AgLiving06 said:

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FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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AgLiving06 said:

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FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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The doctrine of the imputation of Christ's righteousness to the believer and the imputation of the believer's sin to Christ through the exchange of faith alone, that uniquely Protestant doctrine is an invention of Martin Luther and has no precedent in the tradition whatsoever at all for ~1500 years. That is the conclusion not just of Catholic historians, but of Protestant historians like Alastair McGrath in his two-volume work, Eustitia Dei, The History of the Doctrine of Justification, which confirms that Luther's interpretation of justification is a complete theological novelty.

At the other end, if you want to look at Matthew J. Thomas' book, Paul's Works of the Law in Second-Century Reception, it's a great analysis of how the very earliest Christians understood Paul's statement that we are not justified by works of the law, and it's quite clear they did not mean what Luther meant by that phrase. Modern biblical scholarship, including much Protestant biblical scholarship comes to the same conclusion. Christer Stendahl, James Dunn, and in particular, NT. Wright. Wright's book, simply titled Justification speaks to this.

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This isn't accurate.

McGrath does not claim imputation language is an invention of Luther. He acknowledges that the church has historically employed imputation language, particularly in the context of Romans. It's unavoidable.

He does say that Luther's specific formulation, emphasizing forensic justification over alternatives, lacks a firm historical grounding. I don't think anybody denies this.

But that's a different discussion.

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Your statement mischaracterizes what I said. I never said McGrath said what you say I said about imputation language. The first sentence in my post is a characterization of the soteriological economics of sola fide, not something I attribute to McGrath. I said that McGrath states " that Luther's interpretation of justification is a complete theological novelty." And so it is.

But more fundamentally the point is that the idea of justification invented and promoted by Luther and adopted by all his progeny does not appear in the Christian lexicon until the early 1500s. You believe something that no orthodox Christian believed until Luther discovered it.

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Why would that be surprising though? If the standard is we throw out anything that gets refined later, there's a ton on the Roman Catholic side that goes by the wayside.

As we see throughout history, doctrine gets clarified and refined as issues arise. We don't often have the foresight to miss all the future arguments.

As we seem to agree, imputed righteousness is certainly in Scripture and the Church Fathers. We should all be able to accept that imputed righteousness as it relates to Christ is correct doctrine.

The clarification or development by Luther of an existing doctrine takes place in response to the errors of Rome. Is it new? Yes, because it's responding to theological claims that the historical church did not have to deal with or address. Does that make this a problem? No because at the end of the day, the question is not "what did the church fathers believe", but instead "What does Scripture say."

And as posted above, the Scripture is quite clear in imputed righteousness and it's role in our salvation.

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There's nothing clarifying about a novelty. It was a complete theological novum.

And it is so clear that no one thought to propose it for 1,500 . I think you should just own it and admit that what you believe wasn't believed or taught by anyone for 1,500 years.

That's not true. Bernard of Clairvaux for sure taught it. Augustine too.

Martin Q. Blank said:

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That's not true. Bernard of Clairvaux for sure taught it. Augustine too.

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Augustine taught no such thing. And I have no knowledge of what Bernard of Clairvaux taught.

There is a radical difference between Augustine's teaching and Luther's idea of sola fide that lies in the recognition that faith without works is incomplete and that works do not merely follow but are INTRINSIC to faith.

Augustine taught that salvation is by grace through faith, but that faith is never alone in the sense of excluding works; rather, true faith necessarily expresses itself in love and OBEDIENCE. This is the Catholic understanding and it rejects the misinterpretation often ascribed to Augustine (or Paul) by people like yourself, of the sola fide doctrine, which the historical Church Fathers, including Augustine, never taught.

But you should take it up with McGrath. He's the one who says it's a theological novum.

You're the one citing him. I don't have time to read a two-volume work, find out exactly what he thinks is novel about Luther's interpretation, and respond to him. All I'm saying is the idea of imputed righteousness and imputed sin was not introduced by Luther. Or is your only problem that the imputation is by faith?

Martin Q. Blank said:

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You're the one citing him. I don't have time to read a two-volume work, find out exactly what he thinks is novel about Luther's interpretation, and respond to him. All I'm saying is the idea of imputed righteousness and imputed sin was not introduced by Luther. Or is your only problem that the imputation is by faith?

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I don't have any problem. I am stating that the doctrine of the imputation of Christ's righteousness to the believer and the imputation of the believer's sin to Christ through the exchange of "faith alone" was a complete theological novum when Luther proposed it meaning that it was not part of Christian orthodoxy for 1,500 years.

I am further saying that some fairly well-regarded Protestant theologians such as McGrath agree that such proposition was in fact a theological novum when Luther first came up with it.

So "through the exchange of faith alone" is the novum, not imputation?

Martin Q. Blank said:

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So "through the exchange of faith alone" is the novum, not imputation?

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I think that is fair as far as it goes.

Imputation plays a role in justification in Catholic theology but the Catholic understanding of the imputation of Jesus Christ's righteousness to sinners, as reflected in the Catechism, does not emphasize a purely forensic or legal imputation in isolation. Instead, it teaches that Christ's incarnation and redemptive act are sufficient to acquit sinners and that faith in Christ which entails obedience to His moral teaching and participation in His Church justifies us before God.

Paul taught that justification is a gift of God's gratuitous love through Jesus Christ. This justification is not by the works of the Mosaic Law but by faith in Christ. Since Christ's incarnation and redemption are fully sufficient to acquit humanity, faith in Christ justifies believers. But this faith necessarily includes not only belief but the works of obedience and participation in the Church. So the "righteousness" that justifies is not only a legal counting of Christ's righteousness to believers as a separate imputation, but a righteousness entailed by a living faith united to Christ and His Church.

That's more or less what all Christians believed before Luther.

Further to this point, it seems like there is an underlying concern among some people who believe in sola fide that if obedience or works or good or meritorious deeds play any meaningful role in justification that is somehow negating or taking away from the glory of God as though there is some sort of competition between men and God over who gets the glory for a person being justified. I think this is a very misguided way of thinking about the issue.
I think the better way of thinking about it is by the concept of God's non-competitive transcendence.

God is not a "supreme being" in an antagonistic relationship with creation: Unlike gods in Greek myths who compete for finite resources and power, the biblical God is the source of all existence ("ipsum esse subsistens," or the sheer act of being itself).

A zero-sum "glory game" does not exist. In a finite world, for one person to gain something, another must often give way (a zero-sum game). This dynamic does not apply to the relationship between God's activity and human activity. The more we attribute to one, the more the other is enhanced, not diminished.

God is not a threat to human freedom. In Jesus, divine and human wills come together in perfect harmony, demonstrating that the human will is not overpowered but rather enhanced by alignment with the divine will.
The "glory of God is man fully alive" said St. Irenaeus of Lyon, God glories in human flourishing and in people becoming fully human and "divinized". God is not competitive with us; instead, He delights in our being fully human, which is brought about through faith working through love; i.e. obedience to God's precepts.

The proper understanding of God, as the non-competitive creator, leads to the highest form of authentic, God-blessed humanism.

But imputation is something you receive. You don't believe works of obedience and participation in the church somehow procures Christ's righteousness to sinners, right? I understand Catholics have a dual understanding of justification - where there's an initial justification and then an ongoing one. But imputation is a matter of faith alone.

This begs the question with a certain definition of faith, doesn't it?

I don't think so because that's what imputation is. It is a giving and receiving. If it were contingent on your obedience, the righteousness would be your own, not someone else's imputed to you.

FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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AgLiving06 said:

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FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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AgLiving06 said:

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FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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The doctrine of the imputation of Christ's righteousness to the believer and the imputation of the believer's sin to Christ through the exchange of faith alone, that uniquely Protestant doctrine is an invention of Martin Luther and has no precedent in the tradition whatsoever at all for ~1500 years. That is the conclusion not just of Catholic historians, but of Protestant historians like Alastair McGrath in his two-volume work, Eustitia Dei, The History of the Doctrine of Justification, which confirms that Luther's interpretation of justification is a complete theological novelty.

At the other end, if you want to look at Matthew J. Thomas' book, Paul's Works of the Law in Second-Century Reception, it's a great analysis of how the very earliest Christians understood Paul's statement that we are not justified by works of the law, and it's quite clear they did not mean what Luther meant by that phrase. Modern biblical scholarship, including much Protestant biblical scholarship comes to the same conclusion. Christer Stendahl, James Dunn, and in particular, NT. Wright. Wright's book, simply titled Justification speaks to this.

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This isn't accurate.

McGrath does not claim imputation language is an invention of Luther. He acknowledges that the church has historically employed imputation language, particularly in the context of Romans. It's unavoidable.

He does say that Luther's specific formulation, emphasizing forensic justification over alternatives, lacks a firm historical grounding. I don't think anybody denies this.

But that's a different discussion.

---

Your statement mischaracterizes what I said. I never said McGrath said what you say I said about imputation language. The first sentence in my post is a characterization of the soteriological economics of sola fide, not something I attribute to McGrath. I said that McGrath states " that Luther's interpretation of justification is a complete theological novelty." And so it is.

But more fundamentally the point is that the idea of justification invented and promoted by Luther and adopted by all his progeny does not appear in the Christian lexicon until the early 1500s. You believe something that no orthodox Christian believed until Luther discovered it.

---

Why would that be surprising though? If the standard is we throw out anything that gets refined later, there's a ton on the Roman Catholic side that goes by the wayside.

As we see throughout history, doctrine gets clarified and refined as issues arise. We don't often have the foresight to miss all the future arguments.

As we seem to agree, imputed righteousness is certainly in Scripture and the Church Fathers. We should all be able to accept that imputed righteousness as it relates to Christ is correct doctrine.

The clarification or development by Luther of an existing doctrine takes place in response to the errors of Rome. Is it new? Yes, because it's responding to theological claims that the historical church did not have to deal with or address. Does that make this a problem? No because at the end of the day, the question is not "what did the church fathers believe", but instead "What does Scripture say."

And as posted above, the Scripture is quite clear in imputed righteousness and it's role in our salvation.

---

There's nothing clarifying about a novelty. It was a complete theological novum.

And it is so clear that no one thought to propose it for 1,500 . I think you should just own it and admit that what you believe wasn't believed or taught by anyone for 1,500 years.

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You keep claiming novelty, but as I pointed out, the definition you seem to want to use is quite untenable for Rome and their evolving or (to use your term) "novel" claims.

Imputation is not novel and that was the entire point of this thread (or the claim at least). It's not novel. It's entirely Scriptural.

You second paragraph is just nonsense. We've clearly established imputation was taught. That's undeniable. Did the exact formula Luther synthesize explicitly exist in the early church? no, but that's not of particular concern. That it was refined in the wake of Rome's error is a completely acceptable situation.

You're simply trying to push an argument that nobody particularly is concerned with, especially Rome because of the problems it creates for your own church.

You start with imputed by faith, but then redefined imputation. But faith is the operative criteria here. What is faith?

Faith means something different depending on the context, but wrt imputation it would be receiving or accepting.

AgLiving06 said:

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FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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AgLiving06 said:

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FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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AgLiving06 said:

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FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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The doctrine of the imputation of Christ's righteousness to the believer and the imputation of the believer's sin to Christ through the exchange of faith alone, that uniquely Protestant doctrine is an invention of Martin Luther and has no precedent in the tradition whatsoever at all for ~1500 years. That is the conclusion not just of Catholic historians, but of Protestant historians like Alastair McGrath in his two-volume work, Eustitia Dei, The History of the Doctrine of Justification, which confirms that Luther's interpretation of justification is a complete theological novelty.

At the other end, if you want to look at Matthew J. Thomas' book, Paul's Works of the Law in Second-Century Reception, it's a great analysis of how the very earliest Christians understood Paul's statement that we are not justified by works of the law, and it's quite clear they did not mean what Luther meant by that phrase. Modern biblical scholarship, including much Protestant biblical scholarship comes to the same conclusion. Christer Stendahl, James Dunn, and in particular, NT. Wright. Wright's book, simply titled Justification speaks to this.

---

This isn't accurate.

McGrath does not claim imputation language is an invention of Luther. He acknowledges that the church has historically employed imputation language, particularly in the context of Romans. It's unavoidable.

He does say that Luther's specific formulation, emphasizing forensic justification over alternatives, lacks a firm historical grounding. I don't think anybody denies this.

But that's a different discussion.

---

Your statement mischaracterizes what I said. I never said McGrath said what you say I said about imputation language. The first sentence in my post is a characterization of the soteriological economics of sola fide, not something I attribute to McGrath. I said that McGrath states " that Luther's interpretation of justification is a complete theological novelty." And so it is.

But more fundamentally the point is that the idea of justification invented and promoted by Luther and adopted by all his progeny does not appear in the Christian lexicon until the early 1500s. You believe something that no orthodox Christian believed until Luther discovered it.

---

Why would that be surprising though? If the standard is we throw out anything that gets refined later, there's a ton on the Roman Catholic side that goes by the wayside.

As we see throughout history, doctrine gets clarified and refined as issues arise. We don't often have the foresight to miss all the future arguments.

As we seem to agree, imputed righteousness is certainly in Scripture and the Church Fathers. We should all be able to accept that imputed righteousness as it relates to Christ is correct doctrine.

The clarification or development by Luther of an existing doctrine takes place in response to the errors of Rome. Is it new? Yes, because it's responding to theological claims that the historical church did not have to deal with or address. Does that make this a problem? No because at the end of the day, the question is not "what did the church fathers believe", but instead "What does Scripture say."

And as posted above, the Scripture is quite clear in imputed righteousness and it's role in our salvation.

---

There's nothing clarifying about a novelty. It was a complete theological novum.

And it is so clear that no one thought to propose it for 1,500 . I think you should just own it and admit that what you believe wasn't believed or taught by anyone for 1,500 years.

---

You keep claiming novelty, but as I pointed out, the definition you seem to want to use is quite untenable for Rome and their evolving or (to use your term) "novel" claims.

Imputation is not novel and that was the entire point of this thread (or the claim at least). It's not novel. It's entirely Scriptural.

You second paragraph is just nonsense. We've clearly established imputation was taught. That's undeniable. Did the exact formula Luther synthesize explicitly exist in the early church? no, but that's not of particular concern. That it was refined in the wake of Rome's error is a completely acceptable situation.

You're simply trying to push an argument that nobody particularly is concerned with, especially Rome because of the problems it creates for your own church.

---

All of that is just deflection. Alistair McGrath claims novelty.

So imputing is receiving something and faith is receiving so you receive something by receiving it? This seems unclear.

The idea of imputation is someone giving or crediting theirs to yours. In the realm of justification, it would be the crediting of Christ's righteousness to the believer and the crediting of the believer's sin to Christ. The believer receives Christ's righteousness by faith. It's not some general promise out there in the ether. He believes that this is true of himself. I am righteous before God because of Christ. That's what faith is - seeing a promise in the Bible and applying it to yourself.

So the act of becoming righteous is solely contingent upon imputation, and imputation solely contingent upon faith.

And faith is defined as believing something is true.

Therefore becoming righteous is dependent only on a person believing something is true.

Correct?

FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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AgLiving06 said:

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FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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AgLiving06 said:

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FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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AgLiving06 said:

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FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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The doctrine of the imputation of Christ's righteousness to the believer and the imputation of the believer's sin to Christ through the exchange of faith alone, that uniquely Protestant doctrine is an invention of Martin Luther and has no precedent in the tradition whatsoever at all for ~1500 years. That is the conclusion not just of Catholic historians, but of Protestant historians like Alastair McGrath in his two-volume work, Eustitia Dei, The History of the Doctrine of Justification, which confirms that Luther's interpretation of justification is a complete theological novelty.

At the other end, if you want to look at Matthew J. Thomas' book, Paul's Works of the Law in Second-Century Reception, it's a great analysis of how the very earliest Christians understood Paul's statement that we are not justified by works of the law, and it's quite clear they did not mean what Luther meant by that phrase. Modern biblical scholarship, including much Protestant biblical scholarship comes to the same conclusion. Christer Stendahl, James Dunn, and in particular, NT. Wright. Wright's book, simply titled Justification speaks to this.

---

This isn't accurate.

McGrath does not claim imputation language is an invention of Luther. He acknowledges that the church has historically employed imputation language, particularly in the context of Romans. It's unavoidable.

He does say that Luther's specific formulation, emphasizing forensic justification over alternatives, lacks a firm historical grounding. I don't think anybody denies this.

But that's a different discussion.

---

Your statement mischaracterizes what I said. I never said McGrath said what you say I said about imputation language. The first sentence in my post is a characterization of the soteriological economics of sola fide, not something I attribute to McGrath. I said that McGrath states " that Luther's interpretation of justification is a complete theological novelty." And so it is.

But more fundamentally the point is that the idea of justification invented and promoted by Luther and adopted by all his progeny does not appear in the Christian lexicon until the early 1500s. You believe something that no orthodox Christian believed until Luther discovered it.

---

Why would that be surprising though? If the standard is we throw out anything that gets refined later, there's a ton on the Roman Catholic side that goes by the wayside.

As we see throughout history, doctrine gets clarified and refined as issues arise. We don't often have the foresight to miss all the future arguments.

As we seem to agree, imputed righteousness is certainly in Scripture and the Church Fathers. We should all be able to accept that imputed righteousness as it relates to Christ is correct doctrine.

The clarification or development by Luther of an existing doctrine takes place in response to the errors of Rome. Is it new? Yes, because it's responding to theological claims that the historical church did not have to deal with or address. Does that make this a problem? No because at the end of the day, the question is not "what did the church fathers believe", but instead "What does Scripture say."

And as posted above, the Scripture is quite clear in imputed righteousness and it's role in our salvation.

---

There's nothing clarifying about a novelty. It was a complete theological novum.

And it is so clear that no one thought to propose it for 1,500 . I think you should just own it and admit that what you believe wasn't believed or taught by anyone for 1,500 years.

---

You keep claiming novelty, but as I pointed out, the definition you seem to want to use is quite untenable for Rome and their evolving or (to use your term) "novel" claims.

Imputation is not novel and that was the entire point of this thread (or the claim at least). It's not novel. It's entirely Scriptural.

You second paragraph is just nonsense. We've clearly established imputation was taught. That's undeniable. Did the exact formula Luther synthesize explicitly exist in the early church? no, but that's not of particular concern. That it was refined in the wake of Rome's error is a completely acceptable situation.

You're simply trying to push an argument that nobody particularly is concerned with, especially Rome because of the problems it creates for your own church.

---

All of that is just deflection. Alistair McGrath claims novelty.

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Gotcha. You don't want a real discussion. You just desire to point to McGrath as if his word is Gospel.

Have a good day.

Zobel said:

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So the act of becoming righteous is solely contingent upon imputation, and imputation solely contingent upon faith.

And faith is defined as believing something is true.

Therefore becoming righteous is dependent only on a person believing something is true.

Correct?

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This is kind of how it worked for Abraham, no?

Zobel said:

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So the act of becoming righteous is solely contingent upon imputation, and imputation solely contingent upon faith.

And faith is defined as believing something is true.

Therefore becoming righteous is dependent only on a person believing something is true.

Correct?

---

Specific to justification, yes - what causes us to stand righteous before God. We cannot make satisfaction to the justice of the law. It requires a foreign righteousness.

Protestants also believe in sanctification where we are renewed in the image of God in righteousness. But that is imperfect and cannot satisfy the justice required to stand before God.

So when you say "becoming righteous", yes to justification. But no to sanctification.

Martin Q. Blank said:

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Zobel said:

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So the act of becoming righteous is solely contingent upon imputation, and imputation solely contingent upon faith.

And faith is defined as believing something is true.

Therefore becoming righteous is dependent only on a person believing something is true.

Correct?

---

Specific to justification, yes - what causes us to stand righteous before God. We cannot make satisfaction to the justice of the law. It requires a foreign righteousness.

Protestants also believe in sanctification where we are renewed in the image of God in righteousness. But that is imperfect and cannot satisfy the justice required to stand before God.

So when you say "becoming righteous", yes to justification. But no to sanctification.

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How then will you be with God in heaven?

No, I don't think so.

Quote:

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Specific to justification, yes - what causes us to stand righteous before God. We cannot make satisfaction to the justice of the law. It requires a foreign righteousness.

Protestants also believe in sanctification where we are renewed in the image of God in righteousness. But that is imperfect and cannot satisfy the justice required to stand before God.

So when you say "becoming righteous", yes to justification. But no to sanctification.

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I dunno how satisfaction got brought into this. Or justice of the law, does that mean the Torah?

So being justified is something a person does in their own self, by believing some facts? It's a purely personal action?

If legal imputation of Christ's righteousness to us at our moment of conversion is real, then why did no one in the first 1500 years of Christianity believe in it?

I can't find an English translation for Augustine.
https://www.augustinus.it/latino/esposizioni_salmi/esposizione_salmo_023_testo.htm

Christ made our transgressions his own.

3. [v 2.] God, my God, look upon me: why have you forsaken me? We heard that verse for the first time on the cross, where the Lord said: Eli, Eli; What is it, my God, my God: Lama Sabacthani? that is, why have you forsaken me? What did the Lord want to say? For God had not forsaken him, since he himself was God; of course the Son of God is God, of course the Word of God is God. Hear from the beginning that evangelist who belched what he had drunk from the Lord's breast 8 Let us see if God is Christ: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word 9. Therefore the Word Himself, who was God, became flesh and dwelt among us. And when the Word God had become flesh, he hung on the cross and said: My God, my God, look at me: why have you forsaken me? Why is it said, except because we were there, except because the body of Christ is the Church 10. Whatever he said, my God, my God, look at me: why have you forsaken me? except in some way making us intent and saying, is this psalm written about me? Far from my salvation, the words of my transgressions. Of those transgressions, of which it was said: He committed no sin, nor was guile found in his mouth. 11. How then does he say of my transgressions; but because he himself prays for our trespasses, and made our trespasses his trespasses, that he might make his righteousness our righteousness?

https://www.logoslibrary.org/augustine/enchiridion/041.html

Begotten and conceived, then, without any indulgence of carnal lust, and therefore bringing with Him no original sin, and by the grace of God joined and united in a wonderful and unspeakable way in one person with the Word, the Only-begotten of the Father, a son by nature, not by grace, and therefore having no sin of His own; nevertheless, on account of the likeness of sinful flesh in which He came, He was called sin, that He might be sacrificed to wash away sin. For, under the Old Covenant. sacrifices for sin were called sins. And He, of whom all these sacrifices were types and shadows, was Himself truly made sin. Hence the apostle, after saying, "We pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God," forthwith adds: "for He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." He does not say, as some incorrect copies read, "He who knew no sin did sin for us," as if Christ had Himself sinned for our sakes; but he says, "Him who knew no sin," that is, Christ, God, to whom we are to be reconciled, "hath made to be sin for us," that is, hath made Him a sacrifice for our sins, by which we might be reconciled to God. He, then, being made sin, just as we are made righteousness (our righteousness being not our own, but God's, not in ourselves, but in Him); He being made sin, not His own, but ours, not in Himself, but in us, showed, by the likeness of sinful flesh in which He was crucified, that though sin was not in Him, yet that in a certain sense He died to sin, by dying in the flesh which was the likeness of sin; and that although He Himself had never lived the old life of sin, yet by His resurrection He typified our new life springing up out of the old death in sin.

Justin Martyr
https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01/anf01.iii.ii.ix.html

He gave His own Son as a ransom for us, the holy One for transgressors, the blameless One for the wicked, the righteous One for the unrighteous, the incorruptible One for the corruptible, the immortal One for them that are mortal. For what other thing was capable of covering our sins than His righteousness? By what other one was it possible that we, the wicked and ungodly, could be justified, than by the only Son of God? O sweet exchange! O unsearchable operation! O benefits surpassing all expectation! that the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous One, and that the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors!

Gregory of Nyssa

https://ch.catholic.or.kr/pundang/4/Homilie_on_the_Song_of_Songs-Gregory_of_Nyssa_St_%26_Norris_5413.pdf

For having transferred to himself the filth of my sins, he shared his own purity with me and constituted me a participant in his own beauty he who first made something desirable out of one who had been repulsive and in this way acted lovingly.

Chrysostom

https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/220211.htm

what words, what thought shall be adequate to realize these things? 'For the righteous,' says he, 'He made a sinner; that He might make the sinners righteous.' Yea rather, he said not even so, but what was greater far; for the word he employed is not the habit, but the quality itself. For he said not "made" [Him] a sinner, but "sin;" not, 'Him that had not sinned' only, but "that had not even known sin; that we" also "might become," he did not say 'righteous,' but, "righteousness," and, "the righteousness of God." For this is [the righteousness] "of God" when we are justified not by works, (in which case it were necessary that not a spot even should be found,) but by grace, in which case all sin is done away.

Bernard

https://www.ecatholic2000.com/bernard/letters.shtml

15. Man therefore was lawfully delivered up, but mercifully set free. Yet mercy was shown in such a way that a kind of justice was not lacking even in his liberation, since, as was most fitting for man's recovery, it was part of the mercy of the liberator to employ justice rather than power against man's enemy. For what could man, the slave of sin, fast bound by the devil, do of himself to recover that righteousness which he had formerly lost? Therefore he who lacked righteousness had another's imputed to him, and in this way: The prince of this world came and found nothing in the Saviour; and because he notwithstanding laid hands on the Innocent he lost most justly those whom he held captive; since He who owed nothing to death, lawfully freed him who was subject to it, both from the debt of death, and the dominion of the devil, by accepting the injustice of death; for with what justice could that be exacted from man a second time? It was man who owed the debt, it was man who paid it. For if one, says S. Paul, died for all, then were all dead (2 Cor. v. 14), so that, as One bore the sins of all, the satisfaction of One is imputed to all. It is not that one forfeited, another satisfied; the Head and body is one, viz., Christ. The Head, therefore, satisfied for the members, Christ for His children, since, according to the Gospel of Paul, by which Peter's falsehood is refuted, He who died for us, quickened us together with Himself, forgiving us all our trespasses, blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross, having spoiled principalities and powers (Col. ii. 13, 14).

Imputation certainly plays a role in justification in Catholic theology but the Catholic understanding of the imputation of Jesus Christ's righteousness to sinners, as reflected in the Catechism, does not emphasize a purely forensic or legal imputation in isolation. Instead, it teaches that Christ's incarnation and redemptive act are sufficient to acquit sinners and that faith in Christ which entails obedience to His moral teaching and participation in His Church justifies us before God.

What's in dispute is the doctrine of the imputation of Christ's righteousness to the believer and the imputation of the believer's sin to Christ through the exchange of "faith alone." This was a complete theological novum when Luther proposed it meaning that it was not part of Christian orthodoxy for 1,500 years.

Paul taught that justification is a gift of God's gratuitous love through Jesus Christ. This justification is not by the works of the Mosaic Law but by faith in Christ. Since Christ's incarnation and redemption are fully sufficient to acquit humanity, faith in Christ justifies believers. But this faith necessarily includes not only belief, i.e. faith alone, but the works of obedience and participation in the Church. So the "righteousness" that justifies is not only a legal counting of Christ's righteousness to believers as a separate imputation, but a righteousness entailed by a living faith united to Christ and His Church.

That's more or less what all Christians believed before Luther discovered "faith alone."

Good stuff, but I don't think it implies that we are dunghills covered in snow, as Luther put it. Rather, I believe that righteousness is a process (i.e., "made righteous") over time that has to include obedience to Christ until death, to the Commandments, and love of neighbor and of God.

Romans 3:28: "For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law"

Thaddeus73 said:

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Good stuff, but I don't think it implies that we are dunghills covered in snow, as Luther put it. Rather, I believe that righteousness is a process (i.e., "made righteous") over time that has to include obedience to Christ until death, to the Commandments, and love of neighbor and of God.

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I assume you are responding to me?

The Church certainly teaches that it's a process that can possibly continue after death where we are finally purified before entering fully into the beatific vision.

Thaddeus73 said:

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Good stuff, but I don't think it implies that we are dunghills covered in snow, as Luther put it. Rather, I believe that righteousness is a process (i.e., "made righteous") over time that has to include obedience to Christ until death, to the Commandments, and love of neighbor and of God.

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I agree, but not with respect to justification. Chrysostom on 2 Cor. 5:21: that we" also "might become," he did not say 'righteous,' but, "righteousness," and, "the righteousness of God."

Our obedience is imperfect and cannot stand at the bar of God's judgement.

2 Cor. 5:21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

What Justin Martyr calls the "great exchange." The righteousness referred to here is not a "process over time". Just like the sin Jesus was made was not a "process over time." How we think of Jesus being made sin who knew no sin, we must think of us being made righteous.