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Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Romans 4:6-8 crushes Calvinism (Faith Alone)

I'm convinced that Romans 4:6-8 is the most powerful text against Calvinism, and if Catholics utilized this one text I believe there would be astronomical success in their apologetics. While I've written about this before, I want to focus on one thing in particular because I cannot emphasize enough how powerfully this verse crushes Calvinism. Here is Paul in Romans 4 (quoting Psalm 32:1-2):
5 And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, 6 just as David also speaks of the
blessing of the one to
whom God counts righteousness apart from works:
7 “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
8 blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.
I have color-coded this text to help get the point across. When Paul says "just as David speaks of counting righteousness," this means David is speaking of the same crediting of righteousness that Paul just talked about. But David doesn't use the phrase "counting righteousness" in Psalm 32:1-2, and instead he speaks of "lawless deeds forgiven" and "not counting sin". This means that for Paul, "counting righteousness" is synonymous with "lawless deeds forgiven," which is also synonymous with "not counting sin". Simply put, when a persons sins are forgiven, God does not regard that person as a sinner any longer, and in fact God regards them as righteous. Using the analogy of a shirt with a stain on it, after I clean the stain I could either "not reckon a stain on the shirt" or, equivalently, I could "reckon cleanliness to the shirt," and I'd be saying the same thing. The only difference is perspective, similar to asking if the glass is reckoned as half full or is reckoned as half empty.
 
Once you recognize that "counting righteousness" is synonymous with "not counting sin" (meaning forgiveness), you can now proceed to hammer the Calvinist on the issue of the imputation of Christ's righteousness. Since the two phrases are equivalent, then it's impossible that "crediting righteousness" refers to "imputing Christ's righteousness," because you'd then have to read "not crediting sin" as referring to "imputing Christ's righteousness" as well, which makes little grammatical sense. How does transferring Christ's righteousness to your account come out of the phrase "not count sin"? It doesn't. 
 
And speaking of "not counting," since the word "count" is the same in both phrases, this means it must carry the same meaning. So when the Protestant thinks "count" means something along the lines of "transferring," so that the text is interpreted as "transferring [Christ's] righteousness," this fails when "transferring" is carried over to David's words, for then David says "the Lord will NOT transfer sin." How can a person who's sins the Lord will NOT take away be a Blessed man? He cannot be a Blessed man if his sin remains, and thus "count" cannot mean "transfer" in either case. Rather, the only definition that makes sense is to read "counted" as simply "regards as," and this gives a coherent interpretation of each phrase: "regards as righteous" and "does not regard as a sinner". Thus, the imputation of Christ's righteousness has no place in this crucial justification text.

The beauty of this passage is that it goes right to the Calvinist's favorite place in the Bible, Romans 4, and it turns their interpretation on it's head. No need for James 2:24 since Romans 4 does the job and does it quite well.

37 comments:

Unknown said...

That doesn't demolish Calvinism. Its exactly what they say: You don't become righteous for real after conversion, God just "counts" you as righteous even though in the back of his mind he knows you aren't. God fakes himself out. Where do you think Calvinists got the idea? From Romans 4:6-8. The problem that no non-Calvinist but me wants to face is that Paul was a Gnostic. Its really that simple: Paul is the author of Calvinism, which is just Gnosticism.

Unknown said...

Notice also how the Gnostic twists Old Testament scripture in his framing of the discussion:


"5 And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, 6 just as David also speaks...."

DAVID DOES NOT SPEAK OF THE UNGODLY BUT OF THE GODLY!!!

This is Psalm 32 being refereced right (I don't feel like looking it up) -- doesn't David say in verse 5 or 6 that because God forgives sins "therefore the GODLY will pray to You"??? The GODLY, not the UNgodly as the Gnostic claims.

"David speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works"

Really, oh Gnostic? Apart from works? Where the hell does David say anything about "apart from works" in Psalm 32? (I looked up the Psalm; it is Psalm 32 being used.) Psalm 32 says NOTHING about "apart from works" -- in fact, forgiveness is contingent on PRAYER in Psalm 32, and isn't prayer a WORK? Apart from works my butt.

The bit the Gnostic quotes:
7 “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, 8 blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”

Where's the "apart from works"? Where's the claim that this applies to the ungodly, you godless Gnostic writer?

cwdlaw223 said...

Calvinism is a form of Gnosticism and theological relativism all rolled into one. Wormwood would be proud he convinced so many people to believe in so many falsehoods.

Either admit that Christianity failed for 1,400 years or stop trying to twist history and backfill a theology with scripture even though such theology does not naturally flow from all of scripture.

Calvinism will never die because it makes people feel like they're in charge and satisfies their intellectual pride.

cwdlaw223 said...

Prayer and faith are works unless you need to up-end logic and reason to make a theological worldview fit.

Unknown said...

"...stop trying to twist history and backfill a theology with scripture even though such theology does not naturally flow from all of scripture."

Since when do Protestants really count anything but the Gnostic texts of Romans and Galatians as scripture? I mean aside from Augustine's Confessions.

Unknown said...

Psalm 32:2 "Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile."

I wonder why the Gnostic doesn't quote this part of Psalm 32. I guess it doesn't fit the lie about "apart from works."



Verse 11 "Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, ye righteous: and shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart."

These don't fit the Gnostic template of the lie that God justifies the UNgodly.

Steve Martin said...

Huh?

How does that crush "faith alone"?

To me, that is exactly what the verses are saying.

And I'm no defender of Calvin went off the rails, too. Sending people back into themselves for proof that they are of the elect. Terrible theology.

Nick said...

Steve,
I said it crushes Calvinism, particularly the Reformed doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone. It does apply to Lutherans though also, because Imputation of Christ's Righteousness is clearly ruled out as a possible interpretation.

Michael Taylor said...

Folks,

Wake up and smell the coffee. If there's one thing Nick is good at, it's being wrong about Calvinism. Over and over again he knocks down the straw men of his own making. Someone called me an "anti-Catholic." If that person had anything like an evenhanded standard, he'd call Nick an "anti-Calvinist," as this blog pretty much is nothing more than a collection of poorly reasoned hit pieces against Calvinism.

The exegesis here is abysmal and as I've shown Nick in other venues, it's not even in accordance with Roman Catholic principles of interpretation.

One thing Vatican II has absolutely right is the priority of the New Testament in interpreting the Old. The irony is that Nick has far more in common with Protestant Dispensationalists who interpret the New in light of the Old, when it really is the other way around.

This means that Paul's use of the psalm within the logical flow of Romans 4 is, finally, determinative of its meaning *for Paul's purposes.* This is not to say that we don't go back to the OT context to see what may have drawn Paul there. (We definitely ought to do this.) But we don't stay there. Sometimes there are subtle changes and differences in the New. In this case Paul deliberately stops where he does to isolate the part of the Psalm 32 that makes his point.

I can't go into the entire exegesis here, but suffice it to say that the imputation of righteousness and non-imputation of sin is a permanent arrangement, since Paul's Greek uses the strongest possible form of emphatic denial. God not only does not, but will never count "the blessed man's" sin against him.

So who is the "Blessed man?" It is the believer whose trusts in the God who justifies the ungodly. It is he or she whose sins Christ "became" on the cross (2 Cor. 5:21).

Nick, the schedule is freeing up. Any debate topics interest you?

Nick said...

Michael,

You said: "I can't go into the entire exegesis here"

That's not fair. You can't accuse me of bad exegesis unless you demonstrate why.

The question can basically be reduced down to: What does it mean to NOT impute? I shouldn't have to beg for an answer from Protestants.

I'm open to many debate topics, preferably a Scriptural topic. Romans 4, Ephesians 2, Galatians 3, Ecclesiology, Sola Scriptura, Eternal Security in Paul, Active obedience, Penal substitution, Justification, Church History, Were the Church Fathers Catholic, Canon of Scripture, etc, etc.

How about debating whether Romans 4 supports Catholicism or Reformed theology?

Steve Martin said...

" because Imputation of Christ's Righteousness is clearly ruled out as a possible interpretation."

For you guys, maybe.

We believe that is exactly what it means.

Unknown said...

"In this case Paul deliberately stops where he does to isolate the part of the Psalm 32 that makes his point." (Michael Taylor)

If you quote a passage to prove a point, and stop short of the next verse which demolishes that point, that's called twisting scripture.

Even so, he didn't just stop after quoting a verse; he removed a phrase mid-verse.

He quotes as “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”

The full text: "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile."

The bolded text has been purposefully cut away by the Gnostic scripture twister.

And he LIES and says that David said something about "apart from works" which he DID NOT.

And he ignores that PRAYER (A WORK) is specifically credited, all while claiming its apart from works!

That's called being a big fat liar.

Michael Taylor said...

James Jordan,

I'm trying to figure out where you're coming from...

Are you saying Paul was a "Gnostic?"

Michael Taylor said...

Nick>>That's not fair. You can't accuse me of bad exegesis unless you demonstrate why.<<

That's rich coming from you Nick. You're the king of truncated replies which mostly skip over other every salient point against your position. Mine was a combox reply--not the place for a detailed exegesis of Romans 4. Still, I gave you plenty of nutshell reasons, which you skipped over in your reply to me (which is of course to be expected, since this is your M.O.)

>>The question can basically be reduced down to: What does it mean to NOT impute? I shouldn't have to beg for an answer from Protestants.<<

It means not to count one's sins against them. For who could stand if He did? "[I]n Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, *not counting their trespasses against them,* and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation." (2 Cor. 5:19).

You utterly skipped over in silence my point that you are misrepresenting Roman Catholicism insofar as you adopt a Dispensationalist heremeneutic for interpreting OT quotations in the NT.

You utterly ignore the logical flow of Romans and instead insist on bringing Paul into conformity with Psalm 32, instead of looking at how Paul is pressing the Psalm into service within the context of *Paul's* argument in Romans 4. You did this in our debate in Romans 9, and you're doing it here.

But that's not even right by Rome's standards. Not only do you misrepresent Reformed theology routinely, you also seem to be ignorant of much of your own tradition. For example, recall that in our debate I pointed out that the Augustinian tradition represented by the Thomists interprets Romans 9 in the same way Calvinists do--that is, as having to do with individual election and not merely "corporate election to temporal tasks." I'll even refer you to a valuable resource written by someone who would pass every standard of Roman orthodoxy, lest there by any doubt. Just say the word, and I'll send you the link. (That's how confident I am that Rome and Geneva are actually not far apart on the issue of unconditional election of individuals.)

I>>'m open to many debate topics, preferably a Scriptural topic. Romans 4, Ephesians 2, Galatians 3, Ecclesiology, Sola Scriptura, Eternal Security in Paul, Active obedience, Penal substitution, Justification, Church History, Were the Church Fathers Catholic, Canon of Scripture, etc, etc. <<

That's a lot of topics there....all very interesting.

>>How about debating whether Romans 4 supports Catholicism or Reformed theology?<<

I'm game. Let's try to work out some specific debate propositions. And then we can work on the time frame.


cwdlaw223 said...

Michael -

Care to explain why Catholic soteriology (which includes the EO) dominated the Christian world from 200-1,400? Man became more intelligent? Certainly you would admit that someone who believed in the Mass couldn't hold a P view of soteriology.

I started at 200 AD to avoid the debates that Ps try to drum up that we don't know enough about the early Church.

cwdlaw223 said...

Michael -

Why don't you debate whether ALL of scripture supports the Catholic or Reformed view! That's the real issue.

Michael Taylor said...

Cdw,

Did you get my email?

Mike Taylor

cwdlaw223 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Michael,
I have enjoyed reading your blog. Its one of the best I have come across. Your posts are an excellent resource for Protestants and RC"s.

Keep up the good work.

Michael Taylor said...

Anony,

[Blushing] Thanks, brother. (Or sister?)

I'm hoping to expand it this summer as my schedule frees up (teacher with summers off) :-)

Mike Taylor

Unknown said...

@Michael Taylor,

If my position isn't clear to you at this point, then you're no more capable of reading comprehension than the Gnostic twister of Psalm 32 who wrote Romans 4.

cwdlaw223 said...

Paul wrote Romans and wasn't a gnostic.

Michael Taylor said...

Hi James,

You're assuming that I read everything up to this point...So now I'm clear: You say Paul was a Gnostic. Fascinating. Thanks for the clarification. No thanks for insulting my reading comprehension skills, which apparently aren't at your high standards. (Because they must be really high if you're reading Paul as a Gnostic).

Cheers,

MT

N/a said...

No thanks for insulting my reading comprehension skills, which apparently aren't at your high standards. (Because they must be really high if you're reading Paul as a Gnostic).

Ooooooooh!

Yes, that was meant to be the typical young student's reaction. :p

How anybody can read Paul as a Gnostic in Romans is totally beyond me. I mean, look at chapter 1..

Unknown said...

"How anybody can read Paul as a Gnostic in Romans is totally beyond me. I mean, look at chapter 1.."

How anyone can read chapters 1, 2, and 12 as if they were written by the same person as 3,4,5,7,9 is beyond me. This is why I did somewhat avoid saying outright "Paul was a Gnostic." The historical character named Paul may not have been, especially if he was indeed responsible for chapters 1,2,12. But whoever wrote 3,4,5,7,9 was most certainly a Gnostic.

Anonymous said...

James,
Where is your proof that Paul did not write the entire book of Romans? Keep in mind that proof is not the same thing as an assertion.

Unknown said...

"Where is your proof that Paul did not write the entire book of Romans?"

It doesn't make sense to speak of "proof" with respect to something that it is impossible to either prove or disprove. You cannot prove that he did write the whole book either. And, BTW, if you're a Calvinist, remember in Calvinism its a sin to post comments anonymously.

We can tell that Paul did not write the whole book of Romans as we have it because of how contradictory it is. Granted, Paul could just be a nut who contradicts himself a lot and thus could have wrote the whole thing. However, assuming Paul to be a logical person, it would be unlikely he wrote the whole thing. I'm not going to list every contradiction but lets just throw out one.

In Romans 2 for instance he says "It is not the hearers of the Law who will be justified, but the doers of the Law shall be justified." Notice, he admits that one can be justified by doing the Law.

Yet in Romans 3, "By the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified." These can't be harmonized. Well, I guess you could harmonize them by saying that the spirit may be justified by doing the Law but the flesh can't be but that sounds absurd.

Interestingly enough, in that passage in Romans 3 it doesn't say "no flesh" but actually in Greek "all flesh." Literally translated from Greek it reads "By the works of the Law shall not all flesh be justified." That actually sounds like he's trying to say some will be justified by the Law and some by another means (i.e. faith in Christ). But the surrounding context of chapter 3 forbids this interpretation, which is why translators hide that this verse says this by translating it differently. BUT obviously, without the context of chapter 3, the statement "By the works of the Law shall not all flesh be justified" would fit with Romans 2 "the doers of the Law shall be justified." IT would mean the doers of the Law are justified by the Law and those who don't do the Law have the option of being justified by another means, faith in Christ. But the context of chapter 3 seems to have been added to cut off this rather benign treatment of the Jews and make Paul a full-blown anti-Judite.

Anonymous said...

James,
Since you are the one making the claim that Paul did not write the entire book or is skeptical that he did its up to you to give us some facts to support this assertion. I've seen various scholars make these kinds of claims but they never produce any facts. Only more speculations and speculations are not facts.

It is true that a man would be justified by doing the works of the law if he could do them perfectly all the time. The fact is no man can. Only the Lord Jesus was able to keep the law perfectly. This is why all men are condemned before God is that they fail to keep the law. This is why he wrote "By the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified."

He does goes go in chapter 3 to describe how a man is justified in 24,28 and 31.

Unknown said...

Anonymous Calvinist: I'm not your slave. I will refer you to J.C. O'neill's book Paul's Letter to the Romans, and to Heikki Raisanen's Paul and the Law.

O'neill's view extremely summarized: (1) The text contradicts itself A LOT. (2) Paul MUST have been logical and coherent; therefore nearly 70% of the text is interpolation.

Heikki Raisanen comes afterwards and his work is at least partially a response to O'neil. His views extremely summarized: (1) The text contradicts itself. (2) Paul need not have been as logically coherent as tradition claims.

Now, go read those books and learn something!

Whichever of these two is right, the point is that top notch scholars are increasingly coming to agreement that the Pauline epistles are contradictory. (Raisanen gives a bit of an overview of this fact in the opening of his book.) Not only that one epistle contradicts another, but that Romans contradicts itself. Anyone who pretends that the Pauline epistles have one coherent message, or even that Romans is coherent, is simply not a serious scholar but a Fundamentalist playing at being a scholar.

Unknown said...

I'll also suggest to you Paul and Epictetus on Law which shows that Paul's thinking on the Law comes from the Greek philosophy of Epictetus not Judaism nor Christ.

And by "Paul" of course I mean the epistles, not the character from Acts who may have in fact never written so much as one word in his entire life for all we know.

N/a said...

James,

But whoever wrote 3,4,5,7,9 was most certainly a Gnostic.

Ok, read this:

Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was reckoned unto him; but for our sake also, unto whom it shall be reckoned, who believe on him that raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification. (Romans 4:23–25)

I had no idea that the Gnostics believed the Old Testament God justifies those who believe that He raised Jesus from a full physical death. Nonetheless, I still believe the author of Romans 4 was most certainly a catholic individual. :p

Unknown said...

"I had no idea that the Gnostics believed the Old Testament"

Not all Gnosticism was completely opposed to the Old Testament. If you knew much about Gnosticism you would know that Velentinians accepted the Old Testament, especially those who followed Ptolemy. Where Marcion's theory was that the Old Testament was the production of a different and inferior god, and where some other Gnostics like Apelles saw it as entirely made up, the Valentinians especially those following Ptolemy's system believed that some parts of the Old Testament were from God, some from man, and some from I don't remember what they called it exactly but basically their version of the devil. What makes one Gnostic ultimately is the belief that salvation is by knowledge/belief with no connection to character or morality, which is precisely what is being taught in Romans 4.

Anonymous said...

James Jordan,
Again, all you are giving me is the speculations of a couple of scholars. There are no contradictions in Paul's letters once you understand the contexts.

N/a said...

James,

Not all Gnosticism was completely opposed to the Old Testament. If you knew much about Gnosticism you would know that Velentinians accepted the Old Testament, especially those who followed Ptolemy.

I see what you did there..

You quoted part of what I wrote in order to make it look like I meant something else, followed by trying to make me look ignorant. What I wrote was, "I had no idea that the Gnostics believed the Old Testament God justifies those who believe that He raised Jesus from a full physical death." I was already aware that Valentinians accepted Old Testament writings. Within the past eight years I have read one book about Gnosticism, several of the Nag Hammadi texts, and even some blog posts by modern Gnostics.

What makes one Gnostic ultimately is the belief that salvation is by knowledge/belief with no connection to character or morality, which is precisely what is being taught in Romans 4.

Are you saying knowledge and belief are the same thing? Knowledge (gnosis) and belief or faith (pistis) are two different things according to the New Testament, the Valentinians, and modern scientists.

No where in Romans does it teach that salvation is divorced from character or morality. While Romans 4 and 5 teach justification by faith instead of works, chapter 6 verses 1–4 begin the section of the letter where Paul tells his readers that this liberty we have in Christ is not an excuse to do whatever we please. He wrote of living a new life of doing what is good and refraining from sin. There is no justification without sanctification.

N/a said...

James,

There are some more of your comments that I want to reply to.

This is why I did somewhat avoid saying outright "Paul was a Gnostic."

In your first comment to Nick's post (this one) you wrote "The problem that no non-Calvinist but me wants to face is that Paul was a Gnostic."

Its really that simple: Paul is the author of Calvinism, which is just Gnosticism.

Yeah, and John was the author of Lutheranism, which is just Montanism.

This is Psalm 32 being refereced right (I don't feel like looking it up) -- doesn't David say in verse 5 or 6 that because God forgives sins "therefore the GODLY will pray to You"??? The GODLY, not the UNgodly as the Gnostic claims.

The sinner is forgiven and thus justified in the sight of God, therefore, in her new life of sanctification, she will pray to God and do her best to walk in His ways. The author of Romans was not twisting Scripture.

Since when do Protestants really count anything but the Gnostic texts of Romans and Galatians as scripture? I mean aside from Augustine's Confessions.

Have you ever read through the Lutheran confessions, the Westminster standards, and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer? All what their authors ever referenced or cited were Romans, Galatians, and Augustine's Confessions. LOL.

And he LIES and says that David said something about "apart from works" which he DID NOT.

If you would simply read Romans 4 and 6, you would understand that Paul personally described David's view of justification as being in itself grace rather than works and that the justified from then on does works.

The full text: "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile."

God forgives that person and does not impute iniquity, not because of anything they've done to merit His forgiveness, rather, because He is a gracious God. That person who is justified has no guile in his spirit because he lives in godliness from then on for his gracious God. Do you understand what I am saying? One does not amend one's life in order to merit justification – one amends one's life because one is justified.

And, BTW, if you're a Calvinist, remember in Calvinism its a sin to post comments anonymously.

Bwahahah! XD

I wonder if anonymous was amused.

Anyway, James, I am curious as to what is your persuasion. You feel very strongly about the supposed Gnostic allegedly twisting the Old Testament writings. What do you believe in? What are you? I hope you don't mind me asking.

Nick said...

I've been away from the computer the last few days so I'll try to catch up with comments.

Steve Martin said...

I'm not a fan of Calvinism.

But I am a big fan of faith alone:

http://theoldadam.com/2013/06/17/justification-by-faith/

That one is a winner.