If That’s Grace, Then We Don’t Want Any

In the ninth chapter of Piper’s book, he starts to get into the issues that make Wright’s project really vulnerable — if we take Wright’s offerings in the “take it or leave it” way he offers them. For my part, I intend to continue to learn from Wright, but that can’t be done on Wright’s terms. In other words, for the life of me I don’t see why many of Wright’s readings are not fully consistent with the traditional readings of Paul. But Wright insists on a fundamental division of some sort. Here is Wright, making that point.

Sanders’ “major point, to which all else is subservient, can be quite simply stated. Judaism in Paul’s day was not, as has regularly been supposed, a religion of legalistic works-righteousness. If we imagine that it was, and that Paul was attacking it as if it was, we will do great violence to it and to him. The Jew keeps the law out of gratitude . . .” (p. 141).

There’s that timeless Jew again. Given Wright’s bias against timeless, contextless abstractions (and he has a point), I do not know how Wright can say things like this. Who is “the Jew”? Caiphas? Judas? Peter? Mary? Zecharias? This was certainly true of a Jew who was converted to God and who received God’s Word as it was written. He, whoever he was, kept the law out of gratitude. It was not true of those who crucified Jesus. Were they keeping the law when they murdered Jesus? Were they doing it out of gratitude? Of course not.

But the point here is that Wright makes this quite an important issue for him. He regards this particular contribution of Sanders as quite settled. According to Wright, if I believe that Judaism in Paul’s day (the governing, covenant-breaking part of it) was legalistic and self-righteous, then according to Wright I am doing great violence to that Judaism and to Saul of Tarsus, as well as to that same man as Paul the apostle. I don’t believe I am, and I believe this can be demonstrated quite simply.

Piper is right to say in this chapter “that one of the most integral threads holding the system together is Wright’s assessment of first-century Jewish experience as a life built on God’s grace” (p. 143). He is also correct to say that this “understanding of first-century Judaism is an integral part of Wright’s system” (p. 141). This chapter in Piper simply sets up this particular problem, stating it, and a more detailed examination of it will come in the following pages.

Sanders’ mistake — and Wright’s in making so much out of this point of his — is that they are treating “Judaism” as a term in a syllogism, as in “all P are Q.” But “all Jews were legalistic” and “all Jews were recipients of grace” are both equally false, if we are taking the term as distributed. But if we take it as a prophetic generalization, the impact and meaning is quite different, and the way we handle it must be different.

“Cretans are evil beasts, lazy gluttons and liars” is a true generalization. “Pharisees are whited tombs” is true as a generalization, and it is an authoritative generalization made by the Lord Himself. Before we set out to rehabilitate the reputation of the Pharisees, we need to remember who it was that trashed their reputation in the first place. And it simply won’t do to say that the Pharisees were grateful observers of God’s law, fully conscious of their need for grace, with their one teensy-weensy problem being a tetch of ethnocentrism. No. They devoured widow’s houses. They loved money. They hated the attention Jesus got. They were full of self-indulgence. They were full of all uncleanness. And they didn’t do these wicked things “out of gratitude, a proper response to grace.” Not even close. Plenty of Jews did obey God, and kept the law out of the gratitude that Wright describes, but they still didn’t have the necessary votes at Sanhedrin. And the Lord did not see fit to use these loyal, faithful Jews as the representatives of “Judaism.” He picked the other lot. So the Bible names Judaism, and describes its characteristics for us.

These generalizations are not falsified if we point out that it was a Cretan who made the first observation, or that many Pharisees came to believe in Jesus. The generalization is not falsified by the exception. The exception, the faithful remnant, was only maintained by God’s grace. Otherwise all Israel would have been like Sodom. All Israel would have been like Gomorrah. And speaking of these cities, it is worth pointing out that Capernaum will fare worse in the judgement than these ancient cities of the plain.

This failing case for Pharisaic dependence on grace is made on the basis of documents, and scholarly analysis of those documents, with all the ancient sin carefully hidden away from the modern scholar. But Jesus was actually there in the synagogue watching these men puff themselves up like a jay bird in order to pray. He saw their arrogance, and knew that their eyes were fat like grease. He pointed this out, and we who are Christians need to follow Him in this. Read through Matthew 23 again. If that is grace, we shouldn’t want any.