Tom Wright Justification 1

In 2008 John Piper published The Future of Justification: A response to NT Wright. This short volume from 2009 is Wright’s response to Piper. See my earlier post on Piper, in short, I think his book seeks to show that Wright is not following a main line, traditional reformed interpretation of justification. We didn’t need a book to tell us that.

In a number of posts I’m going to offer comments on Wright’s response.

Chapter 1
In this first Chapter Wright sets out to show what this discussion is all about and why it matters.

“Ever since I first read Luther and Calvin, particularly the latter, I determined that whether or not I agreed with them in everything they said, their stated and practised method would be mine, too: to soak myself in the Bible, in the Hebrew and Aramaic Old Testament and the Greek New Testament, to get it into my bloodstream by every means possible, in the prayer and hope that I would be able to teach scripture afresh to the church and the world. The greatest honour we can pay the Reformers is not to treat them as infallible – they would be horrified at that – but to do as they did.” (page 6.)

I have not yet found a human author with whom I can say I agree with everything they said (or wrote). And I do not expect to find one. By definition a human author is human and therefore even the best author and their best work will be tainted by sin in some part. We cannot allow ourselves to be blindly chained to any human author, however much we value any tradition of interpretation of Scripture that derives from them.
I am not one of those who denies the value of theology and the systematic study of theology. However, if I am forced to choose let me study Scripture and only Scripture. There is no greater need in our generation than for Scripture to be heard and obeyed. If I find my study of Scripture to lead me to disagree with any tradition or part of Christian theology then I will humbly do that. That is what Augustine, Luther and Calvin did. Are they the only ones to be given this duty?

“But the real point is, I believe, that the salvation of human beings, though of course extremely important for those human beings, is part of a larger purpose. God is rescuing us from the shipwreck of the world, not so that we can sit back and put our feet up in his company, but so that we can be part of his plan to remake the world. We are in orbit around God and his purposes, not the other way round.” (page 8 – Author’s emphasis)

Yes, read that one over again and then lower your peacock feathers. Salvation is for God’s glory alone, not our glory. This doctrinal debate is not about some obscure point of theology. Justification is that doctrine by which the church stands or falls. It does very closely touch the work of redemption God has achieved in Christ. It is about the heart of the gospel.
It matters that we get this right, because if we get it wrong we will end up mistreating the gospel and misrepresenting the purposes of God in his great work of redemption.

In this opening chapter Wright comments on the vast field of contemporary literature on this theme. Noting that he will not engage with it all, but promises us a larger more detail work on Paul as part of his on going Christian Origins and the Question of God series. In this introduction Wright promises much. He will offer us three further chapters of introduction in which he outlines his thinking on justification before a final four chapters of detailed exegesis of the key Pauline texts on this theme.