In chapter three, John Piper continues to interact with N.T. Wright’s take on the law-court aspect of justification. At the center of the discussion is this now famous section from What Saint Paul Really Said, which needs to be quoted at length.
There are three things to be said about this. The first has to do with the line of argument that Piper takes in this chapter, which is quite effective. He argues that Wright’s definition of righteousness does not go deep enough (p. 62), being limited to what God does and not being concerned with why God does it. If God’s righteousness is defined as keeping covenant, judging impartially, dealing properly with sin, and being an advocate for the helpless (p. 62), then how might we answer the question whether God was righteous before the world was created? As Piper says, “He was righteous before there was any covenant to keep” (p. 64).
Piper argues (and shows from Scripture) that God’s righteousness is to be understood as God’s zeal for His own glory. Because God is zealous for His own glory, He does of course act in the world in the ways that Wright outlines. But to say that a righteous God acts in this world in a particular way is not to explain why He acts this way. He was righteous, everlastingly and eternally righteous, before there were any covenants with man, before there were any cases to judge impartially, before there was any sin that had to be dealt with, and before there were any widows and orphans to defend. Piper is exactly right when he locates the standard of right within the character of God Himself. “What we find therefore in the Old Testament and in Paul is that God defines ‘right’ in terms of himself” (p. 64). God does righteously because He is righteous, and the former flows from the latter. “The righteousness of God consists most basically in God’s unswerving commitment to preserve the honor of his name and display his glory” (p. 66).
I agree completely with Piper here, and believe that defining righteousness this way creates problems for Wright’s entire approach to justification. In short, I believe this argument works very effectively as a critique of Wright’s project. The only thing I would want to add to what Piper has done here is to urge him to develop this concept of God’s zeal for His own glory in more explicitly Trinitarian terms — without that, God allegiance to His own name and glory can easily be represented or misunderstood as a form of divine megalomania. This is a slander of course,, and I am confident that Piper could answer it, but to speak of divine triune glory prevents the whole thing from coming off like transcendental selfishness. For what it’s worth.
While the line of argument Piper has taken here is an important one, there is another critique of Wright’s position stated above which I believe is equally potent. Wright has said that to say that righteousness can be imparted across a courtroom from judge to defendant is a category mistake, but I believe his entire illustation is dependant upon a much larger category mistake.
This is the second point. In a previous installment in this series, a comment posted stated that both Piper and I had missed the fact that Wright was talking about the righteousness of the judge. The righteousness of the judge cannot be wafted across the room and settle on the defendant. This is quite right — that is what Wright is saying, but to whom is he saying it? In the Old Perspective on Paul, whoever thought that the righteousness of the judge was imputed directly to us? Wright’s argument here is directed against something which no one believes. But this mistake is what highlights the Wright’s problem.
The Old Perspective on Paul does envision a scenario in which the sinful defendant comes into the courtoom, and because the judge is entirely righteous and uncorruptible, the sinner is damned. He is damned precisely because righteousness does not float from judges to defendants. The more righteous the judge, the worse it is for me.
But this is where the gospel enters with a glorious paradox. The righteousness of the judge does not float across the courtroom where the sinner stands accused. What happened goes far beyond that and staggers the imagination. The righteousness of the judge actually grows and develops in the womb of a virgin for nine months, and is born among us so that the judge might become the principal defendant. When Wright says that the righteousness of the judge means that He keeps His covenant promises, we must never forget that one of those covenant promises is that the judge promised to become the defendant — Immanuel, God with us. And so when he acts righteously, as Wright points out, He does something that makes Christ our representative, and when He becomes our representative He does so in the dock. The Lord is our righteousness, not because of some legal language, but because the Lord was born of a woman, born under the law.
The imputation that occurs is not from the judge to the human defendants. Imputation is what happens when the sins of Christ’s people are laid on Him, and His righteousness is laid on us. But this is not a movement from Christ as judge to defendants as toast It is from the lead defendant (Christ) to all His co-defendants (those who are in Him by faith). The movement from judge to defendants (and there is one) is not called imputation, but rather happened earlier and is called the Incarnation. Once Christ is incarnate as the heavenly man, the last Adam, the new humanity, the last and ultimate way of being human, everyone who is found in Him is the recipient of His imputed righteousness, just as He was the recipient of all their imputed sins, filth, rebellion and disobedience.
In the divine courtroom, how did it come about that Jesus Christ is standing in my place, answering the questions that I should be answering? If Wright wants to say that there is no imputation of the judge’s righteousness directly to me, he is quite right. But this is a hollow theological victory, because nobody thinks that is what happens. But if Wright wants to say that there is no legal device whereby the lead innocent defendant can successfully stand in for all His co-defendants, who are as guilty as they look, because such a stand-in is a “category mistake” and “makes no sense,” then things are worse in Durham than I thought. But I don’t believe this latter option is at all likely because Wright has elsewhere argued clearly for penal substitution, which is precisely what this doctrine is.
So at best, it looks as though Wright is debating with a straw man. Righteousness does get from the judge to the defendants, and in just a couple days we will be celebrating how that was accomplished.