The Doctrine of Justification by Faith
Closes the system with double imputation
The problem it faces
The suretyship scheme still owes an account of how Christ's work actually counts as the believer's, and how a guilty person comes to stand righteous before God.
The move it makes
He closes the forensic circuit with double imputation: the believer's sin is reckoned to Christ and Christ's righteousness reckoned to the believer, received through faith — locking the whole system together.
The new problem it opens
Double imputation invites the legal-fiction charge and rests the whole system on a transactional Father–Son distinction — Christ standing before the Father — that a strong 'to see Jesus is to see the Father' would collapse.
My notes
This opens another problem, which is that the imputation scheme is really just legal fiction and not something actual--it makes no actual change. To defend, he makes it forensically real (stronger than legal fiction) by basing on union with Christ. Rome says that a verdict only declares the person righteous, but doesn't make them righteous. Torrance says salvation should be an actual, not forensic, change, which pushes the actual change to sanctification--making sanctification, not justification, the actual thing that changes.
Where this sits
Upstream
- Vindiciae Evangelicae But now that it's penal, it needs a transfer mechanism that pecuniary provided
Downstream
- What Did the Cross Achieve? relegate to mystery