Dubious innovators

During the PCA debate on the Federal Vision, PCA minister David Coffin dismissed NT Wright’s supposed claims to have discovered the gospel that had been hidden for centuries. Coffin found the claim dubious.

I am dubious that Wright actually makes the claims that Coffin attributes to him. He claims to have discovered fresh insight into Paul’s letters, but he doesn’t claim, as Coffin implied, that he’s the first ever to understand Paul’s gospel.

Leave that to the side. The irony of Coffin’s statement runs deep, because in the end, the PCA voted in favor of the committee report in the interests of defending justification by faith, which, if Alister McGrath is to be believed, is a theological innovation of the first order (a quite proper theological innovation, I should add).

It’s not hard to imagine a sixteenth-century Cardinal saying, “Dr Luther, we have known since the time of Saint Augustine that iustificare means ‘to make just.’ Are you telling us that we have been wrong for a 1000 years?”