He left quite an impression on my young daughter as has the entire group of Anglican teacher’s who head up a the English departments at her college. While I have no problem with her being influenced by the Bishop (he truly is a great teacher), we are more familiar and in tune with Piper’s theology. However, after reading the summary of Christianity Today, I am finding a big point missing in both camps…actually a critical point to the Justification argument.

Justification did not start with the Law. It started after the Fall when God made a Way for man to be saved through the sacrifice of His Son. So the argument really should not be about what the purpose of the Law is, it did not bring salvation and never did. This is clear in the NT, the Law just a task master used to show man his inability to be perfect before God. While following it did mark you as part of the Covenant, following it did not save you, as the rich young ruler could testify.

The keeping of the Law nor its Covenant gave man Salvation. That alone is and has always been a free gift of God through the Sacrifice of His Son (ex: David broke the Law numerous times, but yet was beloved of God). Furthermore God communicated this clearly in the form of an objection lesson-the Sacrifice, a requirement made of man since the Fall.

Man was instructed LONG before the Law was ever written down on the purpose and practice of the Sacrifice. There was a reason Cain’s sacrifice was not acceptable before God, it was not a blemish free Blood Sacrifice. This sacrifice did not make them right before God, no it was the grace imparted to them through their faith in God’s provision as seen by their obedience to perform the Sacrifice. It was like a pre-sacrament, being done in celebration of what will happen in the future. Today we do the same when we take communion, we look back at what was done, OT believers looked forward.

I feel that both men over complicate the issue, especially in the purpose of the Law, and this, muddies the waters and becomes a stumbling block to the Church. We need to keep our debate within the Body (and allow it), BUT Salvation is a gift, always has been, always will be…teaching ANYTHING else is NOT the Gospel.

I certainly wouldn’t say that you are “off in the weeds” because you are asking a very good question. There are several levels at which it ought to be addressed.

First, “covenantal credentials” was perhaps a slightly misleading way of stating Wright’s position on my part, chosen for the pleasure of its alliteration. What I mean to say is that Wright understands “righteousness” language as a reference to “covenant membership,” he understands “justification” to be a verdict in the trial asking the question “who are the true members of God’s covenant people?” and he understands “works of the law” as what Jews thought of as the demonstration of their covenant membership and “faith” as what Paul asserted was the true sign of covenant membership. Thus, the question of whether an Israelite fulfilled the Torah in a way that would redeem from sins is a different question than that of justification.

Wright does, however, think that the point of the nation of Israel was that it was to redeem the world, which the Messiah did through his fidelity to God’s covenant plan, but he links this more with Jesus’ death than with Jesus’ obedience to the law.

The primary question is the meaning of “righteousness” language. Wright has asserted that this language means “covenant membership” when applied to humans; Piper claims that it refers to one’s absolute moral standing before God. What I find less than compelling about Wright’s view is that the terms in which the charges are laid out in Romans 3:10-18 seem to make more sense under Piper’s definition than Wright’s. The charge “No one is righteous” is laid out in terms of moral failure, and verse 20 summarizes the point with an allusion to Psalm 143:2, which says, “Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you.” This latter text appears to me to be addressing the trial of one’s ultimate moral standing before God, not a trial determining whether or not one is a member of God’s covenant people. Was the Psalmist really asserting that no one would pass judgment in the trial determining if they were a member of God’s covenant people? That would be the implication if Wright’s view of “righteousness” language is correct. I find it more likely that the point of this verse, and Paul’s argument in Romans 3, is that all are sinners and thus cannot pass God’s judgment on their own. The covenantal interpretation of “righteousness” language proposed by Wright just feels forced at this point, and he sometimes makes telling awkward statements that seem to contradict his view of what justification is. For instance, on p. 112 of Paul: In Fresh Perspective, Wright states regarding Galatians, “the point of ‘works of Torah’ here is not about the works some people might think you have to perform to become a member of God’s people, but the works you have to perform to demonstrate that you are a member of God’s people. These works, Paul says, simply miss the point, as Psalm 143.2 had indicated, partly because no one ever performs them adequately, and partly because…works of Torah would simply create a family which was at best an extension of ethnic Judaism.” In this quotation, Wright claims that no one can perform works of the law “adequately,” but adequately for what? The previous sentence claims that their function was to demonstrate one’s membership within God’s people. Is that what no one can perform them adequately to do? That just doesn’t make sense to me. Rather, it seems that for Paul, no one can perform the works of the law adequately to attain the blessing promised in the law contingent upon obedience. The program of Leviticus 18:5 (“The one who does these things will live by them”) fails (cf. Gal 3:10-14; and the neglected Rom 7:7-11). The point, I think, is that the Sinai covenant was not a covenant that a sinner could obey sufficiently to attain ultimate moral right standing with God (this sort of combines the two elements that you contrasted in the final sentence of your comment). I think that Wright’s exposition omits this point, and could use some revising. His definition of “righteousness” in terms of “covenant membership” just doesn’t seem to square with the significant ways in which Paul brings this language into contact with moral obedience and the condemnation of immoral action (Rom 1:18-32, which 3:9-20 is simply reasserting with respect to Jews). Thus, although I love Wright’s work and consider his books to be some of the most influential on my thinking, I am not persuaded on this point.

So then, Romans 3:10-18 is not measuring sin simply in an abstract moral perfection sense, but in the Torah-Covenantal sense.

Am off in the weeds?

Bruce

You have pretty fairly described Wright’s position here, but have you read some of the more substantive critiques of his thoughts on justification? Personally, I am big fan of Wright in general (as you seem to be), but his proposals on justification are not without their problems. The best point that Piper makes is that righteousness language in Paul seems to be more directly tied to moral performance than covenantal credentials (note the way that Paul lays out the charge “No one is righteous” in Rom 3:10-18). Piper, however, is only one of a number of voices protesting Wright’s proposals. Wright’s (and Sanders’s) work on Judaism has come under serious criticism. The Justification and Variegated Nomism series, Simon Gathercole’s Where Is Boasting?, and Francis Watson’s Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith all display the shortcomings of Sanders’s paradigm of covenantal nomism (on which Wright’s proposals depend) through hefty interaction with Jewish sources. The latter two in particular (because they are single author volumes and thus contain one coherent argument rather than a combination of various evaluations) well demonstrate from contemporary Jewish sources that there was a belief among Jews that final salvation was attained by means of one’s fidelity to the law. I would recommend consulting these works for more details (if you haven’t already).