Micah Tillman

So, now I’m listening to Dr. Derek Thomas‘s “Theological Foundations” course from Reformed Theological Seminary.

He’s got a fantastic accent.  I find his habit of saying, “in [Book] chapter [number] and verse [number]” annoying.  But I can forgive him because of his accent.

____

What I can’t forgive him for (just kidding) is something he said in a lecture I listened to today.

While discussing original sin/guilt, he presented the argument . . .

It would be unfair to ‘impute’ Adam’s sin and guilt to us, therefore, God would not do so

. . . as being most soundly refuted by the statement . . .

If that’s true, then God’s imputing Christ’s righteousness to us is unfair too.

____

To which the reply is:

Of course it was unfair! But unfair != unjust.  Unfair == unjust iff somebody gets hurt (i.e., gets something bad that she/he didn’t deserve).*

We get hurt if sins we didn’t commit are ‘imputed’ to us, but nobody gets hurt if Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us.

Both are unfair, but only the former is also unjust.  The latter is what we Christians like to call ‘grace’.  Grace is unfair.  But, like mercy (which is also unfair), it’s perfectly alright.

Therefore, the fact that God did something unfair in ‘imputing’ Christ’s righteousness to us says nothing about whether or not God would do something as unfair as imputing Adam’s sinfulness to us.

____

I was not a little displeased.

^{* (The symbol/operator “!=” is read “bang equals” — hilariously enough — and means the same as “is not equal to” in computer programming.  “==” means the same as “is equal to,” in computer programming, while “=” means “set equal to.”)}

^{(Therefore, “a == b” means the same as, “a is equal to b” and “evaluates” to either true or false, while “a = b” means the same as “set a equal to b” and doesn’t evaluate to anything.  Instead, it simply makes the value of a equal to the value of b.)}

^{(The word “iff” means the same as “if and only if” in logic shorthand.)}

Tags: Christ, Imputation, Original Sin, Righteousness