Justification - Tom Wright / A book review
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I’ve just finished reading Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision, Tom Wright’s latest book, which is a response to John Piper’s The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T.Wright. Piper was criticising Wright, and the various exponents of the ‘New Perspective” generally, for abandoning or watering-down the great Reformation truths, of which he sets out to be the advocate-general. Wright produces, to my mind, a superb response, with an edge sharpened in the context of debate, which criticises the Reformers (and Luther) where he thinks they have gone wrong, but affirms the truths they sought to highlight in what he believes is their more biblical context, namely: the covenant God established with Abraham, which was the driving motor of His dealings with Israel, which found its climax in Jesus, and by means of whom Abraham’s descendants would bring blessing to the entire earth. However, I have to bring a demurral. While I can listen (on Youtube) to, or read Piper and understand instantly what he is saying and relate it both to my own biblical understanding and current life experience, I really struggle to locate Wright’s thinking in categories which will lodge in both my biblical understanding and experience. It’s quite simply a struggle to wade through the arguments and exegesis with Wright – even though I think he is ‘right’, and Piper (often) wrong! Is this because, as I was suggesting to Andrew over a Cappuccino and scone at the Royal Festival Hall cafeteria yesterday, I have a huge ‘reformation theology’ paradigm in my head, which struggles to give way to a ‘New Perspective’ paradigm? That may be the case, but I still think that Wright’s ‘right’ view of things is a lot more difficult to get hold of than Piper’s ‘wrong’ view. And it’s not that I think Piper is ‘wrong’ at all in all that he draws out of his neo-Calvinism. At the time I picked up Wright’s Justification from our local Christian bookshop last week, I noticed a new book (how many has he written?) by Piper – Alive at last! – which is an exposition of the ‘new birth’ in the life of the believer. Visiting the bookshop again today, I took a copy of this off the shelf, and was able to glide serenely through the arguments with a great sense of being inwardly up-built. After reading Wright (who I believe is ‘right’), I feel as if I’ve done my head in! So what can I say about Justification? It’s quite simply a great account of the meaning of the word, set in the context of general issues and background (Part 1), and detailed (Oh so detailed!) exegesis (Part 2) of the relevant parts of Galatians, Philippians, Corinthians, Ephesians and Romans. What are the major themes which come through? Wright’s trumpet-call is that Paul’s argument is not a theologically abstract account of how God makes bad people good and gets them to heaven – in which biblical characters (such as Abraham) are used as examples to illustrate the theme from the OT, and Israel’s history is a major cul-de-sac, to be discarded once we have got to the coming of Jesus. Rather, Wright’s burden is that Jesus came to fulfil the covenant made with Abraham, to bring blessing to the whole world, which was in itself a response to the disaster of Eden and its worldwide consequences, and the theology is through the whole narrative rather than abstract and universal. Once we grasp this apparently obvious, but actually frequently forgotten perspective, we get the whole direction of flow concerning God’s dealings with Israel and the world into the right focus, and everything else begins to fall into place. Israel tried to obstruct the purpose by restricting the operation of the covenant exclusively to herself, to keep the Gentiles out. This, rather than attempts to ‘gain merit’ with God through moral effort or ‘works’, was God’s contention with Israel in Romans, according to Wright. The resurrection of Jesus was not only the affirmation of sins dealt with on the cross (and not the sins of Israel alone), but also the revitalisation of the original promise and covenant – directed to bring blessing back into creation – first, through God’s reconstituted people; second, through a future world populated by the reconstituted people with resurrected bodies. (Yes, I can hear the objections from one side to another already forming in the minds of devotees to this site!). As a necessary part of this ‘paradigm’ for understanding Paul, ‘righteousness’ must be seen not as a moral commodity, and the gospel being an account of how this commodity is transferred from God via Jesus to sinful people. Rather it is to be defined, as Wright does insistently, as God’s commitment to his single plan to bring the blessing of Abraham into the world through Abraham’s descendants. The heart of this plan is Jesus the messiah, ‘the seed’, the focal point of the blessing itself. God’s plans are therefore for this earth, both as it is now, and as it will be in the renewed future. God’s people are to bring anticipations of that future in their lives and actions, and offering the central good of that future, the life of the Spirit in the community of the people of God, as a reality to be obtained and lived now. This, it seems to me, is the great central thrust of Wright’s version of the New Perspective. (There are various versions, just as there are various conflicting emphases of theology amongst Reformers and Lutherans). But just to pick out some gems – paradigm busters, if you like – attaching no priority of importance to one over the other, or even commenting thereby on gems I have not highlighted: 2 Corinthians 5:21 – where Paul speaks of Jesus becoming sin who knew no sin, that we might become in him the righteousness of God. Wright detaches this verse from its use in the reformed traditions as one of the proof-texts of the great exchange which took place on the cross – Jesus taking my unrighteousness and giving me his righteousness etc. Wright shows, in painstaking attention to the flow of the passage in context, that Paul is actually talking of the apostolic ministry, not the cross in relation to believers in general (at least, at this point he is!). So he is saying that Jesus did indeed die a unique sin-bearing death (for everyone!) on the cross, so that in the lives of the true apostles, the covenant faithfulness of God (His righteousness) might be demonstrated, reflected and lived out. Part of that ‘living out’ was that new life found its expression in the midst of the suffering and hardship which the apostles themselves experienced – as a reflection of the dying and living of Jesus himself. Judgment of works for believer and unbeliever – Wright demonstrates and affirms this to be Paul’s message concerning final judgment. The believer’s assurance, however, is in the ‘declaration of righteousness’ (justification) brought forward from the future by Jesus’s death on the cross (for the believer), and the confident anticipation of that same declaration in the future – not as an automatic right, but through the operation of the Spirit in the life of the believer, producing the fruit which the Torah had always required but could not produce, and in which personal response and divine initiative work co-operatively together (as Paul so often demonstrates in his language on the subject). A wonderful insight into the meaning of Romans 2:13-16, that passage about Gentiles obeying the law even though they do not have the Torah. Wright suggests, correctly in my view, that Paul is here talking about Gentile Christian believers who have the Spirit – in anticipation of his argument of the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham, and the gospel he preaches, which includes Jew and Gentile. In other words, Paul is not (at least not primarily) talking about Gentile non-believers who, by obeying their consciences, do what the law required Israel to do, but without the benefit of having the law. This interpretation also makes sense of Romans 2:13, which talks of ‘doers of the law’ being ‘justified’. How can this be when he talks elsewhere of the law justifying nobody? Because he is anticipating the law being fulfilled in the lives and actions of those who do so by the Spirit. I got so excited when I saw this, that I reached for the keyboard and put it on Facebook! Romans 3:21-26 - the NIV totally mangles the language here to shoe-horn it into a particular theological slant. Wright has pointed this out before. Finally Wright’s exegesis of the Romans passages demonstrates a coherence of argument and flow which just does not exist if you are trying to fit Romans into a personal account of how the gospel transforms people from being sinners to saints and thereby fits them for heaven. The major paradigm shift here is seeing the covenant with Abraham as being foundational for the history of Israel, and that covenant not to get Israel ‘saved’ (primarily), but to release blessing and restoration back into creation. Israel’s history was, in this sense, crucial to the climax which came about in Jesus, the messiah, doing for her what she could not do for herself, and effecting the paradigm shift from that which placed her at the centre of the universe to that in which God was at the centre, and the whole world was the true outward focus and beneficiary. So yes, I do appreciate much of John Piper (though not what he says, for instance, about Jesus’s obedience to the Torah storing up ‘merit’ which is transferred to us when we believe in him. Jesus’s obedience was to the cross, and thence his resurrection, which is actually what is transferred to us through faith, and acted out in baptism. Wright again makes this point for us). But integrity compels me to the view that the more difficult interpretation offered by Wright comes closer to a coherent view of how Paul actually saw things, and that it is out of this that a better theology underpinning our lives and actions as the people of God in the 21st century needs to be hammered out. |
Comments
Re: Justification - Tom Wright / A book review
Thanks for the review.
I am presently doing a translation and (simplistic) commentary on Romans. I do however have a full time paying job and a family with 4 young children so it is a slow process.
This is what I wrote on one of the passages you quoted above.
2.14
For when gentiles who by nature don’t have the law, do what the law requires, these, although without the law, are their own law.
Paul is talking here about the proselytes, non-Jews who, throughout the Greek and Roman world, had accepted the tenets of Judaism. Most translations get this wrong and put the ‘by nature’ in the second phrase thus “For when gentiles who don’t have the law, do by nature the things of the law…” It should be obvious that no one in the world keeps the law by nature, whether it be the ancient Mosaic law or any other law. You keep the law either because you are compelled to for fear of punishment or by choice because you accept that it is useful. Paul is specifically talking about the Mosaic law here, the Jewish law; he is simply using the example of the gentile proselytes to illustrate the principle that you need to do more than just hear the law. In other words, the proselytes are not officially Jews but the law is active in their lives. Many had accepted it because it provided a moral light which was lacking almost everywhere else in the Roman empire. And it was mainly to these that Paul preached the Gospel and who became the backbone of the new church outside Palestine.
2.15
They are the kind of people who show that they have committed themselves to the purpose of the law,
But not the literal “the law is written on their hearts” because that phrase tends to mean ‘instinctively’ or ‘by nature’ in modern English.
‘Written on the heart’ in Biblical use refers to a positive, free commitment.
such that their consciences witness within them as to the rightness or wrongness of their various thoughts.
The law which they have adopted thus becomes a guiding moral light for them. It can therefore be as much a pain as a pleasure to them but at least they have accepted to live by it and the sacrifice that that entails. Paul speaks specifically of the dilemma of living by the law in chapter 7. One of the shameful consequences of the mistranslations referred to in vss. 14 and 15 above is that they condone the idea that the gentiles are able to keep the law without ever being taught what that law is, in other words they are born with a conscience and superior intellect that enables them to know the difference between right and wrong, but that the Jews do not have such an inbuilt conscience or enhanced intellect and therefore need a written law to educate them as to the nature of morality. This is a subtle anti-Semitism, which has existed in the church for many centuries and represents a complete turn around from the issue Paul himself had to deal with, which was that the Jews were anti-gentile and therefore excessively proud. The church moved away from the anti-gentile but to the equally proud anti-Jew prejudice when it lost its roots in Palestine and adopted mainly Greek thought processes.
Unfortunately, if Paul’s meaning is corrupted at this point, the entire message of Romans will be compromised. The fairness and impartiality of God, which for Paul is the bedrock of his faith and his teaching, will have been turned into its diametric opposite and it will be possible to believe things about God which are in reality evilly unfair, but as though they were fair things. This is particularly the case in chapter 9.
Re: Justification - Tom Wright / A book review
“Why did not the Law “increase the trespass” as it did with Israel?”
I am not sure what your question means but if it means what I think it does then I would add:
The proselytes were not subject to the law by nature. They were not under obligation to it in the way the Jews were. At least the Jews of the Old pre-exilic Covenant. The Jews of Jesus’s time were under Roman law, as were most people. But barring that little detail, the law was not merely a moral code, it was a national, political law to which all were subject as part of their national identity. Therefore, as far as the gentiles were concerned, there were no punishments for contravening it and no rewards or promises associated with keeping it and there was no covenant with God which involved it.
Because the Jews were obligated to keep it, trangression was sin in an objective sense. But for the proselytes the only sin would be against their own conscience. Paul does say in 5:13 that before the law sin was in the world so I would not draw the conclusion that sin was subjective in nature. But he goes on to say that sin was not counted as such until the law came. Death resulted from it just the same (from whence its objective (shall we say) nature) but it was not considered as crime until the law came.
Otherwise Paul’s argument loses its force: his point is being made to Jews. He says to them that even gentiles, who are not born subject to it keep it. How much more then are Jews under obligation to keep it? I don’t think he is anticipating anything, he is just giving an example of how things are. He is not suggesting that all proselytes are Christians, nor anticipating a time when they would become Christians, merely pointing out that being Jewish per se is not enough and if gentiles can live under the law then merely having the law by nature (i.e. being Jewish) is not something on which to rely in terms of one’s standing with God.
Re: Justification - Tom Wright / A book review
“Indeed when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves”.
Read my translation again!
On Galatians 5:3, I would say Paul’s meaning is more down to earth: “If you think you need to be circumcised, then in order to be consistent with yourself, you need to keep the whole law, because circumcision is just an arbitrary selection.”
Otherwise stated, he is simply pointing out the illogicality of insisting on circumcision.
But in any case, the ones who were insisting on it were Jewish Christians, not gentile ones. They wanted circumcision implemented in all new Christian converts who were not Jewish as a sign that they had to become Jewish in order to receive grace and salvation. Paul’s argument against them is nothing to do with the Spirit but that circumcision for them was merely a symbolic act because they had no intention of keeping the whole law. The ones who were insisting on it were already Jewish and otherwise subject to the whole law anyway. So it was not wrong for Paul to suggest that they were under obligation to keep the whole of it. His argument in a nutshell: “You were born Jewish so you were subject to the law by nature but now Christ has set you free from the law and you are no longer subject to it. But if you want to go back on that and insist on circumcision, then you have to go back on the whole law, you can’t just go back on a small or merely symbolic part of it because law doesn’t work like that. Law is not something that you pick and choose about. It is something that you are under obligation to for you natural life (Rom 7:1).”
There is also a distinction between Jewish converts and proselytes. The proselytes did not become Jewish, they merely followed the tenets and joined in the communities of the Jews. The converts actually became Jewish (though some Jews denied the validity of that). The Judaisers who Paul was up against insisted on conversion to Judaism as a condition precedent to Christian baptism.
Scot McKnight on Justification and New Perspective
Scot McKnight has just started a new blog series on Justification and New Perspective, beginning with a helpful overview of the emergence of the New Perspective from Stendahl through Sanders and Dunn to Wright. He also provides a link to a review of Tom Wright’s Justification by Michael Thompson - amusingly (and perhaps revealingly) at the head of the review Thompson gives the author’s name as Thompson Wright.
Re: Justification - Tom Wright / A book review
“This interpretation also makes sense of Romans 2:13, which talks of ‘doers of the law’ being ‘justified’. How can this be when he talks elsewhere of the law justifying nobody? Because he is anticipating the law being fulfilled in the lives and actions of those who do so by the Spirit. I got so excited when I saw this …”
Excited? Not me? This is terrifying. After 40 years of the Spirit’s empowering presence in me, I am still SO far from meeting the requirements of the first and greatest commandment.
Thankfully, being found in him, I have a righteousness (as required by Ro.2:13) not my own. In light of Ro.3:20 (cf Luke 10:25-28: DO this and you will live.”), there is no other way. THAT excites me.
Re: Justification - Tom Wright / A book review
Good review overall.
But “Jesus’s obedience was to the cross” dropped from the air like a stone when I first read it.
Tell me more. It seems that Jesus was obedient to God, to whom he prayed. The cross took on significance after Jesus’ crucifixion, no?