Miscellaneous Thoughts on N. T. Wright and Theological Encyclopedia

N. T. Wright is all the rage these days.  He's the hottest theologian going and may be this generation's Karl Barth.  Whereas Barth's commentary on Romans may have been like a bomb exploding on the playgrounds of the theologians, Wright seems to have made a lifestyle out of exploding bombs on theological playgrounds.

Everyone is reading Wright, and since I take a backseat to no one when it comes to following the crowd, I am trying to get acquainted with Wright myself.  I am just getting started on Wright - I've listened to a few messages and read a few downloaded articles.  I've only skimmed J. Ligon Duncan's paper on him, so I really don't know enough yet to offer any intelligent opinions on his teaching.  In this post I want to take one statement of his on imputation, and use it as a springboard to another topic that is of interest to me, and hopefully to you.

I give that preface to hopefully head off some of the comments I know are going to come.  I am quite sure there will be some folks who will warn me of the dangers of dabbling with Wright.  And then there are his followers who will say that I don't understand him.  Please understand that though I don't know that much about Wright himself, I am well acquainted with his critics and advocates.  Almost to a man, his critics consider him to be a snake in the garden, and almost to a man, his followers think his critics misunderstand him, haven't read him, or haven't read enough of him.

I'm going a different road in this and hopefully it will be helpful to some of you.  I'll begin with a passage from an interview that Wright did with Travis Tamerius.  Then I will use that quote to spring into a couple of thoughts and a series of questions that came to mind.  I was reminded recently that asking the right questions is often as important as finding answers to those questions.

Here's the quote from the interview:

The imputation of Christ's righteousness is one of the big sticking points for sure. I think I know exactly what the doctrine is about and I believe you don't lose anything by the route I propose. The force of what people have believed when they have used the idea of imputation is completely retained in what I have tried to do. Why? Because in Christ we have all the treasures, not only of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 1, and also I Corinthians 1), but in whom we have the entire package, meaning sanctification and wisdom, as well as righteousness. So Paul's theology of being in Christ gives you all of that. But the fact that it gives you more than that does rock you back on your heels a bit and prompt you to ask, "Have we made too much of this one thing called righteousness?" The key text, which is 2 Corinthians 5:21, has been read for generations, ever since Luther at least, as an isolated, detached statement of the wondrous exchange. When we do this we forget that the entire passage, for the three chapters that led up to it, and the chapter and a half that follow it (chapter six and the beginning of seven) are about apostleship. These are all about the strange way in which the suffering of the apostle somehow is transmuted into the revelation of God's glory. In the middle of this the statement occurs that God "made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." After this I started to read dikaiosune theou ("the righteousness of God") as "covenant faithfulness" in Romans. I then suddenly thought, "wait a minute." What about 2 Corinthians 5:21? And then I realized that the whole thing here is 2 Corinthians 3, the new covenant. God has made us ministers of a new covenant. We are embodying the covenant faithfulness of God. I can see how frustrating it is for a preacher who has preached his favorite sermon all these years on the imputation of Christ's righteousness from 2 Corinthians 5:21 to hear that this is not the right way to understand it but I actually think that there's an even better sermon waiting to be preached. You can always preach one on 1 Corinthians 1:30 so long as you do wisdom, sanctification, and redemption, all three.

The reason this is such a significant quote is that Wright is accused by many of denying the doctrine of imputation, which is particularly central to the reformed understading of justification and sanctification.

You can see that, in the answer he seems to affirm imputation, but he just dances around the issue and doesn't come right out and say it.  But, all in all, he seems to affirm the doctrine.  In fairness to his critics, Ligon Duncan, in the piece I mentioned above, says that Wright outright denies imputation in an e-mail exchange with a student.  He doesn't deny it in this quote, what he denies is the conventional interpretation of II Corinthians 5:21.  What Wright is saying here is that, if you believe in imputation you've got to look to a passage like I Cor 1:30 to find it.

What is also apparent is that, if Wright does believe in imputation, he doesn't emphasize it as much as the reformed tradition (and many other traditions).  The reformed tradition puts imputation front and center in its doctrine of justification and Wright seems to shrug his shoulders about the whole thing and say "that's fine if you want to do it, but Paul didn't make as a big of a deal out of it as you guys do."  For those who are familiar with Wright, one of his big issues is that he contends that the church hasn't done justice to the historical setting of the New Testament in its reading of it.  In all eras, the modern concerns of that particular era have provided the lens through which the church has read the Scripture.

But getting back on point, here are the questions I want to raise from this quick look at Wright?

1. Is Wright denying a doctrine or the conventional exegesis of a particular passage of Scripture? 

In the above passage Wright is arguing with the conventional interpretation of II Corinthians 5:21, but he doesn't seem to be arguing against the doctrine of imputation per se.  Which leads to another question . . .

2. Should we judge a person's orthodoxy by how they handle the exegesis of particular passages of Scripture, or by their overall doctrinal positions? 

My question, in and of itself, prejudices the matter because I have framed it as an either/or when it's not so cut and dried.  In this case let's suppose the doctrine of imputation is built solely on II Cor. 5:21 (which it is not).  But if it were, then if the conventional interpretation of II Cor. 5:21 is found faulty, then the doctrine attached to it collapses.  At that point we either have to create a new orthodoxy to accomodate the new exegesis or we have to condemn the exegesis as heretical. 

But I think we also need to be careful about knee jerk reactions.  We may be hearing the denial of a doctrine when all that is really being denied is the exegesis of a particular passage.  Probably the best example of this is in debates about the length of creation days.  It is not uncommon for someone who believes in say, the day-age theory or the framework theory of Genesis 1-2 to be accused of denying the inerrancy of Scripture.  That is patently wrong - many day-agers and frameworkers deny a particular interpretation of a particular passage of Scripture while affirming inerrancy. 

So, we ought to be careful and pay attention to the nuances of individuals like Wright and others.  Wright may in fact be heretical, but if you're going to burn him, burn him for the (W)right heresy.

3.  How do we determine the importance of a particular doctrine in the theological encyclopedia? 

One of the problems that many have with Wright is that, even if he does believe in imputation, he doesn't make that big a deal of it, and he's not clear about it.  In reading Wright, it seems that he either doesn't believe in imputation at worst, or thinks it is a peripheral concern of Paul's at best.  To Wright, imputation isn't as important as it is to many of us, particularly those in the Reformed tradition.  He treats as peripheral something we treat as central and treats as central things we treat as peripheral.

But who decides and how do we decide what is central to the Christian faith, or what is of utmost importance in the theological encyclopedia?  We all intuitvely suspect that some doctrines are more important than others - i.e. what you believe about justification is more important than what you believe about baptism or eschatology.  But then again, on what basis do we believe this?  Do the Scriptures contain a table of contents or an answer key which tell which matters are of utmost importance and which are peripheral?  They don't.  So what justification do we have for saying that one's view of imputation is more important than one's view of something else?

Well, I said I was only asking questions but I'll take a stab at that last one.  Romans 14 is a classic passage on the fact that there are some matters that are legitimately disputable and it is reasonable to conclude that they are therefore, lesser matters.  Those are things that we are to agree to disagree on.  Then Romans 16:17 tells us to mark those who cause divisions and stay away from them.  There are some matters which we ought to divide over - these are weightier matters.  Hence, there is Scriptural warrant for believing that some matters are more important than others.

The book of Galatians gives us a clue to what the weightiest matters are - matters pertaining to the gospel.  I realize that Galatians is a battleground between Wright and his critics but I'll skip that debate for now and simply point out that the gospel is central here.

Having said all of that, we've got very rough Scriptural outlines for determining what doctrines are of utmost importance.  But we want to be careful about this.  We should all have the humility to admit that our ideas of what is most important are often governed by extra-biblical factors. In the reformation era disputes over the nature of the sacraments were life and death matters, today they are matters of yawning for most evangelicals.  In my own reformed tradtion there are all kinds of arguments about what is of utmost importance.  I have had my salvation called into question because of statements to the effect that we can enjoy fellowship with Arminians and Dispensationalists, and have also been chastized for placing too much importance on the five points of Calvinism.

But where this hits home for me in the discussion about Wright is that, if I am reading him correctly, he places a greater aspects on the corporate aspects of salvation than on the individual aspects.  I have to admit that I have had a gnawing suspicion along those same lines for the last few years.

In the evangelical church the matter that we generally treat as of first importance is the matter of how an individual can get to heaven.  The gnawing started when I read the sermon Public Worship to be Preferred Before Private, and grew as I studied more and more about the biblical teachings on covenant community.  Whereas individual salvation is of utmost importance to us today, I have come to think the New Testament gives greater weight to the task of creating a community of believers.  Granted, an individual's salvation is of great importance, but it is a means to a greater end - that of shaping the covenant community.

In modern evangelicalism, individual salvation is of first importance and the covenant community is peripheral.  How often do we say to people that its not important that you go to church, what is important is that you believe in Jesus.  But what if, in God's mind, the most important thing is building the church?  Now what do we tell people?  True we can never tell them that they will be saved by becoming a member of the church, but shouldn't we then tell them that the purpose of being saved is to become a part of the church?  So, one's personal salvation is not the thing of greatest importance but is a means to a greater end.

I've gotten a bit off track here, but in some of the back and forth I have heard regarding Wright I have gotten the impression that people are not only arguing the issues themselves, but are also arguing about the weight that should be given to particular issues.  Its kind of like being a football fan.  In my house, we are Florida Gators.  It would be a terrible insult to me for one of my sons to say "yeah dad, the Gators are an good football team, but they aren't the greatest team in the country."  Such words would be heresy - its not enough to acknowledge that the Gators are merely "good," - if you wanna call yourself a child of mine you better be as fanatical about the Gators as I am.

Wright and his opponents both think they know what was of utmost importance in Paul's (and therefore God's) mind.  And I am just encouraging a little humility in the attempt to disceern what St. Paul or anyone else was really thinking.

And all of this brings me to a final question . . .

4. Must we always frame things in either/or terms?

As I wrote those last few paragraphs I realized I got a bit off track into some areas of personal concern and/or interest and it also occurred to me that I am framing some of the discussion in either/or terms and that this is not always helpful.  To argue that either the corporate or the individual aspect of salvation is more important than the other may creating an unnecessary dichotomy. 

I am currently reading the book I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be An Atheist by Geisler and Turek and they make a big deal of the importance of either/or thinking, especially as it ties into the law of non-contradiction.  They use Ravi Zacharias's famous illustration where someone once told him that in the west people use "either/or" thinking, but that in the east they should use "both/and" thinking.  To which Ravi replies, "So you're telling me that when I am in the east I have a choice - I can either use 'either/or' thinking or 'both/and' thinking."  Then Ravi says that when he is in India he still looks both ways before crossing the street because its either him or the bus. 

This is a valid principle and is helpful for showing the fallacies in many lines of reasoning.  But it is not an absolute paradigm through which all of life and faith are to be viewed.  There are things that we think are dichotomies that aren't.  In his book Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, J. I. Packer tells the story of how Spurgeon once responded to a question of how he reconciles divine sovereignty and human freedom.  Spurgeon replied, "I never try to reconcile friends."

Again, getting back to the whole debate about Wright I am wondering if part of the problem is that both sides are turning both/and's into either/or's unnecessarily.  Maybe they aren't, but I wonder. 

One of my favorite books is Moises Silva's book Has the Church Misread the Bible.  In it, he takes to task the conventional wisdom that says the church has misread the bible throughout some (much) of its history.  In the last few centuries it has been a common practice to give a patronizing laugh at earlier scholars who used outdated methods of interpretation like the allegorical method and the quadriga.  Silva goes to great lengths to show that these folks weren't dummies - they had some legitimate concerns and reasons for taking the approaches they did and they are not without value to us today.

Similarly, I think Wright (or maybe it's his followers) may be too easily dismissing pre New Perspective exegesis and his opponents may be too easily dismissing his own concerns.  True, there may be some issues raised in this debate that demand an either/or response.  But I am not convinced that we must choose either the Old Perspective or the New Perspective.

So, those are some of the questions that came to mind and a few initial and staggering attempts to answer some of my own questions.  As always, any feedback is welcome and appreciated.