Imputed and Infused Righteousness

Anglicans are, even by the admission of good RC and Orthodox scholars and theologians, sui generis, because we emerge from an entirely different set of circumstances from those of the continental reformation. 'Reformed Catholics' we are, but not 'protestants' in the modern conventional meaning of that word.

A classical Anglican answer to the questions of justification and sanctification is provided by the architect of Elizabethan Settlement, Richard Hooker: 'Participation is that mutual inward hold which Christ hath of us and we of him. They which thus were in God eternally by their intended admission to life, have, by vocation or adoption, God actually now in them, as the artificer is in the work which his hand doth presently frame. We participate Christ partly by imputation, as when those things which he did and suffered for us are imputed unto us for righteousness; partly by habitual and real infusion, as when grace is inwardly bestowed while we are on earth. Baptism is a sacrament which God hath instituted in his Church, to the end that they which received the same might thereby be incorporated into Christ, and so through his most precious merit obtain as well that grace of imputation which taketh away all former guiltiness, as also that infused divine virtue of the Holy Ghost, which giveth to the powers of the soul their first disposition towards future newness of life' (Book V, 56, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity). Neither puritan nor papist, the explanation of Richard Hooker is the classical, and brilliant, Via Media synthesis between the confessional protestant and historical catholic positions. In good Anglican fashion, Hooker attempts to reconcile and unite these two different views of justification. The work of Jesus Christ is essential and central to the plan of salvation, and therefore at one level righteousness is imputed. At the same time, man is understood to possess the capacity freely to present himself to God in freedom of worship and service, co-operating with grace, and therefore there is another level at which grace is infused. He has his cake and eats it too! Essentially, Hooker teaches that 'God does what He declares,' He makes us righteous by the infusion of divine grace ex opere operato as He simultaneously declares us righteous and vindicates us for the sake of the merits and work of Jesus Christ. These mysteries are not mutually exclusive. Justification and sanctification are for Hooker a both/and proposition, not an either/or opposition. His assertion is certainly 'justified' in the Prayer book and Articles. He refuses to be scholasticised, rationalised, or compartmentalised in the matter of how grace works in the soul to bring about justification and continuing sanctification. He does not allow us to limit or circumscribe the mystery of the operation of the Holy Ghost in the application of the Life of Christ to us. And that is the traditional Anglican way...