Jun 06 2007
Why Bird’s book is needed
Just after I had finished posting my review of Bird’s book The Saving Righteousness of God (here, here and here) I stumbled across references on Sacra Doctrina to a fierce argument going on in the Presbyterian Church of America. A large part of that debate is being pushed by a group wanting to declare the New Perspective on Paul a dangerous and alien virus in the body of their Calvinist doctrine. The report (whose legality is being challenged by some within the church) is available here.
I don’t intend to intrude on private grief. But I do want to highlight this as a demonstration of the need for the Reformed scholars to engage the New Perspective in the way Bird does. It is at least odd, to someone from my very different standpoint, that a group wanting to anathematize Tom Wright (for he it is who is primarily in view – a nasty Anglican leading all those young Presbyterian pastors astray) for trespassing against Reformed doctrine because of his exegesis, should begin by stating: “We affirm the principle of sola scriptura.”
They are complacent that scripture means whatever their standards say it means. Where is the patient exegetical work, the eirenic engagement with new scholarship, the willingness to learn new things about and from scripture that marked Bird’s work: nowhere! They simply reaffirm their traditional understanding of scripture, show that Wright has a different understanding, and then end by asking for his views to be condemned. Sola scriptura – well, you could have fooled me!