Has a new generation of scholars tried to overthrow the Apostle Paul’s teaching of justification by faith, by saying that Protestant luminaries like Martin Luther are wrong? Have these scholars denied the Gospel? Or have they recovered a crucial insight into Paul’s letters that has been there all along, hiding in plain sight?
If you have ever contemplated such questions, then chances are that you have heard something about the so-called “New Perspective on Paul.” Some think that the “New Perspective on Paul” is a recovery of what Paul originally taught in his New Testament letters. Others think that the “New Perspective of Paul” is suspect and even dangerous, if not downright heretical. The real answer is probably somewhere in between the extremes, but trying to figure out where to land on this controversy can be difficult to navigate for the average church-goer.
The most well-known popularizer of this “New Perspective on Paul,” otherwise known as the “NPP” is none other than world’s best known New Testament scholar, Nicholas Thomas Wright, or “N.T. Wright” as he is often called. N.T. Wright became famous within evangelical circles particularly in the 1990s, by taking on the radical scholars of the infamous “Jesus Seminar.” The critical scholars of the Jesus Seminar would take different colored slips of paper and vote on which sayings in the Gospels actually go back to the historical Jesus, and which ones were fictions simply placed on the mouth of Jesus by the early church.
Did the early church fabricate sayings from Jesus, thereby misrepresenting his actual message? N.T. Wright vigorously championed the idea that the Jesus of the Gospels is indeed the real Jesus, thereby strengthening the faith of evangelicals faced with such challenging questions. While not all sayings of Jesus in the New Testament were strictly verbatim records, these sayings nevertheless faithfully represented what Jesus actually taught. Any skeptic who wanted to cut the historical Jesus down to size had to contend with the sharp pen of N.T. Wright., as he eviscerated arguments against historic Christian orthodoxy right and left.
Since then, N.T. Wright has been a theological hero to many. I personally devoured Wright’s book in dialogue with the liberal Protestant scholar, the late Marcus Borg, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions when it was published, as Wright championed the historic, bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ! Wright also defends the virgin birth, Jesus’ divinity, and Christ’s atonement for sins…. all doctrines that Marcus Borg finds incredible to believe. That book is a classic!!
But when it came to the Apostle Paul, a number of evangelicals began to have their doubts about N.T. Wright. It was Wright’s What Saint Paul Really Said that shook everyone up. For example, N.T. Wright was saying that Paul never taught the imputation of Christ’s righteousness for the salvation of the believer. Essay after essay from Reformed pastors poured out over the Internet, issuing dire warnings to the faithful who had fallen in love with the jovial bearded Anglican bishop. Was this British evangelical scholar’s enthusiasm for the NPP causing him to lose sight of the Gospel?
A younger generation of evangelicals took up N.T. Wright’s arguments with great enthusiasm, much to the consternation of the “old guard,” who were concerned that Wright’s influence was weakening the resolve of the church to uphold the faith once delivered to the saints. Like teenagers pushing the limits on their curfew imposed by their parents, N.T. Wright emboldened a kind of respectable rebellion among younger evangelicals, tired of the same-old same-old. In a culture which tends to favor the “new and glitzy” versus the “tried and true,” the concerns of the “old guard” are not without merit. Yet to these younger evangelicals, the “old-guard” came across sometimes as sweet yet curmudgeonly grandparents complaining about the clothes young people are wearing these days.
But was N.T. Wright making any sense to anyone? Was he really throwing a knife-edge at the heart of the Gospel, as his critics claimed?
In response, the well-known Minneapolis pastor and Bible teacher, John Piper, wrote a whole book expressing his alarm and dissatisfaction with the teaching of Wright’s (and others), The Future of Justification: A Response to N T. Wright (2007). Wright responded with a book of his own, Justification: God’s Plan, Paul’s Vision (2009). So was Piper misreading N.T. Wright, or was Piper’s critique correct? Or to play on the name of the British scholar, was he N.T. Wright or N.T. “Wrong?”
N.T. Wright and his array of bookshelves, loose papers, and slightly tilted lampshades. This reflects my own study environment, but my wife would not approve of Wright’s untidy library…..On the other hand, N.T. Wright is a bit of a theological book nerd. What else would you expect?
Veracity 