Overview of this series
- First post, background issues
- Example passages
- Reductionism in Wright (This post)
- Conclusion
But, (did you sense the “but” coming?)—Wright has been extraordinarily reductionist even as he has recovered this emphasis. Wright does a fascinating job of helping us understand the significance of, say, circumcision as a work of the law. But his approach to the totality of law is baffling. Yes, one can see how a part of the law consists of covenant markers, but law necessarily must also contain God’s moral standard for Israel. Further, one can see how God’s righteousness might be revealed in his covenant faithfulness, but God’s righteousness is surely “wider” than his faithfulness to the covenant. Consider the following passage from Deuteronomy:
Deuteronomy 28:58-59: If you are not careful to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, the LORD your God, then the LORD will bring on you and your offspring extraordinary afflictions, afflictions severe and lasting, and sicknesses grievous and lasting.
A passage like this brings the comprehensive function of law with respect to God’s own identity (nature) into high relief.
Because Wright’s way of reading demands narrow restrictions of law and righteousness, justification, which is inseparable from concepts of law and righteousness, necessarily is also given a narrowed scope. Justification becomes primarily not about the importance of the news that God makes right, as the news whom God makes right (covenant members). In a Reformational way of reading, with its broader, and, I think, more fully Biblical conceptions of law and righteousness, justification has a “wider” scope. The accent is not just on whom God makes right, but what it means that God makes sinners right. Whereas Wright would chiefly restrict that meaning to the good news that now, the Gentiles are “in,” the Reformation reading of justification is far greater news than only the inclusion of Gentiles: the failure addressed by justification is the totality of human failure (whether covenant marker pride or any other sin against God’s requirements), as in Romans 5. God justifies those who have faith in Christ, even though they have utterly failed to meet God’s standard of righteousness in all their works, of whatever kind. Yet, anyone who claims to stand before God on any basis of meeting God’s requirements is not justified (not just those who insist that they have the proper covenant markers).
Wright and other New Perspective on Paul (”NPP”) folks do not like this wide Reformation reading, because they see it targeted at the medieval concept of merit. They insist (rightly or wrongly) that STJ could not have had merit in mind. However, the Reformation approach is not centrally about merit. Ulimately, it is about the infinite gulf between God and humanity because of sin. It is about utter human failure to meet God’s requirements, always falling short of God’s mark. From the human side, nothing can be done to hit God’s mark in a way that would make oneself “right with God”. But those who have faith in Christ—these will be justified by God. God will deem them to have met his standard (because he attributes Christ’s meeting of the standard to them—but that’s the subject of another post).
It might be useful to look at another example of Wright’s reduction at work:
Galatians 3:10: For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.”
Here, Wright has to perform some interesting work to get around a fuller understanding of works of the law and the curse that comes from this fuller understanding. Here’s how Wright interacts with this passage:
His way of telling the story of Abraham makes it abundantly clear that the promises God made to the patriarch cannot be fulfilled through Torah. According to Galatians 3:10-14, God promised Abraham a worldwide family, but the Torah presents Israel, the promise bearers, with a curse. God deals with the curse in the death of Jesus, so that the promise may flow through to the world, renewing the covenant with Israelas well. According to 3:15-22, God promised Abraham a single worldwide family, but the Torah would forever keep Jews and Gentiles in separate compartments (exactly the problem of 2:11-21 and, we may assume, of the Galatian congregations). See Wright’s full essay on Galatians here.
Note how the requirement to abide by all things in the book of the law, the requirement to do all that is in the law, which is a curse for those who do not do them, gets subtly morphed into a curse that somehow the Torah becomes a block that would always keep out the Gentiles, if Jesus had not died to unblock and let the promise flow to the world. This is not what the passage says is the real curse, which is failing to do all that God requires in his law. Yet, Wright must narrow the curse here, or he would have to let in a much fuller understanding of law.