Strong Words

The whole Christian church holds that justification and consequently salvation are effected by God the Father by imputing the merit of Christ His Son; and this imputation takes place by grace when and where God wishes, and so at His discretion. Those to whom Christ’s merit is imputed are adopted and numbered among the sons of God. Since the leaders of the church have not advanced a step beyond this concept of imputation, or raised their minds above it, their dictum about God’s discretionary choice has led them to fall into the gross errors of extremists, and eventually into the detestable heresy of predestination, as well as the abominable heresy that God pays no heed to what a person does in his life, but only to the faith he has written on the interiors of his mind. Unless therefore this erroneous belief about imputation is done away with, atheism would overrun the whole Christian world, . . . (TCR 628)

But the present-day concept of imputation rules out the power to act thus as fatal to faith and so to salvation, to avoid anything of one’s own entering into the imputation and so into Christ’s merit. The establishment of this doctrine has led to the spread of the satanic notion that a person is totally impotent in spiritual matters. This is like someone saying ‘Walk’, though you have no feet, not even one; ‘Wash yourself’, though both your hands have been cut off; or ‘Do good, but sleep’; or ‘Feed yourself’ when you have no tongue. (TCR 630)

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