Kris and I leave South Africa today and ask for your prayers for our trip home -- a long one through Paris. But, the blog goes on! We are working our way through Tom Wright's new book, Justification: God's Plan & Paul's Vision
and are now at the point of getting into Wright's understanding of justification.Wright opens up part 3 of chp 4 with a little sketch of bell ringing and how very few know what is going on ... and he sees the same in biblical theology times -- most don't what we are on about. Here he pushes back against a few scholars for their lack of attention to "covenant."
God's plan is to call Abraham so that through his family God could rescue the world from its plight (94). And folks in the criticize-the-new-perspective camp all the time claim Paul had very little "covenant" at work, and Wright observes that Paul's uses of Gen 15 and Deut 30 are through and through covenant texts. Piper, he says, thinks covenantal readings belittle Paul. "Dealing with sin, saving humans from it, giving them grace, forgiveness, justification, glorification -- all this was the purpose of the single covenant from the beginning, now fulfilled in Jesus Christ" (95). [I'm a bystander at times in this but why do the critics not like "covenant"? That's not a Reformed thing to do.]
Covenant has four elements:
1. How Israel understood themselves as the people of the Creator God -- perhaps we could call it "covenant people";
2. The focus of this purpose on Genesis 15, 17, and Deut 27-30 -- perhaps "covenant plan";
3. The sense that this story was ongoing in an unbroken manner toward fulfillment -- perhaps "covenant hope";
4. Paul's retrieval of the story and recapturing it in light of Jesus Christ, the one through whom God would fulfill his purposes - perhaps "covenant fulfillment."
All of this makes clear why rescuing from sin and bringing together Israel and Gentiles is part of the covenant.
And finally, eschatology.
1. God's single purposes have a definite goal, the redemption of God's people and the rescue of the whole creation;
2. This was launched in Christ;
3. Paul believed believers were in the now and not yet zone of history.
What God had planned he had done already in Christ.
Here's a summary: "Eschatology: the new world had been inaugurated! Covenant: God's promises to Abraham had been fulfilled! Lawcourt: Jesus had been vindicated -- and so all those who belonged to Jesus were vindicated as well!" (101). "Welcome to Paul's doctrine of justification....".
And that means also Christology: a big point is that Jesus Christ is the one in whom God's people are summed up. The task of the Messiah was to offer to God the obedience Israel should have offered but did not. Israel had been faithless; Jesus was obedient/faithful. The "faith of Christ" therefore refers to Christ's faithful obedience as the true Israelite.
Therefore, as the representative Israelite Christ is the substitute -- the stand-in for Israel or his people. He is the substitute because he is the representative.
His resurrection launches the new creation. The Spirit makes justification's declaration a reality. And this makes Jesus the judge on the last day.
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David Yates #11:
Are we reading the same Bible?
Not that I think we should read Paul as the final word on Biblical theology, but even if we did, look at the centrality of Abraham. Moses enters less into Paul's writing. Why? Because he is writing for the Gentile mission of the church and Torah is not the Gentile way of life.
There is no covenant in Gen 3:15.
It really helps to read the Bible as a story and not as a bunch of prooftexts, David. Also, any reading of the Bible which suggests that it does not build on itself, but rather comes to the end and undoes the beginning, is a faulty reading. Even if someone doubts inspiration, they must admit the apostles were purposefully trying to build on the earlier texts. I suggest that Scot's Blue Parakeet book lays out a great understanding of this.
Derek Leman
Travis #13
Thanks for that, only your first paragraph is a repeat of the problem - is it really so that God did it "as the specifically Jewish Messiah of a covenant people"? Maybe, for instance, God did it principally as the new Adam, for all mankind directly, and only peripherally as Israel's Messiah. Torah sins were not really different than everybody else's.
Your second paragraph could be because of course Jesus had to come within some context or other. And what might be expected but that a nation's archives would have stuff about their ancestors and their experiences!
Wright claims that what he takes to be the setting of Christ's redemptive dying actually explains how it did what it did. It seems to me there is no explanation, since it is beyond us what sort of transaction between Father and Son could do what it did.
David (#19, 11),
Divorcing Jesus from his "Jewishness" requires elimination of most of the NT (including most of Paul). Certainly it requires dismissal of the Gospels except for the fact of the crucifixion and resurrection - and throw out Luke 24, which is post resurrection.
I don't see how it can be considered incidental in any real sense.
Randy--
My point was that belief that we are saved by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ implies faith (trust) in Jesus. In contrast, belief that we are saved by faith in Jesus does not necessarily lead to trust in the faithfulness of Jesus--it may instead lead to trust in our own faith.
Father God: please guide the McKnights safely home in your loving hands. May they have a beautiful, peaceful, restful flight and arrive in Illinois refreshed and filled with your spirit. May they be blessed in all their travels, now and forever...
In Jesus' name, Amen.
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