Theology Club: Imputation of Christ's Righteousness
- Thread starter Nang
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Nang
TOL Subscriber
This just your opinion, which does not come close to addressing the subject of imputed righteousness, at all.
Care to try again and actually post some Scripture this time?
I Jn. 5:11-13; Jn. 3:16 use present, continuous tense.
If one could believe and then cease to believe and become an unbeliever and still be saved (johnw view), then a different tense could be used.
Principle more than proof text. Issues of free will, warnings about apostasy, etc. must be considered. Part of the problem is wrong MAD assumptions that pick and choose which verses apply to whom.
There is an interpretative, theological aspect to this. 10 scholars can talk about imputation and quote verses and mean 10 different things.
Nang
TOL Subscriber
There is?
Where?
I have never seen such an example or occurrence on this subject, but the disagreement of 10 "scholars" on any subject, cannot ever undo what the word of God clearly teaches regarding the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
All the "scholars" can do, is make total fools of themselves . . .
Nang
These scholars have influenced the development of your view. How much of your view is from Augustine? Calvin? your favorite Calvinistic theologian? There was not consensus on the details and many of the issues were probably not discussed much in the early church (or with Fathers saying and meaning different things). There is more than one view, so we have to wrestle with the strengths and weaknesses of each, since they all claim the same verses, but interpret the relevant verses as a whole differently leading to different conclusions. You are not infallible nor can you just find a verse that proves your understanding of the word/concept. You and AMR (don't even agree on all things) dogmatically say the party line and assume it is true. You may be accurate to a view rooted in Augustine, but this does not prove it is biblical or logical.
Don't get me going on infant baptism. If you hold to this, you are also wrong on it (even more so than a generic statement about imputation that I could say without losing sleep...I am interested in understanding and accuracy, not just spouting my denomination creed like it is infallible as Scripture).
Don't get me going on infant baptism. If you hold to this, you are also wrong on it (even more so than a generic statement about imputation that I could say without losing sleep...I am interested in understanding and accuracy, not just spouting my denomination creed like it is infallible as Scripture).
Yes, it was the fulfilment of the law (of Moses) but it was also more than that. Christ was prophesied long before Moses. His purpose was to save mankind from sin, not from the law. It just so happened that the law showed up sin for what it was. Perhaps you are not expressing yourself properly or perhaps you are not seeing the bigger picture. I can only reiterate my previously stated position that the legal substitution is just a way of looking at it.
This is where we differ. And this is where you differ from the Bible, which clearly states that Abraham was justified through his faith. And not only him but a long litany of examples is given by Paul in Hebrews of those who obtained the promises or otherwise pleased God through their faith. (And the purpose behind Paul explaining this was to persuade the Jewish believers not to rely on legal justification but to exercise faith and why would he need to do this if they supposedly already had this faith?) It is of course a typical part of the Calvinist ethos to then say that this faith was only made possible by God's grace in the first place. And this is how they make white black and black white and this is why their disciples really don't need to bother reading all those scriptures at all but just listen to the Calvinist doctrines.
This is just blatant misanthropy. God empowers us, he does not rub our noses in the dirt, the way Calvinists constantly do.
So let me get this right: because A is not B and C is not B, therefore C must be A? Is that the basis of your argument in the OP? Let me explain briefly the significance of faith since apparently you do not quite understand this principle. Faith is trust in God. I don't care whether that faith is expressed in receiving the sacraments or sticking theses up on a cathedral door or playing a role in Pygmalion. I really don't. You don't need 'biblical' (and having read a lot of Calvin, I despair of what Calvinists describe as 'biblical') refutations of the R.C. doctrine of infused righteousness, you are looking in the wrong place. What you need is refutation of dead works, which receiving the sacraments or burning rosaries or playing roles in Pygmalion could all become. I mean, even the ultra-faith prosperity teachers make the same mistake with their new rules 'believe that you have received and you will receive', 'name it and proclaim it'. For they think they will receive if they just follow these divine rules. They are doing the same as you, putting their trust in a doctrine. What you need is living faith, which is living, active trust in God. What you are doing is trusting in a doctrine, the doctrine that says that you already have got everything that God wants you to have and that you actually cannot have any real faith at all. The result is that you never exercise faith for yourself and you end up being exactly the same as the R.C. adherents you set out to oppose who equally had lost all semblance of faith and relied on the sacramental acts themselves. What you need to do is to trust God (in Christ of course) not trust in a doctrine.
I hope you still find them interesting and learn too. Openness is about relationship, not about following rules and mental activity.
I don't see how you can claim to be better. Protestantism became just as bad or even worse than R.Cism with its persecution of dissenters, its rigid enforcement of morality and its disingenuous use of scripture. What was the point of proclaiming sola scriptura when you were bashing the Bible to dust with a mallet?
See above. More misanthropy and doing the very best not to exercise real faith.
So?
What makes you think one who doesn't now believe ever actually believed in the first place? If you know something to be true you can't later believe it to be wrong.
Principle over Scripture? I have no further comment.
Using your logic, someone who divorces was never actually married. Someone who becomes a Christian was never a Muslim or atheist or sinner. You wrongly assume that people cannot be deceived, change their minds, even from truth to error (happens all the time on any given subject/religion). One can also retain mental assent to a belief system, while choosing to reject God's rule in their lives and revert back to a godless, pagan life. Christian preachers of the gospel have become agnostics/atheists/Mormons/Muslims, etc. just as some from these groups have become Christians. It does not mean they never believed or lived their previous system, whether true or false. Your logic is absurd.
When there is not an explicit verse on an issue (e.g. free will, time vs eternity, etc.), we may be able to elicit principles to formulate a reasonable view (some who just proof text claim the same verses for opposing views). We can quote a verse from Paul and pull out principles for our time (meat offered to idols is the verse, Mr. Pharisee, but the principle/application for us differs today).
It is BECAUSE man is so fickle and changeable that we go by God's word.
"You have not chosen Me, I have chosen you and ordained you that you might bear fruit and that your fruit may remain"
"You have not chosen Me, I have chosen you and ordained you that you might bear fruit and that your fruit may remain"
You're right. I stand by my assertion that my parents no longer even know each other, and neither has any idea where I came from. I've got two brothers and my mom doesn't know how they got here either.
Oh, wait...
2COR12:9
New member
I'm still waiting for the passage that says Christ's righteousness is imputed to us. I've thoroughly searched and have not found one. There are many that say God gives His righteousness to those that have faith in Christ. I still see this statement of Christ's imputed righteousness as eisegesis in an attempt to make a doctrine of justification legally tidy and logical for intellect's sake. I think we try too hard sometimes to compartmentalize every aspect of salvation systematically and we lose sight that all this actual applied Grace is really beyond our earthly comprehension, it's okay to accept that some things we see in part.
It says specifically in the text that our sins are imputed to Christ, and I think some try to make their own logical leap saying we now get Jesus' righteousness, as if God needs a certain amount of merit to accept us, so we'll borrow Jesus' instead of seeing our faith in God and His Son as adequate to become righteous; the analogy that we hide behind Christ, and as a legal fiction we are declared righteous when we are not; instead of accepting that Christ's blood cleanses us, and by faith in Jesus we are given God's righteousness. Scripture clearly says that God gives to us and declares us righteous through faith, and that's sufficient for me. I'm not squabbling about words if you wish to say Christ is God so we do we receive His righteousness, if that were the case then the doctrine would be God's imputed righteousness which has textual support, though it's never stated that way in Reformed circles, its' always stated Christ's imputed righteousness.
It says specifically in the text that our sins are imputed to Christ, and I think some try to make their own logical leap saying we now get Jesus' righteousness, as if God needs a certain amount of merit to accept us, so we'll borrow Jesus' instead of seeing our faith in God and His Son as adequate to become righteous; the analogy that we hide behind Christ, and as a legal fiction we are declared righteous when we are not; instead of accepting that Christ's blood cleanses us, and by faith in Jesus we are given God's righteousness. Scripture clearly says that God gives to us and declares us righteous through faith, and that's sufficient for me. I'm not squabbling about words if you wish to say Christ is God so we do we receive His righteousness, if that were the case then the doctrine would be God's imputed righteousness which has textual support, though it's never stated that way in Reformed circles, its' always stated Christ's imputed righteousness.
There is a difference between knowing about someone, knowing them, and a right relationship with God. Divorced people remarry and are simply not married and in former right relationship anymore.
Some theists have now become atheists, just as some atheists have become theists. There is a difference between denying the existence of God (whether one ever believed in it or not) and human relationships that have some analogous points but are not identical in every way.
The issue is the nature of perseverance, apostasy, salvation, biblical teaching, not the self-evident issues of people still knowing each other despite broken relationships.
Romans 4:11
Whose righteousness do you think it is that is imputed to us?
2 Corinthians 5:21
Is Christ not God?
So people who actually know God would actually choose to leave Him? Is that your argument?
Either they know God or they do not, and if they do they will not walk away and deny Him.:nono:
You have nothing but ignorance.
The reality (confirmed by stern warnings in Scripture) is that some who once walked with God no longer do so. If Israel in the OT could go after false gods and get cut off, why do you think a born again Christian who renounces it and converts to Islam is still saved?! (or worse, becomes an atheist, like some have)?!
Israel was never saved. Salvation is in the life of Jesus, which comes from His resurrection from the dead which had yet to happen during the times recorded in the OT.
Those who actually know God will never become atheist; for they cannot deny His existence, for one.
And while some can be fooled for a time and led astray into thinking the God they know is another god, they cannot undo what He has done, by any action of their own; and He will not undo it, for His gifts and calling are irrevocable.
The Rom. 11 verse is about Israel and her unique calling as a nation for service. It is terrible exegesis/proof texting to play that verse as a card for OSAS.
Sorry, but some who knew God, OT and NT, did go on to deny God, including His existence. It is begging the question on your part to say those who were born again and died as an atheist could not have been saved.
Even your MAD friends admit that the post-cross circ group could lose their salvation, an inconsistent view at best. Some even interpret Hebrews the way I do, but deny it is applicable to the post-Paul church.
I can understand a TULIP Calvinist taking your stance, but a free will Open Theist?!
I didn't say anything about Romans 11.
You're delusional if you think it possible, outside of delusion, to truly deny the existence of someone you personally know.
Wrong again: MAD teaches that the post-cross circumcision believers were in the same boat as those before the cross; they were looking forward to a future salvation.
Part of the open view is the God is free to do as He pleases, and it pleases Him [it is His will] to keep those who are His, and to not revoke His gifts or callings.