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| N. T. Wright on Salvation & Grace | | Date Created: Nov 27, 2004, 01:31 PM |
According to N. T. Wright, justification is forensic, declarative, received by faith alone, grounded in union with Christ, and is by grace alone. I don't really know or care much about Sanders and Dunn, but Wright's understanding of justification, thought not expressed exactly as we would express it, is thoroughly orthodox in content. Here are a few paragraphs from his new commentary on Romans that show all five themes at work. This is a section from his comments on Romans 3:22b-24 (p. 471-2 ):[Justification] is God's declaration that those who believe are in the right; their sins have been dealt with; they are God's true covenant people, God's renewed humanity. This astonishing declaration needs explaining. How can the righteous judge, spoken of at the start of the chapter, make such an announcement about those who a moment ago were standing in the dock, guilty and without defense?
Paul offers three explanations, of which the third is then developed further. This justification happens 'freely'; it is neither deserved nor paid for, but is pure gift. More particularly, it is 'by God's grace'--the first mention of 'grace' since the introduction (1:5, 7), but another theme that is now going to dominate, particularly in chapters 5 and 6. 'Grace' is one of Paul's most potent shorthand terms, carrying in its beautiful simplicity the entire story of God's love, active in Christ and the Spirit to do for humans what they could never do for themselves. This, indeed, is what he at once explains in the present passage, with the last phrase of v. 24: 'through the redemption that is in the Messiah, Jesus.' Abut this there are three things to grasp.
The first thing to notice is that what happened in the Messiah was the gift of God's grace. Paul has no conception, as in some medieval paintings and their accompanying theology (some of which has lingered to this day), of a stern Father-figure on a throne with the Son pleading with him, against (as it were) his better judgment, to exercise clemency. Rather what takes place in Jesus and supremely on the cross is all from God's side. As Paul will insist in 5:6-10, the death of Jesus reveals the love of God. God does not, so to speak, have to be persuaded that Jesus' death makes a good enough case for sinners to be justified. It was God who initiated the movement in the first place.
The second point is the meaning of 'redemption.' . . . .
Third, this redemption happened 'in the Messiah, Jesus.' This is where Paul makes explicit the compressed point of 3:22, that when Jesus acts in faithfulness and obedience he does so as the Messiah, Israel's representative, the one 'in whom' Israel is summed up. We shall have more to say about "in Christ" when discussing chaps. 6-8; for the moment we notice that Paul's messianic christology is explicit here, at the point where he is stating how the world has been brought from guilt to grace.
What the world needed (3:2) was a faithful Israelite, to carry out God's saving purpose. God has now provided one. And, because Israel itself has joined the rest of the world in the dock, this Messiah is also God's Israel FOR Israel. All have become disobedient, that mercy might be shown to all (11:32). I'm back. Me, not N. T. Wright. Okay? Now, what eats me up is that a number of Reformed authors have falsely claimed that Wright is a neo-legalist, in the sense that he teaches that man must earn his favor with God. Others have called Wright's teaching on justification a "new moralism." Either the men who make these claims are unaware of what Wright writes (in which case they should keep quiet for a while and actually study what Wright says) or they are malicious, desperately in need of a new heretic to define themselves and so justify themselves over against all other simple believers. It is amazing to me how sectarian Reformed leaders can be. If you don't say it just like we do, using the same theological terminology and slogans, you are dismissed.
Think about what I said in the post on "Subscription and Freedom" and recognize that differing theological terminolog and categories may hide fundamental agreement. It think that is the case here with N.T. Wright's work.
Much of the problem arises because Wright has uncovered what has been submerged in much post-Reformation theology (both Roman and Protestant): that justification has a corporate dimension and is not ONLY about how individual people find inner peace and comfort. This corporate dimension scares individualistic Protestant and Catholic commentators. Because we aren't used to correlating the corporate and individual, we reject the attempt as a muddle, a confusion of what is "clear" to us. It is precisely this corporate, social, even political perspective that we have not paid enough attention to or have sometimes missed altogether. But if I am right about this, then Wright's contribution to the doctrine of justification is not to take anything away from the importance of individual salvation, but rather to ADD to this the crucial corporate, social dimension of redemption. |
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