The Imputation of Christ's Active Obedience to Believers

[RBerman]

Hmmmmm.... "Father, Son and Holy Ghost..." Well, so much for the Trinity...

Now you're just being silly.

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God..."

Obviously God has no part with conversion of pagans, right?

So salvation is about words???

Well, at least you did answer the question, thank-you...

The Christmas conversion of Scrooge is a falsehood in your total-depravity understanding...

Fair enough, and thank-you...

This kind of understanding is "How the West was LOST..."

It is a Scroogic, dry, and heartless understanding...

Of the intervention by God into a hardened heart...

And its holy transformation into the likeness of God...

Any other Calvinists out there?

Arsenios

Now you're still being silly.

[Rdr. Arsenios]

Now you're just being silly.

Do you really think that the "Ghost of Christmas Past, Present, and Future" is any other Ghost than the Holy Ghost?

Now you're still being silly.

Do you really think that "the intervention by God into a hardened heart...
And its holy transformation into the likeness of God", which is indeed
what happened with Scrooge, is silly?

Do you really think that the events were NOT about the redemption of Scrooge?

Do you REALLY think it was about the hunger of Little Tim and others that was the point of the story?

Do you really think it was about God providing their worldly needs?

Can you really not see the salvation of Scrooge in this story?

How ALL ELSE pales before this blinding light?

This is the story of the redemption of the Rich Man...

Lazarus needed no such redemption ...

Arsenios

[RBerman]

Do you really think that the "Ghost of Christmas Past, Present, and Future" is any other Ghost than the Holy Ghost?

Nothing in the text implies such.

[Rdr. Arsenios]

Nothing in the text implies such.

Knowledge of past, present and future and the ability to take Scrooge to all three is a clue...

How many besides the Holy Spirit can do this?

Arsenios

[RBerman]

Knowledge of past, present and future and the ability to take Scrooge to all three is a clue...How many besides the Holy Spirit can do this?

It's fiction, George. The answers aren't limited to historical truth.

[hedrick]

Well, I don't consider Scrooge as canonical, but I kind of agree with George.

As I see it, the problem with Romans is that Paul gives his argument kind of backwards. He starts out by justification by faith, then realizes that people could take this as meaning that it's OK to sin, and fills the rest in, ending that sequence with the atonement, in Rom 6.

If you kind of look at the whole thing, it's pretty clear that we are credited with Christ's righteousness precisely because we are no longer sinners. Not that we never sin, but that we are no longer "slave of sin." Through faith, God makes us righteous (justifies us) by uniting us with Christ in his death and resurrection. We are now new people. We are longer sinners. At least in principle. Of course Paul understands all too well how far we fall short. But we are still new people, and sin is no longer the "real us." It's now something that happens when we (all too frequently) fail.

But I claim that for Paul, Christ's righteousness is credited to us precisely because we are Christ's. We have repented (turned around), trust him, and become new people. And so God gives us credit for something we haven't really earned yet, but we're still committed to it.

As I understand it, Calvin agrees with this. He sees the center of Christianity as being the "mystic union" with Christ. His discussion of the Atonement in the Institutes say that Christ's death changes us, because we are united with him. Indeed his primary explanation of the atonement is not that God had to punish someone, but that through participation in Christ's death and resurrection we become new people. He says that even though we have fallen, God still sees things in us that he loves. (The passages that suggest that he hates sinners, Calvin considers to be "accommodation," i.e. things said because we weren't ready to understand the full truth.) But he needs to get rid of the sin. So Christ dies for us, in order that by participation in him we can become new people. For him the focus of the atonement is upon Christ's obedience. Not just his death, but his obedience throughout his life. Through our union with Christ, that changes us. Active obedience matters because it's Christ's whole person that transforms us, not just his death.

[Rdr. Arsenios]

It's fiction, George. The answers aren't limited to historical truth.

I think you just said that because it's fiction, its answers are not limited to historical truth... Did I get that right?

OR... How the West lost Hollywood, and why it is that kids would rather live in idealistic fantasies than your limitations of "historical truth."

You are correct, the story is fictional - It is the fictional account of the Redemption of the Rich Man, and it sketches him ugly, and Little Tim in holy beauty... That is how fiction generates the thematic currents and counter-currents of the outworking of its plots... What you are missing is that it is a Christian story, illustrating the transformative power of an encounter of a very evil rich man with God, where he is transformed from being a tortured and hate-filled and miserly person into one that is joyous, loving and giving... How it is that by seeing the lives of others who are better, and then his own end in a dreary, cold and frozen wind-swept grave where no one comes to mourn, he is overcome with compunction and turns his whole life around in the Love of God...

When stories are NOT fiction, you close your eyes to them as well, for the stories of Christian saints and martyrs [in all the eras following the martyrdom of Christ Whom we follow] are not a part of your required reading either... So now you have your eyes closed to fiction and non-fiction stories of Christ working in the world through the Holy Spirit, and you are left with the fiction of Calvin's fantasy of imputed justification of the sinful, with perhaps their later repentance, but only if God does it for them... When the Christian Witness of the Saints and Martyrs of Christ bear witness in their very lives to you, let alone their words, I have never heard a Calvinist response

But here is what I would ask of you...

What is the difference between the CALL of God and His later JUSTIFICATION... Can you give a little illustration in, say, a hypothetical life of a person lost in total depravity, living sinfully, who is first called, then justified, then glorified? What does that look like? You remember the sequence, yes?

Rom 8:29-30
For whom he did FORE-KNOW,
He also did FORE-ORDAIN to be conformed to the IMAGE (icon) of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Moreover whom He did FORE-ORDAIN,
them He also CALLED:
and whom He CALLED,
them He also JUSTIFIED:
and whom He JUSTIFIED,
them He also GLORIFIED.

So the story of salvation begins in the FORE-KNOWLEDGE of God,
And ends in the GLORIFICATION of man...

And in between we have God's CALL,
and LATER, following God's call, His JUSTIFICATION...

We have to add to this the text that tells us:
"MANY are CALLED, but FEW are CHOSEN..."

And what I want from you is an accounting, because you are here teaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, an accounting of the difference between the CALL, which so many receive, and the later JUSTIFICATION, which constitutes the "CHOSEN" to which so very FEW ATTAIN, OK?

Just a little example would help greatly, so that a person struggling in sins, like Scrooge, might be able to recognize the call, and then the justification, being offered to him in the Gospel of Jesus Christ...

Would you do that for us?

And then, perhaps, the sequence of events that occupy the WALK between the CALL and the JUSTIFICATION

Arsenios

[Rdr. Arsenios]

Well, I don't consider Scrooge as canonical, but I kind of agree with George.

My only beef with RB here is that
IF one cannot find a PLACE within one's Christian understanding of Scrooge's Redemption,
THEN one has to question one's understanding...

Arsenios

[RBerman]

My only beef with RB here is that IF one cannot find a PLACE within one's Christian understanding of Scrooge's Redemption, THEN one has to question one's understanding.

Certainly a story like Scrooge's story could be the story of a man repenting of his sin and surrendering his life to the Lordship of Christ. Or it could be the story of a man whose altruism was driven by a desire to secure his reputation in the eyes of men, while remaining disinterested in serving or honoring God.

[Rdr. Arsenios]

Certainly a story like Scrooge's story could be the story of a man repenting of his sin and surrendering his life to the Lordship of Christ.
Or it could be the story of a man whose altruism was driven by a desire to secure his reputation in the eyes of men, while remaining disinterested in serving or honoring God.

What if it is neither?
What if it is simply a story of a bitter man's redemption?

The point of Scrooge, you see, and why I brought him up here, is that he does not fit into the formulaic template that Calvinistic understanding artificially imposes on the rich mosaic of the working of the Holy Spirit in human experience...

It is a humanistic and artificially formulaic template that demands that one "Receive Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior." in order to be saved... And the crime does not stop there... For even in those terms, was Scrooge's conversion not EXTREMELY personal? And was not the SPIRIT of Christmas , whether past, present or future, the Spirit of the Birth of Christ, which as the Angel Gabriel announced to the Birth Giver of Christ-God is indeed the HOLY SPIRIT? And was not his conversion complete even to the smallest detail, and over-wrought in joy and gladness in every respect? Are you not denigrating the work of God in this man? Are you really, after seeing the whole of his [fictional, granted] life, prepared to say that such a man, and such a conversion, can be Godless? [Or maybe not???] Is not this to denigrate the work of the Holy Spirit in such a man? Is not such an understanding of the conversion of Scrooge a condemnation of one's theological underpinnings? I mean, if there was no doubt about the misery of his character prior to his conversion, and how could there be, given its extreme characterization by the novelist, how can there then be any doubt about the holiness of the man after his conversion, given the equally extreme characterization of his generosity and ebullient joy therein??

I mean, RB... I want sometimes to just GRAB you by your lapels and rattle your rattles and ask you, as I would ask Scrooge himself were he to walk in off the paper in his misery and into my home: "What are you thinking???" I mean, only a Scrooge could withhold the conversion of a Scrooge and call it possibly anything other than holy! [As indeed Scrooge did to his hires and to Little Tim...]

Your response condemns your theology, my Brother, as one that is tentative, human, brittle, and frail... Just as was the anti-theology of Scrooge prior to his Visitation... You hear such a story and look for something WRONG with it, rather than affirm and rejoice in God Who inspired its author to write it...

OR... How the West was Lost...

I mean, if EVER there was a story of God's redemption of a wretched soul, this is it...

Arsenios

[siliconwafer]

Christ's righteousness is counted as our righteousness. Phil. 3:9 says that we do not have a righteousness of our own; we have the righteousness of Christ. All of Christ's righteousness has been imputed to believers, not just some of His righteousness.

[Rdr. Arsenios]

Christ's righteousness is counted as our righteousness.

Sounds like you have an accounting problem, I would have to opine...

I mean, there are two possible conditions in which you might say this:

1 - If you are keeping your old man alive and living in his sins...
2 - If you are putting your old man to death and are dead to his sins...

Do you say that one, or both, or neither of these conditions applies?

If you for some reason think that you can just keep on sinning as you were doing before,
and then think that God will only see Christ in you
and that He will account your ongoing sins as Christ's Righteousness,
you had better think again...

God does not count willful sinning as righteousness...
And especially not the Righteousness of His Son...

Arsenios

Phil. 3:9 says that we do not have a righteousness of our own; we have the righteousness of Christ. All of Christ's righteousness has been imputed to believers, not just some of His righteousness.[/QUOTE]

[RBerman]

What if it is neither? What if it is simply a story of a bitter man's redemption?

There are all kinds of redemption, so I'm sure one fits for Scrooge.

The point of Scrooge, you see, and why I brought him up here, is that he does not fit into the formulaic template that Calvinistic understanding artificially imposes on the rich mosaic of the working of the Holy Spirit in human experience...

It is a humanistic and artificially formulaic template that demands that one "Receive Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior." in order to be saved... And the crime does not stop there... For even in those terms, was Scrooge's conversion not EXTREMELY personal? And was not the SPIRIT of Christmas , whether past, present or future, the Spirit of the Birth of Christ, which as the Angel Gabriel announced to the Birth Giver of Christ-God is indeed the HOLY SPIRIT? And was not his conversion complete even to the smallest detail, and over-wrought in joy and gladness in every respect? Are you not denigrating the work of God in this man? Are you really, after seeing the whole of his [fictional, granted] life, prepared to say that such a man, and such a conversion, can be Godless? [Or maybe not???] Is not this to denigrate the work of the Holy Spirit in such a man? Is not such an understanding of the conversion of Scrooge a condemnation of one's theological underpinnings? I mean, if there was no doubt about the misery of his character prior to his conversion, and how could there be, given its extreme characterization by the novelist, how can there then be any doubt about the holiness of the man after his conversion, given the equally extreme characterization of his generosity and ebullient joy therein??

I mean, RB... I want sometimes to just GRAB you by your lapels and rattle your rattles and ask you, as I would ask Scrooge himself were he to walk in off the paper in his misery and into my home: "What are you thinking???" I mean, only a Scrooge could withhold the conversion of a Scrooge and call it possibly anything other than holy! [As indeed Scrooge did to his hires and to Little Tim...]

You're injecting a lot into the story that I'm not aware is there.

Your response condemns your theology, my Brother, as one that is tentative, human, brittle, and frail... Just as was the anti-theology of Scrooge prior to his Visitation... You hear such a story and look for something WRONG with it, rather than affirm and rejoice in God Who inspired its author to write it...

I've come to expect nothing else from you but condemnation of my theology, and your track record remains secure. There's nothing wrong with the story of Scrooge. It is what it is, and nothing more.

I mean, if EVER there was a story of God's redemption of a wretched soul, this is it...

I prefer the ones in the Bible, the ones that mention God.

[Rdr. Arsenios]

There are all kinds of redemption, so I'm sure one fits for Scrooge.

But you have no idea what it might be??

You're injecting a lot into the story that I'm not aware is there.

It is the CAUSE of that unawareness that I am addressing...

I've come to expect nothing else from you but condemnation of my theology,
and your track record remains secure.
There's nothing wrong with the story of Scrooge. It is what it is, and nothing more.

It doesn't follow the formulaic of your theology, right?

I prefer the ones in the Bible, the ones that mention God.

And close your eyes to the world?

OK...

Arsenios

[Rdr. Arsenios]

There are all kinds of redemption, so I'm sure one fits for Scrooge.

But you have no idea what it might be??

You're injecting a lot into the story that I'm not aware is there.

It is the CAUSE of that unawareness that I am addressing...

I've come to expect nothing else from you but condemnation of my theology,
and your track record remains secure.
There's nothing wrong with the story of Scrooge. It is what it is, and nothing more.

It doesn't follow the formulaic of your theology, right?

I prefer the ones in the Bible, the ones that mention God.

And close your eyes to the world?

OK...

Arsenios