INCORPORATED RIGHTEOUSNESS: A RESPONSE TO RECENT EVANGELICAL DISCUSSION CONCERNING THE IMPUTATION OF CHRIST'S RIGHTEOUSNESS IN JUSTIFICATION

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Jun 2004 by Bird, Michael F

I. INTRODUCTION

In the last ten years biblical and theological scholarship has witnessed an increasing amount of interest in the doctrine of justification. This resurgence can be directly attributed to issues emerging from recent ProtestantCatholic dialogue on justification and the exegetical controversies prompted by the New Perspective on Paul. Central to discussion on either front is the topic of the imputation of Christ's righteousness, specifically, whether or not it is true to the biblical data. As expected, this has given way to some heated discussion with salvos of criticism being launched by both sides of the debate. For some authors a denial of the imputation of Christ's righteousness as the sole grounds of justification amounts to a virtual denial of the gospel itself and an attack on the Reformation. Others, by jettisoning belief in imputed righteousness, perceive themselves as returning to the historical meaning of justification and emancipating the Church from its Lutheranism. In view of this it will be the aim of this essay, in dialogue with the main protagonists, to seek a solution that corresponds with the biblical evidence and may hopefully go some way in bringing both sides of the debate together.

II. A SHORT HISTORY OF IMPUTED RIGHTEOUSNESS SINCE THE REFORMATION

It is beneficial to preface contemporary disputes concerning justification by identifying their historical antecedents. Although the Protestant view of justification was not without some indebtedness to Augustine and medieval reactions against semi-Pelagianism, for the most part it represented a theological novum. The primary characteristics of the Reformation understanding of justification were as follows. (1) justification refers to the believer's legal status coram Deo, not his moral state. (2) A distinction is made between justification (a divine declaration of righteousness) and sanctification or regeneration (inner transforming work of the Spirit). (3) The formal cause of justification is the righteousness of Christ imputed to believers. The chief contribution of Martin Luther that helped cultivate this articulation of justification was his contention that justification ensues because of the iustitia Christi aliena (alien righteousness of Christ).1 Commenting on Titus 1:14, Luther declares, "Our faith depends solely on Christ. he alone is righteous, and I am not; for His righteousness stands for me before the judgment of God and against the wrath of God ... for a foreign righteousness has been introduced as a covering."2 When expositing Romans 4, Luther's faith and scholarship merge with poignant effect:

He has made His righteousness my righteousness, and my sin His sin. If He has made my sin to be His sin, then I do not have it and I am free. If he has made His righteousness my righteousness, then I am righteous now with the same righteousness as He. My sin cannot devour Him, but it is engulfed in the unfathomable depths of His righteousness for he himself is God, who is blessed forever.3

It was in Melanchthon, however, that Lutheran ideas about imputed righteousness began to crystallize and the distinction between justification and sanctification was engraved in Protestant thought. he writes, "If we believe on the Son of God, we have forgiveness of sins; and Christ's righteousness is imputed to us, so that we are justified and are pleasing to God for the sake of Christ."4 Soon thereafter Melanchthon comments, "By are justified he means this comfort in the midst of true anguish, forgiveness of sins received through faith . . . But the renewal that follows, which God effects in us, he calls sanctification, and these two words are clear and distinct."5

John Calvin argued with equal vigor for the imputed righteousness of Christ as constituting the material cause of justification:

A man will be justified by faith when, excluded from the righteousness of works, he by faith lays hold of the righteousness of Christ, and clothed in it appears in the sight of God not as a sinner, but as righteous. Thus we simply interpret justification, as the acceptance with which God receives us into his favor as if we were righteous; and we say that this justification consists in the forgiveness of sins and the imputation of the righteousness of Christ.6

Yet in the same chapter of Institutes Calvin also underscores the Christocentric nature of justification and intimates his awareness of its relationship to union with Christ:

For though God alone is the fountain of righteousness, and the only way in which we are righteous is by participating with him, yet as by our unhappy revolt we are alienated from his righteousness, it is necessary to descend to this lower remedy, that Christ may justify us by the power of his death and resurrection.7

You see that our righteousness is not in ourselves, but in Christ; that the only way in which we become possessed of it is by being made partakers of Christ, since with him we possess all riches.8

It is little known that the imputation of Christ's righteousness was not advocated universally amongst the Reformers as the central tenet of justification. The Augsburg confession states, "This faith God imputes for righteousness before him."9 This stands in stark contrast to the Westminster confession which reads, "Those whom God effectually called he also freely justified . . . not by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them."10