Justification: Five Views – A Lutheran Response

Jordan Cooper, a Ph.D student at London School of Theology and minister in the AALC, who blogs at Just and Sinner, has written a Lutheran Response to Justification: Five Views. Interesting piece, worth having a glance at. He concludes:

The differences between Luther’s approach to justification and these five views have been made apparent. The Lutheran Reformation affirms the imputation of Christ’s alien righteousness contra Bird, Dunn, and Rafferty. The Lutheran confessions also  accept a legal view of justification as is denied by Karkkainnen. However, justification is not limited to a bare legal declaration, as is the case in the standard Reformed approach, but is a reality that encompasses legal and ontological dimensions. Luther’s approach shares various similarities with Horton’s perspective. However, Horton misses the sacramental context for Lutheran doctrine. There is no justification with an absent Christ, or without one baptism for the remission of sins, or Christ’s true body and blood coming to his church through the Eucharist. Horton also divides justification from the other benefits of the ordo salutis in a manner incommensurate with the Book of Concord. None of the authors accept the unique perspective of Luther on sanctification as a monergistic act effected through God’s justifying word, although Horton seems close to Luther. As the five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation approaches, I pray that the dialogue on this essential issue will continue, as Luther’s voice once again resounds to the church.

Though I would retort that I do, when properly defined, affirm the concept of imputation.