Remember that Paul Hops from Foot to Foot

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Chapter two is a helpful and revealing chapter called rules of engagement. Much of what Wright says here is prudent and wise, and it is clear that he and Piper are not really disagreeing at those points, but rather just leaning against one another — trying to guard against abuse in the opposite direction. A good way to tip the canoe, in my opinion, but no real disagreement at those places.

At the same time, not surprisingly, there are a number of points that require a response, the last of which will result in our first forays into the text.

The first is an odd objection that Wright raises to an observation by Clowney, when Clowney said that “the Old Testament provides the revelation from which the salvation in Christ must be understood” (p. 24). To this, Wright responds by saying, “We know, it seems ahead of time, that ‘the salvation in Christ’ is the topic to be discussed” (p. 24). Well, of course we do. We are baptized, and so we should see Christ everywhere in the Old Testament. We must not be “slow of heart” to believe.

Wright here is being an academic neutralist, a foundationalist of sorts who wants to build up the meanings of phrases like the righteousness of God painstakingly from original contexts. There is a place for that work, obviously, but not if you are going to chide people like Clowney for cutting to the chase. The Old Testament is a Christ-saturated book, and in what he is doing, Clowney is much more Pauline who, after all, saw Christ as the Rock that accompanied the Israelites in the wilderness. A good corrective here would be du Lubac’s treatment of medieval exegesis — not that they didn’t have their problems too.

Secondly, Wright makes it clear that the boundaries of his Pauline corpus are narrower than they ought to be (p. 26). In his list there, he leaves out the pastorals, while recognizing that many of the old perspectivalists accept the authenticity of Paul’s letters because of their view of Scripture. Wright’s point here was to emphasize his inclusion of Ephesians and Colossians, but the omission of the pastorals was still telling. It is also convenient for him because a good bit of the autobiographical evidence for Saul’s unconverted state prior to the Damascus road comes from the pastorals.

Neither is this incidental as a matter of method — Wright has said earlier that he wanted to be steeped in Scripture, letting it settle in his bones. But then what? We must then submit to it, which means that when Paul tells Timothy and Titus that he wrote those books, our choice is either to believe him and submit to it, or maintain that somebody was telling a pious and edifying lie. This is crucial, because Wright says later that “proper evangelicalism is rooted in scripture, and above all in the Jesus Christ to whom scripture witnesses, and nowhere else” (p. 34). Yes, and amen. But why do we need a proper evangelicalism rooted in Scripture, if goodly portions of that Scripture are telling me pious lies, and if they feel free to make up details of Paul’s life that were not true? And further, if a late first century Christian can tell me edifying lies about Paul, then what could possibly be wrong with sixteenth century Christians telling me edifying lies about Paul? Just following a long and honored tradition. If it is good enough for the canon of Scripture, then why should it not be good enough for the canon of our confessions?

Wright’s larger point in listing the books of the Pauline corpus was to say that our controversies would have been completely different if we had read Galatians and Romans in the light of Ephesians and Colossians instead of the other way around. But, as it happens, that is what happened to me. I came into Paul through the Ephesians portal, and a fat lot of good that apparently did.

Wright then quotes J.I. Packer (approvingly) when he notes that Packer acknowledged that the phrase imputation of Christ’s righteousness is not in Paul, “but its meaning is” (p. 30). I am with Packer on this, but with this proviso. This meaning is not something that has to be teased out of what Paul actually does say, but is rather a meaning that is capering all over the text of Romans, waving its arms and beckoning to sinners. In this way it is like the phrase faith alone. The meaning is flagrantly there, while the actual phrase is not (except in James, to be in that sense denied). God’s covenant righteousness is seen in His provision of an Adam who did it right, an Adam who obeyed on our behalf the way the first Adam did not. That obedience is mine because God considered or reckoned it to be mine. Take this away and the architectural structure of Romans collapses in a heap. Much more on this later.

This chapter does reveal a contrast in paradigms.

“The rules of engagement for any debate about Paul must be, therefore: exegesis first and foremost, with all historical tools in full play, not to dominate or to squeeze the text out of the shape into which it naturally forms itself, but to support and illuminate a text-sensitive, argument-sensitive, nuance-sensitive reading” (p. 34).

No — it is not exegesis first, but Christ first. Christ is preached and proclaimed from the Scriptures first. Then comes faith and baptism. Then after that comes the exegesis. Now I agree completely with Wright that this exegesis, when it comes, is not authorized to pound the text into unnatural shapes, but I deny the Enlightenment’s definition of what constitutes an unnatural shape. Was Christ the Rock in the wilderness? Was he the true bread from heaven? Was Noah’s deliverance an exemplar of Christian baptism? Were Hagar and Sarah really two covenants? Could I have discovered any of those things in the Old Testament by bare bones exegesis? Or did somebody have to declare Christ to me first in order for me to see it? In other words, is true faith necessary to true exegesis? Yes, of course it is. The thoughtful reader should see my overarching point about Saul of Tarsus, and the things that he could not see in the law and in the prophets.

Wright makes a good point against textual cherry picking.

“I respond: Yes, absolutely: and that means taking Romans 3:21-4:25 seriously as a whole argument, and discovering the meaning of its key terms within that. It means taking Romans 9:30-10:13 seriously as a whole argument . . . it means as well and hehind those two, taking Romans 2:17-3:3.8 seriously as part of a single train of thought and discovering the meaning of its key terms within that” (pp. 32-33).

In the course of these reviews, we will deal with all those passages, walking through them in due course. But let me make just one point about them now. Wright refers to “discovering the meaning of its key terms within that.” But Paul is famous for jumping around between meanings in the course of a single sentence without even stopping to breathe. For example, nomos or law means both the Torah and the moral code that even Gentiles can see in their hearts and in the sky. In some verses, Paul delights in hopping from one foot to the other and back again (Rom. 2:14). And a true Jew is an internal Jew (Rom. 2: 28-29), while in the next breath he is talking about the great value in being a not-really Jew (Rom. 3:1-2), and he is back to using that word in the conventional way. So we have no a priori reason to believe that Paul is going to start behaving himself with the dikai- word group.

But there was one thing Wright revealed in this chapter that I thoroughly approved of, and that was his disdain for the NIV. I myself have been tested, and am entirely NIV-negative.

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