gives us a new standing before him, this justification is indissolubly linked with his sanctifying recreation of us in grace. This transformation is being worked out in the course of our pilgrimage, despite the imperfections and ambiguities of our lives. God’s grace effects what he declares: his creative word imparts what it imputes. By pronouncing us righteous, God also makes us righteous. He imparts a righteousness which is his and becomes ours.
also from this link:
, Alister McGrath (Reformation Thought):
Whereas Augustine taught that the sinner is made righteous in justification, Melanchthon taught that he is counted as righteous or pronounced to be righteous. For Augustine, ‘justifying righteousness’ is imparted; for Melanchthon, it is imputed in the sense of being declared or pronounced to be righteous. Melanchthon drew a sharp distinction between the event of being declared righteous and the process of being made righteous, designating the former ‘justification’ and the latter ‘sanctification’ or ‘regeneration.’ For Augustine, these were simply different aspects of the same thing . . .
The importance of this development lies in the fact that it marks a complete break with the teaching of the church up to that point. From the time of Augustine onwards, justification had always been understood to refer to both the event of being declared righteous and the process of being made righteous. Melanchthon’s concept of forensic justification diverged radically from this. As it was taken up by virtually all the major reformers subsequently, it came to represent a standard difference between Protestant and Roman Catholic from then on.
and
Thus we read in the Lutheran/Catholic Common Statement (1985):
The proclamation of God’s grace in word and sacrament is itself the saving event in that it announces the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God’s word does what it proclaims or, in modern terminology, the gospel message is performative; it effects the reality of which it speaks. The preaching of the gospel has the force of decreeing the forgiveness of sins for Christ’s sake. Like a will or testament, it makes human beings heirs of the promise quite apart from what they deserve. God’s word accomplishes what it says in the very act of being proclaimed.In this hermeneutical perspective even the faith which receives the promise is not a condition for justification. It is not a human achievement, but it is rather a free gift created and bestowed in the power of the Holy Spirit by the justifying word to which it clings. Justification is unconditional in the sense that the justifying word effects its own reception. (Justification by Faith: Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue VII, p. 47).
and
"Protestants believe that justification is by imputation. Catholics believe that justification is by infusion. Protestants believe that we are justified by God forensically declaring us just. Catholics believe that we are justified by God making us just. Theologians and apologists tell us that these two models–the imputational and the transformational–are fundamentally incompatible and that the difference is rightly church-dividing.
Of course, things are murkier nowadays, because Catholicism seems willing to embrace within herself some of the Reformation distinctives. As a result official ecumenical agreements on justification have been worked out between Catholics and Anglicans and between Catholics and Lutherans. An informal agreement reached between Catholics and evangelicals, The Gift of Salvation, has also been published. But with a few exceptions, the Reformed and evangelical communities are not buying it! The imputational model of justification is pure Bible truth. To compromise on this is to abandon the gospel. In 1998 theAlliance of Confessing Evangelicals declared Gift of Salvation to be a dangerous, ambiguous, and seriously flawed document and reiterated the dogma of imputation as the primary and irreplaceable expression of the gospel:..............................
and
I would not be the Pontificator if I did not raise once again the question of authority. Are the confessional statements infallible? If not, then by what authority are these confessions, and in particular their imputational construal of justification, imposed upon the Church catholic? There is only one proper Protestant answer: “Justification by imputation is true! Just read the Bible (in Greek).” But this answer is insufficient. No matter how convinced confessional Protestants may be that their specific reading of the New Testament is the right one—and let’s remember, there are also lots of Protestants who do not agree with the Reformed and Lutheran churches on justification (just ask John Wesley and Charles Finney)—the fact remains that the imputational model of justification was a “genuine theological novum” (Alister McGrath). Melanchthon’s and Calvin’s theory of imputation was a real, honest to God novelty. (See my post Was the Reformation a Blunder?) Up until the 16th century, everybody, both East and West, held and taught a transformationist model of salvation. Readers of my blog know that the Pontificator holds a deep sympathy for the Reformation in its hermeneutical call to rightly divide law and gospel; however, the Church catholic has not dogmatically defined justification by imputation. The Council of Trent reaffirmed the transformationist model of justification; and though the Vatican is now willing to acknowledge that the Reformation formulations, properly understood, are not heretical, it sure ain’t going to repudiate the transformational understanding that has been dominant, virtually exclusively so, in the Church for two thousand years—nor should it. For her own part Eastern Orthodoxy has made it clear that she has no intention of altering its teaching oftheosis in order to accomodate the salvational theories of the Protestant reformers. Yet confessional Protestants have the hutzpah to insist to the point of ecclesial separation that their theological novum is the gospel and thus defines the identity of the Christian Church. Well, there’s a name for this—sectarianism!
and
and
In other words, what is important is not that the Church teach a theory of imputational justification but that the Church should do salvation to sinners through the preaching of the Word. The language of the courtroom can be employed very powerfully in this regard. There is a difference between saying “Faithful Christians will be acquitted at the final judgment” and “You are innocent!” The first statement is a true description; but it does not change the hearer. The second statement changes the hearer and establishes him in the eschatological life of the Spirit.
Can you think of ways where the Church speaks unconditional promise to sinners? Three items immediately come to my mind: “I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”; “I absolve you from all your sins”; “The body of Christ,” “The blood of Christ.
No comments:
Post a Comment