The Saving Righteousness of God

The Saving Righteousness of God
Michael F. Bird
Paternoster/Wipf & Stock 2007

This is an important if rather technical work from a talented Australian theologian on the much debated areas of Paul, Justification and the New Perspective. Bird's book is irenic in tone, in fact it's practically a call for a cease fire in the hostilities between the Old Perspective and the New Perspective on justification.

Bird charts a "third way" that is basically still the Old Perspective but augmented (and I use that word deliberately as opposed to "diminished") by some valid New Perspective insights. Such an approach is risky - it always risks being attacked on two fronts, as being not true to either perspective. But Bird is a careful exegete and willing to be critical of both sides.

Some of the chapters have appeared in some form within theological journals and periodicals, but have probably been revised for publication here, and there is also a fair amount of new material.

Of particular interest was Bird's concept of "incorporated righteousness" rather than imputed (traditional Protestant theology) or infused (traditional Roman Catholic theology) righteousness in the doctrine of justification. If I read Bird correctly, he has no problem with, and agrees with, imputation as a systematic theology category, but he thinks this is not how Paul himself understood our becoming righteous. In a way, Paul's scheme is simpler. We are righteous because Christ is righteous and we are "in Christ" - incorporated into Christ, in union with Christ. I found Bird's analysis interesting.

The end result may be the same, but there is a difference between Christ giving us his righteousness and us benefiting from his righteousness by being united to him. Either way we are righteous through an alien righteousness being reckoned to us, but there are differences too. One is like a cosmic set of accounts being drawn up and righteousness being transferred from one account to the other. The other is much more relational and organic. It's like the difference between handing someone one of your umbrellas and a raincoat to protect them from the rain, and inviting them to come into your house. Either way you are kept dry, but the methods are very different.

The other chapters were interesting too, particularly his analysis of the close link between Christ's resurrection and our justification (cf Romans 4:25). Rather than looking at Christ's life in terms of merit that can then be passed around the faithful, Bird sides with the New Perspective and sees it in terms of fulfilling his mission as Messiah and being the one faithful Israelite. Then the resurrection is seen as Christ's own vindication and justification first and then ours through union with him. If Christ's resurrection becomes our justification, it is difficult to see how our future justification can be based on works as N. T. Wright posits. Indeed Bird comes fair and squarely down on the side of the Old Perspective when he states that our future justification is based solely on Christ's death and resurrection. Our works, for Bird, are evidential and not instrumental in our justification.

I found this book stimulating and challenging reading. It deserves to be widely read in Reformed and evangelical circles.

The Future of Justification

The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright
John Piper
Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester 2008

This is an important book from John Piper in which he outlines and then criticises in detail the teachings regarding justification by New Perspective theologian and Anglican bishop, N. T. Wright.

Piper here is at his very best and writes as a theologian and as a concerned pastor. Point-by-point he criticises Wright not just because Wright's views are different from the Reformed/Protestant tradition (the proponents of Wright's views who dismiss Piper with this kind of remark have totally missed the mark). Piper engages Wright on the texts and the discussion is at the exegetical level for the most part.

The Future of Justification brings into sharper focus just how much the New Perspective on Paul - even in its most evangelical guise under Wright's advocacy - is a serious departure yes from Reformed tradition, but more seriously from the New Testament. Time and time again, Piper demonstrates just how Wright's claims take some of the evidence and treat it as if it was all and then dismisses the texts that don't fit. The truth is that Wright is the one committed to a theological project through which he reads the texts. Claims to be only concerned with the texts fail to convince.

Piper writes with an irenic spirit yet not one that will compromise the gospel. He bends over backwards in fact to put Wright in the best possible light he can. Yet even with this, he still makes many telling criticisms of Wrightian exegesis and theology. I think the power of Piper's "response" is obvious - not least in the fact that Wright felt he had write a reply (though a very indirect and frustrating one) and seems to have modified his view from earlier statements. I think the Wright of Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision (2009) is much closer to Piper than the Wright of What Saint Paul Really Said (1997). Perhaps in time, he will go further get closer to Piper's view yet. One hopes so, for Piper is on the side of Protestant orthodoxy on this issue and Wright, at times, isn't.

This is bound to become a key text in the ongoing theological discussion and dispute between the Old and New Perspectives on Paul.

Counted Righteous in Christ

Counted Righteous in Christ
John Piper
Inter-Varsity Press

I have been reading quite a lot about the doctrine of justification recently, mostly as a result of trying to come to grips with the New Perspective on Paul and in particular N. T. Wright's re-writing of Paul's doctrine of justification. By this I mean his re-writing of what has been understood to be Paul's doctrine at least since the time of Augustine onwards (though Wright would say he is going back to what Paul really said as one of his earlier books put it).

The latest book in my reading is Counted Righteous in Christ by John Piper. In this book, Piper deals with only one part of the debate surrounding justification, and in which Piper actually crosses swords not with Wright, but with Robert Gundry. The matter is dispute is quite narrow and exact and it's this: traditionally, evangelicals have said that in justification two things happen (1) our sins are counted, reckoned or imputed to Christ in his death as if they were his and atoned for through his sacrifice and (2) Christ's righteousness or right standing before God as a result of his sinless life of obedience to God is counted, reckoned or imputed to us. Gundry has argued that only point (1) is true and (2) should be abandoned as "unbiblical". Piper's book objects to Gundry's view and argues that (2) is also true and essential for a right understanding of the gospel.

Gundry's view in essence is that it is not Christ's righteousness that is imputed to us by faith, but rather that God imputes our faith in Christ to us as righteousness. Read that sentence again: it is not that Christ is our righteousness, but that our faith is accepted as our own righteousness.

The book is a short one of less than 150 pages and is divided into four chapters. The first two chapters are written from quite a personal, pastoral perspective about why this subject matters and is worth arguing about. The heart of the book is chapter three, which takes up more than half the book is given to exegesis of the key texts in the debate, namely Romans 4, Romans 10:10, Philippians 3:8-9, 2 Corinthians 5:21, 1 Corinthians 1:30, and Romans 5:12-19. The book ends with a concluding chapter where the arguments are drawn together.

Piper concludes his book with these words (p.125):

I pray that the "newer" ways of understanding justification, which deny the reality of the imputation of divine righteousness to sinners by faith alone, will not flourish, and that the fullest pastoral help for souls will not be diminished.

Piper's main concerns are exegetical and theological, but in this concluding paragraph, we find two other aspects that Piper understands to be wanting in Gundry's view. Piper argues that the older view gives Christ all the glory where Gundry's view says that our righteousness is not down to Christ's work alone, but takes our own faith into account. And secondly, Piper recognises the pastoral problems of saying to sinners that for your righteousness you cannot rely on Christ, you have to rely God's promise to accept your own faith as your righteousness.

This is not an easy book, nor a popular book. I suspect that many Christians reading this would scratch their heads and ask "What's this all about? Why is Piper so concerned?" Even so, this is an important book by Piper. The view he defends is the view historically held by the Protestant churches.

The doctrine of imputation of Christ's righteousness to believers is one of the areas where Piper disagrees also with the New Perspective and Tom Wright. But that's another story, and another review.

To me it is the glory of the gospel that I do not need to rely on myself for my righteousness before God, no not even relying as it were on the empty hand of faith. I want to rely on the rock of Christ and his life and work, not on the shifting sands of anything in myself.

Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision

Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision
by Tom Wright
SPCK

This is the latest book by New Testament scholar, N. T. Wright, in which he outlines his unique interpretation of the writings of the apostle Paul as they concern the subject of justification. As is well known, Wright is one of the key figures in the loose grouping of New Testament scholarship known for better or worse as the New Perspective on Paul. Wright is significant not only because he is the most popular, the clearest, and the most evangelical of the main scholars associated with the movement, and therefore the person whose teachings have made the most inroads into evangelicalism in Britain and the United States, but also because in this particular book, Wright confronts his many critics who come from "the Old Perspective" or more accurately, traditional evangelicalism and confessional Reformed theology. In particular, Wright's critic, John Piper who wrote a book critiquing the new perspective and Wright especially called The Future of Justification comes in for some stinging criticism.

Wright's central metaphor in the book is that the Old Perspective is like someone who insists the earth is the centre of the solar system because the sun rises and sets each day, whereas the New Perspective is (naturally in Wright's mind) like the person who realises the deeper truth that the sun is at the centre and the earth revolves around it. Of course this immediately sets up the idea that the Old Perspective is not only outdated and less sophisticated, but also simply untrue. That does more or less poison the well. The fact is that the choice is not between an unsophisticated and demonstrably untrue view of the Bible and a sophisticated and demonstrably true view. The choice is between two sophisticated views, one which has been understood and believed for centuries and which fits the Bible's testimony (I don't accept Wright's assertions otherwise) and one which has been more or less discovered by Wright himself and missed by every generation of theologians from the post-apostolic period till the 1970s. Of course it is possible Wright is correct and everyone else did get it wrong. But just going back to the texts in itself does not guarantee theological correctness. Not if you go back and interpret them in the wrong way!

Time and time again, Wright says that his opponents "don't get it" as if the only problem with his view is that the rest of us are a bit thick. Maybe that's not how he intended to come across, but I'm afraid that is how he comes across at times, and it is not an attractive quality. It compares poorly with Piper's gentleness and graciousness in dealing with Wright.

Despite many shortcomings, I like Wright. I like a lot of what he says. And a lot of what he says is absolutely biblical and solidly evangelical, even Reformed. Just look at his defence of the bodily resurrection of Christ for example, and the way in which the covenant lies at the heart of Wright's theology. There are aspects of his doctrine of justification that are also, it seems to me, entirely in harmony with the Bible, the Reformed confessions and the best of traditional evangelical scholarship and church teaching.

However, there are also massive problems with Wright's views on the subject of justification, and this book only clarifies that the problems are a clear and present danger to the church, rather than allay any such fears.

There are a number of points that should be borne in mind about Wright's teaching in this book (and his others for that matter - the latest book does not shift much ground from what Wright has previously said).

Firstly, much of what Wright says here would find ready agreement from many "old perspective" people. I think it was the New Testament scholar, I. Howard Marshall, who brilliantly summed up the New Perspective as being "right in what it affirms and wrong it what it denies." Amen to that! Wright, somewhat inexplicably, writes as if almost everything he teaches is revolutionary and was never noticed by Old Perspective traditionalist Reformed theologians like John Piper and many others like him. That's just not the case. Almost all of what Wright states about God's covenant and purposes has been said before by Reformed theologians, particularly in Reformed Biblical theology. It is quite clear from where Wright is coming from that he does not even have a rudimentary knowledge of covenant theology, far less a grasp of its historical development from Calvin to the present day. Otherwise he could not write with that "look what I alone have discovered" tone he sometimes displays.

Secondly, there are new insights that we need to hear and correctives we need to heed in Wright's teachings. The problem for us in dealing with the New Perspective is in sifting out the sound teaching - and there is much in Wright's work that is good and true - from the errors that pepper the book. Wright is correct in probably 75% of what he says. Justification is in part a matter of ecclesiology and of telling "who has membership of the covenant people." It does have ramifications for how we do church and how we treat each other as Christian brothers and sisters. But it does so precisely because all Christians are forgiven their sins and declared righteous in God's sight on the same basis - by Christ's work received in faith. Wright is right that in Reformed theology we have too often made salvation an individual and private matter and not fully realised the implications of the gospel in a corporate sense for the whole of creation. We have de-politicised the gospel and in that sense we have truncated the gospel. Wright is on the right track I believe in all these issues. But this is not the stuff that is actually in conflict with the Old Perspective, though sometimes Wright puts it as if rejecting some of what he says that we cannot agree with means we have to reject that which we can accept. Wright's views it seems to me help us gain a better understanding of how the Gospels and Letters in the New Testament fit together. But yet again, we do not need to accept the most controversial parts of Wright's scheme in order to gain the benefits of some of his stresses and clarifications.

Thirdly, Wright has an unfortunate tendency to set up straw men in the sense that he often writes against caricatures of old perspective theology rather than the real thing. Whether this is because he fails to understand what previous generations of Reformed theologians actually taught, or whether he just can't be bothered reading them, is immaterial. The fact is that Wright often shows a shocking lack of familiarity with that Reformed theology has actually believed and taught. To give one example at the very heart of this whole debate, Wright characterises the Old Perspective of teaching that in the doctrine of justification the active obedience of Christ is imputed to believers as righteousness because Christ fulfilling the law so as to store up a "treasury of merit" which can then be granted to believers. As far as I recall, no Reformed theologian has ever taught such a thing. It is rather that in Christ we gain the benefit of his own righteousness as someone who lived without ever having committed a sin. Another example with Wright's bizarre claim that the Old Perspective doesn't have an adequate place for the Holy Spirit. That is simply wrong. As we will see, the difference is that the Old Perspective does not assign the role to the Holy Spirit in justification that Wright gives him (and quite why Wright keeps on writing 'holy spirit' instead of Holy Spirit I don't know, but I found it odd).

Fourthly, there is no way to avoid the conclusion that Wright's view also contain serious errors. The one that stood out above others is Wright's doctrine of two-stage justification, one on the basis of faith in this life and the second on the basis of works at the Last Judgment. Wright's scheme almost says the same thing as Reformed orthodoxy in a different way, but not quite. By making 'the life lived' by believers a part of justification, albeit fencing it with the fact that the works concerned are the Holy Spirit's work, Wright cuts out a key part of the Christian's assurance. Despite his protestations that his scheme is more theo-centric than the Old Perspective (another bit of inaccurate revisionism at best), Wright's scheme actually encourages experiential navel gazing rather than looking to the objective work of Christ for justification. Rather than a two-stage justification, the New Testament talks about justification followed by sanctification. Wright's scheme confuses the two things. Reformed orthodoxy is that we are in the future justified according to works, but not on the basis of works. The difference between those statements is simply whether our works show that we are already justified (which they will) or whether our works are needed in order for us to be justified in the end (which they will not be). In my view he hopelessly confuses justification with sanctification (which is in effect Wright's second stage of justification!).

So, although Wright's book offers us much, in the end, there are significant problems with it that do not make me want to change from the Old Perspective. For every new insight that Wright offers, there are also problems with things he overlooks. An example would be the New Perspective's (and Wright's in particular) inadequate view of sin and the problem it creates for the human race. Many of the problems with the New Perspective stem from this in my view. For instance, if God's plan was to save the world through Israel, how was this to be established? The only way could have been through Christ, the only sinless human being to have lived since the Fall. To my mind, this undermines Wright's insistence on God's plan to save the world through Israel as such, if considered otherwise than through the promised Messiah. The New Testament teaches that only a sinless substitute of infinite merit could achieve the salvation of sinners. Only the Messiah could do it, which is precisely what the New Testament teaches (Acts 4:12).

To conclude, paraphrasing Wright himself, I submit that the Old Perspective can do everything the New Perspective wants to do but by a better route and with much more besides. And in the end, with its emphasis on sin and grace and the salvation of lost sinners, the Old Perspective is actually closer to Paul's vision than Wright's revision.