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)