Thomas Torrance (1913-2007) was a well-respected Protestant theologian, an ordained minister of the Church of Scotland, and was professor of Christian dogmatics at New College, Edinburgh for twenty-seven years. He wrote the following which captures the internal inconsistencies within some Protestant (especially Reformed/Calvinistic) understandings of the justification vis-à-vis the resurrection of Jesus and the nature of the atonement:
A purely forensic doctrine of justification bypasses the resurrection, and is empty without an active sharing in Christ’s righteousness.
When, therefore, the Protestant doctrine of justification is formulated only in terms of forensic ‘imputation’ of righteousness or the non-imputation of sins in such a way as to avoid saying that to justify is to make righteous, it is the resurrection which is being bypassed. If we think of justification only in light of the crucifixion as non-imputation of sins because of what Christ has borne for our sakes, then we have mutilated it severely. No doubt we can fill it out with more positive content by relating it to the incarnate life of Christ and to his active obedience, that is, fill it out with his positive divine-human righteousness—and that would be right, for then justification becomes not only the non-imputation of sins but the clothing of the sinner with the righteousness of Christ. Nevertheless, that would still be empty and unreal, merely a judicial transaction, unless the doctrine of justification bears in its heart a relation of real union with Christ. Apart from such a union with him through the power of his Spirit, as Calvin puts it, Christ would remain, as it were, inert or idle [Institute 3.1.1]. We require an active relation to Christ as our righteousness, an active and an actual sharing in his righteousness. This is possible only through the resurrection—when we approach justification in this light we see that it is a creative event in which our regeneration or renewal is already included within it. (Thomas F. Torrance, Atonement: The Person and Work of Christ, ed. Robert T. Walker [Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2009], 224)
