I used the word excursus in the title so that people would know that I was going to be scholarly in this one. Or maybe try to be scholarly. Or, better yet, try to act scholarly. You know, I think I am off to a bad start.
In the comments on this series of posts on Wright, and in some of the debates/discussions in the Federal Vision thing, a recurring question has arisen, a question about what kind of metaphor to use in describing imputation. As Katecho a few posts back put it:
In his book What St. Paul Really Said, Wright described the “transfer” model as though righteousness could float across the courtroom, like it was a gas or something. When you are trying to deal with distance, as this comment above points out, the temptation will be to try to cross it in some kind of substantive way like that. But this is to take the metaphor the wrong way, and this is why I think that using the word “transfer” helps contribute to the confusion. I don’t think that imputation transfers anything really. It is more accurate to say that imputation declares or announces a new status.
I was the foreman on a jury once, and when we returned the verdict, it was given to the clerk who read it aloud. We in the jury were sitting on the right side of the courtroom, the clerk was on the left side, and the defendant was in the middle at his table. So there was distance involved, but our finding of guilt didn’t transfer guilt from one side of the room to the other, and then back again to the middle. The defendant’s status changed from legally innocent to legally guilty, but not because he was united to anything, or because anything substantive moved from us to him.
But in our courtroom appearance, the declaration that God makes is “not guilty,” and a problem is created here because we in fact are guilty. I believe that God, who wants to be just and the one who justifies, deals with this problem by means of our union with Christ. Because we are united to Him by imputation, resulting in Him being our covenantal head, it is just for God to reckon our sins to Him, and to reckon His righteousness to us. But here the language is more like a wedding than it is like a courtroom, although powerful elements of both are still present. Imputation (a legal pronouncement that alters someone’s status) is present in a court trial, and it is present in a wedding. Let’s see if thinking through this in wedding terms helps.
When I perform a wedding ceremony, there comes a point in every wedding where I say something that alters the status of the couple. That declaration unites them, and that declaration also makes it possible for them lawfully to unite later on with their clothes off. They may now unite that way because they have been united this way. If they had sex twelve hours before the ceremony, they would both have been sinning. If they have sex twelve hours after the ceremony, they are both being virtuous by doing what every witness in the church expected of them. A ministerial declaration was made, altering their status, making the other person’s body fair game. Before that, no dice. So there is a declaration of union in the ceremony, and then later that evening there is the experienced union. I don’t want to say that the declaration is unreal “legal fiction” union and the sexual union is the real one, because they are both real, although real in different ways. The declaration is real enough to be necessary to keep the physical union from being a real sin. So the declaration of union is necessary to keep the physical union from being sinful. And the declaration of union does not involved transfer of anything, while the physical union does.
But more is involved than just the sexual union — there are also issues of property, name, inheritance, and so on. And the status of all these things is altered by words that are merely spoken, and spoken across a distance.
with my body I thee worship,
and with all my worldly goods I thee endow:
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Now to make this more like our situation when we are united to Christ, let us suppose that the bridegroom is incredibly wealthy and the bride owes money beyond all hope of repayment. When the minister declares that they are husband and wife, at that moment his wealth becomes hers, and her debts become his. This is very much a kind of double imputation.
Now I believe this kind of illustration works fairly well when we are talking about the justification of an elect covenant member. But unfortunately that is not the only kind of covenant member there is, and this is why I have been reluctant to simply attribute all the work of imputation and justification to “union with Christ.” If reprobate covenant members have some kind of connection with Christ (as John 15 and Romans 11 require) then, unless we make some clear and easy-to-follow distinctions between this kind of union and that kind, we will find ourselves trying to answer awkward questions about reprobate covenant members who are supposedly in full possession of the imputed righteousness of Christ.
Now in the Federal Vision debates, when I am accused of (say) holding to various crazy and heterodox positions, one of the best ways I have found of defending myself is by having the charges be false. It’s a little trick I have.
Because of that, I really want to be careful here. If we try to get to “imputed righteousness” as a possession of ours via our union with Christ simpliciter (and nothing else), I don’t believe we have a developed theological vocabulary (of different kinds of union) capable of keeping us out of bad doctrinal ju-ju.
Elect covenant members need to be individually justified and reprobate covenant members cannot be justified. In the older model, this part of the problem was relatively simple. It created other problems, particularly in the area of ecclesiology, but I don’t want to treat this thing like the toddler’s toy, where you whack down one part of the toy, and another part pops right up.
Enough thinking out loud for now.