Review 3: Piper's Future of Justification

Finally we arrive at Chapter 1 of John Piper's book on N. T. Wright:

"Caution: Not All Biblical-Theological Methods and Categories Are Illuminating"

1. There is a truly ironic element that has peeked through a few times even in the brief 38 pages of this book I have read. The following statement is typical:

"I think we need a new generation of preachers who are not only open to new light that God may shed upon his word, but are also suspicious of their own love of novelty and are eager to test all their interpretations of the Bible by the wisdom of the centuries" (italics mine, 37-38).

In the context of this statement, Piper is discussing a quote from Wright in which Wright admits to being energized by his new reading of Paul. Piper suggests that Wright might unbeknowingly be fascinated with the new over the time-tested true.

Now of course Piper admits in a footnote that this is not how Wright perceives his delight at the "freshness" of his reading of Paul. I know what Wright is saying. Wright is saying that his interpretation works so well in reading the text in context that it is exciting in a way that the text wasn't to him before.

Piper's warning is fair enough to consider at some point--is Wright subconsciously enticed by the new when there was nothing wrong with the old interpretation. Wright of course would say no, this is not what's going on. I suspect that the freshness we will find in Wright is more light in a dark room than a quest for novelty for its own sake.

But what is so fascinating about Piper's comments is his appeal to the magisterium, to tradition as the arbiter of interpretation! Has Piper suddenly turned catholic?!

Here is Piper again: "It is sobering to hear him [Wright] say, for example, 'The discussions of justification in much of the history of the church, certainly since Augustine, got off on the wrong foot--at least in terms of understanding Paul--and they have stayed there ever since" (37).

Ha! Didn't Erasmus say something like this about Luther--"It is sobering to hear Luther saying..."

I welcome Piper's recognition that the consensus of the church counts for something in the appropriation of Scripture. It cannot change the original meaning of the Bible, but in my theology it does have a strong say in how we read it as Christians.

But on this point a blind spot in Piper's own pre-modern approach to Scripture is exposed.

2. In a very brief four pages, Piper in his own way recognizes the problem of biblical theology. He is wrestling with the complications of reading the NT in the light of its first century background. His three brief warnings are fair enough:

a. What if you misunderstand the first century source?

Piper's argument here is that the first century texts are less studied than the NT ones and therefore are more prone to misunderstanding than the biblical ones, for which we also hopefully have the illumination of the Holy Spirit.

There is a legitimate warning here. Sometimes scholars have taken a hypothetical reconstruction of some extra-biblical text and then shoved it down the throat of a biblical text. However, we are just as prone to bring clearly anachronistic "definitions" to the biblical text that are simply part of our own tradition and have no clear connection to what people were thinking in the first century.

When there is so much disagreement among Christian groups, it behooves those who would be theological leaders in their traditions at some point in their life to examine the historical categories they have inherited. Most Christian traditions are, from a standpoint of probability, more likely to be wrong than right on the beliefs that are particular to their tradition, simply because they are in the minority on those ideas. This is not an argument for abandoning distinctives, only a pointing out that we as individual traditions are most likely to be eccentric at our points of uniqueness.

The idea of the illumination of the Spirit here is fascinating. I have come to a conclusion of late when it comes to a wide variety of Reformed thinkers from Barth to Van Til to Platinga and Wolterstorff to Vanhoozer to Smith to Piper. Here I am thinking of the way in which their "Reformed epistemologies" hang in air without support, without the need to be supported by argument or prop. I am speaking of their underlying sense that the Spirit illuminates to where their foundations are somewhat intuitive, "properly basic."

What occurred to me is that this approach to truth is of a piece with the spirit of their theology, namely, its predestinarian orientation. While they might not articulate it in this way, I believe there is at least a subconscious tendency to hang the foundations of their view on air because of the sense that God will cause the elect to resonate with these truths.

A recent conversation with a scholar from the Reformed tradition brought this home. This person has a colleague who would like to believe in Christianity, but simply cannot bring his mind to do so. This Reformed scholar was somewhat at a loss as to what to do with the colleague. All he knew to do was to give the individual things to read. But clearly the person knew enough already to respond. God simply had not led him to respond at this point, in this person's Reformed theology.

Now there are similar issues for Wesleyan-Arminians with regard to free will, so I am not claiming to be without difficulties. I am simply pointing out that the Reformed tradition lends itself to inaction when it comes to proofs because of its overall paradigm.

b. What if we assume a first century source represents a first century view when it was only one first century view among many?

Again, this is a fair enough warning. Whether it applies to Wright, however, we will have to see in specific cases.

c. What if an individual author departs from the first century view?

Now this comment, although Piper does not really explore it, is a crucial question for all biblical interpreters. After we have examined all the first century literature that we can, we have to leave room for innovation on the part of the NT author. More importantly, as Christians who believe in revelation, we must leave room for divine supervention in the meaning of the text.

For lack of better terms, we must leave open the possibility of the supernatural and not limit our interpretation to the natural. What I am calling a "natural" interpretation is one that asks, "What is the most likely meaning of this text in the light of the paradigms and definitions of the time?"

This issue arose recently in a paper I delivered on Hebrews. In that paper, I suggested it would be quite unlikely that the earliest Christians would have immediately thought that Christ's death atoned for all the sins of all time and that there was no longer any need for sacrifice. I suggested that this idea may not have coalesced until the time of Hebrews, although it is possible that Paul held this view as well.

Now my reading of early Christianity here is a natural one--it is based on the views we find in books like 2 and 4 Maccabees toward the "atoning" value a noble human death might have. A good question was asked by a Christian in the audience, however. If I might rephrase it, it went something like this: "Wouldn't we as Christians expect God to reveal the unprecedented nature of Christ's death to the apostles?"

This was a great question for a believer. Although he didn't put it in these terms, he was pointing out that the "natural" reading of the first century evidence might not be sufficient in the light of a "supernatural" situation.

My method is, first, to attempt a natural reading of a biblical text--its most likely meaning in its original historical-cultural context. When that interpretation differs from the traditional Christian reading of that text, caution lights go off that say to take care and double check.

[I might add as a sidenote that I can distinguish the original meaning from the canonical one, so I do not feel a need to choose between the two so that the text has a single correct meaning. For me it can have an original meaning that was appropriate for its place in the flow of revelation and a canonical one that has as much to do with the consensus of Christendom under the leadership of the Holy Spirit]

When the natural does not seem to account for what's going on, then I take recourse to supernatural explanations.

Let me put this method into perspective. It was once traditional to think that thunderstorms were spiritual storms in which either God was angry or demons were at play. It was once traditional to see sickness as punishment for sin. Perhaps sometimes God does direct storms or make people sick for sin. But most of the time, I suspect barometric pressures and fronts and germs and viruses are responsible.

The distinction between natural and supernatural is clearly a modern one and one that needs to be seriously questioned. But it was not born of whim or fancy, and we would not have cell phones or satellites if we continued to think that physical events are simply the whim and fancy of angels and demons.

The freshness of which Wright speaks is the realization that, most of the time, the biblical texts fit very well within their historical contexts. When at Ugarit they speak of a Lothan sea monster whose consonants are the same as the Hebrew Leviathon, am I to dismiss this close background parallel in lieu of some tradition centuries later that didn't have the benefit of modern archaeological discoveries?

What I have concluded is that God revealed the Bible in terms that the original audiences could understand. The words of the Bible are incarnated truths, not truths in some bubble. If these words were not intelligible within first century paradigms, then the very audiences they say they addressed could not have understood them.