Julie highlights the elements of Paradigm

Earlier today I wrote about how we approach truth-seeking at Paradigm. Julie joined in the Paradigm focus and highlighted the “elements” (shared values and commitments) of Paradigm.

Check out what she has to say and please do consider if and how you would be interested in contributing to what we’re up to in Rain City.

Learning at Paradigm

The text below is taken from Paradigm’s website. Paradigm — in case you didn’t know — is a ministry that Julie and I are involved with in Seattle. Our vision: to create sustainable faith in Seattle. We’re inviting people to hear God’s story through interactive liturgy (Sunday night gatherings), deepen their understanding of the story (Paradigm communities during the week) and bring a bit of heaven to earth for our local and global neighbors (missional involvement opportunities).

We started a few months ago, and we’re very much still in the process of putting together a core team to serve as the nucleus for the ministry. Even during the process of inviting people to the team, we are gathering on Sunday nights to pursue God through a lot of worship forms and spiritual practices that we see becoming part of Paradigm’s long-term identity.

If you’re in Seattle and want to come by, we meet at 1059 NE 96th St in Seattle (fairly equidistant to Northgate Mall and Green Lake), in a building we share with Maple Leaf Church, at 6:00PM Sundays. (I feel like there should some sort of pithy gimmick here — “Mention that you heard about us through this blog and you’ll receive a free [something].”)

Or maybe you’re reading this and you’re not in Seattle, but you suddenly realize one of two things: 1) your newfound calling to pack up your things and move to Seattle to join us in our endeavor, or 2) the inclination to gently nudge your Seattle-area friends to check out Paradigm (maybe try something really subtle — “Paradigm is the greatest thing ever and the future of the universe depends on whether you go and take part in what they’re doing”). 

Um, yeah, we’re going to want you to act on either/both of those impulses.

In all seriousness though, we have been, are, and will be ridiculously grateful for anyone who wants to take a risk and give some time to a ministry that has the potential to make a significant impact in Seattle. Let me know if that’s you.

————-

(From the Paradigm site)

We want to relentlessly pursue truth. It’s our belief that God is pleased when people are willing to dig deeper than status quo assumptions, ask big questions, and engage the mystery and grandeur of God and His story.

We’ve made a few central commitments in how we seek truth at Paradigm. First, we want to embrace both left- and right-brain thought processes as we study, reflecting on God’s story in both creative and linear ways.

Seeking truth is no solo job. We pursue truth in the context of community, where we can not only learn from one another, but also apply truth in and through the community (because truth is lived and not merely thought).

Learning at Paradigm is holistic and relational. Sometimes it is also difficult and limited. Paradigm is a community where people are free to engage mystery, raise questions, and run their fingers along the wounds in Jesus’ hands. And sometimes we raise questions to which our only honest answer is, “I don’t know.”

“I don’t know” can be a great theological claim.

We’re not pursuing truth for the sake of self-assurance, textbook answers, and power games. We aren’t creating circular smokescreen doctrines. We’re engaging a complex world with a powerful, mysterious Gospel. We have found life-changing hope in God’s Story and life in the Way of Jesus, and we want that truth to be lived, told, explored, and known.

There are four main resources we use to seek and verify truth: Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. The technical term for these four “truth-decectors” is the Wesleyan Quadrilateral.

In Scripture we have the most tangible, uniquely authoritative expression of God’s revelation. For this reason, Scripture is the starting point of our Quad. Scripture provides us with the narrative of Israel and some of the earliest communities that followed Jesus and built his Kingdom. The Bible explains to us God’s character and articulates what it looks like to become part of the people of God. As God’s Spirit illumines it, we’re able to use Scripture wisely in our context today.

God gives us intelligence and welcomes us to use it. We naturally bring our cognitive ability and framework (our reason) into our handling and application of Scripture, understanding of God, and observation of ourselves and our world. We want to worship God with our thoughtfulness, as we love Him enough to observe His work in this world.

God’s Holy Spirit is available to Christ-followers as a Helper — consulting, convicting, encouraging, ministering, and illumining truth through all different kinds of mediums and situations. As individuals and as a community, we are called to remain sensitive to the Spirit’s personal and particular guidance. Through a deep experience of God’s Spirit we gain the wisdom and discernment needed to serve God in our culture and context today.

We’re connected to the tradition of God’s people throughout the centuries and around the globe. As we pursue truth, it’s important that we look beyond our own context and learn from the wisdom of other faithful believers. By seeing how other Christians have understood truth, we’re able to affirm and adopt many of their conclusions. We’re also free to recognize and correct misguiding thoughts of past Christians — moving forward into a healthier understanding of, and relationship with, our God.

By holding the four components of the Quad together in dynamic community, we continuously learn and grow in our understanding of who we are, who God is, and what is going on in the world.

Get rid of cheerleaders and indoor football

Matt Birk, an offensive lineman formerly of the Minnesota Vikings and now playing with my enemy Baltimore Ravens, filled in for my favorite sports writer Peter King and wrote this week’s Sports Illustrated’s Monday Morning Quarterback. I have to say, the guy has some good opinions — my opinions, coincidently — on the NFL. 

In MMQB Birk vouches for current players putting a larger portion of their collective bargaining agreement toward retired players, especially those who are enduring long-term injuries and can’t get health coverage because their condition is “pre-existent.” Birk also called for all football to be played outdoors (and I’ll add to that by saying that cold weather cities should have the chance to host the Super Bowl), for the league to do away with cheerleaders (feels sleazy) as well as light shows and T-shirts being cannoned into the seats (unnecessary), and to emphasize flag (not tackle) football for youth (Birk says up through high school; I’d be OK with middle school but he might be right).

Anyway, you can read Birk in his own words here.

Julie addresses the link between complementarianism and Calvinism

Calvinism and complementarianism are the focus of Julie’s latest blog post. She writes from the experience of someone who has emerged from the portrait of determinism’s god, into a relationship of true interaction with a God of pathos. You should take a moment to reflect on her perspective.

Interacting with Justification by N.T. Wright – Chapter Three

Wright’s third chapter in Justification, “First-Century Judaism: Covenant, Law and Lawcourt,” is an attempt to explain that first-century Jews (the main characters and audiences of the New Testament) were more concerned with experiencing deliverance from exile (an exile the Jewish people had been experiencing even after returning to their land, as they were still under Roman occupation) by way of David’s promised son. While first-century Judaism was not ignorant to ideas of transcendence and afterlife, those issues were being overshadowed by more pressing physical, political concerns. In other words, first-century Jews, unlike many Christians today, were not simply trying to find their ticket to heaven. They expected God to move within history, within their world.

Wright notes that first-century literature illumines us to the fact that Judaism was not a monolithic religion before, during, or after the time of Christ. He speaks of Variegated Nomism – the multiplicity of ways in which first-century Jews were interpreting Israel’s law, constructing theologies of grace, resurrection etc. 

I find this much clear: first-century Judaism was far different from the works-not-grace caricature of Judaism that Martin Luther so unfortunately concocted in order to read the biblical text into his own sixteenth-century world. There is a cost when we use the biblical text so liberally as to form the biblical narrative and characters in our own image, so that they are living out our story rather than us living continuing their story faithfully in our day. Disregard for historical context, authorial intent and the like can lead us in directions as dangerous as the Lutheranism-gone-awry that was experienced in the Holocaust in the early-to-mid-twentieth century – a mere sixty years ago.

Within the “Judaisms” of the first century, there were some who aimed to calculate the moment when God would deliver Israel from exile. Wright notes many of them leaned heavily on Daniel 9 – a prophecy of the end of exile in which an angel tells the main character that exile would not be for the simple seventy years he read about in Jeremiah, but seventy weeks of years (70 X 7). (pgs 57-59)

This, Wright says, is the social milieu into which Paul writes – a group of people who felt that they were living a continued biblical narrative, still in exile but hoping for the end of exile as described in Daniel 9. Yes, these Jews were back in their land, out from captivity in Babylon. Jews were “enslaved” to pagan cultures and customs.

Here the Bishop lets out some of his frustration with Piper and his “ordinary folk”:

“. . . for many, perhaps most, contemporary Western readers of the New Testament (John Piper’s ‘ordinary folk,’ perhaps), the effort required to think into a worldview where people were thinking to themselves, When is God going to do what he’s promised? is all too much, and they shake their heads and settle back into the comfort of a non-historical soteriology the long and short of which is ‘my relationship with God’ rather than ‘what God is going to do to sort out his world and his people.’ Or, alternatively, the question, when will God do what he’s promised? splurges back onto the theological scene in the form of lurid speculations about the Rapture: drive eschatology out the front door, and it will break in through the back window. And with all of these strategies we thereby put ourselves in the position of musicians who, finding the score of a Beethoven symphony, reckon that because the only instruments they possess are guitars and mouth-organs, that must be what Beethoven had in mind. Or, if you like, that because the only music they know is a collection of songs none of which last longer than four minutes, that must be what Beethoven actually intended.” (pg 61)

Can you tell he’s had it with Piper and his “ordinary folk,” and their commitment to make ordinary what should be a very inordinate use of Scripture?

One of the ways in which Wright’s view of justification succeeds is in its incorporation of the New Exodus motif woven throughout the entirety of Scripture. In Chapter Three Wright exegetes Daniel 9 (remember, this is a text that first-century Jews were leaning into for a variety of reasons), and two things become very clear: “righteousness” in this passage is interchangeable with covenant faithfulness, and God’s covenant faithfulness allows Him to stand as “right” (faithful) when His covenant people are not (allowing the curse of exile as promised in the covenant) as well as to declare “right” (lawcourt language) an unfaithful people (allowing exodus) – on the basis of God’s own covenant faithfulness, not the people’s.

That doesn’t sound much like Luther’s caricature of works-righteousness, does it? No, this is about a God who is covenantally faithful to the extent that He allows consequences of the covenant (exile) but ultimately restores the covenant on the basis of His own covenant-keeping (allowing exodus). This is the hope of first-century Judaism, and the center of Paul’s writing, that God would declare His people right – an act that, to them, was connected to the political ramification of exodus and the ongoing of narrative of human history.

Wright proceeds to shed light on Piper’s big motif for understanding righteousness and justification, God’s concern for God’s own glory. Here’s one part of Wright’s review of Piper that I found to be particularly funny (and refreshing):

“there is a huge mass of scholarly literature on the meaning of God’s righteousness, and Piper simply ignores it. I am not aware of any other scholar, old perspective, new perspective, Catholic, Reformed, Evangelical, anyone, who thinks that tsedaqah elohim in Hebrew or dikaiosyne theou in Greek actually means ‘God’s concern for God’s own glory. . . . Piper’s attempt to show that there must be a ‘righteousness’ behind God’s ‘covenant faithfulness’ is simply unconvincing. It begins to look as though Piper has simply not understood what covenant faithfulness means, and its enormous significance throughout Scripture.” (pgs 64-65)

Also to my amusement, Wright notes that even J.I. Packer – a notoriously Reformed scholar – slips into the New Perspective when he notes, “The reason why [Isaiah and Psalms] call God’s vindication of his oppressed people his ‘righteousness’ is that it is an act of faithfulness to his covenant promise with them.” (pg 64)

The Bishop proceeds to discuss the role of Israel in God’s plan to put the world to rights. God does not give up on Israel. God does not replace Israel. It is precisely through Israel that God will put the world to rights. Wright notes Piper’s decision to not engage Romans 3 and 4 (chapters centered on Abraham and God’s still-applicable commitment to bless the world through his people). This is consistent with Piper’s evasion of Deuteronomy 27-30, Daniel 9, and the whole of Genesis 15. Piper is not engaging the texts that best clarify that God’s righteousness is His covenant faithfulness.

And it is at this point that I, as a reader, become frustrated on Wright’s behalf. Piper and others within the old perspective have accused Wright of proposing a “complicated” gospel. The danger of that accusation is the implicit notion that Wright is weaving complexities into the biblical narrative. The reality, it seems, is quite the opposite. Wright is merely guilty of engaging more of the biblical narrative in his exegesis and theology. We would do better to call Wright and his gospel “hard-working”or “supremely literate.”

The chapter proceeds with Wright discussing Piper’s construction of a theology of God’s righteousness for God’s own glory. Wright acknowledges that such theology portrays God as Divine Narcissist. In reality God is not a self-absorbed being concerned with making sure that His creation lauds Him; He is an outward-focused giver of love whose tsedaqah elohim is His generous faithfulness to undeserving people who have not been anywhere near as faithful to Him.

The role of Israel and Torah in God’s saving plan is the final theme of the chapter. Wright notes the similarities between E.P. Sanders’ covenantal nomism and Calvinism’s emphasis on covenant and “being in Christ.” Wright esteems the Reformed view for agreeing with Sanders’ take far more than Lutheran exegetes and their construction of Judaism as a religion of works-righteousness.

While often falling in the Reformed camp on many issues, Piper’s handling of Israel is fairly Lutheran; he and his “ordinary folk” may find it easier to create a caricature of Judaism to fit their purposes rather than to study the variety of beliefs within Second Temple Judaism (it seems that Piper is suspicious as to whether much reliable knowledge can be gained from that wealth of material). 

Here Wright chops away at both the old perspective’s antinomianism with which I am so amused and the replacement theology over which I completely fume:

“According to the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that he had not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. A Calvinist will find that much easier to grasp than a Lutheran – though it would be interesting to hear an old perspective expositor explain how Jesus’ brisk commands in that great sermon are to be obeyed by his followers without any sense of moral effort, synergism and so on.”

This is where the New Exodus motif within the Pauline corpus becomes so important: it is the blood of the Lamb over our doorposts that spares us and declares us “right” (initial justification), yet we still need to follow God on the path of liberation and deliverance, the Way that brings us from a former identity (Egypt, Eden) to a new humanity (Promised Land, New Jerusalem/complete Kingdom of God). This is covenantal nomism! Following the law (whether it be Torah or that which the Spirit writes on our hearts) is not what makes it possible for us to be part of God’s people, but it is the guideline for how to get from Egypt to the Promised Land, from a humanity that lives to propagate systemic sin and death to a humanity that lives to participate in the systemic faithfulness and life. This is synergy! And compared to it, monergy is shown to be nothing more than an inferior half-gospel that leaves everyone standing under a blood-covered doorpost, but never leaving their house for the Promised Land!

As Wright is making abundantly clear, there is no such thing as a soteriology that is divorced from eschatology – God is not rescuing people from the unfolding history of His creation; He is acting within the grand narrative of His creation to save it. Wright says it well when he talks about God’s single plan to save the world through Israel, and when he acknowledges Jesus as the uncompromised “Yes!” to God’s covenant with Israel. Jesus is every bit as much the Son of David as he is the Son of God, and until we come to terms with that Israel and Torah will be a source of confusion in our theology of escapist eschatology. But if we can come to terms with our favorite first-century Jewish carpenter, then we can see what it means that Gentiles join Jewish followers of God in their mission to bless the world.

That mission requires obedience and synergy, covenantal nomism. Jesus paid it all, and now we walk in his Way.

Initial reaction to A Jesus Manifesto

Earlier this week, Frank Viola and Leonard Sweet released what they dubbed “A Jesus Manifesto: A Magna Carta for Restoring the Supremacy of Jesus Christ.” The Manifesto’s release seems to be in sync with recently published books for both of the contributors (linked to at the bottom of the Manifesto’s page, labeled “The Manifests”). I want to share just a couple thoughts about the Manifesto in this space, but I‘ll leave the rest to Julie Clawson’s review, which I think is great.

Honestly my first reaction after reading the Manifesto was, “How did Leonard Sweet (whose work I tend to really enjoy) get roped into this?” The document reads completely like Viola’s repertoire – an at-times reductionistic longing for primitive, anti-establishment Christianity – and nothing like Sweet’s passion for hi-fi, multi-sensory liturgical experiences (a fervor not too different from CNN’s love for holograms and magic maps).

I could be really off-base – for all I know Sweet wrote the entire thing – but it just seems like the Manifesto took on Viola’s agenda and Sweet just agreed to it.

Without dissecting their intentions beyond that, I think the Manifesto, on a Trinitarian level, fails completely. The authors’ call for Christocentrism is misguided. [Gasp.] What I mean is that if we examine the words of Christ we won’t find a call to Christocentrism. The work of Christ (and, I’d say, Christ’s expectation for the Church) points in a thoroughly Theocentric direction. Contrary to the Manifesto, Jesus did not become the Father. He came to make the Father known, and to make us the sort of people who make the Father known. He is our Brother Jesus.

The Manifesto’s Trinitarian shortcomings continue as “the living Jesus” is depicted as our Helper, while the Spirit is hardly mentioned throughout the Manifesto. It is the Spirit and not the “living Jesus” (let alone canonized Scripture) that the historical Jesus called his followers to lean against as they progressed in their kingdom-building work. Jesus didn’t fake the Ascension. He went so that the Spirit could come.

Then again, am I getting too sensible? The authors write, “[Academic knowledge of Christ and "personal knowledge of the living Christ"] stand as far apart as do the hundred thousand million galaxies.” I guess it takes some anti-intellectual posturing to be able to get away with some of things Sweet and Viola claim in the Manifesto.

They have it as backwards as backwards can be – it’s all about God’s Kingdom. It’s been about the Kingdom since God’s covenant with Abraham. The Old Testament is filled with stories of people experiencing injustice and crying out for the Kingdom to come. The Messiah’s incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection happened to enable the Kingdom within all peoples (God kept His promise to Abraham). That same Messiah’s exemplar prayer was a petition to the Father that the Kingdom would come to earth. The Apostle Paul’s ministry was fixated on answering the question, “Who participates in this Kingdom?” Our entire future, the eschatology of God’s story, points in one and only one direction – a fully renewed creation and a fully-arrived Kingdom.

If you want a Kingdom-less Gospel, you’ll need to find a different Scripture and a different Messiah. The Judeo-Christian story is a story about the Kingdom.

We are not called to simply walk around with a giggly crush on Jesus. We’re called to participate in his exodus and in the Kingdom. This is obvious if we use the language of marriage: what wife wants a husband who twirls around and writes her love songs if the guy is unfaithful or doesn’t do any of the things she asks him to do? Jesus doesn’t want a bunch of song-writing sluts. Read his words: he wants people to make disciples who walk in his Way. His prayer is, “Kingdom, come.” I’m willing to go out on a limb and speak for Jesus in saying that he would rather see hunger and poverty put to end than to see a few more people getting all hot and bothered by him and shouting about how they’re “in love” with him.

Oh, wait, I’m actually not speaking for Jesus – he said it himself: “If you love me, keep my commandments.”

Thanks, readers

I just want to thank everyone who has been stopping by this blog – this June has now brought in the most hits of any month in the blog’s year-long history. This blog has always leaned toward being more of an op-ed than a forum, and I appreciate that there is room in the blogosphere for that style of writing.

My commitment is to improve the amount of professionalism with which I write and to balance judiciousness with enough forthrightness to keep things interesting.

Shalom,

Paul

Good things happening at Seattle Pacific

OK, so I’m a little biased in favor of Seattle Pacific University considering Julie is both a full-time employee and full-time student there (then again, it isn’t vested interested creating opinion so much as SPU’s characteristics giving us a reason to associate with the University and develop bias – we moved to Seattle last year because these things were already true of SPU and we believe in what God is doing there – and since then our positive view of SPU has only been reinforced), but nonetheless I wanted to link over to the blog of SPU’s president, Philip Eaton.

In a time when many Christian colleges and seminaries are more interested in politically appeasing their denomination, directors, and trustees than worshiping God intellectually by following through on advances in biblical studies, Eaton seems to be bucking the trend. In the past few years his office has been responsible for bringing in biblical scholars such as Richard Hays, Jurgen Moltmann, and Nicholas Woltersdorf. You can jump over to Eaton’s blog and read some his positive thoughts regarding N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope. In other words, Eaton and other decision-makers at SPU are locating the University in the radical center – not pandering to the sometimes anti-intellectual hyperbole of Evangelicalism’s most conservative fringe or dissolving into the cowardice of Seattle Christianity’s more liberal wing.

All of this is being done in Seattle’s tumultuous climate for Christianity. The city’s most influential church gains its notoriety by espousing a mix of Augustinian determinism and neo-Fundamentalist suppression of all-things-gender-related concerning the boundary-breaking work of Christ. One of the city’s other major theological schools seems to be (in my opinion) lagging – training pastors in the language and conversations of Evangelicalism’s yesteryear – while another (very unintentionally, I’d say) seems to be turning out too many students who operate out of a deterministic controlling meta-narrative of soft science within which “the fall” is essentially what your parents did to you, soteriology rests in the redemptive work of your therapist, and following Christ (and any of the normative expectations connected with following Christ) is a tangential hobby.

In other words, while there are some good things happening in the city (sometimes even within those places I’ve criticized, I should add) Seattle is in need of leaders who can approach theology with wisdom (not wobbly liberalism or nut-job conservatism) and help navigate the Church through the uncertainty that is post-Christendom and the Electronic Age (both with the potential to be very, very good things). While it’s difficult to make monolithic endorsements of institutions that are as diverse as their many contributing voices, I feel good about saying that SPU is suited to be that voice in Seattle.

I feel good about Seattle being pastored by, among others, the wise voices emerging from within SPU.

And I feel good about recommending SPU to any college-age person who would enjoy learning from truly-orthodox voices (people whose teachings are consistent with Christ and the Early Church, and not simply Augustinian modifications) in a city where it is anything but simple or convenient to be a Christian.

Reviewing Wright’s Justification: Chapter Two

In the second chapter of Justification, “Rules of Engagement,” Wright sets out by saying that if we allow books like Ephesians and Colossians equal place to Romans and Galatians – letting each of these canonical texts inform the others on a basis of full mutuality – we arrive at “nothing short of a (very Jewish) cosmic soteriology.” Within Christ the world finds its summation, and now one family of Jews and Gentiles becomes “Christ’s body for the world.” (pgs 43-44)

Wright isn’t calling readers to prioritize Ephesians and Colossians over Romans and Galatians, but rather to hear Romans and Galatians outside of the old perspective by which our interpretation has been conditioned. Because Ephesians and Colossians have never fit nearly into the old perspective (Wright notes the Lutheran suspicion toward Ephesians, in particular), if we use them as a starting point we find that Romans and Galatians don’t actually fit into the old perspective either.

Immediately following that point regarding canonical conversation, Wright begins this top-notch tangent:

Supposing that had been the vision that gripped the imagination of the Reformers in the sixteenth century; supposing they had had, engraved on their hearts, that close and intimate combination of (a) saving grace accomplishing redemption in the once-and-for-all death of the Messiah and putting it into operation through faith, without works and (b) the proleptic unity of all humankind in Christ as the sign of God’s coming reign over the whole world; and supposing they had then, and only then, gone back to Romans and Galatians – the entire history of the Western church, and with it the world, might have been different. No split between Romans 3:28 and Romans 3:29. No marginalization of Romans 9-11. No scrunching of the subtle and important arguments about Jew-plus-Gentile unity in Galatians 3 onto the Procrustean bed of an abstract antithesis between faith and works. No insisting, in either letter, that ‘the law’ was just a ’system’ that applied to everyone, and that ‘works of the law’ were the moral requirements that encouraged people to earn their own salvation by moral effort. In short, the new perspective might have begun [at the Reformation]. Or perhaps we should say the new perspective did begin – when Ephesians was written. No wonder Lutheran scholars have been so suspicious of it. But why should that apply to conservative readers for whom it is every bit as much Holy Writ as Romans or Galatians?

“In particular, what Scripture actually says must be brought into creative dialogue with tradition. This is standard fare in beginner-level doctrine courses, and ‘conservative’ churches within the Protestant tradition have always insisted that they are ‘biblical,’ whereas other churches down the road are in thrall to human traditions of this or that kind. But here is the problem, which I hinted at in the opening chapter. Again and again, when faced with both new perspective and some of the other features of more recent Pauline scholarship, ‘conservative’ churches have reached not for Scripture but for tradition, as with Piper’s complaint that I am sweeping away fifteen hundred years of the church’s understanding. Of course, Piper himself wants to sweep away most of the same fifteen hundred years, especially anything from medieval Catholicism, and to rely instead on the narrow strand which comes through Calvin and the Westminster Confession. But whichever way you look at it, the objection is odd.” (pgs 44-45)

Wright then has at it with Piper’s selective ignorance of first-century Judaism. Piper claims that study of the first century context can “distort and silence what the New Testament writers intended to say,” an alarming claim he tries to support by saying that first-century extra-biblical literature has not been studied to the same extent as the New Testament, and so we lack the contextual awareness we bring to the Scriptures. (pg 48)

I can feel my mind going numb thinking about that. So the reason we can’t understand the extra-biblical literature is because we haven’t studied it enough – and that’s why we are wasting our time to study and emphasize it? Seriously? Meanwhile we do have a contextual awareness of the Bible – we just can’t muddy that by studying… its context. Piper goes as far to say that, in terms of word studies, we cannot know “how words were used in that world” outside of their biblical use. Wright responds by noting that Piper’s mindset, “seems to me dramatically to overstate the case.” (pg 49)

Conversely, Wright’s response might be an exercise in dramatic understatement. Even someone who disagrees with Piper about some or many things should be able to acknowledge that he’s likely above-average in terms of intelligence (it’s difficult to lead – directly and indirectly – as many people as Piper does without being a sharp person). Still, Piper’s attitude regarding the Bible’s first-century context is intellectually insulting, and comes across as hiding the facts for the sake of posturing an argument. It demonstrates a desperation that one would expect from a person who is trying to defend ground in a losing battle. Which then begs the question: is Piper really ready to die on the hill of his own Calvinism, or is his life and ministry about something bigger and better, the very topic of Paul’s obsession. (A witty person might ask Piper to not waste his life…) To hide or diminish the facts we can glean from first-century context to defend a philosophy of sixteenth-century origin is not the marker of a truth-seeker. If Piper is in the business of truth-seeking, he had better re-examine his mentality and motives toward the contextual setting of Scripture.

Wright devotes several pages of his second full chapter bemoaning Piper’s shirking off of first-century context in favor of a Protestant-originated interpretation of Paul, and Piper’s attitude that his is the “ordinary” interpretation, held by his oft-cited “ordinary folk.” The Bishop demonstrates his concern:

“It is worrying to find Piper encouraging readers to go back, not to the first century, but to ‘the Christian renewal movements of sixteenth-century Europe.’ To describe that period as offering the ‘historic roots’ of evangelicalism is profoundly disturbing. Proper evangelicals are rooted in Scripture, and above all in Jesus Christ to whom Scripture witnesses, and nowhere else.” (pg 51)

Reviewing Wright’s Justification: Introduction and Chapter One

Justification, N.T. Wright’s latest book, is the Bishop’s seemingly irritated response to John Piper, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minn., and a figurehead of the “neo-Reformed” sect of Christianity. Wright clarifies that, already balancing a full schedule of pastoral and academic assignments, writing a rebuttal to Piper (who himself wrote The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright after Wright’s Paul: In Fresh Perspective) is necessary because of the subject matter and its implications. 

This isn’t back-and-forth for the sake of getting petty or something about which Christians should “agree to disagree.” To Wright, there’s simply too much riding on justification.

“. . . the question is about the nature and scope of salvation. Many Christians in the Western world, for many centuries now, have seen ’salvation’ as meaning ‘going to heaven when you die.’. . . In the Bible, salvation is not God’s rescue of people from the world but the rescue of the world itself. . .  Some Christians have used terms like justification and salvation as though they were almost interchangeable, but this is clearly untrue to Scripture itself.” (pgs 10-11)

Wright cites Piper’s theology of justification ignoring Paul is four main areas: the work of Jesus as Israel’s Messiah, its covenant nature (bringing about the end of exile), the lawcourt metaphor (in which God finds Himself “in favor” of those who follow Jesus; not merely allowing Jesus to transpose his moral achievement to his followers), and eschatology (a full narrative understanding of what God is doing in the entire world). (pgs 11-12)

“What’s All This About, and Why Does it Matter?” is the first full chapter of Justification, Wright comes out of the gate with frustration that Piper and similar theologians demonstrate a concern for “God’s glory” while espousing an eisogeted theology of justification that is centered on individuals finding their ticket of escape from the world. Wright does not discount the value of personal salvation but scoffs at a concocted theology that places mankind at the center of the universe (with no regard for a more universal eschatological plan). (pg 23) 

“. . . 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.” (pg 24)

This is no petty argument or nit-picking theological tangent. The nature and scope of salvation have been misstated, leading people to a Westernized individualistic construction in which the “sinner’s prayer” is an end-all-be-all ticket to otherworldliness, with little or no place give to participation in God’s great exilic work in the universe. Of the overall aim for Justification, Wright says, “I hope that the next generation, without preexisting reputations to lose and positions to maintain, will get the message.”

Piper, as well as some early reviews of this book, have accused Wright of constructing a “confusing gospel.” Wright responds to such a mentality toward him and the New Perspective:

“Sometimes, faced with a jigsaw puzzle, one is tempted to make it apparently easier by ignoring half the pieces. Put them back into the box! I can’t cope with that many! The result is of course that the puzzle is made harder, not easier. However, one can imagine someone, having made this initial disastrous move, trying to remedy the situation by brute force, joining together pieces that don’t quite fit in order to create some sort of picture anyway.” (pg 31)

The old perspective on Paul tossed out critical “pieces” of Paul’s theology: “Abraham and the promises God made to him, incorporation into Christ, resurrection and new creation, resurrection and new creation, the coming together of Jews and Gentiles, eschatology in the sense of God’s purpose-driven plan through history, and, not least, the Holy Spirit and the formation of Christian character.” (pgs 31-32)

Wright calls out Piper for completely sidelining passage such as Romans 2.25-29 and Romans 10.6-9 in his treatment of Paul and for picking out Paul’s Genesis 15 reference without consideration for the meaning of the full text toward which Paul was directing his readers. “When Paul quotes Scripture, he regularly intends to refer, not simply to the actual words quoted, but to the whole passage.” (pgs 32-33)

Of the impact of a narrative, covenantal approach to Scripture, the Bishop says:

“God had a single plan all along through which he intended to rescue the world and the human race, and that this single plan was centered upon the call of Israel, a call which Paul saw coming to fruition in Israel’s representative, the Messiah. Read Paul like this, and you can keep all the jigsaw pieces on the table.” (pg 35, italics his)