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)