I was driving cross-country in the summer of 1995, at a time when the music of Hootie and the Blowfish was inescapable. My wife and I listened to the radio from Kentucky to California, and the soundtrack assigned to us by American pop music was song after song from the multiplatinum album Cracked Rear View. Now, I happened to like the band’s acoustic-stadium sound, and Darius Rucker’s über-masculine vocals. But it didn’t matter whether I liked it or not, I was getting it from both speakers no matter what. Hootie’s dominance was unquestioned: At best, DJs could manage to alternate one song by somebody else in between songs from Hootie. Change the channel, more Hootie. At one point (somewhere in New Mexico?), a DJ shouted, “This is Hootie’s world, and the rest of us are just livin’ in it!”
The theological Hootie of our age is NT Wright. He’s everywhere. Multiplatinum, hit singles, the whole package. I happen to like his work, but it doesn’t matter if you like it; you’re getting it from both speakers anyway. This is NT Wright’s world, and the rest of us are just livin’ in it.
I skipped last year’s Wheaton Theology Conference (probably the best annual theology conference anywhere in the US) because it was all about NT Wright. But then the main program of the national ETS conference was also all about Wright, so there was no avoiding it. Change the channel, more NT Wright. The ETS event was exquisitely well planned, with dueling plenaries and an extended panel discussion. Look elsewhere for commentary on the event: Summaries of what went on in Atlanta are available at reputable places, including here at Evangel.
Here in Hootie’s world, I’ve had to develop a few rules for how to keep livin’ in it. I want to make a few brief, impressionistic remarks about Wright’s work, and I want to have the freedom to speak irresponsibly –in a certain sense which I will now define. By “irresponsibly” I don’t mean gossipy or overblown or inflammatory comments. I would prefer to avoid both sin and boorishness. But I want permission to speak irresponsibly in the sense that I haven’t read most of Wright’s work, and haven’t paid close attention to most of the controversy surrounding his views. I didn’t even attend all the ETS sessions where he and his interlocutors mixed it up.
Over the past few years, as an informed Christian person who just isn’t devoting scores of hours to tracking this massive discussion, I’ve developed some rules for getting along in the age of NT Wright. As I listened to the panel discussion among Wright, Schreiner, and Thielman, I thought about how I’d been processing the Wright I’ve read over the years, and a few things became clear to me. Here are my new, modified rules for “livin’ in Hootie’s world.”
1. NT Wright is more helpful than I thought. Tom Schreiner spent a good ten minutes in his plenary address listing the many ways in which NT Wright’s work has been helpful. This wasn’t just the obligatory lip service before a mainly critical presentation; it was sustained, specific, and heart-felt. Schreiner nailed it: NT Wright has presented the world of biblical history in a gripping and fascinating way. He has struck a great balance between historical responsibility, open to academic and even secular standards of investigation, and a faith-motivated reading of the Bible as a Christian believer. His book on the Resurrection of the Son of God is masterful in this regard. Here is an Anglican on the side of the angels when it comes to most biblical issues. And every time Wright spoke in Atlanta, he did that Wright thing: taking any particular passage and putting it in a breathtakingly large context, teasing out the historical, cultural, and hermeneutical threads that make you look at the passage anew. This is Bible scholarship in the grand style, and I love it. The church has a desperate need for a few Bible scholars who know their technical stuff but who also know how to ask the big questions and point us to the big picture. Wright is one of our best, page after page after page.
2. I should try not to think about NT Wright himself. The reason I had sort of forgotten how helpful NT Wright is, is that his relentless airplay had distracted me from Wright’s arguments and made me look at Wright’s public persona. That public persona is not something I enjoy. Wright the public speaker comes across to me as smug. He is at his worst in the field of controversy, where he indulges in describing his critics as people who just don’t quite believe in heliocentrism. He constantly complains that anybody who disagrees with him hasn’t read him fairly. Hardly the happy warrior of Wordsworth’s poem, he tends to adopt a Nixonian tone (“The media’s out to get me… they even attacked my little dog Checkers!”). His book on Hope is vitiated by an “everything everybody has ever believed about heaven is wrong, and only I speak unto you the truth” tone of voice. It just makes my eyes cross; I can’t read on.
So far my rule of thumb has been that NT Wright’s big books are great, but his small books are to be avoided. That’s still not a bad guideline: make some time to study through any of the Wright books that top 500 pages, and you’ll get a blessing. The smaller books (where he can’t show all his work) give him too much opportunity to indulge in cutting a figure, in putting himself out there and invoking his own credibility. From these performances I will avert my eyes when possible. Life is too short, and reading time too precious, and the big books too good, for me to read the little ones with the regrettable passages. Your response to the Wright literary persona may be different; I admit this is subjective. But in the future, I’m not going to let my Wright annoyance factor cheat me out of benefiting from Wright’s plentiful good stuff.
3. NT Wright’s big idea is smaller than I thought. Somewhere in the second hour of panel discussion, it became clear to me that what Wright is insisting on in the justification debate is that there is such a thing as conversion, getting saved, and being forgiven by God, but the dikaio- word-group doesn’t refer to it. Here is a parallel: There is such a thing as growing in grace as a Christian, moving on from being oppressed by sin to living in victory over certain sins. The New Testament knows of that process and progress. But it doesn’t call it sanctification, as Protestants tend to in popular discourse. In other words, the hagio- word-group doesn’t refer to it in the NT. “Sanctification” in the NT tends to refer to a divine action in which he sets something apart for special use, or renders it appropriate for God’s presence. Now, I’ve noticed that, but I don’t correct people when they say things like “After being justified, do you go on to make progress in being sanctified?” I especially don’t correct them over the course of thousands of pages in which I warn them that they are seriously distorting the biblical message and are enslaved to traditions. Again, I speak here as somebody who is barely paying attention, so I could be wrong about everything. But I have provisionally made a different decision about how much it matters that the dikaio- word group does not map onto traditional Christian usage in a straightforward way. I decided it is not one of the major issues facing us today. I’m well aware that New Testament experts speak with greater precision than the rest of us about things like this, and I’m glad that they have epic battles amongst themselves about very precise matters. I want to learn from them, and to be accountable to them as the relevant experts. But precisely because there are hundreds of such arguments, I don’t norm all of my communication by the standards of that guild.
4. NT Wright is definitely not helping me think about justification. I’ll keep listening to the ongoing discussion, because I don’t really have a choice with the way the airwaves work. I’m on a long drive and NT Wright and his critics are what’s on the radio. But when I do make time to read Wright on justification, or New Perspective on Paul stuff in general, I can never quite keep the tune in my head long enough to hum it afterwards. I might just be too dense and too hidebound to be talked out of the rut I’m in. I might be one of those benighted souls who can’t quit thinking the sun goes around the earth (as portrayed in the opening pages of Wright’s Justification book). But I might also just be persuaded by something more like the classic Protestant interpretation of Paul’s writings, as represented by its current advocates who have studied this more responsibly than I can.
I wasn’t able to stay for all of Tom Schreiner’s paper on justification, so I asked a friend at the conference to tell me the bottom line. “The bottom line?” he said. “Basically, it turns out that what you think justification is, is what justification is.”
November 24th, 2010 | 4:05 pm | #1
‘I wasn’t able to stay for all of Tom Schreiner’s paper on justification, so I asked a friend at the conference to tell me the bottom line. “The bottom line?” he said. “Basically, it turns out that what you think justification is, is what justification is.” ‘
But the problem is that it isn’t. That’s what Wright is pointing out.
You have nailed a few points: for example, that Wright is important in scholarly biblical studies, and why. That Wright’s tone is quite off-putting at times, for another example.
A third example: that it is difficult to summarize at times exactly what Wright has said.
I personally think there is a good reason for this third point you make. I think Wright, as an Anglican bishop, cannot just come out and say what he is thinking: “Well, essentially, on justification, well, you know–the Catholics basically had it right all along.”
This also explains something else that has been noted on this blog: why Wright thinks schism is one of the worst, if not the worst, aspects of the church world today. After all, why split if the doctrinal reasons are not that good in the first place?
November 24th, 2010 | 4:10 pm | #2
P.S. I was at the Wheaton conference which you mention. Other folks who attended might remember the very last question Wright was asked: “What is the difference between your view of justification and the Catholic view?”
If you were there, you can correct me if I’m wrong–but as I recall it, Wright didn’t answer the question.
November 24th, 2010 | 4:53 pm | #3
Does this mean in another year or two he’ll disappear, only to reappear as a country singer on CMT?
November 24th, 2010 | 5:08 pm | #4
I like Hootie and the Blowfish better.
November 24th, 2010 | 5:57 pm | #5
I attended Wright’s plenary & the panel discussion, with the same starting point of being only loosely aware of the specific argument, yet being very aware of Wright’s important work overall. I’ve actually read quite a lot of his work (The Resurrection of the Son of God was literally life-changing for me, and it’s not too much to say that his For Everyone series taught me how to read the Bible) but I haven’t followed the justification arguments.
That said, I find it interesting that I differed in two key areas in my response.
I was favorably impressed by Wright-as-speaker (I hadn’t heard him before). I liked that he was so scrappy, that he doesn’t mince words in saying that he thinks someone’s view is not just wrong, but utterly and completely wrong. (I also think that his call for a new ethos of Christian blogging was spot-on). When he agreed with the other panelists, he wasn’t afraid to say so, either. As a result, my impression of his approach is that it’s refreshingly direct – no passive-aggressive use of qualifiers. Maybe it’s because I’m in the field of English, where everything gets nuanced to death, but at a certain point one gets sick of “I feel your point lacks a certain development in a few areas that are central to the argument” and finds it envigorating to hear “I think you’re completely wrong, and here’s why.”
I also think that his work on getting a more precise definition of justification is critically important. Again, maybe it’s because I work in the field of literature and writing, but I truly believe that language matters. In order to speak clearly, we must also speak precisely. If we use terms as umbrella or bucket terms, to hold whatever we put in them, then there are negative consequences. First, we can lack clarity on what we actually mean; second, it becomes difficult to talk about the differences in a coherent way. Wright’s refining of the terms makes it possible to talk more productively about more than just justification.
The use of justification as an umbrella term may not bother someone who agrees with the way it’s being used in the broader sense… but that same broadness may make it harder for someone with a different perspective to agree with any of it. I’ve been struggling for a while now in my apologetics study with the concept of forensic justification. Until I heard Wright speak, I was in the position of fundamentally disagreeing with forensic justification, period. That put me at odds with most of my Protestant classmates and much Protestant thought. What benefited me greatly, from Wright’s talk, was the realization that maybe I don’t disagree with forensic justification after all… in fact, I can see that what I disagree with is the extension of the “forensic” part to cover more and more, so that by implication there is no such thing as real growth in holiness. Now, you may protest that this is a misunderstanding of forensic justification, and at this point I will actually more or less agree – what Wright helped me see is that the declaration of righteousness is one specific part of what God is doing in us… and what we say about this particular thing is not automatically true of every aspect of conversion, sanctification, etc.
So after listening to the talk and panel, I find myself, as an Anglo-Catholic, more in accord with my Protestant brothers and sisters on an important theological point than I was two hours earlier. So… yes, I do think Wright’s focus on language matters, and can make a real difference.
November 24th, 2010 | 6:35 pm | #6
Nice post from Fred Sanders. It’s sorting out time again–as always? It’s hard for Protestants (evangelicals especially) to see the Tridentine decree on justification for what it clearly is: a biblical formulation (at least by intention), even if it ultimately falls short. When we’re playing on the biblical keyboard, lots of chord combinations and different tunes are possible, or at least plausible. When it comes to working out a doctrine, a lot more than exegesis (in some narrow sense) is involved.
How texts should be read in relation to each other is as important as how they should be read in their own immediate contexts. Romans 2, for instance, is rarely given its full force because it’s basically side-lined by the presumed meaning of Romans 3-5; and Matthew 5-7 gets similar treatment by being dwarfed by Romans and Galatians. In each case, many people (including “exegetes” and “biblical theologians”) may be too quick to read these texts through a Reformational lense as if Luther’s “breakthrough” is the self-evident meaning of Scripture. Since Luther himself had to struggle to bring his new-found position into line with passages in Matthew, Hebrews, James, and Revelation (and Romans itself), we too have to ask over and over how texts and themes have to be played off against one another. What is the relative weight of each passage? When passages seem to collide, do we read A in light of B or vice versa? Who decides?
Bp Wright has provocatively stirred up the pot. One hopes the limitations of his ideas don’t encourage others to settle back into the “business as usual” ideas too quickly. His proddings are an occasion for discussing some very urgent issues.
November 24th, 2010 | 7:00 pm | #7
Holly Ordway: “I liked that he was so scrappy, that he doesn’t mince words in saying that he thinks someone’s view is not just wrong, but utterly and completely wrong.”
I love the straightforward bluntness of Anglican Christians. No mealy-mouth mish-mash that’s nearly impossible to parse and understand for the Anglican and Episcopalian pew-sitters.
November 24th, 2010 | 7:37 pm | #8
:)
November 24th, 2010 | 7:40 pm | #9
“I wasn’t able to stay for all of Tom Schreiner’s paper on justification, so I asked a friend at the conference to tell me the bottom line. ”
Great post, Fred. I probably agree with most of the criticisms of Wright out there, though I’m not convinced all of them are important. The point that really struck out to me about Schreiner’s paper was his third critcism (which I’m not sure if you got to hear). It was that Wright denies double imputation, specifically, Christ’s righteousness imputed to us. Of all that I heard over the course of the papers, that seemed most important.
November 24th, 2010 | 9:00 pm | #10
D.A. Carson has an interesting analysis of Wright on justification. When you press him on any of the things that don’t come out or barely come out in his books, he insists that he holds those things and tries to show you where they occur in his book. But he doesn’t see that he’s so marginalized them that hardly anyone will pick up on them, or at least he’s unwilling to do something about it once it’s been pointed out to him. Then he goes and writes the next book and once again marginalizes or ignores those points. When you consider that those points are much more central in Paul, and the points Wright treats as central are less so, it’s pretty clear that he’s excited about secondary things and assuming primary things but not passing on the primary things and not moved one bit by correction from other believers who have gotten him to admit an imbalance but only temporarily. Carson’s conclusion is that he’s got some real ability in systematizing (whether his conclusions are right or not) but a lot less skill at actual exegesis, and I’d have to say that I agree. His three volumes in his major academic series (New Testament and the People of God, Jesus and the Victory of God, Resurrection of the Son of God) are clearly his best work, and I tend to think of his commentaries as his least helpful and valuable work.
As for the little book/big book thing, that may be generally true, but there are exceptions. His little book on Jesus in the early 90s is an excellent critique of the most radical Jesus scholarship of that time. I saw him about 15 years ago at the Yale Veritas Forum. He was an excellent keynote speaker for that sort of event. He was doing apologetics without coming across as doing so, and the level of scholarly engagement was pretty high. There was hardly anything I detected that I found worrisome (other than his claim, which I thought must be insincere, that he hadn’t looked enough at the Gospel of John to have come to a conclusion on how to handle the historicity issues with that book).
November 24th, 2010 | 9:37 pm | #11
Jeremy Pierce,
I find most of your comment very helpful, but there is one thing that I disagree on: While I agree that Wright minimizes the traditional Reformation themes that are found in Paul, I think that he actually situates them within the bigger picture of an apocalyptic Jewish story. As far as this story is concerned, the Reformation traditions could use a lot of help from Pentecostals in reading Paul as an agent operating within and preaching the power of Christ’s Spirit. (Pentecostal theologian Frank Macchia has written a recent book on this theme: “Justified in the Spirit.”) Actually, even the Reformers give a bigger role to the Spirit in justification than many of their theological descendants do. So, I would flip your contention that Carson emphasizes what is “primary” and Wright what is “secondary” in Paul, and I would contend that the Reformation traditions of recent centuries have too often missed what is primary in Paul for cultural reasons (living in an individualistic rather than a communal culture, using reason rather than spiritual power as the locus of theological inspiration – again, these are only differences in degree or emphasis, but they are important differences in interpretation). Or, we could point to the fact that Old Light Calvinism eventually won out over New Light Calvinism among North American Reformed churches, emphasizing imputed righteousness over the notion of infused righteousness that would find a more hospitable home in revivalist traditions.
November 25th, 2010 | 5:50 am | #12
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by ntwrightnews and Luis Jovel, John Starke. John Starke said: Getting Along with NT Wright, Without Really Trying [Fred Sanders] http://bit.ly/dQ3pzj [...]
November 25th, 2010 | 9:05 am | #13
Two quick questions and an observation:
If the dikaio- group is not the exegetical foundation of “conversion,” “getting saved,” etc., then what IS? What set of NT words/concepts provides a scriptural foundation for those evangelical notions?
If the hagio- group is not the basis of the Protestant ideas of “sanctification,” popularly conceived, then what IS?
(I understand Mr. Sanders to be saying that the first is Wright’s position, and the second is his own.)
I’m a specialist in (among other things) antebellum evangelical/Protestant thought. I suggest that if one accepts both of those propositions, then there is NO New Testament foundation for popular evangelical/Protestant piety. The evangelical tradition invented its spirituality out of whole cloth (based partly on reinterpretations of Reformation dogmas, and partly on its own native religious experience) and projected scriptural ideas onto that spirituality, and thus created a “scriptural” dress for a non-scriptural (I do NOT say “anti-”scriptural) piety.
November 25th, 2010 | 2:05 pm | #14
Can anyone tell me how someone can be regenerated by a grace that only imputes? It seems to me that if one is regenerated, then one changes as a consequence of Christ’s righteousness. But if appropriating his righteousness results in a change (i.e., “grace changing nature”), then isn’t that infusion and not imputation?
Although I am writing from the 13th century, I can’t for the life of me (even though I am dead) figure out what the Reformers meant. I’ve read McGrath on this, and I’m just more confused than ever.
November 25th, 2010 | 4:20 pm | #15
Aquinas,
What do you find so confusing? In Reformed theology, imputed righteousness doesn’t regenerate. Rather, that pertains to justification.
Justification involves a change in our relationship to God, a change in our objective legal standing, whereas regeneration (effected by God’s unilateral grace) involves a subjective change in our psychological predisposition.
While McGrath would be flattered to learn that his monographic is available in the 4th sphere of heaven, why don’t you simply ask St. Paul for further clarification? Or do you not have a landline to the Empyrean?
November 25th, 2010 | 4:57 pm | #16
I thought I posted this, but apparently not. So I apologize if it turns out to be a double posting.
Three quick questions:
If the *dikaio-* group does not refer to “conversion, getting saved,” etc., as understood by modern evangelicals, then where in the New Testament do we find those doctrines?
If the *hagio-* group does not refer to “growing in grace,…” etc., as understood by modern evangelicals, then where in the New Testament do we find those doctrines?
If neither evangelical idea corresponds to the biblical concepts that evangelicals *think* they correspond to, then what is the New Testament foundation of evangelical piety and theology? Is it possible that evangelicals read the New Testament to say what they *think* it says, and not what it *says*?
November 26th, 2010 | 12:57 am | #17
David L.,
You asked, “If neither evangelical idea corresponds to the biblical concepts that evangelicals *think* they correspond to…”
Maybe you meant to type “corresponds to the biblical *words*,” because that’s the issue.
The concept of being outside of Christ and then hearing the gospel and responding by faith at a distinct point in your biographical timeline is in the New Testament: All over Acts, Ephesians 2, etc. The question here is what term to use when talking about it. Billy Graham didn’t make up the spiritual reality itself, he just pitched it in a certain cultural idiom.
As for whether we are in danger of reading the NT for what we think it says rather than for what it really says, that is a very grave threat indeed, so yes it’s one of the reasons to thank God for NT scholars who hold us to precise terms.
But it’s a threat that all Christians have to be alert to. The ancient liturgies, the writings of the church fathers, the earliest monuments of Christian art, etc.: They all have instances of semiotic slippage where the community starts using biblical terms with a different focus than the Bible itself did. We’re never done with the task of holding ourselves accountable to Scripture’s own sense.
I hope what I’ve said here is clear; I do think you’re onto the right point in general.
Fred
November 26th, 2010 | 1:18 pm | #18
Steve Hays writes:
“Justification involves a change in our relationship to God, a change in our objective legal standing, whereas regeneration (effected by God’s unilateral grace) involves a subjective change in our psychological predisposition.”
“Regenerate” means to bring to life something that had died. So, your answer makes it even murky for the Angelic Doctor. For I have no idea what you mean by “subjective change.” You could mean it in the sense that the subject himself changes, like in the case of the demoniac who is exorcised. Or you could mean “subjective” in the sense of “it seems to me,” like subjective judgments of taste and preference. But you can’t mean the latter, since God’s grace is in fact regenerating something. If there is an effect and God is the cause, then grace effected nature insofar as it caused my subjective change. That sounds like infusion to me.
Again, I beg for clarity.
November 26th, 2010 | 1:34 pm | #19
One more thing. Steve, if I am reading R. C. Sproul correctly, does not he claim that an essential aspect to Reformed soteriology is that regeneration precedes faith? (A view, by the way, that I held). So, if justification is by faith alone and faith requires grace to subjectively alter the will in regeneration, then isn’t that a case of grace changing nature? And in that case faith can only arise from a soul infused by regenerative grace. So, faith is not “alone,” since it requires a will touched by God’s grace to appropriate justification by an act of faith. So, by his grace God allows us to cooperate with our own justification. Hey, I once said that (relying, of course, on everyone’s favorite Calvinist, St. Augustine):
(Click my name for my presentation of cooperating grace in the Summa Theologica)
November 26th, 2010 | 2:27 pm | #20
Thomas Aquinas
“’Regenerate’ means to bring to life something that had died.”
That’s what the metaphor means. But as a theological term, it has an abstract, technical meaning.
“For I have no idea what you mean by ‘subjective change.’”
I’d expect Thomas Aquinas to be more astute. Let’s take an example of a subjective change. A patient suffers from mental illness. A psychotropic drug is administered which restores the patient to sanity. That’s a subjective change.
Let’s take an example of an objective change. A king adopts the son of a commoner. The adopted son automatically acquires the prerogatives of the royal heir. That’s a change in his social status, not a change in his character or personality.
“So, if justification is by faith alone and faith requires grace to subjectively alter the will in regeneration, then isn’t that a case of grace changing nature? And in that case faith can only arise from a soul infused by regenerative grace. So, faith is not ‘alone,’ since it requires a will touched by God’s grace to appropriate justification by an act of faith. So, by his grace God allows us to cooperate with our own justification.”
You’ve jumbled two categorically distinct domains into one:
i) Like theological jargon generally, “sola fide” is a term of art. To be justified by faith “alone” stands in contrast to justification by works of the law (a la Paul). That’s what the phrase means. You can’t substitute any comparison you please.
ii) The fact that justification is contingent on faith while faith is contingent on regeneration doesn’t mean that justification itself is transformative. A second-order effect is not interchangeable with a first-order effect. An adopted child must be conceived before he can be adopted, but that doesn’t mean conception and adoption are equivalent.
iii) Since, in Reformed theology, God monergistically regenerates the elect, the fact that justifying faith is contingent on regeneration doesn’t introduce “cooperation” (which you’re apparently using as a euphemism for synergism) into the transaction.
November 27th, 2010 | 2:58 pm | #21
“..I can never quite keep the tune in my head long enough to hum it afterwards.”
And that’s a good thing. I like it much better when I have a good tune stuck in my mind, then when a bad one gets in there, until I find a good tune again, and it replaces the bad tune.
“in Reformed theology, God monergistically regenerates the elect, the fact that justifying faith is contingent on regeneration doesn’t introduce “cooperation”” -Steve
Amen.
“For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake,”
God grants faith, repentance, and a heart soft and tender, where it was once as hard as granite.
November 27th, 2010 | 11:42 pm | #22
“In Reformed theology,” Steve writes, “God monergistically regenerates the elect.” But then the elect act in faith, which means that they act.
There’s no way to get around it. Justification is by faith alone, and only agents can have faith (remember, rocks and microwaves can’t), then the act that follows regeneration is an act of an agent. If it’s not, then no one was saved, since non-agents are no-ones.
This is why no one was a monergist until the 16th century. It is implausible since it does not consider the nature of the being saved. Not even Augustine believed it. See Phil Carey’s wonderful analysis of this: http://pontifications.wordpress.com/2008/01/08/augustine-and-the-varieties-of-monergism/
November 28th, 2010 | 1:05 pm | #23
No one said that “faith” was monergistic. No one denied that the regenerate are “agents.”
The unregenerate are passive in regeneration, but regeneration creates a predisposition to believe the gospel.
That’s entirely consistent with justification by faith alone, in contrast to justification by works of the law.
If you continue to burn straw men without a fire permit, I’ll have to report you to the authorities.
November 29th, 2010 | 11:44 am | #24
Steve:
What you have articulated in #22 is boilerplate Catholic catechism: “The merit of man before God in the Christian life arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of his grace. The fatherly action of God is first on his own initiative, and then follows man’s free acting through his collaboration, so that the merit of good works is to be attributed in the first place to the grace of God, then to the faithful. Man’s merit, moreover, itself is due to God, for his good actions proceed in Christ, from the predispositions and assistance given by the Holy Spirit.”
Well done, separated brother.
November 29th, 2010 | 3:27 pm | #25
Thomas Aquinas
“What you have articulated in #22 is boilerplate Catholic catechism.”
Your reading skills leave much to be desired. Of course, I realize that English is not your first language. Perhaps if I’d put it in Medieval Latin or Neapolitan, you would not so badly misunderstand.
I said nothing about a man “meriting” either regeneration or justification.
Badly done, separated non-brother.
November 29th, 2010 | 4:52 pm | #26
[...] Sanders has a characteristically insightful—and edifyingly entertaining—post here about N. T. Wright. (What hath Hootie and the Blow Fish have to do with Tom Wright? Read [...]
November 29th, 2010 | 5:33 pm | #27
Wright can’t be right about everything, but he can be wright all the time.
November 29th, 2010 | 6:23 pm | #28
*groan*
November 29th, 2010 | 7:55 pm | #29
But does he have a right to be Wright all the time? That may be a birthwright, but is it a civil wright?
November 29th, 2010 | 10:06 pm | #30
Wright on.
If someone is a “separated non-brother,” does that mean that person is not a Christian? Just wondering how far the rhetoric has gone already.
“Your reading skills leave much to be desired….I said nothing about a man ‘meriting’ either regeneration or justification.”
But if we go back through Post 23 (to which this comment responds), we see that T.A.’s use of the word “merit” asserts that merit is based entirely on God’s previously extended grace. I think that is what he was relating to the posts by Steve Hays: that every stage of salvation is by grace alone.
P.S. Thomas Aquinas–PLEASE change your post name. Don’t you see what an impossible standard you have set for your own posts? It’s like naming yourself “Albert Einstein.”
November 30th, 2010 | 8:48 am | #31
Craig Payne
“But if we go back through Post 23 (to which this comment responds), we see that T.A.’s use of the word ‘merit’ asserts that merit is based entirely on God’s previously extended grace.”
The grace is God’s but the merit is ours. However, Reformed theology would never permit that dichotomy. Therefore, it’s simply mistaken for “Thomas Aquinas” to equate that with what I said.
He can take issue with my position, but that’s quite different from imputing the formulation of the Catholic catechism to my own formulation, as if they’re interchangeable–when they’re fundamentally at odds.
November 30th, 2010 | 8:56 am | #32
I see your point now. Thank you for clarifying.
November 30th, 2010 | 3:36 pm | #33
Thank you for this post and the comments. Two things startled me. First, is the impression that NTW is smug. Perhaps the fact that I agree with so much of NTW innoculates me against his smugness but I have never noticed it. Is it that the English sound smug to Americans when they are being ‘scrappy’? I wondered this partly as it seems that every villain in US films needs to be played by a Brit, even if the villain is German.
The other (from Jeremy Pierce) is that NTW’s weakness is his exegesis. I am sure that he would find that an incomprehensible comment; or a very wounding comment. What he is engaged in is precisely an exegetical project. If he is failing there he is failing in toto. But I find his exegesis very compelling. I do not always follow it, I admit. But more than any other commentator he seems prepared to acknowledge where scripture does not say what we expect it to say. This is why he spends so much time on Romans 2 because it really does not fit our tidy theologies. It is why he can challenge the typical view of 2 Cor 5:21 which does not at face value teach the imputation of Christ’s righteousness but is often trotted out as if it unambiguously did.
I also love his relocation of Paul and his gospel in the context of Abraham in a way that is so seldom done, or at least I had never done, but which is clearly true of Paul.
November 30th, 2010 | 3:55 pm | #34
“His book on Hope is vitiated by an “everything everybody has ever believed about heaven is wrong, and only I speak unto you the truth” tone of voice. It just makes my eyes cross; I can’t read on.”
So??? If he’s right then you should listen to what he’s says, and if he’s wrong then you should explain why.
Unless you want to buy a book which summed up what everyone else has already said on Heaven.
In which case – why did you buy Surprised by Hope in the first place?
November 30th, 2010 | 8:08 pm | #35
If I may be so bold as to offer a clarification on the debate between Steve Hayes and Thomas Aquinas, there are two areas of connection:
1. While Reformed theology does not talk about “merit,” it does hold to the third use of the law and thus retains the idea of rewards being given to the Christian. Melanchthon would talk about these rewards under the rubric of the “new obedience.” The difference is that these rewards are only related to sanctification, not justification, which remains sola fide.
2. There are Catholics, like Luther’s mentor Staupitz, who hold to Augustine’s view on predestination and thus embrace monergism. Thus, any talk of “merit” for Staupitz would necessarily follow from the irresistible flow of divine grace in the elect individual. It is possible to read the Catholic Catechism as allowing for that kind of view even while also allowing for a synergistic view as well.
There is more in common than meets the eye.
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