Justification and New Perspective 14

I have been dropping in on these posts from time to time, and I am afraid have not read Wright's book, although I am looking forward to it. I did want to make a comment about the context of Wright's claim that righteousness refers to covenant faithfulness, whether God's or ours. Please correct me if I am wrong, but that particular claim is not unique to either Wright or the New Perspective on Paul. That definition certainly does not come from the reformers, but is not uncommon in the 20th century after Cremer. Perhaps I am off here, but the main point of the NPP is that our understanding of Judaism was off and so we did not quite understand what Paul was arguing against. It seems like to me that one could hold to a more traditional understanding of the definition of righteousness and still identify with the New Perspective. I simply say this because the comments make it sound as if this view is something new that Wright has just brought in.

David #11

"It's not actually clear that Christ needed ontologically to be an Israelite to do what he did, he redeemed everybody, so of course Israel also got redeemed with everybody else. It looks like at best one can say Christ had to be an Israelite because God told Abraham he would be."

If God promised redemption through Abraham and his seed, and then he didn't do it that way, then what trust do we have that there is redemption in Christ when that is what God now promises us? If God broke the first covenant, where is our confidence that he will keep the second? As I read Wright, he is saying that Paul is making his case for why Christ was the fulfillment of that first covenant and that we can, therefore, have faith in God's promises. For that reason, it is paramount that Jesus be an Israelite and accomplish what he did the way he did.

Scot, thanks for this post. I've just had the time to read it. Interestingly, I've been teaching a class on Jonathan Edwards' theology, and thought he had some interesting insights into what God's righteousness actually is:

"So the word righteousness is very often used in Scripture for his covenant faithfulness; so 'tis in Nehemiah 9:8, "Thou hast performed thy words for thou art righteous." And so we are very often to understand righteousness and covenant mercy [to] be the same thing, as Psalms 24:5, "He shall receive the blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of [his salvation]," Psalms 36:10, "O continue thy lovingkindness to them that know thee; and thy righteousness to the upright," and Psalms 51:14, "Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation; and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness" and Daniel 9:16, "O Lord, according to thy righteousness, I beseech thee, let thine anger and thy fury be turned away" and so in innumerable other places." (Y9:114-115)

Edwards continues on to add, "God's righteousness or covenant mercy is the root of which his salvation is the fruit." In light of the debate, I thought it would be interesting to find Edwards agreeing with Wright here!