Q AND A WITH BISHOP WRIGHT ON 'JUSTIFICATION'

"Systematicians have long given up on serious exegesis having (in some cases) waited for ages to see it produce 'useable' results, only to wait in vain. Hence the scattered approach. I look forward to a day when utterly serious historical exegesis of whole texts, not just prooftexts, will be seen by systematicians as the real blessing it is. Bauckham's work is of course a model here."

i will definitely have to pick bishop wright's book up. i suppose this is why i tend to like the exegete and be suspicious of systematicians. i also think some of your work, ben, is a model of a more even-handed approach of bringing together serious historical exegesis of whole texts, and traditions, like in Jesus the Sage and Jesus the Seer...great stuff. i am actually re-working my way through Jesus the Sage preparing to write a paper for the first Society of Vineyard Scholars conference.

peace

"And scripture itself suggests that the whole western tradition, from mediaeval catholicism onwards, has dangerously skewed the focus of discussion to 'me and my getting to heaven' rather than to 'God and God's kingdom coming on earth as in heaven'. The irony is that Piper's concern for the glory of God reflects exactly this biblical emphasis but he doesn't allow it to do what it should, but instead distorts it into a particular sub-variant of the reformation tradition of imputed righteousness..."

I'm reading Piper's book right now (close to the end) in preparation to read Wright's on this subject (which I am truly excited to read, I find Wright's commentaries to be incredibly interesting and helpful). I know an interview doesn't allow for fully thought out arguments but it is frustrating that Wright has relied on straw man rather than actually engaging the arguments themselves.

Piper's arguments on justification center on God and God's dogged faithfulness to his own glory (the way Piper defines God's righteousness)as the ground for imputated rightousness. I see very little of "me and my getting into heaven" in Piper's argument, instead I see "God, God's glory, and the obedience of Christ", the latter being the king of the kingdom. But it is politically expedient in the course of an interview to deploy rhetoric like this to make one's point.

...so is "As I've often said, the trick to aim for is to recover the first-century questions and try to give twenty-first century answers, rather than taking sixteenth-century questions and giving nineteenth-century answers...". Piper pretty well grounds his interpretations in the scholarly work around those first-century questions, and I think that the 2 Corinthians 5:21 has relevance outside the 19th century.

But perhaps Wright would say I'm proof-texting - it's an easy claim to make, I hope he is making it responsibly.

So is NTW saying apostasy is self-deception and not a legitimate - had faith, lost it? Or is that just his analysis of Paul in 1 Cor. 9? And, while justification in Paul is his basic subject, ultimately, don't we need a full canonical reading - including Hebrews 3-4? While one does not want to participate in an easy cross-reference that eliminates tensions that need to be respected, eventually that cross reference has to take place in a canonical reading.

I love and appreciate what NTW has done in so many areas and the benefit he has been to my faith. However, this answer is typical of a lack of clarity on this subject. One always wants to provide support for an answer but he really doesn't seem to answer the question very clearly.

Indeed, as he has said, the writers of the NT weren't necessarily responding to the same question we are (or asking them). But, I don't think there is any doubt that some of these questions of losing salvation were, in fact, in the minds of the Hebrew writer. And, that he is warning his readers that though they have been saved - they can make decisions to "fall away" (Heb. 3-4, 6:4-6; 10:26-31). These were brothers in Christ in danger of that very thing.

What's your take on NTW's response here, Ben?