Wright’s Ordo Salutis

Wright ( Paul and the Faithfulness of God ) doesn’t think Paul addresses ordo salutis questions directly, but he still attempts to tease out what Paul might have said on the subject: “First, the spirit works through the proclamation of the gospel. This powerful work of the spirit upon the human heart is what Paul labels the ‘call.’ Second . . . the person answers the ‘call’ by ‘confessing with the lips that Jesus is lord and believing in the heart that God raised him from the dead.’ This is the faith like Abraham’s, because of which, third, the one God declares, covenantally, that this person is a member of the family, and forensically, that this person is ‘in the right,’ that their sins are forgiven. The word for both of these ‘declarations’ . . . is “justification’; the present and inalienable status resulting from both of them is ‘righteousness.’ This status is the basis both for assurance of final salvation and for assurance of membership in the single family” (959).

Given all the hubbub around Wright, this is remarkably traditional. It could nearly have been written by John Murray, who, like Wright, preferred what he considered the more biblical term “call” to the term “regeneration” ( Redemption Accomplished and Applied ). But Wright’s discussion does raise some issues, of which he doesn’t seem aware.

First, he says some things that make me wonder how familiar he is with the discussion he’s entering. He characterizes the ordo as “the attempt to line up chronologically the various elements which take someone from the unregenerate state of sin to the ultimate state of salvation” (952, fn 498; emphasis added), but the sort of order in the ordo is a highly contentious question, and virtually no one says that it is simply chronological. Further, he complains that the role of the Spirit in justification has been neglected, but the main role he gives the Spirit is that of awakening faith (952), precisely the role the Spirit has in the traditional Reformed ordo . Wright doesn’t discuss here, as I think he ought, Paul’s surprising move from “did to receive the Spirit by the works of the Law or by hearing with faith” to “Abraham believed and it was reckoned as righteousness” in Galatians 3, a move that appears virtually to identify righteousness with the gift of the Spirit.

He raises the question of the relationship between regeneration and justification. He says that some have feared that if regeneration precedes justification, then “‘justification’ would after all depend on ‘something in me’ – the beginnings, some might say, of ‘subsequent ethical transformation,’ taking us back to the earliest Reformation debates” (954). Two pages later, he suggests that “Protestants regularly insisted that [justification] preceded any such change, making it clear that justification was an act of utter, unmerited grace” (956). I’ll take up the substance of this point in a minute, but for now will only observe that the Reformed ordo salutis has always said that regeneration precedes justification. The primacy of regeneration is a sine qua non of traditional Reformed soteriology. (Wright may have Lutheran ordo s in mind.)

Second, my reference to Murray highlights what’s missing in Wright’s treatment, the feature of the ordo that Murray said surrounded and undergirded all the others, union with Christ. Wright does stress union with the Messiah, claiming that Abraham’s seed is Abraham’s seed by being “in him” (944), but that makes it a bit more odd that he doesn’t bring it up when he discusses the ordo itself. Similarly, he is unaware of the fairly radical revision of the ordo proposed by Richard Gaffin and his students; Resurrection and Redemption: A Study in Paul’s Soteriology doesn’t appear in Wright’s lengthy bibliography, which is unfortunate.

Third, on regeneration and justification: Though the Reformed ordo puts regeneration first, and often faith before justification, it does not link justification with faith in the way Wright does. His way of stating this makes faith, which is a gift of the Spirit, the basis on which the declaration of justification is made: “The faith because of which one is declared ‘righteous’ consists simply of the helpless trust in what the one God has done in Jesus” (954); “initial faith, inspired by the work of the spirit, because of which the verdict dikaios is issued in the present time” (955); “the faith like Abraham’s, because of which . . . the one God declares” the verdict of justification (959). The picture is: The Spirit works in the preaching of the gospel to awaken faith; God acknowledges that faith, a helpless looking to Christ; and because He sees the person wearing that “badge,” God declares him or her a member of the family and “in the right.”

This creates tensions in Wright’s presentation, in a couple of directions. He strongly denies that justification is based on “any developed character-change” (957). I suspect that the emphasis is on “developed,” since justification is , in Wright’s view, because of faith, based on the Spirit’s work of changing the person from an unbeliever into a believer. Wright’s is not a Catholic view, but it is structurally similar to Thomas, for whom justification involves “the infusion of grace, the movement of the free-will towards God by faith, the movement of the free-will from sin, and the remission of sins” ( ST I-II 113, 6). Wright says, similarly, that justification occurs as the Spirit gives faith through the call, faith is reliance on God, on the basis of which sins are forgiven. But, then, the Reformed ordo seems to be structurally similar to Thomas too!

The other place of tension is in Wright’s understanding of baptism. He has an excellent section arguing that baptism makes the declaration of justification “visible and tangible” (962) and is “the public celebration of justification by faith” (963). But on Wright’s ordo , the verdict comes after a called person confesses Jesus. Presumably, as an Anglican bishop, Wright baptizes infants, but it’s not clear how his ordo fits with paedobaptism.

These comments should not be construed as saying that the traditional Reformed ordo is beyond criticism. I agree with Gaffin’s critique, and the ordo is also weak because it detaches the application of redemption of the concrete historical reality of the church.As noted, the Reformed ordo has always placed “transformation” ahead of (but not as the basis of) justification, which creates some tensions of its own. John Frame has helpfully described the ordo as a useful pedagogical tool. Perhaps Wright’s biggest difficulty here is that he felt it necessary to address the question at all, and to try to squeeze his own understanding of Paul into a different framework, and one that Wright doesn’t grasp all that well. He could have saved himself some shrapnel lacerations by avoiding the minefield altogether.