N. T. Wright and Catholicism

Every now and then someone makes the charge that N. T. Wright's views on justification are very similar to those of Catholicism. In a recent panel discussion on Wright the issue was raised again. The panel members included Tom Schreiner, Mark Seifrid, Denny Burk and Brian Vickers and was moderated by Al Mohler. You can find the discussion here. I found it interesting but not much that was new.

But several people responded to the charge that Wright's views were the same or nearly the same as the Catholic view of justification. One of the comments referred to post by Taylor Marshall called "Does N. T. Wright's Theology Lead to Catholicism?" Marshall says "I started reading N.T. Wright at Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia) and along the way through my hiatus as an Anglican priest. I believe that he provided the necessary paradigm shift for me to appreciate the nuances of the Council of Trent regarding justification." He says that Wright is a "Protestant writing like a Catholic." Imagine my surprise then at finding a comment from Chris Castaldo whose book Holy Ground I just recently reviewed. Castaldo agreed with Marshall saying he was "right to suggest that NT Wright’s emphasis on covenantal nomism raises new questions about the merits of the Catholic position on justification." Marshall was so taken with Castaldo's comment that he offered him an opportunity to do a guest post on the subject of “The Four Aspects of Wright’s Pauline Theology." Castaldo agreed and wrote a post called "An Evangelical Perspective on N. T. Wright and Catholicism". Castaldo concludes however, that while he understands why some would take a second look at Catholicism because of Wright, "because the believer’s identity is founded in the risen Christ, God the Father views us as possessing the merits of Jesus’ victory and on that basis declares us 'not guilty.' For this reason, it seems to me, Wright stands closer to Calvin than anyone on the Catholic side of Wittenberg’s door."

Marshall has written a book, The Catholic Perspective on Paul, which is due out Summer 2010.

Michael Horton on N. T. Wright's Justification

The White Horse Inn Blog will start a series over the next several weeks called "Wright Wednesdays." It will be Michael Horton's review/critique of N. T. Wright's book Justification. I know some of you may be thinking "enough already!" Well, welcome to the world of academic debate. It's not going away. My experience has been that the longer a response takes to come out the more thoughtful it is. This isn't always true of course but those who have taken their time with an issue and have given themselves the time to formulate their critique have been more helpful to me in the long run. We will see what comes from Horton's pen (or should I say keyboard?).

Helm on Why Covenant Faithfulness is not Divine Righteousness

Paul Helm continues his review and critique of N. T. Wright's book Justification with the latest article entitled "Why Covenant Faithfulness is not Divine Righteousness (and cannot be)." Helm writes as a philosopher in this essay. His criticisms are related to "points of logic, or conceptuality" but urges they are "none the worse for that." For exegetical support he refers the reader to Piper's book The Future of Justification.

In a nutshell Helm argues that Wright "treats righteousness solely in terms of God's actions." He agrees with Piper that defining God's righteousness as covenant faithfulness does not go deep enough "because it does not start with the character of God, but with his actions." He recognizes the current fashion to think of theology in some sort of narrative form. He cites Horton (covenant), Vanhoozer (speech-act theory and 'theodrama') and Wright (history). The problem with all these narrative approaches is they cannot provide a doctrine of God. "Being, the being of God, must come first; acting is a consequence of being. . . In God's case, doing righteously follows from being righteous. Acting faithfully is a consequence of being faithful, of having a faithful character, or a character apt for being faithful."

I suspect the response from Wright could be that he is simply using terms, "righteousness" in particular, the same way that Scripture uses them and is not concerned to know if that word also refers to that quality of God's character which underlies his actions. This would be similar to an Eastern Orthodox understanding which says we only know God through his actions and can't know his nature. I'm not sure Wright would go that far but I'm only speculating on what his response to Helm would be. I think much of what Helm says bears hearing and can't be swept under the "that's just philosophical speculation" rug.

N. T. Wright and Justification

No better summary than that offered by the author himself. Wright summarizes a couple of the major points of importance in his latest book.

Genesis 1 - John Walton and A New Perspective on Genesis?

The fun thing about reading more than one book at a time is finding similar thoughts expressed in widely different contexts. I started reading John Walton's new book, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origin's Debate, and thought it soundly strangely familiar to another book I'm currently reading: Justification by N.T. Wright. Here's what I'm talking about. The first quote is from Wright and the second from Walton.

"If you read your own question into the text, and try to get an answer from it, when the text itself is talking about something else, you run the risk not only of hearing only the echo of your own voice rather than the word of God but also of missing the key point that the text was actually eager to tell you, and which you have brushed aside in your relentless quest for your own meaning." (42)

"All of these issues are modern issues imposed on the text and not the issues in the culture of the ancient world. We cannot expect the text to address them, nor can we configure the information of the text to force it to comply with the questions we long to have answered. We must take the text on its own terms--it is not written to us. Much to our dismay then, we will find that the text is impervious to many of the questions that consume us in today's dialogues. Though we long for the Bible to weigh in on these issues and give us biblical perspectives or answers, we dare not impose such an obligation on the text. God has chosen the agenda of the text, and we must be content with the wisdom of his choices. If we attempt to commandeer the text to address our issues, we distort it in the process." (21)

I'm about a third of the way through Wright but one of the endorsements on the back of Walton's book said "every Christian. . .must put aside all other reading material this minute and immediately begin to absorb the contents of [Walton's book]." So I did. I must say though I was already familiar with Walton's views I'm already impressed with the clarity this book provides. This is an important work and should be must reading (admittedly an over used phrase) for anyone interested in creation and Genesis.

Both Wright and Walton are prepping the reader for what is to come and the necessary ground work for that is, in part, to make them aware of how terribly easy it is for us to impose our own thoughts and concepts on to a text. No one is calling Walton's view the "New Perspective" on Genesis but given the similar cautions and warnings as Wright he is clearly preparing the reader for somthing new. So, I called it the New Perspective on Genesis. The similarites end there since both are dealing with very different contexts. But while the material context may differ both are advocating for a serious and careful consideration of the cultural context for a proper interpreation of the Biblical text.

I will do a proper review in a latter post but for now I should say Wright may have to wait till I'm done with Walton. I have been anxiously awaiting for Walton's book. I won't tell you to stop what you're reading and start Walton but maybe you could make it number two on your list.

N. T. Wright - Reviews and Responses - 2

My friend Paul Adams has begun a list of links to the various responses to N. T. Wright's new book Justification: God's Plan & Paul's Vision. He will add more as he comes across them or if you know of some he has missed I'm sure he would appreciate a quick note. If you're interested in this book and would like to see some of the responses give Paul's site a visit. He has done the leg work for you.

N. T. Wright - Reviews and Responses - 1

Well, the fire just got turned up over N. T. Wright’s book Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision. Craig Blomberg has offered a thoughtful review (preceded by a shorter post on the Koinonia blog) which has sparked responses from Justin Taylor (and here) and Doug Wilson. (See also the response by R. Scott Clark here.) Taylor insists that Blomberg has misunderstood the difference between Christ’s active and passive obedience. This is fleshed out a bit more by Wilson. (I cannot emphasize enough how important the comments are in these posts. Defenders from both sides are heard although sometimes with more heat than light.)

Wilson’ critique is more engaging and a bit frustrating. He is disappointed that Wright did not engage Piper more. He says,

“How many actual citations of Piper's book are in Wright's book? How many particular arguments does he engage with and actually seek to answer? And the problems that attend this above-it-all, breeze-by approach also show up in Blomberg's review. If the claim is that Piper misunderstands Wright, would it be too much to ask to be shown where and how he does? It is too easy to lump a particular critic in with a crowd of assumed (and more easily handled) critics, and there to demolish him.”

Secondly, Wilson complains that Wright has not responded to any of his writings. He notes, “I have spent the last several years answering Wright in terms of a cosmos-encompassing, life-affirming, culture-transforming vision of the lorship [sic] of Christ over all things, and Wright has not engaged with me at all. Now why would he not engage with me? Yes, I understand -- I am a nobody pastor in the chimney part of Idaho. But other than that, why would he not engage?” His speculation on Wright’s silence is unnecessary and pejorative. Wright’s critics are many and he simply can’t respond to them all still make a book of reasonable length. Had the book been 1,000 pages the readership would have been much less.

Finally, after quoting this statement from Blomberg’s review where he was summarizing Wright, “Where Israel failed to live up to its obligation, the faithful Jewish Messiah succeeded,” he says:

“Yes, exactly. Where Israel had disobeyed, the new Israel had now obeyed. Not only did the new Israel die to suffer the penalty of the old Israel's disobedience, but the new Israel also lived it right. He lived as faithful Israel because Israel needs to have lived faithfully. He obeyed, He was faithful Israel, in whom we also (by faith) may be faithful Israelites. Does Wright use the doctrinal jargon of Reformed theologians, does he use the shibboleth of "active obedience"? I couldn't care less. But I would be very interested to see an argument that demonstrates any substantial difference at all between the doctrine of the imputation of the active obedience of Christ, as advanced by the best and most careful Reformed theologians (see Justin Taylor's point), and the doctrine represented by Blomberg's summary above.”

My own thoughts are a jumbled mess at this point and I’m trying to sort it out. Teachers that I admire are on both sides of the issue to varying degrees. I’m thinking of hosting a forum on the New Perspective next year. The more I read about it the more excited I am about the prospect. I was delighted to see a book in the works from IVP tentatively called "Justification: Five Views" with Michael Horton (Traditional Reformed), Michael Bird (Progressive Reformed), James Dunn (New Perspective), Theosis (Veli-Matti Karkkainen) and Catholic (Gerald O'Collins & Oliver Rafferty).

Scot McKnight and the New Perspective

Scot McKnight is starting a series of posts on N. T. Wright's newest book Justification. This will no doubt be one of many. I've started reading it myself and was struck by Wright's comment when he said "But I do know that if a church only, or mainly, relies on the NIV it will, quite simply, never understand what Paul was talking about" (52). That's a bold claim and it doesn't say much for the NIV. So what is The New Perspective on Paul (commonly abbreviated NPP)? There are variations of beliefs within those who would be included under the NPP umbrella but according to The Paul Page (a website dedicated to the NPP) it is "[a]t 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." Scot has a good summary and brief history of the major players in the NPP. Michael Horton says the NPP can be divided into two stages: 1) Paul misunderstood Judaism (a la E. P. Sanders), 2) The reformers misunderstood Paul (a la Dunn, Wright et al). Those looking for a summary of Wright's new book can find it here by Michael C. Thompson.