NT Wright's Particular Perspective on Paul and Justification

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.

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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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This is a live program and we invite your participation. 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. And good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line on a Thursday afternoon.

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It seems like it's been a bit of a long day for me since I was sitting behind this microphone at 745 this morning and had really the honor of joining

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Justin Brierley on the unbelievable radio broadcast yet once again. And I don't know how many times

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I've been on now, it would be interesting if someone would look that up. Most of the time it has been in studio, but I've been on by ISDN line in the past from a local radio station.

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And a couple times now have been on via phone using this setup.

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And what we do, when you listen this coming Saturday, the program we recorded today will be broadcast.

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And the podcast will be uploaded sometime on Saturday. So if you subscribe to the unbelievable radio broadcast, which many of you do, because I have mentioned it numerous times, you will get it on Saturday.

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It will sound, I will not sound like I am on the phone, thankfully. But we do,

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I'm sort of revealing the magician's secrets here. But what we do is we record it on our end.

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I send it to Justin and he drops my comments in from the local recording on top of the phone sounding recording.

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And it sounds like I'm in studio. It sounds a whole lot better that way. And we try specifically not to talk over each other.

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In other words, this wouldn't work really well with Adnan Rashid, for example.

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That wouldn't go very well. But it worked with Brian McLaren. And I think it will work fairly well today in the program that we did today.

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I had less than 70 hours to prepare. Justin contacted me early

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Monday morning. I was the emergency backup man. And I think that's perfectly appropriate.

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I was not the first choice, nor should I have been the first choice. I happened to notice in reading one of my books that there was a...

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It's interesting sometimes I'll find books. And back in the olden days, they used to hand out these...

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Wow, it still says America West Airlines on it. Look at that. They used to hand out these ticket holders type thing.

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Remember those? They just hand you the boarding pass now. But it had advertisements on it and stuff like that.

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And so I looked at this one and it was from one of my trips back to St. Louis at the end of 2005.

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And so that sort of gave me some idea of right around the last time that I was focused on the subject of new perspectivism and so on and so forth was what?

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Seven and a half, eight years ago, somewhere around that timeframe. And so when he contacted me and said,

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Look, I'm just getting no joy in getting anyone at all to come on the program and to dialogue with NT Wright on the subject of justification.

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Would you be my emergency backup, man? I almost said no. I almost said no.

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I've had to decline. There are some times that Justin has contacted me on significantly less, shall we say, important issues.

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And I've had to say no. It hasn't been often. But I've had to say, you know, that's not my area.

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And this hasn't been my area for quite some time. I finished writing the book on justification back in 0304 or something like that.

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And. But I thought and I thought and I said, you know. The idea of of having a program without any response from someone who wouldn't take this perspective just just bothered me too much.

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So what do I do when I have to study very quickly? I get on my bike.

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And so I I fired up the Kindle. I grabbed all the old lectures I had listened to years ago. And I I got the

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Kindle recording while I was out. And I covered 151 miles since Monday listening and studying and preparing for this morning.

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I was troubled in the process. I really was troubled in process for many reasons.

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I was primarily troubled due to the fact that as I listened to a lot of what's on our side, good stuff on our side, important stuff on our side.

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I just realized that it is so this is such a difficult area.

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It is so complex. There are so many issues. I have a stack of books sitting here.

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I haven't moved anything from this morning. I've just left everything sitting right where it was or everything up on the screen or whatever.

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And I'm looking over here. Justification and variegated nomism.

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From 1 ,205 pages to volumes with all sorts of unpointed

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Aramaic and Greek and Latin and everything mixed in between. Just stuff that is boring beyond commentary most of the time.

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But important anyways. Massive amounts of material that one would have to somehow master to really delve into this area.

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And so a part of me was like, oh man, do I really do this? But a part of me was like, no,

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I need to because there are important issues to discuss here. But I was also troubled by the fact that the distinctions that need to be made between the various new perspectives frequently aren't made.

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You hear of new perspectivism as if it's a monolithic movement. It is not. A lot of new perspectivists have a very liberal perspective on things.

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For example, many new perspectivists, and I assume this. I assume this myself until corrected.

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I assume that all new perspectivists, for example, would function with a truncated Pauline corpus.

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Now even that you go, what? A truncated Pauline corpus. You go, oh, well,

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Paul wrote 14 letters, right? Well, if you accept Hebrews as being Pauline, but most people would say 13.

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Well, people like Bart Ehrman and others, they function on the basis of a seven -letter

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Pauline corpus. And so the pastoral epistles, Ephesians, Colossians, they are post -Pauline.

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They are not representative of Paul himself, but of a later disciple.

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Thank you, Turretonfan. So I've been on eight times. Eight times now. Well, with this Saturday. Eight times on, really.

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Oh, that's right, that's right. Roger and Faith Forrester. Oh, but wait a minute. We did more than one with Roger and Faith Forrester.

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We did two with them, with him. And I've done at least two with Adnan.

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And that's not listing. And there's David and Stoneborough. But that's not listing the one that I did with the fellow on King James Onlyism in Dublin.

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What? No, no, no, no. That was a TV show. Oh, man.

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I'm sorry. I wasn't even thinking about this. But there's a couple others that need to be added on there, actually. So I thought it was right around ten.

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And it is ten times. I bet I'm unbelievable. Anyways, I had assumed improperly that if you're a

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New Perspectivist, you probably had a truncated Pauline corpus. That's not the case. That's not the case.

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N .T. Wright is a brilliant man. There is no question about that. I have said that about many of the people

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I've debated. I've said John Dominic Crossan is at least 20 IQ points beyond me.

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And I had six months to prepare for John Dominic Crossan. There are brilliant people with whom we have strong disagreements.

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It doesn't change the fact that they're brilliant. And I sense some discomfort on the part of many

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Christians to admit that. I've especially noticed it when talking about Mormonism.

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I'll talk about some of the Mormons I know. And they're brilliant people. They're engineers. They're sharp.

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They're bright. They're brilliant people. They're well -educated, etc., etc., etc. And people are like, well, that's... Yeah, Ian Paisley's son.

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That's right. Thank you. Yes. It was Ian Paisley's son. Michael, I think. Was it

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Michael Paisley? I don't remember. Anyways, we did an unbelievable broadcast here.

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Brilliant people. And yet we have strong disagreements with them.

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And Guy Prentice -Waters has identified N .T. Wright as the single most influential New Testament scholar in Christendom today.

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And that's probably true. And if you've read any of his books, some of his books are 800, 900 pages long.

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With thousands of footnotes in them. Obviously, an encyclopedic knowledge of various things.

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It's going to be a challenge. And as D .A. Carson said, he is a world -class debater. And he can be very charming as well.

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Very charming as well. Including the invitation that I got after the program was over.

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The next time I'm in London to look him up and we'll have a beer together. I said, ah, those

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Anglicans. So, I knew I was going to be. I knew that in light of the subject, it was going to take everything

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I could to even make this useful. Kyle Paisley, thank you. To even make this useful to people.

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Because there's just so many background issues. If we just dive into a text and he's going to have to bring all this stuff in.

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And it's really, really difficult. What I wanted to do today. Thank you.

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Neil in Twitter also said Kyle Paisley. What I wanted to try to do was to bring some level of clarity and to focus on the real issues.

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Because a lot of people assume Wright believes things that Wright doesn't believe. They assume he's

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Jimmy Dunn. He's not Jimmy Dunn. And one thing that I came to the conclusion in doing this massive amount of study real fast.

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Is I had spent a lot of time with his book. What St. Paul really said. The 1997 book.

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Then you've had the exchange with John Piper. And I forget who directed me to it.

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Whoever it did. Whoever directed me to this. Thank you very, very much. I think it was in Channel.

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I don't remember. But the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. 54 .1.

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March 2011. Pages 49 through 63. Has N .T. Wright's article.

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Justification. Yesterday, today, and forever. And so what I basically said at the beginning of the program was. Of course

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I was going to call him Dr. Wright or Bishop or whatever. But he said call him Tom. I have. That's hard for me to do.

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It's the way I was raised. I just. It's just hard for me to do. But I managed to pull it off most of the time.

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By saying sir. And he immediately stopped and corrected me at that point. But that's just the way

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I was raised. Anyway. I said from the beginning. I said you know. I've seen a lot of stuff about you.

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And yet when I read you. You say that ain't what I believe. Now part of it is people saying.

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Well it's the logical outcome of what he believes. Okay. If you really have listened to him.

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Then I'll let you go to the logical outcome part. But may I offer a word of warning.

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Based on my own experience. Until you really understand where he's going. Coming from.

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Don't try to map where he's going. You got to know where he's coming from. To know where he's going. And a lot of people just don't.

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Partly. Partly. I'll lay part of this at his own doorstep. I see a difference. Between 1997 and 2011.

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I see development. I see actually a desire. To use more reformed terminology.

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Etc. But the fact of the matter is. A lot of what

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I've encountered. In lectures and things like that. I've encountered a lot of good stuff. But I also encountered.

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A lot of stuff that made me go. And made me sit back honestly.

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And say okay. You got to be consistent here dude. You've said you're going to do this. You don't have much time.

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How are you going to represent him? You have to represent him accurately. Why? Because I have to represent the

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Muslims accurately. And I have to represent the Mormons accurately. And I have to represent the Jehovah's Witnesses accurately. And that's what

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I've built my ministry on doing. Is trying as best I can. With my limited mental capacity.

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To accurately represent people. With whom I have substantial disagreement. And so.

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I said at the beginning of the thing. I'm going to use your Jets article. Because it's the most current thing.

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He's got. I guess his magnum opus on the subject is coming out in November. I'm going to get it. I need to get it.

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I've got to start keeping up with this. More than I have over the past few years. Yeah I've been focused on Islam.

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And that can't change. I need to stay there. I have much more to learn. But. This is important stuff.

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I think that much more work needs to be done in this area. I hope the conversation will be useful to you.

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And especially if you listen to this program. Maybe it will. Because what I want to do. In the time we have left. Which I've been yammering too long already.

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I marked up this Jets article. What I'm going to do. Is I'm going to go through with you. My dear listening audience.

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I'm going to go through this Jets article. And I'm going to read you everything I marked. And then make comments from that. How's that?

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That'll sort of give you a background. As to what I would like to have gotten to. And remember. We only had. I think it was an hour and ten minutes.

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An hour and ten minutes is hardly sufficient time. To even delve into defining.

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NT Wright's position versus anybody else's. Let alone really getting into the subject. So maybe this will help.

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I don't know. So I'm looking at the Jets article from 2011. And I knew

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I wasn't going to get into this. But I marked it anyways. He says. First let us make no mistake.

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This debate is about scripture and tradition. And about whether we allow scripture ever to say things. That our human traditions have not said.

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Now you see. Dr. Wright knows. That he is presenting a view. That no one before him.

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Has ever really enunciated. And it's a big thing to say. Basically from the days of Augustine on.

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We've blown it. We've missed it. We've completely missed. Not completely. That's one of the problems here.

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Is one of my critiques of him. Is that sometimes. He's. He goes too far. In his own criticisms this way.

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We have. Been asking the wrong questions. And we have missed. The proper emphases.

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I think that would be a fair way. Of summarizing what he would say. He says.

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Here then. I think it should be here then. Not here there. Here then is a great irony. It has often been said.

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Of the so -called new perspective. That in criticizing the Protestant reading of Paul. Is pushing us back towards Roman Catholicism.

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That is already silly. Has Ed Sanders become a Roman Catholic. Has Jimmy Dunn. Has any single person gone to Rome.

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As a result of the new perspective. Yes. In my. I'm now speaking. Yes. New perspectivism as a whole.

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And the federal vision movement. As well amongst reformed people. Has been a. And. Entree.

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Into Rome. It has. Functioned as a bridge across the Tiber. There's no question about that.

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We didn't get. To do that. But it goes on to say. Get to discuss that. I'm sorry. The point is not the reformers had a faulty hermeneutic.

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Therefore the Catholics must be right. Get the hermeneutic right. And you will see it. The critique is all the stronger.

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Just because they use a faulty. Faulty hermeneutic to attack Rome. That does not mean. There was nothing to attack.

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Or that a better hermeneutic. Would not have done the job better. Now that's interesting.

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And one thing you do need to understand. Is that. NT right. Believes. That he.

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And almost he alone. But he. Is actually defending.

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Sola Scriptura. And that. We who hold to.

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What he would call the old perspective. Which he at times. Identify.

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Identifies us as. Geocentrists. The sun is still going around the earth. And he develops that analogy.

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In his response to John Piper. Which I didn't find useful. And I said that today. I said. I don't find that to be a useful.

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Way of doing things. That sort of gets people's. Hackles up. But. Anyway. He believes.

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He is defending Sola Scriptura. Against us. That we are not being consistent here. And if. And folks. If I'm. Sensitive to anything.

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I am going to be sensitive. To the allegation. That I. Am not practicing.

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Sola Scriptura. And so. It is good.

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Always to be reminded. That we cannot. Make our traditions.

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An authority. That determines. What Scripture is actually saying.

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Scripture always has to be. The Norma Nomata. The norm. That norms all others.

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The norm of all norms. So. He says.

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On this underlying question. I am standing firm. With the great reformers. Against those who.

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However. Baptist. Their official theology. Are in fact. Neo Catholics. I think he's talking about D .A.

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Carson. A few folks there. Maybe. Maybe. Then he says.

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Second following from this. It is always important to remember. That New Testament Scripture. Is the original. First century. Apostolic testimony. To the great.

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One off fact. Of Jesus himself. The doctrine. Of the authority of Scripture. Is part of the belief. That the living

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God. Acted uniquely. And decisively. In. Through. And as Jesus of Nazareth. Israel's Messiah. To die for sins.

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And to rise again. To launch the new creation. Again. Is a central Protestant insight. That this happened once for all.

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Ephipox. Straight out of the book of Hebrews. It does not have to happen. Again. And again. Then I.

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I just mark this. Because it's interesting. At the time. In the early 16th century. Some Roman Catholics.

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Were implying that Jesus. Had to be sacrificed. Again. In every mass. Now I don't know. If you put some Roman Catholics. Because he recognizes.

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That modern Roman Catholicism. Says there's only one sacrifice. And that it's represented. In the mass. Or if he was just saying.

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That was one stream. Of Roman Catholic theology. I didn't get a chance to.

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I didn't get a chance to ask. I continue on. Now of course.

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It is true. That some people. In the first century. Were asking some questions. By the way. I'm skipping through this. Just going to things I've marked.

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So if you're reading it. You're going. What? But don't worry about it. Now of course. It is true. That some people.

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In the first century. Were asking some questions. Which have some analogy. With those of Luther. The rich young ruler.

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Wants to know how to inherit. The age to come. Not how to go to heaven. By the way. But Jesus does not answer.

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As Luther would have done. He sends him back. To the commandments. And tops off by telling him. To sell up.

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And become a disciple. Part of the problem. Is that Luther's question. Was conceived. In thoroughly medieval terms.

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About God. Grace. And righteousness. Put the question. That way. And Luther. And Luther's answer. Was the right one.

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The fact. That the words. Are biblical words. Does not mean. That theologians. In 1500. Meant what writers. In AD 50. Meant by them.

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Or rather by their Greek. Antecedents. Now you need to understand. What he's saying there. Because that's where.

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People. Miss. The vote. In their criticisms. You've got to. You've got to accurately.

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Represent the guy. Or he will rip your lips off. He really will. He's a good debater.

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And you don't. You don't misrepresent the guy. And I don't think. That he would say that I did.

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I think if. One of my goals. Today. Was that if someone were to ask him. As if he's going to even remember me.

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You know tomorrow. Probably won't. But that's okay. But.

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If someone were to ask him. Remember that guy. You talked to on the radio. An American. Did he accurately represent you.

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My goal was. He would say. Well yeah he did. And I appreciated that. I disagreed with him.

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And I think he's wrong about this. That and the other thing. But he accurately represented me. That has been for me.

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A goal. Many times. I think Rich will remember. When we were standing in the radio station.

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In Salt Lake City. Talking with some people.

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We had just been doing a debate with. On the air. You know. One of the key things.

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For me is to hear someone say. I disagree with you. But at least you know what we believe. And hopefully that's what.

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As well. Anyway. I continue on. Because I need to get to the important stuff. Because I really do want you.

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To understand this. One word in particular. About the big story of scripture.

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The story which is presupposed. Throughout the New Testament. How much clearer can I make this. The big story. Is about the creator's plan.

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For the world. This plan always envisaged. Human beings. Being God's agent. In that plan. Human sin.

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That's their problem. But God's problem is bigger. Namely that his plan. For the world. Is thwarted. So God calls

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Abraham. To do the mischief. He wants to talk about.

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The big picture. He wants to talk about. beginning and end. Now. The way we talk about this.

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Is we talk about God's covenants. And we talk about the threads. And the. The concepts.

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That are woven. Throughout the text of scripture. Et cetera. Et cetera. Et cetera. But you normally don't hear it.

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Quite this. Israel dominated. But it is. And in fact.

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For N .T. Wright. The key. Narrative concept. For the interpretation.

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Of all the Bible. And especially the New Testament. Is the concept of.

24:56

The exile. Israel in exile. That is for him. What gives. Cohesion.

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To the interpretation. Of everything else. I don't agree with that. I don't necessarily think.

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That Daniel 9. Is what's in the background. Of Paul's thinking everywhere. But that's one of the main issues. That. That comes up.

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And that really didn't get discussed. It was only mentioned. But. Was not discussed today. So he says.

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And this is in. The point of the covenant. With Israel. In the whole. Of scripture. Is that.

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It is the means. By which God. Is rescuing. The children of Adam. And so. Restoring.

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The world. That is. N .T. Wright's. Understanding.

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Of. Covenant theology. In essence. And. You have to be prepared.

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To deal with that. And to see. Where the emphasis. Leads. Let's see here.

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Fourth. And last. Relief. I'm still in the preliminary point. I'm still in the preliminary points. And I'm already at 425. Sorry about that. It is.

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Of course. True. That all variations. The so -called. New perspective on Paul. Look back as a historic marker. To Ed Sanders.

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Nineteen. Seventy -seven. Book Paul. And Palestinian Judaism. But as I had. And by the way. He said today.

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On the program. He has spent more time. Since. Over the past number of years.

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Distancing himself. From. Sanders. Than in agreeing. With Sanders. So he said.

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Some people might disagree. But that's what he said. Need to know what he said. But as I had assumed.

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Was now well known. There are many variations. Within the new perspective. As there are scholars. Writing on the subject. And I in particular.

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Have spent. Well here it is. Almost. As much time. Disagreeing with Sanders. On many things. Including his analysis.

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Of Judaism. As I have. In a different context. With Dom Croson. I had already reached a point.

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In my own research. Before I read Sanders. Where I had begun to read. Romans 10. Three. Very differently. From the traditional reading.

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Indicating that Paul's critique. Of his fellow Jews. Was not that they were legalists. Trying to earn merit.

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But that they were nationalists. Trying to keep God's blessing. For themselves. Instead of being the conduit. For that blessing to flow.

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To the Gentiles. What does that mean? What does that mean?

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You've got to. You've got to understand. What that means. And one of my. Criticisms today. Was. Well. You can't.

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Cut. Apart. The motivations. Of the Jews. So that they have. Solely. A national.

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Issue going on. And that they do not have. A works righteousness. Issue going on. It just.

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Flattens Paul out. Too much. To. To. To try to. Make the right.

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Paradigm fit. You have to. Flatten. Too many terms out. And look.

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We do that all the time. When we don't think through. Biblically. What terms mean. It's just. Well. Our systematic theology says.

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These terms mean this. And so. We flatten them out. That way. And so. We've got to be.

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Consistent. Here. And. Recognize. We're doing that. But.

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It. Also. Requires. The reading. Of particular. Texts. In a very. Unusual way.

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In fact. Sometimes. He will admit. The reading. That he suggests. Has never been suggested. By. Anyone.

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Else. Before. And that. Got us. Into some. Interesting. Discussion. That. Got us.

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Into some. Interesting. Discussion. One of the. Criticisms. I think. It's a valid. Criticism. Is that. To. Maintain.

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His. Presupposed. Overarching. Pauline. Narrative. He has.

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To. Reduce. Engage in. Reductionism. Engage in.

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Flattening out. I've. The term. That. I'd. Used. Back. Seven. Eight. Years. Ago. When I was.

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Lecturing. On this. Was. Providing. Monochromatic. Definition. Of justification.

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Remember. The old. Monochrome. Monitors. Some. Of you. Do not. Some. Of you. Going. I had.

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I had. The first. Of course. I had a monochrome. Green monitor. On my compact. And then I had a monochrome. Amber.

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Monitor. That was nice. Then I got my first RGB. The resolution of what? Two by two? I forget what that was.

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Wasn't much. 640 by 480. Yeah. I think it's 640 by 480. It was probably the first RGB monitors.

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We had. Anyway. Um. Monochrome.

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One. One color. So everything was just shades of one color. And that's sort of what we've got here.

29:36

He so enforces the idea that the righteousness of God is

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God's covenant faithfulness. And that it's all this big narrative being fulfilled that I think some clear differentiations between the uses of that get lost.

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I really do. Tried to bring that up. But again. We just couldn't get into a whole lot of depth today.

30:01

I was. I was doing my best. As it was. Justin at one point said that he was doggy paddling trying to keep up.

30:08

A couple times it got a little. Not heated. He took a couple shots in my direction.

30:14

But it didn't get heated. I felt that I needed to be just as respectful as John Piper was. I think

30:20

John Piper was tremendously respectful in the comments and how he made comments in his book.

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And I did not feel that the gospel would be in any way shape or form promoted or helped if I was in any way disrespectful to a man who is clearly a very accomplished scholar and has said many, many, many, many true things.

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Many true things. And that shouldn't bother you. You can still disagree with someone who's said many true things.

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But I'm getting way, way behind here. I can interrupt. He does take a shot at justification variegated gnomism.

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However, it simply will not do to cite those volumes called justification variegated gnomism as though they have disproved

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Sanders' reading of Judaism. Carson's summary at the end of the first volume is disingenuous.

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Most of the authors have not drawn the conclusions he wanted them to draw. I think

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I may be reading between the lines, but I think there's a lot between those lines. I think there's a lot between those lines that maybe

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Tom Wright would tell me about at a pub sometime in the future, but anyways, that's a different issue.

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Paul's letters obviously arise from a wide variety of different needs. In most of his letters, justification is barely mentioned.

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Where it is, apart from the one -liners, he calls them the one -liners, like 1

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Corinthians 1 .30 and 2 Corinthians 5 .21. Well, okay, they're one line, so they're one -liners.

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That doesn't mean that they're not vitally important. The context of the letter indicates a particular set of questions.

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Then he starts going to Philippians and Galatians and Romans. This is his bailiwick. He says,

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I am merely pointing out, which anyone can see if they look at the text, that the basic question has to do with membership in the people of God in Abraham's family in Israel.

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This is obvious in Philippians 3, where the righteousness of my own, which Paul forswears, is not his legalistic self -achievement.

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It is explicitly his membership in physical Israel, circumcised on the eighth day of the race of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, of the

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Hebrew of Hebrews, when it comes to law of Pharisee, when it comes to the old church persecutor, when it comes to righteousness under the law of blameless. Of course, there is a sense in which that contains something that could be called legalism.

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But it is not the detached legalism of the proto -Pelagian. It is the covenantal legalism of the

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Jew, for whom the law is the way of demonstrating and maintaining membership in the ethnic people of God.

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The problem with this is, there is an element of truth. And this discussion is very much, very, very much an issue of weighting things, not

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W -A -I -T, W -E -I -G -H -T, weighting things, how much weight you place upon certain things.

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And N .T. Wright's weight is placed way out of the mainstream of Reformed exegesis and interpretation on these matters.

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It doesn't mean that he's not pointing out true things. And one of the things I get, maybe one of the reasons that I haven't struggled with these things the way that N .T.

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Wright assumes that we all have, and I mentioned this briefly in the program, was that I really studied

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Judaism when I was in seminary. Back in the olden days, I recognized, again,

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I was already involved in apologetics, and I just recognized that this is really an important area, a vitally important area, for doing apologetics.

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And so, there was a, you know, I haven't been to that Jewish bookstore in years. I wonder if it's still there. I'll have to look it up, because I really like going over there, like talking to folks.

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But, I'll go to the Jewish bookstore, and I would buy, you know, I have the Mishnah.

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What now? You didn't walk in and ask for the Old Testament. That's right. I didn't ask for the Old Testament. I didn't use the name

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Yahweh. None of those things. No, I had already been warned about that. But, anyhow,

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I got in there, and I had purchased the Mishnah. This is back before Lagos.

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I've got all this stuff on Lagos now. I realize that. But, it still looks really nice in my library, I've got to admit.

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I had purchased the Mishnah. I had purchased the Sinsino Talmud, all 22 volumes. And, I even took,

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I took classes at the Jewish Community Center. I took classes from Jewish rabbis on Midrash, and things like that.

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I really took the time to try to get that perspective.

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And so, I've always had, I think, a much deeper appreciation of the different kinds of Judaism, and different strains in Judaism, than a lot of people have.

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And, Wright is primarily responding to a real monolithic, the

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Jews were just trying to earn their way to heaven type thing. And so, he frequently even accuses us, though when pressed he'll say, well, the

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Reform folks don't do this. But, just sort of in a blanket way, he'll accuse the old perspectivists of thinking that the

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Jews believed you could pull yourselves up by your bootstraps. Old Pelagianism, didn't need grace at all.

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No! And, at least I did today get the opportunity on the program to point out that the issue of the

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Reformation was never, ever, the necessity of grace. It was, in fact, the sufficiency of grace.

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And, I did get to at least mention that New Perspectivism as a whole, and even

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N .T. Wright's position individually, makes me wonder how he can avoid a synergistic compromise of sovereign grace and salvation.

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Now, he will say he doesn't, but I did raise the issue.

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I did get it out there. And so, notice he says, of course, there's a sense in which that contains something that could be called legalism.

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That's right. And, it's the kind, it's the very kind of legalism that I've always read Calvin responding to, that I've read

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Reformed theologians responding to, when they read Paul. I think that's exactly what we've seen as well.

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Now, here's one that I put a circle next to. And, when I put a circle next to it, that means this is very, very, very important.

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Here is Peter at Antioch, first eating with the Gentiles, and then when people come from James, separating himself. It simply will not do to generalize this problem, to demythologize it, to transform it into the modern formulation according to which

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Paul's opponents were offering a message of Christ and, Christ and a bit of law,

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Christ and a bit of self -help religion, whatever. Of course, in a sense, that is true. And, this is one of the things that makes interpreting rights so difficult.

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Of course, in a sense, that is true. But, what mattered was that the Galatian agitators were doing it the other way around.

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They were saying, ethnic Jewish covenant membership and Jesus. They were not adding something extra to Jesus.

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They were adding to Jesus. They were trying to add Jesus onto the thing they already had.

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And, Paul's whole point is that it cannot be done. I, through the law, die to the law that I might live to God. I am crucified with the

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Messiah. I mark that off because I have to disagree.

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The Judaizers were saying to people who had already confessed faith in Jesus, you need to be circumcised.

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So, they were making an addition to faith in Christ. It wasn't just, well,

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I suppose you could say you have to be one of us before that can avail you.

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But, they were actually saying to people who had already made statements of faith in Christ, they need to be circumcised.

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So, Paul's response to them is, if you're going to go that way, you've got to go all the way. You have to go all the way.

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And, this didn't come up today. Again, a thousand things didn't come up today. But, I would like to have asked about comments he made in his 1997 work about how there are people who are justified by faith who don't know they're justified by faith and specifically making reference to people in Galatia who are justified by faith who didn't know they were justified by faith.

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The only context I can give that is the Judaizers themselves. And, I wanted to be able to ask him, what do you do with what

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Paul said when he specifically refers to them and says they've been cut off from Christ?

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I would like to know. He goes on, I leave aside Romans 3 for the moment. I have said enough to remind you that the context of Paul's major justification passages is not the individual search for a gracious God, but the question of how you know who belongs to God's people.

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Now, is there truth in recognizing that Paul was very concerned about knowing who

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God's people were? Yes. How many times have I said, the thing that is being fought against in Acts 15, the thing that is being fought against in Galatians, is the specter that Paul saw of a division between a

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Jewish and Gentile Christian church. No question about it.

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Are we guilty of having, are there people who have reduced our side down to the point where all it is is, well, how does a person get to heaven?

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Well, hey, let's face it. One of the reasons that his words resonate with a lot of people is because we're sick and tired of the shallow individualistic evangelicalism where it's me and my

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Bible under a tree and I'm just getting my fire insurance so I can get to heaven. There's nothing about the church.

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There's nothing about God's greater plans. It's all about us. None about the honor of the

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Trinity and the glorification of God and all the rest of that stuff. And, you know, you can really get a knee -jerk reaction to that.

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It'll give you hives. And I've run into it and I don't like it either. But, but, it doesn't mean that the individual search for a gracious God is to be separated from how you know who belongs to God's people because it's only

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God's people who are looking for the gracious God. You see? It all goes together.

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It continues on. And belonging to God's people, call it ecclesiology if you like, is not something detached from soteriology.

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And here's something I marked, and I think I even mentioned this to him as a criticism.

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It says, And belonging to God's people, call it ecclesiology if you like, is not something detached from soteriology, as in so much low -grade

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Protestant polemic. The vital and central questions of forgiveness, of peace with God, of assurance of salvation in the age to come, these are not questions to be detached from the

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Old Testament, from the promises of God made to Abraham. They are contained within them.

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As Paul insists in Romans 9, notice, by the way, how the normal Protestant reading or misreading of Paul always tends to leave chapters 9 to 11 to one side, it is to Israel that the promises belong, the promises now fulfilled in the

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Messiah. My main point then about the context of Paul's justification language is that the question of justification is always bound up with the question of Israel, of the coming together of Jews and Gentiles in the

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Messiah. Okay, I can continue on. It is about the establishment of a covenant with that person and their descendants.

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I'm not going to have time to flesh that out. Let me get down to the law court stuff.

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He has emphasized over and over again that the proper analogy that we need to see in regards to the righteousness of God is the law court.

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Now, if you're like me, and in this audience I'm going to assume most of you are

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Reformed, if you're like me, as soon as you hear law court, what are you thinking of? You're thinking of Romans 8, aren't you?

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You're thinking of who should bring a charge against God's elect. God is the one who justifies, Jesus Christ is the one who died, rather it was raised from the dead.

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That's the law court you're thinking of. That's not the law court he's thinking of. That's where the confusion can so often come in.

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So I marked, for example, his saying, it is precisely the ancient Hebrew law court that is envisaged in which two parties appear before a judge.

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And see, that's one of my criticisms. It's not a two -party law court.

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The New Testament version is a three -party law court. God, the convicted sinner, and Jesus, the intermediary.

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That's where you've got to find the newness of the

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New Covenant. I'm concerned that the good Dr. Wright's viewpoint doesn't leave a whole lot of room for the newness of the

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New Covenant. And that's a problem. That's a major problem. That needs to be kept in mind.

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All humans are in the dock before God, the impartial judge. All have sinned and come short of God's glory. But God has made covenant promises to and through Israel.

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That is what Romans 2 .17 -3 .9 is about. And by the way, if Bethany House ever asks me, and they've already asked me to do another edition of Forgotten Trinity.

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If Bethany House ever asks me, you didn't know that? I hadn't told you. If Bethany House ever asks me to do a new edition of The God Who Justifies, I still could not expand it out to deal with New Perspectivism as a whole.

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But I would definitely expand the exegesis of the key texts that are directly relevant to New Perspectivism.

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And would, at the very least, ask to be able to expand the footnotes.

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I know it's endnotes, but we've got footnotes in the Koran books. I'm sort of hoping for the future we could have footnotes for other things, too.

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Because the section on Romans 2 would have to get a lot bigger. A lot bigger.

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Because there's much I need to say. For Wright, Romans 2 is key.

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And he criticized me. I'm not sure he refuted my interpretation, but he criticized me for my comments on Romans 2, even though I was placing it in the overarching context of Romans, which he has disagreements with.

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Not so much my conclusions as with the methodology by which I get there. And the terminology.

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But God has made covenant promises to and through Israel. That is what Romans 2 .17 -3 .9 is partly all about.

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How is he to be faithful to those promises? Answer, through the Messiah, Jesus, who has been the one and only faithful Israelite, embodying

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God's covenant faithfulness, and hence evoking through his death as an act of sheer divine grace, the answering faith, which is the recognizable badge of a renewed covenant people, the people who turn out to be the people of God promised

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Abraham in the first place, the people composed equally of believing Gentiles and believing

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Jews. This is the action, the sin -bearing obedience of the last

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Adam to the Israel vocation as in, for instance, Isaiah 53, through which

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God's faithfulness to the covenant generates that forgiveness of sins because of which there can now be a sin -forgiven people.

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What then does it mean within law court setting for someone to be righteous? This is important. What then does it mean within law court setting for someone to be righteous?

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Simply this, that the court has found in their favor it means that they have been declared to be in the right.

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They have not been granted or imputed a righteousness which belongs to someone else. The judge's righteousness consists of his trying the case fairly in accordance with law, showing no favoritism, punishing the wrongdoer and upholding the widow, the orphan, and the defenseless.

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When the court finds in favor of one of the two parties at law, there is no sense in which their righteous status carries any of these judge -specific connotations.

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Now here is his big disagreement with imputation. He does not believe that God's righteousness, which is merely his faithfulness to the covenant, can be imputed to anyone.

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The righteousness which they have is their right standing in the law court now that the verdict has been announced.

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Now, where do I disagree with this? Well, I disagree with this because I don't believe

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Paul leaves it in the Hebrew law court two -person judge and the judged context.

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He just doesn't. And when you bring Jesus into this, you've got to start talking about his life, his righteousness, and that righteousness

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I don't think can be left as a monochrome righteousness but involves his perfect life as well.

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And we are judged in this law court context in him.

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So we're in union with Christ. That's Paul's whole point. Who can condemn us?

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God is the one who justifies, and it is Christ who died, yea, rather rose again, right?

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And so if we are united with him, then we participate in his death, burial, and resurrection. And I think Tom Wright would generally agree with everything

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I just said, but what he doesn't want to do is to say that because of our union with Christ, his righteousness, positive and negative, worked out on the cross, worked out in his perfect life, is imputed to us, credited to us as the basis upon which we stand before God.

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Instead, from his perspective, God declares us righteous. We're in the covenant people, and at the end of life there is going to be a final justification that will say that we are right, that takes into consideration everything

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God has done in our life, including the spirit -generated good works.

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Now this came up again. You're going, oh, wait a minute. Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. This sounds big here.

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Well, it is. Because it goes on, just on this page. I'll go ahead and read this.

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The righteousness which God has in this case is simply not the same thing as the righteousness, covenant membership, of those who have faith.

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In other words, God's righteous in saying you're forgiven because of Jesus, but that's not the same thing as covenant faithfulness, and you're having faith.

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This is in italics. To think otherwise, to insist that one needs righteousness in the sense of moral character or repute or whatever in order to stand unashamed before God and that lacking any of one's own, one must find some from somewhere else or someone else, shows that one is still thinking in medieval categories of justitia,

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Latin for justice, rather than in biblical categories of law, court, and covenant.

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Here is where you have the biggest divergence. Now he will say elsewhere.

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You get everything we're talking about by going a different direction. I'm not convinced of that.

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And one of the things that bothers me and that, you know, next time

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I go to London, I'm going to take him up and I'd like to sit down with a man because I think I could ask if we're not...

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See, we were under such constraints today. We had so little time. And we also had to try to keep in mind the audience that has not done a lot of this reading.

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But I'd like to ask him some very direct and blunt questions. And if he gives me a

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British answer, I'll ask an American question again, in essence.

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Think about this. To think otherwise, to insist that one needs righteousness in the sense of moral character or repute,

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Tom, since that's what you asked me to call you Tom, isn't that, in essence, what you're saying?

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The final statement of justification over the entire life lived actually involves is that the

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Spirit has brought about this moral character or repute? Where do Reformed folks ever define the righteousness that is imputed to us,

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Christ's righteousness, as moral character or repute? It's the obedience of Christ in his death and in his obedient life.

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It is the fulfillment of law. It's not just some moral character or repute or whatever.

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Like, whatever? Or whatever? There's a little bit of dismissiveness there that concerns me.

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And I don't think that categories of justitia, for him, that's a complete separation from anything

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Paul's thinking about. I don't think so. He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf that we might have made the rights of God in him.

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He limits that solely to the Apostles. The Apostles, according to N .T.

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Wright in 2 Corinthians 5 .21, by pursuing their apostolic ministry have become a testimony to God's faithfulness even in the midst of what the world would say is failure on their part.

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That doesn't explain why he says he made him to be sin. I'm sorry,

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I just, it's just not there. Just not there. And he may say

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I'm compromising sola scriptura to point this out, but I'm not. But the fact that no one else has ever come up with that has to be taken into consideration.

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I mean, where has the Spirit of God been for 2 ,000 years? There have been a lot of people that have wrestled with that text.

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There's a lot of people that have read that in the original languages. You know, Justin pointed out that he was simply reading a

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Greek New Testament. He doesn't have to have a translation. Well, that's good. I've often said my best sermons are when

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I'm just reading the Greek as well. But we aren't the only people who've read Greek. There's lots of people who read

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Greek. There are heretics who read Greek. There are Greeks who read Greek. Okay? Just reading

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Greek doesn't mean anything. But there have been lots of people who've struggled with this stuff in the original language.

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For years. It didn't come up with that understanding. It didn't come up with that understanding. I have thus, by drawing in the covenant, anticipated the next point.

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The law court in question is the covenantal one in which God's promises to Abraham are at stake. The right standing of those in whose favor the court has found is at the same time the covenantal status they enjoy as members of Abraham's true family, which includes among its privileges, as I have insisted, the assurance of sins forgiven and of the promise that those whom

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God justified, them he also glorified. Now, the reason I marked that was

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I really wanted to ask where he stands on the existence of a particular elect people.

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Didn't get a chance to. Because justified and glorified, that's the end of the golden chain. What comes before that?

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Foreknown? Called. He says, how can anyone disagree with this?

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We are not at liberty to pick and choose in God's word. We are bound to search it all, to study it all, to make sure we interpret each element in the light of the whole, and the whole in the light of each element.

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I couldn't have said it any better. And you've got to recognize he thinks he's doing that.

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And you will not get anywhere until you recognize he thinks he's doing that.

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Just my experience. I'm not going to finish this up, am I? No, I'm not.

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And I've just gotten to the exegesis and exposition part. So I think this is important enough.

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I hope you think it's important enough to dive back into it. I will let you know ahead of time that we please watch the

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Twitter feed, watch Facebook, watch the blog, though Twitter and Facebook are faster than the blog.

56:16

Because right now it's easier for me to do that. I'm hoping maybe with the new website,

56:23

I'll be able to have a way of when I post something on Twitter or Facebook, automatically going to the blog.

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I bet you there's some way of doing that. There's probably a plug -in someplace that would allow that to happen.

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But anyway, keep your eyes open for an announcement. Because next week is all the stuff, we're going to hopefully have some banner ads up, is the debate with Michael Brown, the debate with Shadid Lewis, the dialogue with James Tabor.

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Shortly after that, I head to Dublin, Ireland, for a debate at Trinity College Dublin and at UCD.

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Two debates, two nights with Adnan Rashid. So this is an amazing month.

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But I've got some studying I need to do. You know how I study. And why may we need to move

57:13

Tuesday's dividing line to Monday? Weather. It's real simple. The only way

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I'm going to catch up, I have not been able to do any preparation for these other debates over the past couple of days because I've been studying

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Andy Wright and trying to understand him so that I could represent him accurately, because I think that is just incumbent upon me.

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It's just the way God made me. I think that's important. So I've got a lot of catching up to do. And since I've got a lot of catching up to do, that's a lot of writing to do basically.

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And so looking at the weather on Monday and Tuesday, we may have to do some moving of things around a little bit.

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We'll try to let you know one way or the other. But I will try to continue this because I think it's important.

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I'm trying to make it clear and understandable. Hopefully it is helpful to you. But we will continue with this and then get back to all those other things that we need to get back to here on The Dividing Line.

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Thanks for listening. Thanks for your prayers, those who prayed for this morning. And, again, unbelievable radio broadcast.

58:08

You can subscribe to it in iTunes. And it should be posted sometime Saturday afternoon,

58:14

London time, which will be Saturday morning, our time. You can listen in and hopefully what I've said here will help you to understand a little bit better what was discussed between myself and N .T.

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Wright. We'll see you next week. God bless. I believe we're standing at the crossroads.

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Let this moment slip away. We must contend for the faith above us fought for.

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59:32

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