Trevin Wax recently posted an interview with Tom Wright about his latest book, Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision
, which is a response to John Piper on the issue of justification. Here's a sample, and some of the money quotes from the interview:
Trevin Wax: What would you say are the key differences between you and Piper on justification?
N.T. Wright: Well, I set justification within the
larger Pauline context, where it always comes, of God’s purposes to
fulfill his covenant promise to Abraham and so to rescue the whole
creation, humankind of course centrally included, from sin and death.
Piper holds that Abrahamic context at arm’s length.
Second, I understand justification as basically a law-court term,
where it means the judge’s creative declaration that a person is ‘in
the right’ in terms of the lawcourt, whereas Piper holds that
justification involves the accrediting to a person of the moral, not the forensic, ‘righteousness’ of Christ – something Paul never says (as J. I. Packer admits).
Third, I understand Paul’s doctrine of justification as eschatological,
that is, the justification of the faithful in the present time is both
the fulfilment of the long story of Israel and the anticipation of the
eventual verdict to be delivered on the last day, as in Romans 2.1-16
and 8.1-30.
Fourth, in line with many Reformed readers of scripture, including
Calvin, I understand Paul’s doctrine of justification to be of those
who are ‘in Christ’, whereas Piper and others don’t make that a central
element in justification itself. Conversely, for Piper the center of
justification is the ‘imputation’ of ‘the righteousness of Christ’,
seen in terms of ‘righteousness’ 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 of Jesus Christ is
‘reckoned’ to those who are ‘in him’. 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.
Finally, for Piper justification through Christ alone is the same in
the future (on the last day) as in the present, whereas for Paul, whom
I am following very closely at this point, the future justification is
given on the basis of the Spirit-generated life that the
justified-by-faith-in-the-present person then lives. In fact, the
omission of the Spirit from many contemporary Reformed statements of
justification is one of their major weaknesses.
Closing out the interview, Wax ask the question:
Trevin Wax: What is at stake in this debate
over justification? If one were to adopt Piper’s view instead of yours,
what would they be missing?
N.T. Wright: What’s missing is the big, Pauline
picture of God’s gospel going out to redeem the whole world, all of
creation, with ourselves as part of that.
What’s missing is the big, Pauline view of the church, Jew and
Gentile on equal footing, as the sign to the powers of the world that
Jesus is Lord and they aren’t.
What’s missing is the key work of the Holy Spirit in enabling the
already-justified believers to live with moral energy and will so that
they really do ‘please God’ as Paul says again and again (but as
Reformed theology is shy of lest it smack of smuggling in
works-righteousness again).
What’s missing is an insistence on Scripture itself rather than tradition . . .
[HT:
Chris Marlow]
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