The prince and the pauper

Recently I had an impromptu debate on Facebook regarding the Reformed doctrine of imputation. My exchange alludes to this post as a frame of reference:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2017/08/paul-and-james-on-justification.html

This is just a rehash of the hackneyed objection that sole fide is a legal fiction. Is there anything new to say on that issue? What's the point of repeating the stock arguments and counterarguments?

In my experience, debating particular doctrines is never constructive because the participants don't agree on the rules of evidence. For Protestants, it's an essentially exegetical debate over what biblical revelation teaches, using the grammatico-historical method. BTW, contemporary Catholic Bible scholars use the same hermeneutical methodology.

For Catholic apologists, by contrast, it's filtered through selective appeals to the church fathers, the Magisterium, and a priori notions of what is fitting. 

The debate over particular doctrines never gets anywhere because that's a downstream discussion where constructive dialogue is only possible if there's common ground on the rules of evidence, which lies upstream.

i) In my experience, many Catholics don't bother to read Bible commentaries (or articles) by contemporary Catholic Bible scholars. If they did, they could avoid the false dichotomy between Catholic and Protestant hermeneutics. There's no essential difference between the way Joseph Fitzmyer, Raymond Brown, Luke Timothy Johnson, John Meier, John Collins et al. exegete Scripture and their Protestant counterparts. The main difference is that Catholic scholars are typically liberal, whereas Protestant scholars range along a liberal/conservative continuum. 

ii) I don't have to affirm the general perspicuity of Scripture to say that Scripture is clear on particular issues. For one thing, on certain doctrines, the teaching of Scripture is redundant, so even if a particular word or sentence is ambiguous, it doesn't hang on that.

iii) BTW, Mommy and Daddy didn't teach me that Scripture is perspicuous. My parents didn't have a definitive role in the hermeneutical process in the first place. It would behoove you to avoid stereotyping people if you know nothing about their personal background.

iv) Catholic apologists labor under the illusion that they can achieve the certainty denied to Protestants. But Catholic epistemology simply pushes the same issues back a step. To establish the authority of the Magisterium, you must interpret texts apart from the authority of the Magisterium. If you don't have some confidence in your ability to interpret the church fathers, church councils, &c., then your skepticism disqualifies you from ever making a case for the Magisterium.

iv) I don't fret over inconclusiveness. I accept the epistemic situation that God has put us in. I don't invent a makeweight.

In my experience, modern Catholic Bible scholars as well as modern Catholic church historians compartmentalize their faith from their scholarship. Their scholarship yields one set of conclusions, but they partition that off from their faith. They continue to profess Catholicism despite the results of their scholarship. That's analogous to liberal Protestants.

i) This goes to a fundamental difference in theological method, where you appeal to your philosophical intuitions to veto exegesis. That makes an element of sense if one rejects the revelatory status of Scripture. But it's improper to say I preemptively discount an interpretation that conflicts with my philosophical intuitions even if the best exegetical arguments support that interpretation.

ii) I don't think imputation presumes a theologically voluntaristic view of divine sovereignty, if that's what you're angling at. 

iii) I gave hypothetical illustrations in which agent A acts on behalf of and in place of agent B, so that agent B acquires an ascribed status by virtue of what was done for him that's functionally equivalent to an achieved status. That's not unique to Protestant/Reformed theology. That's a commonplace in social interactions. Although my examples were hypothetical, they have many real-world counterparts. So even at the level of philosophical intuitions, there's nothing counterintuitive about it. 

iv) Another potential problem is that many Catholics frame these issues in terms of Thomistic metaphysics. At best, the objections are only cogent if one grants all the paraphernalia of Thomistic metaphysics. 

Notice that I cast the issue, in part, by reference to standard sociological categories (achieved/ascribed status) rather than metaphysical categories.

"1) I don't think scripture allows for a multitude of different metaphysical positions, for one thing. I think it constrains us when we do our exegesis."

What constrains exegesis? Metaphysical positions that Scripture rules out, or metaphysical positions (criteria) we bring to Scripture, apart from Scripture?

"And you appear to be saying that I'm using philosophy to veto your exegesis"

That's manifestly the case.

"And you appear to be saying that I'm using philosophy to veto your exegesis when I'm simply saying that you're exegesis in my exegesis both involve different philosophical frameworks that we should not ignore."

And what distinctive philosophical framework do you think is driving my distinctive interpretation? 

"If your framework is conjoined to your exegesis and your framework is wrong then your exegesis is wrong, too. The same applies to mine."

You haven't identified what framework I've conjoined to my exegesis. You've also indicated that there's something uniquely Protestant about my approach, but that's not the case. For instance, as Eleonore Stump has said in a different context:

"If one passage can be set aside because it strikes us as incompatible with our moral intuitions, then others may have to be treated in the same way. But then our moral intuitions will be the standard by which the texts are judged, and the texts can’t function as divine revelation is meant to function, as a standard by which human beings can measure and correct human understanding, human standards, and human behavior." "The Problem of Evil and the History of Peoples: Think Amalek." M. Bergmann, Michael J. Murray, and M.C. Rea., eds. Divine Evil? The Moral Character of the God of Abraham (Oxford University Press 2011), 181.

The same holds true for setting aside an interpretation because it strikes you as incompatible with your philosophical intuitions–even if that interpretation has the best of the exegetical arguments.

Your position reminds me of my many debates with unitarian philosopher Dale Tuggy. His metaphysical criteria preemptively discount the possibility that Scripture teaches the deity of Christ. 

"If you don't think it presumes that, I'd like to hear an explanation as to what view of divine sovereignty you feel it does involve."

You seem to think the Reformed doctrine of imputation presumes a voluntaristic or Cartesian notion of divine omnipotence. But that's generated by what happens when you plug imputation into your (Thomistic?) metaphysical scheme. I'm not operating with your metaphysical framework (whatever that is). It's up to you, not me, to explicate why you think imputation generates that consequence, inasmuch as that's based on your understanding rather than mine.

"Do you hold the son's friend is truly being treated as the son in an interchangeable way that isn't based on ontology? The father has to realize he is still just a friend and isn't conflating. Obviously the privilege wasn't so exclusive in the first place."

He receives a benefit which the father would normally reserve for his own son. He's not treated "as" the son but "as if" he's the son. No, it's not based on ontology. Sure, he's still just a friend and not the son. That's the point. In the nature of the case, vicarity isn't identity. Not ontological identity, but functional equivalence. 

"As for adoption, I view it ontologically. It certainly is when Scripture talks about us as sons and relates it to our being born again - Christ gets called only-begotten not because that terminology od being begotten can never be applied to us, but because he is so eternally and we are so temporally, hence the semantic distinction. But I'm not a child of God for primarily legal reasons - the designation reflects the ontological reality and does so necessarily (and it seems to me that your metaphysics cannot allow for that since the morally innocent Christ is legally guilty on the cross). In the case of human adoption I entirely view the process of the state calling someone an adopted child as secondary or contingent."

i) To begin with, you're inventing a generic concept by merging different Bible writers like Paul and John, as if their positions are interchangeable or reducible to a common denominator. But each one has his own paradigm. John prefers a reproductive metaphor while Paul prefers an adoptive metaphor. One involves an analogy with biological sonship while the other involves an analogy with adoptive sonship, which, by definition, is not biological. You're blurring an essential distinction between the two.

ii) BTW, while I affirm the eternal sonship of Christ, I reject eternal generation. But that's an argument for another day. 

"Similarly, if the state pronounces someone guilty or innocent it needs to align with "the truth of the matter" about the person, that is to say the MORAL innocence or guilt. It's absolutely counterintuitive for us to say that a court could declare someone legally innocent who is morally guilty or declare someone legally guilty who is morally innocent. Moral guilt and innocence is the thing that most people give a damn about and they expect any legal determination to necessarily reflect it or it is a worthless lie."

It's that attitude which renders Catholics impervious to the Gospel. Paul in particular stresses the prima facie dilemma of how God can justly forgive sinners. A just God is supposed to punish sinners.

Sinners are guilty before God. So how can they be acquitted? How can a just God save anyone if everyone is sinful? That's the conundrum. Paul resolves that dilemma by appeal to vicarious atonement and penal substitution. 

"And you might think that that means that the thing I said is counterintuitive (and it certainly is in every other occurrence)"

The vicarious principle is common in human experience. 

"so that their new legal status is a direct reflection of their ontological, moral status."

Even making allowance for sanctification, they remain sinners.

"You want me to hold that he legally declares ungodly men righteous and sure, is simultaneously morally conforming them to that, but I see that as taking the declaration itself in a rather literal and univocal way."

No, I'm taking that in a substitutionary way.

"And I think the twofold distinction between legal and ontological/moral in the Protestant paradigm creates problems for knowing what specific verses are talking about, justification or sanctification."

Paul repeatedly and emphatically denies that one can be justified by works (or works of the law). In his scheme, justification and works are antithetical principles. He's the one who "radically distinguishes" the two.

"As for adoption, I view it ontologically."

My comparison was more specific. I used adoption to illustrate the distinction between achieved status and ascribed status. A king can adopt a peasant. That instantly elevates the peasant's social standing. He becomes the crown prince and heir apparent not on account of anything he did, but on account of something done for him. It's as if he was the conqueror who founded the kingdom by his military exploits. For the conqueror, that's achieved status. Yet the adoptive son enjoys the equivalent status despite having done nothing. 

In fact, that's true for biological sonship. You are born into a social status. You may inherit the family fortune. You did nothing to earn it.

"For me the issue isn't whether you earned it or not. The issue is whether it is an ontological reality or if it is merely something nominally describing you. As in to me the issue isn't how my brown desk got brown; the issue is that it is completely meaningless to give it the 'status' of being brown or participating in brown-ness unless you are talking about its real participation in that quality. I don't divide the universe into, say, legal brownness vs real brownness."

You're recasting the issue in your preferred metaphysical categories. That's your prerogative, but I don't grant your conceptual scheme as determinative. Moreover, I don't regard justification as analogous to color predications. 

"With regards to the adoptive son focusing on how he got adopted or on questions of who meriting that are entirely besides the point. The Sixth Session of Trent makes it clear that we don't earn our justified status in the first place."

To my knowledge, traditional Catholic theology bifurcates justification into first justification without works and second justification involving congruently meritorious works.

"The issue is whether or not that status is merely reflective on an ontological reality or if it is something else altogether."

You keep insisting that justification must conform to your strictures, but that's imposing your preconception on Pauline categories. In Pauline theology, God justifies sinners. They are not "ontologically" righteous. They are the opposite of "ontologically" righteous. 

"Would you say that the Crown Prince did the military exploits 'legally'?"

I'm not using that framework. The crown prince didn't perform the military exploits at all. Rather, he's the beneficiary, as if those were his personal attainments. 

Your approach reminds me of methodological atheism. Even if divine agency is the correct explanation for a particular phenomenon, the methodological atheist discounts that explanation in advance. By the same token, your approach disallows imputation even if it turns out that in fact this is what Paul really means. You have a screen in place that filters out certain interpretations even if they happen to be correct. Is there any kind of evidence you'd allow to count against your interpretive grid, or is that unfalsifiable?