Unless you have had all access to theology blogs cut off for the last few years, you have heard the name N.T. Wright. Even Christians who, as a rule, do not involve themselves in theological debate will likely have heard of him. But who is N.T. Wright, and why has he been causing a stir of late?
Nicholas Thomas Wright is a New Testament Scholar, Anglican Bishop of Durham, and prolific writer. Among other things he was educated at Oxford, taught at McGill University, was Canon Theologian at Westminster Abbey, and is well know for his opposition to the Jesus Seminar’s thought and his opposition to homosexual conduct. He is also not one to skip on scripture. Anyone who has read only a bit of his works know that they are saturated with scripture.
On first blush then one would think that he would be welcomed by conservative protestants in North America, but in fact it is a bit of a rocky relationship, particularly with how Reformed Protestants deal with Wright. Although Reformed Protestants will often accept the work that Wright has done investigating the historic Jesus, and appreciate his position on homosexuality, another one of his positions cause deep concerns.
N.T. Wright is involved with what has come to be known as the New Perspectives on Paul (NPP). Broadly speaking the NPP are a group of ideas that re-think the historical understanding of Paul. The NPP is not a single idea, but includes the perspectives of many different writers on Paul. E.P. Sanders and James Dunn are, along with Wright, leading voices within this movement although there are important differences between these authors. According to The Paul Page The NPP has:
At its core is the recognition that Judaism is not a religion of self-righteousness whereby humankind seeks to merit salvation before God. Paul’s argument with the Judaizers was not about Christian grace versus Jewish legalism. His argument was rather about the status of Gentiles in the church. Paul’s doctrine of justification, therefore, had far more to do with Jewish-Gentile issues than with questions of the individual’s status before God.
How this is worked out in Wright’s understanding, and his ability as a communicator, has troubled many in the Reformed community. Many blogs entries against Wright’s views have been written, papers given, and now the books have begun to flow with the latest being John Piper’s The Future of Justification. Some have thoughtfully engaged with his ideas, but there are some who consider him a wolf in sheep’s clothing leading many astray.
Due to the attention given to Wright and his thought, I began to read some of his work earlier this year. The most important thing that studying philosophy at university has taught me is that if you want to understand someone’s views: read them. Base your understanding on expositions of their thought, or replies from their critics, but read them. Although I’ve only begun to brush the surface of Wright’s massive amount of books having read Simply Christian, The Last Word, What Saint Paul Really Said, Paul For Everyone: Romans Part 1, and am currently working through Paul For Everyone: Romans Part 2, it’s easy already to see what the big deal about N.T. Wright is.
Without a doubt Wright is one of the most gifted communicators I’ve read lately. He is engaging and thoughtful in his writing. Although it does still require some work to understand what he is saying it’s a joy to read him. This is part of the reason that Reformed conservatives have spoke out with force against him; if he is teaching error people will be attracted to him because of his ability to communicate, and therefore their strong response to him.
Most of the responses available on the internet to Wright deal with his book What Saint Paul Really Said. This book was released in 1997, and in that time Wright has written more on the subject of Paul, yet this is the book that seems to still be the “battle ground” and for that reason I decided to read it before his newer stuff. There is a lot in the book that should be uncontroversial, but there are three terms of which Wright challenges the common historic understanding.
This challenge is what makes Wright a big deal (although for the other stuff he says, he deserves to be heard and read; and when I say “big deal” I mean why everyone writes about him). What are these three terms? Without offering my own view on them I’ll try now simply to explain what Wright says and how it’s different from the historic understanding.
Gospel
The first term the Wright wants to change is “gospel.” Like all of these terms, he believes that the church has misunderstood what Paul originally meant. Historically the church has meant by “gospel”: a way of coming to salvation. When one preaches the gospel, one preaches what one has to do in order to come to Christ. Wright thinks that this does not fit with the understanding of Paul, the message of the gospel is not how to do something, but a message about Christ. Wright says regarding this:
It is not, then, a system of how people get saved. The announcement of the gospel results in people being saved - Paul says this a few verses later (speaking of Romans 1). But ‘the gospel’ itself, strictly speaking, is the narrative proclamation of King Jesus. He can speak equally of ‘announcing the gospel’ and of ‘announcing Jesus’, using the term kerussein, ‘to act as a herald’ in each case (e.g. 1 Corinthians 1:23, 15:12; 2 Corinthians 1:19, 4:5; 11:4, Galatians 1:21, 1 Thessalonians 2:9). When the herald makes a royal proclamation he says ‘Nero (or whoever) has become emperor.’ He does not say ‘If you would like to have an experience of living under and emperor, you might care to try Nero.’ The proclamation is an authoritative summons to obedience - in Paul’s case, to what he calls ‘the obedience of faith.’
Righteousness of God
The second term deals with a topic going back to the Reformation. Luther understood the term Righteousness of God as referring to the righteous the God imputes to sinners who have by faith trust in Christ. Looking at what the term righteousness meant in the Jewish law courts in the time of Paul, Wright believes the term does not refer to anything given to a person, but to God’s own faithfulness to the covenant He has made with man. God’s righteousness is them “covenant faithfulness”. This is a major point, and beyond the historical setting of the term he has several pages devoted to looking at how the term appears in the epistles, particularly in Romans. To quote Wright again:
If an when God does act to vindicate his people, his people will then, metaphorically speaking, have the status of ‘righteousness’. I shall have a good deal more to say about this in the next chapter, when we look at the cognate topic of justification. But the righteousness they have will not be God’s own righteousness. That makes no sense at all. God’s own righteousness is covenant faithfulness, because of which he will (Israel hopes) vindicate her, and bestow upon her the status of ‘righteous’, as the vindicated or acquitted defendant. But God’s righteousness remains, to to speak, God’s own property. It is the reason for his acting to vindicate his people. It is not the status he bestows upon them in so doing.
Justification
Lastly Wright believes that how we use the term ‘justification’ has no scriptural support. Historically justification refers to the act of coming to faith in Christ, but for Wright this doesn’t make sense; it doesn’t fit with Paul’s worldview. Yes, people come to Christ through faith, but this isn’t what justification refers to. Justification for Wright is the status a person who has faith in Christ has. Wright explains it was follows:
Justification in this setting, then, is not a matter of how someone enters the community of he true people of God, but of how you can tell who belongs to that community, not least in the period of time before the eschatological event itself, when the matter will become public knowledge.
…it should be clear that certain aspects of the post-Augustine debate of what has come to be called ‘justification’ have nothing much to do with the context in which Paul was writing. ‘Justification’ in the first century was not about how someone might establish a relationship with God. It was about God’s eschatological definition, both future and present, of who was, in fact, a member of his People. In Sanders’ terms, it was not so much about ‘getting in’, or indeed about ’staying in’, as about ‘how you can tell who was in’. In standard Christians theological language, it wasn’t so much about soteriology as about ecclesiology; not so much about salvation as about the church.
These three terms then are what the big deal (for Reformed folks at least) is about Wright (the question of imputation which is often brought up follows from the Righteousness of God, it cannot be dealt with on it’s own). No matter what side you take, if Wright is wrong or right about these terms, it does need to be recognized that it is an important discussion with consequences, particularly regarding the mission of the church.
I must admit at the get-go that my theology training is miserable. My education in matters relating to the church has been much less abstract and theological than many.
With that said, I am not finding any major problems with Wright and I struggle to see what the big deal is with what he is saying.
GOSPEL - I have always believed that the gospel was a recounting of what Jesus did, the context of it and the results. Who cares that this doesn’t include how to benefit from the gospel (i.e. how to be saved). We naturally can share that afterwards. IT seems that the gospel and the salvation message go hand in hand - and I don’t think it’s really a problem if you mean one or both when you use the term.
RIGHTEOUSNESS - I think we see an example of what Write is saying with Abram, when God walks through the carcase by himself while Abram slept. It’s pretty clear that by contract law, God is the only one obligated to impart righteousness and it is still his. We never “own” it. He doesn’t give it to us so much as permanently “lend” it. Or maybe not even that, but his righteousness sort of “takes care of” us or “protects” us from sin.
Well, I actually can see how this would cause problems, now. As a “covering” of sin has been understood to be an OT principles while the NT has been said to talk about completely eradicating sin. And I think a lot of people interpret that to be a imbuing of righteousness.
JUSTIFICATION - Again, no major problems here. I have heard churches interchange the two possible meanings for this often. We also see this in some of Paul’s “being justified” language, which usually makes people go “wha?”
I guess I too don’t quite understand what the big deal is. So far, I have yet to see anything obviously wrong with NT Wright; it seems like he is mostly getting all worked up over semantics. I guess I really need to see someone explain the importance of the differences between Wright and Piper.
Darius:
I think your comment hits the proverbial nail on the head. There seems to be a lot of “getting worked up over semantics” in the Wright/Piper debate. As for “the importance of the differences between Wright and Piper,” I’ve tried to touch upon that theme at the meta-level in some of the recent posts on my blog. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Darius, take a look at A Defense of the Old Perspective on Paul by Phil Johnson for an overview of what those who oppose Wright see as issues with his work.
For those who follow a Reformed Confession, Here is an article explaining why you cannot follow it and Wright.
And Here’s an article attacking Wright on Justification.
For the record I think Wright is right on the Gospel, And Justification. I need to think through his position on Righteousness of God more before I comment on it.
For whatever reason Raffi Shahinian’s link did not come through. Here is his blog:
http://parablesofaprodigalworld.blogspot.com
What i need is one of those tests that tells me if I’m reformed or not.
I’d never heard of any of this before, so I guess I must be one of those “cut off people”. Probably because I have an inherent dislike for the blog format. Anyway, the main areas of argument appear to be:
1) View of what the first century Judaism taught and Paul’s conflict with that movement (personally, I think that the claims that Paul was combating legalism are pretty well established in Scripture).
2) View of the gospel is an announcement or an invitation. This seems to be similar to the long division between “election” vs “freewill” argument. Can people “come to the Father” through Christ?
3) Defining what “justification of the believer” means, and whether it suggests a change in the believer or simply is a status held from birth which should overcome any racial differences. I’m the least clear on what this new definition entails, and this seems the biggest reason for concern. “Justification by faith” is the entire rallying call of the reformation, and therefore an attack on that doctrine is an attack on the core of Protestantism. Again, I don’t really understand what the “New Perspective” people are claiming here.
As to #3, Wright recently gave an interview in which he was asked about his view on justification. The answer he gives I think is what your looking for to better understand what he’s claiming. The transcript of the two questions on justification can be found HERE. Let me know if that helps.
I do agree that Judaism was not supposed to be a religion of works, although some made it that.
I thought the gospel as the story of Jesus was the standard definition. The gospel is good news, and that good news is the whole story of Jesus.
And I thought the standard definition of justification was the correcting, by God, of a person’s status before Him.
I have not be able to get my head around imputed/infused/whatever righteousness discussions, nor to I particularly care to.
We’ve been discussing the atonement in my Monday night Bible study, and one area we are currently covering is the difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. In other words, how were people saved prior to Jesus? In Galations 3, it says that God “preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham,” when it said “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” So, it would seem that people were saved the same way, belief in the “gospel.” What is that gospel? It would seem that what Abraham believed was that God would do what He said He would do. The same is true of Christians, we believe that God did (and will do) what He said He did (and will do). It’s more specific now with us, in that what He said was Jesus was His Son and that He took the sins of the whole world upon himself. So, more generally speaking, believing in the “gospel” is believing that God is who He says He is and He has done what He says He has done (and will do in the future).
Judaism wasn’t designed as a religion of works (as Paul clearly states that Abraham and other OT ancestors were saved by faith and that they knew this). However, the NT also clearly shows that the Jews had turned it into a religion of works.
I agree with Darius, and I don’t see this as incompatible with what Wright is saying.
The following is a few points by Scot McKnight on what Sander’s holds to on the question of Judaism and works salvation:
1. Judaism was not a religion of works where if you built up enough credits you’d find final approval with God. Paul can’t be understood saying that about Judaism.
2. Turning Judaism into a “works” religion flies in the face of all of Jewish scholarship, emerges from Luther’s problem with the Catholic Church and gets imported onto Paul, and is out of touch with the vast bulk of ancient Jewish sources. (Sanders allowed some, but not much, works-type religion in Judaism.)
3. Judaism’s understanding of salvation (which is a Christian way of capturing the reality) is rooted in two themes: God’s election and the covenant. God chose Israel and this gave Israel salvation; Jews were not worried about final redemption and were not striving to gain eternal life by accumulating merit. The Covenant is the foundation of all of Jewish religion. To suggest that Jews were accumulating merit because this is human nature is not true according to Sanders.
4. The Law, or observing and obeying the Law, is how Jews “maintained” their relationship to the covenant and God and not the way of entering into that covenant. To say Jews followed the Law to get salvation misses why Jews loved the Torah.
5. Righteousness describes behaviour that conforms to that Torah.
This broadly fits with what I’ve read in Wright so far. For Wright’s own words look at the first few questions of THIS INTERVIEW, which is quite good.
Bryan…I really appreciate how you went to the source on this and think your synopsis is good, albeit necessarily generalized in light of all that Wright has written. If you really want to understand the basis for Wright’s views, though, I encourage you to read his “Christian Origins and the Question of God” series. Volume 1, “The New Testament and the People of God” can be a slow read, but Parts I and II in particular set out Wright’s methodology for combining historical study and theology and will be of particular interest in light of your philosophical background. The rest of this volume goes on to study in depth the historical setting of Judaism in the time just before, during and after the time of Christ. It’s interesting but a long read.
However, Volume II, Jesus and the Victory of God, is a “must read” if you are to understand why people really like NT Wright. For one thing, you’ll see (I think) that the source of much of his thinking is in his understanding of Jesus words. Too often, the church derives its theology of the Gospels based on Paul, when one could make a strong argument for the reverse. Although Paul seemed to write earlier, he was writing based on what he knew to be the words of Jesus. If we accept the Gospels as historically true, then the ideas and concepts they portray precede Paul and should be used as the basis for interpreting Paul, not the other way around.
I could go on, but suffice it to say that until I read JVG, I saw the Gospels as a collection of loosely connected stories leading up to the passion narrative. Wright helped me see them as tightly integrated theological works conveying a rich and beautiful message of “God with us” coming to establish His kingdom by confronting the evil in the world head-on and defeating it.
I’d be remiss to not say that Volume III: The Resurrection and the Son of God is also a great book that will deepen your understanding of this most important event.
Shouldn’t the books of the Bible be considered EQUALLY when deriving one’s theology??? It is ALL God-breathed, not just the parts we like best. Someone made a comment last week about how Jonah could have been left out of the canon for all he cares. This is a worrisome idea; that parts of the Bible are meaningless. I understand having favorite books, but we can’t just say that other books are worthless.
Thanks for the encouragement Bob. I do want to get to Wrights “bigger books” eventually as they sound really good, but I will be waiting until I’m done University at the end of this year to read them for two reasons:
-Time. I can finish off a small book, and then move onto my course reading without little difficulty, but I find whenever I try to read a larger book I get caught up in it and leave my course reading behind.
-I do most of my reading on the bus to and from school right now and dragging those bigs books back and forth along with my school books makes for an overflowing and heavy bag.
I also really want to read “Paul in Fresh Perspectives” next as thats where my head is at right now. But it’s only 3 and 1/2 months and I’ll be done university and can move onto these books!
Darius said: “Shouldn’t the books of the Bible be considered EQUALLY when deriving one’s theology???”
No. For example, we should draw more theology from Romans than from Esther. The two books are not equal. Both are canon and both are inspired, so in that sense they are equal. In any other sense, you’d be a fool not to acknowledge that Romans is more central to a right understanding of Christianity than Esther.
Moreover, we cannot just gloss over the very different expression, intent and techniques of the author and holy spirit when these things were written. This makes things inherently unequal.
I’m not saying that all are equally important to understanding Christianity, but that they all are important, and you can’t just ignore one book because you don’t like what it says or because it bores you.
you can’t just ignore one book because you don’t like what it says or because it bores you.
I dunno Darius, ever tried reading Chronicles? It’s like roll call in a Jewish kindergarten. I have tried several times and still get sleepy.
Chronicles? That’s not so bad, nothing like Leviticus. I’m not denying that some books are boring, but that doesn’t make them any less important.
I know, I was just making a joke.