The Wright Stuff

A parting gift
from Phil Johnson

Here's a letter I wrote to the iMonk a year ago this very week, before I ever even considered entering the blogosphere. (As a matter of fact, the episode that precipitated the following letter, closely followed by a campaign of terror at the Boar's Head Tavern, is the biggest factor that finally provoked me to start blogging. I made that decision last year, a couple of weeks after this letter was written.)

Some background: Last March, the iMonk stumbled across a critical review of an NT Wright book from a lecture I gave in London more than a year before that. (I also gave a completely different review of the same book last year at the Shepherds' Conference, a couple of weeks before Michael Spencer's diatribe. The two reviews were for completely different audiences. They complement, but don't contradict one another, and—just to be clear—it was the earlier one that was the object of so much derision from Michael Spencer last April.)

It's putting it mildly to say that the iMonk hated my critique. He dashed off an angry post about it at the Boar's Head Tavern Blog. He didn't bother interacting with the substance of what I actually said, but he took quite a bit of liberty misrepresenting what I said. For example, here's how he paraphrased the thrust of my message: "Just keep reading those Macarthur commentaries, and all will be well. Consider us warned."

Of course, I hadn't mentioned MacArthur or anyone's commentaries anywhere in my critique. I had described Wright's book and disagreed with four points, all related to his view of justification.

Anyway, the following letter was my response to Michael's suggestion that Wright should be off limits to lesser beings like me:

13 April 2005 Dear Michael, Readers of your blog have informed me that there is some controversy there concerning how much of N.T. Wright I may or may not have actually read. Someone sent me a collection of remarks you have posted about me ["he hasn't read the people he's citing. . . . He's only read WSPRS {What St. Paul Really Said} and he's only going to critique WSPRS. Tell-tale sign of what you are getting. . . . If I'm wrong about this, I will publically apologize"]—and strongly suggested that in the interests of self-preservation I need to write and give you an accounting. At the moment, I'm supposed to be editing a book that's due to the publisher at the end of the month, so I don't have time to peruse many blogs or even keep my own website up to date. I apologize for missing the brawl over at The Boar's Head Tavern. But you have my permission to post this e-mail in full as my one and only contribution to the brouhaha. I wish I could come and join the fray personally, but my schedule seriously doesn't permit me to do so at the moment. Anyway, to the business at hand: I am by no means any kind of expert on Wright's written corpus (nor did I ever claim to be). On the other hand, I've read a little more Wright than you originally guessed. Of Wright's large works, I have read only The Resurrection of the Son of God and a generous helping (but not much more than half) of Jesus and the Victory of God. Of his smaller works, I have read The Challenge of Jesus, Who Was Jesus? and What Saint Paul Really Said. I actually had to read WSPRS multiple times, because after my first reading, I participated in two semester-long discussion groups with a dozen or so seminary students who were particularly keen to study that book. Then I was asked to review it twice in separate conferences. Also, when N. T. Wright was canon theologian of Westminster Abbey, the gift shop there used to carry his books. (They quit doing that when he became Bishop of Durham. So much for brand loyalty.) I once stopped in there and bought a bagful of his little commentaries in the "For Everyone" series. I've used them frequently (the "Galatians" volume is particularly dog-eared); I have listened to several lecture series by Wright; and I have read virtually all the short pieces by him posted at http://www.ntwrightpage.com/. WSPRS is the only Wright book I have ever formally reviewed. For the most part, I thought The Resurrection of the Son of God was superb. I do greatly appreciate Wright's unrelenting defense of the historicity of Jesus and the resurrection. I've seen him a couple of times on the BBC, dismantling the latest skepticism, and I appreciate how he handles that kind of nonsense. As I have said often and publicly, we owe him a great debt for the clarity and force with which he has answered the left wing of contemporary "Jesus scholarship." But I don't think it necessarily follows that it's impossible or unreasonable for anyone who truly appreciates those contributions to conclude that Wright's view on justification by faith poses certain serious dangers. And to suggest that all my concerns about Wright boil down to "four paragraphs in a small book" is the very kind of ham-handed hyperbole I think you rightly deplore. (Likewise for your comment that I am "freaked out" and "panicked" about Wright's "attack on transactionalism.") Wright has written a considerable amount to try to clarify his position on sola fide. I have read as much of it as I have been able to obtain. I still have grave concerns. Sorry, but I do. The earliest thing I read from Wright on justification was a chapter titled "Justification: The Biblical Basis and its Relevance for Contemporary Evangelicalism," which he originally wrote in 1980. I first saw a reference to it in the late '90s in Philip Eveson's book on Justification. (Eveson's published criticism of Wright actually preceded WSPRS.) So I acquired a copy and read it. That chapter contained the seeds of almost everything that troubles me about Wright's view of justification and the atonement. It was written 20 years before WSPRS, so to suggest that Wright only recently got himself in trouble with Reformed critics because of "four paragraphs" in one of his less technical books doesn't really do justice to the larger argument. The folks at http://www.ntwrightpage.com/ have kindly posted that chapter from 1980, as well as several other articles by Wright in which the Bishop attempts to defend his views on justification. I've read all of those, and obviously, I remain deeply troubled about Wright's position. However, let me address the larger issue of "the Grand Canyon of scholarly gravitas that exists between Phil Johnson and N.T. Wright," and the corresponding question of whether a "hack" like me has any right to subject a scholar like Bishop Wright to the kind of scrutiny the Bereans employed when they analyzed the teaching of the apostle Paul: I admit freely and without reservation that there is a vast, almost unbridgeable chasm—nay, virtually a bottomless pit—of "scholarly gravitas" between Wright and Johnson. No argument there. And insomuch as my first review of WSPRS (especially the printed editions of my transcripts) may have failed to pay due respect to the Bishop's scholarly credentials, I do humbly acknowledge and bewail my manifold sins and wickedness, which I, from time to time, most grievously have committed, by thought, word and deed. And I promise to try to do better in the future. On the other hand, I wasn't actually critical of Wright's scholarship so much as his theological opinions. Oh, sure—I noted at one point that there are still some fairly competent New Testament scholars who would strongly disagree with Wright's characterizations of Second Temple Judaism. But I didn't pretend to be one of them. If that wasn't completely clear, I herewith apologize for that, too, and I repent in dust and ashes. Still, hopefully even you would agree that the world's most decorated canon theologian's academic status doesn't ipso facto translate into sound doctrine. Nor should scholarly credentials be used as a shield to guarantee immunity from criticism. Else you and I both might be forced to put our hands over our mouths whenever John Dominic Crossan speaks. I'm not the least bit offended by those who notice my lack of scholarly credentials. I'm not even offended by legitimate questions about whether I have done my homework. From time to time I have had to be put right on theological issues by people who know better than me. No one needs to apologize for challenging me. I herewith formally absolve you from any guilt on that score. However, I don't think the dispute between NPPers and critics like me hinges on the issue of anyone's academic credentials. It's a fundamental difference of enormous magnitude, encompassing basic theological, hermeneutical, and world-view issues. Which is to say that I don't think the debate over the New Perspective on Paul is going to be won by Wright's devotees if their only answer to every argument is, "You just haven't read enough Wright." I know only one guy who really has read all of Wright. (Who can keep up with the Bishop's pen? Does the man never SLEEP?) But the argument is little more than a convenient dodge. Every time I hear it, I am tempted to ask why Wright never seems to explain his controversial statements in the context where he MAKES them. After all, why do I have to read all 741 pages of Jesus and the Victory of God plus 300+ pages of The Climax of the Covenant to understand Wright's attack on the concept of imputation in WSPRS? Or is your real point that no one can possibly understand Wright without agreeing with him? Some Wright enthusiasts have flatly denied sola fide. Others (usually his more Reformed devotees) insist that his views pose no threat whatsoever to the formal principle of the Reformation. Wright himself rather weakly and obliquely seems to make that same claim in WSPRS (p. 113), but he's not explicit enough to know for sure what he means. Do we really have to wait for his next volume before we're allowed to complain about this rather glaring ambiguity? In short, how much of Wright should I expect to have to read before I am entitled to criticize what he has written specifically about the doctrine of justification? (By the way, the apostle Paul himself really isn't that hard to make sense of.) Meanwhile, Wright is aiming books like WSPRS and his small commentaries at lay people, some of whom are under my pastoral care. He has also given a glowing, unqualified recommendation to Steve Chalke's blundering attempt to blend post-modernism and Socinianism and sell it to grass-roots churchgoers as a "lost" form of Christianity. I'm not going to stifle my criticism of stuff like that just because someone tries to intimidate me with insults about what a hopeless Luddite I am intellectually, academically, or theologically. I'll accept those criticisms, but they don't really speak to the doctrinal and biblical issues I have raised, do they? Phil Johnson The Spurgeon Archive http://www.romans45.org P.S. BTW, if you really think about it, John MacArthur or Michael Horton aren't really germane to the differences between us, either. I'm a little mystified about why their names keep getting thrown in and kicked around in this particular discussion. After all, trashing MacArthur doesn't really answer what I have written. And as far as the New Perspective is concerned, Horton has raised concerns that are strikingly similar to mine. So he isn't really going to help you much here, either.

I am surprised to see how well the letter works a year later. I am even trying to finish another major editing project. (I wish this stuff would come up in August, when my schedule isn't so hectic.)

Anyway, what made me think of this letter was a comment by "Dr Thomas" (an imaginary character with an imaginary degree) in the mega-thread of comments under Dan's post. Several of us had taken pains to explain why we think nothing—no academic credentials, and no philosophical sophistry—could possibly justify Wright's endorsement of Marcus Borg's "passionate" love for "Jesus." (Especially given the fact that Borg's actual idea of Jesus is that He was a mere human who is now dead.)

Then "Dr. Thomas" wanted to know if I was familiar with Wright's epistemological framework as explained in Wright's 550-page tome, The New Testament and the People of God. I gotta admit: That's one of Wright's books I haven't read yet. (Though I did finally finish with Jesus and the Victory of God.)

But I still think what Wright said about Borg is unjustifiable, no matter how much "academic respectability"-capital it may have earned for Wright.

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