I think the following will be useful for Latter-day Saints when they interact with Reformed Protestants:
According to confessional Protestantism,
justification entails the definitive divine declaration that a person though
intrinsically sinful, is legally righteous in the sight of God. The
righteousness on the basis of which sinners are declared righteous before God
is, moreover, alien to them and proper to Christ; it is His obedience to the
law of His people imputed to sinners and received through faith alone that
trusts in Christ and His finished work. . . . These are two parts to
justification: the imputation of Christ’s righteousness and the forgiveness of
sins. The righteousness by which we are justified is not proper to us, whether
conferred by us, whether conferred by us to ourselves or infused in us by the
Holy Spirit, but proper to Christ and imputed to us. This imputed righteousness
is twofold: Christ’s perfect obedience to the law, and Christ’s payment of the
penalty for our disobedience. There are two ends of justification: proximate—that
is, our peace of conscience and our eternal salvation; and ultimate—that is,
the glory of God in His righteousness and mercy. (Zachary Purvis, “Introduction
Profiles of Authors and Texts,” in Justification by Faith Alone: Selected Writings
from Theodore Beza (1519-1605), Amandus Polanus (1561-1610), and Francis
Turretin (1623-1687) [trans. Casey Carmichael; Classic Reformed Theology 6;
Grand Rapids, Mich.: Reformation Heritage Press, 2023], xi, xxxiv-xxxv)
But regarding the true explanation of
this word, omitting other meanings that are irrelevant, I affirm the Greek word
λογιζεσθαι and the Latin word imputare. I affirm these
words just as in translation our sins are compared with debts and sinners with
debtors. In this way also, in translation the word to impute in this
argument that we treat is used by Moses and the apostle Paul. Therefore, it is
this translated meaning assumed by those who demand or return accounts (that
are the shares of the creditor). Moreover, there are two tables of those
accounts—one of what has been received and another of what has been spent—that we
commonly call the received and the sent, in which indeed the creditor is said “to
charge to one’s account” (ελλογειν)—that is,
to bring back into accounts against the debtor. Moreover, what he credited to
him and what is credited is said “to be charged to one’s account” (ελλογεισθαι). The apostle Pual uses these words in Romans
5:13 and Philemon 18. But in turn, the debtor for the same account is said “to
charge his account” (ελλογειν) what he brings back into his
accounts, as if spent and paid to the creditor by himself or in his own name.
Consequently, the creditor is said to reckon (λογιζεσθαι) this to the debtor—that is, to impute that
he approves and accepts as paid whether by the debtor himself or by the sponsor
of the debtor or by someone else he has rightly received in his name, or even as
if he has accepted as paid what was not paid to him but has freely pardoned it.
All this is indicated by the term acceptation. Moreover, the debtor, in
turn, paying back accounts, it said to impute to the credit what he pays to
him, and when accepted, they agree that the debt is released.
Hence, these words are therefore translated
for the tribunal of God, before which we are all established debtors, not about
to repay an account for mutual credit but belonging to the offended divine
majesty. Moreover, as it is indicated in the likeness of talents, we are
debtors with very bad faith in the deeds of the king and the affairs of the
Lord in the thing accomplished. Therefore, that capital action belongs to God
in a manifold way. He is the one who acts and the Judge from whom there is no
court of appeal against sinners—that is, all men in themselves. Moreover, here
it is not a question of credited money that must be paid but of penalties that
correspond to the divine majesty and to our faithlessness, just as the formula
of the law says for those to be paid even to the outermost part. (Theodore
Beza, “A Defense of Justification through the Righteousness of Christ Alone,
Freely Imputed, Obtained by Living Faith” (1592), in Justification by Faith
Alone: Selected Writings from Theodore Beza (1519-1605), Amandus Polanus
(1561-1610), and Francis Turretin (1623-1687) [trans. Casey Carmichael;
Classic Reformed Theology 6; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Reformation Heritage Press,
2023], 93-94)
Another False and
Wicked Argument of the Anonymous Man against the Imputation of the
Righteousness of Christ Himself
The righteousness of Christ, which is
said to be imputed to us as if it were ours, cannot coexist with inner imputation,
through which Christ is said to impute faith to us, which He establishes in us
for righteousness and which is the inner beginning of all good works.
Beza’s Defense
This objection hangs from the repeated
errors of the anonymous man, for whom to impute means nothing else than “to
give, count, and actually hand over.” Many times before we have refuted this ignorance.
If this were true, surely to impute sins would be the same as “to give,
to count, or actually to hand over sins.” Likewise, to impute the wage owed
to the one who works would be the same as “to give,” which is also the
sense that the anonymous man has readily persuaded us that eternal life
is imputed—that is, it is paid for by our good works. Moreover, if the free
righteousness imputed without works abolishes the inherent righteousness, by
which consciousness in the beginning of this writing was it assented that we continually
affirm justification and sanctification cling to each other by an inseparable
bond? And how would the apostle be truthful when he testifies that the
obedience of Christ (that is, which Christ furnished to the Father, not which
is inchoate within us) established us as righteous? For it is in this sense
that what we said a little while before must be accepted. But the apostle is
indeed truthful, as surely as the anonymous man must in no manner be heard. (Ibid.,
107-8)
