Time to follow up on this promise.

Here is Mirriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary tenth edition:

impute 1: to lay the responsibility or blame for often falsely or unjustly 2: to credit to a person or a cause : Attribute (Our vices as well as our virtues have been *imputed* to bodilty derangement–B. N. Cardoxo) syn see Ascribe.

Unlike words like “Trinity,” or “Atone,” impute is a normal word translating a normal word used in the Bible. In Greek, the word is logizomai. Webster shows how “impute” is a fine word to use as a translation. This definition works perfectly for Romans 4 where we read

Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”

Notice here that there is nothing inherently transitive about the word logizomai (“count” in the ESV–another perfectly good translation).

So far so good. What has been odd to me is that some treat the English word “impute” as if it were inherently transitive. They point out that logizomai is not inherently transitive (i.e. it works with a sentence dealing with the possibility of reckoning one’s own sins to ones own account) and go on to claim that imputation is not important to Paul’s soteriology. Of these, there seem to be two types. Those who simply leave things vague and those who strongly state and argue from Scripture that believers are represented by Christ so that his righteousness is ascribed, reckoned, attributed, etc, to sinners so that they have right standing with God even though they don’t derserve it (i.e., N. T. Wright). While the first of these could be dangerously confusing (though my perception of vagueness may only reflect my lack of familiarity with and understanding of the posiiton). The second of these is merely frustrating because they are obviously affirming nothing less than imputation.

But the frustration increases all the more when Reformed guardians, instead of pointing out the confusion, spread it and harden it into novel boundary markers, by accusing the second of this group of “denying imputation.”

A related problem here is a shallow view of how the Bible relates to theology. People are being (mis)led to believe that our theological formulations come and are supposed to come straight off the page. If we have a “doctrine of imputation,” then the word “impute” in Scripture must contain and imply the entire doctrine. But doctrines are never simply definitions of words but shorthand headings for longer statements gleaned from a great deal of Scripture. As those living after the publication of The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, I thought we all knew better than to do word-level exegesis and theology. Apparently, the news hasn’t spread. This is odd, since D. A. Carson’s essay in Justification: What’s At Stake in the Current Debates is quite good about acknowledging that we cannot simply read the imputation of Christ’s righteousness straight out of any passage in Paul or anywhere else. The doctrine is not to be derived in that manner.

(By the way, this excellent piece was marred by what appears to me to be calculated cruelty toward Don Garlington designed not only to disagree with him, and not in any way to refute him, but to dehumanize him in the minds of Carson’s audience. Since I am endorsing the article in general I can’t ignore that problem.)

Teaching people to read the doctrine of imputation out of a prooftext using the word logizomai creates triple trouble. On the one hand, it systematically distorts the actual content of the Bible as it ought to be read on its own terms. Secondly, it makes anyone who does read the Bible accurately appear to be an imputation-denying heretic even when he actually affirms the doctrine and grounds it in Scripture. Finally, it makes the doctrine actually appear to be false by anyone who sees the false foundation but doesn’t consider that there is another one available.

I recently had the rather sad experience of listening to a sermon railing against this statement:

This justification requires no transfer or imputation of anything. It does not force us to reify “righteousness” into something that can be shuffled around in heavenly accounting books

[Update: the above (and below) is from Rich Lusk in his essay in the book, Auburn Avenue Theology: Pros and Cons] Here is the quotation with some context:

This justification requires no transfer or imputation of anything. It does not force us to reify “righteousness” into something that can be shuffled around in heavenly accounting books. Rather, because I am in the Righteous One and the Vindicated One, I am righteous and vindicated. My in-Christ-ness makes imputation redundant. I do not need the moral content of his life of righteousness transferred to me; what I need is a share in the forensic verdict passed over him at the resurrection. Union with Christ is therefore the key.Note well, this does not downplay the significance of the active obedience. Without it, Jesus’ body would still be in the tomb. But to be precise, I am not justified by a legal transfer of his “obedience points” to my account. I am justified because the status he has as The Sinless One, and now as The Crucified and Vindicated One, has been bestowed upon me as well.

Allow me to illustrate. Suppose a woman is in deep, deep debt and has no means at her disposal to pay it off. Along comes an ultra wealthy prince charming. Out of grace and love, he decides to marry her. He covers her debt. But then he has a choice to make about how he will care for his bride. After canceling out her debt, will he fill up her account with his money? That is to say, will he transfer or impute his own funds into an account that bears her name? Or will he simply make his own account a joint account so it belongs to both of them?

In the former scenario, there is an imputation, a transfer. In the second scenario, the same final result is attained, but there is no imputation, strictly speaking. Rather, there is a real union, a marriage.

I would suggest the first picture (the imputation picture) is not necessarily wrong, though it could leave adherents exposed to the infamous “legal fiction” charge since the man could transfer money into the woman’s account without ever marrying her or even caring for her. It could become, as Wright has said, “a cold piece of business.”

The second picture (the union with Christ picture) seems more consistent with Paul’s language, and for that matter, with many of Calvin’s statements. It does not necessarily employ the “mechanism” of imputation to accomplish justification, but gets the same result. Just as one can get to four by adding three plus one or two plus two, or just as one can get home by traveling Route A or by Route B, so there may be more than one way to conceive of the doctrine of justification in a manner that preserves its fully gracious and forensic character.

For Calvin, the central motif of Pauline theology is not “imputation,” but union with Christ….

The writer goes on to quote Calvin, but anyone familiar with Calvin already knows this is true. What I find more troublesome is that few seem to grasp that the Westminster Standards fit perfectly with this central Pauline motif. There is simply no getting around it: the marriage picture is a picture of precisely what Reformed Theology has taught both in Calvin and in the Westminster Confession and Catechisms.

And it is imputation. No one has any rational right to start screaming about “denying the Gospel.” What they should be upset about is the misconstrual of the word “imputation” that somehow identifies it with the more impersonal illustration. Instead, we seem to have a North American changeling of Reformed theology within Evangelicalism that is pushing a heavily nominalist version of orthodoxy as the only allowable version. I am still trying to figure out everything about how this happened. Reformed theologians as far apart from each other as John Williamson Nevin and Robert Dabney both seemed to see it coming. Sadly, one of the best historical studies of it, William Evans dissertation on “Imputation or Impartation” has never been published or made widely available.

Nevertheless, it is perfectly obvious that in the marriage scenario the wife acquires a status and possession from somewhere other than herself or her own resources. This is truly an alien righteousness. In other words, it is just as much an “imputation” as the first scenario. To treat it as an alternative makes no sense. Imputation should not be saddled with a prevailing image of God doing math in his head. That is simply not the doctine. If it were, then eternal justification would be true, or else justification at the time of the cross. But justification is accomplished through uniting sinners to Christ by the Holy Spirit through faith:

God did, from all eternity, decree to justify all the elect, and Christ did, in the fullness of time, die for their sins, and rise again for their justification: nevertheless, they are not justified, until the Holy Spirit doth, in due time, actually apply Christ unto them (WCF 11.6).WLC Q. 66. What is that union which the elect have with Christ?
A. The union which the elect have with Christ is the work of God’s grace, whereby they are spiritually and mystically, yet really and inseparably, joined to Christ as their head and husband; which is done in their effectual calling.

WLC Q. 69. What is the communion in grace which the members of the invisible church have with Christ?
A. The communion in grace which the members of the invisible church have with Christ, is their partaking of the virtue of his mediation, in their justification, adoption, sanctification, and whatever else, in this life, manifests their union with him.

WLC Q. 70. What is justification?
A. Justification is an act of God’s free grace unto sinners, in which he pardoneth all their sins, accepteth and accounteth their persons righteous in his sight; not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but only for the perfect obedience and full satisfaction of Christ, by God imputed to them, and received by faith alone.

Notice that the marriage scenario comes directly from the Westminster Assemblies doctrinal statements. And that justification is simply a manifestation (Q. 69) of that union.

It has been a true tragedy that the idea seems to be floating around in the Evangelical world that justification is merely a matter of God doing math in His head (and, correspondingly somehow, saving faith gets degraded into the sinner doing math in his head). But those problems should not be laid at the feet of the term “imputation.” Head and body, husband and wife, are reckoned, regarded, or counted as one person. All who are in Christ share his verdict at his resurrection. At his resurrection the Father declared that Jesus was right with him, that he had led a totally faithful life and even willingly died the death we deserved. Thus, in Christ, we are reckoned as utterly faithful and having already passed through the curse our sins deserved. Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us.

Imputation, in other words, is simply the legal aspect, property, or attribute of being united to Christ by the Holy Spirit through faith.