Ben Witherington III on “Imputed Righteousness”

As with a good portion of Reformed theology, the notion of “imputed righteousness” has never made a lot of sense to me. However much I have read the “proof-texts” that many of those in the Reformed camp have presented, I still have not been able to see exactly what they are asserting, at least not in my Bible. And the idea that the righteousness of Christ is somehow or another “transferred” (or imputed) to a believer at the moment of his or her conversion really hasn’t made much sense to me on a logical fashion either.

There have been a number of times over the last year or two that I considering diving into this notion, but after dipping my toes into the different essays that I read on the subject, I decided to back off and save tackling this subject for another day ( some might remember that I actually started to write a series of posts on it this spring but realized that I was over my head). I find the whole Piper/Wright Justification debate, the Faith in Christ/Faithfulness of Christ debate as well as this notion of imputed righteousness to be interlocked, and frankly I think that it is important to be able to understand these ideas in an attempt to live the ethically pleasing lives that I believe that God has called us to live.

But enough with the lengthy introduction. I have been reading Ben Witherington III’s book “The Indelible Image” for the last few weeks, which is in actuality a book on Christian Ethics. I’ve been moving rather slowly through it, alternating my readings through my daily Bible Study, my research on Hell, as well as continuing through Thomas Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ.

Tonight I got to the portion of the book where Witherington discusses this whole “imputed righteousness” notion (pp. 223-227)

“What, then, about the notion of “imputed righteousness”? Is this a Pauline idea, or is this something that the early Reformers, such as Calvin and Luther and Erasmus, read into the text? We should remember that Luther especially was responding to the abuses of the papacy when it came to things such as indulgences, the attempt to buy years off of time spent in purgatory. It is no surprise that when Luther realized that this practice was at odds with what Paul said about salvation as a gift, he overreacted in the way he did to all sorts of works or good deeds, not just the works of the Mosaic law, which is what Paul is critiquing. We must consider first the quotation of Genesis 15:6 in Romans 4:3, where Paul follows the LXX [Septuagint], which has the passive voice “was counted/reckoned rather than the active voice “he counted” which is what the Hebrew has. I must stress that this quotation has nothing to do with Christ’s righteousness being counted in place of the believers righteousness. The text is quite explicit: it was Abraham’s faith that was reckoned to him as his righteousness. The former is credited in lieu of or as the latter. Notice that this is not forensic language but rather accounting or bookkeeping language (emphasis mine). There is a difference. In this quotation Paul is not talking about a legal fiction but rather about an exchange. God accepts one thing from Abraham in lieu of his giving God something else. ”

Witherington then goes on to examine a number of other texts where some have found the idea of  “imputed righteousness” such as in 1 Corinthians 30 and Philippians 3:9 and compares these to other Pauline texts that seem to say otherwise. After Witherington deals with the scriptural references fro and against “imputed righteousness” and comes to the conclusion that Paul did not say anything to that effect, he looks for the source of this doctrine.

Witherington continues:

“Once more we must ask, “If imputed righteousness is not in Paul’s thought, whence comes this idea that Christ’s alien righteousness is imputed to beleivers?” As it turns out, it comes from Erasmus, who bequeathed it to some of the later Reformers¹. Erasmus chose to depart from the Vulgate rendering of Romans 4, which had “Abraham believed God and it was reputed [reputatum] to him unto justice.” Erasmus instead, drawing on the language of the lawyers of his day, rendered the text as follows: “Abraham believed God and it was imputed [imputatum] to him for justice.” This is the rendering found in Erasmus’ famous 1516 Greek New Testament, which was to have great influence both on the Reformers and on the early English translations of the New Testament. This might not have been so important except that Melanchthon used Erasmus’ Greek New Testament, and this sort of rendering was passed on into later Lutheran orthodoxy. Thus, an “imputation” understanding of the term diakaiosyne was imported into Pauline discussion, and has been a part of it ever since.”

A couple of paragraphs later, Witherington discusses the ethical ramifications of “imputed righteousness”:

“…Where it the case that when God looks at believers, he sees only Christ, that in turn would mean that God is prepared to be deceived or at least overlook Christian sin and not hold believers accountable for it. This is the direct opposite of what Paul says in Galatians 4 and 1 Corinthians 6. These ideas amount to a presentation to us of a God of legal fiction who in the end is less than totally righteous. This too would contradict the teachings of Jesus that God was requiring a higher righteousness of Jesus’ followers than Moses required of his, indeed even higher than the very particular Pharisees. It may be asked, “Why would God expect less of the believer under grace after the Spirit had been given than he expected and required under the Mosaic law?” This whole idea hardly comports with the intensification of demands that we find in the ethics of both Jesus and Paul.”

Some day soon, I plan to revisit all of these ideas of justification, imputed righteousness and the faith/faithfulness of Christ. When I do, I think that I will re-examine this portion (that I have bookmarked on my blog) of Witherington’s book, as he has explained it (imputed righteousness) better to me that anyone else to date.

1. Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation; A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics, 1996, p. 24 [↩]