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In regard to the NPP, I want to briefly look at the works of Krister Stendahl, E.P. Sanders, and James D.G. Dunn before I examine Nicholas Tom Wright’s position in more depth. There are others who have directly or indirectly contributed to the NPP, for example, Claude Montefiore, George Foot etc. One of the difficulties with this subject is that there are many new perspectives, and they tend not to agree with each other. As J. Ligon Duncan put it: “There is no such thing as ‘the New Perspective on Paul’ if you mean a unified, uniform, comprehensive theory or mode of interpretation about which there has come to be a broad consensus of agreement.”24 It is because of this concern raised by Duncan that I will address only Wright’s position.

Krister Stendahl

In 1963 Stendahl delivered a very influential paper entitled The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West. According to Stendahl, the Western church started to go off the rails in its approach to Paul from the time of St Augustine, and this was very much compounded in the Protestant Reformation, as he puts it, “The Augustinian line leads into the Middle Ages and reaches its climax in the penitential struggle of an Augustinian monk, Martin Luther, and in his interpretation of Paul.”25 Error crept in because the wrong questions were being asked; questions that had to do with the individual’s conscience and what the individual needed to do in order to be saved. He believes that “the West for centuries has wrongly surmised that the biblical writers were grappling with problems which no doubt are ours, but which never entered their consciousness.”26 The old perspective had been guilty of misreading Paul. According to Stendahl the “Reformation interpreters have read Luther’s experience back into the writings of Paul, rather than comprehending Paul on his own terms,” believing that “our conception of Paul is the product of medieval thought in the Western world that would have been completely foreign to those in the period of Second Temple Judaism.”27 Sanders comments that “Stendahl argued that . . . the usual (Lutheran) interpretation of Paul’s view of righteousness by faith is historically erroneous since it understands the doctrine as freeing one from the guilt of an ‘introspective conscience’, while Paul had not suffered such a dilemma.”28

Stendahl maintains that Luther’s reading of what Paul said “has been reversed into saying the opposite to his original intention.”29 The Reformers misunderstood the Jewish problem, believing that they were attempting to achieve peace with God by their own works, essentially, justification by works, whereas Stendahl believes that Paul was concerned with something very different:

The Problem we are trying to isolate could be expressed in hermeneutical terms somewhat like this: The Reformers’ interpretation of Paul rests on an analogism when Pauline statements about Faith and Works, Law and Gospel, Jews and Gentiles are read in the framework of late medieval piety. The Law, the Torah, with its specific requirements of circumcision and food restrictions becomes a general principle of “legalism in religious matters.” Where Paul was concerned about the possibility of Gentiles to be included in the messianic community, his statements are now read as answers to the quest for assurance about man’s salvation out of a common human predicament.30

He sees little or no evidence in Scripture for the old perspective’s interpretation of the law as something that makes men aware of their wretchedness. He states that “God’s mighty hammer bringing complacent sinners to despair has little support in Paul. The roots of the notion are rather problems peculiar to the modern West.”31

Stendahl rejects the more orthodox understanding of Paul’s Damascene experience that insists it concerned his conversion or rebirth and associates it more with the apostle’s call to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, “There is not- as we usually think-first a conversion, then a call to apostleship; there is only the call to work among the gentiles.”32 While Paul’s great concern was the inclusion of the Gentiles, “his statements are now read as answers to the question for assurance about man’s salvation out of a common human predicament.”33 When Paul spoke about justification his chief concern was the church’s identity and to show that the law should not be imposed upon the Gentiles. He was most certainly not thinking about how the individual might be saved and inherit eternal life.

E. P. Sanders

Stendahl’s work, “like a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand, gave promise of the coming storm. The storm broke with the publication in 1977 of Paul and Palestinian Judaism.”34 This effectively provided the impetus for the development of the NPP.

Sanders maintains that in order to understand the New Testament’s relationship to Judaism one must first understand the Judaism of the time. To this end, Sanders researched Second Temple Judaism, a period from BC 200 to AD 200. He saw the old perspective as being wrong, principally because it has been based on a Judaism from a later age. Regarding justification, he is of the opinion that “Many Christians, both in the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation traditions, have done themselves and the church a great disservice by treating the doctrine of ‘justification’ as central to their debates, and by supposing that it described the system by which people attained salvation.” 35 When, therefore, the old perspective interprets Paul in regard to doctrines like justification by faith, it is, so he would have us believe, guilty of anachronism. In other words, the old perspective is charged with interpreting Paul’s letters in the context of a Judaism that did not exist in the first century. Not only this, but Sanders maintains that our understanding of the New Testament owes much to Medieval Roman Catholicism.

The Reformers, men like Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli saw Roman Catholicism as a legalist religion, one based on good works. He tells us that “Luther’s problems were not Paul’s, and we misunderstand him if we see him through Luther’s eyes.”36

They then took this understanding and applied it to the Judaism of Paul’s day. Their view of first-century Judaism was then, in the words of Sanders, the result of “the retrojection of the Protestant-Catholic debate into ancient history, with Judaism taking the role of Catholicism and Christianity the role of Lutheranism.”37

From his research into Palestinian Judaism Sanders saw a very different Judaism from the Reformers legalist portrayal. He saw Paul arriving at a solution, namely, salvation in Christ before he became aware of man’s plight. He essentially reversed the traditional understanding, so instead of believing that Paul became aware of sin and condemnation before he turned to Christ, he was, rather, reconciled with Christ before he turned his attention to the law. In the words of Venema, “Paul’s understanding of the human plight was a kind of by-product of his view of salvation.”38 So the apostle’s view of sin was shaped by his understanding of the salvation he recognized in Christ, where “Paul, in effect, starts from the basic conviction that Christ is the only Saviour of Jews and Gentiles and on this basis develops a doctrine of law and human sinfulness corresponding to it.”39

He is of the opinion that Paul criticised the law because salvation is only found in Christ, however, having said this, he embraced a very different understanding of the Jewish relationship to the law from that of the old perspective. Paul does not criticise the Judaism of his day for believing in the possibility of keeping the law. By this, he did not mean a perfect obedience to God’s moral law, but an acknowledgment that whilst the Israelites did break the law, they were, by correctly administering the sacrificial system, granted the forgiveness for their transgressions. So the keeping of the law relates not to perfect obedience, as the Reformers believe, but to the proper administration of the Mosaic administration.

Sanders saw in Judaism a religion of grace and coined the term “covenantal nomism”. He identifies essentially eight characteristics of first century Judaism.

The ‘pattern’ or ‘structure’ of covenantal nomism is this: (1) God has chosen Israel and (2) given the law. The law implies both (3) God’s promise to maintain the election and (4) the requirement to obey. (5) God rewards obedience and punishes transgression. (6) The law provides the means of atonement, and atonement results in (7) the maintenance or re-establishment of the covenantal relationship. (8) All those who are maintained in the covenant by obedience, atonement and God’s mercy belong to the group which will be saved. An important interpretation of the first and last points is that election and ultimately salvation are considered to be by God’s mercy rather than human achievement.40

Although Israel entered the covenant solely on account of God’s grace, staying in the covenant was dependent on obedience to God’s law, “Salvation is by grace but judgment is according to works; works are the condition of remaining ‘in’ but they do not earn salvation.”41 According to Wright, Sanders thus, “at a stroke, cut the ground from under the majority reading of Paul, especially mainline Protestantism.”42 Sanders summarizes covenant nomism as “one’s place in God’s plan . . . established on the basis of covenant and that covenant requires as the proper response of man his obedience to his commands, while providing means of atonement from transgression.”43

If, however, as Reformed Baptists believe, this covenant made with Israel is a different covenant from the covenant of grace, being a type of the latter, then Sanders position is undermined. I hope to show that the grace of God in choosing Israel, its redemption from Egypt and being given Canaan, served to typify the grace unto spiritual redemption in the new covenant. Although, in its application, the new was before the old covenant. Thus, while the covenantal stipulations were a type promising temporal blessings on the condition of obedience, these served to highlight the work of the antitype, namely the obedience of Christ in the new covenant. It is my contention that Sanders, and those who follow him, are wrong because of the way they apply what belongs only to the new covenant in Christ to those who knew only the jurisdiction of the conditional old covenant. It amounts from a failure to appreciate that these are two radically different covenants, and whilst the old pointed to the new covenant, it contained promises of conditional temporal blessings which were always beyond the reach of those under its regime.

Although Sanders, and other advocates of the NPP, correctly maintain that Second Temple Judaism had nothing in common with Pelagianism, they fail to consider its resemblance with semi-Pelagianism. One cannot argue with the fact that Sanders’ view comes pretty close to this. Semi-Pelagianism is the belief that salvation involves both works and grace, where the people are by grace placed in the land, but the continuance of land possession is based on their works. Grace plus works is at the very heart of Roman Catholic soteriology, it should, therefore, be borne in mind that the Reformers were far from wrong when comparing Second Temple Judaism and Roman Catholicism.

Whereas the Reformers placed justification in the context of soteriology, Sanders considered it more in terms of ecclesiology. It had to do not with whether one was saved, but with whether one was included amongst God’s people; with whether one was in the covenant. Essentially, then, it was about the identification of the church. Justification is not, as the old perspective would have us believe, concerned with the imputation of righteousness, but rather, with who is “in” the new covenant community. The Jews were using “the works of the law,” to maintain their exclusivism, namely, laws about food, circumcision etc., to prevent Gentiles from becoming members of the new covenant or being justified.

The Jews considered themselves as belonging to God’s people to the exclusion of the Gentiles simply because they were in possession of the law, and their problem lay in their failure to appreciate the fact that with the new covenant there was now a “new way of entrance into the number of God’s covenant people, a way equally open to Jews and Gentiles who put their faith in Jesus Christ.”44 From this, it appears, one can glean that Sanders considered the new covenant as commencing only after Christ, and, in keeping with the paedobaptist paradigm, wrongly maintains that before the arrival of the new covenant there was a way unto God through the old covenant.

The righteousness of God is given a very different interpretation from that of the Reformers where it is something that is imputed. Rather, it has to do with maintaining one’s status as a member of God’s covenantal people. Sanders tells us that, “In Paul’s usage, to ‘be made righteous’ (‘be justified’) is a term indicating, getting in, not staying in the body of the saved. Thus, when Paul says one cannot be righteous by works of law, he means that one cannot, by the works of the law ‘transfer to the body of the saved’. ”45 The problem with the Jews was not their legalism but their exclusivity, believing that the Gentiles could not achieve covenantal status without embracing certain aspects of the law, such as its dietary requirements and circumcision.

The phrase “works of the law” is not, in the words of McGrath, “to be understood (as Luther suggested) as the means by which the Jews believed they could gain access to the covenant; for they already stood within it. The works of the law are to be seen as an expression of the fact that the Jews already belonged to the covenant people of God, and were living out their obligations to that covenant.”46 This assumption that the Jews were God’s special people is a recurrent theme, and, as we shall see, it is a theme that fails to adequately distinguish between that earthly typical redemption that occurred in the exodus with that spiritual redemption that comes only through Christ.

It is worth pausing here to ask whether Sanders’ take on Second Temple Judaism is correct. Wright fully accepts what Sanders said about the type of Judaism that existed at the time of Christ. If one can, however, show that Sanders was wrong in his deductions about Second Temple Judaism the foundation of the new perspective will be shown to have been built upon sinking sand. The question is: Did some within Second Temple Judaism believe in a works righteousness? Were the Reformers more right, than wrong? There is, in fact, a lot of evidence to show that works righteousness was present. We see this in the Apocrypha in, for example, 2 Esdras, which includes 4 Ezra in chapters 3-14. In Ezra we find a number of references to a works-based righteousness:

For you have a treasury of works laid up with the Most High. (4 Ezra 7:77)

The Day of Judgment is decisive and displays to all the seal of truth . . . For then everyone shall bear his own righteousness or unrighteousness. (4 Ezra 8:77)

For the righteous, who have many works, laid up with you, shall receive their reward in consequence of their own deeds. (4 Ezra 8:77)

Another work within Second Temple Judaism is the Testament of Abraham. Again, we find references to works righteousness:

The two angels on the right and on the left recorded. The one on the right recorded righteous deeds, while the one on the left recorded sins. The one who was in front of the table, who was holding the balance, weighed the souls (T. Ab. A 12:12-13).

The Commander-in-Chief said, “Hear, righteous Abraham: Since the judge found its sins and its righteous deeds to be equal, then he handed over neither to judgment nor to be saved, until the judge of all shall come . . . If [one] could acquire one righteous deed more than one’s sins, one would enter in to be saved. (T. Ab. A 14:2–4).

In the Psalms of Solomon we are told that:

The Lord is faithful to those who truly love him, to those who endure his discipline, to those who live in the righteousness of his commandments, in the Law, which he has commanded for our life. The Lord’s devout shall live by it forever. (Psa. Sol. 14: 1–3).

Our works are in the choosing and power of our souls, to do right and wrong in the works of our hands, and in your righteousness you oversee human beings. The one who does what is right saves up life for himself with the Lord, and the one who does what is wrong causes his own life to be destroyed. (Psa. Sol. 9: 4-5)

There are many similar texts47 in, for example, and various Rabbinic literature, the Dead Sea Scrolls etc. What is interesting is the way Sanders tries to brush these texts aside, unsuccessfully, I might add. In regard to Ezra, while he acknowledges that it does present a works righteousness, he seems to suggest that because it is polemic in nature, written against the backdrop of Roman oppression, it cannot be considered as a true representation. Again, while acknowledging the fact that there are texts from the period that provide evidence contrary to his position, he nevertheless, views these as not reflecting the Jewish beliefs from the times, “It is true that there are some sayings which do indicate that God judges strictly according to the majority of a man’s deeds . . . this can by no means be taken as Rabbinic doctrine.”48 It seems to me that Sanders has done a kind of balancing act with the texts, suggesting that if those that refer to grace outnumber those that speak of a works righteousness, it is only the former that should be considered as providing a true understanding of Second Temple Jewish beliefs.

Sanders’s confidence that his ideas about covenantal nomism clearly represents what was consistently believed in Second Temple Judaism is far from watertight, and his conclusions are ambiguous. Imagine one 2000 years into the future doing research into Christianity in the 21st century, only to conclude that the majority of Christians espoused the beliefs of Roman Catholicism, and then interpreted all the evidence accordingly, this is essentially what Sanders has done to the Judaism of Jesus’ day. One can only endorse the words of D. A. Carson:

But covenantal nomism is not only reductionistic, it is misleading, and this for two reasons. Firstly, deploying this one neat formula across literature so diverse engenders an assumption that there is more uniformity in the literature than there is . . . Sanders’s formula is rather difficult to falsify, precisely because it is so plastic that it hides more than it reveals, and engenders false assumptions that lose the flavour, emphases, priorities, and frames of reference of these diverse literary corpora . . .49

D. G. Dunn

Like Sanders, Dunn agrees that the standard Reformation understanding of 1st century Judaism was wrong, believing the “picture of Judaism to be drawn from Paul’s writings is historically false.”50 He, on the whole, accepts Sanders understanding of Second Temple Judaism. However, he does not see eye-to-eye with Sanders on everything, for example, Dunn takes a more positive position concerning “the works of the law.” In all, Dunn essentially takes from Sanders that which he considered good, and incorporates this into his own ideas.

Agreeing with Sanders that the apostle’s reference to the “works of the law”, did not mean works of the legalistic righteousness one associates with the Reformers, he, unlike Sanders, concludes that the apostle in referring to “the works of the law” had in mind a kind of boundary marker; one that served to distinguish between who was in God’s community and those who were not. Apart from the moral law, Dunn tells us that there were “other works of the law which from early times particularly marked out Israel’s set-apartness to God and separation from the nations.”51 In this regard, he alludes especially to circumcision, Sabbath keeping, and food laws. To back up his understanding he makes reference to extra-biblical sources, for example, the Dead Sea Scrolls. So whilst he acknowledges that the works of the law “does, of course, refer to whatever the law requires,” however, when comparisons are made between Israel and the nations, “certain laws would naturally come more into focus than others”, in particular, “circumcision and food laws.”52 Elsewhere he states that the works of the law “functioned as identity markers . . . to identify their practitioners as Jewish in the eyes of the wider public.”53 We will see more of this when we examine Wright’s understanding of particular texts.

Interestingly, Dunn acknowledges that prior to Christ’s arrival people were justified by faith, that from man’s side salvation is “wholly and solely of faith.”54 Yet, having said this he appears to associate God’s people with those within the old covenant. To quote Westerholm, “The law spelled out how those who were already God’s people were to live within the covenant. Its righteousness was this ‘secondary righteousness,’ to be practiced by those already in possession of ‘primary righteousness’ based on faith.”55 The problem I have with this is simply that Dunn is here associating salvation with the old covenant, making the assumption that all Israel was somehow in possession of a “righteousness based on faith.”

Again, like Sanders, Dunn has a very different understanding of Justification from that of the Protestant Reformers. In the words of Venema:

Because Paul’s doctrine has its roots in the traditional Jewish understanding of God’s ‘righteousness’ as his covenant faithfulness, he uses the term, ‘to be justified’, to refer to God’s gracious acknowledgement of his covenant people. Though Judaism also taught Justification by faith, the Christian gospel fulfils and surpasses Judaism by teaching that God now graciously acknowledged all who believe in Christ as his covenant people. The gospel announces that God in his righteousness has declared that all who believe in Christ, whether Jews or Gentiles, are acceptable to him. Justification is by ‘faith alone’ in the sense that faith in the crucified and risen Christ is now the chief badge of covenant membership.56

It is important to note that in recent years Dunn has come to see the weakness of his position and now believes that when Paul refers to “the works of the law” he means all that the law requires.57

N. T. Wright

Nicholas Thomas (Tom) Wright is undoubtedly the greatest publicist for the new perspective, and it is principally his views I want to examine before criticising them in the light of Baptist covenant theology. Wright is a New Testament scholar who has authored over fifty books. He is currently Distinguished Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at St Andrews University in Scotland. He has held a number of prestigious roles in the Church of England, and prior to his present position, he was, for seven years, Bishop of Durham. His position in the Church of England provided him with an essential vehicle for the dissemination of scholarly debates to the man in the pew, and he has, in the words of Waters, “done more than any other single individual to mediate NPP exegesis into the mainline and evangelical churches.”58 He possesses that rare gift of making complex ideas intelligible and extremely interesting. This has enabled him to bridge the gap that usually exists between the rarefied world of academia and the average churchgoer. Wright claims to be thoroughly evangelical. His credentials were clearly manifested in his work on the resurrection.59 He said in an interview, “My only agenda here is to be as close as I can possibly get to what Paul actually says. And I really don’t care too much what the different later Christian traditions say. My aim is to be faithful to Scripture here.”60 No evangelical would disagree with this. It is somewhat ironic that Wright’s position concerning two justifications and the idea of imputed righteousness are similar to the 17th century Puritan Richard Baxter (1615–91).

When Wright is discussed, people tend to converge to polar extremes, to quote Schreiner, “Some are inclined toward an uncritical adulation of his scholarship, while others to an uncritical denigration.”61 Wright has a lovely engaging writing style, and secondly, he makes one think and ask questions about one’s own position. Many have been convinced by his arguments due to the forthright way he puts his points across. I was somewhat surprised, especially in light of Wright’s refusal to believe in God’s wrath, and the imputation of righteousness, to find Tom Holland saying in reference to Wright’s many books, “These works have assured many that he is a trustworthy teacher of the church and that for the most, the early suspicions concerning his proposals concerning justification have evaporated.”62It is because of this that many readers can come away believing the case to be settled, especially if they are not grounded in Reformed theology. What Carl Trueman said about the new perspective’s understanding of Luther is relevant here:

The story is told of Bernard Shaw being taken to see the lights of Las Vegas late one night. `It must be beautiful’ he commented, `if you can’t read.’ I confess that the New Perspective approach to Luther strikes me a little that way. It too must be beautiful, but only if you don’t know the primary texts. Its portrait of the Reformer certainly appears persuasive and impressive but that is because of the confidence with which it is presented to an audience whose culture generally considers novelty a good thing and tradition to be bad. A close examination of his theology in context reveals this portraits [sic] manifest deficiencies and palpable errors.63

Wright puts his points across with a marked degree of rhetorical flourish that encourages the unwary and unsuspecting reader to accept what he says. Again, many find themselves agreeing with Wright because they have been swayed by his academic credentials. They assume that he must, because of these, have researched all there is to research, and that such a man’s approach is candor personified. Such a person, however, does not exist, not only in the field of theology but in any discipline. We also need to bear in mind that there is nothing new under the sun. So-called new theologies are usually, on closer examination, reworked versions of what has gone before. The Christian needs to realize that the truth of God’s word is revealed not to the clever or the wise but to the foolish and that God uses the foolish to confound the wisdom of the wise (1 Cor 1:18–24).

Evangelicals then listen to what Wright has to say, and it is this that makes his thoughts on Paul dangerous. I say dangerous because error is mixed in with much that is right (excuse the pun). Surprisingly, as well as Tom Holland, Wright’s work has been endorsed by a number of evangelicals, for example, Peter Enns, a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, in positively reviewing a two-volume work of Wright’s sermons could write, “I recommend these volumes without reservation to all who wish to know better the biblical Christ and bring the challenge of this Christ to those around them.”64 He was suspended from the seminary in 2008 because he had differing views about inspiration. George Grant could say when reviewing What Saint Paul Really Said, Wright “weighs the evidence and finds that only historic biblical orthodoxy has sufficiently answered the thorny questions of the apostle’s contribution to the faith…. Mr. Wright pores over the New Testament data with forensic precision to add new weight to a conservative theological interpretation.”65 For an evangelical to say this is something of a mystery, to say the least. This, again only serves to confuse the average Christian, and to give Wright’s teaching a degree of legitimacy within evangelical circles.

If any should consider the NPP to be more of an annoyance, what might be called: a storm in a teacup” than a serious threat, they should bear in mind the words of Kim Seyoon:

Since the Reformation, I think no school of thought, not even the Bultmanian school, has exerted greater influence upon Pauline scholarship than the school of the New Perspective. With its radical reinterpretation of Paul’s gospel, especially the doctrine of justification, on the basis of Ed P. Sanders’s definition of Second Temple Judaism as covenantal nomism, the New Perspective in many respects overturning the Reformation interpretation of Paul’s gospel. The potential significance of the school for the whole Christian faith can hardly be exaggerated.66

The very fact that one can read Wright’s works, e.g., What Jesus Really Said, and be no wiser at the end of the book; that one can expend so many words and still leave many readers confused should be a sign that something is askew. While I would not go as far as John Macarthur, his words speak for many of Wright’s readers: “I have read his writings and they are a mass of confusing ambiguity, contradiction, and obfuscation, academic sleight of hand. I cannot tell you what he believes.”67

When reading Wright one should bear in mind that heresy never enters the church under a placard declaring itself to be a deviant teaching, but usually on the back of an orthodox teaching, and even then when one is least expecting it. Wright says much that Reformed believers can wholeheartedly agree with, yet, like the Trojan Horse, error is allowed to creep in unawares, as it has done in many evangelical churches, contaminating some of Protestantism’s most cherished beliefs. This has especially been the case in some Presbyterian churches in North America. I would have to agree with Eveson that Wright’s “interpretation of the Pauline texts is arguably the strongest challenge to the traditional Protestant approach that has yet appeared.”68

The new perspective tends to employ the same terminology as Reformed Protestantism, but changes the meaning. Many get caught out by this because they only hear what they believe to be orthodoxy.

Wright is not slow in criticizing the old perspective, yet he does not interact with any of the primary sources. For example, while he does not shy away from criticizing the Reformers, he never appears to interact with their teachings. One will find in Wright’s work very little in regard to actual quotes from the Reformers’ many works. One can only draw the same conclusion as Fesko, namely, that when Wright “does allude to its teachings he usually does so with superficial caricature. Because Wright does not examine primary sources and their historical setting, his claims of distortion lack cogency; they are suspended in mid-air apart from any factual foundation.”69This may well be because “For NT scholars, the history of interpretation usually starts somewhere in the early nineteenth-century with little to no attention given to the previous eighteen hundred years of church history.”70

Although he does not see eye-to-eye with Sanders and Dunn on everything, the main trajectory of Wright’s thought is similar. He tells us that Sanders’s new take on Paul “dominates the landscape [of Pauline studies], and, until a major refutation of his central thesis is produced, honesty compels one to do business with him. I do not myself believe that such a refutation can or will be offered; serious modifications are required, but I regard the basic point as established.”71

He accepts Sanders’s views when they fit with his purpose. Wright says that “one of the great ironies in Sanders’ position is that he has never really carried through his reform into a thorough rethinking of Paul’s own thought. He contents himself with a somewhat unsympathetic treatment of Pauline themes.”72 It appears that Wright sees himself as having picked up the mantle and considers himself to be a modern-day Luther, ushering in a new Protestant Reformation.

Wright and the Righteousness of God.

In traditional Protestantism, the “righteousness of God” manifests itself in two ways. First, it denotes God’s righteous anger against sin, for example, as manifested in Romans 1-3. Secondly, it represents God’s faithfulness to the new covenant in that God himself has achieved through the work of his Son a righteousness for all who believe. What Wright considers to be the main motif, namely, God’s faithfulness to his covenant promises, the old perspective takes as a given and it is found in Christ’s fulfillment of the original covenant of works.

Wright is of the opinion that the Reformed school has “systematically done violence to that text for hundreds of years, and . . . it is time for the text itself to be heard.”73 He believes it is wrong to perceive of righteousness as something that can be given or imputed to another. Rather, God’s righteousness must be seen as representing his unfailing loyalty to his covenantal promises:

God’s ‘righteousness’, especially in Isaiah 40-55, is that aspect of God’s character because of which he saved Israel, despite Israel’s perversity and lustiness. God has made promises; Israel can trust those promises. God’s righteousness is thus cognate with his trustworthiness on the one hand, and Israel’s salvation on the other. And at the heart of that picture in Isaiah there stands, of course, the strange figure of the suffering servant through whom God’s righteous purposes are finally accomplished.74

God’s righteousness is then covenant orientated; it is God demonstrating his faithfulness to his covenant. He initially chose Israel to be his people; a people who were to be a light to the nations, and, although Israel failed in its mission, God, however, has remained faithful, and he has through Jesus, the faithful Israelite, done what fallen humanity was incapable of doing.

Of course, both Reformed Baptists and paedobaptists believe in God’s faithfulness to his covenant; it is what God secured in his Son’s preceptive and penal obedience to his covenantal requirements. None would disagree with Wright in maintaining that there must be covenant faithfulness before there can be salvation. As we will see, however, Wright’s idea of covenant faithfulness and that of Reformed Baptists is markedly different. The latter’s understanding of the old perspective takes umbrage with him because, not only has he mixed up the covenants, but he has essentially limited God’s faithfulness, separating it from his faithfulness to himself as the just God, denying entirely the imputation imputation of God’s righteousness in Christ.

Wright and Justification

Justification for Wright is very different from what one finds in orthodox Protestantism. It is not concerned with how sinners find favor with God, indeed, it is not even about soteriology, but, rather with ecclesiology, with the identification of those who are in the covenantal family. Furthermore, justification has nothing to do with the imputation of righteousness, but with God finding one to be in the right because one is counted among the covenant people.

Carl Trueman, while he does not specifically mention Wright, clearly has him in his sights when referring to the new perspective’s deviant understanding of justification:

To put it bluntly, it seems to me that the current revision of the doctrine of justification as formulated by the advocates of the so-called New Perspective on Paul is nothing less than a fundamental repudiation not just of that Protestantism which seeks to stand within the creedal and doctrinal trajectories of the Reformation but also of virtually the entire Western tradition on justification from at least as far back as Augustine.75

Wright believes the Reformers saw in first century Judaism a people who were seeking acceptance with God through their good works, and, no doubt, he would fully endorse the words of Duncan:

At the heart of the NPP’s critique of both Protestant and Catholic teaching interpretation of Paul is the charge that Reformational-era theologians read Paul via a medieval framework that obscured the categories of first century Judaism, resulting in a complete misunderstanding of his teaching on justification. The ideas of “the righteousness of God,” “imputation,” and even the definition of justification itself-all these have been invented or misunderstood by Lutheran and Catholic traditions of interpretation.76

Again, Wright agrees with Alister McGrath in his two-volume work on justification, where he states the doctrine:

Has come to develop a meaning quite independent of its biblical origins, and concerns the means by which man’s relationship with God is established. The church has chosen to subsume its discussion of the reconciliation of man to God under the aegis of justification, thereby giving the concept an emphasis quite absent from the New Testament. The ‘doctrine of justification’ has come to bear a meaning within dogmatic theology which is quite independent of its Pauline origins.77

Are we seriously to believe that the old perspective’s understanding of justification is “independent of its Pauline origins”? That “Imputation is nowhere to be found, in either the teaching of Paul or anywhere else in the New Testament? I have no doubt that McGrath’s words fit a number of views on this doctrine from the church’s long history, however, I find it hard to accept that such a critique can be applied to the Reformed position. One could well ask what it is that makes McGrath’s interpretation true, while others, as qualified as him, argue the opposite? While I agree that there is more to our salvation than justification, for example, regeneration, adoption etc., which, it should be noted, the Reformers would not deny, it is Wright’s understanding of this doctrine that falls short of the mark. He tells us that: “I want my people to understand and hear the whole word of God, not just the parts of it that fit someone’s system.”78 I don’t believe there is any who would not acquiesce with this. However, at the subconscious level, it is very difficult, if not impossible, for one to put aside all previous ideas. One finds that Wright has contorted the word to make it fit his own system; effectively he has taken a preconceived idea and has galloped through the New Testament with it.

Although agreeing with the Reformers that justification is expressed forensically in the terms of the law court, Wright denies any two-way exchange:

In the Hebrew law court, the judge does not give, bestow, impute, or impart his own “righteousness” to the defendant. That would imply that the defendant was deemed to have conducted the case impartially, in accordance with the law, to have punished sin and upheld the defenceless innocent ones. “Justification” of course means nothing like that. “Righteousness” is not a quality or substance that can thus be passed or transferred from the judge to the defendant. The righteousness of the judge is the judge’s own character status, and activity, demonstrated in doing these various things. The “righteousness” of the defendants is the status they possess when the court has found in their favour. Nothing more, nothing less. When we translate these forensic categories back into their theological context, that of the covenant, the point remains fundamental” the divine covenant faithful is not the same as human covenant membership.79

To be accepted by God there must be both the forgiveness of sin, and also the imputation of that which Christ secured by his active obedience. This is why the believer’s possession of Christ’s righteousness lies at the heart of the Reformed Baptist understanding of justification. The words of Owen are particularly pertinent here

It is not enough to say that we are not guilty. We must also be perfectly righteous. The law must be fulfilled by perfect obedience if we would enter into eternal life. And this is found only in Jesus (Rom 5:10). His death reconciled us to God. Now we are saved by his life. The perfect actual obedience that Christ rendered on earth is that righteousness by which we are saved. His righteousness is imputed to me so that I am counted as having perfectly obeyed the law myself. This must be my righteousness if I would be found in Christ, not having my own righteousness which is of the law, but the righteousness which is of God by faith (Phil 3:9).

The holy character of God cannot, as Wright claims, just find in favor of the sinner, he can only do this if an actual righteousness is present. To do otherwise would be to undermine his holiness. Again, to quote Owen:

For that any may be reputed righteous—that is, be judged or esteemed to be so—there must be a real foundation of that reputation, or it is a mistake, and not a right judgment; as any man may be reputed to be wise who is a fool, or be reputed to be rich who is a beggar. Wherefore, he that is reputed righteous must either have a righteousness of his own, or another antecedently imputed unto him, as the foundation of that reputation. Wherefore, to impute righteousness unto one that hath none of his own, is not to impute him to be righteous who is indeed unrighteous; but it is to communicate a righteousness unto him, that he may rightly and justly be esteemed, judged, or reputed righteous.80

Maintaining Christ’s redemptive work to have only secured the forgiveness of sins is to grossly misconstrue the true nature of justification. In the words of John Murray:

. . . it is prejudicial to the grace and nature of justification to construe of it merely in terms of remission. This is so to such an extent that the bare notion of remission does not express, nor does it of itself imply, the concept of justification. The latter means not simply that the person is free from guilt but is accepted as righteous; he is declared to be just. In the judicially constitutive and in the declarative sense he is righteous in God’s sight. In other words, it is the positive judgment on God’s part that gives to justification its specific character.81

The righteousness that God bestows on those in Christ occurs instantaneously, being a forensic declaration that one is now considered both forgiven and righteous. It is a consequence of being placed into Christ. This righteousness must not be confused with that which the apostle refers to in texts like Romans 8:3–4, where the righteousness is not forensic, but concerns the believer’s progressive sanctification. In regard to justification, the only ones who may dwell in his presence are those who meet the necessary criteria, namely, possessing righteousness and being forgiven for sin, as the Psalmist said, “O LORD, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill? He who walks blamelessly and does what is right and speaks truth in his heart” (Ps 15:1–2). Wright, however, maintains that forgiveness and membership of the covenant is sufficient:

Paul can assume that “reckoning righteousness apart from works and “not reckoning sin against someone” are equivalents. The covenant, we must always remind ourselves, was there to deal with sin; when God forgives sin, or reckons someone within the covenant [=justifies], these are functionally equivalent. They draw attention to different aspects of the same event.82

He holds no punches in regard to the imputation of righteousness, maintaining it to be impossible, even nonsense:

To imagine the defendant somehow receiving the judge’s righteousness is simply a category mistake. That is not how the language works . . . If and when God does act to vindication his people, his people will then, metaphorically speaking, have the status of ‘righteousness. That makes no sense all.83

He again states:

If we use the language of the law-court, it makes no sense whatsoever to say that the judge imputes, imparts, bequeaths, conveys or otherwise transfers his righteousness to either the plaintiff or the defendant. Righteousness is not an object, a substance or a gas which can be passed across a courtroom.84

We must not forget that any analogy can be taken to extremes and caricatured. We need to heed the words of Carson, commenting on a popular caricature of the courtroom analogy:

In certain crucial ways, human law courts, whether contemporary or ancient Hebrew courts, are merely analogical models and cannot highlight one or two crucial distinctions that are necessarily operative when the judge is God. In particular, both the contemporary judge and the judge in the Hebrew law court is an administrator of a system. To take the contemporary court: in no sense has the criminal legally offended judge . . . the crime has been ‘against the state’ or ‘against the people’ or ‘against the laws of the land.’ In such a system, for the administrator of the system, the judge, to take the criminal’s place would be profoundly unjust; it would be a perversion of the justice required by the system, of which the judge is the sworn administrator. But when God is the judge, the offence is always and necessarily against him. He is never the administrator of a system external to himself; he is the offended party as well as the impartial judge. To force categories of merely human courts onto these uniquely divine realities is bound to lead to distortion.85

Wright has forced categories that are applicable to human courts onto the court of God, this has resulted in a gross distortion of justification. Campbell cuts to the chase, aptly summing up the implications of Wright’s understanding of justification:

For all its laboured originality, this theory completely fails to escape the gravitational pull of the religion of self-justification. Wright’s basic thrust is that justification is no legal fiction: the believer is righteous, but when all is said and done it is our own personal righteousness. It is inherent, not imputed. We are asked to stand on the rock of our own covenant-keeping. Could that have given Martin Luther peace? Could it give any of us peace? On the contrary, our hope would ebb and flow with every rise and fall in the tide of our personal spirituality.86

To suggest that the righteousness which justifies is like an object, substance or a gas87 is to grossly misconstrue the teaching. It needs to be emphasized that it is not God’s intrinsic or essential righteousness that is imputed to the believer, but the righteousness secured by Christ in his redemptive work. In Wright’s depiction of the courtroom, there is only the judge and the defendant in attendance, when, in fact, there are three persons, a judge, a defendant, and a third party, who is Christ. Indeed, the “Reformers and their heirs labored the point that it is Christ’s successful fulfilment of the trial of the covenant representative that is imputed or credited to all who believe. His meritorious achievement, not God’s own essential righteousness, is imputed.”88 Unlike God’s own essential righteousness, that righteousness secured by Christ’s covenantal obedience did not always exist. It is the result of what the third-party in the court has done on behalf of the defendant, and it is this that constitutes that which is imputed. About Wright’s deficient portrayal of justification, Horton states, “Wright’s account so far does not seem to allow for an inheritance to be actually given to anyone in particular. Justification may be forensic (that is, judicial), but there can be no transfer of assets, if you will, from a faithful representative to the ungodly.”89

Wright again tells us that justification arises out of the believer’s covenant membership. It is a declaration that one is in covenant with God. The problem with this is, to use the proverbial saying, “it puts the cart before the horse.” He limits justification to a relationship that has already been established when it is justification is that establishes the relationship. There can be no membership of the new covenant without it, as Gathercole tells us, “God’s act of justification is not one of recognition but is, rather, closer to creation. It is God’s determination of our new identity rather than a recognition of it.”90

Those who are justified have peace with God, “therefore, since we have been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also received access into this faith in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God” (Rom 5:1). Such justification did not only apply after Christ, for Paul uses Abraham as an example. If, as Wright maintains, justification means that one belongs to the covenant, and if this was the position of Israel, then he seems to be saying that all had peace with God. To put this in the form of a syllogism:

• Justification means one is a member of the covenant

• Being a member of the covenant means having peace with God

• All Israelites were members of the old covenant

• Therefore, all Israelites had peace with God

Yet we know that it was only the remnant who had peace with God, even though all Israel belonged to the old covenant. Far from knowing the peace of God, the nation found itself under God’s wrath.

God is Just

Many ask the question: “Is not God unjust for allowing an innocent party to be punished for the sins of others?” Christ was innocent, and to maintain, as some do, that God then punished our sins in his flesh is to call God’s justice into question because a righteous judge would not punish an innocent party for the sins of another, “He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the LORD” (Prov 17:15).

Caricaturing the analogy occurs when one makes a like-for-like comparison of the things being compared without allowing for the differences that might exist between them. For example, the human court analogy can only go so far in drawing out certain principles. It must not be pressed too far. There are aspects of God’s judgment that simply do not fit with our human categories. When Jesus was punished in our stead he was not an unrelated third-party. It is not as if one who is separate from us suffered for our wrongdoing. No, Christ, because of our union with him and his union with us, became liable for the consequences of our sins. It is a union which ensures that God the Father views Christ and his people as constituting one body, Christ being the head, and we his members. As John Owen puts it:

[God] might punish the elect either in their own persons, or in their surety standing in their room and stead [as their substitute]; and when he is punished, they also are punished [in their representative]: for in this point of view the federal head and those represented by him are not considered as distinct, but as one; for although they are not one in respect of personal unity, they are, however, one,-that is, one body in mystical union, yea one mystical Christ;-namely, the surety is the head, those represented by him the members; and when the head is punished, the members also are punished.91

In the application of redemption, our union with Christ was communicated to us when God effectively called us into fellowship with himself at a point in time (1 Cor 1:9). Having said this, in another sense, one can say that our union with Christ began before the foundation of the world in the covenant of redemption, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will” (Eph 1:3-5). It is important to realize that we have been blessed because, even before our salvation, we were in some sense “in Christ.” God the Father gave a people to the Son (John 6:37–39), and it was for these that Christ carried out his redemptive work. All those whose names are written in the book, as it were, are those for whom Christ suffered and died. This is why, even before our union with Christ in time, Jesus could justly suffer for his people’s sins because the union that exists between him and his people makes him liable for his people’s sins and righteousness.

One also needs to take into account that in the death of Christ the Father was not an entirely separate being, an onlooker, so to speak. He was not like the human judge who remains distanced from the acts of the accused. The Father too suffered in the death of Christ. This is something of a mystery; one that lies in the union that exists between the persons of the Trinity. One must, of course, avoid modalism, which teaches that the one God can appear in three different modes, where the Son can become the Father etc., this leads to patripassionism, a teaching which maintains that it was the Father who died upon the cross. I point this out because it is often not taken into consideration when human analogies are used in speaking about Christ’s sufferings. For example, Wright, in criticising the human categories of the law court metaphor does tend to caricature the analogy, not sufficiently expressing the limits of such language, the fact that it can at best be compared to looking through opaque glass into the mind of God.

Justification should not be viewed in isolation from the believer’s union with Christ. They must go together. The idea of a judge somehow walking across a courtroom and giving something of his own to the defendant is, to say the least, liable to misunderstanding. It is at best a somewhat imperfect attempt to capture an aspect of what justification involves. Wright overplays the human aspect, not alluding to the fact that God’s courtroom is very different from that of which we are familiar with. Talking in human terms, if I do a good work for someone else, say, serve a prison sentence so that the person in question does not have to, I will always remain external to the person. This is not what happens in justification. The believer is in possession of Christ’s actual righteousness because he is in Christ. In my simple example, for it to bear any resemblance to justification, one would have to say that not only did I serve the prison sentence, but that the person on whose behalf I did so must be looked upon by the appropriate authorities as if he actually served the sentence with me. This could not occur because, unlike with the relationship that exists between the believer and Christ, there cannot exist the necessary union between us. So, of course, righteousness cannot be given to one who is external from the giver; it can, however, become one’s very own in virtue of a person being made at one with him who possesses the righteousness. This is why the apostle keeps using the phrase “in Christ,” it is because of being “in him” that the believer possesses all that belongs to him. Our union with Christ and our resulting justification exist in a dimension unavailable to human courts in that it is the result of the Spirit’s supernatural activity whereby we are engrafted into Christ, where we possess all that he achieved in his redemptive work.

Furthermore, in a human court, if the judge pronounces a guilty criminal innocent it is because he has made a mistake. It is a mistake based on his lack of knowledge about the crimes of the accused. This, however, cannot happen in God’s law court because God is omniscient. He will never acquit the guilty. If he did he would be a very unjust judge. That he does so is entirely because of the fact that when he looks upon the sinner he sees Christ’s righteousness and sacrificial death. He sees this rather than the sinner because the sinner is in Christ’s body; flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood. One does not separate Christ, the head from the body, and neither must one separate justification from union with Christ.

Again, Wright does not see justification as a one-time past event in the believer’s life, but simply the first of two justifications. So while acknowledging the believer’s present justification, he emphasizes an eschatological aspect or a future justification. Although one may be considered as presently or provisionally justified, with the final verdict being brought forward, one’s works now begin to play a role. They do so to the point where one’s future justification will be based on these works, on the life one has lived. He is essentially applying to the Christian what Sanders said about Israel, where God by his grace rescued Israel and placed her within the land; having done so he made her continuance in the land dependent upon works, in a similar manner the believer is placed in the covenant community, but abiding there depends on his works.

Wright is somewhat remiss in not adequately explaining how those within the nation were saved in the time preceding Christ’s arrival, and in discerning the different covenants and their respective ends. He leaves one asking a number of questions. Is he saying that prior to Christ’s arrival salvation was possible by keeping the law? Is he telling us that faith became the badge of covenantal membership only for New Testament believers? He does, however, state, that “Those who adhered in the proper way to the ancestral covenant charter, the Torah, were assured in the present that they were the people who would be vindicated in the future.”92What does he mean by “ancestral covenant charter”? This is where he appears to mix up or confuse the covenants. If he has the old Mosaic covenant in mind he is remiss of the fact that no salvation was available under this covenant. Paul, in the third chapter of his second letter to the Corinthians, “contrasted his own ministry with the ministry of Moses. Moses ministry was incapable of bringing life, what it did bring condemnation; the apostle refers to the law as a “ministry of death” (2 Cor 3:7). Indeed, if it were possible to bring in a law life, then righteousness would have been by the law (Gal 3:21–22). As Holland reminds us: “Whatever Rabbinic Judaism thought of Israel’s status, Paul’s point seems diametrically opposed to it. The law is not evidence of acceptance, but of separation. Israel was a prisoner to sin.”93 Paul’s own ministry, on the other hand, brings righteousness and life. Wright, it seems, is here making the classic paedobaptist blunder in affording the old covenant an efficacy it never possessed. Israel was never expected to keep the covenant even to secure temporal blessings, let alone anything related to the spiritual realm. Joshua was under no illusions about Israel’s position, telling the people that they were “not able to serve the LORD” (Josh 24:19).

Continuing Exile and the Law

One of the central planks of Wright’s position is the idea that the Israel of Jesus’ time was still in exile.94 If he means the nation was disqualified from those blessings we read of in Deuteronomy 27–30 because of its disobedience he is unquestionably correct. Wright, however, goes further, believing that when Jesus became a curse, as we read of in Galatians 3:13, he did so with only the Jewish exile in mind. He sees Jesus as having brought to an end Israel’s exile, and in so doing misses the essential fact that any exile Israel may have been under was but a type of the exile which all humanity is born into as a result of Adam’s sin. Holland correctly distinguishes between these two exiles:

The Jews when sent into exile received fully what they deserved. Once they suffered what God saw was appropriate (Isa 51:17), then he delivered/redeemed them. But Paul is not talking about salvation at a temporary level where it was possible to be punished and the past put behind. Rather he means an eternal exile from the presence of God, a totally different exile from anything depicted in Israel’s history . . . The nature of the exile caused by Adam is of a different dimension and order, and required an act of cosmic redemption. The nature of this exile is of such significance that the offender cannot possibly make atonement.95

Although there is no longer any need for typical Israel, humanity’s exile under the covenant of works has not gone away. All people remain, unless they believe in Christ, under God’s condemnation because of their transgressions and sins.

It was only a minority from within the nation, the remnant, who saw beyond the various sacrifices and believed in the one promised. Only these knew justification. The country they looked forward to in faith was a different country from that promised to earthly Israel. They desired a “better country, that is a heavenly country: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he hath prepared for them a city” (Heb 11:16). They looked not to those conditional promises as found in Deuteronomy 27–29, that were part of the old covenant and spoke only of the type, rather, they looked to the new covenant expressed in the promise, and benefited from the spiritual and eternal blessings secured by Christ, the antitype. True Israelites, the true children of Abraham, “all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Heb 11:13).

Concerning “the works of the law” Wright takes the same position as Sanders in regard to covenantal nomism, and adopts Dunn’s understanding that the works of the law are concerned with boundary markers, i.e., the apostle does not have in mind a legalistic keeping of the law in an attempt to gain God’s favor, but those aspects of the law that certain Jews were using to exclude Gentile membership of the covenant, namely, dietary laws, circumcision, the Sabbath and other holy days. One of the problems with this view, although not what Wright articulates, but his references to Israel certainly imply it, is that it assumes that Israel of old was a justified people and that these boundary markers marked them out as such. The Jews were all circumcised, they kept their holy days and the Sabbath, and this marked them as being in the covenant. Again, because of Wright’s mono-covenantal position, it seems that he deems the new covenant to be a continuation of the old covenant, only in the new covenant Jesus, as the faithful Israelite, has kept the covenant that Israel was supposed to keep but didn’t. It is a position that fails to appreciate the fact that these external regulations marked Israel out as being a people under, not the covenant of grace, or new covenant, but the temporal and conditional old covenant.

The law’s function was not to vouchsafe acceptance before God but to show that without perfect conformity to its moral demands there could be no acceptance. To quote Holland, “The law is not evidence of acceptance, but of separation. Israel was a prisoner of sin.”96 The apostle advised the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15:6–11, saying that the law should not be imposed on the Gentiles, Why? because it was a yoke that they were unable to bear. Clearly, he is not speaking of “boundary markers” because these could hardly be considered as being too difficult to bear, as Holland tells us, “It would have been inconceivable for a Jew not to be circumcised, so it would have been meaningless to say that the Jews were not able to bear it. The same would be true of the other boundary markers, dietary law, and Sabbath keeping.”97

The problem with Wright’s position, as with all new perspectives on Paul, is that he relies on Second Temple Judaism to understand justification and the role of the law. It may be an extreme example, but if a thousand years from now one wanted to know about the Triune God one would not go to those documents provided by today’s Jehovah’s Witness to explain it. By the same token, in wanting to understand the New Testament and the place of the law, one should not go to Second Temple Judaism. This is because there were a variety of different views being propounded by the Judaism of the time. As I said in the case of Sanders, the danger is that one might take one of these views, perhaps the wrong one, and seek to interpret the Scriptures accordingly. I’m not saying that we cannot learn much from Second Temple Judaism, but I am saying that great care must be taken when one tries to interpret the Scriptures in the light of this.

Wright, Calvin and, the Reformation.

Before moving on, I want to briefly examine what Wright has to say about Calvin and the imputation of righteousness. He clearly believes his position on justification to be something akin to that of the Reformer:

As with Calvin himself, and many subsequent Reformed theologians, Sanders saw that Paul’s doctrine of justification meant what it meant within the idea of ‘participation’, of ‘being in Christ’.98

The irony is that at this point Sanders and others, including the present writer, are standing firmly in line . . . with Calvin himself, though it is from would-be Calvinists that some of the sharpest criticism has come.99

The idea of imputed righteousness’, whether of God himself or, as some constructs, of Christ himself, is not the only way of addressing the question. The idea of ‘imputed righteousness’ was in any case, a latecomer to Reformation theology.100

So is Wright’s position “firmly in line with” the great Reformer? In regard to the believer’s “participation” and “being in Christ,” one would have to say yes. One must be fair to what Wright is saying, he maintains that because of believers’ union with Christ, they are in possession of all that Christ’s work achieved.

The sticking point concerns the meaning of justification, and one would have to say that Wright’s position is far removed from that of Calvin. This is because he fails to acknowledge imputation; something that lay at the heart of the Reformer’s understanding of justification. He tells us that contemporary Calvinists consider justification as a first-order doctrine in our salvation, when, in fact, it is of secondary importance. He states that “from reading many today who claim Calvin’s heritage but would be shocked to find ‘justification’ as a ‘secondary crater.”101 Calvin, however, does not consider justification as a secondary anything, rather, he sees being “in Christ” and justification as soul mates. Yes, one can correctly say that justification is the result of the believer being in Christ, however, one cannot be saved without being justified, and one cannot be justified without being “in Christ.” So important was justification for Calvin that he considered it “the main hinge on which religion turns.”102This is because there can be no peace with God without it. Both our union with Christ and our justification, although we separate them logically, in terms of chronology, occur simultaneously, with one being no more important than the other. To call justification a “secondary crater” is to misunderstand Calvin

I find Wright’s statement, “The idea of ‘imputed righteousness’ was, in any case, a latecomer to Reformation theology” rather bazaar, to say the least. Does he perhaps think that it is something Calvin and the other Reformers103 did not fully endorse? In all probably the concept was introduced to Luther in 1519 by his close companion Philip Melanchthon. He was a Greek scholar, and it was his study of the New Testament that convinced him that the Greek word dikaioo meant, not as the Latin maintained, to make righteous intrinsically, but to declare righteous. It was a forensic act that takes place outside the sinner and amounts to a legal declaration by God that the sinner is righteous. It is based on the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the sinner, with the sinner’s sin imputed to Christ.

A cursory look at what Calvin said about justification should dispel any notion that it was a latecomer to the Reformation:

Therefore, we explain justification simply as the acceptance with which God receives us into his favour as righteous men. And we say that it consists of the remission of sins and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.104

He is said to be justified in God’s sight who in both reckoned righteous in God’s judgment and has been accepted on account of his righteousness.105

Now he is justified who is reckoned in the condition not of a sinner, but of a righteous man.106

On the contrary, justified by faith is he who, is excluded from the righteousness of works, grasps the righteousness of Christ through faith, and clothed in it, appears in God’s sight not as a sinner but as a righteous man.107

Therefore, “to justify” means nothing else than to acquit of guilt him who was accused, as if his innocence were confirmed. Therefore, since God justifies by the intercessions of Christ, he absolves us not by the confirmation of our own innocence but by the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, so that we who are not righteous in ourselves may be reckoned such in Christ.108

Calvin could not have expressed his belief in justification and the role that Christ’s righteousness plays, more clearly. The above quotes should suffice to show that Calvin adhered to the traditional Protestant understanding of imputation.

24. Duncan, Attractions of the New Perspective (s).

25. Stendahl, Paul Among the Jews, 85.

26. Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul”, 95.

27. Cooper, The Righteous One, 3–4.

28. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 437.

29. Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul”, 87.

30. Ibid., 86.

31. Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New on Paul, 149.

32. Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul”, 84–5.

33. Ibid., 86.

34. Neill and Wright, The Interpretation of the New Testament, 372.

35. Wright, WSPRS, 158–9.

36. Sanders, Paul A Very Short Introduction, 58.

37. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 57.

38. Venama, Gospel of Free Acceptance, 101.

39. Ibid., 101.

40. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 17.

41. Ibid., 543.

42. Wright, WSPRS, 19.

43. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 75.

44. Venema, Gospel of Free Acceptance in Christ, 103.

45. Ibid.

46. McGrath, IUSTITIA DEI, 28.

47. Wright places significant emphasis on a text known as 4QMMT. For a discussion of this see Tom Holland’s Tom Wright and the Search for Truth pp. 316–331.

48. Sanders, Palestinian Judaism, 143.

49. Carson, Justification and Variegated Nomism, 544.

50. Dunn, The New Perspective on Paul, 101.

51. Ibid., The Theology of Paul the Apostle, 356.

52. Ibid., 358.

53. Wright, “The New Perspective on Paul”, 192.

54. Dunn, “The Theology of Galatians” 83.

55. Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New, 190.

56. Venema, The Gospel 114.

57. See Garwood P. Anderson, Paul’s New Perspective 46.

58. Waters, Justification, 119.

59. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, London, SPCK, 2003.

60. Wright, Transcript of interview by Trevin Wax.

61. Schreiner, Faith Alone, 240

62. Holland, Search for Truth, 34-35.

63. Trueman R. Carl, A Man More Sinned Against than Sinning?

64. Enns, Peter, “Book Review” 328.

65. Grant, George, “Books: Revisiting the Apostle”

66. Seyoon, Paul and the New Perspective. XIV.

67. MacArthur, John MacArthur Refutes False Teacher.

68. Eveson, The Great Exchange, 126.

69. Fesko, Deficiencies in Wright’s Theology,

70. Fesko, “John Owen . . .”, 18.

71. Wright , WSPRS, 20.

72. Ibid., 19.

73. Wright, WSPRS, 51.

74. Ibid., 113.

75. Truman, “The Portrait of Martin Luther”.

76. Duncan, “The Attractions of the New Perspectives on Paul,” 16–30.

77. McGrath, Iustitia Dei. A History of the Doctrine of Justification, Vol. 1, 1–2.

78. Wright, WSPRS, 167.

79. Wright, “Romans and the Theology of Paul” 3:38–39.

80. Owen, Works, 5, 166.

81. Murray, Collected Works, 2, 218.

82. Wright, The letter to the Romans, 493.

83. Wright, WSPRS, 99.

84. Wright, WSPRS, 98–99.

85. Carson, “Atonement in Romans” 132.

86. Campbell, A Faith To Live By, 166–167.

87. Wright, WSPRS, 98.

88. Horton, Covenant and Salvation, 104.

89. Ibid., 105.

90. Gathercole, “The Doctrine of Justification in Paul” 229.

91. Owen, Works, 10, 598.

92. Wright, WSPRS, 119.

93. Holland, Contours of Pauline Theology, 209.

94. For example, see Revolution 105–6.

95. Holland, Contours of Pauline Theology, 170.

96. Ibid., 209.

97. Ibid., 210.

98. Wright, Paul and His Recent Interpreters, 67.

99. Ibid., 119.

100. Ibid., 120.

101. Ibid.

102. Calvin, Institutes XI, 3: 1.

103. Luther also believed in a righteousness that is imputed to the believer, see, R. Scott Clark’s article entitled: “Iustitia Imputata Christi: Alien or Proper to Luther’s Doctrine if Justification?” in Concordia Theological Quarterly, Vol. 7:3/4, July/October 1976, pp. 269-310. In this Clark examines Luther’s mature writings and unambiguously shows that he believed in the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the believer.

104. Calvin, Institutes III, XI, 2.

105. Ibid., III, XI, 2.

106. Ibid.

107. Ibid.

108. Ibid., III, XI, 4.