SP4. The Spirit sanctifies the believer.

This is now the fourth and final post in a unit on the Holy Spirit in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first unit had to do with God and Creation, and the second was on Christology and Atonement.
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The Spirit sanctifies the believer.

1. In terms of priority, the body of Christ is primary, and the individual believer is secondary. Yet every individual is valued equally, created in the image of God, male and female, people of every tribe and nation, people of every status. All are loved whether sinner or saint.

God is love, so he loves every individual. But there are many individuals in the Church. So it seems obvious that there is more love dispensed to the Church as a whole than to any one individual in the Church. The health of the whole Church takes priority over the liberty of the individual Christian (e.g., Rom. 14; 1 Cor. 10).

Accordingly, the way in which the Spirit engages the individual is a microcosm of the way he engages the Church as a whole. The Spirit sanctifies the Church and makes it God's own. So the Spirit sanctifies the individual believer. The Spirit purifies the Church and makes it righteous, and the Spirit purifies the believer and makes us righteous. The Spirit empowers the Church for mission and service. The Spirit empowers the individual for mission and service. The Spirit leads the Church into truth. The Spirit leads individuals into truth.

2. If Christ is the basis of atonement, all the grace relating to salvation is dispensed through the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that dispenses prevenient grace, the grace that comes to us before we are able to go looking for God. It is the grace that enables us to move toward God. It is the grace that empowers us to be able to repent and exercise faith.

It is the Holy Spirit that dispenses the grace that justifies us and acquits us of all our sin. The Holy Spirit is God's "seal" of ownership (2 Cor. 1:22), such that if someone does not have the Spirit, that person does not truly belong to Christ (Rom. 8:9). The Holy Spirit is an "earnest" of our eternal inheritance (2 Cor. 5:5; Eph. 1:13-14), which is both a guarantee of that coming promise and a down payment of what is to come, a "foretaste of glory divine."

The Holy Spirit is thus the central factor in the incorporation of a person into the body of Christ. You can be baptized and not have passed from death to life (Acts 8:16). You can have passed from death to life and not been baptized (Acts 10:44-48). You can have undergone significant change and movement toward a godly and righteous life. You can have prayed the sinner's prayer and agreed to all the creeds of Christendom with your head.

But unless a person has the Holy Spirit, he or she is not yet in Christ. [1] It is the Holy Spirit that gives witness to our spirits that we are children of God (Rom. 8:16). The Holy Spirit thus brings us the assurance that we are children of God. It is the act of the Holy Spirit whereby we become "in Christ" and when we speak of Christ in us, we are speaking of the Spirit of Christ, Christ's presence in us somehow mysteriously mediated by the Holy Spirit.

3. It is somewhat popular at the moment to speak of conversion as a long gradual process rather than an instantaneous one. [2] There is of course a good deal of truth in this claim. It usually does take a good deal of time for a person to change.

It's also a slightly different question from whether you will escape the judgment. Most believe that unbaptized children will escape the final judgment, and yet they have neither been baptized nor have they received the Holy Spirit. If so, then one can technically be "saved" in that sense without baptism, faith, or having even received the most crucial element of all--the Holy Spirit.

But the Holy Spirit comes in an instant, and in that sense, you become part of the people of God in a moment. There may be a long process leading up to that point, and there is almost always a long process thereafter. But this is a different issue than being baptized into Christ by receiving the Holy Spirit, which must thereby always happen definitively in a moment.

The disciples cannot be used as an example of gradual incorporation into the body of Christ, even if they changed gradually. The Holy Spirit simply was not given in the manner of the new covenant until the Day of Pentecost. In that sense, none of the disciples were "in Christ" until the Day of Pentecost, when they were baptized into Christ in an instant. [3]

4. How does one know that this baptism, this receiving of the Holy Spirit has taken place? There can and often have been noticeable signs. The book of Acts testifies to the sudden ability to speak in other languages, a sudden boldness to proclaim Christ's resurrection, the sudden ability to perform miracles and healing. In the American revivals of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, people often felt an overflow of emotions and might start shouting or even running the aisles of a church.

But did everyone in the early church experience these sorts of dramatic manifestations or emotions? Not likely. We can imagine that the most typical manifestation of the Holy Spirit is a sense of peace and assurance, a sense that, in fact, you are received by God and at peace with him.

No doubt there will be some who do not feel different. Some, perhaps because of their past, may not feel anything at all. But are you truly committing to God with your whole will to the extent you know how? Are you making a choice of faith for God? Are you willing to make that faith public, including a public confession of faith in baptism?

Then you should trust that your sins are forgiven and that the Holy Spirit has taken control over your life. Sometimes God uses others to give us an assurance in such cases. Seek out someone you trust. God often empowers others in the body of Christ, especially those he has called to minister, to proclaim to us that our sins are indeed forgiven (cf. John 20:23).

3. The Holy Spirit thus sanctifies us and sets us apart as belonging to God. He purifies us of our guilt of sins past and he overcomes the power of Sin present and future. The Holy Spirit is behind initial sanctification, the act of cleansing us of our past sins and setting us apart as God's children. The Holy Spirit is behind progressive sanctification, the increase of righteousness and godliness in our lives.

When we get to the point of complete surrender of all our lives in every way we know how, the Holy Spirit can sanctify us entirely, making it easy to do the good we want to do. But we will always have room for growth until the day when we are glorified, when our mortal, corruptible bodies, our flesh subject to Sin and temptation, is transformed into resurrected bodies that are made like Christ's glorious resurrection body.

The Holy Spirit thus empowers us for obedience. The Holy Spirit imparts righteousness and godliness to the believer so that we are not only legally in right standing before God, but the Spirit actually makes us good. We are not, as Luther taught, doomed always to be both sinner and saint, but the Spirit empowers us not only to do the good but even to want the good. [4]

3. The Holy Spirit not only empowers us for purity. He also empowers us for ministry. We have already mentioned the manifestations of the Holy Spirit in Acts. The Church is praying in an upper room in Jerusalem when the Holy Spirit comes on the Day of Pentecost. The Church is born. The Spirit brings everyone there into Christ.

Immediately we see a change. They are witnessing with boldness to the crowds, even in languages they have never learned. The next day, Peter and John heal a lame man. Later in Acts they and others will cast out demons.

The mission of the Church is the mission of God. The mission of God is the redemption of everything in the creation. The Spirit empowers the Church--both on an individual and corporate level.

The Holy Spirit sanctifies the believer. He purifies us. He incorporates us each individually into the body of Christ. He empowers us.

Next Sunday: E1. The Church is the body of Christ.

[1] We are not talking about tongues here, for not all who receive the Holy Spirit in Acts speak in tongues and the rest of the New Testament is practically silent on the topic, except for a couple chapters in 1 Corinthians.

[2] E.g., Richard Peace, Conversion in the New Testament: Paul and the Twelve (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999).

[3] In this sense, Peace's book is inadvertently trying to address two quite different questions at once, one a question of change and the other a question of incorporation. Given this blurring of questions, it is no surprise that his book barely mentions the most important element in conversion of all--the Holy Spirit.

[4] Simul iustus et peccator, semper repentans -- "At the same time, righteous and a sinner, as long as we are always repenting"

S5. God justifies us in response to our repentance and faith.

This is the fifth post in a unit on salvation in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first section had to do with God and Creation, and I have also finished units on Christology and Atonement.
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God justifies us in response to our repentance and faith.

1. You may have heard the saying, "When I am justified, it is just-as-if-I'd never sinned." This childhood saying relates to the traditional sense that justification is about God declaring us legally right with him after he has forgiven our sins. In this way of defining the words, God's forgiveness precedes God's verdict that we are "not guilty" of all charges in his divine court. [1] Then after we are forgiven, God declares us to be in right standing before him. Justification is the act of God considering us in right standing before him. He declares us righteous, innocent, "not guilty" in the divine court.

In some respects, then, justification looks to our past, since "all have sinned" (Rom. 3:23). In our "natural state," as Wesley put it, we stand condemned before God, for "the wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23). [2] But despite our sins, God declares us righteous in his eyes. He gives us a clean slate legally.

Martin Luther emphasized that this righteous state was a legal fiction. That is to say, God's verdict is not based on what we really are. Like adoption, where someone who is not literally the child of another by blood is declared a child by law, so a person who is justified by God is not truly innocent but is declared so by God. However, this righteousness is as real as actually righteousness, even though it is "imputed," because God is the one who decides. God is the judge.

2. The normal process of coming to this righteous status before God begins with his prevenient grace. God reaches out to us. In our moral powerlessness, he gives us just enough power to respond to his call. If we continue to respond, he will give us the power to repent of our past sins and exercise faith in him.

Repentance is a regret for past sins and a turn away from them. It is not a regret of future punishment. It is a true desire that we had not done wrong and a sincere desire to change our actions in the future. In Acts 2:38, when the the crowds of Jerusalem realize that they have put their Messiah to death, Peter tells them to "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."

So also John the Baptist, in preparation for the Christ, preached a "baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins" (Mark 1:4). To the Gentiles, Paul in Acts 17:30 tells them that while God in the past has overlooked the ignorance of the nations, he was now commanding people everywhere to repent. Baptism, from this perspective symbolizes and sacramentally acts out the washing away of past sins.

If repentance is a negative action toward the past, faith is a positive action toward God in the present which continues into the future. Faith is more than mere belief or mental assent. Faith is a trust and conviction. It is a commitment that looks to the future. "if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved" (Rom. 10:9).

Paul here is talking here about a righteousness that comes by faith. Our English hinders us from seeing the full nuances of this passage. In Greek, the noun faith (pisteuo) and the verb believe (pisteuo) are clearly related. To believe can thus mean "to have faith," and faith can mean "belief." Here it is important to realize that words have more than one meaning and context determines which one is used in which individual instance.

In Romans 10:9, Paul is saying that, "if you have faith in your heart" in relation to what God has accomplished through the resurrection of Jesus, you will be saved. This act of faith is more than simply believing with your head that it happened. After all, it involves a confession that Jesus is Lord, that he is Master, that he is the king. "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved" (Rom. 10:13), but this is a call that gives him allegiance, not a mere cry for help.

Similarly, the verb "to justify" (dikaioo) and the nouns "righteousness" (dikaiosyne) and "justification" (dikaiosis) are clearly related as well. To speak of the "righteousness that comes by faith" (Rom. 10:6) is thus to speak of justification by faith.

3. The basis of our justification is the atoning death of Jesus, "whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood" (Rom. 3:25). Empowered by the Holy Spirit, the mechanism of our justification is faith: "a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law" (Rom. 3:28). Then once God has declared us righteous before him on the basis of faith (cf. Rom. 4:3), we are at peace with God (Rom. 5:1). We are reconciled to him (e.g., 2 Cor. 5:19).

4. You will notice that most of the biblical references above come from Paul's writings in the New Testament, Romans in particular. Accordingly, it is significant to remember that the language and imagery we have been discussing is not the only language of salvation in Scripture. It is only one way of looking at salvation, and it was forged in Paul's debates with certain opponents in the earliest church.

Indeed, language of justification is not even the primary language of Paul's letters. It is chiefly confined to Romans and Galatians, where Paul was dealing with opposition to the way he viewed the salvation of non-Jews. "Justification by faith" thus was not the center of Paul's theology but one set of language he used with Jews who opposed the way he conducted his mission to Gentiles. Romans is not a systematic theology but a letter written in part to defend Paul's way of including Gentiles within the people of God without requiring them to keep the Jewish Law.

There are thus a number of nuances to Paul's language that we are prone to miss because we are no longer facing the situations he was facing. This fact does not undermine the truth of the theology of justification above. What it does is suggest that this language is only one way of expressing the process of our reconciliation to God.

For example, when Paul spoke of Gentiles not being justified by "works of Law" (Rom. 3:28), he clearly had the Jewish Law in view. And what works of the Jewish Law does he primarily have in view? Surely it is primarily matters that separated Jew from Gentile. In Galatians, circumcision is primarily in view. Romans speaks in more general terms, but the point is that Paul does not have mere "good works" in mind. That is not what he is talking about. He is talking about any sense that a Gentile has to keep the Jewish Law in order to obtain a right standing before God. [3]

It thus would go well beyond anything Paul had in mind if we were deny that faith involves an act of the human will. Yes, justification is a matter of God's grace (Rom. 4:16), but as we have seen in previous articles, grace in Paul's world was a gift disproportionate to anything the recipient might do. Grace did not imply, however, that the recipient did absolutely nothing to solicit or maintain the grace. The faith of Abraham by which God considered him righteous was an act on Abraham's part. It reflected an investment in God that went beyond mere assent.

5. Another debate about Paul's original meaning focuses on the phrase, "the faith of Jesus Christ" (Rom. 3:22; Gal. 2:16). Many Pauline scholars believe that this expression had to do with the faithfulness of Jesus in death rather than our exercise of faith in him. [4] This is not a denial that faith in Christ was part of Paul's equation, for these two verses also use the verb "believe" with Jesus as the object. However, it might shift the emphasis in justification even further away from our faith toward the action of Jesus and his faithfulness to death (cf. Phil. 2:8).

In our view, the bulk of Paul's references to faith in Romans 4 and Galatians 3 are surely to human faith. Nevertheless, it is quite possible that Paul's focal statements in Romans 3:22 and Galatians 2:16 did refer to the faithfulness of Jesus as the basis of our justification. Paul would be affirming again that it is the atoning death of Jesus that is the ground of our right standing before God.

Nevertheless, this discussion does free us up to see that Paul primarily saw Gentiles and Jews as putting their faith in God the Father (e.g., 1 Thess. 1:8). We also put our faith in Jesus' death. But for Paul, almost all the mentions of human faith have God as their object (e.g., Rom. 4:3, 24).

6. A final nuance to mention about Paul's language is that the phrase, "the righteousness of God," in Romans 1:17 almost certainly referred primarily to God's righteousness rather than human righteousness or justification. Again, this nuance does not contradict the theology above but it reminds us that Paul's argument is placed against a long backdrop in history that goes back to Psalms and Isaiah. If you look at Psalm 143:1, for example, God's righteousness and his faithfulness are put in parallel to each other. In Isaiah 45:8, God's righteousness and his salvation are parallel.

In short, while Paul does speak of human justification in Romans, the idea of "the righteousness of God" had a history that suggests Paul's audience would have heard it in relation to God, in the first place, rather than something relating to humans.

God justifies us, he declares us in right standing before him, on the basis of the atoning death of Jesus Christ. He does this in response to our faith in him and in the death of Christ, which presupposes our repentance for past sins.

Next week S6. God fills us with his Holy Spirit as a seal of ownership.

[1] John Wesley's understanding of justification by faith and conversion can be explored in numerous sermons, including "Justification by Faith" and "The Spirit of Bondage and the Spirit of Adoption," With regard to justification, Wesley largely followed the lead of Martin Luther.

[2] See especially "The Spirit of Bondage and the Spirit of Adoption" above.

[3] For a discussion of "works of Law," see especially the essays in J. D. G. Dunn, A New Perspective on Paul (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), esp. 8-10, 121-40.

[4] The most notable proponent of this view is Richard Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ: The Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1-4:11, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002).

Book Review: Campbell's The Deliverance of God

There are certain books that you have to read in your field, whether you want to or not. Wright's Paul and the Faithfulness of God is one of them if you hope to be any kind of expert on Paul. I've come to admit that Douglas Campbell's The Deliverance of God is another. It's 936 pages.

Campbell teaches at Duke Divinity School but is originally from New Zealand. He also taught in London for a few years.

I see in this exhaustive, methodical tome a glimpse of my teenage self. His first chapter is an analytical philosopher's dream, a theologian's version of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. In these opening pages, he tries to paint a picture of what he's about to do and why he's about to do it the way he's going to do it.

I find it a bit tedious at this stage of my life, but he's earned my endurance. I'll keep going and see try to keep an open-ish mind.

Some thoughts on the Preface, Introduction, and first chapter:

• I would be offended if I taught with him in Otago (xxv). Apparently there was nothing there to stimulate his brain cells.
• You can see that he is going to critique prevailing interpretations of Paul for being 1) individualist, 2) conditional, and 3) contractual. Here are also the first hints that I'm not going to end up going with him. I don't think Paul would have formulated himself necessarily in these terms, but to do what he's doing, I think Paul inevitably sets the stage for these three.
• I don't have a problem with Campbell starting with somewhat of a draft that he then will deconstruct and eventually newly construct from scratch...
• ... but I agree with the thought that his starting point is somewhat of a straw man. There were contractual, conditional arrangements in the ancient world long before Kant. He starts with a modernist draft of Paul that should rightly be deconstructed. But there are other "contractual" models that would be right at home in the ancient world (e.g., patron-client relationships assume a certain informal contract; suzerainty treaties were a sort of contractual arrangement). Again, he's going to deconstruct this starting point anyway, so it doesn't matter much to me at this point, other than the fact that I'm having to read through all this material he's going to later throw away.
• He says we should assume coherence until we see otherwise. I'm very fine with this. The question is, "When we are working 'too hard' just to maintain the assumption of coherence?"
• I'm fine with the idea of doing a hermeneutical circle. Start with a draft. Critique, revise, redraft. Repeat as necessary. There seems to be a "jump in at any point" dimension to the book, which is fine, although I intend to go from beginning to end.
• He sets out in numbered form a modernist, Kantian version of justification as a contract. It's very propositionally set out and is the bulk of the first chapter. It's not worth critiquing because it's just a draft he's going to unravel. Patience, Ken. Be patient.
• He ends chapter 1 with some recourse to Lakoff and Johnson's ideas of root metaphors. He mentions the fundamental anthropological and theological metaphors in the propositional structure of contemporary justification thinking. Again, since he's going to deconstruct these, I'm being patient. I will say that meaning is always synchronous, even if the diachronic sometimes leaves traces, artifacts in the synchronous. But metaphors aren't truly metaphors if they're dead in current usage. In that case, they've taken on a plain meaning. We might even say that they have become literal, though once metaphorical. 

New Perspective and Works

... One feature of Wright’s interpretation that seems particularly helpful is his recognition of the role that works play for Paul in the ongoing life of someone in Christ. Key texts in this regard are Romans 2:6-10, 12-16 and 2 Corinthians 5:9-10, both of which seem to indicate that God will take into account the deeds of a believer in the judgment. [1] If I read Wright correctly, he believes that those who are truly justified by faith in the present will live, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the sort of life that will result in justification by works in the future. That is to say, "the verdict already announced is indeed a true anticipation of the verdict yet to be announced." [2]

Of course, Paul is less than explicit about any certain connection of this sort between justification by faith in the present and a future justification that takes deeds into account. [3] The best we can do is suppose that Paul would generally, although not certainly, expect the two to correspond. Nevertheless, it is also difficult to deny Wright's conclusion about the role works play for Paul in the final judgment. Romans 2:6 indicates that God will repay each person, both Jew and Gentile, for what they have done. While interpreters have often considered these verses as a sort of hypothetical, 2 Corinthians 5:10 presents the same idea in a context that has no hint of the hypothetical. Paul tells believers in Christ that they will give an account for what they have done while in their bodies.

It is hard for Pauline scholarship to kick against these conditional pricks. Nevertheless, Paul considers even his own place in the resurrection to be contingent on his faithfulness (e.g., Phil. 3:10-11; cf. 1 Cor. 9:24-27). We are not suggesting that Paul really felt insecure about his final salvation any more than most Jews felt insecure about their membership in the people of God. We are simply suggesting that Paul expected those in Christ to produce a life of righteousness, a life of striving for "glory, honor, and immortality" (Rom. 2:7). God would evaluate those in Christ in relation to their works. It would matter, just as it mattered in general to Jews that they act in faithful response to God's covenant with them.

Paul does not clarify the details of great interest from the perspective of later theology. At least on a surface level, his language speaks in synergistic terms. He did not know the future in order to guard himself against accusations of Pelagianism. He did not produce a passage where he explained how justification by faith and judgment that includes consideration of works might fit together. So the disciplined exegete will leave it at that and not try to fit his thought together more than his writings themselves seem to warrant...

[1] Key places where Wright discusses these passages include, “The Law in Romans 2” (1996), now in Pauline Perspectives, 134-51; Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision (London: SPCK, 2009), 158-68; and Paul and the Faithfulness of God, 1086-90.

[2] Justification, 198.

[3] I am assuming here that, at least at some points, Paul's justification language is forensic in the sense that word has normally had in Pauline scholarship, contra J. L. Martyn, Galatians (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 2004) and D. A. Campbell, The Deliverance of God.

Paul's "Conversion" (part of tonight's presentation)

From my presentation tonight:
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But while I was on my way to Damascus, Jesus stopped me and tapped me on the shoulder and told me that I had it all wrong.  Everything was exactly the opposite of what I thought it was.  The things I thought were important weren't important, and the things I thought were evil were actually good.  God rocked my world and turned me around 180 degrees in the opposite direction.

This changed everything.  It was going to take some time to work through.  It was going to take some prayer and it was going to take some reflection.  God led me to a man named Ananias in Damascus and he told me everything he knew about what Jesus had did and taught.

But you know, I found out that Jesus' followers were still trying to figure things out too.  Although he had warned them, no one was expecting Jesus to die.  Like me, they thought that messiahs were winners.  Messiahs won and kicked the Romans out of town. They had gone to Jerusalem expecting the heavens to open and for God to crown Jesus king of Israel before the whole world.

Then after he died, they weren't expecting him to rise again.  Of course as a Pharisee, I knew what resurrection meant.  If Jesus had risen from the dead, then the resurrection was beginning, the beginning of the end, the restoration of all things.  If Jesus rose from the dead then he was the last Adam, the one to undo all the problems created by the first Adam.

Of course my thoughts would only develop over time as I thought about such things.  I would more and more come to understand that sin and death had entered the world through the first Adam.  God had made us to be full of glory, but Adam's sin made us lose that glory.  And it wasn't only us humans but the rest of the creation too.  The creation decays and disintegrates because of Adam's sin.

Jesus is the antidote.  Jesus' death sets everything right again.  The cross was God's solution to world's problem.

I hadn't anticipated that.  I thought that what God wanted was for us to keep the Law perfectly.  And I did.  I had lived blamelessly, as far as the righteousness in the Law.  I had kept the works of the Law perfectly, as I understood them as a Pharisee.

But it wasn't what God was looking for.  The cross was the solution.  Therefore, my works of Law were not.  Works of Law must not play any role in being right with God, but rather trusting in the faithful death of Jesus on the cross...

Reconciliation (Wes Theo Series)

Outline/overview of Wesleyan theology.  More detailed posts:

1. Faith (Introduction)
2. God
3. Creation and Alienation
4. Revelation

5.1 Incarnation 
Christians have long viewed Christ taking on flesh as the first step in the reconciliation of the world. God becomes one of us. He not only comes to us. He identifies with us. He assumes our situation and our problem, to some extent. He is tempted as us. His earthly life is part of the reconciliation.

5.2 Christ's Death
Christians of the ages have used a number of pictures to describe how Christ's death serves as a mechanism for our reconciliation. Christ's death satisfies God's anger toward sin or satisfies the need for justice and order in the world.  It is an atoning sacrifice. Christ takes our punishment and substitutes for us. Christ shows us God's love and thus woos us back to him. Christ redeems us from slavery or defeats the power of Satan over us.

These are all pictures of atonement and Wesleyans can ascribe to all of them. The Wesleyan emphasis on God as love, however, sometimes shifts the focus. So Wesleyans often resist rigid views of penal substitution, where some mathematical sense of punishment had to be assumed for it to work. A Wesleyan may lean toward seeing Christ's death ultimately as a matter of God's choice in reconciliation rather than some inevitable path he would have to take. Would not God have the authority to forgive us outright if he wanted?

A Wesleyan might see the picture of God's wrath as one of the least literal of the pictures, though one with which we may most identify. Anger involves emotion and emotion involves new stimulus, but God knows all things equally from all eternity. A fuller picture is of God's love in action. We understand and identify with sacrifice for us. There is a certain order to things that Christ's death embodies. We are enslaved and we understand the defeat of our enslaver.

5.3 The Spirit and the Church
Christ's presence in the world continues through the Spirit and the Church. The Spirit inside us marks us as God's possession and empowers us to live reconciled lives. We are a new creation. We are an island of heaven in a fallen world.

God also uses his Church as a means of reconciliation. The invisible Church consists of all those with the Spirit in all times and all places, despite what visible Church they may attend. But the Church is also physical, visible entity that gathers together to proclaim God's word and participate in means of grace.  Baptism is the image of entrance into the Church, although the Spirit is the more important threshold. Communion is the image of atonement, reminding and catalyzing our continued reconciliation with God.

5.4 Justification and Sanctification
Protestants think of justification as our legal acquittal of the charges against us for our past sins.  Through Christ, all charges are dropped against us. Sanctification then positively empowers us to do what is right. Wesley largely adopted Luther's understanding of (initial) justification. A difference comes in his sense of final justification.

For Wesley, final justification is dependent on a continued relationship with God that manifests itself in right living. Lutherans fear such talk, because it seems to give too much importance to "works" in the equation of justification. Calvinists agree with Wesley that works must follow, but see no element of human will involved in the process and affirm the persistence of the elect from beginning to end.

Wesleyans do not believe in "eternal security" but see right relationship with God as breakable. A person must continue in faithfulness to that relationship after initial justification.

Calvinists and Wesleyans also disagree on the extent to which God makes us righteous in this life. Wesley even taught a crisis experience where one was freed from the power of sin, to be able to love God with all one's heart, mind, soul, and strength. Wesleyans do not believe that the fight against sin in this life must always be a struggle, and especially not a losing struggle.

5.5 Society
Wesleyans have historically been activists for change in society where possible. An emphasis on helping those in need has been core to Wesleyan identity since Wesley himself. Many in the Wesleyan tradition were strong supporters of abolition and women's rights.  Today, the best Wesleyan voices speak out against those who would intentionally or unintentionally oppress the disempowered of society.  Even when someone has done wrong, the best Wesleyan attitude is one that looks to redemption and insists on love as the primary value.

5.6 Creation
A view of reconciliation that does not include the entire cosmos is an incomplete view. The best Wesleyan voices will be conscious of God's creation and strive to be good stewards of it. Paul says that the creation too is enslaved to sin and slated for redemption. It is the Wesleyan way to be optimistic about how much redemption we can see now on every level, without waiting for Christ's return.

McKnight 2

I don't know how fast I'll be able to work through Scot McKnight's King Jesus Gospel, but here is a second post.  The first one is here.

Chapter 1 presents the "big question" of the book: "What is the gospel?"  He gives three stories in this chapter.  The first was an email wondering what the fact that Jesus is king has to do with the gospel--the assumption being that personal salvation is the center of the gospel.  The second was John Piper demonstrating to a conference that Jesus taught Paul's justification by faith by finding a rare instance in the gospels where the word justified is used (Luke 18).  The third was a casual conversation with a pastor who not only did not think Jesus preached the gospel (of justification by faith) but that he couldn't have because he was on the "before it could happen" side of the cross.

Then we get McKnight's basic point, something those who have read something like Wright's What Saint Paul Really Said will recognize.  This is not what the New Testament means when it talks about the gospel.    Scott F. asked in a comment after the last post what difference it really makes.  I think some possibilities will emerge as we work through McKnight's book.

Since it is still Reformation Day as I prepare this post for Tuesday morning, let me say that one effect is to clarify our emphases.  On the one hand, I am a little more open to using the word gospel in a very general way in relation to these sorts of things.  On the basis of the sermons of Acts, I believe all the consequences of the good news are part of the good news.  So in that sense, I am willing to say that justification by faith is part of the good news just like the resurrection and all that other good stuff is.

This is by extension, however.  It don't think it was in the bubble over any New Testament author's head in a single instance where the word "gospel" is used in the New Testament.  Justification by faith was not even the focus of Paul's preaching (the cross was... no, they're not the same... the cross is about something Jesus did, not something I do), let alone what appeared in the bubble over his head when he used the word gospel.

And it WAY was not the focus of Jesus' preaching, and certainly not what the gospels mean by the word gospel in any instance where they use the word.  This really annoys Scot. "Isn't the more important question about whether Paul preached Jesus' gospel?" he says, gently questioning John Piper's quest to show that Jesus preached Paul's gospel (25).  

So there are at least two reasons to read Wright and McKnight on this topic: 1) just to get it right and 2) to get our emphasis right...

How to be Saved (4.3)

The race is on to finish Paul 2...
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Enveloped in Paul’s thoughts about God’s plan for the Gentiles are some familiar verses. We have heard them in terms of “getting saved,” about “becoming a Christian,” about “getting to heaven.” For example, Romans 10:13 says "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved," quoting Joel 2:32.  Romans 10:9 features in the “Roman road,” a series of verses from Romans meant to lead a person through the logic of becoming a Christian. On the Roman road, Romans 3:23 first tells us that “all have sinned,” which of course includes me. Then Romans 6:23 tells me that the “wages” for my sin is death. But Romans 5:8 gives me hope—even though I was a sinner, Christ died for me. Finally, we come to our verse from this passage, Romans 10:9: “if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

Hopefully the last few chapters have made it clear that, while this way of using these verses is not completely off, it approaches these verses a little differently than Paul did. For Paul, all these statements had to do with the question of whether Gentiles, non-Jews, could escape God’s coming judgment. This is what being saved and salvation means for Paul.  It refers to escaping God’s wrathful judgment on the day when Christ returns to the earth and everyone gives him an account for the deeds they have done on earth—including believers for the things they have done after God forgives their sins (cf. 2 Cor. 5:10). In that sense, no one is literally saved yet because salvation is something that is yet to come, on the Day of Judgment. When we speak of “getting saved,” we are really speaking of our assurance of something that has not yet happened.

So in Paul’s mind, the “all” in “all have sinned” meant "both Jew and Gentile" rather than just Gentiles—all, both, have sinned. And Paul’s arguments about the wages of sin and Christ dying for the ungodly were situated in his mind in a story in which the Jewish Law set the standard for sin and Israel would eventually recognize that Jesus was its messiah. Later Christianity has universalized Paul’s thinking in ways that are not wrong, but are slightly out of context. The Law becomes the universal moral law rather than the Jewish Law. The “all” in “all have sinned” shifts to the individual trying to be justified and ultimately saved, rather than the Gentiles as well as the Jews.

So Romans 10:9 is also situated in a passage where Paul is asking why it is that so many Gentiles are headed for salvation while most Jews were not. Why? Paul says it is because they insisted on doing it their way rather than God’s way.  God's way was to make the world right with him through trust in Jesus, but the Jews by and large wanted to be right with God through keeping the Jewish Law (9:30-33).  They stumbled over God's plan for "righteousness," in this case a right standing before God, through Jesus (9:33).  They tried to establish a right standing before God on their own, rather than what God had in mind (10:3). [1]

Christ is thus the goal of the Law, that to which the Jewish Law points (10:4).  Some traditions take the phrase "Christ is the end of the law" to mean that Christ brings an end to the law.  But it is far more likely that Paul is saying Christ is the goal, the telos of the Law.  As Paul says in Galatians 3:24, the Law was a guardian, a tutor for the Jews to be ready for Christ (NASB).  But now that Christ has come, born under the Law to redeem Jews under the Law (4:4-5), faith has come and neither Jews nor Gentiles need the tutor any more (3:25).  We have "grown up" in the maturity of salvation history now to have the status of sons and daughters who no longer need the Law as our guardian...

[1] The parallelism of 10:3 pushes us to take the phrase, "the righteousness of God" in 10:3 in reference to human righteousness more than God's righteousness as in 1:17.  Of course Paul may intend a double entendre, as he may in Romans 3:21.  Some like N. T. Wright insist that Paul always must mean God's righteousness when he uses the phrase (What Saint Paul Really Said ***), but this approach seems excessively rigid.  Wright and others are correct that the background of the phrase pushes us toward God's righteousness as the default.  But ultimately the immediate literary context must cast the deciding vote.

The Righteousness of God (3:21-26)

Working on another small writing assignment. When what I had in mind as the first section hit 500 words (a little less than half the allotted words) I realized I can't use any of the below. Oh well, here it is for you, whoever you are... :-)
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Introduction
Romans 3:21-26 is the very heart of Romans. These six, extremely thick theological verses present in a nutshell both the problem Paul discusses in the first three chapters (1:18-3:20), as well the solution he discusses to the end of Romans 4. The problem is that “all have sinned” (3:23). We thus should expect the wrath of God to come on us when he soon judges the world (1:18). However, God has graciously provided a solution: first, he offered Jesus as a kind of “sacrifice of atonement” for our sins (3:25); second, he asks for our faith in the risen Christ as our sovereign Lord. God will consider us righteous if we only trust in what he has done for us through Messiah Jesus.

The Righteousness of God
One of the disadvantages of reading the Bible in English is that you sometimes miss aspects of the text that you cannot really see in English. For example, some variation on the root for "righteous" appears seven times in Romans 3:21-26, even though the NIV only uses the word righteousness (dikaiosyne) twice (3:21-22). What you cannot see in English is that the word justified (dikaioo) comes from the same root (3:24, 26), as does the word just in 3:26 (dikaios). Even more interestingly, the word for justice in 3:25 and 26 is the very same word the NIV translates as righteousness in 3:21-22.

The NIV was of course translated right before a new era in the study of Paul exploded, leading to a great deal of clarity on exactly what Paul was saying in these verses. For one, it is now generally realized that the phrase, "the righteousness of God" almost certainly would have immediately made any first century Jewish audience think of God's righteousness, the fact that God is a God who always comes through, who always keeps his promises. His character is well known, as is his love for his people. He brings justice for sure, but he also is a God of great mercy and salvation.

The "righteousness of God" that is revealed apart from the Jewish Law (3:21) is thus in part God showing a new way he is walking with the world in justice and mercy--a way that by-passes the Jewish Law. This new way involves God's offering of Jesus as an atoning sacrifice (3:25), whose blood provides redemption for our sins. It is understandable that the NIV focuses on the justice side of God's righteousness in 3:25 and 26, because Christ's offering demonstrates that God is in fact a just God. Even if God could have simply let us off the hook for our sins by divine command, his offering of Christ as a sacrifice certainly demonstrates that he stands for justice as well as mercy.

However, it is also possible that Paul had a double meaning in mind when he used the phrase "the righteousness of God" here, in fact that he was also thinking of something like the way Luther and Wesley took Romans 3:21. They took Paul to be speaking of a new way for us humans to become righteous that did not involve us keeping the law. Paul almost certainly was first thinking of God's righteousness, but he does go on to speak of our righteousness, that is, a way for us to be considered righteous or innocent in God's eyes. Even though we have sinned, we can be "justified freely" (3:26) because of God's gracious mercy he is offering through Jesus.

Paul thus has two "righteousnesses" in view in this passage, the righteousness of God himself, demonstrated in both his mercy and justice. The second is the righteous status ("not guilty," "innocent") he confers on us through Jesus Christ.

The Message of Galatians (Mutiny 2)

To follow the chain back, see the previous entry of this chapter, The Setting of Galatians.

We continue with part 2 of chapter 8: "The Message of Galatians." Last night after long consideration, I finally conceded to myself that I need to give up the northern Galatia hypothesis. In any case, I can continue the chapter...
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...
So the situation Galatians addresses is a primarily Gentile audience being urged to convert fully to Judaism by undergoing circumcision. Those who are trying to convince them are most likely Christian Jews, perhaps one key person in particular, who has come to Galatia from elsewhere, quite possibly from somewhere in Palestine like Antioch. It is important to recognize that their detractors claim to be Christians, not non-believing Jews. They are like the Christian Pharisees of Acts 15:5. Paul would probably consider them "false brothers" (e.g., Gal. 2:4), but they think of themselves as believers in Christ and the Jerusalem church likely would as well.

The central issue at debate is circumcision. If the meeting we call the Jerusalem Council was widely known, it is a little strange that we would find missionaries of a sort who are teaching that the Gentiles should get circumcised. [1] But we remember that Galatians 2:3 says Titus "was not compelled" to become circumcised, meaning it was still likely James and Peter's preference. It would thus be understandable if some were telling the Galatians they should fully commit and go the whole way.

One of the more peculiar features of the situation was the fact that these missionaries were apparently claiming that Paul himself agreed with them or at least had submitted to the authority of Jerusalem. They were apparently telling the Galatians that Paul himself thought it preferable for them to become circumcised (Gal. 5:11). How they made such an argument is puzzling to us, since we so strongly associate Paul with the opposite position. Perhaps he and Barnabas were still somewhat tentative on the subject when they came through the area on the first missionary journey. After all, it was after the first journey that Paul made the visit of Galatians 2 to Jerusalem. And Acts tells us that Paul circumcised Timothy at Lystra on his second journey (Acts 16:3), which certainly could have given the impression that circumcision was the optimal scenario.

Whatever they specifically argued, the undermining of his mission clearly infuriated him. This situation was personal, and no doubt reminded him of losing the argument at Antioch. Now they were tampering with his churches in his territory. One of the noticeable features of Galatians is the fact that Paul does not have a thanksgiving section at its opening, like his other letters. Instead, he launches into the Galatians in astonishment that they are beginning to act as if God's gracious acceptance of them is somehow not enough. They are beginning to observe aspects of the Jewish calendar (Gal. 4:10) and even to consider circumcision (5:2).

Paul's counterargument is not only that no amount of such "works of Law" could make one right with God. He is arguing that such Jewish particulars have no impact on one's status with God at all, particularly if one is a Gentile. To the Gentiles, God was offering a remarkable gift. Through the faithful death of Jesus the Messiah, he was offering both Jew and Gentile the possibility of being right with God regardless of how much wrongdoing a person had previously done. To try then to earn God's favor by keeping the particulars of the Jewish Law was a slap in God's face, tantamount to a rejection of His grace.

We have fallen off the log perhaps with the majority in thinking that Paul might be at Ephesus on his third missionary journey as he writes Galatians, perhaps not too long after he wrote 1 Corinthians. While many argue Paul's theology of getting right with God may have been intact very early on in his ministry, it does not really show itself in 1 Thessalonians and hardly in 1 Corinthians. [2] But just after our placement of Galatians in our reconstruction, we hear verses like Philippians 3:9 and then 2 Corinthians 5:21, culminating in Romans. Indeed, Philippians 3 and 2 Corinthians 10-13 address similar issues that Galatians does. We have from Galatians on a deeper exploration of what it might mean to be incorporated in Christ. [3] We even hear of "new creation" in Galatians (6:15) and 2 Corinthians (5:17).

Acts tells us that Paul rented out one Hall of Tyrannus while he was at Ephesus (19:9). Is it possible that Paul ran something like a school of interpretation while he was there? Is it possible that some of the arguments in Galatians are a product of his teaching there? These suggestions are all speculation, but they are not impossible.

The Message of Galatians
The heart of the message of Galatians is thus about what, in fact, makes a person right with God. The argument of Galatians is very thick, perhaps the thickest in the whole Bible. But the basic point is that Jesus is the only way to be right with God. Arguments over whether Gentiles need to get circumcised or whether you need to observe certain days certain ways are ultimately irrelevant to being right with God. Trusting in what God has done through Jesus--that's the ticket!

Of course there are countless debates both between scholars and churches over the details. Paul would no doubt be both perplexed and amused. It might be worth it to take just a little time to spell out what Paul was likely saying so that we can avoid some of the arguments between Christian groups today over theology.

First, it is important to hear exactly what Paul is arguing over concretely. Paul says that no matter how many "works of Law" a Jew might do, it will not make them right with God. It will not "justify" you. Five hundred years ago, Martin Luther heard Paul saying very generally that no one could earn God's favor. No matter how many good "works" you did, you could not earn a right standing with God.

Luther was of course correct. Paul did believe you could not earn God's favor (e.g., Rom. 4:4-5). Whether you were a Jew or a Gentile, all had wronged God and others at some point (e.g., Gal. 2:17; Rom. 3:23), thus requiring Him to overlook our sins. In other words, we all need God's grace, His "unmerited favor."

At the same time, Luther slightly changed the focus of Paul's argument. Particularly in Galatians, Paul is not really talking about faith versus good works in general. He is talking about whether "works of Law," that is the Jewish Law, could gain you right standing before God. [2] In other words, it was things like circumcision, the purity rules of Leviticus, and sabbath observance that were in the "bubble" above his head, not good works like feeding the poor or clothing the needy. One of the documents found among the Dead Sea Scrolls has an argument over "works of Law," and the things it has in mind are squabbles between Jewish groups over what makes a person unclean, not good works.

What Paul is arguing over, therefore, is the parts of the Jewish Law that were most distinctly Jewish, the things that distinguished the Jews ethnically from other people. Around the world, people knew that Jews did not eat pork and did not work on Saturday. These were exactly the kinds of "works of Law" that Paul is targeting. These are the sorts of things at Antioch that got in the way of Jewish and Gentile believers eating together. Paul's main point in Galatians is that none of these things actually help a person get in right standing with God.

In fact, relying on such things can be a slap in Christ's face. Here God has offered a free gift through Christ's death on the cross. It is a gift so good, no one could possibly deserve it. Yet you are insistent on trying to pay for it, and you cannot accept the gift for what it is.

Peter and James apparently agreed that a person could not be in right standing with God apart from trusting in Jesus' death. Paul uses an expression in Galatians 2:16 that scholars debate over, but we think Paul is saying that both he and Peter agree that you could only be right with God if you trusted in the faithful death of Jesus on the cross that one can become right with God. [3] But where they disagreed is in the value of keeping the Jewish particulars of the Mosaic Law. Paul goes on to say that those particulars do not help a person be right with God at all, while Peter and others still saw them playing a role in "justification," in being pronounced right with God. Only trust in what God has done through Christ works.

Paul uses Abraham as his fundamental example of this principle: "justification by faith." Abraham was a superb example because Paul could use him both as a model for the justification of Jews and Gentiles. Paul interpreted Genesis 15:6 to say that Abraham had faith in God, and God considered him right with him as a result (Gal. 3:6). Thus Abraham was a model to Gentiles of how to be right with God. Have faith in what God has done through Jesus the Christ and God will consider you righteous, right with Him. Paul understood Genesis 12:3's promise that all the nations would be blessed through Abraham as a promise that they would get right with God through faith, with Abraham showing them the way (Gal. 3:8-9, 14).

Paul's opponents no doubt had some arguments of their own, and most think Paul is responding to some of them in Galatians. One of the key questions he needed to answer was what the purpose of the Jewish Law was. If it was not meant to show how to be in right relationship with God, then what was it for? Paul's answer is that the Law was like a child's guardian (Gal. 4:24) that watches over it until it comes of age.

So also, the Law served several functions before Christ came. For example, it taught us the difference between right and wrong (e.g., Rom. 7:7). Paul here has seemed to shift a little in what he is talking about. When he was talking about "works of Law," he seemed to be thinking of what many Christians think of as the ritual or "ceremonial" parts of the Jewish Law. [4] But now he is talking about the heart of the Law, what later Christians would call the "moral law." The fact that Paul can glide without notice between these various parts of the Jewish Law is the primary source of confusion over what exactly he meant.

Before Christ, we were all, Paul taught, under the power of Sin in the world. Before Christ, the Law pointed out our weakness in the face of this power (e.g., Gal. 4:3). But now that Christ has come, God's Holy Spirit is available to empower us to do what is right. We no longer need the instruction of our guardian, the Law. We have the power of the Spirit inside us to keep the essence of the (moral) Law.

Galatians thus turns to an exhortation to the Galatians not to let their freedom from works of Law to lead to sinful living. This is the tight rope Paul's theology walks. On the one hand, he argues that the Jewish particulars of the Law cannot make us right with God, nor were we able to live above sin before Christ. But now Christ has enabled us to receive the Spirit of adoption and sonship. Now if we walk in the Spirit, we will not fulfill the desires of the flesh (Gal. 5:16).

Works of law cannot make us right with God, but if we have the Spirit inside us, fruit will follow. The fruit of the Spirit are things like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22-23). Quite different are the works of the flesh, things like sexual immorality, strife, jealousy, anger, and so forth (5:19-21).

And so Paul closes his letter to the Galatians, likely to churches in south Galatia like Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, and Pisidian Antioch. He points out the hypocrisy of those urging them to get circumcised. They are not models of Jewish Law keeping. And Paul would know, since he was once a Pharisee who paid close attention to such things. But in the end, it is neither circumcision nor uncircumcision that matters before God, he claims. It is the new creation of the Spirit made possible through the cross of Jesus the Messiah.

[1] Even though we called them "missionaries of a sort," we are not insistent at all that the main reason they have come to Galatia is to further instruct Paul's converts. They might just as likely have come into the area on other business.

[2] Another article in James Dunn's The New Perspective on Paul is a classic here, "Works of Law," ***.

[3] The expression is "the faith of Jesus Christ." To understand the debate, you have to look at a phrase like "love of God." What does this phrase mean? Is it God's love, as in "The love of God led Him to send His Son"? Or is it our love for God, as in "Your love of God should lead you to serve Him better"? The phrase Paul uses, "faith of Jesus," could also mean either the faithfulness of Jesus or faith in Jesus.

The three main reasons I finally concluded that the first expression in Gal. 2:16 and Rom. 3:22 refer to the faithfulness of Jesus are 1) Otherwise these verses are quite redundant, Galatians 2:16 then referring to faith in Christ three times in the same sentence, 2) the parallelism between Romans 5:19--"through the obedience of one person many will be established as righteous" and finally, 3) 2 Corinthians 4:13, while the train of thought is hard to follow, seems to say that just as Jesus had faith and was resurrected, so we must have faith and be resurrected. It thus seems to substantiate the notion that Jesus' faith was indeed one of Paul's categories.

[4] It is significant to point out that a Jew, indeed Paul himself, would not not have categorized things this way.

Tom Wright: Justification The End

And with this post we finally at long last finish our review of N. T. Wright's, Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision, Wright's response to John Piper's book, The Future of Justification. I can truly understand I understand where he's coming from much better now.

The previous posts were:

Chapter 1: What's it all about and why does it matter
Chapter 2: Rules of engagement
Chapter 3: First Century Judaism
Chapter 4: Justification: Definitions and Puzzles
Chapter 5: Exegesis of Galatians
Chapter 6: Interlude: Philippians, Corinthians, Ephesians
Chapter 7.1 Romans 1:16-17
Chapter 7.2 Romans 1:18-2:16
Chapter 7.3 Romans 2:17-3:20
Chapter 7.4 Romans 3:21-26 7.5
Chapter 7:5-6 Romans 3:27-31 and chapter 4

And now, the rest.

Chapter 7.7: Romans 5-8
What is the connection between justification by faith at the beginning and justification at the end with works taken into account? "the people who are already justified by faith are the people who will live the sort of life I described earlier on, those who will have the present verdict confirmed in the future" (198). In short, "Chapters 5-8 is, in fact, a single great argument for assurrance, the Christian doctrine that 'those whom God justified, them he also glorified' (8.30). In other words, that the verdict already announced is indeed a true anticipation of the verdict yet to be announced"

I personally don't think the connection is quite so neat, but this is a brilliant escape from the potential conundrum of the tension between (initial) justification by faith and (final) judgment/justification by works.

We also find this: "the notion of 'being in Christ' which Paul develops in these chapters is rooted in, and fully dovetails with, the doctrine of justification. It is not the case, in other words, that one has to choose between 'justification by faith' and 'being in Christ' as the 'centre' of Paul's thought" (201).

I'm pretty dubious about propositional centers anyway. Tell me what part of Paul's theology we're talking about and who he's talking to and I'll tell you what I think the focus is.

This was an interesting quote to me, all in italics in the book: "It is therefore a straightforward category mistake, however venerable within some Reformed traditions including part of my own, to suppose that Jesus 'obeyed the law' and so obtained 'righteousness' which could be reckoned to those who believe in him" (205). I suspect Wright is right.

Throughout this section Wright rightly emphasizes the importance of the Holy Spirit in making what is done legally in justification by faith actual righteousness in works through the power. I've omitted some of the more idiosyncratic Wright stuff with which we are all now very well acquainted.

Chapter 7.8: Romans 9-11
He focuses first on 9:30-10:13. "The subject of this passage is God's righteousness, the righteousness of God's people, their salvation and how it might be attained, and above all the covenant" (212).

"I have no hesitation in saying that dikaiosyne in 9.30 and 9.31 must be understood in terms of membership within the covenant" (214). The problem is that I don't see the word covenant here. Yes, it clearly has implications for who God's people end up being. Maybe I'm dense. I just don't see it.

"Israel's mistake, here as elsewhere, was to imagine that the purpose of God was not the single-purpose-through-Israel-for-the-world but a single-purpose-for-Israel-apart-from-the-world" (215). "[T]he plan always was the single plan through Israel in the person of the Messiah alone, for the world" (216). "When people believe the gospel of Jesus and his resurrection, and confess him as Lord, they are in fact doing what the Torah wanted all along, and are therefore displaying the necessary marks of covenant renewal" (217).

I don't know what to say. I guess I still come closest to Sanders within the triad.

Conclusion
"What shall we say to these things? If Paul is for us, who can be against us?" (221). :-)

"Any attempt to give an account of a doctrine which screens out the call of Israel, the gift of the spirit, and/or the redemption of all creation is doomed to be less than fully biblical" (222).

quod faciendum eram feci. finis

Tom Wright: Justification 7.5-7.6

This is the fifth part of my review of the seventh chapter of N. T. Wright's, Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision, Wright's response to John Piper's book, The Future of Justification.

Chapters reviewed thus far:

Chapter 1: What's it all about and why does it matter
Chapter 2: Rules of engagement
Chapter 3: First Century Judaism
Chapter 4: Justification: Definitions and Puzzles
Chapter 5: Exegesis of Galatians
Chapter 6: Interlude: Philippians, Corinthians, Ephesians
Chapter 7.1 Romans 1:16-17
Chapter 7.2 Romans 1:18-2:16
Chapter 7.3 Romans 2:17-3:20
Chapter 7.4 Romans 3:21-26

7.5 Romans 3:27-31 (pp.185-90)
The boast that there is no room for, for Wright, is the boast of Israel of superiority because of having the Law. I think I agree, although not exactly in all of Wright's particulars. I think Wright would agree that it is a boasting of a Jew having an advantage in relation to justification because of being a Jew, when they do not have such an advantage.

One place where I disagree with Wright is his penchant always to translate nomos as Torah. To me Paul slips in and out of the various nuances of the word, an article I've never gotten around to writing, woah is me.

Wright correctly scraps the medieval concept of imputed righteousness, where the "imputer" transfers "his" own righteousness to the other. Nothing like that in this law court scenario.

7.6 Romans 4 (190-97)
Here we find again Wright's strong assertion that Abraham is not simply an example of someone who is justified by faith but "the foundation of the single-plan-through-Israel-for-the-world" (190). I reread the chapter because the promise is through Abraham in Galatians and I assume Paul has not changed his mind. But after rereading Romans 4, I still think Paul here is using Abraham more as a prototype of faith than as "the single plan for the world," and I don't see the "through Israel" part here at all.

Wright agrees with Hays that the opening verse has been mistranslated. Most versions say something like, "What therefore will we say Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, to have found [regarding justification]?" Hays has argued in an article (now reprinted in The Conversion of the Imagination) that in keeping with Paul's other "What then" statements it should be translated something like, "What then will we say? Have we found Abraham to be our forefather according to flesh?" You'll remember that there was no punctuation in the original Greek, so we have to make these sorts of decisions as interpreters.

I feel the argument. My main objections are 1) the "to have found" is an infinitive and so flows most naturally in connection with a main verb like "will we say" and 2) I don't think the Greek fathers took the verse this way--and they were much better at Greek grammar than us.

Wright summarizes Romans 4: "The whole chapter, then, is not about 'how Abraham got justified by faith' so much as 'God's faithfulness to his promises to Abraham, giving him a worldwide family whose badge is the same faith that Abraham himself had' (195). OK, I reread the chapter again and I still disagree with Wright's emphasis. Yes, Abraham is the father of both Jew and Gentile who are justified by faith, but the emphasis of the chapter is on how to be justified, not on God keeping his promises to Abraham. The location of promise language in the chapter is not in the past with the story of Abraham but in the accomplishment of justification in the present.

I still don't get the whole "faith as badge of covenant membership" thing.

To end today on a good note, Wright was helpful to me in the connection between resurrection and justification that Paul makes at the end of the chapter. "[I]f the cross had dealt with sin it would also have dealt with death" (196), Wright says, referring to 1 Corinthians 15's argument. Jesus' resurrection thus proves that sins have been dealt with on the cross and thus, that justification can take place.

Tom Wright: Justification 7.4

This is the fourth dying gasp of my review of the seventh chapter of N. T. Wright's, Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision, Wright's response to John Piper's book, The Future of Justification.

Chapters reviewed thus far:

Chapter 1: What's it all about and why does it matter
Chapter 2: Rules of engagement
Chapter 3: First Century Judaism
Chapter 4: Justification: Definitions and Puzzles
Chapter 5: Exegesis of Galatians
Chapter 6: Interlude: Philippians, Corinthians, Ephesians
Chapter 7.1 Romans 1:16-17
Chapter 7.2 Romans 1:18-2:16
Chapter 7.3 Romans 2:17-3:20

And now 3:21-26 (pp.176-85). One day I'll have the mental strength just to plow through the rest. I finished the book Sunday on a plane, but I'm just sooo tired mentally.

Now righteousness of God has been revealed... "'God's righteousness', in the light of 2.17-3.8, must mean, and can only mean, God's faithfulness to his single plan, the plan through which he will deal with the problem of human sin and put the whole world to right at last" (176). Sounds familiar. I still think he reads too much meaning into the phrase, although I certainly agree more with him than Piper.

I did enjoy his rag on the NIV, again! "... fudging the evidence by translating dikaiosyne in verses 25 an 26 as 'justice', not noticing what a mess they are thereby making of the inner coherence of the paragraph" (177).

By the way, Steve Lennox is doing a review on the ESV Study Bible. I guess it has lots of bells and whistles... and of course is endorsed by several key wrong people for Wesleyans--John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Albert Mohler. I won't speak ill of all the names who have endorsed it, but Wesleyans should be aware that the individuals I just named hold views fundamentally incompatible with the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition (there is good in them, but you should treat anything you read from them as a hostile witness). The translation itself is a good translation, although I do not recommend it to Wesleyans (I'm endorsing the NLT and TNIV as our replacements for the NIV--I'll wait to see some of the other new ones). But I explicitly oppose the use of the ESV Study Bible by Wesleyans.

Now back to Wright: "faithfulness of Jesus Christ..."

"It was not so much that 'God needed a sinless victim', though in sacrificial terms that is no doubt true as well, as that 'God needed a faithful Israelite' (178). I agree with the first part, just don't see the second part.

I very much am sympathetic to his read of "the one from the faith of Jesus." Wright says it "looks as though it is a telescoping together of both halves of 3:22, 'through the faithfulness of Jesus for the benefit of all who have faith'" (179). Yes!

That's about as much of this section I feel like wading through today...

Tom Wright: Justification 7.3

This is the third dying gasp of my review of the seventh chapter of N. T. Wright's, Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision, Wright's response to John Piper's book, The Future of Justification.

Chapters reviewed thus far:

Chapter 1: What's it all about and why does it matter
Chapter 2: Rules of engagement
Chapter 3: First Century Judaism
Chapter 4: Justification: Definitions and Puzzles
Chapter 5: Exegesis of Galatians
Chapter 6: Interlude: Philippians, Corinthians, Ephesians
Chapter 7.1 Romans 1:16-17
Chapter 7.2 Romans 1:18-3:20

And now Romans 2:17-3:21 (169-76). I messed up on the last post--it was only through 2:16. In the last part of chapter 2--"you call yourself a Jew"--Wright thinks Paul is addressing his own former self (169). Why not?

In sum, for Wright, Israel was meant to be God's light to the world, but Israel has turned inward, hoarded gifts God intended it to bring to the world. Israel has not only not saved the world. It hasn't saved itself.

I just don't see it. I reread this section of Romans and I just don't see it.

Wright: "Paul is not primarily talking here about the salvation of 'the Jew'. He is talking about the salvation to come through 'the Jew'" (169).

Schenck: "Either I'm blind or Wright's reading goes way beyond anything Romans explicitly says here."

Tom Wright: Justification 7.2

This is the second dying gasp of my review of the seventh chapter of N. T. Wright's, Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision, Wright's response to John Piper's book, The Future of Justification.

Chapters reviewed thus far:

Chapter 1: What's it all about and why does it matter
Chapter 2: Rules of engagement
Chapter 3: First Century Judaism
Chapter 4: Justification: Definitions and Puzzles
Chapter 5: Exegesis of Galatians
Chapter 6: Interlude: Philippians, Corinthians, Ephesians
Chapter 7.1 Romans 1:16-17

Now the second gasp of chapter 7, on 1:18-3:20 (pp. 158-68).

Romans 2 features significantly in Wright's understanding of Paul and, despite the diversity of those claiming new perspectives, Romans 2 is a new perspective moment for him. He has mostly convinced me of his reading here, so amid many questions I have about his ubernarratives.

It seems to me there are three prominent readings of the verses in question in Romans 2. These are the verses that pose the question of Gentiles who by nature do not have the Law, but nevertheless do the righteous requirements of the Law, demonstrating the Law written on their hearts (e.g., 2:14-15).

The first is that there are Gentiles out there who are true to the little light they have who will be saved. These are the Socrates types, the "anonymous Christians" of Karl Rahner, etc. Unfortunately, despite the venerable tradition of reading the verses in this way (maybe they're right theologically), it does not at all seem likely that Paul had anything of this sort in mind. Wright doesn't even mention the possibility.

The more traditional Protestant interpretation is to see this verse as a hypothetical. Paul is leading his audience to the conclusion that all have sinned and thus that no one actually fits in this category. But, says Paul, if there were such a Gentile, they would be just as acceptable as any Jew who kept the Law. I used to hold this position.

But alas, Wright has convinced me of his interpretation, and I consider it--at least insofar as I agree with Wright--a boon for Wesleyan-Arminians. Although Romans 3 is headed to "all have sinned," Wright suggests that "This, in fact, is one of the few cases where a failure in exegesis is caused by too much attention to the overall scope of a passage, and not enough to the small details and sub-sections" (158).

For Wright, "the description in 2.26-29 of those who 'keep the commandments of the law' even though they are uncircumcised (2.26), who actually 'fulfil the law' (2.27), are Christian Gentiles, even though Paul has not yet developed that category" (166). I consider this interpretation by far to be the most likely one, given the phrase "written on their hearts."

Thus the other "new perspective" Wright takes in this chapter, which in fact I agree is none other than reading Paul in his Jewish context is the fact that "There is, then, for Paul, a final judgment, and it will be 'according to works'" (168). "The verdict of the last day will truly reflect what people have actually done" (167). Wright rightly finds the later debates about monergism (simply God's work in people) versus synergism (cooperation between God and human will) anachronistic. For Wright, it is both at the same time. "from one point of view the spirit is at work, producing these fruits... and from another point of view the person concerned is making the free choices" (167).

Here is Wright in a nutshell:

"(a) the judgment of which Paul speaks in Romans 2.1-16 is of course the future judgment, that which will take place on the last day. When, on that day, God issues through the Messiah the positive verdict spoken of in 2.7, 10, and 13, it corresponds to the present verdict which, in 3.21-31 is issued simply and solely on the basis of faith.

"(b) How do these two verdicts correspond? The answer has to do with the spirit. When Paul returns triumphantly to the future verdict in chapter 8 ('there is now no condemnation for those who are in the Messiah, Jesus'), he at once explains this with a long discourse about the work of the spirit (8.2-27). What Paul says about Christians could be said about the doctrine of justification itself: if you don't have the spirit, you're not on the map (8.9)" (165).

I agree with this analysis wholeheartedly and put in my pile of "a great day for Wesleyan theology" things. However, there may be one very significant difference between my analysis and Wright's, which is the "hair's breadth" between Wesley and Calvin. For Wright there is an inevitable correlation between the verdict that is given by faith at the beginning and the verdict that is vindicated by works at the end. To me this is to systematize Paul in a way he does not.

Given his rhetoric, it is possible for him to speak of someone as "justified by faith" at one point and yet for them not to win the prize or attain to the resurrection of the dead, thus not being justified by works at the judgment. Being true to Paul's rhetoric will require us to pull these two apart, while Wright's tidy system will no doubt hold them together, once again confirming that Wright's Anglican theology, as he actually implies at one point (205), is half Calvinist.

Here endeth the second gasp...

Tom Wright: Justification 7.1

This is the first part of my review of the seventh chapter of N. T. Wright's, Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision, Wright's response to John Piper's book, The Future of Justification. I'm sorry to say that I grow weary, so I will give you some gasps and then collapse on the finish line.

Chapters reviewed thus far:

Chapter 1: What's it all about and why does it matter
Chapter 2: Rules of engagement
Chapter 3: First Century Judaism
Chapter 4: Justification: Definitions and Puzzles
Chapter 5: Exegesis of Galatians
Chapter 6: Interlude: Philippians, Corinthians, Ephesians

And now we begin the 70 some page finale, "Romans." The first of my final gasps is on Wright's treatment of 1:16-17 (pp. 153-58)--"I am not ashamed of the gospel... in it the righteousness of God is revealed."

Basically, Wright supposes that if the Latin had not translated the key word righteousness with iustitia and if that had not gone into the categories of Roman thought... then "nobody would ever have supposed that the 'righteousness' in question in Romans 1.17 was anything other than God's own 'righteousness', unveiled, as in a great apocalypse, before the watching world" (154).

And if this thought had not been detached from its Jewish moorings, "nobody would have supposed that 'God's righteousness' was anything other than his faithfulness to the covenant, to Israel, and beyond that again to the whole of creation" (154).

Then Wright takes this thought and gives us a foreshadowing of the rest of the chapter, which is the playing out of his interpretation of this verse. Apart from the melodrama, I agree that the "righteousness of God" refers to His propensity to be faithful in justice and in relationship with His people and His creation. I think Wright might be okay with that last sentence of mine. But he would load the words with more meaning than I do.

This is my first dying gasp.

Tom Wright: Justification 6

This is my review of the sixth chapter of N. T. Wright's, Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision, Wright's response to John Piper's book, The Future of Justification.

Sorry it's taken so long. I have to work at least occasionally... :-)

Chapters reviewed thus far:

Chapter 1: What's it all about and why does it matter
Chapter 2: Rules of engagement
Chapter 3: First Century Judaism
Chapter 4: Justification: Definitions and Puzzles
Chapter 5: Exegesis of Galatians

And now, Chapter 6: "Interlude: Philippians, Corinthians, Ephesians." Only one more chapter (a biggie, Romans) and we're done.

Philippians
Wright sees 3:2-11 picking up and building on the Christological poem of 2:6-11. I personally don't see this in anything but largely coincidental connections. If some people tend to see the discontinuities between things, Wright's besetting sin is probably that he sees more connections than are there. While I don't side with them, it is no surprise that some scholars think 3:2ff might have come from a separate letter to the Philippians as they seem to come out of nowhere.

I'm not sure how to summarize this section other than interesting snippets. On 3:6, "as far as righteousness according to Law, [I was] blameless." Wright agrees with Dunn that this statement includes participation in the usual means of atonement. I still agree a little more with Stendahl than them here--Paul really felt like he did a pretty good job at Law-keeping before believing on Christ.

He looks a little at 4QMMT. He thinks the question "works of law" is answering is "How can you tell in the present who will be vindicated in the future?" He nods to Sanders that this was about staying in rather than getting in. "Works of law" were thus the works "which would function as a sign in the present that he was a part of the people who would be vindicated in the future" (125).

I feel a little uneasy about this definition on the lips of Wright, because on his lips words like "people" take on loaded meanings. For me, the phrase "works of Law" for Paul did, primarily, have to do with the more "Jewish" parts and they were about being acceptable to God within the context of those already in Israel. I admit, however, that Paul can go more abstract into more generic acts of goodness.

Wright rightly sees that moral holiness is important to Paul in Philippians 3, something I have repeatedly emphasized as a reason why those in the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition should generally be friendly to the so called new perspective on Paul.

Corinthians
Wright looks at two passages here, 1 Corinthians 1:30 and 2 Corinthians 5:21. The first is a very general statement, "From him are you in Messiah Jesus, who became wisdom for us from God, yes, righteousness and sanctification and redemption." Wright rightly concludes that "Paul is not here trying to make a precise theological statement" (133).

As a side note, he says of sanctification that it is "in one sense their status as God's people, but is also, and more particularly, their actual life of holiness through the power of God working in them by the spirit." This would be true of the various ways Paul uses the word, although I suspect in this particular verse Paul is thinking more of their connection to God's holiness rather than their moral life.

Then he gets to the biggie: 2 Corinthians 5:21: "He made him who knew no sin to be sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God." This is one of those signature interpretations for Wright. The traditional interpretation of this verse is an interchange. Jesus had no sin and we did. Jesus had righteousness and we did not. God makes the one without sin--Jesus--to be sin and in exchange we who were with sin become the righteousness of God.

This interpretation seems so straightforward, so balanced, that when I first heard of Wright's interpretration, I scoffed at it. What is his interpretation? His interpretation is that becoming the righteousness of God is "that, in the Messiah, we might embody God's faithfulness, God's covenant faithfulness, God's action in reconciling the world to himself" (140). Gufaw, says I.

But I considered the argument and it grew on me. It grew on me for precisely the reasons Wright presents.

1) The idea of God's righteousness was not something Paul came up with. It had a history and it had a history in relation to God's relationship to His people. It referred to God's propensity not only to judge sin but also to His propensity to save His people. There is thus a bias in the language that makes a meaning consonant with this idea the most likely meaning, the default.

Just on linguistic grounds alone, then, we would expect the statement, "we become the righteousness of God" to mean that we establish concretely God's propensity to save His people and, indeed, the world.

2) Paul has indeed been talking about this subject for chapters. And he continues to talk about it. I'm reformulating Wright's arguments into my own arguments here to some extent.

Wright spends chapters talking about the ministry of reconciliation entrusted to Paul as a minister. The verses just preceding have that great verse about the ministry of reconciliation (that Wright does not think is directed at the Corinthians).

He has a few other arguments, but those two are the primary ones. He does mention the possible intertextuality with Isaiah 49:8.

Ephesians
This section seems somewhat of an aside to me, since Ephesians does not even use the word justification. It has the famous verse, "By grace you have been saved through faith," but it does not use Paul's characteristic language of justification by faith of Christ instead of works of law. One strength of the "new" perspective is that it has noticed this distinction for the most part. The "old" perspective, I have noticed, uses passages in Ephesians and 1 Timothy to read statements in the key letters, thus skewing them rather than letting them say what they say in their own right.

I think Wright's main point in this section is to show that soteriology and ecclesiology sit side by side in Ephesians.

On Monday, perhaps, the final review of this book, and then we're off to his Surprised by Hope with hopes to finish by Easter.

Tom Wright: Justification 5

Before I begin, I should mention that Pete Enns' mother died last week, so let's remember his family in prayer in these days. It was not unexpected, but that doesn't take away the grief!

This is my review of the fifth chapter of N. T. Wright's, Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision, Wright's response to John Piper's book, The Future of Justification.

Chapters reviewed thus far:

Chapter 1: What's it all about and why does it matter
Chapter 2: Rules of engagement
Chapter 3: First Century Judaism
Chapter 4: Justification: Definitions and Puzzles

Chapter 5 begins the second half of the book where Wright focuses on the exegesis of Galatians and Romans. I deeply appreciate this work because Wright is dealing with concrete passages and exegesis and it helps me evaluate what he's doing in my categories rather than in his general ones. It helps me see what words like covenant, eschatology, and law court justification actually do in his exegesis, how he is actually using these words in relation to how I think Paul was using them. The use of a word is its meaning.

As I continue to try to get my head around what he is saying and how I might take or not take exception to it, let me try to summarize and evaluate some key points.

1. The context of the proposition of Galatians (2:15-21) is the incident of table fellowship at Antioch.

I agree. While the situation may be a little broader in Romans, the picture in the bubble above Paul's head what he says "since we know we are not justified by works of Law" in Galatians 2 is the table fellowship issue of Jew and Gentile eating together.

And, yes, I agree Paul always has the Jewish Law in view when he speaks of the Law in this way (95, although I believe now one, now another part of the Jewish Law may appear in the bubble above his head when he uses this word).

And yes, they are not generic good works and yes, justification may entail the forgiveness of sins, but that is not what the word "justification" itself means (96).

2. Wright believes, as we have seen, that Jesus is the faithful Israelite, the one in whom God's promises to Abraham are fulfilled.

I am okay with everything in this sentence if you just take the word Israelite out, which of course is Wright's distinctive. I translate Galatians 2:20 in this way: "the life I now live, I live by faith, in the faithfulness of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me." Yes, I know I am fairly alone to take the verse as a double entendre. But I think Paul is moving "from Hays to Dunn" in this passage.

I am part of a very small number, I think, to suggest that the phrase, "through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ" was a slogan that derived, not from Paul, but from the Jerusalem church. Paul takes it and moves it to faith as the principle of justification in general.

But in any case, I agree with Hays and Wright here that Paul does have a significant place in this passage for our incorporation into the faithfulness of Jesus the Messiah.

And yes, I agree, Christ is the seed to whom the promise was given, and those who are in the seed, whether Jew or Gentile, will be blessed on the basis of faith.

My problem here is that I do not see Paul equating promises to Abraham with promises to Israel. If anything, I would rather think that Israel comes into view with the Law, while Abraham represents the broader principle which applies to both Israel (=Jew) and Gentile.

3. "The Messiah's death and resurrection reconstitutes the people of God" (100).

OK. The part of this statement that slows me down is the two letters "re-." Do I agree that those who die and rise with Christ and are thus "in Christ" constitute the people of God? Yes. These are the sons [and daughters] of God. Yes, the boundary lines of slave-free, Jew-Gentile, male-female are obliterated as far as belonging to this family.

It's the "re-" that sticks a little. It sticks because it smuggles in a lot of stuff for Wright. It smuggles in "return from exile," but I'm finding it hard to see this passage demanding that theme. Wright sees overtones of the exodus in the slave-free imagery. Again, I'm finding it hard to see the passage demanding us see that theme here.

4. "Torah must be understood within the strange single-plan-of-God-through-Israel-for-the-world, the covenantal and eschatological framework... within which the running metaphor of the 'lawcourt', always there by implication in the language of 'justification', is to be understood" (107).

One word that stuck out to me as I read this chapter is this word plan. There were a couple places in this chapter--including this one--where I began to see what Wright meant by suggesting we might start reading Paul with Ephesians. The other one had to do with Galatians 2:18 where Paul talks about rebuilding what he tore down. As I've said before, it is a dubious exegetical move to read Paul's earlier writings through the lens of Ephesians. Let each letter construct its own world.

I haven't fully conceptualized the hermeneutical distinction between Wright's "front to back" reading of Paul (which is more typical of Ephesians 1) and what I would call Paul's more normal "back to front" approach. Let me also say that this is my critique of the Calvinist reading of Paul that might logically prioritize predestination in explication of Paul's theology. Paul is dealing with an attack and he is reaching back into Scripture to respond. I do not believe he is writing the story from front to back in quite the way Wright presents him.

The difference here is that I see Paul's exegesis in Galatians 3 as less contextual and thorough than Wright does. It is not exactly ad hoc, for Paul surely has planned this letter out very well before sending it off. Nor is the word "atomistic" quite right, for the individual bits do cohere and relate to each other. But I think that Paul's argument is more atomized and ad hoc than Wright does.

5. The dikaios root implies the verdict (lawcourt) of "membership within God's family" (covenant) (112).

I don't think I'm splitting hairs to wonder if Wright has fallen prey to the same accusation he makes of Christian history. Has he confused a consequence or corollary of justification with justification itself. Yes, to be justified implies that you are a member of God's people. On the basis of faith, you are justified, and those who are "from faith" are "in Christ, sons of Abraham. What I am struggling with is whether the word justification itself means inclusion within God's people.

I do think I maybe, possibly am beginning to see Wright's point, maybe. The Law was not about getting into God's people but about staying in (Sanders, check). So the verdict in question (for those who are Jews by nature) is not about whether we are good enough, smart enough, and whether--dog gone it--people like us. The verdict for a Jew is whether we can stay in God's people. It is about responding appropriately to God's grace such that he accepts us.

So Paul comes to be saying, we do not remain in God's people because of our keeping these particulars of the Law, we stay in God's people through the faithful death of Jesus Christ. And, by the way, this is how Gentiles can also get in.

Well, thank you Tom Wright. I don't know whether I've completely understood you yet. But I think I am beginning to see what it might mean for their to be a "people of God" element to justification. I'll think on it. Could be an article.