This is Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

Today, the Doctrine of Salvation, Part 16.

We've been talking about different views of justification, and we've looked at the traditional Roman Catholic view of justification,

the Reformation view of justification, and the view of

the new perspective on Paul with respect to justification. Today, we want to discuss a further

challenge to the reformers' doctrine of justification, which a number of evangelicals find persuasive,

and that concerns the question of imputation. According to the traditional Reformation view,

there is a kind of dual imputation involved in justification. My sin and guilt are imputed to Christ,

and he pays the penalty for my sin. In turn, Christ's righteousness is imputed to me. So in Christ, I am righteous. I am declared by God to be righteous on the basis

of the imputed righteousness of Christ. Some evangelicals hold that although there is an imputation

of our sin and guilt to Christ, there is no imputation of Christ's

righteousness to us. Rather, justification simply involves the declaration of pardon on God's part.

On the basis of Christ's atoning death, Christ has taken our sin

and guilt from us, and now we are declared to be forgiven, and so we are redeemed by Christ.

But they would deny that there is any imputation of Christ's righteousness

to me. They claim that it is very difficult to find in the New Testament any sort of biblical

basis for the doctrine of the imputation of Christ's righteousness. It is regarded as a theological

construct of the reformers that some would say finds little or no support in Scripture. For example,

Robert Gundry, the same scholar who argued for the inferiority of the new perspective on Paul,

argues that the doctrine of the imputation of Christ's righteousness to the believer is not taught in the New Testament.

Gundry looks at passages like Romans 4 verses 2 to 5 and argues that these

passages do not teach the imputation of Christ's righteousness. In Romans 4, 2 to 5, Paul says,

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