‘Justification’ God’s plan and Paul’s Vision by Tom Wright

SPCK 2009 (224 pages) ISBN 978-0-281-06090-0

I am a self confessed devotee of Tom Wright, I just love his expansive view and the way in which he refuses to simply accept the ‘given’ with regard to the things of the faith.

In large part this book is in answer to John Piper’s book, The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright.

I was not aware of this ‘argument’ and it is possible to read Wright’s book without constantly looking over your shoulder to Piper, although Wright does make reference to Piper and others on occasion. A useful first chapter explores something of the argument and the reason why Wright wants to make redress to his critiques.

Wright is not one to take isolated text out of context and make a pretext.  Here he argues cogently that some of the ways we have done our thinking around ‘justification’ has been too narrow; focussed basically on the failure of the law and the need for a new plan B.

The result of this ‘failure’ according to some theologians then works out principally in one of two ways. One argument is that the law failed and therefore God put plan B into operation through Jesus, the messiah, who ‘did away with the law’ and gave opportunity for a new righteousness based on faith alone. Or that Jesus was fully faithful to the law, and thereby vicariously imputes the due righteousness onto to those who now put their faith in Him.  

Here Wright comes into his own as someone who wants to pick up the whole of Scripture, to grapple principally with Paul and in particular Romans.

In so doing he takes us back to Abraham and his faithfulness, to the covenant, to the whole history of God’s people and makes a simple yet profound challenge. Israel had failed to keep the law because they did not understand that they, as God people, were to be ‘a light to lighten the Gentiles.’  In short they did not grasp that they were called by God for the world and not from the world. 

Of course this is only the briefest of summaries and Wright, in typical fashion, makes a strong and well argued case for a ‘new’ perspective and way of reading Paul and our understanding of justification. 

This is based on God’s one and only plan for the redemption of creation (Romans 8:18ff) beginning with a covenant with faithful Abraham. That covenant now finds its unique fulfilment in the person and works of Jesus as Messiah. And it is through faith in God’s goodness as revealed in Jesus, by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit that we are called to live out our lives for the world as the people of God, i.e. the Church.     

‘When people believe the gospel of Jesus and his resurrection, and confess him as Lord, they are in fact doing what Torah wanted all along, and are therefore displaying the necessary marks of covenant renewal.’ (p 217.)
GB comment; note renewal, not replacement!

Captain Gordon Banks CA August 2010