Review 4: Piper's Future of Justification

Chapter 2 of John Piper's book on N. T. Wright is entitled:
"The Relationship between Covenant and Law-Court Imagery for Justification"

Justification as Covenant Membership?
In this chapter Piper deals with what indeed is one of Wright's more idiosyncratic views, namely, "Justification is not how someone becomes a Christian. It is the declaration that they have become a Christian" (What Saint Paul Really Said, 122, 125). Or in another place Wright says, "Justification, for Paul, is not (in Sanders' terminology) how one 'gets into' God's people but about God's declaration that someone is in" ("New Perspectives on Paul," in Justification in Perspective, 261).

In other words, to use E. P. Sanders' words, N. T. Wright denies that "justification" is "transfer terminology," to "make righteous."

I agree with Piper that Wright's understanding of Paul on this topic is peculiar and confusing. Wright's varied ways of circling around this concept are like someone whose attempts to explain something only confuse you more.

Piper argues that Wright's understanding of justification, "conflates implication and definition." In other words, certainly justification implies that a person is now part of the people of God. But Wright doesn't want to say that. For Wright, justification seems to indicate that one is already in. For Wright, justification is the declaration that you are in.

At the same time, Wright sees justification as law-court language as well. Piper quotes Paul in Fresh Perspective when Wright says that "belonging to the covenant" (i.e., what Wright believes justification declares) means "forgiven sinner" (121). I find this confusing, and I am not alone.

Where I think the confusion lies is with Wright's idiosyncratic views of covenant, something I'm sure Piper will give us ample opportunity to examine. Let me try to "de-covenantify" Wright's language so that his views seem more plausible in relation to Paul.

What if Wright were to say that justification is a declaration of our innocence, the verdict of "not guilty" pronounced at our trial? In that sense, the verdict would presuppose forgiveness. The verdict would presuppose atonement. But the verdict would not be exactly identical to forgiveness or atonement. It would be the pronouncement of a legal verdict, a declaration if you would, that presupposed those things.

If this is what Wright is saying--but obfuscating by introducing his covenant ideas into the mix--then his comments begin to make more sense.

The problem is of course that legal language (from an illocutionary standpoint :-) is not simply language of assertion or declaration. The pronouncement of a verdict establishes that declaration as the official status of the defendant. In that sense, to limit justification to a declaration is inadequate. The innocence of the defendant is legally established in the declaration.

Piper does not express his objection to Wright with this clarity, but he rightly points out passages in Paul that redirect Wright's focus:

"God reckons righteousness [dikaiosyne] apart from works" (Rom. 4:6)
"A person is justified [dikaioo] by faith apart from works of law" (Rom. 3:28)

Piper rightly sees that these are roughly equivalent statements and thus that to justify is to "reckon righteous" (Piper prefers the NASB translation "credit righteousness"). Paul's use of Psalm 32 in Romans 4 further clarifies what this involves:

"Blessed are those whose lawless acts have been forgiven
And whose sins have been covered.
Blessed is the one to whom the Lord does not reckon sin" (Rom. 4:7-8).

Wright is probably correct to steer us away from seeing such language in isolation from the Jew-Gentile issue. But it remains to be seen whether he has done this in a way that helps or truly clarifies these nuances in Paul's thought. I'm sure there is more to come on this topic.

Penal Substitution
I'm sure it made great sense to Piper to discuss Wright in relation to penal substitution in this chapter. Penal substitution plays such a focal role in Piper's theology that he can hardly think of justification without thinking about who is paying the check for this "credit" we get. In that sense, I think the explanation of justification I have made above is not exactly the way Piper thinks of it.

Penal substitution is the idea that, in some way, Jesus took the punishment for our sins on the cross.

Piper takes some time in this chapter to discuss what has been a very controversial matter in his circles, namely, Wright's endorsement of a book by Steve Chalke entitled The Lost Message of Jesus. In a now famous line in that book, Chalke suggests that if the cross was a personal act of violence on God's part, it makes a mockery of Jesus' teaching to love your enemies and is tantamount to cosmic child abuse (182-83 of Chalke's book).

Wright has made a lengthy blog response to this controversy, indicating his support of penal substitution as a biblical idea and defending Chalke as a believer in it as well. Piper is skeptical whether Chalke believes in it and while accepting that Wright does, once again suggests that Wright's comments on the subject have been confusing.

Wright himself suggests that there is more than one understanding of penal substitution and that Chalke simply does not have the form most vigorously argued in certain evangelical circles (e.g., Piper's).

Certainly the idea of penal substitution is major for Piper's theology. Piper is a "7 point Calvinist," by which I mean he thinks God not only has predestined those who will be saved but also those who will be damned, Adam (6th point), and even Satan (7th point). The affirmation that God is love is devoid of any familiar meaning in this system.

We might summarize Piper's theology here as "God so loved himself that He sent His only Son (admiring Himself greatly for so doing), that whoever He has chosen to save will irresistably believe and so have eternal life." Love has no meaning whatsoever in Piper's system. It amounts to little more than divine masturbation.

So Piper will not be able to see the real tension between the biblical affirmation that God is love (presumably using that word in its normal sense rather than some convoluted way that alters it beyond recognition) and the orthodox perspective that God had to punish sin. This is the orthodox Christian perspective, although books such as Joel Green and Mark Baker's Recovering the Scandal of the Cross, show how Piper's version of it is an extreme form of the idea.

I personally think Green and Baker's book represents the opposite extreme. Nevertheless, they raise very important and significant questions. For example, it seems to contradict the sovereignty of God to suggest that He would not be allowed, by divine fiat, to forgive us of our sins without someone needing to pay. Jesus' parables do not in any way point to a doctrine of penal substitution. For example, the father of the prodigal son does not tell the prodigal that he'd be glad to welcome him back... as long as he can find someone to pay back the debt he has incurred. Rather, the father seems to have the authority to pronounce the son forgiven, period.

For this reason, it seems clear to me that while penal substitution is one appropriate way to understand Christ's atonement, it is not the only one or even the central Christian one. Piper's views on atonement are extreme and ultimately unbiblical in focus.