<\/p>
Vanhoozer\u2019s lecture and now article on Wright emphasizes the central importance of union with Christ in understanding justification. He suggests the term \u201cincorporated righteousness\u201d as a way of getting at Calvin\u2019s focus on union with Christ and the double grace that flows from that union. Justification is thus an effective speech act of incorporation: \u201cTo declare someone righteous is to declare that person incorporated into Christ\u2019s righteousness: \u2018I now pronounce in man in Christ.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
Vanhoozer\u2019s point is well taken: Up with union with Christ! What surprises, though, is that Vanhoozer thinks this is somehow a corrective to Wright, an insight that Wright has failed to reckon with. I have always understood incorporation into the Messiah to be close to the heart of Wright\u2019s explanation of Paul\u2019s doctrine of justification, and an interview from late 2009 (before the Wheaton conference where Vanhoozer delivered his paper, and while Wright was formulating his response to John Piper) confirms this. <\/p>\n
Wright said: \u201cin line with many Reformed readers of scripture, including Calvin, I understand Paul\u2019s doctrine of justification to be of those who are \u2018in Christ\u2019, whereas Piper and others don\u2019t make that a central element in justification itself. Conversely, for Piper the center of justification is the \u2018imputation\u2019 of \u2018the righteousness of Christ\u2019, seen in terms of \u2018righteousness\u2019 as a kind of moral achievement earned by Jesus and then reckoned to those who believe. I believe that this is an attempt to say something close to what Paul actually says in Romans 6, namely that the death and resurrection <\/em> of Jesus Christ is \u2018reckoned\u2019 to those who are \u2018in him\u2019. Putting it the way Piper (and one part of the Reformation tradition) puts it is a pointer to something which is truly there in Paul, but one which gives off misleading signals as well.\u201d <\/p>\n This also indicates that Wright acknowledges that Paul teaches a form of imputation, God\u2019s reckoning of something accomplished by Christ to sinners by virtue of their union with Christ. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Vanhoozer\u2019s lecture and now article on Wright emphasizes the central importance of union with Christ in understanding justification. He suggests the term \u201cincorporated righteousness\u201d as a way of getting at Calvin\u2019s focus on union with Christ and the double grace that flows from that union. Justification is thus an effective speech act of incorporation: \u201cTo […]<\/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-6431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible-nt-paul"],"yoast_head":"\n