Wright vs. Piper

A standard Reformed account of justification includes the view that Christ's righteousness as being "imputed" into us (in Luther's phrase, the alien righteousness of Christ is somehow or other transferred onto genuine believers).

Bishop Wright has suggested that such a view, based on our understanding of the first century imagery of the law-court, makes no sense at all--the righteousness of the judge is a distinct concept from the righteousness of the defendant.  Thus, the conception of justification as an imputation of (one and the same) righteousness makes a serious category mistake.

Piper objects, suggesting that Wright conflates what (divine) righteousness does (viz., keeps covenant, judges impartially, deals with sin, advocates for the helpless) with what righteousness is.  I'm not so sure here, but Piper claims that in order to see where Wright goes wrong, we need to ask just what righteousness is.

The problem is with Piper's definition, that God's righteousness is his "unswerving commitment to do what is right...which is to preserve the honor of his name and display his glory", or "God's righteousness...is most fundamentally his unwavering allegiance to uphold the value of his glory" (moreover, "his doing what is right is a knowledge and love of what is right that is so full and so strong that it consists in an inviolable allegiance or commitment or faithfulness to do what is right") [Piper The Future of Justification].  Piper spends much energy trying to prove that this is the Biblically accurate way of understanding righteousness.

But even if he is right about what righteousness is, it's still not clear how that can be imputed or transferred.  Clearly after justification, the believer does not have an unswerving commitment to do what is right.  Even after conversion, Peter was prone to pandering to the Judaizers instead of following his commitment to expanding the gospel even to the gentiles.  Even after my conversion, I tend to "swerve" here and there.

Here is a passage from Piper:

"For both the defendant and the judge, righteousness is "an unwavering allegiance to treasure and uphold the glory of God."  This is what makes God and humans "righteous."  Therefore, it may turn out in this law-court that it is indeed conceivable for the Judge's righteousness to be shared by the defendant. It may be that when the defendant lacks moral righteousness, the Judge...may find a way to make his righteousness count for the defendant" (Piper FoJ).

Ack.  First, I don't understand why he adds "moral righteousness".  But the deeper problem is that given his definition, it's still not clear how this transfer or imputation is supposed to take place.  A straightforward transfer is not occurring since the human defendant does not possess an unwavering allegiance to upholding God's glory.  Perhaps Piper means that humans were obligated to give God glory, but failed to do so (and so sinned and became unrighteous), but since God is able to "find a way to make his righteousness count for the defendant, since it is exactly the righteousness he needs", then the defendant is no longer guilty.  But it still is unclear how this is supposed to be a case of imputation or transfer, for what is being transferred is not righteousness as defined by Piper--rather it seems that the debt is getting paid by the Judge.  Even if true, that doesn't show how there's any transfer.

Let me try to explain.  Suppose that I owe a lender $50, and instead of giving him the money, I blow it all on candy.  Now suppose the lender says to me:

   "you owe me $50, because that is how much I lent to you, and I always recognize this and give myself what I am due.  However, since I recognize that you can no longer pay me because you wasted your money on candy, you should be punished.  But I'll overlook your punishment, and instead, I'll make up for your debt by paying what you owe me".

Now there's something quite silly about saying something like this.  The lender wouldn't really be "paying" himself; rather, he's just canceling the debt.  Moreover, and this is my main point, no transfer of anything is occurring.  Granted that I no longer owe anything, which is a good thing; still, no "item" was transferred or imputed to me.  Similarly, although Christ our Judge may cancel our debt (or pay it Himself), he hasn't transferred that unswerving commitment to make sure he gets what he is owed.  Nothing is transferred to me; rather, something is taken away.  That's fine--I have no quibble there.  My quibble is that somehow Piper thinks we can still make sense of the notion of imputation of righteousness even with his new definition of righteousness.  Although he does an impressive job of defending his definition, he goes no way in explaining how it supports the idea of imputation.