Covenant of Love

Archive for the ‘In Christ’ Category

As is well known to casual readers of Covenant of Love, I am a fan of N.T. Wright and I do not appreciate John Piper very much. (I was a not a fan of John Piper long before these two came to clash.) At the Evangelical Theological Society’s 62nd Annual Meeting, the topic is Justification by Faith and both N.T. Wright and John Piper were invited to be plenary speakers for this event. Taking the position I do, the “dialogue” would have essentially amounted to Wright embarrising John Piper in my opinion. Even fans of Piper usually acknowledge that simply put, him and Wright are in completely separate leagues (Tom being in the Big Leagues and Piper in the Minors).

Still, I am amazed that some bloggers holdout underdog hopes with a great deal of misguided confidence that John Piper is more then up to the task, that he would somehow be able to sweep Wright aside, that it would somehow amount to little more than a walk in the park of Piper. I have no clever response to that, I simply stand in awe that someone could reasonably think such a thing.

But I saw Wright at the Wheaton Conferences. His respectability, his humility, his willingness to engage other perspectives, to think through reasonable critiques of his work by his opponents, and sometimes to consider their suggestions for further dialogue. I think the question of “who would win” or “who would lose” in a debate between John Piper and N.T. Wright is, from Wright’s perspective and probably from the perspective of Wrightians, irrelevant.

John Piper has written against Tom Wright (The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright), and Tom has written a response (Justification: God’s Plan Paul’s Vision). I think it would have been beneficial, even crucial, for these two men to have met and to get to know each other’s personalities. Who knows, maybe an unlikely friendship is lurking right around the corner.

Alas we may never know. For reasons which are unclear to me, the ETS announced:

We had previously announced that Pastor John Piper would be one of our plenary speakers at the November meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in Atlanta addressing the theme of “Justification By Faith.” Unfortunately, Pastor Piper has had to withdraw from his involvement in this meeting in conjunction with an eight-month leave of absence that he will be taking from his ministry assignments. (Here)

The last time I am aware that Piper took a leave of absence from his ministry responsibilities, it was to write a book against N.T. Wright (Future of Justification, p.10). Is it possible that he has chosen to forgo an opportunity to meet the good Bishop so that he might rather write another book against him? Nah, pure conjecture. I wish to attempt to give Piper the benefit of the doubt (however difficult that may be) and believe that he has not backed out of this engagement for fear of the humble Bishop or intimidation of the Bishops godly presence and vast knowledge.

In any case, Piper has been substituted by Thomas R. Schreiner, an expert in Pauline scholarship and (by all accounts) a better match with Tom Wright. Tom and Tom will share a discussion panel and engage each other on the subject of Justification by Faith. It is my hope that this discussion panel and lectures of Tom W and Tom S will be made available via on-line in the same way that the Wheaton Conference lectures were. The ETS meeting will be held in Atlanta GA on November 17-19, 2010. Praying for a good and fruitful engagement!

Here’s another controversal quote by N.T. Wright. Background: the subject of “the Rightousness of God” or “God’s Rightousness” must be seen as God the Judge who judges rightly. Therefore “God’s Rightousness” is his own, so to speak…

“it makes no sense whatever to say that the judge imputes, imparts, bequeaths, conveys or otherwise transfers his righteousness to either the plaintiff or the defendant. Rightousness is not an object, a substance or a gas which can be passed across the courtroom.” – What Saint Paul Really Said, p.98

I cannot see where the bible says that we have been “imputed” God’s rightousness. At least that is not the language which is used. I also don’t see anywhere where the bible says that everyone has been “imputed” Adam’s sin.

When it comes to God’s own Righteousness, he does not pass gas.

If what I said in the last post is correct, can it be that by the doctrine of sola fide we have created a false dichotomy between “faith and works” in regards to Justification? Here is Galatians 2:15-16:

We ourselves are Jews by birth, and not gentile sinners, yet we know that a person is not justified by doing what the law requires, but rather by the faithfulness of Jesus the Messiah. We, too, have believed in the Messiah Jesus so that we might be justified by the faithfulness of the Messiah and not by doing what the law requires, for no human being will be justified by doing what the law requires. – Galatians 2:15-16 ISV

For starters, the phrase “law requires” is not the same as “good works”. There are a lot of people in the world today who think that they are “good” enough to “get into heaven”. But Paul is not writing to them, he is writing to “we who are Jews by birth”. For a Jew, the “law” was a reference to the covenant charter of Israel – specifically Deuteronomy 28. If they remained obedient to the law (i.e. God) they would remain in the covenant (vs. 1-14), but if they rejected the law they would be removed from the covenant (vs. 15ff.). So his readers would have understood his statement as: No person can be justified by obeying the Torah – remember the Exile? – but there is One who has been faithful to the covenant of God, and by his faithfulness (or obedience – Philippians 2:8) we are justified!

Notice the key point which Paul is making here: no one is justified by their obedience but we are justified by Christ’s obedience. Now notice the key point which Paul is not making here: he is not saying that one is justified by faith and not by works. This is one of those important implications in this debate which is bubbling under many Reformers skins.

The closer we get to comprehending this distinction the closer we come to happily embracing other often neglected passages about justification:

You observe that a person is justified through actions and not through faith alone. – James 2:24 (Luther had a good mind to reject James all together because of sola fide)

For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. – Romans 2:13

For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned. – Matthew 12:37 (a passage about bearing fruit in your life in keeping with repentance)

We are saved by grace through faith – there is nothing we can do to save ourselves (Ephesians 2:8-9), and when this happens we join the body of Christ and are therefore justified! All of this is possible because of Christ’s faithfulness to God on the cross (Philippians 2:5-11).

The appropriate place to begin if one is interested in understanding what N.T. Wright believes regarding Justification is to properly distinguish between the “biblical concept” of Justification, and the later church doctrine of Justification (sola fide). To this effect, Wright quotes Alister McGrath who is said to be arguably the world’s foremost scholar on the subject of the history of the doctrine of Justification:

“The concept of justification and the doctrine of justification must be carefully distinguished. The concept of justification is one of many employed within the Old and New Testament, particularly the Pauline corpus, to describe God’s saving action toward his people. It cannot lay claim to exhaust, nor adequately characterize in itself, the richness of the biblical understanding of salvation in Christ.” – Quoted in Wrights Justification: God’s Plan Paul’s Vision, p.79

I’ll break here as Wright does just to highlight the obvious of what McGrath is getting at. The idea (or notion or thought) of Justification in the scriptures is that it is one (and only one) aspect of the salvation process. Justification is not synonymous with salvation (Justification ≠ Soteriology). McGrath continues…

“The doctrine of justification has come to develop a meaning quite independent of its biblical origins, and concerns the means by which man’s relationship to God is established. The church has chosen to subsume its discussion of the reconciliation of man to God under the aegis of Justification, thereby giving the concept an emphasis quite absent from the New Testament. The ‘doctrine of Justification’ has come to bear a meaning within dogmatic theology which is quite independent of its Pauline origins.” – ibid, p.80

What McGrath seems to be saying is that we have a case of mistaken identity of which I am as guilty as anyone for perpetuating. I thought: “Justified by Faith” = “Saved by Faith”. And I was not alone. This case of mistaken identity is perpetuated almost every time the subject comes up in conversation. In chart format, the doctrine of Justification – if I understand McGrath correctly – is usually thought of like this:

So that just as we are “justified” by “faith in Jesus Christ” and not by observing the law in Galatians, we are “saved through faith” and “not from yourself” (or, “by our works”) in Ephesians. The doctrine of sola fide is thought of in such a way that Galatians 2:16 and Ephesians 2:8 are two different ways of saying the same thing and the terms used are interchangeable.

So does this biblical support for sola fide (the doctrine of Justification) dislodge McGrath’s analyses? Does it support the view that the doctrine of sola fide accurately depicts the biblical concept of Justification despite McGrath? Well that depends on how Galatians 2:16 (and Romans 3:22) translates the phrase pistis Christou? (Yes, the old “pistis Christou” debate.) Here are your options:

The difference between the New International Version and the International Standard Version in translating this passage is not something which someone can simply shrug their shoulders at. The difference is drastic and the message could not be more different. The NIV is teaching that we are justified by BELIEVING in Jesus Christ whereas the ISV is teaching that we are justified because of Jesus’ own FAITHFULNESS (i.e. “obedience” or “works”). The first (NIV) is teaching that we are not justified by works but by faith. (There is a dichotomy between “works and faith” in Justification.) The second (ISV) is teaching that we are not justified by our works but by Christ’ works. (There is no dichotomy between “works and faith” in Justification.) You can already see that there is more at stake here then just “justification”. Regardless, N.T. Wright affirms the ISV’s rendering over the NIV here:

“This theme makes it very likely, in my view, that when Paul speaks in Galatians and Romans of pistis Christou, he normally intends to denote the faithfulness of the Messiah to the purposes of God rather than the faith by which Jew and Gentile alike believe the gospel and so are marked out as God’s renewed people.” – Wright, Paul: In Perspective, p.47

So now a paradigm shift has taken place. Rather than viewing Galatians 2:16 as simply another way of saying the same thing as Ephesians 2:8, the two are no longer a match. The one (Galatians) teaches that you are Justified because of what Christ did for you on the cross (i.e. his “faithfulness” or “the faithfulness of Jesus Christ”) whereas the other (Ephesians) is teaching that you are saved by grace through faith (or “believing the gospel”). The chart format reflecting this new paradigm which confirms McGrath’s analysis and Wright’s understanding of Justification is this:

So what is the point? The point is that church doctrine has raised Justification up to be the center of Paul’s theology. It’s a categorical mistake with important implications. As Wright says:

“We find that [Justification], though it is indeed related closely to the whole theme of human salvation by God’s mercy and grace through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, does not denote that entire sequences of thought—so that to force it to do that is necessarily to invent all kinds of extra bells and whistles of which Paul was innocent—but rather denotes one specific aspect of or moment within that sequence of thought.” – Justification, p.87

In other words, the biblical concept of Justification is not central to Paul’s theology (as the church doctrine of sola fide has made it) and it is not synonymous with salvation. Rather the biblical concept of Justification nestles itself nicely within the broader Pauline category we have termed “Participation” or “Union with Christ” or simply: “in Christ”.

Wright: "Aren't we on the same team?" Sproul: "It depends, define 'sola fide' and then define 'Gospel'."

A few years back I must have been the only person oblivious to the horrendous massacre of the Munich Olympics of 1972. When in conversation a friend mentioned the movie, Munich (2006), I asked what it was about, and in shock he said “Don’t you know? It’s when Muslim terrorists murdered Jewish athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.”  But we were both caught off guard when another friend my mine, a Muslim, overheard our conversation and roared out through clenched teeth the way a father might chastise his children: “THEY WERE NOT TERRORISTS! IT WAS WAR! THOSE JEWISH ATHLETES WERE SOLDIERS WHO WOULD HAVE KILLED MUSLIMS AFTER THE OLYMPICS!” Then, as if nothing happened, he just walked away, leaving us staring at each other in perplexed silence.

The Olympics are supposed to be a time of peace. Everyone knows that. But for those Muslim terrorists, there is no such thing as “truce”. The context never changes. Time never goes by. “Kill the infidel!”

If this short-sighted mentality frustrates you as much as it does me, then you may be able to glimpse the frustration I have when leaders who are hailed as defenders of Reformed orthodoxy write and lecture as though the volatile age of the 16^th century were alive and well. (“Anathema the Catholic!”) It is a mentality which needs to be crushed under the full weight of the true Gospel of Jesus Christ for the glory of Christ and the union of his Body: the Church invisible and visible.

These men – I believe – need to undergo a “gestalt switch”, nothing less then a complete paradigm shift.

In the book Justification in Perspective, N.T. Wright was invited to contribute to the last essay-chapter titled “New Perspectives” where he makes this comment which some have called “The King Kong of straw man fallacies”. Here’s what Wright wrote which “defenders of Reformed orthodoxy” find so offensive:

“We are not justified by faith by believing in justification by faith. We are justified by faith by believing in the gospel itself – in other words, that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead.” Wright, “New Perspectives” (Under the heading “5: Justification” in the essay.)

I cheer Wright for this bold statement. It was about time someone called the Reformers out on the carpet and exposed much of their rhetoric for what it is. What Wright is saying is that Catholic and Orthodox believers are as much a member of the family of God, the living Church, as are Protestants if (and the “if” goes for Protestants as well) they believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ: “that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead”.

Well of course the charge is an offensive one. In one fell swoop N.T. Wright has accused the Reformation Tradition (of which he is a part of, it is important to note) of raising 16^th century “doctrine” above scripture, above the faith and above the Gospel. This is a deadly blow to the Reformers ego, and like any blow dealt to an ego, there was a backlash reaction. And so R.C. Sproul (who one blogger refers to as being “at the top end of the heavyweights” when it comes to Reformed theology) pushes back:

“To intimate that Protestant orthodoxy believes that we are justified by believing in the doctrine of justification by faith is the king of all straw men. It is the Goliath of scarecrow, the King Kong of straw man fallacies. In other words, it is a whopper. I am aware of no theologian in the history of the Reformation tradition who believes or argues that a person can be justified by believing in the doctrine of justification by faith. This is a pure and simple distortion of the Reformed tradition.” (Here)

But is that true? We have to look no further for our answer then to Mr. Heavyweight himself (in case you missed it, that’s a reference to R.C. Sproul) in a little tract called Justification by Faith Alone. In it he writes this:

“Since the Reformation the doctrine of sola fide has been the defining doctrine of evangelical Christianity. It has functioned as a normative doctrine because it has been understood as essential to the gospel itself. Without [the doctrine] sola fide one does not have the gospel; and without the gospel one does not have the Christian faith. When an ecclesiastical communion rejects [the doctrine] sola fide, as Rome did at the Council of Trent, it ceases being a true church, no matter how orthodox it may be in other matters.” – Justification by Faith Alone, p.12 (2010)

There is so much to say and so little time.

1) The doctrine of sola fide has NOT “been the defining doctrine of evangelical Christianity”. The defining doctrine of evangelical Christianity is sola scriptura (it is a sad day when we have to remind any Protestant of this fact). Pick up any book on Evangelical Christianity and you will not find a treaty there on sola fide (at least not in any central or defining way). You will find other points such as “missional” or “conversionism”, and centrally always “sola scriptura” (no matter how it is defined) but not sola fide:

“[Francis] Schaeffer said that an orthodox view of the Bible is the ‘Watershed of the Evangelical World’. In other words, it is a defining position, such that our view of Scripture determines whether or not we are truly evangelical. It seems to me that he was correct in this assessment.” A.T.B. McGowan, The Divine Authenticity of Scripture: Retrieving an Evangelical Heritage, p. 11

2) It is NOT true that without the doctrine of sola fide one does not have the Gospel. Nowhere in scripture is the Gospel defined as “sola fide”. But Paul explicitly defines the Gospel as believing in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:1-4) – as N.T. Wright correctly points out in his quote above. (This constitutes one of the fundamental areas of confusion among the traditionalists: confusing the terms “gospel” “justification” and “soteriology“.)

3) It is NOT true that by rejecting the doctrine of sola fide an ecclesial commune “ceases being a true church, no matter how orthodox it may be in other matters”. This last point is a very dangerous move on Sproul’s part because now he has explicitly raised up the Reformed doctrine of sola fide above the core belief of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ! He subjugates this core orthodox belief (the True Gospel) to the sixteenth century doctrine of sola fide. Was there no “true church” before Luther? Sproul places the true Gosple of Jesus Christ (by which he “is being saved” 1 Corinthians 15:1-4) under the subcategory of “other matters” (as if you could tuck the Gospel away somewhere under the rubric of “other matters“?). God help him!:

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gosple – not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. (Galatians 1:6-7, emphasis mine)

Sproul has distorted the Gosple by confusing the sixteenth century doctrine of sola fide with the Gosple Paul preaches in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 and which he declares to be the true Gospel being distorted here in Galatians 1:6-9. A blogger named Cameron whom I have been in dialogue with states that God is not the author of confusion, “but maybe N.T. Wright is a good candidate“. N.T. Wright has offensively reminded the Reformers what the true Gospel is: belief in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If this truth has confused my friend Cameron, this should not reflect either God who wrote the Word or Wright who has been dragging the Reformers (kicking and screaming) back to the Word. I am not surprised that my friend Cameron has been confused by Wrights comment. If he has always believed an error, and someone writes to correct his error, before he capitulates to the truth his mind will be confused. This only reflects that he is either resisting the truth or about to overcome the presuppositions of his mind!

In any case this entire quote from R.C. Sproul, an influential leader in the Protestant church and author of such books as “Defending the Faith” and “The Consequences of Ideas”, is very scary. In the quote above Sproul writes: “I am aware of no theologian in the history of the Reformed tradition who believes or argues that a person can be justified by believing in the doctrine of justification by faith.” Perhaps he should have a good look in the mirror.

If N.T. Wright’s argument is a straw man, then R.C. Sproul is the scarecrow who is caught up in the time loop of 16^th century polemics. Even the Catholic Church has moved on since then, acknowledging that other forms of orthodox Christianity are a part of the true church, while Sproul (like my Muslim friend) vehemently contends that because Trent (1559-1563) rejected the Reformed doctrine of sola fide, our Catholic brothers and sisters who believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, i.e. the Gospel, are not “a true church”.

But of course we now know that Wright’s comment is nothing at all like a “straw man argument”. It is verified right here in Sproul’s own words as the “heavyweight” speaks out of both sides of his mouth.

It is this bloggers opinion that Kevin Vanhoozer was the most entertaining and illuminating lecturer at the Wheaton Conference (aside, perhaps, from Wright himself). It is for this reason, and also because I have received complaints about the lag time it takes to load and watch the videos, that I decided to directly re-post them here.

If you have read Wright at all you will find this video enjoyable and also challenging as Vanhoozer attempts suggest a way for Wright to improve his paradigm and find a middle road between “new perspectives” and “old reformers”.

Kevin Vanhoozer: Wrighting the Wrongs of the Reformation from Derek Ouellette on Vimeo.

(I was given permission via email from Wheaton College to re-post this video here so long as I link back to Wheaton’s site. To watch the original postings click here. Because of the volume of people watching from Wheaton’s site the lag time to download and watch this may be great.)

I purchased a copy of What Saint Paul Really Said? so that N.T. Wright could autograph it since it was the first book on Paul by him I read.

If memory serves it was Edith Humphrey who brought up and challenged Wright’s interpretation of 2 Corinthians 5:21.

For N.T. Wright, if you are discussing Justification using the law-court metaphor (which has been the case since Calvin or before) it makes no sense at all to say that God’s righteousness is “imputed” on the believer. God as judge simply judges justly thus making him a “righteous Judge”. But when putting the subject of the believers Justification aside and asking the question on its own – giving full weight to the Old Testament use of “righteousness” – N.T. Wright believes that the phrase, “Gods Righteousness” is actually short hand for “the covenant faithfulness of God”. In both cases God’s righteousness is his own, it is not something he gives to anyone else.

If his interpretation is correct then what about 2 Corinthians 5:21 in which the text explicitly reads that “we have become the righteousness of God”?

N.T. Wright believes (as he says very clearly in both What Saint Paul Really Said? and in Justification) that this passage is so contextualized that we must read it as Paul talking about his own Apostolic Ministry and not about believers everywhere being imputed God’s righteousness.

Keep in mind that God’s righteousness is a reference to his faithfulness to his covenant, a faithfulness which came to fruition in the “faithful obedience of Jesus Christ on the cross” (Galatians 2:16, Philippians 2:5-11). So if the message of the Gospel – the birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:1-5) is the message of God’s covenant faithfulness then, says Wright, when Paul and the Apostles preached that message they actually embodied that message. In that sense they literally became “the righteousness of God”. This, says Wright, is the whole context of 5:11-20 and even going back to chapter 3 and 4.

But I was not satisfied with this interpretation because it seemed to limit the scope of the biblical text. I tried to dance – ever so delicately – the line between the “old” view and the “new” (i.e. Wright’s) view believing that this passage does teach that believers “take on” God’s righteousness as it were, but through the Union With Christ (“In Him” it says) rather than “imputation”. In short, I leaned toward Edith’s understanding of this passage.

In Wright’s response to Edith Humphrey my anxieties were relieved. Wright, in explaining this text at the conference, seemed to go further with it then I think he does in his books. Keeping all of his premises in tact he expanded his interpretation of this passage to include all believers and their mission.

The righteousness of God does in fact refer to God’s faithfulness to his covenant expressed fully in the life, death and resurrection of Christ (i.e. the Gospel). Furthermore, Paul in 2 Corinthians is talking – in context – specifically about his own ministry and that of the other Apostles. But – and this I think is the touch Wright adds which he does not make clear in his previous writings – we believers have a job to do in proclaiming the Kingdom Message of the Gospel to the world and when we do that then we too become, i.e. embody, the Righteousness of God.

And that is how N.T. Wright interprets 2 Corinthians 5:21, it is an interpretation I can live with though I myself need to tease it out a bit more.

At the conference one scholar challenged N.T. Wright’s interpretation of 2 Corinthians 5:21 which reads, “He became sin who knew no sin that in Him we might become the righteousness of God”.

N.T. Wright maintains a distinction between “God’s righteousness” and “our justification” and we should not confuse the two.

The phrase “God’s righteousness” is God’s own righteousness as the Judge. The Judge is a “just” Judge not because he is morally perfect (though obviously God is), but because He judges Rightly, i.e. He is a righteous Judge. So God’s righteousness is his own ability to judge rightly, and in that sense it would be silly to suggest that the Judge (i.e. God) could impute, impart, bequeath et cetera his own “righteousness” onto the defendant.

The phrase “to be justified” is a declaration from the Righteous Judge (assuming He judges rightly). It is not a declaration that someone is morally perfect (“no one is righteous, no not one”), rather the Judge finds the defendant, based on the case and evidence at hand, to be justified. The evidence in a believer’s case that God looks for is whether or not he/she is a follower of Jesus the Messiah.

So God’s righteousness is His own as Judge and refers to His judging rightly. The defendants “justification” is a declaration made by the just Judge that he is acquitted of the crime of which he is accused of in that particular case. So the Judges “righteousness” is distinguished from the defendants “justification”.

So what about 2 Corinthians 5:21 which Paul distinctly writes that in Christ we become the “righteousness of God”. How can the defendant become the Judges own righteousness?

Cannot and does not this text support the traditional view that the believe becomes (i.e. is imputed) God’s own righteousness? I struggled with Wrights interpretation of this text (see my struggle here and read under the heading, “What About God’s Righteous Judgment”) and my struggle came into focus after Wright was challenged on this point and before he responded. I remember talking with a friend after the challenge was made and we bantered around ideas and wondered how Wright will respond.

It is his answer to that challenge which will be the focus of the next post.

CAN YOU GUESS WHERE DEREK IS SITTING IN RELATION TO WHERE N.T WRIGHT IS SITTING?

The debate over Justification is far reaching, stretching its tentacles into all things soteriology and ecclesiology including such doctrines such as Union with Christ, Imputation and so on.

I apologize for this untimely post. The Wheaton Conference crept up on me by near surprise, I did not anticipate how swift the past days would be. But rest assured I had this post, Why does the Justification Debate Matter?, in my mind through the whole conference. It’s a good thing too because as I have been anticipating or rather trying to think Wright’s thoughts after him, to the answer why this debate matters I had the honor of hearing Wright answer the question himself.

Answering Questions on the Discussion Panel

“If you read the text as though that were there you will miss what is really there.”

What is Wright saying? If you read the biblical text as though that thing you always believed it said were actually there, you will miss what the biblical text really does say. I gather from this two principle matters as to why this debate matters:

1. Personal integrity

2. Biblical integrity

Galatians 2:16, to use a key example, does not read “Justified by faith in Jesus Christ” (despite poor translation choices) but rather, “Justified by the faithfulness of Christ” a translations difference of significant proportions. Luther’s reading of the biblical text in this case was highly and emotively conditioned by his times. He made a mistake. Personal integrity says that we should accept the roots of our misreading (“our” because we read through the lens of our traditions, and in the Protestant tradition, Luther’s reading of Galatians 2:16 is fundamental).

Biblical integrity says that if this is what the text reads, well then be gone with our mistaken categories. N.T. Wright’s quote above challenges us who claim to be biblical to actually be biblical. As long as we read the text wrongly, we will forever miss what its author (not to mention its Divine Author) is actually saying.

To me that really makes this debate matter.

Someone might think there is not much at stake in this debate. There is. (I state that matter-of-factly.)

After reading the last post it should be obvious that the doctrine of Imputation hangs in the balance. If Wright is correct then the doctrine of Imputation is unnecessary, superfluous and even simply wrong.

J.I Packer, Michael Bird, Larry Helyer and other Reformed scholars have all said explicitly that there is no verse in the bible that teaches Imputation (neither that we have been imputed Christ’s righteousness, nor that every individual has been imputed Adam’s particular sin). It is for this reason that John Wesley rejected this doctrine for most of his career (only to accept it on the condition that “imputation” never be separated from “impartation”) and why N.T. Wright and others reject it.

But the fact that the bible does not explicitly teach imputation does not stop Packer, Bird or Helyer from embracing that doctrine. Listen to Bird’s statement here:

“I don’t think that any single text in the New Testament speaks of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to believers, but spread throughout the New Testament we find the ingredients for it when taken collectively.”

So there you have it, the “ingredients” are there. Does anyone even know what that means, the “ingredients”? A little bit of this and a little bit of that and voila: a doctrine. (Too many doctrines are made that way.) I have no problem with the idea that believers have been imputed Christ’s righteousness except that the bible does not seem to teach it and that there are other ways to accomplish what imputation seeks to do. (I do have a serious problem with the imputation of Adam’s sin on every individual. It is this reverse side of the doctrine of imputation that leads people like Jonathan Edwards to smugly declare children to be “infinitely more hateful then vipers”.)

But imputation is not the real issue for classical reformers, it is only a symptom. We could talk about their understanding of “works” or “faith” or “grace” or “justification” and so on. All of these are at stake one way or another (for the Reformers) but they are not the bottom line. The root of the problem, the real issue at stake is the Reformed Tradition. The entire Reformation was built on the foundation of Luther’s Justification by Faith Alone. Centuries of Creeds, respected scholars, heroes of the faith and even the greatest of all Reform giants, John Calvin himself, systemized, expounded, exegete, taught, preached and swore allegiance to this Great Tradition which proudly claims support from the scriptures. It would be a devastating blow to the Reformed ego if it could be shown from the Biblical text in historical context that all of this was built on a mistake.

For Piper, Sproul and others, the stakes are very high.

For Wright the stakes are equally high. If the root of the issue for Reformers is Tradition then the root of the issue for Wright is the scriptures. He says that “what is missing” in Reformed traditional scholarship is “an insistence on Scripture itself rather than tradition…” What he finds frustrating then is when he does this, when Wright insists on the scriptures, he is accused by Piper of doing away with 1500 years of tradition (does anyone else see the irony in that?). N.T. Wright believes that the traditional Reformers are more defensive of their traditions and creeds then in what the scriptures might actually reveal. To suggest that the Reformers did not get it all right the first time terrifies some of these guys.

For Wright, the stakes are nothing short of cosmic proportions. When asked what would be missing if Piper’s views were adopted, he answered:

“What’s missing is the big, Pauline picture of God’s gospel going out to redeem the whole world, all of creation, with ourselves as part of that. What’s missing is the big, Pauline view of the church, Jew and Gentile on equal footing, as the sign to the powers of the world that Jesus is Lord and they aren’t. What’s missing is the key work of the Holy Spirit in enabling the already-justified believers to live with moral energy and will so that they really do ‘please God’ as Paul says again and again (but as Reformed theology is shy of lest it smack of smuggling in works-righteousness again). What’s missing is an insistence on Scripture itself rather than tradition…”

It is my hope that you begin to get a sense of what is at stake. In the long run the stakes involve many issues including how to properly understand the relationship between faith and works, the atonement and half a dozen other issues. In the short run it is nothing short of which is supreme, Scripture or Tradition (keeping in mind that this debate is internal and has nothing to do with the Catholic Church).

Traditional Reformers can no longer get away with smugly waving off all of their opponents by claiming the biblical high ground as long as they continue to canonize the traditions of Luther and Calvin with unquestionable allegiance.

I think by now you probably have something of an idea as to why this debate matters, but as I “Post-Conservative” myself I feel pressed to write the next post anyways.

We have now seen each view summarized (post one) and we also now have a sense of what is at stake (hopefully). My views have been made crystal. I do not agree with Wright on all matters, but on this subject when he explains the scriptures I am inclined to agree. Frankly, accepting the biblical testimony in context over my own tradition has been very enlightening, invigorating, liberating, and joyful.

So next I will briefly suggest why this matters (as if this post didn’t already do that).

***Stay Tuned***