N. T. Wright on Justification
I am currently reading N. T. Wright’s book Justificaion: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision which is basically a response to John Piper’s book The Future of Justification. Although he interacts with Piper at various points in the book, it is not a point by point response which, in my opinion, makes it a much better read. I have read the first part of the book and gotten through his exegesis of Galatians. For those familiar with Wright’s work on this subject, there is probably not going to be a lot that is new, but I am finding that Wright is (re)explaining things in this book in a way that is proving to be extremely helpful for my understanding of justification and Paul in general. I specially appreciated his spending some time explaining exactly what he means by “covenant” (as in God’s righteousness being God’s faithfulness to the covenant). I won’t attempt to summarize it here because it is exactly within the context of all that he is saying in this book that “covenant” makes sense. All I can say is that people should read this book and try to listen to what Wright is saying.
Of course, this doesn’t mean people will get on board and change their worldviews or shift their paradigms. One good example is the Boyce College’s panel Assessing the Piper-Wright Debate on Justification. This was done before the book was released in the US, and I am already surprised at the comments from the panel (after only reading half of the book). As a matter of fact, I recommend that you read the comments at Denny Burk’s blog which, in my opinion, proved to be a lot more helpful than the panel itself. Now that the book has been released here, we are starting to see some helpful reviews, and one that may bring a little balance to this discussion is Scot McKnight’s review.
I think the reading of this book will be a lot richer if you take the time to read John Piper’s book first. Listen to him, see what he is saying why he thinks Wright is wrong. It is very easy to take sides ahead of time and not listen to what is being said.
I look forward to reading the rest of the book. You can also see a short video of N. T. Wright discussing his book.
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