N.T. Wright on Justification (responding to John Piper's concerns)

N.T. Wright's view of justification is a little different from the reformed understanding. Here are a couple of articles outlining the differences. The first article is from Christianity Today summarising the differences between Piper and Wright and the second is an interview with N.T. Wright at the Gospel Coalition blog responding to John Piper's critique.

The Justification Debate: A Primer

Two of the world's most prominent pastor-theologians on justification—and what difference it makes.

John Piper and N.T. Wright, compiled by Trevin Wax | posted 6/26/2009 09:54AM

COMMENTS (35)

Related articles and links |  1 of 2 

Since Christianity Today's August 2007 cover story, "What Did Paul Really Mean?" Piper and Wright have taken the debate on justification from the academy to the masses. Here is where the two evangelicals differ.
Download a PDF of this article here.

John Piper: Pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis. Author of The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright.

N.T. Wright: Bishop of Durham, Church of England. Author of Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision.

The Problem

Piper: God created a good world that was subjected to futility because of the sinful, treasonous choice of the first human beings. Because of this offense against the glory of God, humans are alienated from their Creator and deserve his just condemnation for their sins.

Wright: God created a good world, designed to be looked after and brought to its intended purpose through his image-bearing human beings. This purpose was thwarted by the sinful choice of the first human beings. Because of human sinfulness, the world needs to be put to rights again and its original purpose taken forward to completion. God's purpose in putting humans "right" is that through them, the world can be put to rights.

The Law

Piper: God revealed himself through the Law, which pointed to Christ as its end and goal, commanded the obedience that comes from faith, increased transgressions, and shut the mouths of all humans because no one has performed the righteousness of the Law so as not to need a substitute.

Wright: God made a covenant with Abraham in order to set in motion his plan to rescue his world through Abraham's family. God gave his people the Torah, his holy Law, as a pedagogue—a way to keep Israel, God's wayward people, from going totally off track until the coming of the Messiah. Israel was supposed to embody the law and thus be a light to the nations. But Israel has failed at this task.

God's Righteousness

Piper: The essence of God's righteousness is his unwavering faithfulness to uphold the glory of his name in all he does. No single action, like covenant keeping, is God's righteousness. For all his acts are done in righteousness. The essence of human righteousness is the unwavering faithfulness to uphold the glory of God in all we do. The problem is that we all fall short of this glory; that is, no one is righteous.

Wright: God's righteousness refers to his own faithfulness to the covenant he made with Abraham. Israel has been unfaithful to this commission. What is now required, if the world's sin is to be dealt with and a worldwide family created for Abraham, is a faithful Israelite who can be faithful to the covenant in Israel's stead.

First-Century Judaism

Piper: Many Jews in Jesus' day (like the Pharisees described in the Gospels) did not see the need for a substitute in order to be right with God, but sought to establish their own righteousness through "works of the Law." Whether keeping Sabbath or not committing adultery, these works became the basis of one's right standing with God. The inclination to rely on one's own ceremonial and moral acts is universal, apart from divine grace.

Wright: Jews in Jesus' day believed that the Law was given to them as people who were already in covenant with God. Therefore, the Law was not viewed as a way to earn God's favor, but as a sign that one was already in covenant with God. The "works of the Law" are not ways to earn favor with God, but badges of covenant identity by which one determines who is in the covenant and who is not. Many Jews in Paul's day were clinging to these identity markers (Sabbath, circumcision) in a way that made their Jewish identity exclusive. Therefore, their exclusivism was keeping the promise of God from flowing to the nations.

The Gospel

Piper: The heart of the gospel is the good news that Christ died for our sins and was raised from the dead. What makes this good news is that Christ's death accomplished a perfect righteousness before God and suffered a perfect condemnation from God, both of which are counted as ours through faith alone, so that we have eternal life with God in the new heavens and the new earth.

Wright: The gospel is the royal announcement that the crucified and risen Jesus, who died for our sins and rose again according to the Scriptures, has been enthroned as the true Lord of the world. When this gospel is preached, God calls people to salvation, out of sheer grace, leading them to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ as the risen Lord.

How This Happens

Piper: By faith we are united with Christ Jesus so that in union with him, his perfect righteousness and punishment are counted as ours (imputed to us). In this way, perfection is provided, sin is forgiven, wrath is removed, and God is totally for us. Thus, Christ alone is the basis of our justification, and the faith that unites us to him is the means or instrument of our justification. Trusting in Christ as Savior, Lord, and Supreme Treasure of our lives produces the fruit of love, or it is dead.

Wright: God himself, in the person of Jesus Christ (the faithful Israelite), has come, allowing the continuation of his plan to rescue human beings, and, through them, the world. The Messiah represents his people, standing in for them, taking upon himself the death that they deserved. God justifies (declares righteous) all those who are "in Christ," so that the vindication of Jesus upon his resurrection becomes the vindication of all those who trust in him. Justification refers to God's declaration of who is in the covenant (this worldwide family of Abraham through whom God's purposes can now be extended into the wider world) and is made on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ alone, not the "works of the Law" (i.e., badges of ethnic identity that once kept Jews and Gentiles apart).

Future Justification

Piper: Present justification is based on the substitutionary work of Christ alone, enjoyed in union with him through faith alone. Future justification is the open confirmation and declaration that in Christ Jesus we are perfectly blameless before God. This final judgment accords with our works. That is, the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives will be brought forward as the evidence and confirmation of true faith and union with Christ. Without that validating transformation, there will be no future salvation.

Wright: Present justification is the announcement issued on the basis of faith and faith alone of who is part of the covenant family of God. The present verdict gives the assurance that the verdict announced on the Last Day will match it; the Holy Spirit gives the power through which that future verdict, when given, will be seen to be in accordance with the life that the believer has then lived.

Interview with N.T. Wright – Responding to Piper on Justification

Today’s interview with N.T. Wright (Bishop of Durham) concerns his new book: Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision.

Justification represents Wright’s response to John Piper’s  The Future of Justification (see my commentary here) and is scheduled for release in the UK in February by SPCK and in the U.S. in May by IVP.

My previous two interviews with Bishop Wright can be accessed here and here.

Trevin Wax: How does this robust discussion on justification between you and John Piper help the church to better fulfill its purpose in the world?

N.T. Wright: How does the robust discussion between me and Piper help the church to better fulfill its purpose in the world? Well, I hope it will, and that’s part of the main point of what I’m saying.

My anxiety about what has now been seen as the traditional Reformed view (though there are many traditional Reformed views!) is that it focuses all attention on ‘me and my salvation’ rather than on ‘God and God’s purposes’, which – as we see in the Gospels, and in e.g. Romans 8 – are much wider than just my salvation. This book, for me, thus follows from Surprised by Hope and the other things I’ve been writing in the same vein.

More generally, I hope that the book will alert people to the fact that the underlying discussion is really about taking Scripture seriously – (a) the whole Scripture, not just selected parts, and (b) Scripture as the final arbiter, over against all human traditions including our own! That cannot but help the church in its purpose in the world . . .

Trevin Wax: What would you say are the key differences between you and Piper on justification?

N.T. Wright: Well, I set justification within the larger Pauline context, where it always comes, of God’s purposes to fulfill his covenant promise to Abraham and so to rescue the whole creation, humankind of course centrally included, from sin and death. Piper holds that Abrahamic context at arm’s length.

Second, I understand justification as basically a law-court term, where it means the judge’s creative declaration that a person is ‘in the right’ in terms of the lawcourt, whereas Piper holds that justification involves the accrediting to a person of the moral, not the forensic, ‘righteousness’ of Christ – something Paul never says (as J. I. Packer admits).

Third, I understand Paul’s doctrine of justification as eschatological, that is, the justification of the faithful in the present time is both the fulfilment of the long story of Israel and the anticipation of the eventual verdict to be delivered on the last day, as inRomans 2.1-16 and 8.1-30.

Fourth, in line with many Reformed readers of scripture, including Calvin, I understand Paul’s doctrine of justification to be of those who are ‘in Christ’, whereas Piper and others don’t make that a central element in justification itself. Conversely, for Piper the center of justification is the ‘imputation’ of ‘the righteousness of Christ’, seen in terms of ‘righteousness’ as a kind of moral achievement earned by Jesus and then reckoned to those who believe. I believe that this is an attempt to say something close to what Paul actually says in Romans 6, namely that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is ‘reckoned’ to those who are ‘in him’. Putting it the way Piper (and one part of the Reformation tradition) puts it is a pointer to something which is truly there in Paul, but one which gives off misleading signals as well.

Finally, for Piper justification through Christ alone is the same in the future (on the last day) as in the present, whereas for Paul, whom I am following very closely at this point, the future justification is given on the basis of the Spirit-generated life that the justified-by-faith-in-the-present person then lives. In fact, the omission of the Spirit from many contemporary Reformed statements of justification is one of their major weaknesses.

Trevin Wax: What do you hope this new book will accomplish?

N.T. Wright: I hope it will clear up many misunderstandings, and show that the version of the ‘new perspective’ which I embrace and expound (there are as many quite different versions of the so-called NP as there are expositors of it) is not at all inimical to the real concerns, including personal salvation, substitutionary atonement, and so forth, of the ‘traditionalists’.

I hope, too, it will send the next generation of thoughtful Christians back to Scripture itself, not to this or that tradition.

Trevin Wax: How does this short book relate to the longer book on Paul that you are currently writing?

N.T. Wright: The longer book is intended to be a full-scale treatment of Paul’s theology, integrating traditional ‘theological’ topics with the political and philosophical ones which are implicit in his work. I sketched what I intend to do in Paul: In Fresh Perspective, particularly chapters 5, 6 and 7. Imagine each of those chapters on a grand scale (e.g. about 200 pages each!) and you’ll see what I have in mind.

The debate with Piper functions as a sub-debate within the middle one of those chapters. I didn’t want to have to go into that much detail on that particular debate in the big book, since there are so many other debates out there that need to be engaged . . .

Trevin Wax: Do you see a ‘middle ground’ being reached in recent discussions? A post-new-perspective equilibrium or sorts?

N.T. Wright: No, not an equilibrium. A lot of confusion, rather.

I think there’s a danger in ‘old perspective’ supporters still trying to run an implicit ‘conservative versus liberal’ debate on this one, trying to accuse NP folk of some of the failings of an older liberalism. Better to see the historical and theological quest to understand Paul going wide open to encourage everyone to get back to reading the texts in their proper contexts. If that means going beyond this ‘perspectives’ language, so be it. But it is sometimes helpful to put down some markers as a shorthand way of signposting key moves.

One of the truly worrying things about Piper is his insistence that we should be wary of reading Paul in his Jewish context . . . which basically means that we end up reading him as though he was really a 17th-century theologian born out of due time . . .

Trevin Wax: What is at stake in this debate over justification? If one were to adopt Piper’s view instead of yours, what would they be missing?

N.T. Wright: What’s missing is the big, Pauline picture of God’s gospel going out to redeem the whole world, all of creation, with ourselves as part of that.

What’s missing is the big, Pauline view of the church, Jew and Gentile on equal footing, as the sign to the powers of the world that Jesus is Lord and they aren’t.

What’s missing is the key work of the Holy Spirit in enabling the already-justified believers to live with moral energy and will so that they really do ‘please God’ as Paul says again and again (but as Reformed theology is shy of lest it smack of smuggling in works-righteousness again).

What’s missing is an insistence on Scripture itself rather than tradition . . .

For further reading, check out my summary statements of Wright and Piper’s positions in the June 2009 issue of Christianity Today.