Under Sir Aaron the Brave's MRM profile:
Aaron Shafovaloff became a student of Mormonism in 1998, when he was introduced to the religion by neighbors. His life was forever changed when he discovered Romans 4:5, “And to the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.”
Sadly for Aaron, he embraced a damnable false gospel. Romans 4 does not support his (Reformed) Protestant soteriology on many points.
Firstly, as lexicographers of Koine Greek note, imputed righteousness is not taught in Rom 4:5. As one leading lexicographer Celsius Spicq noted on the transformative nature of δικαιοω and its relationship to Rom 4:5 (emphasis added):
Several times St. Paul uses dikaoō in its forensic OT sense, “declare or acknowledge to be just,” especially when he is quoting the OT, but it would be wrong to extend this meaning to all the texts. In the first place, this would be to forget that “verbs in –oō mean to make whatever the root indicates. Thus dikaoō should properly mean ‘make just.’ This meaning is not found in secular Greek for rather natural reasons.’”[86] In the second place, it would overlook the fact that St. Paul, as a converted Pharisee, perceived as no one else did the opposition between the new covenant and the old covenant, law and grace, circumcision and baptism, and perhaps especially the inefficacy of the old legal dispensation compared to the efficacy and realism of the dispensation of salvation centered on the cross of Jesus. The consequence is a radical change in ideas concerning righteousness/justification, as is seen in the frequent linking of the verb “justify” with faith in Christ and in the explicit contrast between justification and the works of the law; there is a different scheme or process for attributing justice/righteousness in the new covenant than in the old covenant. The apostle gives dikaoō a causative sense, as appears from Rom 3:24—“All have sinned and come short of the glory of God (cf. Rom 8:30; 2 Cor 3:18; 5:21); (henceforth) they are justified (present passive participle, dikaioumenoi) freely by his grace, through the redemption (apolytrōsis) that is in Jesus Christ.” God has shown his mercy, but not by pronouncing acquittal pure and simple; through Christ a price was paid, a ransom (lytron) with expiatory value (cf. verse 25: hilastērion), so that “sinners” have become just, have been made truly righteous.[87] Another clear text is Rom 3:26-“to show his justice/righteousness (his salvific action), so that (it might be established that) he himself is just and that he justifies (present active participle, dikaiounta) the one who has faith in Jesus”: the just God communicates his justice/righteousness and makes just.[88]Notes for the Above[86] M.J. LaGrange, La Justification selon saint Paul, Revue Biblique 1914, p. 121[87] “The sacrifice of Christ has satisfied once and for all the demands for outward justice which God had deposited in the Law, and at the same time it has brought the positive gift of life and inward justice which the latter was unable to give” (P. Benoit, Exégèse et théologie, vol. 2 p. 39 n. 2); c. Rom 5:18—“justification gives life.” The best commentary is the Trinitarian baptismal text on the “bath of regeneration and renewal” (Titus 3:7), “so that having been justified by the grace of this (Jesus Christ) our Savior (ἵνα δικαιωθέντες τῇ ἐκείνου χάριτι), we might become . . . heirs . . . of eternal life”: the aorist passive participle denotes the present state of this new and internal righteousness that permits entry into heaven, where nothing impure may go in. C. H. Rosman, “Iusticicare (δικαιουν) est verbum causalitatis,” in Verbum Domini, 1941, pp. 144-147.
[88] Cf. Rom 4:5—“The one who has no works but who believes in the One who justifies (δικαιουντα) the ungodly, will have his faith counted as righteousness.” M.J. Legrange (on this verse) comments: “δικαιοω in the active cannot mean ‘forgive’: it has to be ‘declare just’ or ‘make just.’ That God should declare the ungodly righteous is a blasphemous proposition. But in addition, when would this declaration be made?” H.W. Heidland (TDNT, vol. 4, pp. 288-292) explains λογιζεσθαι: “Justification is not a fiction alongside the reality. If God counts faith as righteousness, man is wholly righteous in God’s eyes . . . He becomes a new creature through God’s λογιζεσθαι.”
It should also be noted that it is incorrect to render λογιζομαι, as many Calvinists try to do, as "impute"; for a study of λογιζομαι in Koine Greek literature contemporary with the New Testament, see my 7-part series here.
Furthermore, it must be noted that in Reformed theology, one is declared (not “made”) righteous based on the alien imputed righteousness of Jesus. However, the verse immediate after one of their favourite “proof-texts” (Rom 4:1-8) disproves this theory. In Rom 4:9 we read (emphasis added):
Ο μακαρισμὸς οὖν οὗτος ἐπὶ τὴν περιτομὴν ἢ καὶ ἐπὶ τὴν ἀκροβυστίαν; λέγομεν γάρ· ἐλογίσθη τῷ Ἀβραὰμ ἡ πίστις εἰς δικαιοσύνην
Cometh this blessedness then upon the circumcision only, or upon the uncircumcision also? For we say that faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness.
The “blessedness” of Abraham (his “justification”) is not based on imputed righteousness, but Abraham’s faith. Indeed, based on the strict grammar of the Greek of this verse and Rom 4:5, 22 refute Reformed soteriology and its understanding of the “ground” of justification.
While there are other points one can raise against Calvinism, let us end with this one--In Rom 4, Paul uses two Old Testament figures as examples of an individual justified by God--Abraham (through his use of Gen 15:6) and Kind David (through his use of Psa 32). It is the latter example, that of King David, we will look at.
In Rom 4:5-8, we read the following:
But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness. So also David speaks of the blessedness of those to whom God reckons righteousness apart from works: "Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the one against whom the Lord will not reckon sin." (NRSV)
In the above pericope, Paul quotes from Psa 32:1 (cf. Psa 52:1); the entire psalm reads as follows:
Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah. Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the Lord," and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah. Therefore let all who are faithful offer prayer to you at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters shall not reach them. You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance. Selah. I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Do not be like a horse or mule without understanding, whose temper must be curbed with bit and bridle, else it will not stay near you. Many are the torments of the wicked but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart. (NRSV)
In this psalm, David is proclaiming God's forgiveness of his sins of adultery with Bathsheba and murder of her husband, Uriah the Hittite (2 Sam 11-12). God sent Nathan the prophet to convict David of his heinous sins, with Nathan's parable of the little ewe lamb resulting in David being brought to his knees in repentance.
Paul in Rom 4, alongside the example of Abraham, uses this as an example of an individual who was justified by God, linking the justification of Abraham previously discussed with that of David's through the use of the conjunction καθάπερ ("even/just as") in v. 6.
The crucial question is "Was Psa 32 the first time David was forgiven of his sins and justified?" The biblical answer, which refutes Reformed soteriology, is "no."
The Bible clearly shows us that David, prior to committing those heinous sins, was a justified person. In his youth, David called on the Lord to defeat Goliath (1 Sam 17). David was so close to God that in 1 Sam 13:14 (cf. Acts 13:22) is described as a man after God's own heart, hardly something said of an unsaved person! Indeed, David was truly a justified child of God many years prior to the Bathsheba incident. If David was not justified, he was not a man of God, but a pagan idolater feigning belief in God in how he had lived his life prior to Psa 32 and had written earlier psalms before his encounter with Bathsheba in such a spiritually dead state with no true relationship with God.
As one writer put it:
We cannot escape the fact that Paul, in using the example of David in the context of justification, is saying not merely that David's sins were forgiven, but also that David was actually justified at this point. Paul, in Rm 4:5, underscores this fact both by speaking of "crediting righteousness" to David when he confessed his sin in Psalm 32, and by calling him a "wicked" person whom God must justify in order to return him to righteousness. We must understand, then, that a "crediting of righteousness" occurs at each point that one confesses his sins. Since this was not the first time David confessed sin before the Lord (which other Psalms verify, cf. Ps 25:7, 18; 51:5), he must have been "credited with righteousness" on each occasion of repentance. Since he was credited with righteousness upon repentance in Psalm 32, and since it is an established fact that he was not a man of God prior to his sin with Bathsheba, we must therefore consider all previous acts of repentance a "crediting of righteousness." (Robert A. Sungenis, Not by Faith Alone: The Biblical Evidence for the Catholic Doctrine of Justification [2d ed.; Catholic Apologetics International, 2009], 253)
Unless one wishes to accuse the apostle Paul of the grossest form of eisegesis (wrenching select passages of the psalter out of context), it is hard to escape that, based on sound exegesis, David lost his justification due to murder and adultery, and Psa 32 represents another justification (“re-justification” if you will) of David, per Paul’s soteriology. This disproves the Reformed view that justification is once-for-all, and can never be lost.
It should be obvious that the Reformed interpretation of Rom 4:5, as well as the chapter itself, it without exegetical merit. What is more is that Aaron Shafovaloff, apart from lacking any exegetical abilities, embraced his flavour of Evangelical Protestantism based on both a false and blasphemous interpretation of Rom 4:5 as well as the nature of justification.
Of course, this seems par for the course; Bill McKeever espoused such a heretical soteriology in his debate with James Holt. To see my review and where McKeever demonstrated both his lack of intellectual integrity and exegetical/theological abilities, click here.