The following was initially a blog post. I have refrained from editing out matters of informality etc.
Disclaimer: While I am a reasonable typist, I nonetheless cannot type at speech-speed at the best times, much less on a laptop keyboard. Consequently, these notes vary from word to word to close summary, and much of the ground in between. To be sure of precise wording, you will of course need to consult the tapes or CDs.
Session 1: N. T. Wright as Reformer
On the first evening of the conference, each speaker gave one lecture. Wright opened with what may justly be called a blistering presentation providing "starting points, fixed points and aims." Commenting on the Presbyterian wars waged with regard to him, the Bishop wryly observed, "It feels rather like two baseball fans discussing the merits of a cricket player."
Wright's initial lecture gave a great deal of focus to the solas of the Reformation, which he prefaced with the conviction, "I believe I have remained true to [the Reformers'] foundational principles."
The opening section of this presentation was focused upon Scripture - "no syllable altered." Wright noted that he has a "total commitment to Scripture itself over against human tradition. . . (and) all abstractions from the actual text of the New Testament," citing with approval the self-testimonial of William Tyndale: "I call God to record that I never altered one syllable of God's Word against my conscience." That, suggests Wright, is what it means to speak of sola scriptura and to mean it.
Upon this starting point, Wright pointed to several such single syllables - the letter eta which opens Romans 3.29 - all too often ignored (left untranslated by the NIV, thus obscuring the connection with the preceding verses), yet a syllable which is highly symbolic of Wright's own project to bring Paul's own concern back into view. "For Paul that little eta is a telltale indication of where his actual argument is going." Or again, the tiny de in Galatians 2.16: what is the point of the "yet"? Wright argued that this little word highlights Paul's point; the sentence here is saying that to be justified by works of law would mean a status of privilege for Jews over against Gentiles. "He is not offering an ordo salutis. . . [rather he is explaining] why it is that Jewish and Gentile Christians belong at the same table."
On the basis of these and similar passages, Wright concludes: "My Reformation call [regarding Scripture] impels me: when Paul speaks of justification by faith, he is talking about the coming together of Jew and Gentile. It is not a mere secondary polemical doctrine. . . to the contrary: the creation of this family is the aim and goal of all Paul's work."
"That is my first appeal: the Reformation principle, sola scriptura."
Wright moved from Scripture to solus Christus. He noted his own work in the field referred to by the Reformers themselves when they employed the slogan - for example, in his For All the Saints? Yet the thought of saint-worship was not Paul's concern, because it was not on the Church's agenda at the time - Mary is only mentioned (and not by name) in Paul in Galatians 4.4. Yet "Paul's insistence on Christ as only Lord is central to his writing."
This is in fact what Paul is speaking of when he uses the term gospel: "Jesus raised from the dead and exalted as Lord of the world, and claiming allegiance by all alike. . . . the gospel itself refers to Christ as the risen Messiah, [who is] now Lord of the world," as is borne out by Romans 1.3-4, where that gospel is outlined. Solus Christus: this is the center of Paul's gospel.
Wright noted that unlike much current formulation of the meaning of the "gospel," Paul's gospel has a fundamental political meaning: Jesus is Lord, and that means Caesar isn't. He also added that Christ's Lordship stood - and stands - over against all kinds of relativism.
This Lordship has its heart in "the accomplishment of Jesus in His death and resurrection." In connection with this, Wright observed that there is a "strange theory making the rounds," that if he is connected with the "NPP," it must mean that he is weak on atonement. A strange view, since "I am the author of the longest defense of the view that Jesus Himself made Isaiah 53 central to His own understanding of Himself." This is so, while on the other hand, "those who wished to avoid penal subsitution avoided specifically this tie between Isaiah 53 and Jesus." Wright added that from the time of his very first sermon, he has worked from the principle of the death of Jesus in our place. "So it is bizarre to be told that I remain 'vague' on atonement simply because I don't subscribe to one particular set of language. . ." (Wright is referring specifically to his avoidance of the term "imputation" to describe the atonement.)
Wright explained further that the different note that he sounds is owing, not to any attempt to avoid the notion of substitutionary atonement, but rather because "I am determined not to miss a thing, and not to insert things where Scripture does not state them. I have insisted on understanding the full weight of the letters themselves. . . rather than ransacking them to fight in-house battles between rival schools of interpretation." And the result is that in addition to penal substitution, he has recognized that a large theme insufficiently recognized in some Reformed theology is that of new creation: "God condemned sin in the flesh of Jesus the Messiah, and began the new creation in the resurrection."
In his third major point, Wright focused upon solo Deo gloria. He observed that God Himself is "the unmentioned subject" in a great deal of Pauline studies. Yet Paul's gospel "is not simply a message of how individuals get saved, but how God brought together Jew and Gentile into one body," with the aim that both together would with one mouth glorify Him (Rom 15.6). So too Christ's suffering and exaltation is "to the glory of God the Father" (Phi 2.11).
God is glorified in the great Jew-Gentile co-salvation, because that is when humans "become truly themselves through the power of God in the gospel and He is reflected into the world. The sin of humans is reversed in Romans 4 when Abraham believes God and gives Him glory." It is this theme of God's glory which provides "the missing piece whereby judicial and participationist categories are brought together." Undoubtedly, there is a "central and non-negotiable juridical aspect" to God's covenantal action: He will judge; He makes a judicial declaration that His people are in the right. And participation also belongs here: "Abraham's true family is summed up in the Messiah. What is true of Him is true of them, and vice-versa. . . the accomplishments of Jesus Christ are reckoned to those who are in Him."
With regard to this last statement, Wright explains: this notion is "often treated as Jesus keeping the law, and thus has a treasury of merit to impute to His people. I regard this as saying a substantially right thing in a substantially misleading, even wrong way. And then the passages become distorted." Wright went on to argue from Romans 6 that God's people participate in Christ's status - it is reckoned to them: righteousness, covenant membership. Yet this does not mean "that Jesus has 'earned' something called 'righteousness'" which is then imputed. "No, Christ's status of righteousness is given to us."
Wright's final section was on sola fide. Justification by faith is about "anticipation in the present of the Last Day verdict." God's declaration is immediately effective, just as in marriage husband and wife are legally and truly joined. "Because of God's declaration, [those who believe] are righteous in the covenantal sense [they are made members of the family of Abraham]. . . and the forensic sense [they are declared to be "in the right" in God's judgment]. . . and the eschatological [with reference to the Last Day judgment]."
Wright stressed that "Paul connects, in the most intimate way, the final verdict with the continuing work of the Spirit." Yet this is not, he suggested, some sort of semi-Pelagianism, wherein grace is infused and "thus God likes what He sees." That notion is built on "the old misunderstanding" of righteousness. "The gospel is not about me but Jesus, His death and resurrection." To explain Wright's point in other words, justification is not on the basis of infusion (cf Osiander), but participation in the crucified and resurrected Lord.
As elsewhere, Wright noted further that justification by faith does not occur by believing in justification by faith, but "by believing in what God has done in Jesus. Believing in justification by faith is assurance, not salvation. Many justified [people] have not heard of justification by faith (poor lads!)."
Justification is about the covenant, and therefore "justification by faith is about full dining rights at the family table. It's about the definition of the Christian community - in terms of the badge of faith, rather than who one's parents are, or moral achievement," and so on.
Wright concluded by summarizing his lecture thus:
I have expounded the solas of the Reformation, taking Scripture with absolute seriousness, while expounding my own version of the NPP, while criticizing without naming [E. P.] Sanders et al on the one hand, and [Guy] Waters et al on the other. . . . My hope and prayer is. . . we can converse to see that there are ways forward and not simply backward in the study of Paul. The Reformed faith, which I have held from my youth, is enhanced, not diminished, by fresh study of Scripture.
Brief thoughts
I hope that from the above, the reader can get some sense of why this session was such a powerful kickoff to the conference. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised that Wright came out this aggressively. Frankly, I think he seized the high ground right here, and not without justice. I'm presently working through Guy Waters' response to the NPP (Justification and the New Perspectives on Paul), and I have to say that, while Wright's exegesis is by no means perfect or above criticism, the work of confessional Presbyterians such as Waters tends to reflect an unwillingness or an inability to ask the difficult exegetical questions of their own tradition, or to feel the force of the NPP accent upon the centrality of the Jew/Gentile issue in Paul. The point here is not, of course, to discard the exegetical tradition. But it is to say that as long as proof-text-style exegesis (by which I mean: "proving" doctrines via snippets of passages, rather than attempting to follow the structure of a given biblical discourse) dominates the response to people such as Wright, he really does have the high ground. We claim to be heirs of the Reformation, but it seems that we have largely forgotten what sola Scriptura means. It certainly does not mean a trashing of the tradition (cf Mathison's book) - but equally certainly, it does not mean kowtowing to a tradition in order to silence Paul's own concerns and the shape of his own arguments.
So much for sola Scriptura. But then too, Wright's accent upon how solus Christus functions in Paul, particularly that it is political and even cosmological - this too is a fundamental datum that Wright has grasped, but our Reformed systematizers rarely have shown any glimmer of recognition of the point. And this is simply another reminder that, while we will inevitably come to Paul with our own questions (and we could hardly do otherwise), we desperately need to find a way to "hear Paul out" on his own terms, to listen closely to the things that are close to his heart. I think that to a great degree, Wright has achieved this, however much I disagree with him on this or that point of exegesis or strand of thought. The Presbyterian and Reformed confessional community is firing missiles at the "cricket player," when in truth we ought to be asking what we can learn from the example he has set (not to mention the biblical teaching which he has provided).
Finally, the atonement. To use what is now an overworked term, "imputation" has become a veritable shibboleth. And because Wright refuses to call his view "imputation" - though he explicitly calls it the reckoning of Christ's status of righteous - the Gileadites are marking him as a denier of the atonement (Waters is a case in point). This would nearly be funny if it weren't actually seriously put forward. Here is a man who explicitly and repeatedly writes and says that (1) Jesus' death is penal substitution; (2) Jesus' death is propitiatory, and thus answers God's wrath; (3) Jesus has been vindicated as the righteous One, and believers are made partakers of His atoning death and sharers in His status of righteous; (4) the history of Jesus Christ has become the history of believers, and vice-versa. And yet, we are to believe (in Waters's repeated words) that Wright is "unclear" or "fuzzy" on the atonement? No, I think not. This is either a case of (1) failure to read - goodness knows, the points in question have been made frequently enough by Wright; (2) inability to read (presumably, that's not the case); (3) some form of malice, whether out of envy, sectarianism, or whatever. But whatever the reason, we are not dealing with innocent mistakes. None of these three are acceptable scholarship, least of all Christian scholarship. We are dealing with gross negligence or worse, and it must stop. (And to be clear: I am not specifically singling out Waters here; I am referring to a whole swath of mouths and pens, of which Waters is but an example - and in some respects, one of the milder ones - that I have at hand.)
/rant
Meanwhile. . . this was an excellent session, and due to its importance, I went over it quite closely in my report. I don't really expect to be quite this detailed with the other sessions, but I do hope to provide a good sense of their content. I trust my readers will find them beneficial in some way.