Justification by Tom Wright, Part 1

Anyone who has known me for more than a short conversation knows that I love most everything that I have read from NT (Tom) Wright. There are many reasons for this (and if you sign up for the next gospel class you will see how his writing has profoundly influenced my thinking). But, one thing that has racked my mind for a couple of years now has been this whole debate around “the new perspective on Paul.” Awhile back, I listened to DA Carson give a few lectures on this topic, but I don’t remember actually feeling any more confident than I do now that I fully understood 1) what people were so angry about or 2) what NT Wright had to do with the whole thing. For many people, this whole topic just seems like a waste of time, but the ideas that Wright and others are dealing with are very important – they involve God and His purposes in history, through Jesus the Messiah. If that’s irrelevant, then I’ll go watch football!

I’ve also been a long-time fan of John Piper for different reasons than I am of Wright. So, when I heard that Piper was coming out with a book responding to Wright’s understanding of “justification,” I was pretty excited. I think I read the book in one day. But, there were certain parts of that book that I had underlined because I couldn’t see how what Piper was saying was coherent, and it really felt like the two were talking past one another (which seems to be pretty typical in theological debates). The biggest section that stopped me in my tracks I will point out in this post in later.

All that to say, these two great men of God have influenced me possibly more than any other theologians (except maybe Lesslie Newbigin). I am interested in anything they have to say, not because they’re “heroes” or any kind of replacement for Scripture itself, but because I get a sense from both of them of their deep love for God, the gospel of Jesus, and the Spirit’s active presence among and within us today, through the church.

So, of course, when I heard about Wright’s new book responding to Piper’s, I had to get my hands on it. It’s not being released in the US until later this year, so I had to get it from Amazon UK, but it only took a couple of weeks and came in the mail today. Needless to say, I was a little excited.

There’s no way I can respond to every point that I come across in this book, but there are a few that stand out to me, so far, that I think will help frame the debate (at least my own understanding of it).

As a sort of preface, I would like to respond to the endorsements of the book. The most interesting, to me, is that of Scot McKnight’s. I’m also a big fan of what I’ve read from McKnight (despite his connection to Emergent Village), but I haven’t had the time to dig deeper into what he defines as the “neo-Reformed” (if you’re interested in this whole conversation, check out this post from Justin Taylor: http://theologica.blogspot.com/2009/02/scot-mcknights-caricature-of.html). Interestingly, I just read an interview with Eugene Peterson (himself a Presbyterian) who said that using the label “reformed” was ludicrous – we’re always reforming! I personally have my own affinity with Reformed/Calvinist theology, but I’d like to think I’m not committed to it above Scripture itself. So, I’ll have to read some more of his thoughts on this to see if I fall into his category…

The book also received stellar reviews from Rob Bell and Brian McLaren. I personally haven’t paid much attention to Rob Bell, though what I’ve heard is that he comes at everything from a Jewish perspective – something I think the American church should be doing more of (umm, someone pretty important in the Bible was Jewish…). But, with McLaren, I’ve never really understood what he’s talking about. Maybe I’m missing what so many others aren’t, but it just seems like he’s defining what he’s not and misquoting authors like Wright to support his new social gospel. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s the impression I’ve got from reading Generous Orthodoxy and a couple other books that I eventually sold due to their collecting dust.

One of the first points Wright makes I’ve encountered from him before, that Paul wasn’t primarily thinking in terms of his personal guilt because of his personal sin(s) against God. This may have been what plagued Martin Luther, leading to the (great and necessary) Reformation, but it wasn’t what Paul was primarily struggling with. This, it seems, is part of Wright’s critique of an over-emphasis (in his estimation) on justification as “the imputation of righteousness.” He says he understands the personal assurance that this doctrine can give, and that “this sense of assurance is indeed offered by the doctrine of justification as Paul’s expounds it” (p. ix), but that this was not Paul’s primary goal in expounding the idea (this also brings up the constant critique I’ve heard of Wright that he doesn’t think in terms of imputation at all, which I’ve never been able to validate from his own writings).

I actually just posted on a similar idea from a passage in Philippians for our community group. In it, I said that I don’t believe Paul was primarily trying to defend “perseverance of the saints” or “eternal security” in that passage, but rather was providing a very real, concrete defense of God’s work among the Philippian church because of their ongoing participation in the gospel:
http://gospelcommunitymission.wordpress.com/2009/03/06/he-who-began-a-good-work-in-you/

I’ve also thought a lot recently about Paul’s statement that “the gospel was preached in advance to Abraham” (Galatians 3:8). If we’re trying to understand “the gospel” that Paul preached, it seems that this is a necessary part of it. Wright says this about the absence of this vital element: “the long story of Israel seems to function merely as a backdrop, a source of proof-texts and types, rather than as itself the story of God’s saving purposes” (p. ix). Of course, the gospel climaxes in, centers on, the work of Jesus’ inevitable death on the cross and subsequent resurrection from the dead. But, somehow the Abraham/Israel element must be factored in to the equation, not simply as an afterthought but as a huge part of understanding the whole. This, to me, is where writers like Wright bring a healthy balance to a potentially simplistic understanding of the good news.

Wright goes on to dismantle the dangerous individualism that has plagued the Western church since at least the Middle Ages. “We are not the centre of the universe. God is not circling around us. We are circling around him” (p. 7). This gets Wright to the topic of election, which seems to be a central theme for his understanding of the whole of Scripture. When I first started attempting to understand what the Scriptures meant by “election,” I fell into the natural trap of seeing election primarily in terms of personal benefits: “I have been elected/chosen by God for my own good.” Well, that is true. But, there is a lot more to the picture. After years of investigating, not just proof-texts to support a certain doctrinal point but, the whole of Scripture, I have become wholly convinced that election is primarily about responsibility rather than privilege. I first came to this understanding through Newbigin, but then was later enhanced on this perspective by authors like Richard Bauckham, Chris Wright, and NT Wright, and preachers like Tim Keller. Here, Wright says: “God made humans for a purpose: not simply for themselves, not simply so that they could be in relationship with him, but so that through them, as his image-bearers, he could bring his wise, glad, fruitful order to the world” (p.7). God uses humanity to accomplish His purposes, and His mission is to restore what humanity did to His good creation at the Fall. God saves us so that we can be a blessing, a light, to others. Or, as Matt Chandler so often puts it, “love does not terminate on itself.”

He ends chapter 1 encouraging us to look where he believes Paul himself looked to understand what justification was all about: “History was where Paul looked to see the roots of the story whose climax he believed was Jesus Christ… For too long we have read Scripture with nineteenth-century eyes and sixteenth-century questions. It’s time to get back to reading with first-century eyes and twenty-first century questions” (p.21). I don’t believe we need to make the gospel relevant, but I think we can present “a gospel” that isn’t relevant at all – because it’s not the biblical gospel.

I recently picked up a book by Michael Green called “Thirty Years That Changed the World.” It’s his attempt at understanding the book of Acts in its own context and then applying it to today. One interesting thing he points out is that the gospel message the early church preached was never exactly the same. There were, of course, essential elements that had to be understood (sometimes at a later point in a relationship). But, each “sermon,” so to speak, was sensitive to the questions that the hearers would’ve been asking. I brought this up last week in our Community Group discussion time, that I think a lot of times we’re more interested in memorizing a simplistic formulaic gospel than actually dealing with people on their terms and answering the questions that they actually have. If we simply start with each individual at “you’re a sinner,” I think we’re automatically going to be written off. I think, for the most part, people know that something is wrong with the world, and that “nobody’s perfect.” So, this is probably not the most effective way to explain the gospel to a person in our day. I’ve come to appreciate a lot of Tim Keller’s work because of this; he is insistent that we must start with a very good creation and the Imago Dei, not with a sinner who has offended God.

Of course, this is not proposing that we go the other direction, and simply let the audience determine the message. No, the core message is the same, but the way it is presented must take into account who we are actually talking to. Are we paying any attention? If not, is that really love? Or, are we simply dehumanizing people for our own ends?

Chapter 2 gets into the main point of Piper’s book that I couldn’t bring myself to agree with. A lot of the critique that I’ve heard of Wright is that he is imposing a “sub-biblical” system upon the text of Scripture (most recently from James White). This chapter begins with Wright defending exegesis, defined as “close attention to the actual flow of the text, to the questions it raises in itself and the answers it gives in and of itself,” and goes on to say that this “should remain the beginning and the end of the process” (p.23). Now, maybe two theologians like Wright and White are meaning completely different things by exegesis. But, to start a critique of someone here (as White has done) simply means that what Wright actually says is being completely ignored. He wants to deal with the text itself, not with imposing something else onto it.

I’ve personally come to encounter the situation he describes here multiple times lately: “entire passages skimmed over in the hunt for the key word or phrase which fits the preconceived idea” (p.25). This, to me, is the very real danger of systematic theology (a point expressed well by DA Carson). Once we have formulated a “doctrine,” we can very easily search the Scriptures to support that idea, but completely miss what a verse or phrase was actually referring to (and, more often than not, we simply must ignore another large chunk of verses that at face value actually contradict the doctrine we’re espousing). This is part of the reason why I’ve been constructing the gospel class from the perspective of biblical theology rather than systematic. I’m not opposed to systematic theology, but I believe understanding the whole story – the actual flow of Scripture itself – should be the starting point, rather than imposing a systematic structure onto it.

This is where I honestly think Piper went off the deep end, in my opinion. I’m constantly torn between telling people that they need to understand the cultural context of what they are reading to understand the text, and the promise that the Spirit will lead us into all truth. Maybe that’s a good tension to have. Maybe “need” is the wrong word, but I can’t see how ignorance of how a word, phrase, or idea was used in its own culture can help us understand how it’s used in Scripture. To me, it seems the more cultural background, the better chance we actually have at getting to the meaning. Now, of course, there are extremes. “Jesus was a common name in the first century, so we should write off the New Testament.” That’s ridiculous. But, we do have a lot of first century texts that can actually help us. No, they’re not Scripture, but yes they can provide a framework, a backdrop.

Even more important, though, is Wright’s claim that Piper is suggesting that “you don’t need to understand the first-century Jewish context” (p.31). I need to find the exact quote, but I remember reading Piper’s explanation of this in his book and literally yelling, “What?” out loud. Maybe Piper’s point was to avoid extremes with this, but I can’t see DA Carson, Greg Beale, Doug Moo, or several others (loosely classified “Reformed” conservatives) concurring with this perspective at all. Jesus and the first Christians were Jews! How could we ignore that?

The danger here, of course, is that if we ignore the first-century context of the Scriptures themselves, we are naturally going to impose our own assumptions and presuppositions onto the text from our own culture. Looking at the state of the American church today, I pray that we don’t do this!

The last point I want to address is related to Piper’s automatic defense (which is so tempting in the circles we run in) for his own doctrinal positions: “It is worrying to find Piper encouraging readers to go back, not to the first century, but to the Christian renewal movements of sixteenth-century Europe. To describe that period as offering the historic roots of evangelicalism is profoundly disturbing. Proper evangelicals are rooted in Scripture, and above all in Jesus Christ to whom Scripture witnesses, and nowhere else” (p.34). There is, of course, a big difference between having an affinity for certain authors and putting those authors’ understanding of Scripture above Scripture itself. This, to me it seems, is what “semper reformanda” was always about. I doubt Luther or Calvin would’ve expected that they had “figured it all out” and that the Spirit was done revealing truth to His people through them.

This is all I can say right now, but so far I am very intrigued by this book. I am always interested in who is reading what, and it seems more and more guys that I respect and pay attention to are endorsing (or quoting) Wright more than critiquing him. Maybe I’ll come out of this reading reinforcing what I already think, but I’m praying that God will continue to use this servant of Jesus to help “reform” me, my family, those around me, and His church, according to Scripture.