justification and a wing

"...as the Apostle teaches, Christ and the soul are made one flesh....[thus] it follows that all they have becomes theirs in common, as well good things as evil things; so that whatsoever Christ possesses, that the believing soul may take to itself and boast of as its own, and whatever belongs to the soul, that Christ claims as His.

If we compare these possessions, we shall see how inestimable is the gain. Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation; the soul is full of sin, death, and condemnation. Let faith step in, and then sin, death, and hell will belong to Christ, and grace, life, and salvation to the soul. For, if He is a Husband, He must needs take to Himself that which is His wife’s and at the same time, impart to His wife that which is His. For, in giving her His own body and Himself, how can He but give her all that is His? And, in taking to Himself the body of His wife, how can He but take to Himself all that is hers?"

That is Martin Luther, from his tract On the Freedom of a Christian Man (also called On Christian Liberty) . Here he lays out, in as clear an example as I've ever heard, the Reformation teaching on justification: Christ takes on our sin and its subsequent penalty; we take on his righteous law-keeping and its subsequent reward. That is the "what " of it. When it comes to the "how", theologians have since neutered the loving nature of this bone-of-my-bone exchange by assigning it the terminus technicus: "imputation." And, who knew, but this is the centre of a contemporary academic maelstrom! Apparently some, either taking their cue from Käsemann's new perspective on Paul or from exacting exegetical practice, don't agree with Luther's two-way exchange, but want to limit the whole to Christ's assumption of our sin. Instead of, then, being justified by Christ's lawfulness, believers are justified on the basis of their faith! Yipe!

In other news, Lynn-nore's new desk should have been delivered some time this morning. King George keeps up his incessant rattling. Dr. L. and I had a very pleasant lunch yesterday, at which point he got me started talking about the death of theological pedagogy. I remembered to be sad about Susan Ashton's fallen star, paralleling the loss of her delightfully crisp pronunciation into the currents of "the Nashville sound." And, finally, the DVD of Kenneth Branaugh's Much Ado About Nothing came in the mail - a birthday present. I popped it in and thought of who else but that hairy- and chicken-legged fellow Auntie Kara went out with in the early 90's. Still, what a movie! All the flesh, fruit, heat, innuendo, wit, melodrama and unfettered leisure that should go into a Shakespeare comedy and then some! (Oops - have I gotten too long winded for you, now? Sigh no more.)