The doctrine of Imputation is the Protestant teaching that when someone becomes a Christian the righteousness of Christ is imputed to that person. “Imputed” is understood to denote a transfer of moral virtue from Jesus to the believer. Jesus doesn’t lose any of his righteous status, but he shares it with the believer. Since being right with God is thought to depend on no less than perfection, the perfection of Christ is now received as a gift. The forgiven sinner stands before God with all of one’s sins covered by the righteousness of Christ. With one’s sins covered, God no longer sees a sinner standing before him, but someone who is completely righteous. Since no one is good enough to earn a righteous standing before God it must be accepted as a free gift from God through faith in Jesus.
Imputation has been under scrutiny for a number of years by scholars adhering to the so-called New Perspective on Paul. A New Perspective scholar might argue that the transfer of merit is still a very ‘Roman Catholic’ idea. It’s true that Luther argued against the imputation of meritorious virtue from a treasury of the saints based on penance or on the purchase of indulgences. But it seems that he adjusted the doctrine of imputation so that it was no longer a matter of doing “works” to receive merit from the saints, but of simply trusting in Christ to receive his righteousness.
If imputation is not a biblical doctrine, however, then how might it have originated? The understanding that people are righteous (understood as morally virtuous) only by imputation of Christ’s righteousness was complemented, and perhaps influenced, by the long-held belief that people were sinners because of the imputation of Adam’s sin. So one can be righteous without ever having done a virtuous deed and one can carry the guilt of sin without ever having committed a wrong. While the alien righteousness of Christ is imputed to sinners, counting them “as if” they were righteous, the alien guilt of Adam is imputed even to those who have never committed sin.[i] Infants, for example, were considered in need of baptism because of sin that is inherited or imputed from Adam. (Such conclusions were defended by appeal to passages like Romans 5:14-16).
Augustine advanced the doctrine of imputed sin, having been influenced by Platonic dualism which disparaged all things material including the flesh. Augustine believed that humans were so damaged by the fall as to be rendered incapable of doing anything good apart from God’s initiative.[ii]
While sinners shared in the imputed sin of Adam, Augustine advocated an “infused righteousness” by which God’s righteousness empowers believers to be transformed. The righteousness they receive from God is not merely a legal fiction, in reality belonging to another, but this righteousness becomes the believer’s own having been infused into one’s very being. Sinners are not righteous by nature, but through the empowerment of God’s righteousness one has become, and is becoming, a righteous person.
Pelagius, Augustine’s chief opponent, was conversely in favor of an “imitated” righteousness in which one is required to imitate the righteous life of Christ by exerting human effort. [iii] He did not share Augustine’s low view of humanity, but believed that humans are capable of not sinning.[iv] It’s not that Adam’s sin was imputed to sinners, but that their sins are in imitation of his. Pelagius contended that people neither share in Adam’s sin, nor in Christ’s righteousness, but righteousness or sin is the result of which path one imitates. Pelagius taught that humans take initiative toward salvation by their own effort apart from any divine inner prompting which might override free will.[v]
While Pelagius rejected infant baptism as essential to eternal life, his student, Coelestius rejected it outright. This led to Pelagius’ rejection in the West, but he was accepted by the eastern churches. This should not be surprising since Platonic dualism’s low view of the flesh was a western phenomenon. Pelagius was a westerner, having come from Britain, but he was most successful teaching in Jerusalem.
It is not surprising that Luther, an Augustinian monk, would have been influenced by Augustine’s emphasis on God’s initiative in salvation and sanctification. The depravity of humans, according to Augustine, meant they can only live righteously if they are infused with an alien righteousness from without. The depravity of humans, according to Luther, meant they could only saved by an alien righteousness imputed from without. Infused righteousness could easily have evolved into imputed righteousness. Moreover, Luther was reacting to the Catholic notion of imputed saintly merit, contending that only Christ’s righteousness is sufficient.
[i] See R. K. Johnston, “Imputation,” in Walter A. Elwell, editor, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1984), 555.
[ii] See Norman L. Geisler, “Augustine of Hippo,” in Elwell, 106.
[iii] Johnston, 555.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] See Bruce L. Shelley, “Pelagius” in Elwell, 834.
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