imputed active obedience (IAO), a must or a misdirection? (1)

(Over the next few weeks or so I intend to blog intermittently on this topic.)

Justification has again become a controversial topic in recent years in protestant and scholarly circles.  Traditional views have crossed sword with contemporary views, the ‘old perspective’ with ‘the new perspective’.  This is no trivial discussion for Luther is surely right when he defined justification as, ‘The article of a standing or falling Church’ Calvin called justification, “the main hinge on which religion turns’. If we get justification seriously wrong then we lose the gospel.  However, if Christians find themselves through controversy pressed back to the Bible to find out what it teaches about justification rather than resting on tradition them the debate can have a positive outcome for if justification really is so important then it is important to get it right.

However, this thread of blogs is not an attempt to grapple with the bigger (and more serious) questions of this debate.  Here the ambition is more modest, namely, to explore a question that has caused intramural debate even among conservative evangelicals who are on the same page regarding the bigger questions, and that is, the role of the personal righteous life of Christ in justification.  Some evangelicals, particularly those from a confessionally reformed background, argue robustly that in justification Christ’s righteous law-keeping life lived on earth is imputed to all who trust in him, and necessarily so.  That is, believers cannot be counted as righteous by God simply because of the death and resurrection of Christ.  They need more than this; they need his imputed life as a covering. Louis Berkof expresses this view succinctly:

“…if He (Christ) had merely paid the penalty (for the believer), without meeting the original demands of the law (for the believer), He would have left man in the position of Adam before the fall, still confronted with the task of obtaining eternal life in the way of obedience. By His active obedience, however, He carried His people beyond that point and gave them a claim to everlasting life.”

Reformers such as clearly Berkof believe we need for justification not only what they term ‘the passive righteousness of Christ’, that is, his sin-bearing death, but also the active righteousness of Christ, that is his law-keeping life. In Wayne Grudem’s words:

“Christ had to live a life of perfect obedience to God in order to earn righteousness for us. He had to obey the law for his whole life on our behalf so that the positive merits of his perfect obedience would be counted for us. Sometimes this is called Christ’s ‘active obedience,’ while his suffering and dying for our sins is called his ‘passive obedience.’ … It is not just moral neutrality that Paul knows he needs from Christ (that is, a clean slate with sins forgiven), but a positive moral righteousness.”

Other evangelicals demur. They believe that justification is located in our faith-union with Christ in his death and resurrection.  They believe that while the righteous life of Christ was what gave value and glory to his death, yet it is his death that justifies and his resurrection is God’s vindicating verdict of that death.  They do not think that eternal life must in some sense be ‘earned’ through law-obedience, even that of the Redeemer, but is gifted by grace, through his death and resurrection.

My own sympathies lie with this latter group.

You may ask: does it matter?  Well, it matters because truth always matters.  The weightier matters of the law are of foremost importance but that does not give licence to ignore or despise the ‘jot and tittle’.  We want to be faithful in our understanding of Scripture and so we should aim for accuracy.  Nevertheless, we should remember the lesser matters are just that, lesser matters. And so while we should discuss whether IAO is part of justification, we should not, in my estimation, regard differences over IAO as ‘de fide’, of the essence of the faith.  Differences are of a secondary nature and are surely not a test of orthodoxy.  IAO should be treated as ‘adiaphora’.

Yet, tragically, a test of orthodoxy is precisely what some well-intentioned (but in my view badly misguided) leaders in modern evangelicalism wish to make views on IAO.  For these, to deny IAO as intrinsic to justification, is to deny the gospel; it is heresy. Brian Vickers in his book Jesus Blood and Righteousness writes:

‘The argument over imputation is not a mere academic debate.  The discussion strikes at the heart of what it means to be right with God.’

He is referring here to disagreements over IAO.  Clearly those who deny IAO are suspect in orthodoxy if not entirely beyond the pale.

It is principally because of the ground swell that IAO should be a vital hallmark of orthodoxy that I have decided to write this series of blogs as one more dissenting voice countering the stridency of those who insist on IAO and hopefully causing some to pause and consider.  I say ‘pause and consider’ because in my view there are powerful arguments that militate against any attempts to make IAO a matter of evangelical orthodoxy.  In future blogs I hope to outline these arguments.  I hope to demonstrate why the view that IAO is intrinsic to gospel orthodoxy is:

• historically weak
• biblically wanting
• theologically wayward

Though in the next couple of blogs I will try to show why in recent times, a view that for most of the C20 was probably in the minority, has enjoyed a resurgence in conservative evangelical circles.