for Calvin that he considered it “the main hinge on which religion turns.”102This is because there can be no peace with God without it. Both our union with Christ and our justification, although we separate them logically, in terms of chronology, occur simultaneously, with one being no more important than the other. To call justification a “secondary crater” is to misunderstand Calvin
I find Wright’s statement, “The idea of ‘imputed righteousness’ was, in any case, a latecomer to Reformation theology” rather bazaar, to say the least. Does he perhaps think that it is something Calvin and the other Reformers103 did not fully endorse? In all probably the concept was introduced to Luther in 1519 by his close companion Philip Melanchthon. He was a Greek scholar, and it was his study of the New Testament that convinced him that the Greek word dikaioo meant, not as the Latin maintained, to make righteous intrinsically, but to declare righteous. It was a forensic act that takes place outside the sinner and amounts to a legal declaration by God that the sinner is righteous. It is based on the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the sinner, with the sinner’s sin imputed to Christ.
A cursory look at what Calvin said about justification should dispel any notion that it was a latecomer to the Reformation:
Therefore, we explain justification simply as the acceptance with which God receives us into his favour as righteous men. And we say that it consists of the remission of sins and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.104
He is said to be justified in God’s sight who in both reckoned righteous in God’s judgment and has been accepted on account of his righteousness.105
Now he is justified who is reckoned in the condition not of a sinner, but of a righteous man.106
On the contrary, justified by faith is he who, is excluded from the righteousness of works, grasps the righteousness of Christ through faith, and clothed in it, appears in God’s sight not as a sinner but as a righteous man.107
Therefore, “to justify” means nothing else than to acquit of guilt him who was accused, as if his innocence were confirmed. Therefore, since God justifies by the intercessions of Christ, he absolves us not by the confirmation of our own innocence but by the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, so that we who are not righteous in ourselves may be reckoned such in Christ.108
Calvin could not have expressed his belief in justification and the role that Christ’s righteousness plays, more clearly. The above quotes should suffice to show that Calvin adhered to the traditional Protestant understanding of imputation.
24. Duncan, Attractions of the New Perspective (s).
25. Stendahl, Paul Among the Jews, 85.
26. Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul”, 95.
27. Cooper, The Righteous One, 3–4.
28. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 437.
29. Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul”, 87.
30. Ibid., 86.
31. Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New on Paul, 149.
32. Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul”, 84–5.
33. Ibid., 86.
34. Neill and Wright, The Interpretation of the New Testament, 372.
35. Wright, WSPRS, 158–9.
36. Sanders, Paul A Very Short Introduction, 58.
37. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 57.
38. Venama, Gospel of Free Acceptance, 101.
39. Ibid., 101.
40. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 17.
41. Ibid., 543.
42. Wright, WSPRS, 19.
43. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 75.
44. Venema, Gospel of Free Acceptance in Christ, 103.
45. Ibid.
46. McGrath, IUSTITIA DEI, 28.
47. Wright places significant emphasis on a text known as 4QMMT. For a discussion of this see Tom Holland’s Tom Wright and the Search for Truth pp. 316–331.
48. Sanders, Palestinian Judaism, 143.
49. Carson, Justification and Variegated Nomism, 544.
50. Dunn, The New Perspective on Paul, 101.
51. Ibid., The Theology of Paul the Apostle, 356.
52. Ibid., 358.
53. Wright, “The New Perspective on Paul”, 192.
54. Dunn, “The Theology of Galatians” 83.
55. Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New, 190.
