Like Scarsdale

The final section of Wright’s chapter on Galatians is pretty good (pp. 114-118), and the observations I have already made would remain. There are just two things that deserve a brief comment.

“The Christian looks back and celebrates the verdict already issued over faith: ‘righteous’, ‘my child’. The Christian looks forward and waits, in faith and hope, for that verdict to be announced once more on the last day. And in between the Christian knows that he or she is not defined by ethnic membership, in Abraham’s family or anywhere else, but precisely by the faith which works through love” (p. 117).

And it is precisely here that it is necessary to have a doctrine of decisive conversion. It is not necessary to know when that conversion was, but it is necessary to know that that conversion was. You don’t need to know what time the sun rose to know that it is up. At the same time, it is important to know that the sun does in fact rise.

If my inclusion in Abraham’s family in the present is defined by “the faith which works through love,” three questions occur to me straight off. And they are, how much faith, how much work, and how much love? Because when I look at those days when my faith is raggedy, my work slipshod, and my love in tatters, is Abraham still my father?

My point here is not that Wright is threatening to undo justification, but that he has obscured it on the individual level to an extent that is going to do some significant damage to the individual assurance of many. I am not saying that Wright is teaching salvation by works, but I am saying that when free grace is clumsily expressed to God’s people, some of them will figure out a way to get a works principle into the affair in about fifteen minutes. C.S. Lewis once made a comment about writing that applies to pastoral care — he said that when driving sheep down a lane, if there is any open gate along the side of the path for them to go through, they will go through it. So close those gates.

My second comment is on a subject I have already noted, but I really want to say something about it again.

“To make this good, to tell the story of the ‘Christian exodus’, he reaches for the categories, not of justification by faith, but of what we call Trinity (4:1-7). This was the purpose of the father; this is worked out in you through the spirit of the son, sent likewise from the father” (p. 115).

I have a confession to make. I don’t offend easily, and in fact I think that trait is a factor in some of my more glaring faults. But, having said that, this just offends me. We call this “Trinity,” and note with a capital T. That must be a remaining vestige, awaiting the next new developments in theology. After we have worshiped father, son, and spirit for a long enough time we might come to realize that we can start speaking of the trinity too. Why do I have the feeling that learned theologians always keep their copies of the Creed in vats of paint thinner?

But I bet you ten dollars that when that day comes, everybody will still be capitalizing the Archbishop of Canterbury properly. Wonder why. The late Fulton Sheen had an exchange with an editor who kept reducing his upper case H in Hell to lower case. They went back and forth a few times, and then the editor asked Sheen why he kept capitalizing Hell. And Sheen said, “Because it’s a place. You know, like Scarsdale.”