Okay then. I have finished Piper’s book, and I still like it. It is well worth reading, and should be taken seriously. He emphasizes a number of things that I believe that Wright should incorporate into his broader insights, without giving up those broader insights. There are any number of places where the sweep of Wright’s vision of a global gospel, and Piper’s interest in applying the gospel to the recesses of every sinful heart, are fully consistent with one another.
But in those places where there is a true inconsistency I abandon the both/and approach, and, forced to choose in an either/or fashion, go with Piper. As Wright teaches, the penal substitution of Christ on the cross for the sins of His people is a central meaning of Christ’s death. But the imputation of Christ’s obedience to His people is also part of that gospel. The recapitulation of Israel’s history in the life of Christ — with Israel doing it right this time — is a glorious manifestation of this truth. Unless the full obedience of Christ as the new Israel is mine as a new Israelite, then I am still stuck with my old record of disobedience. I am still stuck in the old way of being Israel, or worse, the old way of being a Gentile.
At the same time, there are quite a few places where I prefer Wright over Piper (although they were not in the forefront in this book). Because Piper is a Baptist and Wright and I are both paedobaptists, that would be one obvious place to look. But it is not just the practice of baptizing infants — there are plenty of folks around these parts who observe wet dedications, not covenantal baptisms. It is also necessary to understand the radical, civilization-building nature of infant baptism. And, as I understand it, Piper doesn’t share my postmill outlook, and Wright, though he doesn’t use the eschatological buzzwords, does. Both of these differences will cause any number of texts to cast a completely different kind of shadow.
One final thought. As I read this conclusion, one additional thought occurred to me. Wright believes the whole Protestant/Catholic debate over justification has been miscontrued, and he believes that the doctrine of justification, far from being an article of division, should be an article of ecumenical union. As Wright puts it:
In the examples that follow, I am not trying to be snarky, taking cheap shots at anybody. If we are going to talk about this, we have to talk about this. Wright believes that his formulation of imputation and justification is a. biblical and b. the basis for ecumenical reconciliation. Piper addressed the former, but let me raise a question about the latter.
I want to argue that Wright’s approach, taken as a whole, if it were really adopted, would not cause ecumenical harmony to bust out between Protestants and Catholics. There are several ways to state this. The reason I have no problem affirming that many Catholics truly know the Lord, and have been genuinely justified, is precisely because I believe justification by faith alone is true, whatever they might think about it. They are justified by their faith in Jesus, and their misplaced faith in Trent doesn’t necessarily undo that. But what if I accepted what Wright says? Then what?
Wright says that people are justified on the basis of the “complete life lived.” He says that future justification will be on “the basis of the entire life” (p. 183). Now what am I — staunch Purtian that I am — to do about the question of a Roman Catholic’s future justification? Set aside my personal worries about my “complete life lived,” what am I going to say about my Roman Catholic friend who is going to face the Lord at judgment on the basis of the complete life lived, and he has been bowing down to those graven images for forty years? Not only that, but he has been completely devoted to the Blessed Virgin. And a good half of the good things he did were to minimize the pains of purgatory. If justification is simply free grace, independent of any and all of my screw-ups on our part, it is far easier to charitable about the sins, foibles, and doctrinal errors of others. But if I believe that he is going to have to answer for all that stuff (with justification in view) on the last day, then I and he and everybody else will become increasingly skittish — about ourselves, and others, and both. Wright himself says that these beliefs are dangerous. You bet they are. They are really dangerous if they show to testify at the day of judgment. In short, I think this ecumenical move is going to backfire.