And Lots Have

The more I read Wright interacting with Piper, the less I want to say “new perspective” and “old perspective,” and the more I want to say macro perspective and micro perspective. This is an unnecessary quarrel between the astronomer and the microbiologist. But, though it may be an unnecessary quarrel, it remains a necessary debate. When it comes to the “perspective” of the astronomer, Wright is gloriously edifying. When it comes to his denial of the glories under the microscope, he is simply wrong. But given the obvious correctness of what he is saying over all, there is really no reason for him to be wrong, if you follow what I mean.

This next section of his chapter on Galatians (pp. 101-114) is crammed full of good stuff, with a quirky, odd blunder here and there. One of the good things — aside from his great overarching description of God’s single-purpose for the world through Abraham — is Wright’s repeated acknowledgement in this chapter that at places the new perspective has deserved to be misunderstood, and that at other places the old perspective was hanging on to something important. It would have been far better to begin the book this way rather than with parables about myopic geocentrists, but still (while continuing to urge his perspective upon us) he does say some pretty balanced things throughout this section. Just one example:

“Resistance to the ‘new perspective’, though utterly understandable granted some of its expressions and some of the spiritual riches that looked for a moment as though they were being jettisoned, is always in danger of putting up resistance to the glorious plan of God for the rescue of the entire human race from its fractured, divided, Babel-like existence” (p. 109).

I think this is entirely fair. Just as the astronomer might be too grand to stoop to glance at the microscopic level, so might a microbiologist falter when invited to look at the sweep of the heavens. But it still takes a special kind of mind to see a contradiction between them.

And this is the place where I think Wright is simply wrong. He believes that Paul is not talking about certain things in Galatians that he is in fact manifestly including. Paul is capable of presenting the grand, historical sweep from Abraham on down without losing sight of what this means in particular to individuals in every church. He always has both in mind — justification and forgiveness for the people of God in Christ as well as justification and forgiveness for Demetrius. He is in fact talking about the new humanity, the new people of God, the new Israel reconstituted in Jesus, and he is very mindful of the historical stream and the corporate realities involved. At the same time, the apostle is very specific at the individual level, talking about who is included and who is excluded. More on this in a moment.

Speaking of the death of Christ, Wright says:

“The basis for all this, in theology and eschatology, is the faithful, loving, self-giving death of the Messiah. This is the theological point of reading pistis Christou and its cognates in terms of the Messiah’s own faithfulness; and this brings us as close as Galatians will let us come to what the Reformed tradition always wanted to say through the language of ‘imputed righteousness’ (pp. 113-114).

What Wright goes on to say shows that he is mostly critical of merit-crunching, the idea of a treasury of merit somewhere, “which can then be ‘reckoned’ to his people” (p. 114). But this really is exasperating because Wright is as dependent on this “reckoning” as anybody in the room. The fact that the reckoning is made from certain great moments in history, instead of from a medieval merit room, does not keep it from being imputation. Imputation does not depend upon reservoirs of merit in order to be a coherent and thoroughly Pauline idea.

Now here is the rub, and here is why the macrotheology has to translate into microtheology. It has to be spread into the corners. If we have forgiveness of sins in the new Israel, then I have forgiveness of sins. If we have deliverance and pardon in Jesus, then I have deliverance and pardon. If we have been baptized into His death, then I have been baptized into His death. If we have been raised to life unto justification, then I have been raised to life unto justification.

And this is where Wright consistently shrinks back, declining to look through the microscope. He will use Pauline expressions like “forgiveness of sins” at the individual level, but he won’t do that with “justification,” denying that the idea is found in Paul. But as soon as we pick it up to examine it, it falls apart in our hands.

The apostle Paul gives us the robust, mountaintop view from the top of Pisgah. There is the promised land, all of it. But the apostle Paul is also a good and pious Israelite, and he knows that the blood from the Pascal lamb has to go on each doorway. Wright will use the Pauline vocabulary on the mountain top, but when it comes to individuals, he gives us something generic, and uses washed out vocabulary. Israel is justified, let no man withstand. But this particular individiual can rest assured that sin has been, in some undefined way, “dealt with.”

“Remember, throughout, that ‘membership in God’s eschatological people’ includes as its central element the notion of having one’e sins dealt with” (p. 112, emphasis his).

Wright goes on in the next breath to equate this with individual “forgiveness of sins,” so why not individual justification? What is the heart of the old perspective but the acknowledgment that Paul has individual justification very much in view as he writes?

So here is the problem.

“He is now, on the basis of that assumption, arguing that all those of whom this is true form a single family over which God has already pronounced the verdict ‘righteous’ . . . That verdict, issued in those rich terms, is the fuller meaning of ‘justification by faith‘ (p. 113).

Wright has been very clear about all of this. He says Paul uses the language of justification at the macro-level, and if we “belong to” that justified body, our sins have been “dealt with.” Fine. So what does it mean — for Paul — to belong to Christ? Wright (in numerous places) says that the marker of the new covenant is faith. Those who believe in Jesus belong to Jesus. This is so true as to be almost a truism, but it still doesn’t get us anywhere. The problem is that faith is invisible and doesn’t mark anything. Someone walks up and says they have true evangelical faith in Jesus, and who are you to say they don’t? When you make your determination (which, in this world of liars and false teachers, is a necessity), you will not be able to do it because you have examined their faith directly. You will have examined their teaching, their lifestyle, or their works. Paul is in the highest degree confident that certain men who consistently troubled him were false brothers. But he didn’t say that because their faith, when held up to the sun, became translucent, or that when you bit it, you could see the teethmarks. True faith is a matter of the heart, and is therefore an internal matter, not an external sign.

Not only so, but he is very careful, near the conclusion of Galatians, to describe the kind of individual who is in the justified body that Wright describes, and who nevertheless will miss out himself, individually. He lists a bundle of sins, and says, as he has said before, that “they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5:21).And then he says, again, to Christians, “And they that are [really] Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts” (v. 24).

The problem is a perennial pastoral problem. Not everyone who says he belongs really does. Not all Israel are Israel. The Christians were charged to look at the branches cut out of the olive tree, and they were to take the warning. And the conclusion of the matter is this. The corporate body is everything Wright says. The flow of history is just as he describes. The new humanity is being restored in Jesus. And we can identify the real work of the Spirit, real Christianity, the true deal, at the level of individual lives. And each individual in whom that work is an ongoing affair needs to be able to say that he is washed, that he is justified, that he is sanctified. It is not enough to stand in the middle of a baptized throng. Anybody can do that, and lots have.