Bandits No More

Notes on N.T. Wright, Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision, Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2009.

Chapter 7 – Romans

The biggest failure of traditional (“Old Perspective”) readings of Romans is the failure to include key portions of the letter in the argument. When read traditionally, the parts of Romans 2 that talk about the role of works, chapter 4 on Abraham, and especially chapter 9-11 are awkward appendages, perhaps seen as illustrative material at best.

Addressing Romans as a whole, Wright begins by clarifying that Romans 1:16-17 is a statement about the effect of the Gospel, not a sample of the content of the Gospel. The Gospel, for Wright, is about Jesus, about what God has done through him. The people who experience this work, broadly taken as “salvation,” are those who believe, whether Jew or Gentile.

The most controversial part (for Reformationally minded theologians) of Wright’s account of justification comes in his exegesis of Romans. He refuses to ignore that pesky section in Romans 2 that speaks of the “doers of the law being justified.” Wright insists that justification has two moments – a present moment where our status as part of the people of God is entirely based on faith in the Messiah and a future moment where we will have to give account to God. The present verdict (“Justified!) anticipated the final verdict. Against the logic of Medieval Catholicism, carried over into Protestantism, this is not the logic of merit, of earning. Wright says “it is the logic of love.” (p. 188) The Spirit is the key player here. Wright says,

The pastoral theology which comes from reflecting on the work of the Spirit is the glorious paradox that the more the Spirit is at work the more the human will is stirred up to think things through, to make free decisions, to develop chosen and hard-won habits of life, and to put to death the sinful, and often apparently not freely chosen, habits of death… [Paul's form of synergism is] a matter of being released from slavery precisely into responsibility, into being able at last to choose, to exercise moral muscle, knowing both that one is doing it oneself and that the Spirit is at work within, that God himself is doing that which I am doing. (p. 189)

Paul’s discussion of the failures of the Jews in Romans 3 is not simply to point out that they, like the Gentiles are sinners. Rather, his aim is to show specifically that they have failed in their mission. Missing this is a form of de-Judaizing Paul, a common track in theology.

Even more than his willingness to include Romans 2 in his discussion of Paul’s doctrine of justification, Wright’s treatment of Romans 4 stands out. As I observed above, traditional views of Romans tend to see Paul’s discussion of Abraham in Romans for as a mere illustration. That approach marginalizes Paul’s use of Genesis 15 and the place of justification in that text. Abraham’s concern in that text is not that he is a sinner in need of salvation. His perceived problem is that God has promised to bless him by giving him a family – and here he is, getting to be an old guy, and he hasn’t had a single child. How can God possible solve this problem? Justification in Genesis 15 – and hence in Romans 4 – is about family. How is God going to get a family? Who can count as being part of this family? Do you have to be part of the blood line of Abraham to make it in? Paul, on Wright’s reading, emphatically emphasizes that family membership, counting as part of the people of God – i.e., receiving the status of “justified” – is by faith, not by physical inheritance. Through salvation coming to the Gentiles, through their faith in Christ, God’s promise to Abraham would finally be fulfilled.

Much of the confusion in current teaching on justification stems from a continued assumption that justification has to do with merit. While Medieval Catholicism spoke of the merit of the individual, traditional Reformation theology turned to the merit of Jesus. “We all know,” they seemed to say, “that salvation comes from being good enough. The problem is no one was good enough. So God sent Jesus, and Jesus was good enough. Through his obedience, i.e., his being good enough, he amassed enough merit for us. By faith in him, his merit is transferred to our account, enabling us to be accounted ‘righteous,’ i.e., ‘justified.’” Wright rejects, rightly, I believe, this whole train of thought. Legalism, or moralism, whatever, the form, is not God’s way.

Chapter 8 – Conclusion

A nice quote to end things: On the positive side – “Scripture forms a massive and powerful story whose climax is the coming into the world of the unique Son of the one true Creator God, and, above all, his death for sins and his bodily resurrection from the dead.” And on the negative side – “Any attempt to give an account of a doctrine which screens out the call of Israel, the gift of the Spirit and/or the redemption of all creation is doomed to be less than fully biblical.” (p. 250)

Some notes on N.T. Wright, Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision, Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2009.

Chapter 6 – Interlude: Philippians, Corinthians, Ephesians

A key issue in Philippians: the connection between the status of God’s people (as God’s people) and the life that flows out of that status. Looking at the role of the Law in this, Wright says,

The keeping of the Law was not a way of earning anything, of gaining a status before God; the status was already given in birth, ethnic roots, circumcision and the ancestral possession of Torah. All that Torah obedience then does – it’s a big “all,” but it is all – is to consolidate, to express what is already given, to inhabit appropriately the suit of clothes (‘righteousness’) that one has already inherited. (p. 145)

Looking at 1 Corinthians 1:30, Wright summarizes what Paul says of Jesus:

1. Jesus is the incarnation of God’s wisdom. His way of wisdom is vastly different from the way of the world.

2. “He has become ‘righteousness,’ that is God has vindicated him… Those who are ‘in Christ’ share this status.” (p. 157)

3. In becoming ‘sanctification’ Jesus has defeated sin and its power.

4. He has become “redemption for us because “in him God has accomplished the great new exodus, the crossing of the Red Sea of death.” (p. 157)

In 2 Corinthians, Wright’s focus is on 5:21. He works mightily to make sure that verse, so often used as the foundation of a doctrine of “imputed righteousness,” is read in it’s context, in this case, of Paul’s apostolic apologia. Examining the structure of the the verses that immediately precede it, he notes how repetitive that structure is. In each case there is a statement of the work of Christ followed by a statement of ministry that flows from it. Read this way, the phrase commonly taken to refer to the imputation of righteousness, “so that in him we might become the righteousness of God,” is paraphrased by Wright as “in the Messiah, we might embody God’s faithfulness, God’s covenant faithfulness, God’s action in reconciling the world to himself.”

He argues that this reading makes much better since of the verb “become” than does the traditional reading. If this passage were trying to make the traditional point about imputation it one would expect it to use a different kind of verb to express our relationship with righteousness: we might gain it, or receive it, or even be covered by it. But become it? Traditional imputation teaching doesn’t say anything about us becoming the righteousness of God (unless it takes the force of become to be equivalent to one of those other verbs). Finally, and importantly, Wright also observes the importance of Isaiah 49 to Paul’s argument here.

Wright’s treatment of Ephesians – which he regards as Pauline – and its treatment of justification, can be stated very briefly. Ephesians 2, perhaps more clearly than any other text, lays out the individual and social dimensions of salvation (using that larger term rather than the narrower “justification”).