Koinonia: The Communication of Grace

Mr. Jonathan E. Mason, an English layman, has posted an excellent six part series concerning the “rationalized” Arminian objections that are raised against the doctrine of imputation and penal satisfaction (which are the biblical guarantee of salvation).

I highly recommend this series to be an excellent read for the average interested individual.

http://jonathanemason.wordpress.com/

Additional, more detailed reading of the underlying Greek and Hebrew Scripture by Thomas J. Ascol on imputation and justification may be read in the Founders Journal #59, at:

http://www.founders.org/FJ59/editorial.html where John Bunyan is quoted as saying:

One day as I was passing into the field…this sentence fell upon my soul. Thy righteousness is in heaven. And me thought, withal, I saw with the eyes of my soul Jesus Christ at God’s right hand; there, I say, was my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, God could not say of me, he wants [=lacks] my righteousness, for that was just [in front of] him. I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse, for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, “The same yesterday, today and, and forever.” …

Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed. I was loosed from my afflictions and irons; my temptations also fled away; so that from that time those dreadful scriptures of God [e.g. Hebrews 12:16 –17] left off to trouble me; now went I also home rejoicing for the grace and love of God.[14]

I hope you enjoy learning about God’s grace in Christ,

gonzodave

The via moderna (the modern way), credited to William of Ockham, was a Catholic, pre-reformation axiom of “facienti quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam” – “God will not deny grace to the man who does his best.” This was viewed as a pactum, or covenant between man and God, where grace enables man to play a role in his justification, but without falling into Pelagianism (a side-step at best). The via moderna was rejected by Martin Luther in his teachings on justification.

Whether it be the substitutionary penal satisfaction in the value credited to the death of Christ, or the biblical doctrine of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to the believer, the Arminian denies both. The so-called Protestant, Arminian theology (e.g., the semi-Pelagian Governmental theory of atonement) denies every bit and wit of biblical “imputation.” Mr. Bryan Maes has posted the following citation at his blog site:

Do we then discard the doctrine of imputation, as maintained by the orthodox theology in opposition to the vain talk of the Pelagians? By no means. We seek only to establish the doctrine; for without it, most assuredly, the whole structure of Christianity must give way. It is only when placed on false ground that it becomes untenable in the way now stated… The Bible knows nothing of a simply outward imputation, by which something is reckoned to a man that does not belong to him in fact… The scriptures make two cases, in this respect, fully parallel. We are justified freely by God, on the ground of what Christ has done and suffered in our room and stead. His righteousness is imputed to us, set over to our account, regarded as our own. But here again the relation in law, supposes and shows a corresponding relation in life. The forensic declaration by which the sinner is pronounced free from guilt, is like that word in the beginning when God said let there be light, and light was. It not only proclaims him righteous for Christ’s sake, but sets the righteousness of Christ in him as part of his own life.

– John Williamson Nevin, The Mystical Presence (Wipf and Stock, 180)