WiTHERiNGTON, WRiGHT, and JUSTiFiCATiON

Ben Witherington gives his take on Wright's book and justification. And look what a playground for nerds and glorious haven this is:

Justification

At the conference, I was also able to pick up Tom Wright's new book on justification. It will not officially come out in the states until the summer.

His interactions with Piper are direct. He sees the big picture. I love his emphasis on the Spirit, the covenant, and eschatology in justification.

Wright also has several chapters of introductory material that are very rich for any Bible reader. I am personally challenged at the length these guys go to in order to be faithful to the Scriptures.

MORE WRiGHT ON JUSTiFiCATiON

NT Wright is responding to his critics again [more here and here]. Good ol Johnny Piper is one of these critics who wrote debating and dialoging with him on justification. It will be good to read Wright's response just as it is good to read almost anything he writes. 

Dear Calvinists, Tom is your brother. He is not a heretic. He is smarter than you. This doesn't mean he is always right. It means that you read, seeking to be blessed by God's grace in his life. Shalom.

this might not make any sense. it just came out of the keyboard. it's not my fault.

In a sense, works justify justification. They are also inseperably linked to it, follow it, and flow forth from it.

Also, since when did good works get a bad rap?

Probably since we deduced from the Protestant Reformation that Judaism and Catholicism are both merely morality-based expressions and attempts at a relationship with the God of the Bible.

Or, probably since we have set the post-Enlightenment human psyche as the goal and end of all thinking. When this happens, human motives behind works take a seat on the throne.

But all of this - works, motives, justification, sanctification, salvation, etc - all of this takes its proper order and place when our focus is correct. Our focus is God Himself [2 Cor 3.17-18]. This means we must "hear with faith" [Gal 3] and walk by the Spirit [Gal 5, Rom 5-8] as we have our eyes perpetually fixed on what God has done in Jesus.

Redemption from the New Perspective? Towards a Multi-Layered Pauline Theology of the Cross

Here.

THE FUTURE OF JUSTiFiCATiON [book review]

To the scholar, it will warm his heart and prod his mind. To the pastor, it will cause him to see the need for precision in language and push him to do that on tough texts. To Joe in the pew, read chapter 11 and the appendices and be challenged to think deeper about what Saint Paul really said. There are occasional places where Piper gets repetitive, but not to a fault. You can tell he has really studied and conversed with Wright in this book. Piper even thanks Wright in the intro for his 11,000-word response to Piper's first draft. There are sections where I'm convinced that the standard Reformed understanding of imputation/justification cannot fit. There are other places where the New Perspective's "covenant faithfulness" can't quite be seen. Still, this is exactly how theological debates should be handled.

ROMANS 5-8 and JUSTiFiCATiON

Paul’s questions in Rom 6 and following [“Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?” in 6.1; or “Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?” in 6.13; and others] must be read with the backdrop of chapters 1-5.

If someone is “made righteous” [this is how Catholicism defines justification] by faith in 1-5, then the expectation of an upright and holy person is that they will not sin. This is what righteous means. There was only one of those persons. But what if chapters 1-5 teach that when a person believes, he or she is “pronounced” and/or “declared” righteous? If this latter proposition be true, then it must also be pregnant with questions such as “Are we to continue in sin so that grace may abound?"

Further still, this pronouncement is such that it is not only a counting or a reckoning of one as righteous, but it is a declaration that ensures that one day the justified individual will be completely righteous like and with Jesus. Why else would Paul say that God predestined these to be “conformed to the image of His Son”? Why else would he continue his argument to say that all God predestined, God also called; and all God called, He also justified; and all God justified, He also glorified?

Paul would never link these near the close of his argument in chapters 5-8 and ask the kind of questions he did unless the declaration of righteousness in 1-4 secures the future reality of absolute righteousness forever in the new creation.

NT WRiGHT and JUSTiFiCATiON

In What Saint Paul Really Said, NT Wright does a great job supplying the meaning to a lot of Paul's language regarding justification, righteousness, justice, and other words in the dikai- word group...

"First, it is covenant language – not in the sense of that word made famous through some 16th and 17th century discussions, but in the 1st century Jewish sense. When Paul speaks of justification he is operating within the whole world of thought of second-temple Judaism, which clung to the covenantal promises in the face of increasingly difficult political circumstances.

Second, it is law-court language, functioning within the covenantal setting as a strong explanatory metaphor. Two thing must be said about this. First, this metaphor is necessary for understanding what the covenant was all about. The covenant was there to put the world to rights, to deal with evil and to restore God’s justice and order to the cosmos. Second, it is never independent of the covenant setting. It cannot be made in to an absolute and free-standing concept without doing violence both to itself and to the fundamental meaning of the covenant.

Third, justification for Paul cannot be understood properly apart from eschatology. It cannot, that is, be made into an abstract or timeless system, a method of salvation to be randomly applied. It is part of the Pauline worldview in which the creator of the world has acted, uniquely, climactically, and decisively, in Jesus Christ, for the rescue of the entire cosmos, and is now, by his Spirit, bringing all things into subjection to this Jesus."