Chapter one of By Faith Alone is a critique by Cornelis Venema of N.T. Wright’s views on justification. This chapter was very good, and was admirable on a number of levels.
Readers of this blog know that I have learned a lot from Wright, and I appreciate much of what he has to offer. In this, I am in agreement with T. David Gordon, who starts chapter two of this same book by pointing out that he finds Wright’s work “utterly lucid, and profoundly stimulating” (p. 61). Okay, that’s me too. But at the same time, Wright misses some important things. Sometimes he misses them (I think) because of the Anglican zeitgeist (women’s ordination), and other times because he has accepted as axiomatic some scholarly settlement that ought not to be regarded as settled yet (Sanders on Palestinian Judaism).
Anyhow, my appreciation for Venema’s critique here ought not to be taken as a change of overall attitude. On many issues, I believe that Wright is top drawer. But there are places where he just plain whiffs it. For some reason it reminds me of a Far Side cartoon, where a wooly mammoth is on its back, all four feet to the sky, with a little teeny arrow stuck in its belly. Two cavemen are standing by him with their bows, and one of them says, “We really ought to write that spot down.”
Venema’s chapter was good in the first place because he under-promises and over-delivers. When he summarizes what he finds problematic with Wright’s views on justification, his statements are measured and judicious. The most strident comment in the chapter was, “The carelessness with which Wright and other writers of the New Perspective speak of a final justification on the basis of works threatens a central point of Paul’s gospel” (p. 58). For the rest, Venema says that the “New Perspective ought to be carefully evaluated before it is too quickly embraced” (p. 59), or “critical elements of Paul’s teaching about the law are either downplayed or left largely unacknowledged in Wright’s view” (p. 53), or “I am convinced that the older Reformation perspective more faithfully and comprehensively represents the Scriptures’ teaching” (p. 51). When it comes to his rhetoric, Venema does not come into this with a flame-thrower.
At the same time, in my view some of his criticisms are devastating. This is the part where he over-delivers. His evidence far surpasses his stated conclusions. This is in sharp contrast, for example, to Waters’ introduction, where his evidence was running for home plate like crazy but started its slide twenty feet early, with predictable results.
Venema takes great care (almost twenty pages) to set forth and describe the position that he is going to critique, and I believe that advocates of that position would be able to sign off on his description. He states that position dispassionately and fairly. The last nine pages are his assessment.
One criticism is worth mentioning here. Venema shows that Sander’s views on Second Temple Judaism do not really overthrow the older Reformation view of Paul, but rather, rightly interpreted, lend credence to it. In short, how is covenantal nomism not semi-Pelagian (p. 51)? Getting in by grace and staying in by obedience is something that could work in the first century for some Jews and in the thirteenth for some Christians.
“However the obvious weakness of Wright’s insistence that this requires a new view of Paul’s teaching on justiciation is that he (and other New Perspective writers) does not seriously consider whether covenantal nomism could accomodate a form of religious teaching that regards acceptance with God to be based upon grace plus good works” (p. 52).
Agree or disagree with it, this was a chapter of argument and judicious conclusions — not sloganeering and random quotation.