Think Biblically!

Part of my job is to engage with theological debates and try and decide what the right answer to the problem in question is. Most of the time, since I am in a secular Theology department at a secular university, I read a lot of scholars who do not submit to the authority of scripture, but from time to time I do have to engage with dueling evangelicals. When this happens, I am sometimes amazed at the way in which the debate takes place.

There has been an ongoing debate on justification between John Piper and Tom Wright for the last few years. Simply put, Tom Wright thinks that the reformers (and most modern Christians) have misunderstood what Paul meant by justification - the Jews weren't legalistic and were not trying to "pull themselves up by their moral bootstraps". Therefore what Paul is primarily addressing when he speaks of justification by faith apart from works of the Law is not legalism, but ethno-centric theology, in which gentiles have to become a Jews in order to be part of God's people (works of the law refer to ethnic badges such a circumcision and food laws in Wright's view).

Wright has also suggested that to speak of imputed righteousness (being given the righteousness which Christ earned on earth) is completely unbiblical - the judge doesn't give his own righteousness to the defendant in a law court, but declares the innocent victim to be "in the right" (or justified). 

Piper responds: No! The reformers' understanding of Paul was pretty much spot on. The Jews thought they could earn salvation by moral works and therefore Paul responds: you don't earn salvation by works, it's a gift. Moreover, we are given Christ's moral righteousness as a gift, which becomes ours as if we had earned it. God looks at us and sees the perfection of Jesus. If the righteousness which God gives us isn't Christ's perfect obedience, how can we be sure that we are truly presentable to an almighty judge?

I'm not going to give my view on the matter here - that would take too long and could open a nasty can of worms so I'll leave that for now. However, I would like to make a couple of observations, which will hopefully provoke some of you.

Firstly, evangelical theological debates can often run the risk of unhelpfully creating theological camps with allegiance to a group of particular scholars of pastors (and thereby being an awful witness to both liberals and non-christians). This one unhelpfully has. Some of the reformed responses to Wright's opinions have, in my opinion been downright offensive and unfounded. Just so you know, Wright is one of the most prolific New Testament scholars in the world as well as an evangelical Christian - not a bad thing at all in my opinion. He has written the most thorough defense of the physical resurrection of Christ in the last few decades. In short, he's a good guy! So it saddens me when people who disagree with Wright on this one issue reject the man altogether. I have heard comments (from well respected American reformed pastors) along the lines of "Tom Wright is certainly not a gift to Christianity" and "When Wright is right he is very right, but when he is wrong he is horrifically wrong".

The result is that people who haven't actually read the debate assume that Wright has been relegated to the status of heretic - "steer clear of this dangerous man" is what they hear! "He was good on the resurrection, but now he is turning into a dangerous liberal - don't go near him kids!". This kind of attitude saddens me on the one hand because I hold Wright (as I do Piper) in incredibly high esteem, but also because these kind of attitudes create division over issues that are worth debating over, but not dividing over (cf. 1 Cor 1-2)

Secondly, I have been surprised by the lack of Biblical argumentation in a lot of reformed responses to Wright. To be sure, many of those who disagree with him are incredibly knowledgeable about the Bible, but there has been an oft-repeated chorus along the lines of "Wright's view goes against historical reformed theology, therefore he must be wrong" or "If Wright is correct, then that compromises his particular doctrine which we hold in very high regards, so we must be wary of him". Piper, to be fair did appeal to scripture a lot in his response (although I would have liked a little more), but it is not enough to say "our doctrine says this, therefore Wright is not right". Surely this is to run the risk of taking tradition over scripture. Whether Wright is correct or not, we cannot simply appeal to a cherished list of traditions, we must appeal to scripture!

This is obviously (intentionally) a slightly unfair portrayal of the debate and to be honest the argument has calmed down significantly in the last year (it turns out that some of it was down to mutual misunderstanding). There have in fact been some very decent responses to Wright from a Biblical perspective, but the caricature which I have painted above has, in my experience and reading, cropped up quite a few times over the last 5 years and I think it should provoke us as evangelicals to look to the Bible (and not simply our list of doctrines) before we dismiss something as dangerous or heretical and to make it very clear that that is what we are doing. As the reformers often said - sola scriptura