The notion of “appearance,
fiction, label” is not associated with Paul’s use of the term “reckoning.” A logisomos
is indispensable when, in concrete dealings, the action one precipitates a
situation for the other that requires him to make a new decision. By means of
the logismos he establishes how he will arrange the new relationship. Inherent
in the divine logismos is the divine power. The individual is what the
divine verdict expresses about him. There is no room here for an “as if”
scenario, as if the righteousness produced by the individual himself were
authentic and that which God accorded to him were fictitious. Anyone who
reasons this way disconnects his knowledge of God from the formation of his conviction;
he does not reason in faith. (Adolf Schlatter, Romans: The Righteousness of
God [trans. Siegfried S. Schatzmann; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1995], 110)
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