In the second chapter, John Piper starts to get down to brass tacks, and he begins with the definition of justification. N.T. Wright defines justification as God’s (legal and forensic) declaration that someone is already within the covenant family. Quoting Wright, Piper writes, “‘Justification’ in the first century was not about how someone might establish a relationship with God. It was about God’s eschatological definition, both future and present, of who was, in fact, a member of his people” (p. 40).
Piper is right to note that this statement is made “sweepingly.” I cannot imagine how a word as far-reaching as justification could be taken as meaning just one thing throughout the course of a century. That might be possible (barely) with words like bootlace, or beer, or bratwurst. But justification? Piper begins his response by citing just a couple examples where God or Christ are said to be justified, which cannot mean that they are declared to already be within God’s covenant people (pp. 40-41).
Wright rejects the idea that justification is about becoming a Christian, saying that it is not to be understood as “the event in which a person is brought by grace from unbelief, idolatry and sin into faith” (p. 41). Piper is right to wonder who has ever taught that. If faith is the instrument by which we are justified, justification cannot bring us into faith. Faith brings justification, not the other way around. But Wright sticks to his guns.
A better illustration is that of being naturalized as a citizen. It is all very well to stay that naturalization is the declaration that one is an American, and is not about becoming an American. But if that declaration about someone was false at some point in time, and was true later, then the point where it shifts from being false to being true is what we call becoming. And this means that the declaration that Wright is talking about cannot be separated from what we call becoming a Christian. If justification is the declared state of being “in,” and those who are in have to get in from a previous state of being “out,” then justification is necessarily about becoming a Christian. Piper notes, correctly, that “the divine act of justification . . . is, along with the call, determinative and constitutive of the new relation to God” (p. 41). In other words, not only is Wright splitting hairs, but it is really an odd hair.
It is like saying that the adoption of an orphan is not so much a matter of becoming a member of a new family as it is a question of being a member of that family. Quite. But when did I start being that member? It was when I became that member. The only way this kind of distinction that Wright is pushing makes any kind of sense would be if there were no transition — no border crossings from one condition to the other. So long as there is a transition from unjustified to justified, the whole matter is logically tied up with the moment one becomes a Christian, and trying to separate it from that moment is an exercise in futility.
And of course, once we are backed up to the time of conversion, this would mean that Wright would then have to take into account the many scriptural statements that we are justified by faith. The instrumentality of faith would then have to be taken into account from the first moment of justification on — but which Wright appears reluctant to do.
But none of this means that Wright is opposed to personal conversion, or somehow thinks it irrelevant.
But when Wright limits the preaching of the gospel to such a statement (however expansive that statement might seem), he is actually doing what evangelicals have done so often — truncating the gospel so that it is excluded from certain realms. But an important ramification of the universality of the objective gospel is that it cannot be excluded from any realm of human sin or need. These are all, therefore, statements of the gospel: 1. Jesus is Lord; 2. Jesus went to Capernaum; 3. Through Abraham all the nations of the earth will be blessed; 4. Jesus died on the cross and rose again; 5. God brought Israel out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage; 6. Christ is the savior of all men, especially those who believe; 7. The Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world; and 8. if you repent of being such a pig-headed husband, and ask Jesus to save you, Susan might come back.
The gospel is good news, and the good news is intended by God for every nook and cranny. He comes to make His blessing flow far as the curse is found. Wherever there is curse, Christ brings gospel. To nations, to businesses, to individual sinners, to marriage, and to the garden full of thistles in the back yard. By means of the gospel, God brings his saving lordship to everything. To drop the promise of personal salvation out of the proclamation of the good news, leaving just the declaration of lordship, seems to me to be confusing at best, and counterproductive at worst. The saving lordship of Christ is to be preached at every level — He is Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, and we present Him in these offices to the great empires and to Smith next door. God’s saving grace in this dark world is all gospel, objective gospel, straight across.
Think of it this way — the doctrine of God’s omnipresence is not that a portion of God is everywhere, as though He were extended in space. The doctrine is that all of God is in every place. In the same way, the entire gospel presents itself at every sinful place. The effect of the gospel is when there is repentance and faith at that place, at that level. But salvation does not come to Smith because he found a fruitful line of argument and ramifications somewhere down in the syllogism.
In the latter part of this chapter, Piper demonstrates conclusively — or rather shows Wright demonstrating conclusively — that Wright holds to the doctrine of penal substitution in his teaching about the atonement. Now in the cross, at last, Wright says, “God has punished sins as they deserve” (p. 47).
But the clarity with which Wright defends this doctrine made the dust-up this last year over Steve Chalke all the more curious, and this chapter of Piper’s has an extended excursus on that whole odd business. The short form is that Wright provided a blurb for Steve Chalke’s book The Lost Message of Jesus, a book in which that doctrine, at best, is stated murkily, and, at its worst, is rejected outright. A few years after Chalke’s book came out, the boys at Oak Hill took Chalke to task for his infamous “cosmic child abuse” statement in their book, Pierced for Our Transgressions. After this book came out, Wright emptied both chambers of his episcopal revolvers in the direction of Oak Hill. And now Piper is writing about the whole affair — as am I, actually, but that doesn’t count because I am being the transparent narrator. Well, until just then I was.
To his credit, Wright doesn’t defend Chalke by saying that its okay to deny penal substitution, but rather by saying that Chalke, some appearances notwithstanding, actually holds to the doctrine. Wright says “the reality that I and others refer to when we use the phrase ‘penal substitution’ is not in doubt, for Steve any more than for me” (p. 51). But Piper says with good reason that this appears to him to be grounded on not very much ground. “It seems to me to be wishful thinking to construe Chalke’s own words in a way that would portray him as comfortable thinking of the personal God making his own personal Son bear the Father’s own legal retribution for my sin” (p. 52).
And this brings me to a criticism I have made of Wright before. He is a great scholar, but in certain areas, he appears to be tone deaf — not concerning what he is saying necessarily, but what others are trying to say in the Wrightian spirit. Put bluntly, Chalke’s book does repeat many of Wright’s themes, but it is also a small vat of zeitgeistian goo and very much unlike Wright. To change the metaphor, Wright is affected by the gusts of the zeitgeist the way a great first-rate man-of-war might be — more than he ought to be, but not enough disturb the sailors on board. But Chalke is holding on to the sides of his coracle and skimming across the surface at a goodly rate. He lost his hat two miles ago.
Wright is saying certain things that seem troublesome to tempered, orthodox types — to men like Piper. They respect Wright, as they ought to. But they wonder if, down the road, in a generation or so, this way of putting things mightn’t be misapplied by certain unstable souls, and made to say things “that Wright himself is not necessarily saying, but all the same . . .” In worrying this way, the orthodox types are perhaps way underestimating the quickness and readiness of men like Chalke, McLaren, Middleton, Walsh, et al. to cluster around someone like Wright. We live in a fallen world, and this can’t be helped, but it would be good if Wright were more attuned to this problem than he appears to be. But of course, if he can make it for three days running in the Church of England without punching a number of his fellow clerics (excepting the ladies, of course), and he obviously can, his tolerance levels have been adjusted to places where my knobs don’t even turn. His must go all the way to eleven.