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

Several things can be said by way of response. First, Gundry's bifurcation between God's righteousness and Christ's righteousness is too pedantic, particularly in view of what Paul says in verse 19 that "God was in Christ,"108 not to mention the trinitarian benediction found in 2 Cor 13:14.

VI. CONCLUSION

The ferocity of the debate concerning the imputation of Christ's righteousness will continue while those within the evangelical camp persist in questioning its biblical integrity. It is no surprise, then, that Gundry has opened a can of worms and some suppose he is attempting to undo Luther's courageous stand at the Diet of Worms, resulting in some strongly-worded argumentation. Nevertheless, whether for or against, Gundry and Piper have performed a sterling service in forcing evangelicals to return to the text of the NT to weigh and assess the relevant passages to see if they really are proof texts for imputed righteousness. In my estimation, they are not. Furthermore, the notion of imputation fails to grapple with Paul's "in-Christ" language that gravitates more towards the concepts of incorporation, substitution, and representation. Given the supremely Christocentric ingredient in Paul's formulation of justification, it is far more appropriate to speak of incorporated righteousness, for the righteousness that clothes believers is not that which is somehow abstracted from Christ and projected onto them, but is located exclusively in Christ as the glorified incarnation of God's righteousness.123 In my judgment this term represents a reasonable description of what is happening at the exegetical level in the Pauline corpus regarding how the believer attains the righteousness of Christ.

Additionally, I think much of this debate is spurred on by a profound failure to grapple with two things. (1) The first is the crucial role of the resurrection in procuring justification. The resurrection is more than a divine apologetic, since God's justifying verdict is intimately bound up with the raising of the crucified (Rom 4:25; 5:10; 1 Cor 15:17). This facet of justification was lost on neither Jonathan Edwards nor Karl Barth, both of whom were aware of its importance.124 Without diminishing the centrality of the cross, it is important that this component of justification be recovered. (2) The second element is the forensic dimension of union with Christ. Since Albert Schweitzer, and more recently with E. P. Sanders, it has become common to divide Paul's soteriology into "participationist" and "juridical" categories (while admitting that Paul himself did not make this distinction) and assert the centrality of participationist elements. Justification is subsequently removed to the periphery of Paul's thought and, according to Schweitzer, justification by faith is reduced to a "fragment," "subsidiary crater" and is "incomplete and unfitted to stand alone."125 Yet as soon as an understanding of union with Christ is divided as forensic and issuing forth in a transformed status, such a bifurcation becomes a grossly inadequate generalization. Justification cannot be played off against union with Christ, since justification transpires in Christ. To be sure, union with Christ is not something that is entirely synonymous with justification. Yet neither is union with Christ an ancillary concept subsumed under justification or vice versa.126 Rather, union with Christ comprises Paul's prime way of talking about the reception of the believer's new status through incorporation into the risen Christ by faith.127