Graham Cole on imputation/obedience

In God the Peacemaker, Graham Cole says about Christ's obedience and faithfulness:

"Christ's faithfulness issued in obedience. His obedience constituted his righteousness. His righteousness is put to our account, if we are believers, as the traditional doctrine of imputation maintains. It is put to our account not because of a mere reckoning so by God, but because we are really united to Christ by the Spirit" (p. 118).

Craig Blomberg on N.T. Wright's new book

My friend Craig Blomberg offers some glowing thoughts on N.T. Wright's new book on justification. He writes:

"In the past, Wright has often made sweeping pronouncements about how the Reformation was wrong on some key point, but if one keeps patiently reading one later discovers him saying instead that it’s merely a case of putting Reformation concerns into a larger perspective. Piper, on the other hand, has not always represented Wright well, I suspect in large part because he has not always understood him well.Wright’s new Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (London: SPCK; Downers Grove: IVP, 2009) is an outstanding book. Written in lively, if somewhat polemical style, not encumbered with many footnotes, Wright has here laid out his views with exemplary clarity. In fact, he is affirming all the major Reformation perspectives on justification. The only one he denies is one that was unique to one wing of Calvinism and not even to the entire Calvinist movement. While warmly embracing the representative, substitutionary atonement of Christ through his crucifixion and emphasizing the legal, courtroom context of justification as a metaphor for the declaration of right standing before God not based on anything of our meriting, Wright does deny that Paul, or any other Scriptural author, teaches that the righteousness God imputes to us on the basis of Christ’s cross-work has anything necessarily to do with combining what has been called Jesus’ active obedience (his sinless life) with his passive obedience (his atoning death). And when one looks at the texts often cited in support of such a doctrine (most notably 1 Corinthians 1:30 and 2 Corinthians 5:21), one does indeed look in vain for such a distinction."

Note the critiques by Scott Clark and Justin Taylor of Craig Blomberg's understanding of Christ's active obedience. Part of the issue is how one understands the difference between Christ's active and passive obedience (apart from the question is whether the distinction is even biblical). See Daniel Kirk's excellent discussion of the subject published in SBET and introduced here.

A few thoughts. First, Craig Blomberg much like N.T. Wright, does not engage in a concerted historical discussion of Christ's obedience in Reformed thought and obviously they do not qualify as experts on the subject. Second, as Dan Kirk shows, the WCF mentions only the "obedience" of Jesus Christ and the devisers of the Confession decided to omit the adjective "whole" leaving option the possibility that it is only Christ's passive obedience that is reckoned to believers. Third, the NT clearly (in Rom. 5.17-18; Phil. 2.8; Heb. 5.8) emphasize Jesus' passive obedience. Fourth, we have to distinguish between the imputation of obedience and views of the imputation of merit. Merit is a medieval idea and not a biblical idea. Jesus does not rack up a bunch of frequent flyer points and then give them to you so you can fly to heaven. Instead, as the obedient second Adam and as the faithful Israel he is qualified for his task of redemption. He dies on the cross to take our sin, and he is raised for our justification. Jesus is justified in his resurrection and we are justified insofar we have union with him. And in that union his justification and the basis for it are counted as ours! In other words, Jesus' obedience is not an abstract transaction of merit, but it is the fulfilment of a redemptive-story and is part and parcel of our participation in Christ.

Don Garlington responds to Phil Ryken

Below is a post from Don Garlington who responds to an article by Phil Ryken. My own response is located here.

A Brief Response to Philip Ryken
Don Garlington

Although a number of issues arising from Philip Ryken’s article Justification and Union with Christ. could be addressed in detail, I will confine my remarks to the following.

According to Ryken, the thrust of my response to John Piper’s Counted Righteous in Christ (“Imputation or Union with Christ? A Response to John Piper,” Reformation and Revival Journal, 12, No. 4 [2003], 45-112) is that we “must choose one doctrine or the other in articulating the theology of salvation” (italics added). This, however, fails to take account of the introduction and conclusions of that response. In the former, what I said was this:

It must be clarified from the outset that this response to Piper’s book represents a kind of “mediating” position. Not that the purpose is to bridge a gap simply for the sake of being a “peacemaker,” but rather that the baby is not to be thrown out with the bath water. That is to say, the intention of the doctrine of imputation is not to be disputed: our righteousness comes from Christ and is for that reason an “alien righteousness.” However, it is a question of modality…. It is the contention of this paper that the free gift of righteousness comes our way by virtue of union with Christ, not imputation as classically defined (pp. 45-46).

In the latter, I wrote:

In closing, it must be placed beyond all doubt that imputation as a concept is hardly objectionable: what evangelical could, at least with any degree of consistency, protest the notion that Christ has become our righteousness in the gospel? But as pertains to a strict doctrine of imputation, exegesis of texts must be the deciding factor. It has been the contention of this paper that exegesis will steer us away from imputation to union with Christ (p. 101).

True enough, I see lots of evidence for union with Christ and none for imputation. Nevertheless, the choice is as not as stark as Ryken would have us believe. My position is somewhere between that of Piper and Robert Gundry. Consequently, as I actually stated, the baby is not to be thrown out with the bath water, and imputation as a concept is hardly objectionable. No reader of my essay was forced to choose one or the other as far as the practical consequences are concerned. That is to say, Christ and Christ alone is the source of our righteousness, by whatever modality it comes.

To take matters a step further, my principal problem with Piper is not imputation as such, but two other factors. For one, there is Piper’s attack on a salvation-historical hermeneutic. Those who embrace such a “new paradigm,” as Piper dubs it, are consigned to the company of Paul’s opponents in 2 Corinthians­, who, as Paul himself exclaims, are the agents of Satan disguising themselves as angels of light! As much as anything else, it is this breathtaking condemnation of other Christians that evoked my reply. For another, there is Piper’s emphatic denial that justification entails liberation from sin. It is certainly ironic that Reformed exegetes of the likes of John Murray do affirm that justification is “from sin” (Acts 13:39; Rom 6:7) in the sense that Paul intends the phrase, i.e., liberation from sin’s dominance (Rom 6:18). Among other things, that is the function of justification. Such, I think, is a larger issue than imputation as a theological category.

Since Ryken has chosen to subsume my views, along with those of Michael Bird and N. T. Wright, under the heading of “Current Distortions of Biblical Justification,” I would submit that the contemporary justification debate has been tarnished precisely by a distortion of the theology of those of us who differ with Ryken, Piper and others. A glaring example is Ryken’s partial and out-of-context quotation from my conclusions: “Garlington intends to offer an exegesis that will ‘steer us away from imputation to union with Christ’.” This is but the final sentence of a paragraph that maintains that imputation as a concept is hardly objectionable, because Christ has become our righteousness in the gospel! I would hope for better things in days to come.

Bird on Imputation (Once Again!)

Over at Reformation 21, Philip Ryken has an article on Justification and Union with Christ. During the course of discussion I get a mention under the heading "Current Distortions of Biblical Justification" as an example of one (along with N.T. Wright, Bob Gundry, and Don Garlington) who rejects imputation in favour of union with Christ. Sigh! I have been here before and I am loathe to enter into it further. But since my good name is at stake I offer a slight qualification.

1. My point is that in terms of exegetical content, no single verse establishes the confessional formula that Jesus' active obedience is imputed to me while my sins are imputed to Jesus. Some verses come very close, some verses say part of this, but no single text gives us all of it. Most texts speak of believers being justified through union with Christ (e.g. Gal. 2.17; 2 Cor. 5.21, Rom. 8.1, etc) and I have termed this "incorporated righteousness". In many cases what is spoken of is believers participating in the vindication of Christ as achieved in his resurrection (e.g. Rom. 4.25; 1 Tim. 3.16). I'm glad to say that I am in good company with Mark Seifrid and Richard Gaffin being very close to this and Brian Vickers is probably not far off either.

2. What I am objecting to is what Ryken says here: "The biblical terminology for imputation—chiefly the verb logizomai, “to count” or “to reckon”—is only used in some of these passages (which are briefly considered here, giving only the broad outlines of a full exegesis). However, the concept of imputation is logically present in all of them. In each case God declares sinners to be what they are not in themselves, namely, righteous in his sight. In other words, God justifies them. He does this on the basis of the saving work of Jesus Christ, which is imputed to them by faith". I wouldn't reject all of this, but the content in bold sounds like special pleading. This sounds to me a bit like saying: "Well some texts don't actually mention imputation, but of course we know from the confessions that that is what they mean". But in Philippians 3.9 the preposition ek is not a synonym for logizomai. In 2 Corinthians 5.21 ginomai/poieo is not a synonym for logizomai either! These texts do not deny imputation, they are consistent with imputation, but they are not saying that Jesus' active righteousness is imputed to believers. As an exegete, I cannot and will not call an Egg an Ostrich in order to keep my Reformed Club Card.

3. Lo and Behold, I actually do believe in imputation (shock, cry, gasp)! The question is how do you get there? Well, you can either argue that the usual proof texts really do teach imputation and everyone who denies it is a Wrightophile who has gone off the edge (this is my own caricature and nothing to do with Ryken's article). Or you get your methodology (w)right and shift from exegesis, to biblical theology, to systematic theology. Exegetically I think that "incorporated righteousness" is a good description of what is happening at the exegetical level in these verses (see Timo Laato's essay in JVN vol. II for something similar). If we ask, "how does union with Christ or incorporation into Christ justify?" then I think something along the lines of imputation is required or even necessitated. If we take the forensic nature of justification, the representative nature of Adam and Christ, the language of "reckoning", the idea of righteousness as an explicit "gift" then the only way to hold it all together is with a theology of imputation. So imputation is a coherent and legitimate way of explicating the biblical materials in the domain of systematic theology; but we do violent damage to the text if we try to read each text as proving this systematic formulation. Let the text say what it says, nothing more and nothing less.

4. I think Mark Seifrid hit the nail on the head in his 1992 dissertation when he said that alot of these debates are between those who want to read the Bible historically, and those who want to read the Bible theologically. Truth be told, I want to do both, but I'm finding that Systematic Theologians do not want to allow the Bible to be read with any sense of historical contingency or allow meaning to be determined by reading the Bible alongside other ancient writings (ANE or second-temple Judaism). That just won't do!

So in sum, I am not trying to play off imputation against union with Christ. My concern is to differentiate between exegetical and doctrinal formulations and not to confuse the two (because they often are confused!). I am convinced that, understood in that sense, Ryken might even be sympathetic to my viewpoint. For those interested in what I do say on justification/imputation see my Saving Righteousness of God and (for a simpler and less technical exposition) A Bird's Eye View of Paul (out early next year).