Inter-Varsity Press

Contents

Introduction
On Controversy

Chapter One
Caution: Not All Biblical-Theological Methods and Categories Are Illuminating

Chapter Two
The Relationship between Covenant and Law-Court Imagery for Justification

Chapter Three
The Law-Court Dynamics of Justification and the Meaning of God's Righteousness

Chapter Four
The Law-Court Dynamics of Justification and the Necessity of Real Moral Righteousness

Chapter Five
Justification and the Gospel: When Is the Lordship of Jesus Good News?

Chapter Six
Justification and the Gospel: Does Justification Determine Our Standing with God?

Chapter Seven
The Place of Our Works in Justification

Chapter Eight
Does Wright Say with Different Words What the Reformed Tradition Means by "Imputed Righteousness"?

Chapter Nine
Paul's Structural Continuity with Second-Temple Judaism?

Chapter Ten
The Implications for Justification of the Single Self-Righteous Root of "Ethnic Badges" and "Self-Help Moralism"

Chapter Eleven
"That in Him We Might Become the Righteousness of God"

Conclusion

A Note on the Purpose of the Appendices

Appendix One
What Does It Mean That Israel Did Not "Attain the Law" Because She Pursued It "Not by Faith But as though It Were by Works"?

Thoughts on Romans 9:30–10:4

Appendix Two
Thoughts on Law and Faith in Galatians 3

Appendix Three
Thoughts on Galatians 5:6 and the Relationship between Faith and Love

Appendix Four
Using the Law Lawfully: Thoughts on 1 Timothy 1:5–11 207

Appendix Five
Does the Doctrine of the Imputation of Christ's Righteousness Imply That the Cross Is Insufficient for Our Right Standing with God?

Appendix Six
Twelve Theses on What It Means to Fulfill the Law: With Special Reference to Romans 8:4

Works of N. T. Wright Cited in This Book

Introduction

The Final Judgment feels too close for me to care much about scoring points in debate. Into my seventh decade, the clouds of time are clearing, and the prospect of wasting my remaining life on gamesmanship or one-upmanship is increasingly unthinkable. The ego-need to be right has lost its dominion, and the quiet desire to be a faithful steward of the grace of truth increases. N. T. Wright is about three years younger than I am, and I assume he feels the same.

The risen Lord Jesus sees through all our clever turns of phrase — I am preaching to myself. He knows perfectly when we have chosen words to win, but not to clarify. He has planted a banner on the pulpit of every preacher and on the desk of every scholar: "No man can give the impression that he himself is clever and that Christ is mighty to save." We will give an account to the all-knowing, all-ruling Lord of the universe in a very few years — or days. And when we do, what will matter is that we have not peddled God's word but "as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ" (2 Cor. 2:17).

The Fragrance from Death to Death and from Life to Life

Those of us who are ordained by the church to the Christian ministry have a special responsibility to feed the sheep (John 21:17). We have been made "overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood" (Acts 20:28, NASB). We bear the burden of being not only teachers, who "will be judged with greater strictness" (James 3:1), but also examples in the way we live, so that our people may "consider the outcome of (our) way of life, and imitate (our) faith" (Heb. 13:7). The apostle Paul charges us: "Keep a close watch on your-self and on the teaching" (1 Tim. 4:16). We are "servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy" (1 Cor. 4:1–2) — trustworthy in life, "in step with the truth of the gospel" (Gal. 2:14), and trustworthy in teaching, "rightly handling the word of truth" (2 Tim. 2:15).

The seriousness of our calling comes from the magnitude of what is at stake. If we do not feed the sheep in our charge with "the whole counsel of God," their blood is on our hands. "I am innocent of the blood of all of you, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God" (Acts 20:26–27). If we do not equip the saints by living in a way that exalts Christ, and by teaching what accords with the gospel, it will be laid to our account if our people are like "children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine" (Eph. 4:12, 14).

More importantly, eternal life hangs in the balance: "We are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?" (2 Cor. 2:15–16). How we live and what we teach will make a difference in whether people obey the gospel or meet Jesus in the fire of judgment, "when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus" (2 Thess. 1:7–8).

This is why Paul was so provoked at the false teaching in Galatia. It was another gospel and would bring eternal ruin to those who embraced it. This accounts for his unparalleled words: "Even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed" (Gal. 1:8). Getting the good news about Jesus right is a matter of life and death. It is the message "by which you are being saved" (1 Cor. 15:2).

If Righteousness Were Through the Law, Then Christ Died for No Purpose

Therefore, the subject matter of this book — justification by faith apart from works of the law — is serious. There is as much riding on this truth as could ride on any truth in the Bible. "If righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose" (Gal. 2:21). And if Christ died for no purpose, we are still in our sins, and those who have died in Christ have perished. Paul called down a curse on those who bring a different gospel because "all who rely on works of the law are under a curse" (Gal. 3:10), and he would spare us this curse. "You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law" (Gal. 5:4). And if we are severed from Christ, there is no one to bear our curse, because "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us" (Gal. 3:13). I hope that the mere existence of this book will raise the stakes in the minds of many and promote serious study and faithful preaching of the gospel, which includes the good news of justification by faith apart from works of the law (Rom. 3:28; Gal. 2:16).

N. T. Wright

My conviction concerning N. T. Wright is not that he is under the curse of Galatians 1:8–9, but that his portrayal of the gospel — and of the doctrine of justification in particular — is so disfigured that it becomes difficult to recognize as biblically faithful. It may be that in his own mind and heart Wright has a clear and firm grasp on the gospel of Christ and the biblical meaning of justification. But in my judgment, what he has written will lead to a kind of preaching that will not announce clearly what makes the lordship of Christ good news for guilty sinners or show those who are overwhelmed with sin how they may stand righteous in the presence of God.

Nicholas Thomas Wright is a British New Testament scholar and the Anglican Bishop of Durham, England. He is a remarkable blend of weighty academic scholarship, ecclesiastical leadership, ecumenical involvement, prophetic social engagement, popular Christian advocacy, musical talent, and family commitment. As critical as this book is of Wright's understanding of the gospel and justification, the seriousness and scope of the book is a testimony to the stature of his scholarship and the extent of his influence. I am thankful for his strong commitment to Scripture as his final authority, his defence and celebration of the resurrection of the Son of God, his vindication of the deity of Christ, his belief in the virgin birth of Jesus, his biblical disapproval of homosexual conduct, and the consistent way he presses us to see the big picture of God's universal purpose for all peoples through the covenant with Abraham—and more. In this book, my hope, most remotely, is that Wright might be influenced to change some of what he thinks concerning justification and the gospel. Less remotely, I hope that he might clarify, in future writings, some things that I have stumbled over. But most optimistically, I hope that those who consider this book and read N. T. Wright will read him with greater care, deeper understanding, and less inclination to find Wright's retelling of the story of justification compelling.

"This Whole Thing Is Going to Fly"

For the last thirty years, Wright has been rethinking and retelling the theology of the New Testament. He recalls an experience in the mid-seventies when Romans 10:33 became the fulcrum of a profoundly new way of looking at Paul's theology.

He was trying to make sense of Paul on the basis of the inherited views of the Reformation but could not:
"I was reading C.E.B. Cranfield on Romans and trying to see how it would work with Galatians, and it simply doesn't work. Interestingly, Cranfield hasn't done a commentary on Galatians. It's very difficult. But I found then, and this was the mid-seventies before E. P. Sanders was published, before there was such a thing as a "new perspective," that I came out with this reading of Romans 10:3 which is really the fulcrum for me around which everything else moved: "Being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own."

In other words, what we have here is a covenant status which is for Jews and Jews only. I have a vivid memory of going home that night, sitting up in bed, reading Galatians through in Greek and thinking, "It works. It really works. This whole thing is going to fly." And then all sorts of things just followed on from that."

What he means by "this whole thing" is a top-to-bottom rethinking of Paul's theology in categories largely different from the way most people have read their New Testament in the last fifteen hundred years (see chapter 1, note 6). When someone engages in such a thorough reconstruction of New Testament theology, critics must be extremely careful. Their job is almost impossible. The temptation is to hear a claim about justification or about the gospel that sounds so wrong-headed that a quick critical essay contrasting the "wrong-headed" claim with the traditional view seems like a sufficient response.

Wright is understandably wearied with such rejoinders.

When Global Paradigms Collide

However, in Wright's reconstruction, he has recast the old definitions and the old connections. This may or may not mean that the old reality is lost. It may or may not mean that the new way of saying things is more faithful to the apostles' intentions. It may or may not mean that the church will be helped by this new construction. But what is clear is that criticism of such global reconstructions requires a great deal of effort to get inside the globe and see things from there.

Whether I have succeeded at this or not, I have tried.

We all wear coloured glasses — most wear glasses coloured by tradition; some wear glasses coloured by anti-tradition; and some wear glasses coloured by our emerging, new reconstruction of reality. Which of these ways of seeing the world is more seductive, I don't know. Since they exist in differing degrees, from one time to the next, probably any of them can be overpowering at a given moment. I love the gospel and justification that I have seen in my study and preaching over the last forty years. N. T. Wright loves the gospel and justification he has seen in that same time. My temptation is to defend a view because it has been believed for centuries. His temptation is to defend a view because it fits so well into his new way of seeing the world. Public traditions and private systems are both very powerful. We are agreed, however, that neither conformity to an old tradition nor conformity to a new system is the final arbiter of truth. Scripture is. And we both take courage from the fact that Scripture has the power to force its own colour through any human lens.

What Is Behind This Book?

For those who wonder what Wright has written that causes a response as long and as serious as this book, it may be helpful to mention a few of the issues that I will try to deal with in the book. These are some of those head-turners that tempt the critic to say, "He can't be serious." But remember, the shock may only be because we are, as he would say, looking at things in the old way and not in the way he has redefined them. On the other hand, there may be real problems.

The Gospel Is Not about How to Get Saved?

First, it is striking to read not just what Wright says the gospel is, but what he says it isn't. He writes, "'The gospel' itself refers to the proclamation that Jesus, the crucified and risen Messiah, is the one, true and only Lord of the world." For Paul, this imperial announcement was "that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth had been raised from the dead; that he was thereby proved to be Israel's Messiah; that he was thereby installed as Lord of the world." Yes. That is an essential announcement of the gospel. But Wright also says, "'The gospel' is not an account of how people get saved." "Paul's gospel to the pagans was not a philosophy of life. Nor was it, even, a doctrine about how to get saved." "My proposal has been that 'the gospel' is not, for Paul, a message about 'how one gets saved.'" "The gospel is not . . . a set of techniques for making people Christians." "'The gospel' is not an account of how people get saved. It is . . . the proclamation of the lordship of Jesus Christ."

These are striking denials in view of 1 Corinthians 15:1–2, "Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you . . . by which you are being saved." But be careful. Perhaps this only means that salvation results from believing the gospel, not that the gospel message tells how to be saved. Perhaps. But one wonders how the death and resurrection of Jesus could be heard as good news if one had spent his life committing treason against the risen King. It seems as though one would have to be told how the death and resurrection of Christ actually saves sinners, if sinners are to hear them as good news and not as a death sentence. There is so much more to say (see especially chapter 5). I am only illustrating the flash points.

Justification Is Not How You Become a Christian?

Second, Wright says, "Justification is not how someone becomes a Christian. It is the declaration that they have become a Christian." Or again, "'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." "(Justification) was not so much about 'getting in', or indeed about 'staying in', as about 'how you could tell who was in'. In standard Christian theological language, it wasn't so much about soteriology as about ecclesiology; not so much about salvation as about the church." So the divine act of justification does not constitute us as Christians or establish our relationship with God. It informs or announces. "The word dikaioo (justify) is, after all, a declarative word, declaring that something is the case, rather than a word for making something happen or changing the way something is."

This is startling because we are used to reading Romans 5:1 as if justification had in fact altered our relationship with God. "Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." We thought that justification had brought about this fundamentally new and reconciled relationship with God. (For further discussion, see especially chapter 6.)

Justification Is Not the Gospel?

Third, it follows then that Wright would say that the message of justification is not the gospel. "I must stress again that the doctrine of justification by faith is not what Paul means by 'the gospel.'" "If we come to Paul with these questions in mind—the questions about how human beings come into a living and saving relationship with the living and saving God—it is not justification that springs to his lips or pen. The message about Jesus and his cross and resurrection — 'the gospel' . . . is announced to them; through this means, God works by his Spirit upon their hearts."

This is astonishing in view of the fact that Paul brought his sermon in Pisidian Antioch to a gospel climax by saying, "Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is justified (...) from everything from which you could not be justified (...) by the law of Moses" (Acts 13:38–39, my translation). And again it is difficult to know how a sinner could hear the announcement of the cross and resurrection as good news without some explanation that by faith it makes a person forgiven and righteous before God. (See more on this in chapter 6.)

We Are Not Justified by Believing in Justification?

Fourth, part of the implication of what Wright has said so far is that we are not justified by believing in justification by faith but by believing in Jesus: "We are not justified by faith by believing in justification by faith. We are justified by faith by believing in the gospel itself — in other words, that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead." This sounds right. Of course, we are not saved by doctrine. We are saved by Christ. But it is misleading, because it leaves the meaning of "believing in the gospel" undefined. Believing in the gospel for what? Prosperity? Healing? A new job? If we are going to help people believe the gospel in a saving way (not the way the demons believe, and not the way Simon the magician believed, James 2:19; Acts 8:13, 21–23), we will have to announce the good news that Christ died for them; that is, we will have to announce why this death and resurrection are good news for them.

There is more than one way to say it. Many people have been saved without hearing the language of justification. The same is true with regard to the words and realities of "regeneration" and propitiation" and "redemption" and "reconciliation" and "forgiveness." A baby believer does not have to understand all of the glorious things that have happened to him in order to be saved. But these things do all have to happen to him. And if he comes to the settled conviction, when he hears about them, that he will not trust Christ for any one of them, there is a serious question mark over his salvation. Therefore, it is misleading to say that we are not saved by believing in justification by faith. If we hear that part of the gospel and cast ourselves on God for this divine gift, we are saved. If we hear that part of the gospel and reject it, while trying to embrace Christ on other terms, we will not be saved. (There is more on this in chapter 5.)

The Imputation of God's Own Righteousness Makes No Sense At All?

Fifth, Wright's construction of Paul's theology appears to have no place for the imputation of divine righteousness to sinners:

'If we use the language of the law-court, it makes no sense whatever to say that the judge imputes, imparts, bequeaths, conveys or otherwise transfers his righteousness to either the plaintiff or the defendant. Righteousness is not an object, a substance or a gas which can be passed across the courtroom. . . . If and when God does act to vindicate his people, his people will then, metaphorically speaking, have the status of 'righteousness' . . . . But the righteousness they have will not be God's own righteousness. That makes no sense at all.'

But Wright would protest that if we leave it there, we quibble with words and miss the substance. With his new definitions and connections, he believes he has preserved the substance of what the Reformation theologians meant by imputation:

'(Jesus') role precisely as Messiah is not least to draw together the identity of the whole of God's people so that what is true of him is true of them and vice versa. Here we arrive at one of the great truths of the gospel, which is that the accomplishment of Jesus Christ is reckoned to all those who are "in him". This is the truth which has been expressed within the Reformed tradition in terms of "imputed righteousness", often stated in terms of Jesus Christ having fulfilled the moral law and thus having accumulated a "righteous" status which can be shared with all his people. As with some other theological problems, I regard this as saying a substantially right thing in a substantially wrong way, and the trouble when you do that is that things on both sides of the equation, and the passages which are invoked to support them, become distorted.'

I doubt that this is the case. But we will save the argument for chapter 8.

Future Justification Is on the Basis of the Complete Life Lived?

Sixth, Wright makes startling statements to the effect that our future justification will be on the basis of works. "The Spirit is the path by which Paul traces the route from justification by faith in the present to justification, by the complete life lived, in the future." "Paul has . . . spoken in Romans 2 about the final justification of God's people on the basis of their whole life." "Present justification declares, on the basis of faith, what future justification will affirm publicly (according to Rom. 2:14–16 and 8:9–11) on the basis of the entire life." That he means future "justification by works" is seen in the following quote:

'This declaration, this vindication, occurs twice. It occurs in the future, as we have seen, on the basis of the entire life a person has led in the power of the Spirit — that is, it occurs on the basis of "works" in Paul's redefined sense. And near the heart of Paul's theology, it occurs in the present as an anticipation of that future verdict, when someone, responding in believing obedience to the call of the gospel, believes that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead.'

Again, beware of thinking this means what you might think it means. Remember that Wright has redefined "justification." It is not what makes you a Christian or saves you. Therefore, it may be that Wright means nothing more here than what I might mean when I say that our good works are the necessary evidence of faith in Christ at the last day. Perhaps. But it is not so simple. (I return to this topic in chapter 7.)

First-century Judaism Had Nothing of the Alleged Self-Righteous and Boastful Legalism?

Seventh, Wright follows the New Perspective watchword that Paul was not facing "legalistic works-righteousness" in his churches. The warnings against depending on the law are not against legalism but ethnocentrism. Wright is by no means a stereotypical New Perspective scholar and goes his own way on many fronts. But he does embrace the fundamental claim of the New Perspective on Paul as articulated by E. P. Sanders:

'(Sanders's) major point, to which all else is subservient, can be quite simply stated. Judaism in Paul's day was not, as has regularly been supposed, a religion of legalistic works-righteousness. If we imagine that it was, and that Paul was attacking it as if it was, we will do great violence to it and to him. . . . The Jew keeps the law out of gratitude, as the proper response to grace—not, in other words, in order to get into the covenant people, but to stay in. Being "in" in the first place was God's gift. This scheme Sanders famously labeled as "covenantal nomism" (from the Greek nomos, law).'

When Wright did his own research, for example, into the mind of the Qumran sect represented in 4QMMT, he concluded that these documents "reveal nothing of the self-righteous and boastful 'legalism' which used to be thought characteristic of Jews in Paul's day." In chapters 9 and 10, I will examine whether 4QMMT sustains this judgment. More importantly, I will try to dig out the implications of the fact that a common root of self-righteousness lives beneath both overt legalism and Jewish ethnocentrism. Something was damnable in the Galatian controversy (Gal. 1:8–9). If it was ethnocentrism, it is hard to believe that the hell-bound ethnocentrists were "keeping the law out of gratitude, as a proper response to grace." But again, I will have much more to say on this in chapters 9 and 10.

God's Righteousness Is the Same as His Covenant Faithfulness?

Eighth, I will mention one more thing that I think should be startling but no longer is. Wright understands "the righteousness of God" generally as meaning God's "covenant faithfulness." It does include "his impartiality, his proper dealing with sin and his helping of the helpless." But chiefly it is "his faithfulness to his covenant promises to Abraham."

I am going to argue in chapter 3 that these descriptions stay too much on the surface. They denote some of the things righteousness does, but do not press down to the common root beneath these behaviours as to what God's righteousness is.

When Paul says, "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Cor. 5:21), one must break the back of exegesis to make this mean, "We become the covenant faithfulness of God."

This is exactly what Wright does — in one of the most eccentric articles in all his work. Chapter 11 is my effort to show that this unprecedented reinterpretation of 2 Corinthians 5:21 does not stand.

The Future of Justification

For these eight reasons, and more that will emerge along the way, I am not optimistic that the biblical doctrine of justification will flourish where N. T. Wright's portrayal holds sway. I do not see his vision as a compelling retelling of what Saint Paul really said. And I think, as it stands now, it will bring great confusion to the church at a point where she desperately needs clarity. I don't think this confusion is the necessary dust that must settle when great new discoveries have been made. Instead, if I read the situation correctly, the confusion is owing to the ambiguities in Wright's own expressions, and to the fact that, unlike his treatment of some subjects, his paradigm for justification does not fit well with the ordinary reading of many texts and leaves many ordinary folk not with the rewarding "ah-ha" experience of illumination, but with a paralyzing sense of perplexity.

The future of justification will be better served, I think, with older guides rather than the new ones. When it comes to the deeper issues of how justification really works both in Scripture and in the human soul, I don't think N. T. Wright is as illuminating as Martin Luther or John Owen or Leon Morris. But that remains to be shown.

I end the Introduction where I began. My little earthly life is too far spent to care much about the ego gratification of scoring points in debate. I am still a sinner depending on Christ for my righteousness before God. So I am quite capable of fear and pride. But I do hope that, where I have made mistakes, I will be willing to admit it. There are far greater things at stake than my fickle sense of gratification or regret. Among these greater things are the faithful preaching of the gospel, the care of guilt-ridden souls, the spiritual power of sacrificial deeds of love, the root of humble Christian political and social engagement, and the courage of Christian missions to confront all the religions of the world with the supremacy of Christ as the only way to escape the wrath to come. When the gospel itself is distorted or blurred, everything else is eventually affected. May the Lord give us help in these days to see the word of his grace with clarity, and savour it with humble and holy zeal, and spread it without partiality so that millions may believe and be saved, to the praise of the glory of God's grace.