. . . If God is essentially incapable of forgiving without such suffering then he is subject to a moral demand outside his will and his sovereignty is compromised—something that is contrary to Calvinists’ most basic theological commitments.
Blake T. Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought: The Problems of
Theism and the Love of God (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2006), 283
n. 19
The notion of “imputed righteousness” doesn’t work in English
because “righteousness” has ethical implications within its primary semantic field
entailing that a righteous person possess properties that must be personal in
nature, or which belong solely to the person who is accountable for righteousness
acts. However, the righteousness that consists in being honorable by keeping
one’s covenant is not the kind of righteousness that results from one’s own
righteous acts. Rather, it is the righteousness of honor that arises from being
honored.
Blake T. Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought: The Problems of
Theism and the Love of God (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2006), 297
Calvin also maintained that the prelapsarian (before the fall)
Adam could have merited salvation; however, after the fall, Adam could not
merit anything of himself because all of his acts were tainted by sin and
unacceptable to God. The tension between the realist view of merit that arises
from Christ’s perfect fulfillment of the law (and the prelapsarian Adam who
would have merited God’s gifts by perfectly fulfilling the law) and the voluntarist
“merit” imputed to us remain in tension—or contradiction in Reformed thought.
Blake T. Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought: The Problems of
Theism and the Love of God (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2006), 386
n. 3
