The Practice of Imputation (Part II)

(Ed: This was a scheduled post and should be the last of the ones written about Grace in Practice pending new insight.)

When Zahl talks about imputation in the theological sense, he doesn't divorce it from a "practical" sense. (I must parenthetically insert that I have come to really dislike the word "practical," because more often than not someone is using the word to oppose theology entirely, as though theology is an ivory tower above the knife-work of practical application.)

The vertical practice of grace in imputation has God saying things about us that aren't true, but are made true by virtue of the Word applied to us. The horizontal practice of grace involves our willingness to impute to others what is most certainly not true of them (according to Zahl).

Zahl's argument here is that the horizontal practice of imputation has similar effects to the vertical practice, albeit in a different way. Law works as a mirror to show our inadequacies at fulfilling a standard, while grace applies the fulfillment of Christ to the believer's account.

Zahl continues that we are enjoined to bend this imputation out horizontally. This is a pretty revolutionary thought for me. Think about the way this works for a moment.

No, really, just think about it.

In Zahl's scheme, we are to impute to others righteousness even when they have wronged us personally. (What a far cry this is from the law of Hanlon's Razor, one of my favorite and heretofore most often used defenses against ad hominem.) This is a tremendously difficult thing to do, even in the best of circumstances, and it flies in the face of all of our instincts. The instinct is to shut off, shut down, close away, incarcerate—in other words, to apply the law to the offender.

But the grace that works in us to achieve what it says is the Word that we ought apply to others. In the experience of my friend whose parents provided always the "Yes, but," the practice is to provide the "Yes." In the experience of the friend who hears only Law, it is the practice of hearing Grace instead—even when the speaker is not speaking very graciously.

Zahl's contention is that by bending the vertical expression of grace in imputation horizontally, we will achieve the same effect. I suppose the only way to find out is to try.

I don't think that Zahl is really concerning himself as much with the so-called first use of the law, which is the use that tells us the difference between right and wrong, and so on.

In recounting his story of driving drunk and getting in an accident as a teenager, Rod Rosenblatt remarks that his father showed him a converting moment of grace. Rod was crying and disheveled, and he knew that what he had done was wrong. His father did not berate him or hit him with the law; instead he just said, "Well, I guess we're going to need to get you a new car."

The story, he says, always engenders different responses, many of which are angry. That's a ridiculous way to handle the situation on the face of it, and I think I'd agree. Rod says, however, that it was in that moment that he became a theist.

I think it goes to the point that grace really is personal, and that it is applied personally. The law is uniform in its declaration of right and wrong, but grace is applied non-uniformly in the sense that it is situational.