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The volume edited by McCormack includes a final chapter by NT Wright. Like a good Calvinist, Wright summarizes his views on Paul and justification under five points. <\/p>\n
He begins where he says Paul begins, with the gospel. For Paul, Wright argues, the gospel is not a message of individual salvation, not a how-to about how to be saved. The gospel implies these things, but that\u2019s not the content of the gospel. Instead, it\u2019s \u201cthe proclamation that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth ahs been raised from the dead and thereby demonstrated to be both Israel\u2019s Messiah and the world\u2019s true Lord.\u201d In contrast to the Roman imperial ideology, Paul\u2019s confrontational message is that \u201cJesus, not Caesar, is Lord, and at his name, not that of the emperor, every knee shall bow.\u201d When Paul preaches this gospel, he is confident that the Spirit is at work in and through the message to awaken people to faith. The message is \u201ca royal summons to submission, to obedience, to allegiance; and the form that this submission and obedient allegiance takes is faith.\u201d <\/p>\n
A second point has to do with the interpretation of the Pauline phrase, \u201cthe righteousness of God,\u201d used, for instance, in Romans 1:16-17 in a summary of the gospel. Paul, Wright insists, does talk about \u201crighteousness\u201d that describes a right standing or status before God, but that is not what this particular phrase means. Instead, \u201crighteousness of God\u201d refers to \u201cthe aspect of God\u2019s character because of which, despite Israel\u2019s infidelity and consequent banishment, God will remain true to the covenant with Abraham and rescue Israel nonetheless.\u201d Righteousness is not identical to salvation; it is \u201cthe reason he saves Israel.\u201d It can be described as \u201ccovenant fidelity,\u201d but Wright emphasizes that it also includes justice toward \u201ccovenant-breaking Israel\u201d and a message of future judgment according to works. But God\u2019s righteousness is never \u201can attribute that is passed on to, reckoned to, or imputed to God\u2019s people.\u201d The question that \u201crighteousness of God\u201d answers is whether God has been faithful to keep His covenant. It\u2019s a question of theodicy; it\u2019s not about something that is transferred from God to the sinner. This righteousness has a cosmic reach, Wright says: \u201cthe covenant with Israel was always designed to be God\u2019s means of saving and blessing the entire cosmos.\u201d <\/p>\n
When Paul talks about righteous status, he uses different phrasing, as in Philippians 3:9, where he talks not about the \u201crighteousness of God\u201d but about \u201crighteousness from God.\u201d In this kind of context, Paul is evoking the \u201ccontext of the Jewish law court,\u201d and the word is a forensic term. There, \u201cwhen the case has been heard, the judge finds in favor of one party and against the other. Once this has happened, the indicated party possesses the status of \u2018righteous\u2019 \u2013 not itself a moral statement, we note, but a statement of how things stand in terms of the now completed lawsuit.\u201d The status of the vindicated man before the judge is not the result of the imputation of the judge\u2019s own righteousness; the righteousness of the judge is instead evident in his conduct of the case, whether he has tried the case fairly or not. Wright says that, within this context, it\u2019s quite proper to say that the judge has \u201cmade\u201d the party righteous by his verdict \u201cbecause \u2018righteous\u2019 at this point is not a word denoting moral character but only and precisely the status that you have when the court has found in your favor.\u201d <\/p>\n
Paul does speak of reckoning or imputing righteousness, but it is \u201cnot God\u2019s righteousness or Christ\u2019s own righteousness that is reckoned to God\u2019s redeemed people but, rather, the fresh status of \u2018covenant member\u2019 and\/or \u2018justified sinner,\u2019 which is accredited to those who are in Christ, who have heard the gospel and responded with \u2018the obedience of faith.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
A third point in Wright\u2019s understanding of Paul is the reality of final judgment according to works, something Paul teaches in Romans 2:1-16. Wright insists that \u201cthe \u2018works\u2019 in accordance with which the Christian will be vindicated on the last day are not the unaided works of the self-help moralist, but \u201cthe things that show that one is in Christ; the things that are produced in one\u2019s life as a result of the Spirit\u2019s indwelling and operation.\u201d Paul, Wright points out, has confidence in God\u2019s favorable verdict at the last day, not because of the merits of Christ but because of his own apostolic work (1 Thessalonians 2:19-20). Paul knows that he doesn\u2019t do anything by \u201chis own energy\u201d but only can do \u201cwhat God gives and inspires him to do.\u201d This is related to justification by faith because the final verdict is anticipated in the present. <\/p>\n
Wright, fourthly, discusses his views on the ordo salutis. As he has often written, he objects to the evangelical tradition of equating \u201cconversion\u201d and \u201cjustification.\u201d When Paul talks about what happens at conversion, he describes it with the word \u201ccall,\u201d not with the word \u201cjustify.\u201d Prior to the call, God has foreknown and \u201cmarked out ahead of time\u201d (Wright\u2019s circumlocution for \u201cpredestination\u201d) the one to be called. But justification is not part of that moment. Justification is something that is done after the call and after conversion. In Wright\u2019s view, \u201cGod takes the initiative, on the basis of his foreknowledge; the preached word, through which the Spirit is at work, is the effective agent; belief in the gospel, that is, believing submission to Jesus as the risen Lord, is the direct result.\u201d But this is not, Wright insists, what Paul means when he uses the word \u201cjustify.\u201d He attempts to clarify the place of faith in this ordo by adding that \u201cfaith is not something someone does as a result of which God decides to grant him or her a new status or privilege,\u201d since conversion \u201cin its initial moment, is not based on anything that a person has acquired by birth or achieved by merit.\u201d Faith is \u201cthe first fruit of the Spirit\u2019s call.\u201d <\/p>\n
Finally Wright comes to justification itself. He suggests that DIKAIOO be translated as \u201cvindicate\u201d and the noun form as \u201cvindication.\u201d For Paul, vindication is not what happens at conversion, but subsequent to conversion. DIKAIOO is \u201ca declarative word, declaring that something is the case, rather than a word for making something happen or changing the way something is.\u201d It is \u201claw court language,\u201d and this is appropriate since \u201cGod is the God of justice, who is bound to put the world to rights, has promised to do so, and intends to keep his promises.\u201d He does this \u201cthrough the covenant.\u201d Thus, God\u2019s faithfulness and his justice are \u201cclosely interlinked,\u201d both indicated in the phrase \u201crighteousness of God.\u201d <\/p>\n
When God vindicates an individual, two things happen that Wright suggests were for Paul a \u201csingle thing\u201d: \u201cthe declaration (a) that someone is in the right (his or her sins having been forgiven through the death of Jesus) and (b) that this person is a member of the true covenant family, the family that God originally promised to Abraham and has now created through Christ and the Spirit \u2013 the single family that consists equally of believing Jews and believing Gentiles.\u201d That these two aspects go together is evident, Wright says, in Romans 3 (where God\u2019s impartiality appears suddenly, if Paul is
\n talking about individuals becoming right with God) and Galatians 2. Justification is \u201cGod declaration that\u201d these things are true; not His \u201cbringing it about that.\u201d Call brings it about; vindication is the declaration that it has happened. It is not about getting in; it\u2019s the assurance that we are in. Though \u201cwe are justified by faith by believing in the gospel itself \u2013 in other words that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead.\u201d When we also believe in justification by faith as a doctrine, we believe that \u201cwe are now and forever part of the family to whose every member God says what he said to Jesus at his baptism: you are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased.\u201d <\/p>\n
The corporate aspect of this is important to Wright, though he insists that he has never suppressed the need for every individual to respond to the gospel personally and individually. As an exegetical matter, though, justification is a deeply corporate teaching: \u201cvirtually 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 . . . . The only notice that most mainstream theology has taken of this context is to assume that the Jews were guilty of the kind of works righteousness that theologians from Augustine to Calvin and beyond have used to criticize their opponents,\u201d but what these theologians have missed is \u201cPaul\u2019s sense of an underlying narrative\u201d about God and Israel, coming to a climax with Jesus.\u201d <\/p>\n
As Wright has already emphasized, this vindication anticipates the future verdict that will be rendered at the final judgment. Further, it is \u201cGod\u2019s declaration about the person who has just become a Christian.\u201d It is not, in fact, quite accurate to call it a declaration; like the final verdict, the present verdict is an event. In the future, it will be \u201cthe resurrection of the person concerned into a glorious body like that of the risen Jesus,\u201d and so the present declaration \u201cconsists not so much in words, though words there may be, but in an event, the event in which one dies with the Messiah and rises to new life with him, anticipating the final resurrection. In other words, baptism.\u201d <\/p>\n
This view, Wright says, does everything that traditional Protestant theology has done with the doctrine of imputation: \u201cJesus was vindicated by God as Messiah after his penal death; I am in the Messiah; therefore I, too, have died and been raised.\u201d God sees the baptized Christian in Christ, but not because the sinner has been \u201cclothed with the earned merits of Christ.\u201d Rather, \u201cHe sees us within the vindication of Christ, that is, as having died with Christ and risen again with him.\u201d He argues too that justification is an ecumenical doctrine, about people of different ethnicities sitting at a common table. <\/p>\n
He ends with four reasons to take his version of the New Perspective seriously. First, it follows the Protestant confession of sola Scriptura. Second, it brings together the cosmic, ecclesiological, and political dimensions of Paul in a way that earlier treatment of Paul have failed to do. Third, it explains some of Paul\u2019s judgments, why he is harsh about sexual ethics but tolerate about different views concerning food and holy days. Finally, he comments that he finds the Reformed hostility to the New Perspective puzzling, since the two stand together (against some Lutherans) on many points \u2013 especially in a positive evaluation of the law: \u201cHad the Reformed reading of Paul, with its positive role of Israel and the law, been in ascendancy rather than the Lutheran one, the New Perspective might not have been necessary, or not in that form.\u201d <\/p>\n
He closes with what he calls a \u201cplea.\u201d Paul, he suggests, has been read through Enlightenment, Romantic, or existentialist lenses, and these readings downplay the importance of history and physical reality, and highlight the centrality of the self: \u201cAll these movements are forms of dualism, whereas Paul believed in the goodness and God-givenness of creation and in its eventual promised renewal. Together they reinforce the Gnosticism that is a poison at the heart of much contemporary culture, including soi-disant Christian culture.\u201d Against this Gnosticism, Wright pleads for the fullness of the gospel. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The volume edited by McCormack includes a final chapter by NT Wright. Like a good Calvinist, Wright summarizes his views on Paul and justification under five points. He begins where he says Paul begins, with the gospel. For Paul, Wright argues, the gospel is not a message of individual salvation, not a how-to about how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible-nt-paul"],"yoast_head":"\n