In his article on justification in the New Dictionary of Theology, N.T. Wright says a number of good and indisputable things. The dictionary was edited by David Wright, J.I. Packer, and Sinclair Ferguson, so we know that the Reformed bona fides should be in good order here. And I thought the article was quite good, and very instructive over all.
However, comma, there were a few places where I saw some significant problems peeping out. Wright says, “His polemic against ‘works of the law’ is not directed against those who attempted to earn covenant membership through keeping the Jewish law (such people do not seem to have existed in the 1st century) but against those who sought to demonstrate their membership in the covenant through obeying the Jewish law.”
I am particularly concerned about that throwaway line, “such people do not seem to have existed in the 1st century.” I simply do not know what to make of this idea. In my pastoral experience, it is not possible to go ten metaphorical feet without encountering someone who is trying to figure out a way to boast in themselves instead of in the Lord. And I have trouble going ten minutes myself without seeing the same kind of tendencies to forget boasting in the Lord. Imagine a whole century where this kind of temptation was absent!
The fact that you call it demonstrating instead of earning does not change what it is. The Pharisee in the Temple gave all the glory of God, heaps and heaps of it, and did so in a way as to ensure that he kept everything entirely to himself. The human heart is a gunny sack full of rattlers. Pelagians are honest about their attempts at self-salvation. Were the Pharisees full-tilt Pelagians? Of course not, and if this is all Wright is saying, then okay. But to put it this way is really to invite confusion. The Pharisees were (functional) semi-Pelagians, and can be numbered among those who seek to smuggle personal credit back into the picture without directly challenging the notion that God is the God who saves. They want to indirectly challenge it. Incidentally, we can thank the New Perspective for this point. By showing us (and proving) that the Pharisees were not Pelagians, all this means is that we see how fierce the Lord and His apostles were with semi-Pelagianism. Among other things, this results in theological incoherence, and a great deal of religious pride. But then there is that other group, those with Calvinist brains and Pelagian hearts, who take credit for their understanding that they can’t take credit for anything.
Abraham Lincoln once asked how many legs a sheep would have if we called the tail a leg. Five, came the answer. Wrong, he said. Doesn’t matter what we call it. The tail remains a tail, and does not change into a leg because of what we might say about it. Earning covenant membership by self-effort is not light years away from retaining covenant membership by self-effort. “Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?” (Gal. 3:3). For Paul, earning and retaining, beginning and running, must operate on the same principles of grace. “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him” (Col. 2:6). As you have received so walk. And if you received by grace through faith, then walk by grace through faith. To introduce a new principle of retaining, over against what it was to receive, had it been done in the first century, would have been to invite your very own epistle from the great Paul.