Monday Thoughts: Piper's Chapter 9, Future of Justification 11

Today we review chapter 9 of John Piper's new book, The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright. This chapter is titled, "Paul's Structural Continuity with Second Temple Judaism."

In this chapter, Piper presents--but largely does not evaluate--Wright's understanding of the phrase "works of law." To a large extent, Piper in this chapter is presenting some of the key distinctives of the so called "new perspective on Paul." In particular, he is evaluating an article Wright wrote comparing Paul with one of the Dead Sea scrolls: "Some of the Works of the Law" (4QMMT).

I have already mentioned this issue. Key here is the fact that Paul largely does not contrast faith with works in the abstract, as Luther and the Protestant Reformation did, indeed, as Augustine did. The phrase that Paul primarily uses is "works of law."

Thus Romans 3:28--"So we reckon that a person is justified by faith and not by works of law."

The law in question is certainly the Jewish law. For me, a crucial issue is whether Paul here primarily pictures the "core law" that I have argued he has in mind in Romans 2 or the fuller Jewish law with special reference to the particulars that distinguished Jew from Gentile (circumcision, sabbath observance, food laws). Certainly in Romans 2 he must have something like a core law in mind, since Gentiles do the things in the law--something they by definition cannot do if Paul has things like circumcision in mind.

Wright's Argument
Wright's argument is, first of all, an argument about Judaism. Following the "new perspective," Wright does not believe that Judaism at the time of Paul was a religion of legalism where you tried to earn God's favor. Rather,

1. God graciously brought Israel into covenant with Himself.

2. Israel's life of obedience was in response for this grace.

3. Final justification would come on the basis of an entire life lived.

With this last point we should emphasize that Wright and Piper are talking about the Second Temple Period (516BC-AD70). The OT in context has little sense that history is headed toward some sort of culmination.

So Wright has 6 points in relation to 4QMMT, the key text of which reads,

"We have written to you some of the works of the law... You will rejoice at the end time when you find the essence of our words to be true. And it will be reckoned to you as righteousness."

Here are Wright's points"
1. "Works of the law" here are in a covenantal and eschatological context.

2. The works in question function as "boundary markers" of God's people now anticipating the end time.

3. Paul replaced "works of law" in this scheme with "faith."

4. Both Paul and this document are talking about community definition.

5. Paul's ethics though functions differently than "works" do here.

6. This document is not Pharisee, so we can't assume Paul's Galatian opponents had this understanding of the structure of justification.

So Wright believes that Paul's understanding of justification has a similar structure to that of this Jewish background, only with faith taking the place of works of law.

So for the Teacher of Righteousness, the alleged author of MMT, 1) God's promise led to the 2) establishment of the community of Israel on its way to 3) final vindication, but in the meantime 4) in a state of exile marked by works in the present.

For Paul, according to Wright, 1) God's promise led to the 2) establishment of the community in Christ as fulfilled Israel on its way to 3) final vindication, but in the meantime 4) in a state of exile marked by faith in the present.

I'll confess before we get to the next chapter that I think Wright has seriously overread the parallel and is overloading Paul's words with mega-extraneous meaning. In the next installment, we'll look at Piper's critique and I'll add mine to both of them...