You have a very exalted view of humanity, too exalted IMO. I respect your opinion but I disagree as to the height of holiness and purity you claim for the human race. The NT tells us that he is a fool who believes he is without sin. We are all full of sin. If you read Augustine and his work on Original Sin, you will see that, according to Augustine, humanity is in a terribly impaired and sinful state. He discusses how a child is instantly selfish, instantly worried about himself over all others, and refuses to share with his siblings. Read “Confessions” where Augustine poors out his cynicism about the Fall and how he was as a young man growing up. We are still stained deeply by the Fall.
Where I think you misunderstand Imputation theology is you believe that Luther, et. al taught a libertine, who-cares? type of theology in which once you accept Jesus you can knock over a liquor store and burn down the Chrysler Building with no consequences. OSAS, as Triune pointed out, is not Luther’s teaching. As he stated, it is the overreaction and extremist Calvinism that came much later to the scene that created this silly notion.
Paul makes it very simple for us…There is the Law and there is the justification by faith that Christ won for us triumphantly through His Passion. There is no in between. We either live the Law 100% and are saved that way, which is impossible, or we are justified in Christ Jesus by the faith that saves. His righteousness is credited to us. That is the legal and accounting language used by a tent-maker, which Paul was all his life. It is credited, not earned. Paul goes out of his way in Romans to tell us that we are given a wage we did not work for or earn. The Law, Paul tells us, condemns, leads to works which cause us to boast, pride, and ultimately death. The wages of sin is death.
We cannot be in a state of justification by Christ, receiving the salvation credited to us through His act, not ours, and then expect to add works and merit from a treasury that the Church dispenses, and somehow make more and supplement the salvific work of Jesus? How can we do more than He did? How can we think in our arrogance that we are living the Law? How can we think we somehow, thanks to the Sacraments, have lost all our pride, our lust, our jealousy, our anger, our sense of superiority, our covetousness, our impatience, our gluttony, you name it? How? It’s semi-Pelagianism at best, full-blown Pelagianism at worst!
Who am I to think that Jesus’ act on the Holy Cross somehow will need more? How can little ole me, a sinful man who tries his best but is littered with sin by nature, how can I go back to living under the Law and think my behavior will please God and He’ll balance his work on the Cross with my efforts and own personal goodness?
Finally, you’re overlooking the Protestant teachings on sanctification. Sanctification is a teaching of Luther, Calvin, the Anglican divines, etc. As a person is baptized, grows in faith and in one’s relationship with Christ knowing He has justified them, the Christian draws nearer to God. He wants to feed the poor, wants to love his enemies more despite often falling short, hopefully lust and gluttony and covetous behavior subsides more. Justification leading to sanctification is the imputation theology, not a licentious sinful Sodom and Gomorrah libertine lifestyle. In the end, a person who is justified, who has received God’s saving grace and knows he is justified by the Lord will serve, grow, and be sanctified. So it’s a misnomer to think that the Reformers thought you could get baptized then go blow up the Food Court at the Mall and go to heaven anyway.
How do you square what Paul tells us over and over in Romans, Galatians, etc. with this merit and earning potential approach?
Gurney, you know this ain’t true. God’s image is anything but as you said. We inherit the characteristic of the fallen world, yes, but we are not made as such.
Let’s get another analogy. When Michelangelo sculptured the famous statue of King David in Florence, he took a huge slab of marble, ugly and without an image from the forest. As an artist he saw the image of David embedded in the stone. What he did then was to chip away what was not in the image and produce the famous statue of David.
That’s what we are. God already made us righteous, in his image. The stain of sins accumulated through the years either by us or through our fallen nature make us like the ugly slab of stone before the artist chip it into an image of magnificient beauty. Every time we repent, giving indulgence, good work, the sum total is grace is imparted upon us and the stain or the chip that’s not part of the image is being chipped or refined, purified, cleansed or washed away. I do not use technical theological terms because I am not trained theologically but also those can be very much misunderstood by the Protestants. Nevertheless those terms like credit and deposit of a bank account are really apt to describe the chipping and also the receiving of the dirt through sins or grace to offset the debit.
Actually your argument strengthens Catholic’s position rather than Luther’s. Clothes with Jesus’ righteousness imply that people will always wears that clothe and therefore as long as he does not take it off he is always righteous. This kind of theology of course often leads to the idea of OSAS.
The Catholic’s position is different. We are made righteous through grace every time when we repent or work for it. That’s why in the OT, God is referred to the potter or the refiner of pure gold. He works to make us until we become what we are in his eyes. This is done through the fire of repentance, and it does not stopped in fact until we die.
