Introduction.
In this first post, I’ll interact with Bird’s introductory chapter 1, which is short.

From the very beginning, Bird makes it clear that this book has the ambitious goal of drawing together two approaches to justification which have been in contention and even hot dispute.

The burden of this project is to demonstrate that reformed and “new” readings of Paul are indispensable to attaining a full understanding of Paul’s soteriology. An analysis of Galatians and Romans demonstrates that the covenantal and forensic dimensions of justification go hand in glove. . . . This is a book I felt I had to write . . . also to offer a conciliatory and mediating position in the current war being waged in evangelicalism about justification, the New Perspective on Paul, and NT Wright.

–Bird, The Saving Righteousness of God, p. 1, [from now on, when I give only a page number, I am referring to this book of Bird's].

What then, are the strengths and weakness of both views as Bird sees them?

Wright indicates that his is a Reformational back-ground. He’s a “card-carrying Calvinist,” p. 2. But even from such a background, there are two strands of Pauline thought that account for justification: the idea of union with Christ (the Pauline “in Christ”), and the concept of forensic justification (that God declares righteous those who have faith in Christ, by reckoning Christ’s righteousness to their “account.” Bird says that he, like a Calvin, “affirmed both” without knowing “how to relate the two concepts together,” p. 2.

Bird’s study of New Perspective works and Robert Gundry’s exegetical analysis of justification texts led him to see, that at an exegetical level, “these texts do not espouse imputation.” However, unlike, say, NT Wright, Bird is willing to say that imputation is a valid theological construct at the systematic theological level.

Imputed righteousness remains a legitimate way of expressing the forensic nature of justification in light of the representative natures of Adam and Christ. . . though imputed righteousness is not “true” at the exegetical level, in the theatre of Systematic Theology it can hold its own.

–p. 3

Yet, because Bird does not see imputation at the directly exegetical level, he prefers to speak of Paul’s model of justification as “incorporated righteousness,” a term which he will unpack particularly in chapter 4 of his book.

What does this mean for how “Reformational” Bird’s view is? He may not prefer the term “imputation,” although allowing it at a theological level, yet his view of what is overarchingly at issue in justification is far more Reformational than New Perspective:

There is a tendency in the NPP to sometimes squeeze all of Paul’s righteousness/justification language into social categories. But I cannot believe for a minute that “covenant membership” is the exhaustive meaning of justification. Resultantly, NPP advocates either deny, or more often than not underrate, the way that Paul construes justification as affecting a person’s vertical relationship with God and not merely their standing with other Christians. In Paul’s thinking, justification predominantly functions to address the anthropological problem of human sin, it explains God’s contention against human wickedness, articulates the change of status from condemnation to vindication that occurs in the dispensation of Christian faith, and explicates the inability of the law to provide a means of salvation.

–pp. 3

This represents, very much, the Reformational understanding of the large-scale theological “background” of justification.

What then, does Bird see as the NPP contribution?

several of its authors were spot on in giving us a corrective to caricatures of Judaism as completely legalistic and identifying Paul’s ministry in the context of trying to normalize Jew and Gentile relationships in the early church. I think that Paul did confront Jewish exclusivism as at least one facet of his critique of Judaism (in general) and the Christian judaizers (in particular). N.T. Wright raises a valid point when he says that for Paul what counts is grace not race.

–p. 3

In closing

I’ll close my presentation of Bird’s introduction with this quote in which he gives a further preview of and definition for his whole project. If you are familiar with the debates on justifcaiton, you’ll see how he hits most if not all of the major issues in this quote:

I intend to argue . . . that Paul has a doctrine of the saving righteousness of God whereby God acquits and vindicates the ungodly because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, and what is more, this enacted verdict is the gateway for membership into the cosmopolitan people of God. The saving righteousness of God means the end of all boasting whether it is in performance or possession of the law, whether it is in one’s ethnicity or religious effort. Justification is the act whereby God creates a new people, with a new status, in a new covenant, as a foretaste of a new age. Justification is forensic (it refers to status not moral state), eschatological (the verdict of judgment day is declared in the present), covenantal (Jews and Gentiles belong at one fellowship table), and is effective (sanctification cannot be subsumed under justification but neither can they be completely separated). In this sense, I hope to offer a mediating position between the NPP and its most arduous critics with a view to marking out some shared beliefs in the discussion.

–p. 4

At this point, I won’t say much in evaluation of Bird’s views, since he’ll unpack them more fully in later chapters. So, I’ll say just two preliminary things:

First, Bird’s desire to find a way to blend what is legitimate and valuable from both a Reformational perspective and the New Perspective is very attractive. I look forward to seeing how he does this. To me, the beginning looks both promising and encouraging.

Second, I’m not sure what to think of the conclusion that imputation is true dogmatically (i.e., in the domain of systematic theology), but not exegetically, which leads Bird to prefer his particular model of justification, that of “incorporated righteousness.” If something is true “dogmatically,” shouldn’t that have a heavy weight? (Think of the doctrine of the Trinity, for example). Wouldn’t the dogmatic truth of something justify (no pun intended) it as an existing model (such as imputation), particularly when, as with imputation, it stands in close relation to exegetical data? This is something I will be thinking about as I proceed.

1. First post, background issues
2. Example passages
3. Reductionism in Wright
4. Conclusion (This post)

Conclusion

I’ve read a quote relevant to the NPP, but I don’t know what the source is at the moment. The substance of the quote is: “the NPP is right in what it affirms and wrong in what it denies.” Perhaps another way of saying this with respect to Wright is “what lies within his approach to law is useful, what he has fenced out of his approach is critical.”

I believe that a Reformation approach to law and righteousness, because they are wider, can incorporate Wright’s useful exploration of the Jew/Gentile context for justification in Paul–Wright’s insights can greatly inform a Reformation reading. But Wright’s approach cannot accommodate the Reformation readings of law and righteousness, because they are wider that Wright can allow, even though they are as wide as scripture. As a result, justification is not the same kind of good news with Wright as it is with the Reformation. Wright dampens and reduces the import of justification to a portion of the context in which Paul applied justification (covenant membership issues). Consequently, Wright has the effect of stripping away the even greater significance of justification: that it represents the best possible news for sinners, as in Romans 4:5, that God justifies the ungodly. Wright would not deny this, but his covenantal membership emphasis make it relevant only to Jew/Gentile disputes.

I have simplified things considerably for the sake of presentation, but I think this is a faithful rendition of the basics of Wright’s views on law and righteousness as they relate to justification (correcting comments welcome!)

One caveat is important: Although Wright’s understanding of justification is not the Reformation understanding, Wright has repeatedly made clear that he holds to much, if not all, of what the Reformation gathered under the mantle of its doctrine of justification; he would get at the content of that doctrine via different means (such as union with Christ). One ought to take Wright’s word for it. Wright’s intent is not heretical (measured against Reformation orthodoxy). At the same time, intent and delivery are not the same thing. I think Wright is in a convenient position of wanting to claim all the fruits of the Reformation, while denying the means to those fruits (the full Reformation doctrine of justification). If Wright were truly faced with the dilemmas of the medieval church without the resources of the Reformation, he might well gain a greater appreciation for how a Luther or a Calvin handled justificaiton.

In any case, my argument here is not that Wright’s views are “heresy” (a word that is flung about all to quickly). He is a Christian brother with a considerably (possibly vitally) different interpretation of scripture when it comes to justification. My argument here is simply he is wrong in his approach to justification because of his extraordinarily reductive approach to law and righteousness. I do count myself among those who think that something extraordinarily important is lost amidst Wright’s brilliant but reductionist reading of law and righteousness and justification. I find Wright’s reductive views on justification regrettable, even as I find part of his work on justification highly helpful in understanding the Jew/Gentile context of what Paul is saying.

1. First post, background issues
2. Example passages
3. Reductionism in Wright (This post)
4. Conclusion

Reductionism in Wright

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.

1. First post, background issues
2. Example passages (This post)
3. Reductionism in Wright
4. Conclusion

 
Example passages

At this point, it might be helpful to see some of Wright’s interpretation at work.

Passage 1:

Romans 3:20-22a: For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it–the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

This becomes, roughly:

By covenant markers such as circumcision, no one will be justified in his sight. Through faith in God’s covenant faithfulness demonstrated in Christ, the faithful can become members of the covenant and reckoned righteous by God as a result of being covenant members, but independent of covenant markers such as circumcision. The true covenant marker is faith in the covenant faithfulness of God

Passage 2:

Romans 10:3-4: For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes

This becomes, roughly:

Israel tried to establish its own righteousness by insisting on covenant markers such as circumcision, and did not submit to God’s covenant faithfulness, which included his fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant promise by including the Gentiles into the covenant. But Israel resisted this plan of God’s and wanted to hold on to its exclusive status, asserting its righteousness in terms of possession of Jewish covenant markers.

What Wright has done here is very interesting because it has brought back the importance of questions of Jewish identity and Jew/Gentile conflict when Paul speaks of justification. (And these issues are clearly present and highly important in both Galatians and Romans).

Overview

1. First post, background issues (This post)
2. Example passages
3. Reductionism in Wright
4. Conclusion

First post, background issues

In order to “get” Wright on justification, one has to understand his hermeneutical approach to the New Testament, which is foundational to how he reads Paul. Wright is pursuing a rigorously Jewish reading of Paul–specifically, a Second Temple Judaism (“STJ”) reading. Wright thinks that one must grasp the STJ worldview through its own narrative self-understanding. Looking at Paul as the writer of abstract theological truths won’t do. One must understand how Paul, a Jew who came to view Jesus as the Messiah, would have understood Jesus within the narrative expectations of STJ. One of the aspects of STJ’s self-understanding was the narrative of God’s covenant. STJ was looking for God to fulfill his promises in the covenant—what Paul has to say about Jesus must be understood as an answer to the covenantal narrative questions and expectations of STJ, even if it was a startling, unexpected answer.

With this background in mind, I can begin to explain two important moves Wright makes to set up his understanding of justification. In line with the centrality of covenant narrative, he interprets “the righteousness of God” as “God’s covenant faithfulness.” God’s righteousness is not primarily about his “ethical” holiness, it is a narrative unveiling of God’s faithfulness as this would have been understood within STJ. Further, Wright understands the idea of “works of the law” (prominent in Galatians and Romans as that by which one cannot be justified) as “works having to do with demonstrating who is in or out of the covenant,” such as circumcision, which is big in, for example, Galatians 2. Accordingly, “works of the law” are not moral works, works attempting to earn or achieve something before God, because Wright (and other New Perspective(s) on Paul writers) think that STJ didn’t see works of the law as earning anything with God. As a consequence, Wright reads “justification by faith, not by works of the law”, as something akin to “justification comes to those who have faith (who are covenant members), not to those who insist on covenant markers.” Here’s how Wright puts it in his own words:

Justification . . . is not a matter of how someone enters the community of the true people of God, but of how you tell who belongs to that community–What Saint Paul Really Said, 119.

It’s been one of my most challenging and humbling learning experiences ever, as I’ve struggled to “get” his way of reading things. I hope to write a bit about it when the paper is done. But here are a few preliminary thoughts on this first encounter with Wright.

• The man is a brilliant reader of and thinker about scripture.
• Trying to substantively disagree with a small part of his work without first immersing oneself in his larger approach is hopeless.
• Reading Wright will sharpen your (I include myself) understanding of scripture, whether you agree, disagree, or partly agree. In most any area you read of Wright’s large body of work, you will come away thinking about scripture (and its message) in new and fruitful ways.
• I am annoyed at the sub-Christian and unconstructive way this Christian is treated by some in some sectors (e.g., some in some Reformed sectors: here is an extreme example–search for the word “heresiarch”). I am also more understanding of why he causes alarm in those sectors, although that understandable alarm does not justify uncharitable discourse. (Wright himself can incur blame for reducing the level discourse, too).
• An adequate response to his work cannot rely merely on classical Protestant systematic theologies/confessions, because complex underlying presuppositional differences. Exegesis (that’s more obvious), Hermeneutics, and Biblical Theology all must be involved in evaluating Wright.
• At the same time, I am sympathetic with those who would rather just fence out his approach by appealing to Systematic Theology, because an adequate response is complex, requires much study and is at times highly frustrating to work towards. Further, he is not approaching things from a Systematics stand-point at all. Someone with a well-established Systematics/confession can be understood if they initially want to say: “Why should I have to re-cover so much ground that my Systematics/confession has already covered?”. I now better understand the impulses of some in the Reformed world who would rather appeal to Reformed confessions and move on. (Although, again, this won’t ultimately yield adequate responses).
• He is both a great resource for and a great challenge to Protestant approaches on Scripture, the Gospel, and theology.
• I disagree with him on a lot, but also agree with him on a lot (particularly the way he sheds light on how Jesus is the Messiah in accordance with and fulfillment of the scriptures). I am grateful for his scholarship.
• This blunt iron has been sharpened a bit by NT Wright.