August 12, 2004

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From around the world, from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is
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The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us.
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Get to give that answer with gentleness and reverence. Our host is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an
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Elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation.
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If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the
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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. Well, and good evening. Welcome to The Dividing Line. If you're on the
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East Coast, it is evening, 7 o 'clock, 4 o 'clock out here in Phoenix, Arizona. And I'm very glad to see and channel our very favorite unicle man who lives in the
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Tampa Bay area. And I've been calling and calling and calling and couldn't get through.
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I was starting to get a little bit worried about that, but he's there. And of course, we need to pray for him and his wife and his house and all the folks there as Hurricane Charlie.
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Why didn't they name it Clyde? I don't understand that. You've got Bonnie and then at least you could have had a joke about it, something, but they went and named it
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Charlie. And that sort of sounds silly to me. But anyways, we need to keep our believing friends down there in prayer down there in Florida.
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They live on that thing. It juts out in the ocean near the hurricanes, and it sort of happens very regularly.
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So anyhow, that being said, we have a program lined up for you this evening.
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I think you're going to find to be very useful if that is you are concerned about the subject of the gospel.
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And if like I thought most Christians believed until the past couple of years,
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I guess, if you believe that the gospel defines the faith that apart from the gospel, there's no such thing as the as the
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Christian faith. I'm having to try to get used to dealing with people who who actually believe there's such a thing as Christianity and being a
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Christian without the gospel. I don't understand that. It doesn't make any sense to me, but there are those who are functioning on that level, and it's very difficult to understand that.
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And of course, one of the biggest issues that we face today is the nature of justification. What is justification?
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You've been following my blog. You know that this is an issue that there are many, many facets to these days.
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It's not just what I've been accustomed to in dealing with Roman Catholicism and all of the attacks upon the historic doctrine of justification from there, the biblical doctrine with all the accretions of human traditions and everything else.
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But now we have all sorts of attacks from every which direction.
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This isn't a situation any longer where you have the battle lines clearly drawn, where you have this side over here and then you've got that side over there and then you have the debate.
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That's normally how we've done it. But the simple fact of the matter is today, if you hold to a rigorous doctrine of justification, it's more like you're in a circle and you're surrounded by people lobbying various and sundry attacks your direction.
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It is truly an amazing thing to observe and one that should be of concern to us.
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The reasons for it, we have discussed in the past. So today, as I announced on the blog,
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I am joined by Phil Johnson. Phil Johnson is, of course, well known to those of you in the cyber world as a fellow who had a website.
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And I think this isn't fair. He had a website that looked modern before any of the rest of us did. OK, and I'm not quite sure how he did that, but he did.
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And so you can go to the Spurgeon Archive and you can read all this wonderful stuff from Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
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And I think Phil had the first meaningful links page. I'm not sure if you'd want to admit that because that might indicate chronological advancement or whatever that term would be.
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But Phil Johnson is joining us and Phil is going to be with us in November there in Los Angeles and is going to be addressing the issue of the new perspective on Paul at our national conference.
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And so we have stolen a few moments of his time. He's a very busy individual working with Grace To You, John MacArthur's radio ministry, and also always on the lookout for some new thing to eat.
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Something that, you know, would cause me to just simply pass out.
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Actually, I think if Phil wanted to really make some money for himself, he'd go on Fear Factor and the stuff that makes everybody else fall apart wouldn't do anything to you, would it,
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Phil? I don't know if that's true. I've always said I'll eat any food that anybody else will eat.
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But the stuff they eat on Fear Factor isn't really food. I watched that and I have to admit the first time
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I saw it, I did think of you. You know, you'd be surprised how many people tell me that.
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What a thing to be remembered for, you know. But that isn't really what you're really famous for.
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I mean, obviously, I mean, if you were if you were to say, do people know you more for your work with Spurgeon or with Grace To You?
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It's hard to say, but, you know, probably the Spurgeon archive, I would think, because that's what most people comment on when
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I'm overseas or whatever. Lots of people come up to me and say, I know you from your website. Right. That's an amazing thing that has really changed the way we communicate over just over the past decade, decade and a half.
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And for those of you in the channel, by the way, before we start talking about new perspectivism, for those of you in the channel, you are listening to the man who is responsible for my having found out about something called
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IRC. And that's saying a lot because, of course, I run this channel now and all these people in here, some of these folks don't have any other family but us.
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So I guess they should thank you, Phil. Yeah, or curse me. You know, I almost never go on IRC anymore.
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But I remember when I first began reading your stuff, you were debating in discussion forums on Fidonet.
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And nobody today even remembers what Fidonet is. Well, older people do. But yeah, that was the old
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BBSs. Alpha Omega used to have a BBS that would sit there. And we had a screaming 24 ,000 baud modem that would go do mail runs and all the rest of the stuff.
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And yeah, things have changed. And you know what? I'm still using a lot of the information we had back then. So just moving into the web doesn't exactly change all that stuff.
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But that does seem to have been a long time ago. But like I said, your website looked good before anybody knew what good was supposed to look like.
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So that's always been the case. Now, I know where my interest in NT Wright and the new perspective are really,
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I think it's proper to probably use the plural, new perspectives, because we always want to differentiate between the different viewpoints.
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I know where my interest is coming from that. And what caused you to start examining this information and having to deal with the new perspective on Paul?
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Yeah, I think it goes back years, James. I was in the thick of the lordship controversy as early as the mid -1980s.
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And because of the stance John MacArthur took on the lordship controversy and some of the debates
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I got in with people here and there, it forced me to really be very careful to defend
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Sola Fide. At the same time, we're attacking antinomianism. And I just began to study
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Sola Fide in earnest, I would say around 85, 86, and fell in love with that doctrine and realized that is the heart of the gospel.
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And when I begin to hear people saying, that's not the heart of the gospel, it, of course, pricks up my antenna.
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And I've wanted to read and refute some of their arguments. Well, when you first,
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I mean, the current, how would I say it? The current expression of what we might call new perspectivism really owes at least the inroads it's making into conservative circles, it really owes its impetus to N .T.
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Wright. But obviously, it didn't start with him. And in fact, there were a lot of folks back behind that.
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I guess we shouldn't assume everybody listening is really familiar with the new perspective. How would you want to try to summarize the major components of what is generally called new perspectivism today?
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Well, new perspectivism, it takes its name, actually, the phrase was coined, I think, first of all, by James G .D.
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Dunn, D .G. Dunn, who is, Dunn is one of the leading proponents of the new perspective.
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And it's really a name for a group of views. There's really not one new perspective on Paul, but a bunch of new perspectives on how to interpret the apostle
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Paul. And there are four or five things that most who advocate this position hold in common.
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The probably the starting point, the first thing to take note of is that regarding first century
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Judaism, they claim that the Judaism of Paul's day was not really what we typically think it was.
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It wasn't a religion of works and self -righteousness and human merit. And so they say we've misunderstood
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Paul because we've really misunderstood what he was arguing against. Right. You know, and.
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Well, now, and just for people listening, what you'll hear them referring to is what they call Second Temple Judaism or Tanniatic Judaism.
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But Second Temple Judaism and what it's about, that is really fundamental to to all of the new perspective writings and all the all the viewpoints that are out there.
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And so when you hear someone starting to talk about that, that's what they're referring to. So the first thing you'd say would be, well, this view that that Second Temple Judaism was was a religion more of grace than it was of works and merit is, in essence, what they're saying.
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That's right. They're they're claiming on the basis of new research to have uncovered the fact that Second Temple Judaism was not really legalistic after all.
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And for centuries, they say we Christians have misunderstood and particularly evangelicals and Protestants have misunderstood what the
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Apostle Paul was saying, misunderstood what the Pharisees taught and therefore sort of misconstrued all of Paul's polemics in Romans and Galatians.
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Regarding justification in particular. Now, it should be noted, especially for folks who are just starting to try to understand this, these writers in general, the vast majority of them would not come from our background with a strong commitment to inerrancy and the the consistency of Scripture and things like that.
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They can develop these theories without reference to the entire canon of Scripture, for example, or what
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Matthew says about the Jews or something like that. Isn't that an important thing to keep in mind? Exactly. In fact, I would say that's one of the problems with the view.
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It attempts to interpret the Apostle Paul in isolation and to deal with the doctrine of justification from a
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Pauline perspective, leaving out what the totality of Scripture has to say about justification.
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What is the problem that's being addressed by the doctrine of justification? If you see it only through very narrow eyes, and in fact, some of these original guys that began to write on the new perspective of Paul don't even really accept the
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Pauline authorship of all the Pauline epistles. Exactly. So they've narrowed it even further, and they really are sort of making
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Paul, in my view, this is an attempt to remake the Apostle Paul in a kind of modern, politically correct posture.
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Right. In fact, it's interesting that this really has its roots, I think, in post -World War II theology.
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And it's a reaction against anti -Semitism and whatever. A lot of folks, again, in our churches are somewhat taken aback when they hear someone say something like what you just said, like, well, wait a minute, how can what
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Paul believed and taught about justification, how can that be impacted by World War II?
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But in point of fact, what we're talking about here are theological theories that have deep roots in Europe, and there was a tremendous backlash at that point in time.
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And we need to recognize people are deeply influenced by their circumstances, and there was, and continues to be, a tremendous push to avoid anything that could be construed as quote -unquote anti -Semitism, anything that smacks of that.
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And let's face it, you read some sections in 2 Thessalonians or Matthew chapter 23, and we saw during the
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Passion film uproar exactly how people viewed these things as being anti -Semitic.
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And theologians, amazingly enough, are impacted by issues like that.
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That's right. And one of the things many of the New Perspective writers are suggesting is that Paul's conflict with the
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Pharisees was not a conflict over Judaism, or it wasn't even a theological conflict, that his concern actually was for racial harmony and diversity in the
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Church, in the covenant community. And so the way they would portray it is that the only significant complaint
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Paul had with the Pharisees, and even with the Judaizers, was their racial and cultural exclusivity.
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So you can come up with a really politically correct interpretation of the New Testament if you put these glasses on.
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And that's exactly what they're doing. And when people, again, in the Church hear this, they often wonder, how could someone come up with this?
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But when you don't have to deal with the entire canon, you can be selective in what sources that you're drawing from, you're influenced by this push to be careful appear to be in any way anti -Semitic or anything along those lines.
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And then you start hearing them talking about, hey, look, you know, really, justification, and I think, would this be one of your five marks?
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Justification is not a soteriological issue. Justification is an ecclesiology issue.
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It's a matter of who is in the covenant community and who is not in the covenant community. That's exactly right.
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They have redefined the vocabulary of justification, the categories of justification, the goal and the means of justification.
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They've taken it out of the realm of the soteriological and put it into the realm of ecclesiology.
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And as a result, though, they still, and especially with those who would view themselves,
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I mean, Jim Dunn would view himself as an evangelical. N .T. Wright views himself as an evangelical.
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They still use the terminology that we would be accustomed to. And yet there is such a radical reorganization of the context that it can become very confusing for someone who encounters this material, especially if it's given to them in book form by a pastor or something along those lines.
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And it is, in fact, causing a tremendous problem within the church today.
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That's right. Now, I wanted to play a clip for you, and so I want to do this before you forget it.
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And we are more than happy to take phone calls, too, as well at 877 -753 -3341.
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I mentioned to you earlier that I had linked on my blog to a discussion that took place about an hour long.
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Mark Dever in Washington had J. Ligon Duncan on, and they were discussing the new perspective on Paul in a very erudite way.
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I loved it when Mark asked Dr. Duncan to go to the text of Scripture and said,
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Now, those of you in the listening audience, please take your Greek text or your committee translated translations and your
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Hebrew text. And I'm just like, oh, yeah. And then later, take your Septuagint now. And it's like, yeah, sure.
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Okay. Interesting audience they have listening. And anyway, they were discussing the fact that the individuals like James Dunn and N .T.
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Wright, E .P. Sanders, these are specialists in certain fields. And I don't know about you.
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When I first started reading N .T. Wright, one of the things that bothered me was when he would say the reformers said this.
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The reformers viewed Roman Catholicism as nothing but the modern version of Pelagianism.
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And I remember when I first started seeing this repeated in Wright's writings. I'm sitting here going, man, have
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I missed something? You know, I thought I knew something about the writing reformers.
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This guy is brilliant. And I didn't get that feeling. And thankfully, I've started reading enough other folks that they all say the same thing in the sense that, you know, hey, they're not quite right about this.
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But one of the things that was said fascinating in that interview was some information about the fact that the individuals who are most responsible for the new perspective on Paul don't really understand the
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Roman Catholic context. And so I'm hoping you can hear this. We're going to turn up the computer here.
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And if you could hear the music beforehand, you should be able to hear this just fine. Listen to a little bit of this conversation.
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And then we'll pick it up on the other side. Okay. I remember one time hearing Tom Wright lectures back in 94 or three in England and asking him afterwards when he was saying that Luther had gotten
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Romans wrong. And I asked him questions about how he'd gotten Romans wrong. And then I asked him how he understood justification.
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And I said, look, have you ever read the decrees of the sixth session of the Council of Trent? And he said at that point he hadn't.
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But I said, well, I think you did. You would find some understanding justification very similar to what you've laid out here tonight. Well, let me corroborate that.
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Guy Waters, another colleague of ours, a Duke graduate, studied with E .P. Sanders and Richard Hayes at Duke, worked in early
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Judaism and New Testament Christianity, was at a seminar with Ed Sanders. And for his seminar topic, he chose to do a survey of 20th century
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Roman Catholic New Testament scholarship on Paul the Law and Justification. He handed in to Sanders.
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Sanders said, this is fascinating. I've never read any of this material before. But if I had,
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I would have given them credit for my thesis. Now, I don't know about you, but when
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I hear someone saying if I had read modern Roman Catholic theologians,
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New Testament theologians, and saying if I had read them, I would have to give them credit for my thesis.
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That sort of concerns me just a little bit. How about you? Well, it would concern me as well. But I mean, you know, you can see the linkage between what
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Catholics are saying, what the New Perspectivists are saying. And it's been pointed out to them many times, and they deny that there's any linkage.
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But it seems obvious to me. I'm surprised that they would be surprised at it. You know, it's interesting.
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I'd go even further. I think in their portrayals of Luther and the reformers, there's a lot of bluffing and caricature that they depend on.
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There's a great article on the web written by Carl Truman, who submitted this,
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I think, in about the year 2000 to the Kendall Fellowship, analyzing how the
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New Perspective handles Luther. And the title of the article is, A Man More Sinned Against Than Sinning?
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And it's subtitled, Some Casual Observations of a Mere Historian. And he interacts with how
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Wright and some of the other New Perspectivists, particularly Sanders and Dunn, just sort of offhandedly throw out comments about what
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Luther said and what Luther believed. And he noted that, I think it was Dunn, he said, was quoting from, actually,
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Roland Bainton's book. Roland Bainton's book, yeah. And not ever from Luther himself, no. Yeah. By the way,
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I've never had one of my guests G -lined out of the network while he was on the air with me, but I just had them take care of that for you.
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So if you were feeling unloved there, I have no idea. I just did a little multitasking there, popped into the channel and said, excuse me, but you just G -lined my guest.
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They said, oh, sorry. And I guess they didn't like your dash, dash, whatever it was thing you had going on there.
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Those of you who do know anything about IRC have no idea what we're talking about, but don't worry about it. It does not impact the new perspective in any way, shape, or form.
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877 -753 -3341. Before we take our phone calls,
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I think it's important that people understand that we're not, my concern about this subject is not because I'm, and this is how it's normally represented by proponents of new perspectivism.
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It's not because I'm a traditionalist. It's not because I do not believe in solo scriptura.
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It is not because I just have an irrational fear of Rome or something like that.
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These are the things that are normally said. Instead, people need to understand that there are certain aspects, the doctrine of justification, that because of these other issues, because of this view of Second Temple Judaism, and because of the view of justification that comes out of that, there are certain aspects that are simply denied.
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What specifically about the doctrine of justification do you see, for example, in N .T. Wright, that needs to be there that N .T.
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Wright no longer has, and hence makes it worthwhile for us to be addressing this issue? Well, the big one for Wright would be imputation.
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The imputation of Christ's righteousness, which he utterly rejects. And that meaning, when you talk about imputation, realizing not necessarily everyone listening is, unfortunately, completely up on the subject of justification, why would he have a problem with the idea of Christ's righteousness being imputed to us?
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Where's he getting from that? Well, I mean, I don't want to try to figure out his motives, but it would be a big problem for him, number one, because he's starting by redefining justification so that it's not so much about individual salvation or individual forgiveness of sins or whatever.
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It's a corporate issue, it's an ecclesiological issue, not at all what we normally think of in justification.
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Secondly, he says that he just doesn't find anywhere in Scripture where the doctrine of imputation is taught.
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In his book, What St. Paul Really Said, he quotes, I think, from 1
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Corinthians, where it says, Christ is made unto us righteousness and all. And he says this is the only verse in Scripture he can find that even implies the imputation of Christ's righteousness.
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And he says, but if you take it from that verse, then you'd have to say that Christ's wisdom and knowledge and all that are imputed to us as well.
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Right, exactly. And then he just goes from there. But every time he ever brings up the notion of imputation, it's to argue against it.
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Right. And in fact, it is obvious to me anyway that it is central to his thesis because if you allow for the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, then justification has to be extremely soteriological, and it diminishes his own theory as to the fact that justification is more an issue in regards to covenant membership than it is anything else.
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So, Right is denying that for his particular reasons. There are other people who have different reasons.
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The whole issue of our standing before God, really, and in fact, I liked what
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J. Ligon Duncan said. I forget who he was quoting, but he said, it has been well said that one of the greatest and most pernicious errors in reading the
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New Testament is to take Jesus' words when he said, my kingdom is not of this world, and to turn his words into saying, my kingdom is of this world.
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And he was saying that in the context of Right's eschatology being realized now, and there being very little emphasis in his theology of anything past the point of the final justification of God, things like that.
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Sin is diminished. Many people have said that the whole issue of sin, being dead in sin, things like that, is very much diminished.
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Yeah, I would agree with that criticism of Right. I don't think he's suggesting that he doesn't really believe in the idea of heaven, but he rarely mentions it other than to say that the gospel is not about who's going to heaven, and he constantly talks about the importance of this life, so much that his writings were misunderstood enough that a secular writer writing in the
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Guardian last year wrote an article that he objected to because she,
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I think it was Karen Armstrong, wrote an article where she basically,
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I think, summed up his view, and she was kind of lumping him in with all the major religions, saying that this world matters more than the next.
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And he wrote, as I recall, a letter to the editor just defending the fact that he believes in heaven.
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I think it's interesting that even secular newspaper writers reading his material get the same impression that some of his critics do, that he doesn't place a great deal of emphasis on the next world.
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It does seem strange to me, given the fact that he's obviously a brilliant man, and he's obviously an excellent writer.
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He communicates real well. I think one of the reasons that, like what St. Paul really said in books like that, are having such inroads is, let's face it, a lot of the books written on theology today from what we would call the older school, well, they're just not passionate.
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They're lacking in the passion and the excitement that he can muster for his own theories and his own perspectives.
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And so it has always concerned me or befuddled me just a little bit how someone who is as intelligent as N .T.
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Wright is could then sit there and say, I don't know why everyone's so confused.
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I don't know why everyone's so upset. He does seem at times to speak out of both sides of his mouth.
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I mean, it's pretty hard to nail him down in a hard, fast way outside of a certain number of things because once you start getting into application, sometimes he seems to say this.
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Sometimes he seems to say that. Anglicans tend to be good at that, don't they? Well, yeah, no kidding.
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It almost seems to be a part of the entire theological system. But then their defenders, N .T.
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Wright's defenders especially, many of them just seem to almost put him on such a pedestal of almost infallibility it's very sad to observe.
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But so often what they end up doing is if you try to interact with him, then they'll say, oh, well, but you haven't read this over there or you haven't read that over there.
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He says this over here. He says that over there. He's talking so much anymore that you can always find some way of saying, that's not what he meant.
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You're ignorant again. And he's right. And it makes it very, very difficult. Yeah, that's right. That's absolutely right.
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Well, let's start taking some of our phone calls. And since Phil's with us, ye of great power on the other side of the wall, did you want to take a break first?
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Or did you want to go ahead with our phone calls? We do things live on the air here. I'm a real professional broadcast type guy.
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In fact, where's a piece of paper here? Okay, there we go. Now I feel like a real professional broadcast guy. I'm going to keep on going.
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Good. I have been given the go ahead to go ahead and talk with Jeff in South Jersey.
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Jeff, there are Christians in South Jersey. And Jeff is one of them. I'm one of them.
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You are one of them? I did a cross country trip. And I was actually in Arizona not too long ago.
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Is that where you... So you just brought your Christianity back with you to Jersey? Is that what you did? Yeah, I picked it up on the way up front.
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I went to California. I had to stop on the way. Well, there's not much of it over there, except for Southern California where you got
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Phil down there. Well, anyway, we're in mourning tonight for our governor. Yes, I heard about that.
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Let's not get into that. That'll ruin the entire program. So okay, I'll try to be coherent because I find the new perspective to be incredibly hard to, you know, you think you have it figured out and then people say, no, no, no, no, that's not what we're saying.
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So I'm just what I gather they're saying is that righteousness is like a covenantal badge or something along those lines.
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Yeah, it's no wonder you have difficulty understanding because it depends on which new perspective guy you would talk to.
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To N .T. Wright, he would say righteousness... He defines righteousness as covenant membership.
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And what I don't understand about that view would be that kind of seems to go against the whole flow of Romans, where it starts off with judgment and sin and penalty and then flows into justification.
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It doesn't seem like covenant membership kind of makes sense as the main primary definition there.
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I agree with you, and in fact, that would be one of my criticisms against Wright's interpretation of Romans.
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It doesn't seem to do justice to the logical flow of what Paul is saying. He goes so far even as to paraphrase when he gets to Philippians, Philippians 3 .9,
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where Paul says, you know, that his great hope was to have a righteousness that was not his own, but the righteousness of God, which is by faith.
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And in Wright's paraphrase of that, he substitutes the word covenant membership for the word righteousness.
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Right. Now, what I think that might be confusing is that I think why Paul was concerned with the
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Judaizing heresy was that they're basically saying, you know, unless you do all these things, you can't be in the covenant.
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And it's not just being in the covenant. Being in the covenant meant if you're in the covenant, you're also justified.
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I think they're confusing that. Well, keep one thing in mind, Jeff. The central thing that Wright establishes before he starts going into those texts is that he believes that the term righteousness, the dikaios suni, dikaios, the
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Greek terms that are being used by Paul there, that righteousness in the
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New Testament is almost always God's covenant faithfulness.
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It has almost nothing to do with us individually. It is instead the demonstration of God's faithfulness, the covenant that he made with Abraham.
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And everything is based upon that. Once you get hold of that for Wright, then you can start making sense out of most of what he's saying.
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For example, when you get into his commentary on Romans that was just published recently in the
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Anchor Bible series, you will see that that becomes the overarching concern.
32:33
And so when he goes in Romans and he's dealing with the issue of righteousness there, we are so attuned to hearing that as righteousness as in our right relationship with God that we have a hard time hearing what he's saying.
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And that is that this is a demonstration of God's righteousness. That is, God said he was going to bless the world by sending someone through Abraham's seed.
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He made that covenant with Abraham. He's fulfilled that covenant in Jesus Christ to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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His lordship is demonstrated over the entirety of the world. And therefore, he has demonstrated his righteousness.
33:09
And that's the first fundamental thing that righteousness is. And then only by extension do you then get the idea that, well, by faith,
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I am righteous in the sense that I am in the covenant community. Now, it raises all sorts of issues as how you stay in the covenant community.
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He very strongly emphasizes that it's a future thing. It's eschatological, the final decree of justification.
33:36
And even then, that is the demonstration of God's righteousness. And so it's important to keep that aspect of it in mind because without that, it can become very confusing.
33:45
Well, when the primary definitions of words are in question, and obviously words can have multiple definitions, that's why
33:54
I kind of pointed to the context of Romans overall, the sweeping thing, and try to say, you know, does covenant membership make sense as a primary definition here, which
34:04
I think it doesn't. But I mean, speaking as a layperson who doesn't have extensive
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Greek and Hebrew training, when someone challenges the primary definition of words, what do you do?
34:20
You know, how do you kind of sort that out? Phil, you want to take that or shall I? You go ahead.
34:27
Well, see, the problem is, I don't know that there's been a whole lot of serious interaction going on as far as both sides being in the same room at the same time.
34:38
There are a lot of questions I'd like to ask N .C. Wright, but I don't see that those, you know, I consider myself a nobody, so who's going to listen to me anyways?
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So, I mean, I would like to ask a number of questions as I'm reading his stuff, but I don't have that opportunity.
34:53
For example, I have very openly criticized his interpretation of 2 Corinthians 5 .21.
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I think it's, I think it is very, very, very easy to demonstrate that the forcing of what
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I have called a monochromatic view of justification of what righteousness is onto that passage results in an interpretation that absolutely positively makes no sense.
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I know where he's going with it. I know what he's saying. I just can't believe anyone can defend that. And when you get into dealing with those particular issues, how do you answer the question?
35:31
Well, you take that theoretical meaning of the word, and first of all, you examine how he came up with it.
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And for example, how does Wright come up with it? He says, well, righteous justification is forensic.
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It is the Hebrew law court. You've got the judge. You've got the two people before him. And the judge says, you are right in regards to me.
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That's partially correct. That's certainly a Deuteronomy 25 type idea. But the problem is
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Paul goes beyond that because in his law court, there is a intercessor. There is a mediator named
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Jesus Christ. And that's where his idea, I think, comes short of the fullness of the
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New Testament revelation about what justification is. And then you take his redefinition of those words, or his proposed understanding of those words, and you put them into the text, and you put them into Romans 4, and you put them into Galatians.
36:20
And sometimes they'll fit, but then there are other times when they will not. And if they don't fit, and you have to use the bigger theological hammer to get it to fit, then you've got a clear indication that someone's basically gone off deep end.
36:35
That's what I thought. I have one final note. Yeah, let me, let me. Can I add to that? Yeah, there's a James White Highway in Knoxville, Tennessee.
36:41
Oh, great. Thanks. Go ahead, Phil. What did you want to add to that? Yeah, just let me add to your answer, too, and say,
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I think Culler was exactly right, that the definitions are obviously foundational.
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And that's where a lot of the dialogue and discussion and debate needs to take place.
36:59
All right, well, thank you, gentlemen. Okay, thank you very much, Jeff. And that is where it needs to take place.
37:05
Unfortunately, that's not, in my experience, where it is taking place. It seems to be engendering more just sniping and things like that than actually people dealing with it.
37:15
I would assume you probably have the Romans commentary. I was looking at Wright's commentary here.
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And one of the things I do, Phil, is I take a look at key texts.
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You know, it's sort of like when you look at a new Bible translation, you look at how they handle the deity of Christ and things like that.
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There are certain translator's passages you can look at that gives you an idea of what the committee was like.
37:38
And the same thing in looking at Wright. I looked at Romans chapter 4, because obviously, from my perspective, verses 1 through 8 is going to be very, very key as to how you understand this.
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And I was not disappointed in looking at this, because I discovered that, especially when you get to verses 7 and 8, there's almost no commentary whatsoever.
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There's no discussion of this idea of how Paul himself utilizes language of imputation.
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He utilizes language of positive imputation. He says, just as David also speaks, the blessing of the man to whom
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God credits legitimized righteousness apart from works. But then he illustrates that from Psalm 32, and the covering of sin, and the non -imputation of sin.
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No discussion of it whatsoever in this 400 -page commentary on the book of Romans.
38:38
Yeah, that's a key passage, too, to answer Wright's position. You know, that says justification is not about individual forgiveness of sin.
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I don't see how you can read the first six verses of Romans 4 and shoehorn it into his definition.
38:53
I can't figure it out, either. And unfortunately... Let me ask this.
38:59
The guy's traveling all over the place. I mean, he's going to be speaking... Interestingly enough, you know where he's speaking next
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January? Oh, yes, at the Auburn... At the Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church Conference, which, you know, nothing like throwing gas on a flame.
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But he goes everywhere. Doesn't anybody ask him to put himself in a position where someone could finally stand up and just say, what about these things?
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And really, you know, try to get some answers? Is there just so much of a worship of scholarship that everyone's afraid or something?
39:32
I just don't understand, because I don't travel in those circles. Yeah. Do you have any idea?
39:38
Have you ever run into... I mean, you were just... I've actually spoken with people who've spoken with him privately and say that, you know, in private, he's a very kind and gracious...
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Man, I have no doubt of that. And that he's also open to criticism and discussion, and not afraid to say, well,
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I don't know. Or you've got a very good argument there. Answers to those arguments aren't always forthcoming.
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But, you know, privately, I understand that when he's put on the spot, he'll say, yeah, I'll think it through and get back to you.
40:06
Yeah, that's been... That's... I've talked to a couple of people. They've had the same thing. And they're generally the ones who call him
40:12
Tom. Right. You know, it was sort of like when Mark Dever talked to J. Ligg and Duncan and called him
40:18
Ligg. I'm like, whoa, okay, a little bit too much for me there. 877 -753 -3341.
40:25
That's the number that Frank down in Arkansas called. How are you doing, Frank? I'm doing well, Dr. White. You know,
40:30
I stayed on the phone mostly out of courtesy, because you guys have completely covered everything I was going to ask about.
40:35
You know, the whole idea of that I think these guys who are following this new perspective, you know, they started at almost the right point where we're talking about, you know, that it's
40:46
God's righteousness, God's righteousness. But, you know, they just somehow they just miss all the applications of what we know, what
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God does with his righteousness. Well, part of it is, again, and I don't think anyone else has used this terminology, and that may make it bad.
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But I know that I was sitting around one day trying to find a way of describing this view, this very, what
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I consider a very narrow view of justification. I came up with monochromatic.
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Remember the old monochrome monitors we had? And that's what
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I see this as. In other words, and Phil, please feel free to let me know whether you would agree or not agree with this idea.
41:29
But what I see going on here is a call for us not so much to adopt a new viewpoint as it is to draw back from the clarity of the gospel of the
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Reformation to a much less clear, much less vibrant version that really can't answer a lot of the big questions that are there that, for example, divide
41:59
Roman Catholics and Protestants. I mean, I think you are exactly right. And as I read some of the New Perspective material, it seems to me that some of these guys are deliberately trying to make things fuzzy rather than make them clear.
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Sometimes you read these email dialogues between people who are defending right and critics.
42:20
And to me, the criticisms often seem clear and lucid, and the answers are so confusing.
42:26
They leave everything in the realm of ambiguity. Well, for many people in scholarship today, ambiguity is a great badge of honor.
42:34
Unfortunately, in fact, there are many who have an epistemology of ambiguity. But for me,
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I've tried to explain to folks that that's what I'm seeing here is that I'm seeing people saying, basically, the
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Reformation and the children of the Reformation went too far. We have said things about the gospel.
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In essence, we've been too clear. We have been overconfident. In other words, and this is another aspect of it, many of them have had to end up adopting an epistemology of scripture that says, look, the scriptures cannot give you that level of clarity.
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They don't give you that level of clarity. You need to back off from having assumed that the
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Bible would have a sufficient clarity to give you a foundation for that kind of thing.
43:23
That's one of the things that I'm seeing, and that's very much one of the reasons I'm very concerned about this movement.
43:30
Anyone have a comment on that? I'd say it's a postmodern hermeneutic. Yes. Oh, yes. Very much so.
43:36
And Frank, let me ask you something. I have the feeling, because probably not too many
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Franks in Arkansas, well, I'm sure there are many Franks in Arkansas, but not many
43:46
Franks in Arkansas that listen to the dividing line on a regular basis, that I think you called in when someone that both
43:54
Phil and I know very well was on last week, a fellow by the name of Steve Camp.
44:00
And so we know that we discussed then the Phillips, Craig, and Dean thing. And so the question that I would have is, does your theology section have
44:10
N .T. Wright in it? I have to be honest, we have no N .T. Wright right now. And I'll tell you,
44:18
James, really, the biggest reason I don't have N .T. Wright here is the ambiguity of where he stands on a lot of these issues.
44:27
You know, when you read, he has a commentary series that's kind of pouring out right now that's called, you know, the books of the
44:36
Bible for everyone. So Luke for everyone, Matthew for everyone, et cetera. And, you know, superficially, they're fine.
44:42
You know, they're as good as any, you know, any 30 -page Bible study you buy. You know, how deep can it really go?
44:48
But, you know, as Steve pointed out so well last week, you know, if somebody all of a sudden decides, well, let me read something else by Tom Wright, and they go and they find this
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N .T. Wright stuff, you know, you don't know where it's going to take them. Well, and isn't that one of the biggest problems we have,
45:02
Phil, is that N .T. Wright is a brilliant scholar, and he happens to be the one who has provided some of the most in -depth rebuttals to the
45:12
Jesus Seminar. Yes, that's exactly right. Not only that, he's a gifted writer, and one of the few men
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I know who's capable of writing at the highest scholarly level, but also to the lowest sort of everyman level.
45:27
Those commentaries are extremely readable, and it's one of the things that frustrates me about Wright, frankly, that I can see how this man's mind works and how he writes with such clarity, and yet there's this studied ambiguity that sort of colors what he's saying.
45:43
Yeah, and I think, honestly, I think a lot of that goes back to, now, would you agree with me that Wright would have the highest view of Scripture of Dunne and Sanders and Wright, those three put together?
45:56
Oh, yeah, no question. And yet, still, I don't know that anyone, I would actually wonder if you could be an inerrantist in the
46:04
Anglican Church. Don't they kick those type of people out? I have a feeling they do.
46:12
That still impacts the theology that you do. If you do not believe that you are actually handling that which is
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Theanustas, and not just simply because of the tradition of the Church, but this actually is what
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God has intended, it has to impact your final conclusions. You can't avoid it.
46:32
Right. But because he is primarily known for his defense of the resurrection and the historicity of Christ and his polemics against the
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Jesus Movement -type thinking, the Jesus Seminar -type thinking, he's thought of as an evangelical.
46:48
And he has a huge amount of credibility capital as a result of that.
46:54
That's the only reason that I can see why he has the inroads that he has.
46:59
And I don't know if you would agree with this or not, but I don't consider him an evangelical. Well, obviously, the very term evangelical anymore, what does it mean?
47:09
If it can be extended, let's put it this way. If you can't kick open theists, if you can't kick
47:17
Clark Pinnock out of the ETS, what does evangelical mean anymore?
47:23
It's a shame we've lost that word. But historically, it was pretty clearly defined. And you could boil it down to really two things.
47:29
An evangelical was someone who believed in sola fide and sola scriptura. Right. And it seems to me that right is wobbly on both.
47:38
Functionally. And I think if you dug down, yes, I would agree. Well, Frank, thank you for calling today. James, thanks.
47:44
Appreciate it. All right. Keep up the good work out there. God bless. 877 -753 -3341.
47:50
I can tell that Phil has a Motorola T720 because we have the same ring patterns.
47:58
Do you know how many times I have reached for my phone over the past half hour? Oh, because he keeps beeping.
48:04
Well, because I can hear yours. Yeah, I'm sorry. And I'm like, I'm watching the Cubs game on the side here.
48:13
I managed to get your band pulled at the same time. We are truly demonstrating the modern form of multitasking, are we not?
48:22
That's right. I mean, now there's some folks that I know who cannot multitask at all. And he's in channel right now.
48:28
You and I both know him. We went on a cruise with him. And trying to watch him multitask is one of the most funny or sad things, depending on how you want to look at it.
48:37
Yeah, which puts you in an impossible situation if you're on a ship that's got any movement. Oh, well,
48:45
I'm really looking forward to this coming November. I'll be perfectly honest with you,
48:50
Phil. We'll just have a little chat here in front of everybody. I'm looking forward to the conference. I'm looking forward to discussion of justification.
48:58
I love trying to really excite the people of God about this truth of justification.
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I think it is absolutely foundational to everything else. Paul says, therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God.
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If you don't have that, you don't have the peace. You don't have the foundation. Don't talk to me about Christian counseling or anything else until you've dealt with the issue of one's relationship with God.
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So I think it's absolutely foundational. But the debate beforehand has me concerned.
49:34
It really does. Because in that particular situation, we're not dealing with new perspectivism. But I can't tell you how many people are confused about the differences between the
49:46
Federal Vision, Auburn Avenue material, and N .T. Wright, and James Dunn.
49:52
I know that there is going to be a bunch of folks walking through those doors that think that the two things are the same.
50:02
I've talked to a lot of folks, people that read my blog regularly, channel regulars, people at church, family members.
50:12
The differences between the two, they don't seem to appreciate and assume that the two are just actually the same thing.
50:20
When in point of fact, James Dunn, E .P. Sanders, these people are coming from a much more
50:28
European, liberal background. Whereas the Federal Vision movement is coming from a very confessional, conservative, inerrantist background.
50:37
And yet, the odd thing is, and I'm not sure how much time you spent on Auburn Avenue or anything like that, but I will never forget listening to Steve Schlissel speaking at the
50:49
Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church Conference. And I was listening with an MP3 player while climbing what used to be called
50:56
Squaw Peak here in Phoenix. And it's odd how you can remember exactly where you were on the trail when someone said something, when you're listening to a sermon or a presentation.
51:04
And I'm going around this one corner when Steve Schlissel says, justification is nothing more than Jews and Gentiles are together in one covenant.
51:14
And I'm like, whoa, where have I heard that one before? And he even addressed the next year.
51:21
He said, I had all these people telling me that I got that from N .T. Wright. And I've never read N .T.
51:26
Wright. I'm going to read N .T. Wright now, but I've never read N .T. Wright. I'm just simply giving you my own perspective. And so what's weird is the
51:33
Federal Visionists and the New Perspectivists, they've got these points of connection, but they're coming from two very different backgrounds.
51:41
And we have to be really careful when we address something like that, because what you're saying about N .T. Wright is not necessarily going to be relevant to what you're saying about Douglas Wilson.
51:50
That's right. And you have to be careful. In fact, Wilson considers himself an opponent of the
51:56
New Perspective. And he's been mildly critical of N .T. Wright, not as critical as I wish he had been.
52:03
But Schlissel, I had the same reaction when I listened to it. It was an address. What I heard was an address he gave in Toronto, I think, around the year 2001, where he said
52:15
Luther got it wrong and all. I thought, he's just regurgitating Wright. And then he said he'd never read N .T.
52:20
Wright. I think he must have been influenced by someone who has read N .T. Wright. I suspect
52:26
James Jordan or someone like that. Jordan seems to be the common link between a lot of these guys. Well, briefly in the few minutes we have left, who else?
52:37
We name names around here. Who else has been deeply influenced by this movement that we would recognize that was once what we would consider a solid evangelical, but now is no longer?
52:50
The one that mystifies me the most would be John Armstrong. Because if you look at what all the other guys have in common, is they tend to be high sacramentalist
53:02
Presbyterians with a strong emphasis on high sacramentalism and all of that. But Armstrong's a
53:09
Baptist. I don't really know why this new perspective stuff appeals to him.
53:15
Right. And that's had a tremendous impact upon Reformation Revival Ministries. Yes. As far as I can tell, it is a shadow of its former self.
53:26
And yet, was there not a conference sponsored by that organization just recently that included
53:32
Orthodox and included Norman Shepard, I believe, and a Roman Catholic priest?
53:37
It's interesting. Armstrong, at the same time, has sort of adopted a strong ecumenical thrust to his ministry.
53:45
And you go back to Wright, and he pretty much admits that his chief concern in all of this, and I would think it's probably the motive behind his whole hermeneutic, is ecumenical.
53:59
The unity of the covenant community. Yes. And that's where there's another connection with the federal vision concept, because the primary emphasis of the federal vision is the idea of the objectivity of the covenant and the covenant sign of baptism.
54:13
And therefore, when you have someone who's been baptized properly in a triune fashion, then they are a part of that covenant community.
54:21
And hence the discussion by Wilson and others of evangelizing Roman Catholics by grabbing them by their baptism.
54:28
Whatever in the world that means. I cannot even begin to envision what that looks like in an apologetic encounter, personally.
54:37
But that's where another connection comes in. But again, from two different perspectives. And as you know, at the end of N .T.
54:43
Wright's book, what St. Paul really said, he says that justification is the very doctrine that should undo the divisions that we have introduced.
54:55
And in essence, he's there, I think, basically saying that both sides of the Reformation were wrong.
55:02
I mean, both sides. He says Rome was wrong and Luther was wrong and Calvin was wrong.
55:08
Everybody was wrong. And if they just had his insight, I guess that whole mess would have been avoided.
55:14
I guess that's how I read him anyways. That's right. And that's a pretty big, pretty big claim.
55:20
It is an amazing claim that they're really saying that they are the first people since before Augustine who really correctly understood what
55:30
Paul was talking about. Yeah. Yeah. And it's true. And I understand, and I'm sure you have spoken to people who, after years in ministry, become tired of infighting, of division, of the battle.
55:48
And we all could wish that Paul hadn't had to say what he said to the Ephesian elders in Acts chapter 20, that we didn't have to be vigilant through each generation.
55:59
I'd like a vacation. I'd like to not have to be vigilant all the time, but we have to be.
56:04
And I understand the feelings of people who, after years in ministry, say, look, there's got to be something.
56:10
This battle has to end eventually. There's got to be some new way of creating the ecumenical unity that we're looking for.
56:18
And I understand that they then see an NT right, and there's a real strong emotional bias and desire to believe that this is it.
56:28
This is, if everyone would just get on board here, we would finally have that unity and that peace that you long for after a certain amount of experience of division and difficulty in ministry.
56:41
I understand that. Wouldn't you agree, and at least understand how a person would find that attractive? Yeah, you see it happen all the time, actually.
56:48
And on a personal level, and we could probably name folks. And so I understand that part.
56:54
But I guess that's the point where I put my hands up and I say, look, I get tired of the battle.
57:02
People think, oh, you do apologetics. You must love it. No, no, I get tired of the battle.
57:07
I get tired of the debate. I understand all those things. But I also understand what epagonizomai means and why
57:14
Jude had to write what he wrote and to once again encourage the saints to agonize for the once for all delivered to the saints faith.
57:25
And I know that my generation has to do that and the next generation is going to have to do that.
57:31
And the generation before me had to do that. And some of the names will change and some of the spin will change.
57:38
But you know as well as I do that Jonathan Edwards had to deal with people who were in essence saying the same thing about works of law as Dunn says about works of law.
57:48
And that goes all the way back to the time of the Reformation and even before then really. And so there's really nothing new under the sun.
57:54
It's just the packaging in essence that takes place. That's right. And every generation has to fight the battle and we can't do it on our own.
58:01
We've got to trust in God's grace in letting us do so.
58:07
So hey, Phil, thank you very much for joining us this evening. I really appreciate it. Thank you. I'm looking forward to seeing you in Los Angeles.
58:15
And then that wonderful food we get to have when we...
58:21
Oh, it's just wonderful stuff, isn't it? Thank you very much, sir, for all you do. Everybody, Spurgeon Archive, Phil Johnson, grace to you.
58:30
You can find him on the web and drop a line and say thanks for all you do. And thanks for listening to The Dividing Line this evening.
58:37
We'll be back Tuesday morning, 11 a .m. our time, 2 p .m. Eastern Daylight Time. Steve Camp, take it away.
59:53
And thanks for listening to The Dividing Line.
01:01:11
Philip Johnson. Nationally renowned Reformed Christian artist, Steve Camp. And the founder of Alpha Omega Ministries and author,
01:01:19
Dr. James White. Join us at the Los Angeles, California LAX Sheraton Ballroom on November 6, 2004, beginning at 845 a .m.
01:01:26
Seating is limited, so order your tickets now at aomin .org. That's www .aomin .org.
01:01:36
Convictions once held and died for among Bible -believing Protestants are now being reconsidered.
01:01:43
With the advent of the recent Auburn Avenue Movement. Is there currently a common basis for dialogue between Roman Catholics and Protestants?
01:01:52
Were the signers of ECT correct in their ecumenical efforts? And all of the Reformed scholars who opposed them in error?
01:01:59
Does Trinitarian Baptism make one a member of the New Covenant? Are Roman Catholics our brothers and sisters in Christ?
01:02:06
Join us in Los Angeles, California on November 5, 2004, for a full three hours of moderated debate between Dr.
01:02:14
James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries and Douglas Wilson of the Auburn Avenue Movement and New St.
01:02:19
Andrews College. As these topics are debated between two of the most respected representatives of the opposing viewpoints.
01:02:26
Additional information and tickets can be ordered at aomin .org. That's www .aomin .org.