C. Imputation of the righteousness/active obedience of Christ (also, infusion of righteousness/“justification” as “make” vs. “declare” righteous)

Note: This list is a work in progress, and may change at any time both in the selection of quotations and the content of the annotations. In the meantime, feel free to offer any suggestions.

AD DIOGNETUM (POLYCARP?)

“that the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous One, and that the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors!” (chap. 9)1

Augustine

“…but he says, “Him who knew no sin,” that is, Christ, God, to whom we are to be reconciled, “hath made to be sin for us,” that is, hath made Him a sacrifice for our sins, by which we might be reconciled to God. He, then, being made sin, just as we are made righteousness (our righteousness being not our own, but God’s, not in ourselves, but in Him); He being made sin, not His own, but ours, not in Himself, but in us, showed, by the likeness of sinful flesh in which He was crucified, that though sin was not in Him, yet that in a certain sense He died to sin, by dying in the flesh which was the likeness of sin…” (Enchiridion, chap. 41)2

Leo the Great

“True faith also, that justifies the transgressors and makes them just…” (Letter 124, sec. 4; “To the Monks of Palestine”)3

  1. The doctrine of justification by an alien, imputed righteousness!
  2. Although he is not always so clear on the point, Augustine here teaches unequivocally that our justification is not due to any righteousness that God works in us, but it is rather on the basis of a righteousness wholly outside of us, that is, God’s own righteousness, that we are reconciled to God; this demands the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, as the means by which we become righteousness. Any time, therefore, that Augustine seems to imply the nature of “justification” as an infusion of righteousness, or to understand the meaning of the word (due to the regrettable translation in the Vulgate of “dikaiow” as “iustificare”) as “make righteous” rather than “declare righteous” needs to be set against this passage, in which he affirms that the way in which we are “made righteous” is by the principle of an entirely alien righteousness, which we, being “in Him,” may count our own.
  3. Leo views “justifying transgressors” as something different from “making” them just – believers are declared righteous (justification) and made righteous (sanctification) by faith alone. Lat.: “…justificans impios, et creans justos…” – hence, “iustificare” must mean something different to Leo than to “make righteous” (“creare iustos”).

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