Romans 1:16 - The Faithfulness of God

In John 17:3, the Lord Jesus teaches us that life is knowing God. To have happiness in this life, true happiness, requires that we know God. The book of Romans is best understood to not be essentially about "how to get saved" or how we receive righteousness from God, but about God and His righteousness. God is a covenant keeping God. God is faithful. God is holy. When He makes a promise, He keeps it. God is a promise keeping God and Paul is explaining God's faithfulness in the book of Romans. Has God been faithful to the promises to Israel? Has God been faithful to the promise He made with Abraham to through Him bless the entire world? And so opens the book of Romans:

¹⁶For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

Paul is not ashamed of the preaching of the Gospel because in the Gospel is revealed the righteousness of God, God's faithfulness. It is in the Gospel that the promise to rescue Israel from exile and bondage is being revealed in sending the Messiah to rescue Israel (and the nations too) and to establish the city promised to Abraham. In the Gospel is being revealed the faithfulness of God.

On the contrary, this opening thematic statement is not saying, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel for in it is revealed a means for sinful humanity to receive a righteousness from God in order to be reconciled to Him". Of course this too is revealed in the Gospel but that is not what the over arching Glory of the book of Romans is about. Romans and the driving force and foundation of our faith is the knowledge of God. The gospel is about God and His faithfulness and this faithfulness to rescue a broken humanity and set the world right and establish the kingdom, this faithfulness of God is being revealed in the Gospel. God has fulfilled the promises to Israel to deliver her from her enemies. He has sent Messiah to rule all the world and those who believe who have faith in His faithfulness these are the people who live and persevere and live in shalom in this life.

N. T. Wright on Ephesians - Ecclesiology and Justification

It stuns me as I reflect how many times I have read the book of Ephesians and have been unable to incorporate Paul's use of the word "church" in to the themes of this great book. But if you read the book of Ephesians and start with the assumption that Ephesians is about the church, it all comes into focus. 

Think about Paul's use of the word "mystery". I have always been dumbfounded by this theme. Paul says the mystery of the gospel has been revealed to him. As we read we are anticipating Paul to state the mystery clearly and we expect the mystery to be that the Messiah died for sins that we could be reconciled to God. Is not this the great mystery? But alas, Paul's great mystery, the reason he was called is not to proclaim that individuals are justified, but the great mystery is 

the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things;¹⁰so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.

The mystery is the wisdom of God in reconciling both Jews and Gentiles into one church. If you follow the logic of Ephesians the great truth is that justification produces one unified church. Christ has taken away the dividing wall that was the Law and its ordinances and made one body. 

When Paul speaks of marriage he says, "This is a great mystery, But I am not talking about you and your spouse. I am talking about the great mystery of Christ and the Church. Not Christ and the individual, not about marriage, this paragraph of scripture is about Christ and the church, the great mystery. This is ecclesiology!!!

So what is the point. The point is that the purpose of God, the great purpose, is to build a new temple, the church, in our day. This era is the church age and yet we have a low view of the church. God's glory is not just through "life transformation" but church transformation. 

I had a discussion with a young man the other day. He was talking about how people are planning on re-building the temple in Jerusalem and his take was that therefore the end is near. I said in response "but in the New Testament the new temple is the church. Haven't christians been rebuilding the temple for 2000 years. We are the third temple". Yeah, but the temple is going to be built in Jerusalem and then the end will come, he said. What part of "we are the temple don't you understand". My friends the radical wonderful beautiful new temple that is being built to the glory of God is us. Paul saw it and it was this vision that drove him in his journey's. 

That's Paul's perspective and without understanding this perspective we will not understand the radical implications and challenge of the New Covenant. There are many more references to the church in Ephesians but that will have to be for another post. 

The What and Why of N. T. Wright's Justification

I have been reading N. T. Wright's Justification for awhile now and I just completed the section on Galatians and Philippians. It is hard to understand the distinction Wright is making and why he feels so determined to make it. Even more amazing is why is Piper and crew so vehemently opposed to Wright's way of thinking. I think the point is the underlying worldview between the two positions. So, I will attempt to articulate Wrights point and show how this relates to his worldview "perspective".

Galatians

Where Wright absolutely shines above all other exegetes is his ability to incorporate the entire book into one cohesive argument. Wright includes all the puzzle pieces in discussing the entire picture of the book of Galatians.

Galatians opens with Paul discussing his dispute with Peter. The book is actually about this practical pastoral problem. When the agitators from James (i.e. Jerusalem) came to Galatia, Peter ate in a kind of separate but equal "for-Jews-only" table. The book is about table unity and what constitutes a person's acceptance and identity as "on of God's people". Most interpreters simply skip over this context and instead answer a different question than the one Paul is answering. Isn't the book about how we as individuals stand before God at the judgment? Isn't righteousness the moral quality needed to be accepted into heaven? Here is the subtle difference. The question is actually better stated "What are the cultural markers that define the people of God?" Now here is the point. The reason we formulate the question in an ecclesiological fashion is because God's ultimate purpose is to build a racially diverse and radically beautiful community here on earth. Salvation is manifested in the context not of a future heaven only but in the context of a present church.

This understanding of the big picture of a very practical and present transformed community is the theological foundation to understand Wrights actual distinction. For this reason, Wright emphasizes the covenant with Abraham to make a great nation and inherit the earth and that every nation will be blessed. If this Paul's vision and emphasis, we must incorporate this emphasis in our reading of Paul. The reformers on the other hand were reading Paul to find the answer to a different question that was facing them in their historical context namely the question of purgatory and indulgences. But this question is not the Paul's question. The question then is how is God fulfilling the covenant of Abraham and making this one community out of both Jews and Gentiles and how does this answer in the Messiah answer Peter's hypocrisy in eating at a separate table and faking that he is a Torah follower.

In this context of community building, we must attach meaning to the term "justification". In this context, the first meaning of justification is being accounted as a full member of the community. The sole marker of being a member of the new eschatological community is "faith in the faithfulness of the Messiah". Through this faith in the work of the faithful Israelite, Jesus the Messiah, we are justified that is we accepted in Him as a member of the community. Therefore, to be declared righteous is to be declared a member of the community. Righteousness is a status and not an account of virtue that is great enough to earn heaven.

Here is a way to understand the distinction by looking at a few illustrations.

The Example of Islam, Pharisees, the Qumran Community, and Understanding First Century Judaism

While reading Wright, it dawned on me, "This is exactly the point of Islam!!" Wright makes the point and I am convinced he is correct that first century Judaism never saw perfect attention to the law as necessary to being acceptable before God. Instead the search was for what are the key markers in Torah to constituting being a faithful Israelite. The key is that posing these markers is then reckoned as righteousness. The question is what are the key markers of a member of the people of God. When we see that this is the theology of Paul and first century Jews, then we understand Paul. For the Pharisee the keys were obviously food regulations and sabbath regulations on top of the obvious circumcision and the calendar. For Muslims this is obvious too. The answer to the Muslim is the five pillars. These are the markers of the true people of God. For the Taliban, the signs are a rigorous punishing of the infidel who refuses the markers. This zeal is the marker. For the Christian the marker is faith in the Christ. This is the only marker and this marker is transcends the Law, Torah, and therefore is the great foundation for ethnic unity. This understanding of the quest for definitions of what constitutes community membership is key to understanding Paul and ALL of his books. This the question being answered in Romans, Philippians, and so clearly Ephesians.

The key then to Wright's exegesis is twofold. First, we must make sure we understand Paul and Paul's entire argument and not bring our own perspective to the text. Secondly, we must maintain the worldview of salvation as the membership in the beautiful community here on earth with an eye to this membership being affirmed in the future.

It is this understanding that informs our understanding of the terms "righteous" and "justification".

Application

Here is another key to understanding Paul's emphasis. Christianity becomes more about the moral beauty of the community than our own personal piety. Most western Christians owner story is the story of maintenance of their personal standing with God through confession and repentance. Of course this is important BUT it is not the most important. God's bigger picture, bigger than your personal virtue, is the righteous functioning of the church community. It is the manifestation of the kingdom in the community that we are to emphasize. This perspective, if you will, transforms our priorities and our approach to the faith in a profound way. Sin is now understandably more about love and the one another commands than smoking and drinking and naughty words. The proper perspective on the centrality of community in this life and the purposes of God to build a community to His glory is more important than our journey to heaven. Here is the key to understanding the "what" and "why" of Paul and the New Testament and therefore putting Paul in proper "perspective".

N. T. Wright - Justification God’s Plan and Paul's Vision - Part 2

In the opening pages of his response to John Piper’s critique, N. T. Wright tries to explain his perspective on the tenor of the dialogue between himself and his reformed critics.

Wright describes a scene where we are attempting to explain to a man who “by some accident of education” had never heard that the earth revolved and rotated. You expalin the solar system and planetary motion with props and passion over a glass of wine. The next morning you wake up to the other man’s persistent knock. He takes you to a hilltop over looking the ocean. He returns to the topic of the previous night and then the great evidence arises in the east and he turns and says, “see I told you. There it is before our eyes. Do not let all these new ideas confuse you when the fact is so clear and simple and is right there plain for all to see.” Confident that he is the defender of the truth against silly sophistication, he looks at you with a look of almost pity.


How N. T. Wright Flanks Piper on the Right
What is it in the self-satisfied traditionalist that stands in the way of learning? The first few chapters in Wright’s justification attempt to convince the traditionalist to consider that maybe there exist strongholds that are impeding their ability to see scriptures clearly. If we can all agree on a few hermeneutical principles, maybe some progress in the dialogue can be made. So here are the principles as I see them that Wright suggests:
We must look at everything Paul says. If our system cannot explain or account for some passages, then we must be open to a new perspective which can actually account for the entire system of Pauline thought. This suggestion is fundamentally conservative in that this principle is appealing to scripture. A good understanding of scripture must be able to assist in understanding other scriptures.
A sub set of this principle would be that in order to understand a passage we need to be able to understand the entire argument of the passage and how that passage fits in a larger argument.
As an illustration of this point, Wright uses the analogy of building a puzzle using all the puzzle pieces. If we refuse to use all the puzzle pieces and then force ourselves to make a picture out of the puzzle pieces remaining, we will not get a good picture or a clear understanding of the intended scene. So too, if we do not take every passage into account, we will not be able to understand the entire picture of Pauline thought nor will we have much success or assurance that we understand what little bits we do think we have pieced together.

A second principle is that it is important to look to scriptures and the world of scriptures as opposed to tradition and the world of the 16th century and the thought patterns of the 16th-17th centuries as the authority in scripture interpretation. This point is so obvious and humorous at the same time. Wright is clearly flanking Piper on the right. Is it conservative to point the believers to the 1st century or the 16th? To scripture or tradition? Should we illuminate Paul with the world of Paul or the world of Calvin and Luther?
A great example of this principle is Luther’s own appeal to scripture and the world of scripture to make one of the key revelations of the reformation. Luther appealed to 1st century usage of the word metanoia. Luther insisted that a more accurate translation of Pauline though would be “to repent” and not “to do penance”. On what basis could Luther make this argument but to go back to scripture and the use of such word elsewhere in the first century. Wright is out reforming the reformed purists by using examples of how the reformers did exactly what he is doing, (i.e. looking to scriptures as the final authority as against our traditions.
A last example of this is to make the distinction between the questions we are attempting to answer via the text and the questions Paul was trying to answer via his text. ewvery generation has its controversies and every generations theologies are an attempt to answer these controversies. But isn’t it more important to understand what Paul problems Paul was trying to solve when he wrote the text. The aim is to avoid eisegesis and get back to exegesis.

If we are honest, each of Wright’s principles are an appeal to true scriptural conservatism as opposed to a conservatism that attempts to conserve tradition. Indeed, N. T. Wright is flanking John Piper on the right.

next post: A little more on worldview (like this old post)

N. T. Wright On Justification - Part 1

NT Wright On Justification - Part 1

I am reading N. T. Wright’s book on justification and John Piper’s critique of N. T. Wright as well and John Owen’s original work on “Justification by Faith” (or here). My goal is actually personal in that I believe my own spiritual growth needs a big dose of grace. As we receive grace, we become more gracious. I have six children and I need a lot of grace to remain gracious. I find good exposition to be sanctifying and inspiring for me.

My blog plan is that while I read I will summarize and make comment.

The first thing one must understand and appreciate is how remarkably conservative N. T. Wright is. Many conservatives seem to paint Wright as a theological liberal but in the pantheon of New Testament scholars N. T. Wright is stand in the solidly if not even extremely conservative camp. In fact in this book, Wright’s approach is to flank Piper and co. on the right. It is Wright who appeals to scripture as opposed to tradition. On this note and with many illustrations, Wright begins his book, as he must begin all his more thorough works, with an appeal to method and an explanation of the role worldview of the many actors in hermeneutic process.

An Appeal to Method and the Role of Worldview

This section and a far more expounded discussion of method (see The New Testament and the People of God) is extremely important to understand thoroughly. The basic point is so simple. The reader must be very aware that, as a subject, he or she plays a role in the reading of the text. If one is humble in light of this awareness, the reader will seek all manner of evidence in an attempt to get to the mind of the author of the biblical text. What we are after is not our experience of the text or confirmation of our previously held convictions regarding the meaning of the text. We are always after the illusive meaning of the text itself. Therefore, it is vital that we tough the world that the author touched by immersing ourselves in the world of the author. This process is called contextualization. Is it not more important to learn about the world of Paul, than the world of the reformers if we are after and seeking to understand the bible. This process of radical doubt concerning our own preconceptions and even doubt about our traditions is the basis of conservatism and sola scriptura.

N. T. Wright illustrates this principle with many illustrations but these will have to wait for tomorrow....

Understanding N.T. Wright - Tools for the Task – Part 2 - Critical Realism part 1

In my first post, Tools for the Task part 1, I discussed N.T. Wright overarching goal or his life work. N.T. Wright has embarked upon what he calls the Third Quest. Wright’s quest is to, in light of the abundance of extra-biblical evidence concerning 1st Century Judaism, develop a historically grounded hypothesis about how Christianity developed. A key quote for N.T. Wright, having reflected upon the first two quests for the historical Jesus is “when all was said and done, they dug a well and found at the bottom a reflection of themselves.” Wright is saying that these theologians used methodologies which were not critical enough and their conclusions ended up being a reflection of their own preconceived worldviews. What happened in the 20th century quests for the historical Jesus is that the theologians did not utilize the proper historian’s “Tools for the Task”. The result is the pop culture misconceptions about Christian origins which I wrote about in Part 1 of this series.

The First Tool for the Task – Critical Realism
Defining Critical
In our family, I often ask my older children the question, “What is the worst thing a person can be?” The answer they usually give is, “A compliant thinker”. Next I ask, “And what is the opposite of a compliant thinker?” The answer they give, “A critical thinker”. In my mind, one of the great enemies in the 21st Century is anti-intellectualism. To use our intellect and to be lifelong learners, we must understand what it means to be a critical thinker.

A critical thinker is a person who is constantly pursuing a revision of two perspectives: first, the perspective given to us and, second, our own perspective. In other words, a true critical thinker is constantly aware of how his own preconceptions and the preconceptions of others undermine learning and getting the process of getting closer and closer to reality. This critical approach is the first tool for the task which is the critical side of critical realism. To be critical means being constantly aware of the role that perspective plays in the telling and listening of any and all truth claims. Being critical is in many ways the foundation of the scientific method. We are constantly seeking to re-evaluate and therefore improve our understanding of reality by questioning and challenging both our own understanding and the accepted wisdom. We ask ourselves, “Is there another perspective which can help me see things clearly? What is the tellers stance? What is my stance?" We are always aware that, as subjects, both the teller of the truth and the hearer of the truth participates in the knowing process. Therefore, as learners we must use certain tools to be enable us to be skillful critics of both ourselves and the accepted wisdom in order to be active and skillful critical thinkers. To be a critical thinker, one must be both arrogant enough to question the accepted dogma and humble enough to critique one’s own preconceptions.

So that is the critical part of “Critical realism”. The next term to understand is the term "realism”. I will discuss this term in the next post. As we proceed, with other terms which N.T. Wright spends considerable time defining including, “worldview”, “theology”, “story”, “hypothesis and verification”, we will come to see how incredibly helpful these tools are to understanding both the biblical texts and the origins of Christianity.

Understanding N.T. Wright – Part 1 - Tools for the Task

“Tools for the Task” from The New Testament and the People of God

Introducing the Question of Christian Origins
Upon reading “Tools for the Task”, part II of N.T. Wright’s The New Testament and the People of God, I found the principles so helpful that I feel compelled to share the wealth. This section is pretty heavy lifting for the uninitiated layman like myself. My aim here is to shed some light on how the principles, the Tools for the Task, that Bishop Wright introduces to the reader are actually quite common sense but also quite profound and practical.

To understand the epistemological framework that N.T. Wright is building as the Tools for the Task of his study of Christian Origins, it is helpful to know the kind of knowledge he will be attempting to obtain. In his life work, Christian Origins and the Question of God, Bishop Wright is attempting to answer some very pertinent and practical questions. In our 21st Century western culture, there is great confusion surrounding the origins of Christianity. This quagmire of opinions plays itself out in the media, in academia, and in the minds of both the educated and the not so educated. It seems every pseudo-intellectual with a Mocha Frappuccino has an opinion about the origins of the Christian faith, and all these opinions seem to be a pop version of the last 100 years of academic criticism. N.T. Wright’s quest is to utilize sound historical and philosophical methods to make a systematically thorough analysis of the question of Christian origins.

Many of the scenarios that play out in the popular culture in the form of popular myth surround the question of “Who is Jesus?” One common myth is that Jesus never proclaimed himself to be the Messiah. In this view, it was only the church that developed these messianic claims. In this scenario, we have Jesus of Nazareth, the “historical Jesus”, on the one hand, and the Christ of faith, the creation of the church, on the other. Such a view is quite well-developed within both academia and the popular mind. The fact is that academic, “historical”/critical research and theory has found its way into almost every nook and cranny of the popular mind. One example of the popular mind is quite archetypically represented by the pop icon John Lennon when he said, “I’m all right with Jesus but his followers were a bunch of stupid blokes.” This sentiment takes as accepted knowledge the dogma of the popular myth of Christian origins. This perspective accepts a restructuring of history which sees Jesus as an enlightened mystic, but the apostles or the biblical writers (that is, the early church) as primitive-minded folk who misguided their faith into Jesus and thus created the personality cult of Christianity.

Such a view takes many forms in the popular mind. For example, I have an acquaintance, an intelligent and educated man, who believes that the most likely scenario is that Jesus didn’t even ever exist. This reconstruction starts with the idea that there is a gap between the historical Jesus and the Christian faith as developed by the biblical writers and takes this gap to its logical extreme. This scenario simply says that if what we know about Jesus is actually the construction of the minds of the biblical writers, and if this construction is divorced from actual historical events, then on what basis do we believe that there was ever even a Jesus to begin with? The assumption is that there are actually no historical events which are the referents of the biblical texts. The biblical texts, from this perspective, represent entirely the mind of first-century fanatics. So the question is, "how do we know or can we even come to know anything at all about the actual historical events referred to by the biblical texts?" Answering these questions is vital because the historical events are the actual ground of historic Christianity.

As we ask these questions in order to uncover the history behind Christianity, (i.e. Christian origins), it will not do to simply either accept or reject biblical authority. This is the approach of the anti-intellectuals otherwise known as fundamentalists. Biblical authority as the sole basis for our epistemology is fundamentally circular logic. How do we know the truthfulness of the biblical history? We read the bible. It is easy to see the circularity of this reasoning. Instead, we must develop some tools for the task. In my next post, I will discuss what appears to me and to N.T. Wright as the best way forward.