Salvation hangs on Justification

When you debate, you have an obligation to understand both sides of the argument.  Ideally, you should be able to competently argue FOR the opposition.  And in general, with any argument that is over 500 years old, you should never expect to just solve the problem once and for all, as if all of the educated minds that came before you were dunces.

After reading some of an argument against imputation, I was impressed that Mr. Rose started with articles from reformed sources, including the Westminster Confession of Faith.  He went through the various uses of logizomai and cheseb, and how the term could be interpreted various ways based on its use.  After the article started getting ponderous, I scrolled down to where the writer deals with Calvin, Owen, Turretin, Hodge, and others, whom he proceeded to call ridiculous and dishonest.

I was not impressed with his dismissive attitude towards men who each may have known more about Christianity than Mr. Rose and I will ever know combined.

So I went back and found two things to comment on.  The first is a quote from A Theology of the New Testament on "Imputation".  Mr. Rose took a snippet of it without following it to its conclusion.

Paul never expressly states that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to believers. His words are, “And to the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness” (Rom 4:3,5).
These words could be taken to mean that God regarded faith as the most meritorious human achievement, and therefore God accounts faith as the equivalent to full righteousness. This, however, would ignore the context of Pauline thought.
(A Theology of the New Testament, “Imputation”)

I've put the last sentence in red, because Mr. Rose doesn't follow the line of thought beyond what was expedient to him.  But you can follow it here.

I considered the vanity of blogging on this, but oh well.