Thought Forms to the Rescue!

I enjoyed the next chapter by Wright immensely, and want to offer just a few fundamental quibbles. By this I mean that I want to present an alternative story to the one he is assuming about the history of the development of the doctrine of justification, and see if we can’t make our way to some sort of reasonable consensus. There are places where I feel like I have stepped into the middle of a vigorous argument over whether Henry is taller than a pig is fat (p. 71). Stimulating, entertaining, all of that. And yet, and yet . . .

Wright, following McGrath, says that we must distinguish between the concept of justification and the doctrine of justification. This doctrine of justification need not be false in order to achieve the status of having nothing to do with what Paul was talking about. In other words, if the Pauline corpus were planet earth, the doctrine of justification has achieved liftoff, and is flying quite nicely all by itself. Wright is not opposing it; he is opposing it as established by direct exegesis. I recall listening to a recorded lecture by Wright where he referred to Luther’s great theological insight. The idea appeared to be that it was true in Luther’s head, but not true in the text.

Wright has three objections to theological insights using biblical language though. First, the Scriptures get a novel reading imported at such points. Second, whatever Scripture was talking about is missed. And third, proponents will think they have biblical warrant for their views, when all they have are “‘biblical’ echoes of their own voice” (p. 61).

But there is an alternative story. Perhaps our Reformed fathers did not dash after a brilliant theological insight misleadingly decked out in biblical language. Our Reformed fathers were steeped in a recovery of Hebraic thought forms; they returned to a covenantal understanding of the faith, with Abraham included and everything. Just yesterday I was in the Bodleian library, looking at a first edition of Calvin’s commentary on the Psalms. On one of the first pages was a full page printer’s logo, an olive tree with branches cut off, and others grafted in — Gentiles brought into the ancient tree. Ben Merkle, my son-in-law, is doing his doctoral work here on the Hebraic influences at Heidelberg, and the major factor that was in the Trinitarian controversies there. In short, the Reformers did not invent an a-historical way for individuals to get themselves saved and safely ensconced in heaven.

So they did not just parrot the words of Paul, they understood them. They understood his argument, and the ramifications of it. But the same thing cannot be said of all their heirs and assigns, some of whom appear to have clustered around Wright in order to mislead him as to the true nature of the Reformed tradition.

And this is how it comes about that Wright formally rejects as exegetically unfounded a concept which he demonstrates (in the same chapter, no less) as exegetically grounded on bedrock. Wright says:

“This faithful obedience of the Messiah, culminating in his death ‘for sins, in accordance with the scriptures’ as in one of Paul’s summaries of the gospel (1 Corinthians 15.3), is regularly understood in terms of the Messiah, precisely because he represents his people, now appropriately standing in for them, taking upon himself the death which they deserved, so that they might not suffer themselves” (p. 84, emphasis his).

Wright is gloriously right here, but there is a catch. If I were speaking to Wright in Greek, and I were to undertake the task of repeating his thought back to him in my own words, one of the words I would use with abandon would be logidzomai. I would do the same thing in summarizing Paul. The reason I would do so is that these few sentences are saturated in imputation realities, and I don’t know any way of making sense of them apart from talking about imputation. What is meant by represent? How does that work? How can one person stand in for others? Why is that allowed? On what basis? How can the death that one deserves be assigned to another without gross injustice? There is no way to answer these questions in Greek without using that great Pauline covenantal word for reckon, consider, impute.

Wright has urged us repeatedly in this book to follow the argument. Don’t just catch at isolated words; follow the sustained argument. That is precisely what I believe we need to do. I agree with him wholeheartedly at that point. But if this is the case, there is absolutely no reason why the phrase the imputed obedience of Christ needs to be present in order for the idea to be manifestly there. This is Packer’s point, I believe. How could Adam and Abraham be there, and imputation not be there? How can fathers of races be present and imputation not be present?

Now back to my alternative story. Where Wright is magnificent is in getting us to look up, look around, take in the big picture. God is in the process of saving the entire world, and He is doing so because He is in the process of fulfilling a promise He made to Abraham many thousands of years ago. I believe that this magnificent story was recovered in the Reformation, and gloriously proclaimed to the world. Three generations or so into the Reformation, good little boys started to aspire to the study of divinity (once the fires of martyrdom start to burn low, it is quite a respectable move, one that all the pious aunts approve of), and when they came into the picture, they started to tidy up, fuss around, and generally make things cleaner and smaller. Once the memorials to the prophets are built, the Christian world is greatly in need of curators, and the men who apply are generally the kind of men who make good curators. Thus it was that, in certain pietist quarters, imputation became a narrow bookeeping transaction, surgically applied to the individual soul. But that is not how it started, and that is not how our confessions and best theologians have dealt with it.

So I quite agree with Wright that that is not what Paul is talking about. But I disagree with Wright at this point — in Romans, Paul is talking about imputation almost all the time. I see the concept of imputation even when the word is not there, because I have followed the argument when the word is there.

Wright has elsewhere called imputation a “cold piece of business.” Given how he thinks it is being applied, that is understandable. Rather than hold to imputation in that truncated sense, I would rather run a mile in tight shoes. But return to the story of the restoration of the human race, fallen in Adam and restored in the second Adam. Return to the story of all the promises made to Abraham and his seed. Return to the story of how Jesus Christ represents us to the Father. Return to that moment on the cross when Jesus took on Himself all the sins of all His people. Return to the moment when God declares that in Jesus Israel has finally been faithful, and that all Israel may now enter the promised land, which is the entire earth. Imputation is the thread upon which all those pearls are strung. And without imputation, those pearls will be all over the floor, and some will be horribly lost.

Without imputation, Adam, and Jesus, and Abraham, and Douglas Wilson, and [put your name here] are all isolated and separate individuals, with distinct lives (all but one being wretched and miserable), and that have nothing to do with one another. Adam disobeyed, and what is that to me exactly? Abraham believed, and so what? Jesus died and rose, and how is that mine again? Wright wants us to tell the grand story, leaving imputation behind. But the reason Wright doesn’t see imputation is that he thinks in order to exist, it needs to be a character in the novel he is reading. But it is not so much a distinct character, as it is the paper the whole thing is printed on.