tom, bishop of durham

In his discussion of the last part of Romans, Wright returns to his great theme. The gospel is all about the vindication of God’s righteousness in that the Messiah finally came, as promised, and fulfilled God’s-plan-for-the-world-through Israel. That’s Wright’s drum, and I have to say that he is consistent in how he lays down the beat. And it is a good beat, one that the Church should dance to. What I don’t get is why he leaves out the lead guitar and bass. No matter how good the beat is, the jazz is still impoverished.

“In the same way we might declare: if you fail rightly to understand God’s-single-plan-through-Israel-for-the-world, neither will you understand the place of Romans 9-11” (p. 212).

In this section, Wright focuses on Romans 9:30 through Romans 10:15. He is not one who can’t see the forest for the trees. He flips it, and cannot see the trees because of the forest. But nobody sees the forest like he does.

“Within this context I have no hesitation in saying that dikaiosyne in 9.30 and 9.31 must be understood in terms of membership within the covenant. Gentiles were not looking for such membership, but have found it; Israel, hunting for it, did not attain it” (pp. 214-215).

The problem here is that Israel already had membership within the covenant, as Wright acknowledges in another context a half a page later (p. 215). Later in chapter 11 we have the language of Israel being cut out of that covenant. The difficulty is that here the language is that of not attaining. The Gentiles have attained this righteousness, and the Jews have not. The reason they did not attain to it is that they were ignorant of God’s righteousness, and they went about to establish their own righteousness (Rom. 10:3).

Now when God has declared He will do something, it is the essence of unbelief to get in there and try to do it yourself. This is what the Pelagians were doing, this is what medieval merit-mongers were doing, and this is what these first-century Jews were doing. They differed, certainly, in what they believed the standard of righteousness was actually supposed to be, but they shared the autonomous push to run the show. Whatever righteousness was, they wanted to be in charge of it. That autonomous push has one name throughout all Scripture, throughout all generations, throughout all eras. It is unbelief, and it is the necessary fruit of an unconverted and unregenerate heart. Regardless of what the standard of righteousness is assumed to be, there is always an insistence that the unbeliever be allowed to go about to establish his own form of it.

Now Wright argues that Israel could not have been attempting works-righteousness “in the old Reformational sense,” and the reason he gives is that the “law was they way of life for a people already redeemed” (p. 215, emphasis mine).

But according to Wright (and I think he is right about this), Israel was in exile, and because they had been in exile for centuries, they were desperately in need of another Exodus, desperately in need of redemption. What is exile but a type of being in Egypt again? What is it but a confession of helplessness and slavery? And because they were in this experienced condition of exile (as Wright has ably demonstrated elsewhere), it is not possible to say that Israel could not have been attempting works-righteousness “because they were already redeemed.” This is a major tension within Wright’s approach, and he really needs to fix it.

Wright is more comfortable with Calvinism than with Lutheranism. He believes that the Lutheran idea of the law as negative is wrong, and he believes the Calvinist view of the law as positive is correct but far too limited. He wants his broader proposal to take everybody in the Reformation tradition up to the next level.

“Nothing that the Reformation traditions at their best were anxious to stress has been lost” (p. 219).

“Do we then overthrow the Reformation tradition by this theology? On the contrary, we establish it. Everything Luther and Calvin wanted to achieve is within this glorious Pauline framework of thought” (p. 224).

Two things here. First, Wright persistently writes as though his broader sweep concerns — God’s-single-plan-for-the-world-through-Israel — displaces the more focused concerns found in traditional Reformed theology as the ordo gets applied to Smith, Jones, and Murphy. He tries to represent this as a helio-centric/geo-centric issue (both of which cannot be right), when it is actually the difference between a man who says, “Look! a forest!” and the man next to him who points out one of the oaks. Wright has not even begun to show that his broader vision is in any way inconsistent with the imputed righteousness of the Messiah to every man who believes. Further, he fails to deal adequately with numerous passages in Paul that explicitly apply this gospel to the individual in exactly the way that traditional Reformed theology does. It is not a refutation of those particular applications to show that other passages in the near vicinity are talking about something bigger.

Now, at the same time, to be fair to Wright, when he talks about Calvinists with a truncated vision, men who are so focused on the minutiae of the ordo that they cannot see the panorama that Wright points to — I confess that they do exist. I have tangled with them, and he is not making them up. They not only have screwed down the lid of the Westminster Confession, but they then put screws in it, wrapped it with duct tape, and buried it in the ground. They have precious truth in there that will never get lost now. They do this because they have a harsh master who doesn’t put up with much.

Moreover, some of these guardians of orthodoxy are so blinkered that not only do they refuse to look at the grand view, but they also accuse of heresy anyone who dares to look up at the view. They are so busy analyzing the gravel in the pull-out by the highway that looks across at the Grand Tetons that they are suspicious of anyone who gathers by the rail to oooh and aaah, even for a minute. Of course, Wright doesn’t help matters when he then announces, “Gravel? What gravel? There’s no gravel in Paul.” And I am tempted to say, “For pity’s sake, Tom, look at what you are standing on for a minute. Stop exasperating them.” Now I don’t feel right calling a bishop Tom, but what can you do in these egalitarian days? And that’s what they put on the cover of the book.

One last major irritation, mentioned before.

“Nor is the spirit absent from this exposition, even though unmentioned” (p. 218).

“. . . what Jesus Christ continues to do and teach by the gift of his holy spirit . . .” (p. 222).

A lot of people should drop him a note about this kind of disrespectful foolishness. Address it to tom, bishop of durham.