N.T. Wright Project

This is the second part of my review of Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision. I stated in the first part the two historical events that kept coming to mind while reading through Wright’s book: (1) the sixteenth-century theological dispute that set the Reformation in motion and (2) Karl Barth’s monumental and explosive Romans commentary published nearly twenty years after the turn of the twentieth century. My earlier post covered how Wright’s new book came about, the fundamental differences between Wright and Piper on justification, what exactly is at stake in their dispute, and why this resembles the Reformation in various ways (if this last line sounds melodramatic then read the earlier post). We now turn to the second half of Justification where Bishop Wright really rolls up his sleeves and does nitty-gritty exegesis. I’ll focus particularly on his treatment of Romans and how its bomb-like effect on the theological world is akin to the one caused by Barth’s commentary ninety years ago.

The Proof of the Pudding is in the Eating (and Exegesis)
Wright has already put his cards on the table by the time we arrive at the second half of the book; he’s defined righteousness and justification in terms of God’s faithfulness to the Abraham covenant, argued that justification is only one part of human salvation, and drawn a distinction between how justification works in the present and in the future. He now turns directly to the text to show he’s built his case on Paul’s writings rather than some later tradition of interpretation (he accuses Piper of doing of the latter).

Five minutes ago I finished reading New Testament and the People of God. It is hard to describe the sense of accomplishment that I feel right now. On the one hand, I just finished reading 476 pages. On the other, Wright’s text is so rich that it demands a second reading - perhaps even a third. Tomorrow or maybe the day after, I will begin the critical task of engaging views of Wright’s text within the scholarly community. But for now, I want to bask in the celebration by briefly laying out three reflections about Wright’s work. I will post them in succession.

1. Critical realism

Many evangelicals have a difficult time accepting the mediated character of theologizing and biblical interpretation. By mediated, I mean coming to terms with the fact that theology and biblical interpretation involves human beings making claims about God; and further, that in making those claims, they are inevitably making choices about the meanings of words, the themes of a particular book, the leading images for taking about God, etc. The deep suspicion - which is not an unwarranted one I might add - is that acknowledging the the mediated character necessarily means that talk about God is nothing more than projecting human dramas onto a divine cansas that may or may not exist. Out of disquieting fear, the question then arises: are there any philosophical resources for evangelicals - who rightly believe that we can speak truly of God, and of God in relation to Scripture - desiring to acknowledge the mediated character of theology without subscribing to “your guess is as good as mine” relativism?

“The average Jews would hear a lot of scripture read aloud or sung, and might well know large amounnts by heart…In particular, the psalter, with its continual emphasis on the importance of the Temple and on the promises made to David, would have formed an important part of the mental furniture of the average Jew.”

Tom Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, p. 241

Wright argues that every worldview answers four basic questions. Who are we? Where are we? What is wrong? And what is the solution? (NTPG, 123). Using this framework, he summarizes Israel’s worldview. The people of Israel are the chosen people of God, living in the Holy Land under the wrong rulers, and thus expectantly adhering to Torah while waiting on God “to act again” (NTPG, 243). The question then becomes: what grounds this worldview, or, on what basis might someone respond differently to these four questions? Wright’s response: scripture. He mentions the Essenes, Philo of Alexandria, and the chief priests of the Temple as different ways of employing Scripture within the Jewish worldview.

This week, my fellow scholars and I fell in love - or at least I did - with Tom Wright’s critical realist epistemology. By employing this term, Wright argues that the process of knowing something can be conceptualized as humans conversing with events within the context of story. An example might be in order. In writing this blog, I am not simply aware of typing on an object called a computer. I am, Wright would contend, a “story-telling human” interacting with an object in a “story-laden world” (New Testament and the People of God, p. 44). Thus, it is as one shaped by stories (e.g. the narratives of Scripture, political headlines, Tom Wright’s books), that I sit down to write at my personal computer. And as a story-shaped human, I have believed the advertising stories about the “personal” computer; I store pictures and write journal entries on it - it is mine.

But the question now becomes: what do stories have to do with politics? Everything! Wright observes that “stories of how things were in the Depression are used to fuel sympathy for the oppressed working class; stories of terrorism are used to justify present right-wing schemes…Stories thus provide a vital framework for experiencing the world. They also provide a means by which views of the world may be challenged“‘  (NTPG, p. 39, emphasis mine).