Wright or Wrong

Good article here for conservatives who are nervous about NT Wright. Here are excerpts:


"Wright has said he thinks the Reformers were absolutely correct to apply the biblical texts to the problems of their own day in the way they did, but they were mistaken to think that contours of late medieval Catholicism matched those of 2nd Temple Judaism in quite such a direct, precise way.

"It is important to note, I think, that Wright's end results still look very much like standard evangelical doctrine even if he arrives at those conclusions by somewhat different, and often times more complex, exegetical routes. But not everyone is comfortable with that.

"As Wright himself says, the call of the Gospel 'is the offer of forgiveness. It is the summons to receive God's gift of a slate wiped clean, a totally new start...As we saw earlier, just as you can't set up a ladder of human logic and climb up it to get to some kind of "proof" of God, so you can't set up a ladder of human moral or cultural achievement and climb up it to earn God's favor. From time to time some Christians have imagined that they were supposed to do just that, and have made a nonsense of everything.' (Simply Christian 178)

"For Wright, Jesus' resurrection was God's declaration of Jesus' own right-standing before the divine court, a verdict legally vindicating Jesus in what he did on our behalf. And when we are united to Christ and incorporated into him, what is true of Christ in his humanity is also true of us so that very same forensic status becomes ours....That's more or less Wright's version of how the traditional Reformed doctrine of imputation functions in Pauline theology in more Pauline language and thought-forms and, as far as I can see, it really isn't so different from the understandings of Calvin, Ridderbos, Gaffin, and others. At the very least, there's nothing about Wright's overall picture of justification, if one were to accept it, that necessarily would force us to exclude more traditional understandings of imputation.

"So, if we really believe in justification by faith alone, suggests Wright, human traditions and even biblically-inspired customs or non-essential doctrines should not divide Christians whether those boundary markers are drinking and smoking, or race and gender, or subscription to the Westminster Standards, or belief in credobaptism or speaking in tongues or transsubstantiation. One can imagine why this might get Wright in trouble with fundamentalists and certain kinds of sectarian Protestants."