A Justification Debate Long Overdue By Tom Schreiner

 Schreiner identified three false polarities that he said Wright perpetuates :

l   Wright argues that justification is primarily about ecclesiology instead of soteriology.

l   Wright says Israel’s fundamental problem was failing to bless the world. But Paul focuses on Israel’s inherent sinfulness.

l   Wright contends that justification is a declaration of God’s righteousness but does not include the imputation of God’s righteousness.

Frank Thielman, Presbyterian professor of divinity at Beeson Divnity School

One Important Phrase, Several Intended Meanings  

—focused on Romans 1:16-17. Thielman offered a mediating position that suggested several intended meanings from Paul for the contested and consequential phrase “righteousness of God.” Original hearers, Thielman said, would have understand this phrase to refer to the saving activity and gift of acquittal from God on the basis of faith. They also would have understood that God is fair, even-handed, and equitable in the way he distributes salvation

N. T. Wright, research professor of New Testament at St. Andrews University and the former bishop of Durham,reasserted his Protestant credentials and said we need to allow Scripture to say things our human traditions have not said. And he denied that any single person holding to the New Perspective on Paul has joined the Roman Catholic Church.Wright made the case that the Reformers and his modern-day critics ask contemporary questions of Pauline texts, not the ones Paul actually addressed for the benefit of Jews and Gentiles gathered together in one church. Thus,Wright’s critics are the real modern-day demythologizers who abstract bits and pieces of Paul’s thought by tearing them from the original context.

One Big Story

True to form, Wright kept the big story in view as he analyzed specific passages. God’s plan to bless the world through humans was thwarted by the fall. Then he planned to rescue humankind through Abraham and his descendants.

• He disputed Simon Gathercole on Romans 4:4-8, which he said borrows the idea of reward from God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 15:1. 
• He faulted the two-volume set Justification and Variegated Nomism—edited by D. A. Carson, Mark Seifrid, and Peter O'Brien—for not considering a crucial passage from the intertestamental Qumran literature that he says sheds light on Paul’s teaching.