biblelighthouse
Puritan Board Junior
I have started reading a bit of N.T. Wright's stuff . . . I am curious regarding what all the fuss is about.
From what I can tell, he *retains* the Reformed teaching on justification, but he gives it the word "call". Then, he uses the word "justification" to refer to that which occurs *afterward* in the ordo salutis.
As Wright himself says:
In other words, he does NOT reject the Reformed doctrine of how a person receives salvation. He just thinks the word "justification" is a bad word to use for it. I cannot say that I agree with him. But I have to wonder why he should be anathematized for it. After all, isn't the underlying doctrine the most important thing, rather that the terminology?
Here is more directly from Wright, regarding his views of the "call" and "justification":
And elsewhere:
Also, I have heard some people suggest that Wright throws traditional justification out the window, in favor of focusing on Jew-Gentile relations. But from what I can tell, this is NOT true. This is not a case of either/or . . . rather, it is a case of both/and. Wright retains the Reformed doctrine of justification, AND he believes that the whole Jew/Gentile reconcilliation is intimately bound up together with it in Paul's theology. As Wright says here:
Also, listen to N.T. Wright's powerful and unequivocal stance on the penal substitutionary atonement:
Finally, here are some of Wright's own words concerning our salvation by faith in Christ:
If you would be so kind, please *thoroughly* read what Wright said at the 2003 Rutherford House Conference, and in this 2005 AAPC lecture.
Then, after completely reading both articles, please help me understand why N.T. Wright has been anathematized by some Reformed people. If he *retains* the Reformed view of salvation, but just calls it by a different word, then what's the problem? If he adds the Jew/Gentile relationship question into the mix, but still *retains* the traditional view regarding salvation by faith alone, then what's the problem? If N.T. Wright affirms the penal substitutionary view of the atonement, then what's the problem?
I do not yet see why I should consider N.T. Wright as heterodox. But perhaps I am just missing something.
[Edited on 12-22-2005 by biblelighthouse]
From what I can tell, he *retains* the Reformed teaching on justification, but he gives it the word "call". Then, he uses the word "justification" to refer to that which occurs *afterward* in the ordo salutis.
As Wright himself says:
For myself, it may surprise you to learn that I still think
of myself as a Reformed theologian, retaining what seems to me the substance of Reformed theology while moving some of the labels around in obedience to scripture "“ itself, as I have suggested, a good Reformed sort of thing to do.
In other words, he does NOT reject the Reformed doctrine of how a person receives salvation. He just thinks the word "justification" is a bad word to use for it. I cannot say that I agree with him. But I have to wonder why he should be anathematized for it. After all, isn't the underlying doctrine the most important thing, rather that the terminology?
Here is more directly from Wright, regarding his views of the "call" and "justification":
I have already described how Paul understands the moment when the gospel of Jesus as Lord is announced and people come to believe it and obey its summons. Paul has a regular technical term for this moment, and that technical term is neither "˜justification´ nor "˜conversion´ (though he can use the latter from time to time): the word in question is "˜call´. "˜Consider your call´, he says to the Corinthians; "˜God called me by his grace´, he says of himself.
But if the "˜call´ is the central event, the point at which the sinner turns to God, what comes before and after? Paul himself has given the answer in Romans 8.29"“30. Though he does not often discuss such things, he here posits two steps prior to God´s "˜call´ through the gospel: God´s foreknowledge, and God´s marking-out-ahead-oftime, the mark in question being the mark of the image of the Son.
But what matters for our purposes even more is the question of what comes after the "˜call´. "˜Those he called, he also justified´. In other words, Paul uses "˜justify´ to denote something other than, and logically subsequent to, what we have often thought of as the moment of conversion, when someone who hasn´t before believed the gospel is gripped by the word and the Spirit and comes to believe it, to submit to Jesus as the risen Lord. Here is the central point in the controversy between what I say about Paul and what the tradition, not least the protestant tradition, has said. The tradition has used "˜justify´ and its cognates to denote conversion, or at least the initial moment of the Christian life, and has then debated broader and narrower definitions of what counts. My reading of Paul indicates that he does not use the word like that; and my method, shared with the reformers, insists that I prefer scripture itself to even the
finest traditions of interpretation. The fact that the Christian tradition has since at least Augustine used the word "˜justify´ to mean "˜become a Christian´, whether broadly or narrowly conceived, is neither here nor there. For Paul, "˜justification´ is something that follows on from the "˜call´ through which a sinner is summoned to turn from idols and serve the living God, to turn from sin and follow Christ, to turn from death and believe in the God who raised Jesus from the dead.
And elsewhere:
Paul´s view seems to be that when the evangelist announces the "˜word´, God the Spirit works through that proclamation to bring people to faith. Paul has a very precise technical term which he uses to denote this moment, and it is not of course "˜justification´, but "˜call´. "˜Those he called, them he also justified.´
Also, I have heard some people suggest that Wright throws traditional justification out the window, in favor of focusing on Jew-Gentile relations. But from what I can tell, this is NOT true. This is not a case of either/or . . . rather, it is a case of both/and. Wright retains the Reformed doctrine of justification, AND he believes that the whole Jew/Gentile reconcilliation is intimately bound up together with it in Paul's theology. As Wright says here:
I thus discover that my call, my Reformational call, to be a faithful reader and interpreter of scripture impels me to take seriously the fact, to which many writers in the last two hundred years have called attention, that whenever Paul is talking about justification by faith he is also talking about the coming together of Jews and Gentiles into the single people of God. I did not make this up; it is there in the God-given texts. I do not draw from this observation the conclusion that some have done (I think particularly of Wrede and Schweitzer), namely that justification is itself a mere secondary doctrine, called upon for particular polemical purposes but not at the very centre of Paul´s thought. On the contrary: since the creation, through the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ, of this single multi-ethnic family, the family God promised to Abraham, the family justified, declared to be in the right, declared to be God´s people, on the basis of faith alone, the family whose sins have been forgiven through the death of the Messiah in their place and on their behalf, the family who constitute the first-fruits of the new creation that began with the bodily resurrection of Jesus "“ since the creation of this family was the aim and goal of all Paul´s work, and since this work was by its very nature polemical, granted the deeply suspicious pagan world on the one hand and the deeply Law-based Jewish world on the other, it was natural and inevitable that Paul´s apostolic work would itself involve polemical exposition of the results of the gospel, and that justification by faith, as itself a key polemical doctrine, would find itself at the centre when he did so.
Also, listen to N.T. Wright's powerful and unequivocal stance on the penal substitutionary atonement:
I am the author of the longest ever exposition and defence, certainly in modern times, of the view that Jesus himself made Isaiah 53, the greatest atonement-chapter in the Old Testament, the clearest statement of penal substitution in the whole of the Bible, central to his own self-understanding and vocation, and I have spelled out the meaning of that, in the sustained climax of my second longest book, in great detail. I have done my NT scholarship in a world where battle-lines were drawn up very clearly on this topic: those who want to avoid penal substitution at all costs have done their best to argue that Jesus did not refer to Isaiah 53, and I have refuted that attempt at great length and, I trust, with proper weight. What is more, I have expounded the truth of Jesus´ death "˜in our place´ from the very first sermon I preached, in Passiontide 1972, when I spoke to a small congregation on the faith of the dying brigand who turned to Jesus on the cross and saw him as the innocent one dying the death of the guilty. I have several volumes of sermons in print, and in many of them you will find sermons on the cross expounding this view of the atonement. If you look at my biblical commentaries, whether scholarly or popular, you will find the same thing.
Finally, here are some of Wright's own words concerning our salvation by faith in Christ:
Those who believe the gospel; those, that is, in whose hearts and lives the Spirit has been at work by the word to produce the faith that Jesus is Lord and the belief that God raised him from the dead "“ these people are assured, as soon as they believe, that they are dikaioi, in the right. They are declared to be righteous; the verb dikaioo has that declarative force, the sense of something being said which creates a new situation, as when a minister says "˜I pronounce that they are husband and wife´ or when a judge says "˜I declare that the defendant is not guilty´.
If you would be so kind, please *thoroughly* read what Wright said at the 2003 Rutherford House Conference, and in this 2005 AAPC lecture.
Then, after completely reading both articles, please help me understand why N.T. Wright has been anathematized by some Reformed people. If he *retains* the Reformed view of salvation, but just calls it by a different word, then what's the problem? If he adds the Jew/Gentile relationship question into the mix, but still *retains* the traditional view regarding salvation by faith alone, then what's the problem? If N.T. Wright affirms the penal substitutionary view of the atonement, then what's the problem?
I do not yet see why I should consider N.T. Wright as heterodox. But perhaps I am just missing something.
[Edited on 12-22-2005 by biblelighthouse]