It would certainly be uncharacteristic of Tom Wright to anathematize anyone, but he does rather clearly imply that he thinks Protestants have been getting the gospel wrong since the 16th century. Let me try to answer each one of the five ideas I have outlined with at least one or two biblical arguments:.
I answer that Tom Wright has erred by lending more credence to secular scholarship than he does to the testimony of Scripture. We ought to draw our understanding of the first-century religious climate from the New Testament itself, and not from the disputed conclusions of a handful of skeptical twentieth-century scholars who refuse to bow to the authority of Scripture.
And what does Scripture say about the religion of the Jews, and the Pharisees in particular? Scripture clearly teaches that their central error was that they trusted too much in their own righteousness rather than resting their faith in the Old Testament truth that God would cover them with the garment of His own righteousness.
He constantly criticized the Pharisees for trying to justify themselves. Remember the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican? Wright is simply wrong—egregiously wrong—when he suggests that self-righteousness was not a problem in first-century Judaism. By the way, Wright is making a caricature of the historic Protestant position when he suggests that most interpreters have equated first-century Judaism with Pelagianism, the notion that sinners can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and save themselves through their own works.
Of course Judaism had a major emphasis on grace, and the mercy of God. The Pharisees knew the Old Testament, and the idea of grace was plainly prominent in the Old Testament. But the religion of the Pharisees, and the bulk of first-century Judaism, had corrupted the Old Testament notion of grace.
But it was much like semi-pelagianism , which has a watered-down notion of grace, and still places too much stress on human works. Semi-pelagianism suggests that grace is enough to get your foot in the door of salvation, but you have to maintain your salvation, or your covenant membership, by your own faithfulness and obedience to the law. Listen, even in the way Tom Wright describes first-century Judaism, it is clear that there was a semi-pelagian tendency in that religion.
That kind of thinking frankly has the stench of semi-pelagianism all over it. It is a subtle form of works-righteousness. In effect, Paul banned them from the table Wright insists ought to be open to everyone who acknowledges Christ as Lord. But what they corrupted was the truth that justification is by faith alone. If Wright is right, Paul might have corrected their error, but he would have had no reason to anathematize them. On page , Wright denounces those who think justification has anything to do with the way of salvation.
What about this third distinctive? Romans alone blows that argument to smithereens. Paul is not talking about ethnic badges here; he is talking about the moral demands of the law.
And he is saying as plainly as possible that the law, with all its high moral standards, cannot possibly justify us, because it condemns us as sinners. I reply that it is he who has twisted and deformed the biblical concept of justification, and he has distorted the idea almost beyond recognition.
This is the dilemma Paul sets up, and when Paul launches into his discussion of justification in Romans 3, that is what he is still talking about. But forgiveness and redemption from the guilt of sin are the very issues Paul is dealing with in Romans 3 and 4.
He is dealing with guilt, not merely covenant status. I could go on, but time is short. Let me just give you one other example, from the teaching of Jesus. That parable of the Pharisee and the publican in Luke 18 teaches the very thing N. Wright wants to deny about the doctrine of justification. This is the one place where Jesus expounds most clearly on the principle of justification. And he is fully in agreement with the classic Reformed interpretation of Paul.
There you have the principle of justification apart from works of any kind. It deals with individual guilt and forgiveness, not merely corporate relationships. One man was justified; the other was condemned.
I challenge you to do a careful word study in Scripture on the various Hebrew and Greek expressions that speak of righteousness. There is a germ of truth in what Tom Wright says about divine righteousness. Biblically, righteousness an active concept, not merely a metaphysical idea. But Scripture nonetheless does speak of the imputation of righteousness to the believer. Righteousness is a much bigger concept than Tom Wright will acknowledge, and herein lies my chief complaint with his approach to theology: he has made righteousness a smaller concept than Scripture does.
He makes sin a minor issue. He downplays the idea of atonement. He diminishes the doctrine of justification by declaring it a second-order doctrine. What he ends up with is a theology that is destitute of virtually all the lofty concepts that the Protestant Reformation recovered from the barrenness of Medieval theology. The Evangelical Alliance held a formal debate to discuss the merits and demerits of that book.
The book contains explicit denunciations of some fundamental doctrines of evangelical Christianity, including the notions of penal substitution and original sin. How then, have we come to believe that at the cross this God of love suddenly decides to vent His anger and wrath on his own Son? Understandably, both people inside and outside of the Church have found this twisted version of events morally dubious and a huge barrier to faith.
Christ did bear our guilt, and God did punish Him for it. That—and nothing less—is what the biblical word propitiation means. It is this grave error that has dogged the Church in the West for centuries.
But it may surprise you to learn that the lead endorsement on the book, at the top of the front cover, is an unqualified endorsement from the bishop of Durham, Tom Wright.
Its message is stark and exciting. It leaves sinners without any hope of true redemption. Lately I've started to appreciate that the argument lives on because it has deep and practical spiritual ramifications.
These ramifications bear on the character and possibility of our worshipping the Father, Son and Holy Spirit with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. Let me be a bit more specific, even though it means being a bit provocative. There are spiritual dangers of Calvinism and spiritual dangers of Arminianism. Both of these theological positions, as commonly presented, present a weakness or problem that diminishes the glory of God.
The spiritual danger of Arminianism is in believing that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is not sovereign enough, not powerful enough, to save all. But how could this be? Is God weak? The problem of God's ability to accomplish God's will arises, of course, because Arminians and Wesleyans are more likely to unequivocally affirm the clear biblical teachings that God desires to save all 1 Timothy and that Christ's death atones for the sins of all 1 Timothy ; John ; 1 John So, can God accomplish God's will in creation, or not?
Is God's will that all be saved really able to be eternally bested by the intransigence of the wills of puny finite sinners? God certainly seems to turn St. Paul's life in an entirely surprising direction — as St. Augustine, John Calvin and so many since have noticed and experienced first-hand. Is our will really just autonomously 'free' to say no to God's grace?
And if not, what is there to stop God from accomplishing God's will to save all? After all, how confidently and peacefully can one worship a God who, at the end of the day, doesn't seem to be all that in control?
Infinite goodness and power, it seems, can be trumped by the bored "Naaah" of a pound sinner. Can one really trust, fully trust, fully hope in a God like that? In the darkest storms of life? Wesleyan though I am, I think the Calvinists are exactly right to worry here. The doctrine of double predestination as held by, say, John Piper, means that God, from before the foundation of the world, elects some for eternal suffering in hell.
Nonetheless, their theology convicts God of evil of the most monstrous sort: willing the eternal damnation of a lot of human persons created good and in the image of God. The largest context is what the whole Bible teaches on the particular topic at hand. Tradition can be the bane or blessing of the church.
Tradition hurts the church when we elevate it to divine authority Matt. Reformed theology does not depart from our ancient Christian heritage but affirms the catholic, orthodox doctrines of God and Christ that form the backbone of the great confessional tradition of worldwide Christianity. Though the Reformers were excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church, they did not cast off the Trinitarian faith of the councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon.
They affirmed the doctrines that God is three persons in one divine nature Matt. Christ is everything to believers Col. Earlier we noted that Reformed theology is God-centered; here we clarify that it is centered on the triune God who comes to us through the only Mediator, Jesus Christ. They traced in glowing detail his mediatorial office as the Prophet, Priest, and King of his people.
However, a survey of a Reformed catechism or systematic theology shows that there is much more to Reformed theology than the doctrine of salvation. The first volume in the Reformed Systematic Theology series draws on the historical theology of the Reformed tradition, exploring the first 2 of 8 central points of systematic theology with an accessible, comprehensive, and experiential approach. God-centered teaching calls us to God-centered living. Gisbertus Voetius, a renowned professor of Reformed theology, regularly gave his time to catechizing orphans.
Reformed doctrine has been treasured by some of the greatest evangelists of all time, such as George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards. The Reformers and Puritans theologized in their preaching and preached their theology. This was not merely a method they embraced, but the fruit of their encounter with the living God through the truths of his Word.
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