In What was credited to Abraham by faith? I suggested—perhaps somewhat mischievously, certainly polemically—that ‘The language of “imputation” or “impartation” or “infusion” is overblown.’ Nathan wonders why I am so opposed to the concept. What am I trying to counter? That bears some consideration. At a gut level…

I object to the assumption that we need this sort of esoteric, pseudo-rational, unbiblical metaphysics in order to explain the significance of Jesus’ death for the life of his people.

I object to the obscurantism of so much of the technical theological language.

I object to the finicky, obsessive, blinkered, book-keeping scholasticism that reduces the concrete life of trust to the management of an absolute, overriding, non-negotiable soteriological abstraction.

I made a bit of a mess of this—the system let me down—but I’ve moved this lengthy conversation about the passover and atonement to a separate thread. It arose from this paragraph in response to Peter Wilkinson:

And I still don’t get this argument about the passover. I see no reference to the passover in Romans 3:21-26. I can’t find any connection in the LXX between apolutrōsis (“redemption”) and the passover. The language of justification is nowhere associated with the passover. Ezekiel 43 makes no reference to the passover—sacrifices are made for the consecration of the altar (cf. Ex. 29:37). The nations are “justified” in Isaiah 45:25, but the nations do not take part in the return from exile, whether or not it is thought of as a second exodus. Where else is dikaioō used to describe “God’s bringing his people out of the Babylonian exile in Isaiah”? The passover itself was not in any case an atoning event, the passover sacrifice was not a sacrifice for sin. The “blood of the covenant” in Matthew 26:28 is a reference to Exodus 24:8, which is also not a sacrifice for sin, rather than to the passover lamb. When Paul describes Christ as “our Passover lamb” (1 Cor. 5:7), he is not thinking of the atoning significance of Jesus’ death.

Still on the subject of judgment and works, justification and faith, and the fundamental misalignment of Reformed theology… Darren asks: “What was credited to Abraham by faith?” I’m not entirely sure what he’s getting at—he may just be asking what “it” refers to: “he counted it to him as righteousness”. If so, the answer is simply that God counted or reckoned his act of believing as righteousness. But it gives me an excuse to look a little more closely at Paul’s argument about righteousness and faith. We’ll begin with three other Old Testament passages:

• Moses says that “it will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to do all this commandment before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us” (Deut. 6:25).
• Having been delivered by God from his enemies, David declares:

The LORD dealt with me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands he rewarded me. For I have kept the ways of the LORD, and have not wickedly departed from my God. For all his rules were before me, and his statutes I did not put away from me. I was blameless before him, and I kept myself from my guilt. So the LORD has rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in his sight. (Psa 18:20–24; cf. 2 Sam. 22:21-25)

• When Phinehas killed the man of Israel and his Midianite wife, it was “counted to him as righteousness from generation to generation forever” (Ps. 106:31, with reference to Num. 25:7-8). This is the closest parallel to Genesis 15:6. Notice that it is what Phinehas did (he “stood up and intervened, and the plague was stayed”) that is counted to him as righteousness.

I was hoping that at least one of the views expressed in [amazon:978-0310490333:inline], edited by Alan Stanley, would recognize that the theological problem looks very different—and frankly much less problematic—from a narrative-historical perspective. Sadly not. The four positions can be efficiently summarized using the chapter headings:

• Robert Wilkin: “Christians will be judged according to their works at the rewards judgment, but not at the final judgment.”
• Thomas Schreiner: “Justification apart from and by works: at the final judgment works will confirm justification.”
• James Dunn: “If Paul could believe both in justification by faith and judgment according to works, why should that be a problem for us?’
• Michael Barber: “A Catholic Perspective: our works are meritorious at the final judgment because of our union with Christ.”

Each chapter is followed by critical—and sometimes quite scathing—responses from the other three disputants. [pullquote]In my view the manner in which these four theologians tie themselves in knots trying to rationalize the data is pretty strong confirmation that the traditional paradigm is flawed.[/pullquote] What follows is a rough outline, with some exegetical illustration, of how I think the issue might better be approached.

Elkanah had two wives. Peninnah has children, but Hannah has no children. Elkanah favours Hannah, but Peninnah “used to provoke her grievously to irritate her, because the Lord had closed her womb”. At the temple in Shiloh Hannah prays that the Lord of hosts will look on the affliction of his servant and give her a son. Eventually the boy Samuel is born, and when he is weaned, Hannah takes him to the temple and hands him over to the Lord. She then utters an impassioned prayer: “My heart exults in the Lord; my horn is exalted in the Lord. My mouth derides my enemies, because I rejoice in your salvation…” (1 Sam. 2:1).

I have found John Barton’s defence of “biblical criticism” as a fundamentally semantic or literary enterprise extremely helpful in clarifying what I mean by a narrative-historical hermeneutic. The biblical text relates, on the one hand, to how things really were, and it is the task of historical-criticism to examine that referential relationship: is the text what it purports to be? does it give an accurate and trustworthy account of the people and events to which it refers? But it relates, on the other hand, to the communities which produced and read the text. This is also a historical relationship, but the critical task in this case is primarily to understand what is being said by and for the benefit of the original communities. It is this emphasis on what is being said that is so valuable in [amazon:978-0664225872:inline].