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Category Archive: New Perspectives on Paul
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Wright and Piper Go Face to Face (Nope: Piper Backs Out)
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!
Tagged ETS, John Piper, N.T. Wright, Thomas R. Schreiner
More on Justification (Faith and Works)
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).
Justification: Identity Crisis
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:
| Galatians 2:16 | Ephesians 2:8 |
| [We] know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ… (NIV) | For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourself… [NIV] |
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.
| Galatians 2:16 | Ephesians 2:8 |
| “Justified” | “Saved” |
| “Faith in Jesus Christ” | “By Grace… through Faith” |
| “Not… by observing the Law” | “Not from yourself” |
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:
| Galatians 2:16 NIV | Galatians 2:16 ISV |
| [We] know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. | Yet we know that a person is not justified by the works of the law but by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. |
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:
| Galatians 2:16 ISV | Philippians 2:5-8 ESV |
| Yet we know that a person is not justified by the works of the law but by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ.
(Also, Romans 3:22 ISV God’s righteousness through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction.) |
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. |
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”.
Tagged Alister McGrath, N.T. Wright
The Post After (On the “NP”)
How do you come off the “high” of a blog like the one I just wrote, filled with so much energy and excitement that it actually became viral in some sense? It’s as if people are surrounded by traditional Reformers telling them what to believe in order to remain “orthodox” except that what they are being told to believe does not seem to make any scriptural sense. So I write a post showing where some of the traditional arguments break down and it’s like people are saying, “finally, a breath of fresh air”.
But not everyone was happy with what I wrote (though, oddly enough, few voiced it publically on the blog). They are confused and they think that we are playing fast and loose with semantics, “doesn’t the Gospel = Justification?” “N.T. Wright has muddled the crystal clear teachings of the bible, and now so are you.” “The gospel defined as ‘the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ’ sounds a whole lot like sola fide to me.”
So to get this straight: on the one hand are “Sproul’s folks” who see what the scriptures teach as “crystal clear” and accuse Wright of mucking things up. On the other hand are “Wright’s folks” who see what the scriptures teach as “crystal clear” and believe that it is the traditional position that has gotten into the habit of mucking things up.
But the roots go much deeper than this. The issues are not so clear cut. What is often seen as “crystal clear, it says it right here” is simply a way of choosing not to enter into critical conversation. Frankly, the response to that is: “I see what it says, but you are reading it wrong”. In other words, the deeper issues really revolve around interpretive methods and which tools are we using to uproot (or dig deeper) into the meaning or intent of the text.
I believe that N.T. Wright is closer to the truth on these matters than traditional Reformed dogma. I believe the evidence bares this out. I also believe that unless one is open to thinking these things through critically, rather than digging their heels deeper into the traditional position, on merit of its position being tradition, it is less likely that they will understand what it is this “New Perspective” believes and (more importantly) why.
But will you, please, think openly about what is being said? I am not asking that you agree or swallow everything hook, line, and sinker, but only that you seek to understand. I think good dialogue begins when we understand each other, because only then can we raise our concerns legitimately and ask our questions sincerely.
In what follows will be my honest assessment of what I believe to be some of the key issues (and areas of confusion) in this debate. I invite you to follow along as I attempt to untangle some of these issues and iron out some of the key themes. I invite you to listen and interact with my posts by asking your sincere questions (no doubt they will be tough ones) and allowing for my reasoned responses (which I don’t always promise will satisfy you, but I will do my best).
And for everyone who got behind my last post: God Bless You! It’s nice to be reminded that I am not alone on an island wrestling with coconuts. 
A Word on the New Perspective[s]
It’s really important to keep in mind that there is no such thing as the New Perspective on Paul. After a short survey of the positions of E.P. Sanders and Jimmy Dunn, N.T. Wright writes:
“I say all this to make it clear that there are probably almost as many ‘New Perspective’ positions as there are writers espousing it – and that I disagree with most of them. Where I agree is as follows…” (Here)
He goes on to explain that the common feature which defines the so-called “New Perspective” is the desire of NP scholars to locate and interpret Paul within his Jewish context. As this relates to Justification, Wright states that “It is blindingly obvious when you read Romans and Galatians… that virtually whenever Paul talks about justification he does so in the context of a critique of Judaism and of the coming together of Jew and Gentile in Christ.” In order to understand Paul’s critique of Judaism you first need to understand first century Judaism which – according to NP proponents and thanks largely to the work of E.P. Sanders – was not a “works-righteousness” system similar to 16th century Catholicism.
This is all that NP proponents have in common: the interpretation of Paul in his Jewish context. But this has called for a re-evaluation of how Paul has traditionally been interpreted and has resulted in many new interpretations. Thus there is wide diversity within the “New Perspective” camp as each scholar wrestles with overcoming his traditional presuppositions in a effort to reinterpret Paul within his Jewish context.
I find N.T. Wright’s interpretation of Paul to be the most fruitful, well argued, and best articulated of both “old” and “new” perspectives. So in the posts to follow (at least the ones in keeping with this theme), I rely almost exclusively on the theology of Wright with a “tweak” here or there of my own.
Tagged E.P. Sanders, Jimmy Dunn, N.T. Wright
R.C. Sproul, N.T. Wright and the Scarecrow
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 16th 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 16th 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 16th 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.
Tagged Justification, N.T. Wright, R.C. Sproul
