The Piper-Wright Smackdown (4): Righteousness is not transferable
(For the earlier posts on Piper’s book The Future of Justification, see, in order, here, here and here)
Piper spends two chapters looking at justification and law-court imagery. This has been at the heart of Wright’s argument for nearly three decades. Wright argues that God’s final judgement is in view, and that justification is about God’s final vindication of his righteous people Israel. It is a major plank of Wright’s narrative reading of the whole of scripture, which he also believes is Paul’s narrative reading. Again, for Wright, Paul sees this judgement and vindication having already taken place in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Because Jesus is Messiah, vindicated by God in spite of human condemnation, faith in Jesus is both faith in God’s judgement rather than either the judgement of people or Torah, and a standing with Jesus before God. So to be justified is to be identified with the one who has already been justified in the face of the Law’s condemnation. Justification, then, is a present anticipation and experience of what those who are identified with Jesus in his death and resurrection will receive at the final judgement.
I hope such a terse summary (missing out endless nuances) is not too inaccurate, although I’m aware of how many of the details and careful arguments I’ve left out. For Wright in his own words, one of the most accessible web documents is here. For the beginner, I still think one of Wright’s earliest essays in the book The Great Acquittal1 is the best non-academic introduction of them all, both to Wright’s views and to a very early form of the New Perspective.
Therefore, when Piper says:
… in the theological sense in the New Testament, it [justification] far more often refers to the present reality of justification, not the future. … It is misleading to create the impression that when the word justification is used, the first or main thought coming to anyone’s mind would be final, eschatological judgment.2
I think he rather misses the point. Wright is talking about the present experience and consequences of being identified with the one who has experienced that future final judgement in past history. One might choose to disagree with the whole of Wright’s construal of justification but this particular argument misunderstands how past (the Cross), future (the Judgement) and present (the Christian self-understanding / experience) are related in Wright’s thought.
Piper’s real objection, however, is not to this but to the conclusion that Wright draws from the law-court metaphor. Wright argues that the old Reformation argument about whether God imputes righteousness (the Protestant view) or imparts righteousness (the Catholic view) is simply the wrong argument. A just judge is one who’s judgement can be trusted, a judge who gets it right. So when this judge finds in a person’s favour, or says someone is acquitted, innocent, righteous, they are making a statement that is both just, and if they have the authority to do so, effectual. The judge doesn’t hand over some of his own “righteousness”, he simply passes a verdict which declares someone to be set free from the threat of condemnation, or released from custody.
Although there is an impeccable logic to this analysis, given Wright’s premises, Piper sees this a mistaken version of a Luther-like appeal to sola scriptura and tries to get round the logic by an appeal to tradition:
If Wright is correct here, then the entire history of the discussion of justification for the last fifteen hundred years—Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox—has been misguided. … Whether we should follow Wright as a new Luther over against the Reformation and fifteen hundred years of wrong-footed conceptuality is open to question. I don’t think so. One of the differences between Wright and the Reformers is that the latter labored to link their thinking to the writings of the church fathers3
I can’t help but be unimpressed by this ad hoc devotion to catholic tradition. If Piper showed the same concern to root the rest of his scriptural interpretation in the Fathers, then he would have to make more room for the sacraments, the saints, the catholic rather than the congregational church and even bishops. He would also have to make a lot less room (if any at all) for his much beloved doctrine of penal substitution. But in fact the language of justification is used relatively sparingly until the Reformation, and it the language is usually rooted in rather different questions and debates to the ones became characteristic in the Reformation period. The real debate between imparted and imputed righteousness, with those terms solidifying into clarified polemical doctrines is a mere 500 years old, not 1500, and in the earlier period between Paul and Augustine justification gets very little play indeed, except in quotation or allusion4 The rhetoric of an appeal to tradition has rather less substance than at first appears.
Notes
December 26th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
One of the differences between Wright and the Reformers is that the latter labored to link their thinking to the writings of the church fathers.
Really? I’m pretty ignorant of the Reformation, but I’m well versed in the early church fathers, and it’s pretty obvious that Reformed theology looks nothing like the theology of the ECFs… unless perhaps by the ECFs they mean “Augustine only, and no one else”? And modern writers that want to see their Reformation theology in continuity with Augustine tend to overstate the similarities by twisting Augustine’s views.
As far as Wright’s escaping of the imputation/impartation debate, I think there’s more to be said. Wright attempts to escape the debate by saying (my paraphrase) “Paul himself does not mean either of those terms by the words he uses, but is talking about the judge’s own righteousness”. Wright sees Paul saying that the just judge pronounces righteousness. But this thrusts him straight back into the imputation/impartation debate as soon as you ask Wright “well, on what grounds does the just judge pronounce the person righteous, and in what way does the judges’ declaration make them righteous?” It seems to me that in such a system there are three options.
1) The person is either actually a morally unrighteous person or actually a righteous person themselves before the judges comes to make a pronouncement. If they are actually righteous and the judge pronounces them righteous as a result, then the judge is recognizing their righteousness.
2) If the person is morally unrighteous then they could be made actually righteous through having the righteousness of Jesus and/or God imparted to them through the Spirit. Thus the just judge can pronounce the righteous because they have actually been made righteous.
3) If the person is morally unrighteous, then they could have the fictitious legal righteousness of Christ imputed to them, leading the court to declare them legally righteous when they are not morally righteous.
Piper seems to think that Wright has gone for the invalid fourth option of saying that the allegedly just judge declares righteous for no good reason a person who is not righteous in any way. The judge in this situation simply acts wrongly and unjustly, acquitting the guilty. Now I have absolutely no problem with the concept of God giving forgiveness out of pure mercy (indeed, I firmly believe he does), but if this is what Wright is actually saying (which I am not convinced it is, but Piper seems worried it is) then we have to question the notion that the judge is actually acting justly in this instance by acquitting the guilty.
By the by, I firmly hold to option 1 that Paul’s talk of the righteousness of God is referring to a standard of righteousness that God accepts and recognizes as righteous. (There is no particular reason to think any law-courts are involved in this though… apart from the Reformers’ predispositions to see law-court language everywhere in Paul due to their Latin translations when there is in fact virtually none in the Greek.)
January 3rd, 2008 at 6:56 am
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February 19th, 2008 at 7:25 am
I think the grounds Wright is asserting is that since a man is “In Christ” when he believes in Christ, God declares him righteous because Christ is righteous. One could argue the semantics that this is an imputed righteousness, but Wright might be trying to get away from the view that righteousness is passed onto the man/woman (ie, righteousness moves) rather than the man / woman moves into righteousness (Christ) or are passed into righteousness.
It’s a subtle semantic, but it’s a necessary discussion, as Jesus needs to stay as the central tenet of Salvation.
So if this is what Wright is saying, I would agree with Wright (even though I like Piper) because the central core of salvation and the Gospel is the person of Jesus Christ, not the justification of the believer. Although the justification of the believer clearly happens, it is only because, within, and due to the person of Jesus Christ and WHO He is, and what HE did.