Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Zachary Purvis on "Sola Fide" and Theodore Beza on "Imputation" in Reformed Theology

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)