The final paper is not quite the project I’d hoped it to be, but in the interest of time I had to cut my work short. I have to move forward and get started on my Fall 2014 semester at Southwestern. Of the previously discussed aims of the essay, David G. Horrell’s material was omitted (what little I had!), and reviews of chapters six and seven of Paul and the Faithfulness of God were further omitted (which was significantly more material). Despite these setbacks, I think the final review achieves the aims I initially desired and I am proud to have worked through Wright’s massive book. I hope that readers find my thoughts helpful, but I welcome feedback to help me improve in my own understanding of Wright.
Readers may read the review below:
Paul and the Faithfulness of God:
A Research, Review Essay
To begin with N. T. Wright’s book Paul and the Faithfulness of God[1] is less a conventional Pauline theology and more a social-scientific worldview and theological analysis,[2] with the latter seen in light of the former. This paper will focus specifically on Wright’s ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters. They are certainly the most important in the book. A presentation of a full layout of this paper will be omitted in the interest of space, so the reader is encouraged to use the provided Table of Contents where needed. The review will begin with a brief treatment of methodology before moving to the exegetical discussions in Part III “Paul’s Theology.” Because of the vast amount of detail in Wright’s book, this essay will understandably invest more space in explaining the selected chapters discussed above, and will necessarily narrow further to specific material within these chapters. Only the most critical components that form the structures of Paul’s worldview and his reformulated theology within this worldview will be discussed.
The review will also include additional works of Wright, particularly essays belonging to Pauline Perspectives: Essays on Paul 1978–2013; and references will also be made to Paul: In Fresh Perspective which in many ways anticipates the outline and content of the subject book.[3] A critical evaluation section will follow the review and will be brief by comparison. However, careful readers will find the criticisms firmly grounded if read in light of the preceding and thorough analysis.
Quotations from the Greek New Testament are from the NA28; transliterations all come from Wright, though diacritical marks are not maintained; and all translations will be from Wright’s The New Testament for Everyone series; Old Testament citations are either from the NRSV or LXX. Apart from the chosen Greek New Testament, the above choices are what Wright himself consistently uses throughout his book.
Concerning his three-fold interpretive structures for understanding Pauline theology – monotheism, election, and eschatology – Wright has previously stated: “My proposal in this second main part of the book is that Paul’s thought can best be understood, not as an abandonment of this framework, but as his redefinition of it around the Messiah and the Spirit.”[4] This Pauline worldview framework of Wright’s is extensively detailed in the subject book, specifically in chapters nine, “The One God of Israel, Freshly Revealed” (monotheism), ten “The People of God, Freshly Reworked” (election), and eleven “God’s Future for the World, Freshly Imagined” (eschatology). These three chapters – pages 619–1265 – cover nearly six-hundred fifty pages of the fifteen-hundred pages of material, i.e. more than forty-two percent of the entire book! Nothing is more critical for Wright than these three worldview structures and how they are redefined by the Messiah and the Spirit.[5] Monotheism and election, for Wright, necessarily lead to the third, eschatology. The first two are the twin, chief pillars of Judaism, while the third is seen by Wright as a necessary result of the first two.
Methodology
Wright begins the first chapter of his book with an exegesis of Philemon, but the real focus of the chapter is on his worldview model. Wright’s new worldview model is still informed by earlier versions presented in both The New Testament and the People of God and Jesus and the Victory of God (29 n.83).[6] The model is composed of four inter-related elements: (1) stories, (2) symbols, (3) praxi, and (4) questions (28). Of these four, the review will treat three, omitting questions (discussed in chapter eight, which is also omitted). In his earlier groundbreaking book within the series, Wright explains that “worldviews provide the stories through which human beings view reality,” and that praxes are a person’s actions, a “way-of-being-in-the-world.”[7]
Wright acknowledges that the first three are informative of the fourth, questions, so nothing will be missed foundationally by excluding this category. The second and third components, respectively symbols and praxis, are later merged together by Wright into one, symbolic-praxis (this is due to the fact that “when it comes to ‘symbols’, the earliest Christians have left us virtually nothing,” 352). In essence, then, this review will only treat stories and symbolic-praxis in the discussion of Wright’s worldview treatment of Paul.
When this worldview model is applied to Philemon in the beginning of the book, we learn that Paul’s governing symbolic-praxis is “the unity of the Messiah’s people,” (30). Wright explains the historical importance of this symbolic-praxis: “This is new. There is no sign he is appealing to, or making use of, the symbols and praxis of his native Jewish world,” (30). This novum of unity – specifically a unity within the Jewish Messiah – later becomes the most important of the three worldview structures in Wright’s treatment – election. There will be significantly more pages devoted to the chapter on election than the other two structures in both Wright’s book and the review of it below.
Wright aims for a coherent understanding of Paul. He writes of his concern for coherence mostly towards the end of the first half of the work, Part II – though much of his critical concern to account for all of Pauline theology holistically is evidenced on nearly every page. Again, chapter ten on election is the pivotal chapter:
The principal argument in favour of this entire hypothesis [i.e., the heart of Wright’s Pauline theology, ch. 10] is the way in which the elements of Pauline soteriology… come together in a fresh, and remarkably coherent, way when viewed from this angle. (830; see also 835)
Chapter Nine: “The One God of Israel,
Freshly Revealed”
Wright rapidly works through much of recent scholarly focus on the origins of (high) christology, noting important contributions from each of the following scholars, though finding their work in some ways incomplete for his purposes (644–56): (1) Martin Hengel argued that high-christology was “both early and Jewish,” which struck gold (647); (2) Larry Hurtado’s emphasis on the pre-Christian Jewish world of quasi-divine figures such as “patriarchs (Enoch, Abraham, Moses), angels, possibly even a Messiah, and abstract entities such as ‘wisdom’” (650). This informs the first point of Hurtado, followed by his second: the “early Christian experience of the presence of the risen and exalted Jesus in worship and prayer formed the context within which those pre-Christian Jewish ideas could come together and be formed into a new pattern” (650). (3) Chris Tilling, who seems to move more in the direction Wright is headed, points out “in considerable detail that Paul’s descriptions of the relationship between the early Christians and Jesus matches the scriptural descriptions of the relationship between Israel and the One God (651). This God-relation pattern was then used by Paul to express the Christ-relation (651).[8] Finally, (4) Richard Bauckham “offers a christology of ‘divine identity’ in which Jesus is included ‘in the unique identity of this one God’” (651).[9] Wright then develops the identification models of both Tilling and Bauckham, although primarily Bauckham as the footnotes throughout the chapter reveal, and this development is within Wright’s own Yahweh’s return to Zion motif (653-706 passim).
1 Corinthians 8:6 and the Christian Shema
Concerning 1 Cor 8:6 – “There is one God, the father, from whom are all things, and we to him; and one lord, Jesus the Messiah, through whom are all things, and we through him”[10] – Wright states: “the real shock of the passage is of course simply the expansion of the Shema [Ἄκουε, Ισραηλ, κύριος ὁ θεὸς ἡμῶν κύριος εἷς ἐστιν; LXX] to include Jesus within it” (665). Wright explains the identification as follows:
The force of the revision is obvious. What Paul has done… is to separate out theos and kyrios, ‘God’ and ‘lord’, in the original prayer, adding brief explanations: ‘God’ is glossed with ‘the father’, with the further phrase about God as source and goal of everything, ourselves included, and ‘lord’ is glossed with ‘Jesus Messiah’, with the further phrase about Jesus as the means of everything, the one through whom all was made, ourselves included. ‘One God (the father), One lord (Jesus Messiah).’ (666)
Philippians 2 and Isaiah 45
In his exegesis of Phil 2:6–11 Wright joins together Bauckham’s notion of unique divine identity with his own motif of Yahweh’s return to Zion (680–90). Seeing in Phil 2:10–11a’s ἵνα ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι Ἰησοῦ πᾶν γόνυ κάμψῃ ἐπουρανίων καὶ ἐπιγείων καὶ καταχθονίων καὶ πᾶσα γλῶσσα ἐξομολογήσηται ὅτι κύριος Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς (“That now at the name of Jesus every knee within heaven shall bow – on earth, too, and under the earth; and every tongue shall confess that Jesus, Messiah, is lord”)[11] a now well recognized allusion to the LXX of Isa 45:23b’s ἐμοὶ κάμψει πᾶν γόνυ καὶ ἐξομολογήσεται πᾶσα γλῶσσα τῷ θεῷ (“to me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear”). Wright demonstrates the portrait of the Messiah Jesus as explained in terms of the Isaianic suffering servant who is subsequently exalted (683). Where Wright moves beyond Bauckham and his monotheism of unique divine identity is in specifically “drawing out the christological focus of the ancient Isaianic hope for YHWH’s return” (683). The Messiah Jesus is identified as Yahweh on account of the following: (1) In the Isaiah passage every tongue confesses and every knee bows before Yahweh. (2) Jesus is observed within Philippians 2 to be both the Isaianic servant, and he assumes the divine prerogatives of Yahweh’s lordship, specifically in the manner addressed in Isa 45:23b. (3) Just as in the original context of Isaiah there is hope for Yahweh’s regal return to Zion. Wright’s emphasis is on the fulfillment found in Jesus’ own proclamation of the kingdom of God and his own entry into Jerusalem. “My argument so far is that the Jewish-style monotheism of ‘divine identity’ which Paul so emphatically reaffirmed had also emphatically been redrawn around Jesus” (689; see also 692).
Meeks’ The First Urban Christians,
Chapter Six, “Patterns of Belief
and Patterns of Life”
Wright shows his appreciation for Wayne Meeks’ book, The First Urban Christians,[12] specifically chapter six detailing “the way in which the little churches [of Paul] were an expression of monotheism itself” in his previous Pauline work Paul: In Fresh Perspective.[13] And as the footnotes suggest in the subject book, his work continues to be informed by Meeks. At the outset of chapter nine Wright states that “we are here approaching the very centre of the present book, the fulcrum around which the argument turns. Monotheism and its reframing is the arrow that pierces the mid-point of the target” (625; also citing the work of Meeks). So what does Meeks say in chapter six of his work? And how does Wright develop Meeks in his extensive project?
Meeks’ chapter emphasizes the social context of Pauline theology. Chief for Paul and his churches is monotheism understood in the Jewish sense. With regard to Jewish monotheism Meeks is able to say that “Christians took over the Jewish position completely.”[14] In the Jewish understanding monotheism sharply divided the ancient Mediterranean world between those who serve “the ‘living, true God’ and the idol worshipers (1 Thess. 1:9).”[15] When gentiles entered the churches of Paul, unity was emphasized because God was one.[16]
Under Meeks’ “Correlations” subheading he emphasizes the social dimensions that correlate with the religious/theological symbolism of Christian practice. Three observations by Meeks are identified here: (1) the symbol of the one true God finds its “social correlate” in the Pauline assemblies themselves, which are frequently encouraged by Paul to remain in unity (as Meeks substantiates). (2) The symbol of this one God’s personal and active nature revealed in his Spirit correlates with the intimacy of the communities’ fellowship. Third and lastly, (3) the symbol of eschatology finds its social correlate within the converted lives within Paul’s assemblies (i.e., converted from paganism or Jewish exclusivism), as well as the churches’ expectation of God’s imminent return. Again: monotheism, election, eschatology.
Wright’s Development of Meeks
Wright primarily shares and builds upon two basic principles of Meeks: (1) A rethinking of traditional Judaism insofar as Paul and early Christians were concerned with her now come but crucified Messiah; and (2) Meeks’ understanding of the Pauline churches as meaningful expressions of the one, true God.
The churches of Paul were also novel in their christological confession of the one true God. For example, Meeks writes: “The addition of ‘one Lord’ (Christ) and of ‘God’s Son’ to the confessional statements might be shocking to Jewish sensibilities, but the social implications of Jewish monotheism remain intact.”[17] This speaks to Paul’s reworking of the Jewish Shema seen in Wright’s exegesis above of 1 Cor 8:6, though not directly. Central to the revised monotheism of Paul and his followers was the scandal of the crucified Messiah: “For Paul and his circle, however, the unexpected, almost unthinkable claim that the Messiah had died a death cursed by the Law entailed a sharp break in terms of the way in which the people of God would henceforth be constituted and bounded.”[18] It is for Meeks, as it is also for Wright, that the crucified Messiah forms the basis of a “structural shift of the whole pattern of beliefs, so that Pauline theology, in the narrow sense, cannot be separated from christology.”[19] This is the sine qua non of Paul and the Faithfulness of God and is observed in the work of a sociologist.
Wright also identifies the Pauline communities as expressions of monotheism in both Paul and the Faithfulness of God (and his earlier book, Paul: In Fresh Perspective).[20] He states:
They had to be the one-God people, but to be that people in a quite new way. A rethought theology had to arise to do the worldview-work previously done by the social and cultural boundary-markers. That is the challenge which drove Paul to some of his most breathtaking theological reformulations, which until recently have passed with little exegetical comment due to the fact that scholars were simply not asking the questions in the way that, I am suggesting, it needs to be asked. (626)
As already discussed above, the cross especially (but together with the Spirit) form the new lenses through which Paul accomplishes his theological reformulations.
Chapter Ten: “The People of God,
Freshly Reworked”[21]
This chapter is the heart of the book. Here Wright draws together his entire narrative of Abraham, promise, Israel, covenant, the Messiah, justification by faith, the place of Torah, God’s covenant faithfulness, etc. – all within a lengthy but impressively coherent chapter; and it is by far the lengthiest in the book. Attention here will be devoted specifically to Wright’s exegesis of selected chapters of Romans and Galatians. Following this will be a section on justification by faith which receives significant treatment in the chapter.
To begin with, Wright explains that “the reason the creator God called Abraham in the first place was to undo the sin of Adam and its effects” (784; but see all of see 783–815; esp. references on 794 for substantiation). The purpose of Israel was one of vocation, to deal with the problem perpetuated by Adam – sin and evil set free within the created world. Covenant is the vehicle through which Israel is to perform her vocation, according to Wright. As the covenanted people of God, Israel does not exist for herself, or for her own self-boasting, but for her vocation to the world – to spread God’s sovereignty. She is a servant of God and “through the work of the servant, one may get things done” (804). The central point of election for Wright, which is a sort of single-word expression for the foregoing narrative of Israel, is that Paul now understands it as being re-centered on Israel’s Messiah, Jesus (815–25). The Messiah Jesus becomes, in effect, “Israel in person” (828), and his Messiahship should be understood incorporatively (825).
Romans 2–4
Wright begins his exegetical case with Rom 2:19 (836f.) where Paul writes πέποιθάς τε σεαυτὸν ὁδηγὸν εἶναι τυφλῶν, φῶς τῶν ἐν σκότει (“supposing you believe yourself to be a guide to the blind, a light to people in darkness…”).[22] In the fresh perspective of Wright, he seeks to illustrate the instrumentalizing of Israel, a fact discernible in the passage’s echoes of Isa 42:6–7 where Israel is observed to be an instrument in in the unfolding eschatological destiny of the nations.[23]
There is no quarrel with Wright’s fresh insights of certain verses of Romans 2 other than that he seeks to establish his overall portrait of the passage, specifically 2:17–24, as fundamentally informative for the rest of Romans, as opposed to more traditional exegesis which views the chapter as a stage in the development of Paul’s argument concerning God’s wrath against ungodliness, and how all the world is in sin, resulting in Rom 3:10’s conclusive assertion that οὐκ ἔστιν δίκαιος οὐδὲ εἷς. But the traditional evangelical reading Wright criticizes: “Paul is usually thought to be attempting to demonstrate that Israel, like the gentiles, is a nation of sinners under judgment; this charge, and the arguments used, still seem puzzling.”[24]
Regarding Rom 3:3 – τί γάρ; εἰ ἠπίστησάν τινες, μὴ ἡ ἀπιστία αὐτῶν τὴν πίστιν τοῦ θεοῦ καταργήσει – this Wright exegetes as, “What follows from that? If some were unfaithful [to their commission], does their unfaithfulness nullify God’s faithfulness?”[25] “As we shall see, the problem which Paul faces is not simply universal sin, but the failure of Israel to be ‘faithful’ to the divine vocation (3.2–3)” (830).[26] In his earlier book on Paul, Wright states, “Israel has been unfaithful to the commission God had given it.”[27] Wright elaborates: “I propose, rather, that in both passages [Rom. 2:17–24 and 3:1–9] he is addressing a subtly but significantly different point: that Israel, rightly aware of the vocation to be the light of the world, has failed in that vocation.”[28]
Also buttressing his case of Israel as God’s instrument purposed for a God designed vocation is Wright’s fresh analysis of an often neglected verse (Rom 3:2): πρῶτον μὲν [γὰρ] ὅτι ἐπιστεύθησαν τὰ λόγια τοῦ θεοῦ – “the Jews were entrusted with God’s oracles.”[29] While the larger exegetical discussion of this passage encompasses the pistis Christou debate, it is intended here simply to point out that Wright’s understanding of “entrust” involves vocation, one that Israel was unfaithful in keeping. “Israel, Paul is saying, has been entrusted with a commission, namely, to convey ta logia theou to the rest of the world.”[30] The oracles God has given her are not for her own sake, but part of her vocation in God’s greater plan to bring blessing to the nations, a light to those in darkness. “The word ‘entrusted’ is always used by Paul in the same sense that it bears in secular Greek: to entrust someone with something is to give them something which they must take care of and pass on to the appropriate person” (837). Wright continues with another example, this time using Paul’s own entrustment by God with the gospel, which was not for Paul’s own sake but that through Paul the gospel of God might come to the gentiles (837). Where Israel was unfaithful with her vocation, the Messiah proves faithful (e.g., Rom 3:21). Wright continues:
… I think Paul’s point is that the pistis of Jesus is precisely his faithfulness to God’s Israel-shaped purpose; it is the faithfulness that, in 3.3, Israel had failed to offer – the Israel-faithfulness, in other words, which was required for God’s original plan to go forward at last. ‘God’s covenant justice has been displayed quite apart from the law; it comes into operation through the faithfulness of Jesus the Messiah, for the benefit of all who have faith.’[31]
This reading by Wright noticeably avoids the criticized notion that Paul was arguing against Jewish works righteousness, since the boast of the Jew is not concerned with self-seeking merit, but is seen rather as a boast concerning their place as God’s chosen instrument in the worldwide plan of salvation. This will be considered below in the evaluation. Wright’s fresh reading also illumines Romans 9–11, which is also concerned to account for why “Israel is cast away so that salvation can come to the gentiles.”[32]
In chapter ten of Wright’s book we come close to the meaning of the latter part of the book’s title “…and the Faithfulness of God.” If Israel has proved unfaithful in her vocation, what does this mean for God’s own faithfulness? Has he been unfaithful to his covenant promises to Abraham for the world? Wright invites a negative answer: “The faithfulness of God at the end of verse 3 is then, still, the determination of the covenant God to do what he has promised, even if the people through whom the promised blessings were to be delivered seem to have let him down through their own ‘faithlessness’” (838). How does God prove faithful then? If God “is going to bless the world through Israel, he needs a faithful Israelite. In 3.21–26, Paul argues that this is exactly what has now been provided” in the Jewish Messiah, Jesus (839).
Paul sees Jesus as the one who has been established as Messiah through his resurrection, drawing Israel’s history to its strange but long awaited resolution, fulfilling the promises made to Abraham, inheriting the nations of the world, winning the battle against all the powers of evil and constituting in himself the promise-receiving people, so that all ‘in him’ might receive those promises, precisely not in themselves but insofar as, being ‘in him’, they are incorporated into the True Jew, the one in whom Israel’s vocation has been fulfilled. (830; emphases added)
This reading also explains with fresh light how Torah is established in 3:31: νόμον οὖν καταργοῦμεν διὰ τῆς πίστεως; μὴ γένοιτο· ἀλλὰ νόμον ἱστάνομεν – interpreted by Wright as “Do we then abolish the law through faith? Certainly not! Rather, we establish the law.”[33] Torah was bound up with the covenant; the vocation; the “divinely intended purpose” of rescuing creation (1034). Though in essence serving a negative purpose, it was still divine in its role of “drawing ‘sin’ onto one place, in order that it might be condemned there” (1034).[34] Wright sees Torah, in a manner, as bound up in the Messiah’s death.
Romans chapter four is explained as a commentary on the Abrahamic covenant, and less as an explanation, for example, of justification by faith such as in traditional exegesis (see esp. 998). In Rom 4:5, Paul, citing Gen 15:2, clearly “understands ‘reward’ in terms of the inheritance, both human and geographical, which he has been expecting on the basis of God’s earlier promises.”[35] Paul has “widened” the “promise of the land to a promise about the whole world” in Rom 4:13: Οὐ γὰρ διὰ νόμου ἡ ἐπαγγελία τῷ Ἀβραὰμ ἢ τῷ σπέρματι αὐτοῦ, τὸ κληρονόμον αὐτὸν εἶναι κόσμου, ἀλλὰ διὰ δικαιοσύνης πίστεως – “The promise, you see, didn’t come to Abraham or to his family through the law – the promise, that is, that he would inherit the world. It came through the covenant justice of faith.”[36] Wright also finds it meaningful that Paul takes Gen 17:11’s reference to the “sign of the covenant,” σημείῳ διαθήκης (LXX), in Rom 4:11, as σφραγῖδα τῆς δικαιοσύνης τῆς πίστεως, a “seal of the status of covenant membership, on the basis of faith.”[37] That righteousness is in essence substituted by Paul for covenant in his citation of Genesis certainly lends some credibility to Wright’s case that righteousness language in Paul, particularly Romans, is about God’s covenant faithfulness.
Galatians 2–3[38]
Just as 1 Cor 8:6 forms a central passage for Paul’s redefinition of Jewish monotheism, Gal 2:19–20 does the same for election, although there are others Wright discusses (852f.).[39] In Galatians chapter two, Peter’s actions in Antioch are understood by Paul to be an abandonment of justification by faith. The movement by Peter back to works of Torah, or the Jewish “boundary markers,” threatens the unity of the body; the men from James have influenced Peter and other Jewish Christians to separate themselves from gentile Christians during meals (854f.). Wright exegetes 2:18, “if I build up once more the things which I tore down, I demonstrate that I am a lawbreaker,” as meaning that Peter’s actions threaten “to reconstruct the wall of separation between Jewish Christians and gentile Christians” (859).[40]
In Galatians chapter three, Wright resumes his narrative exegesis, observing four primary points: (1) Torah functions as a block to the promises God made to Abraham for the world (Gal 3:10–14; 863–7). (2) The Abrahamic promise, as Paul understands it, takes precedence over Torah (3:15–18; 868–70). (3) The purpose of Torah is “essentially negative” (3:19–22; 870–73, 1034). Lastly, (4) Paul explains Torah as it now functions in light of the Messiah (3:23–29; 873–6) – the faithful Israelite who both succeeds in the vocation where Israel failed, and bears the resulting and covenantal curse for this failure (1035). Judaism was bound to treat Torah “not as a puzzling vocation but as a badge of privilege. Torah set Israel apart from the world” (1034). The point is that Torah, while divine and just (see 1033), proved not to be the problem – Judaism’s failure in her vocation did. Proving herself to be under the sin of Adam just as gentiles, boastful Judaism found herself as also part of the Creator’s problem. This results in Torah as having an essentially negative effect. Torah also allowed the Creator to draw all sin into a single place to be decisively dealt with:
Because he [the Messiah, Jesus] is Israel’s representative, he can be the appropriate substitute, can take on himself the curse of others, so they do not bear it any more. And the point, once more, is not simply that those who were ‘under the curse’ are now under it no longer. That is not what verse 14 says. The point is that the promise to Abraham, which had got stuck in the traffic jam of Torah-curse, can now resume its journey down the road towards its destination. The Messiah has dealt with the roadblock, and the promise can reach out to the nations. (865)[41]
In Gal 3:16 Wright exegetes σπέρμα as “family”: “It doesn’t say ‘his seeds’, as though referring to several families, but indicates a single family by saying ‘and to your seed’, meaning the Messiah (hos estin Christos)” (868–9; emphases added).[42] In the Messiah, God has provided Abraham the single, promised family (868). Wright accounts for this understanding of Paul through what Paul must have understood as incorporative Messiahship:
First, the vocation and destiny of ancient Israel, the people of Abraham, had been brought to its fulfillment in the Messiah, particularly in his death and resurrection. Second, those who believed the gospel, whether Jew or Greek, were likewise to be seen as incorporated into him and thus defined by him, specifically again by his death and resurrection. The full range of Paul’s ‘incorporative’ language can be thoroughly and satisfactorily explained on this hypothesis: that he regarded the people of God and the Messiah of God as so bound up together that what was true of the one was true of the other. And this becomes in turn the vital key to understanding the close and intimate link between ‘incorporation’ and ‘justification’, between ‘participatory’ and ‘forensic’ accounts of Paul’s soteriology…” (826)[43]
Wright freshly juxtaposes Gal 2:21’s εἰ γὰρ διὰ νόμου δικαιοσύνη, ἄρα Χριστὸς δωρεὰν ἀπέθανεν,” with 3:18’s “εἰ γὰρ ἐκ νόμου ἡ κληρονομία, οὐκέτι ἐξ ἐπαγγελίας· τῷ δὲ Ἀβραὰμ διʼ ἐπαγγελίας κεχάρισται ὁ θεός” (i.e., “If righteousness comes through the law, then the Messiah died for nothing,” and “If the inheritance came through the law, it would no longer be by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by promise.”).[44] Such language is informative of the extent to which Paul sees the Abrahamic promises and covenant fulfilled now in the Messiah and not Torah. “Although Torah offered life, it could not give it” (871). Therefore, the “ecclesial consequences” that follow, according to Wright, are that “all those who believe are now demarcated as the true Torah-keeping people” (1036). Faith is the new badge of covenant membership. Wright’s exegesis of Galatians is largely successful.
Justification by Faith
One of Wright’s controlling motifs throughout chapter ten’s treatment of justification by faith is the claim that Paul understood final judgment no differently than the Judaism of his period – God judges each man according to his actions. Final judgment, Wright states, “will be on the basis of the totality of the life that has been led. God will ‘repay to each according to their works’. Paul never for a moment undermines this biblical and traditional saying, widespread across the thought of ancient Israel,” (938; cf. 936–42). But it is not entirely clear how Wright can claim Romans 2 – particularly v. 13’s οὐ γὰρ οἱ ἀκροαταὶ νόμου δίκαιοι παρὰ [τῷ] θεῷ, ἀλλʼ οἱ ποιηταὶ νόμου δικαιωθήσονται (“After all, it isn’t those who hear the law who are in the right before God. It’s those who do the law who will be declared to be in the right!”)[45] – as paradigmatic for eschatological justification or judgment, when Paul writes, in the very next chapter (3:21), that Νυνὶ δὲ χωρὶς νόμου δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ πεφανέρωται (“But now, quite apart from the law… God’s covenant justice has been displayed.”).[46] When it is recognized that the judgment in Romans 2’s context is specifically a just judgment in accordance with Torah (v.12, διὰ νόμου κριθήσονται), making sense of the δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ apart from Torah in 3:21 results in considerable tension for Wright’s reading; the pivot of judgment has been altered from a Torah-based judgment, to one apart from Torah. When Paul’s larger argument concerning justification in Romans is further considered in light of 3:10 (discussed above), it seems clear that Paul’s purpose throughout the text has more to do with God’s grace in justification than on any understood Israelite vocation. Paul’s concern for demonstrating God’s grace in justification would also account for the importance of Abraham – a figure Wright is certainly correct in highlighting, covenantal emphasis and all. Romans 4, citing Gen 15:6 – καὶ ἐπίστευσεν Αβραμ τῷ θεῷ, καὶ ἐλογίσθη αὐτῷ εἰς δικαιοσύνην (LXX); “And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness – reveals Abraham as both the father of the divinely promised worldwide family composed of Jews and gentiles and the ideal biblical example of justification by faith.[47] And this both/and view, with appropriate emphasis on Paul’s understanding of justification as an act of divine grace, would function as a helpful corrective for Wright’s understanding of Romans, which is elsewhere excellent.
While it is clear that Wright’s exegesis of Romans accounts for the “redrawing of the symbolic world to include believing Jews and Gentiles on equal terms” (932), it is not clear how it accounts for divine grace, when the context of Romans 4 explicitly discusses χάριν (“gift”) with direct relationship to Paul’s use of δικ- vocabulary, and in antithesis to ἔργων (Rom 4:4–5). Wright has elsewhere countered that: “The point is that the word ‘justification’ does not itself denote the process whereby, or the event in which, a person is brought by grace from unbelief, idolatry and sin into faith, true worship and renewal of life.”[48] And: “The doctrine of justification by faith was born into the world as the key doctrine underlying the unity of God’s renewed people.”[49] Wright’s covenantal emphasis is a welcome fresh reading, but a both/and would make better sense, especially in Romans 4.
Wright’s reading of justification is heavily influenced by “covenantal eschatology,” such that it involves the “renewal of all things, the establishment of the new heavens and the new earth” (936). Wright frequently states that justification is God’s “single-plan-through-Israel-for-the-world” in his previous book Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision.[50] This understanding is also revealed at the outset of his lengthy treatment of justification when he explains that the δικ- vocabulary in Paul has its “home within the redefinition of election” (925; though it must be recalled what Wright means by “election,” which includes Israel’s calling, the rectifying of all creation, and putting humanity to rights). “Justification, for Paul, is a subset of election, that is, it belongs as part of his doctrine of the people of God.”[51] The incorporative messiahship discussed previously would account for this reading.
The judicial verdict of this eschatological, final judgment of God can be known in advance. Justification has a proleptic, or “in the present time” forensic aspect (944). In the context of table fellowship between Jewish and gentile Christians in Galatians, Wright explains “… the main theme is the fact that God has one family, not two, and that this family consists of all those who believe in the gospel… Faith, not the possession and/or practice of Torah, is the badge which marks out this family, the family which is now defined as the people of the Messiah.”[52] Clearly for Paul, justification exists now.
The complexity of justification in Paul is not lost on Wright: “Part of the reason why Romans 1.18–4.25, and especially 3.21–31, are as dense and complex as they are is because both of these things, covenant and law court, are being discussed together” (935). And bringing it all together in the finely-tuned passage 3:21–31, Wright explains that the Messiah Jesus, who successfully took upon himself the vocation of Israel, has become the true Israel who brings the covenant to fulfillment:
The critical move here is to affirm, with Paul in Romans 3.22 that the Messiah has been ‘faithful’ to that covenant plan, the plan through which Abraham’s seed would bless the world… These events concerning Jesus [his death by crucifixion and subsequent resurrection], and the announcement of them as ‘good news’, therefore provide a sudden, bright glimpse of the fact that this God is ‘in the right’ in relation both to the covenant with Israel and to the problem of human sin and cosmic corruption. This vision is what Paul refers to in Romans 1.17 and 3.21 as the unveiling of the divine righteousness. (942–3)
Chapter 11: “God’s Future of the World,
Freshly Imagined”
Galatians 4–6
Eschatology defines election, Wright states. Since new creation (6:15) “determines the identity of the single family, the ‘seed’ promised to Abraham,” then the “Israel of God” spoken of by Paul at the end of Galatians (6:16) can be seen as referring to this single family – if the argument of Galatians, from 1:1 throughout, has been properly appreciated (1143). As Wright has shown already in his exegetical treatment of Galatians and in justification by faith, election has now re-centered on the Messiah; the “long-awaited ‘age to come’ has arrived with the Messiah” (1138). The Messiah’s people, in Galatians chapter four are the children of the barren woman, Sarah; “they are ‘children of promise’, because they have believed God’s promises as Abraham did, as in 3.6–9” (1138). What Paul means here in chapter four through associating the Judaizers (1135) – “the present Jerusalem” (4:25) – with the slave children of Hagar, is also picked up in chapter five’s antithesis between free (5:1) and slave (5:2–4). Wright explains that “those, who, relying on the divine promise, are thus embracing freedom, rather than those who, relying on the ‘flesh’, are thus embracing slavery” (1134). This single body of those trusting in Christ is central to Paul’s symbolic world and to his eschatology (1138). Wright considers it fundamentally illogical, and rightly so, that Paul would, after the lengths of his labor throughout Galatians, to lay aside his argument concerning the true people of God, and speak of the “Israel of God” in the exclusionary sense that he has been attempting to correct all along (see commentators noted in 1144 n.408).
Romans 9–11
At the outset of his argument Wright states, briefly explaining the context of Romans 9, that it “ought to be completely uncontroversial to point out that this is Israel’s story” (1159). Wright sees the passage as belonging in a tradition of Israelite history retellings occurring in the second-temple period, including, outside the New Testament, Josephus, Jubilees and Pseudo-Philo, and within it, Acts 7 and Hebrews 11 (1158). Regarding the structure he identifies a chiastic pattern ranging from 9:1–11:36, with 10:5–13 in the center, and 10:9 to be exact (1163). The Christology of the center is not missed on Wright either, who sees it as instructive for the whole passage (1163).
In the subsequent critical exegetical discussion of 11:25–32, the πώρωσις ἀπὸ μέρους τῷ Ἰσραὴλ γέγονεν in v. 25 is not the content of a new mystery, but, following the lead of γὰρ, a further explanation or restatement of what Paul has already said (cf. 11:7: Τί οὖν; ὃ ἐπιζητεῖ Ἰσραήλ, τοῦτο οὐκ ἐπέτυχεν, ἡ δὲ ἐκλογὴ ἐπέτυχεν· οἱ δὲ λοιποὶ ἐπωρώθησαν; “What then? Did Israel not obtain what it was looking for? Well, the chosen ones obtained it – but the rest were hardened”).[53] In customary fashion, Paul provides a summary explanation for what he has just argued. This summary (vv. 25–32) also brings 9:14–23 to closure. This hardening is not permanent but serves God’s soteriological purposes; the gentiles function to make jealous the hardened and create in them a desire for “the Messiah and to the salvation held out in 10.1–13” (1236). The hardening is also seen by Wright as partitive (i.e., “a hardening has come upon a part of Israel,” a reading which, although not the only way of understanding the Greek, would agree with v. 7), as opposed to temporal, “for a time” (1239).
This forms the foundation for understanding v. 26’s “all Israel shall be saved.”[54] The connective grammar from v. 25 to 26 is καὶ οὕτως, although commonly taken temporally in this verse, i.e., “then, after that, subsequently,” is better understood, as Wright has it, as concluding v. 25, e.g., “that is how” (1240).[55] The Greek favors Wright’s manner view against the temporal reading. Still deep in the wood, Wright then covers πᾶς Ἰσραὴλ “all Israel.” He does not see this Israel as the same as ethnic Israel identified in v. 25, but another Pauline redefinition such as witnessed in Gal 6:16 (1243f.). Paul has already pointed to this redefinition in 9:6: οὐ γὰρ πάντες οἱ ἐξ Ἰσραὴλ οὗτοι Ἰσραήλ (“Not all who are from Israel, you see, are in fact Israel”).[56] And, as in Wright’s exegesis of Galatians, this reading has the added value of making Paul a consistent thinker and would seem to be the logical ends of justification by faith.
This is the hope of Paul, his eschatology. That in this critical transition within the heart of Wright’s chiasm of Rom 9–11, the center of the passage, is “Paul’s central theological theme” of a deeply christological grounding of soteriology (1163) now held out to Jew and gentile alike. “Israel according to the flesh has thus found its history and eschatology shaped according to the messianic pattern, the christological pattern” (1253). Wright neglects unrealized aspects of the already/not-yet paradigm.
Critical Evaluation
Justification by Grace through Faith
Justification by faith is important since it informs the means by which the family of Abraham is established. For Paul, according to Wright, justification comes not by Torah, but by faith, but specifically the faithfulness of the Messiah (840f.). While πίστις is the badge of covenant membership, and rightly so, it is specifically the membership badge which replaces Judaism’s boundary-markers such as circumcision, dietary laws and Sabbath keeping. And this new means of identifying Abraham’s family should be seen as only a step along the way towards the full realization of Abraham’s promised blessings.
Justification by faith is, again, concerned with Wright’s grand-narrative of Scripture; it begins with the Abrahamic promises and covenant, but the problem keeping it from fulfillment, as Wright acknowledges, is Israel’s vocational failure caused by sin. Israel proves to be in Adam just as all humanity is. Torah could not, in the end, bring life by Israel since the conditions of Torah could not be met by her. Instead of being a light to those in darkness, Israel suffers in the same darkness as all humanity, and finds herself equally in judgment. This fresh reading of Paul is both welcome and contentious. Welcome because it challenges thoughtful Christians to look back upon the first century and to become students of history; but contentious because in putting forward this understanding of justification by faith evangelical atonement theology is necessarily impaired. Jesus’ life and mission, death and resurrection, in Pauline theology, are rethought primarily in terms of Israel’s/the Messiah’s vocation instead of God’s grace to sinful man. To be sure, it is not either/or in Wright. Sin is part of his narrative. But sin is not why the Messiah goes to the cross. Wright is clear that the Messiah’s faithfulness in contrast to the unfaithfulness of Israel is the meaning of Rom 3:21f.
Along this same line of reasoning, it is not clear how Wright’s narrative could account for the “why” of the cross. Why is the Messiah crucified in order for God’s covenantal purposes to move forward on this reading of justification by faith? The cross is frequently declared to be the means by which the creator God brings the promises made to Abraham of righting the world towards completion – but out of what necessity? What part of Wright’s narrative requires a crucified Messiah?[57] If Christ is the faithful Messiah who keeps Torah and successfully performs the vocational duties belonging to Israel, it would seem that the central concern of Wright’s concerning the dilemma of covenantal unfaithfulness is resolved, and resolving the matter by means of crucifixion would further seem needless within this narrative. A fulfilled covenant should yield only the life promised by the covenant for Jesus instead of his shed blood. No, there seems to be more going on with Paul’s logic in Romans than Wright’s exegesis can account for.
Wright’s association of Jew and gentile together as one people of God correctly understands the result of justification – i.e., Jew and gentile on equal footing in the one people of God – and this is undoubtedly why much of his fresh perspective exegesis of Galatians is more compelling, since Galatians is predominantly concerned with answering the Judaizers ecclesiologically (Gal 4). However, Wright’s work, specifically with respect to works of Torah, is significantly weaker in its reading of Romans, precisely because Romans’ explanation of justification is much more concerned with the vertical, soteriological dimension. The Messiah Jesus, his shed blood, and God’s grace all come to a climax within an antithetical treatment with works, sin, and judgment. Where Wright views Jesus as predominantly the instrument for the realization of the Abrahamic and patriarchal promises, it would be better to see him as also the Savior from heaven Paul awaits as in Phil 3:20. Soteriology and sociology, as Wright claims (see n.47), but with the former providing the basis of the latter.
Concerning works of Torah, it must be observed as logically necessary that by restricting works to Jewish boundary markers, the antithetical component – justification – is fundamentally altered as well. If justification does not come through boundary markers but through the Messiah’s faithfulness, then the Messiah’s death is in no logical way a meaningful offering of God’s grace – since the antithesis is no longer one of works vs. grace, but boundary markers vs. the Messiah’s faithfulness. In reading Romans in this manner, Wright significantly curtails a meaningful Christian atonement theology. And if the Messiah’s faithfulness is understood as his obedience to the vocation originally given to Israel, acting in her stead, this would seem to make the Messiah’s death more a matter of practicality. At the risk of revealing either great ignorance or great hostility, I cannot identify a meaningful Christian atonement theology in Wright’s understanding of Rom 3:21f. As long as exegesis of “God’s righteousness” and “faith in Christ” are wrongly understood as “God’s covenant faithfulness” and “Jesus’ faithfulness to the Israelite covenantal vocation,” justification will be resultantly and incorrectly defined in ways other than justification’s most cherished Christian truth, i.e., God forgives sinners.
A sacrificial offering for an unjust people, both Jews and gentiles, would however make better sense of why Christ dies the cursed death of Torah and why the new people of God is justified by grace through faith. Jews and gentiles are both guilty of Torah disobedience; Jews for failing to keep Torah (not necessarily a vocation), and gentiles for violating the Torah demonstrated in their own hearts (Rom 2:14–15).
Covenant Theology?
Wright’s narrative clearly has affinity with covenant theology in several respects, and he readily admits that Paul is doing “covenant theology” – though Wright surely means this in a different sense. But the Reformed influence is most evident at the holistic level of Wright’s narrative. Wright moves from Adam’s failure to the calling of Abraham, and emphasizes the covenant with Abraham as God’s means of putting the world to rights. Israel’s place in this narrative is as the chosen people of God, the descendants of Abraham, whose vocation it is to get things back in order and ultimately to bring God’s blessings upon the nations; but she proves also to be in Adam. In this last respect, i.e. Israel’s failure to fulfill Torah, Wright’s narrative has a clear theological connection with the covenant of works. The covenant of works in Reformed theology works antithetically to the salvation and grace of God since the latter is given through faith. The Reformed covenant of grace begins in the biblical narrative with the Abrahamic covenant. Since justification/salvation does not come by Torah, but rather through faith – as Abraham’s own justification is demonstrative – the proximation of this narrative to the covenant of grace within covenant theology, which is said to also begin with Abraham, neatly aligns with covenant theology.
Additionally, just as Christ is observed as the Israel-in-person in Wright’s narrative, so Reformed scholar Michael S. Horton writes: “Jesus is the faithful Israelite who fulfilled the covenant of works so that we could through his victory inherit the promises according to a covenant of grace.”[58] The affinities of Reformed theology with Wright’s narrative are, again, often evident .
Lastly, for Wright, the people of God are at last redefined in the Messiah Jesus, and in such a way that Paul can predicate “Israel” of them. This has the obvious effect of supersessionism, as Wright is comfortable enough acknowledging, and would also align with the doctrine of election in Reformed covenant theology.
Perhaps in summary it is fitting to present the seventh chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith:
The distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto him as their Creator, yet they could never have any fruition of him, as their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary condescension on God’s part, which he hath been pleased to express by way of covenant. The first covenant made with man was a covenant of works, wherein life was promised to Adam, and in him to his posterity, upon condition of perfect and personal obedience. Man, by his Fall, having made himself incapable of life by that covenant, the Lord was pleased to make a second, commonly called the covenant of grace: wherein he freely offered unto sinner life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in him, that they may be saved, and promising to give unto all those that are ordained until life, his Holy Spirit, to make them willing and able to believe. (Emphasis added.)
Conclusion
If gauging Wright’s Pauline study in accordance with his coherentist aims, and with specific reference to the three worldview structures of monotheism, election, and eschatology, it must be agreed that Wright’s work is largely successful. His exegesis of both Galatians and Romans (the two epistles emphasized in this review) revealingly speaks to the symbolic, narrative worldview of the apostle’s mindset, and with coherent success. Wright’s holistic view has the added value of further making Paul a more consistent theologian, specifically in Galatians and Romans 9–11, making him less as an uncertain or even compartmentalized thinker with regard to the many topics he addresses. And where Wright’s model is largely successful is not at all surprising since, in Wright’s New Perspective indebted fresh readings of 30 Paul emphasis is usually on the sociological dimension, or an emphasis on Jew and gentile together as God’s people in the Messiah.
The three structures are, again, seen through the light of the crucified Messiah, Jesus. Wright’s incorporative Christology, a characteristic of his work that has been retained since his doctoral thesis, continues to prove a necessary ingredient upon which the wheel of the entire worldview turns. God is freshly revealed in the crucified Messiah (1 Cor 8:6; Phil 2); the people of God are freshly revealed as incorporated in the crucified Messiah (Gal 2–4; Rom 2–4); and the hope and future for God’s people and the creation is freshly revealed by the crucified Messiah (Gal 4–6; Rom 9–11). So, yes, Wright has succeeded, and masterfully, brilliantly so. But his success is not absolute, and despite his emphasis on the Messiah as crucified, in the critical area of justification by grace through faith examined above, his Pauline theology seems to suffer where it matters most.
Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009.
Meeks, Wayne A. The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul. 2nd edition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.
Tilling, Chris. Paul’s Divine Christology. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 323. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012.
Wright, N. T. Jesus and the Victory of God. Volume 2 of Christian Origins and the Question of God. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1996.
________. “Messiahship in Galatians?” Galatians and Christian Theology. Edited by M. W. Elliott, S. J. Hafemann, and N. T. Wright. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, forthcoming. Pre-printed in Wright, Pauline Perspectives: Essay on -Paul, 1978–2013, 510–46.
________. Paul: In Fresh Perspective. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2005.
________. Paul and the Faithfulness of God. Volume 4 of Christian Origins and the Question of God. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2013.
________. “Paul and the Patriarch: The Role(s) of Abraham in Galatians and Romans.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 35, no. 3 (2013): 207–41; reprinted and lengthened in Wright, Pauline Perspectives: Essay on -Paul, 1978–2013, 554–92
________. Paul for Everyone [Part of The New Testament for Everyone series] Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2004.
________. “Romans 2.17–3.9: A Hidden Clue to the Meaning of Romans?” Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters 1, no. 2 (2012): 1–25; reprinted in Wright, Pauline Perspectives: Essay on -Paul, 1978-2013, 489–509.
________. “Romans and the Theology of Paul.” In Romans. Volume 3 of Pauline Theology. Edited by David M. Hay and E. Elizabeth Johnson. Society of Biblical Literature 21. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1995; reprinted in Wright, Pauline Perspectives: Essays on Paul, 1978–2013, 93–125.
________. The New Testament and the People of God. Volume 1 of Christian Origins and Question of God. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992.
[1]N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, vol. 4 of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2013). All page references to the subject book will be made parenthetically in the body of the paper. (A few content-footnotes will also reference the book, but this is unavoidable practically.) Further, emphasis in cited material will only be noted if it has been added, not otherwise.
[2]Readers will find frequent references to anthropologist Clifford Geertz, and social-scientific New Testament scholars Wayne A. Meeks and David G. Horrell throughout.
[3]Wright, Pauline Perspectives: Essays on Paul, 1978 – 2013 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2013); idem, Paul: In Fresh Perspective (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2005).
[4]Wright, Paul: In Fresh Perspective, 84.
[5]See the graphic illustration on p. 615 for a visually informative understanding. Note: Wright does not capitalize Spirit in Paul and the Faithfulness of God.
[6]Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, vol. 1 of Christian Origins and Question of God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992); idem, Jesus and the Victory of God, vol. 2 of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1996).
[7]Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, 123.
[8]Citing Tilling, Paul’s Divine Christology, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 323 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012) 256.
[9]Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009) 3.
[10]Wright, 1 Corinthians, in Paul for Everyone [part of The New Testament for Everyone series] (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2004) 97.
[11]Wright, The Prison Letters: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon, Paul for Everyone [part of The New Testament for Everyone series] (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2004) 100.
[12]Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).
[13]Wright, Paul: In Fresh Perspective, 106 (n.20 = p. 178).
[14]“The affirmation that ‘God is one’ is as basic to Pauline Christianity as it was to all Judaism (1 Thess. 1:9; Gal. 3:20; Rom. 3:30; Eph. 4:6; 1 Cor. 8:4, 6; cf. 1 Cor. 11:12; 15:28; 2 Cor. 5:18).” Meeks, The First Urban Christians, 165.
[15]Meeks, The First Urban Christians, 165.
[16]Meeks, The First Urban Christians, 166.
[17]Meeks, The First Urban Christians, 167.
[18]Meeks, The First Urban Christians, 168. See further: “For Paul himself, the central theological problem is not just to spell out the implications of monotheism, but to explain how the unified purpose of God through history could encompass the novum of the crucified Messiah.” (An obvious point of elaboration for Wright.)
[19]Meeks, The First Urban Christians, 180.
[20]Wright, Paul: In Fresh Perspective, 106.
[21]This is the central chapter of Wright’s book where the entire portrait of Pauline theology is brought together. It is the chapter on “election.” It should be noted how Wright intends election to be understood, which is “the divine choice of this people [Israel] for a particular purpose.” (775).
[22]Wright, Romans Part One: Chapters 1 – 8, in Paul for Everyone [part of The New Testament for Everyone series] (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004) 35.
[23]“The echoes of Isaiah 42 are clear in what Paul writes.” Wright, “Romans 2.17–3.9: A Hidden Clue to the Meaning of Romans?” in Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters 1, no. 2 (2012): 1–25 (p. 13); reprinted in Pauline Perspectives: Essays on Paul, 1978–2013, 499. Isa 42:6–7, in the NRSV, states: “I am the LORD, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness” (emphases added).
[24]Wright, Pauline Perspectives, 490. See further, “The point of the passage is not, then, simply that all Jews have sinned just as much as gentiles have done. I have come to regard the superimposition of this theme on top of Romans 2.17–3.9 as among the most profound, if nearly universal, misreadings of the letter.”
[25]Wright, Romans: Part One Chapters 1 – 8, 42. It should be noted that the brackets are added in Paul and the Faithfulness of God (837), but are not included in the original The New Testament for Everyone version.
[26]“The bearers of God’s solution are themselves, declare the prophets, part of the problem; and as the Old Testament writers address this problem they find ways of declaring that YHWH will nevertheless fulfill both the original purpose through Israel and the contingent purpose for Israel.” Wright, Paul: In Fresh Perspective, 110.
[27]Wright, Paul: In Fresh Perspective, 119. “God will keep to his plan, to save the world through Israel, even though the chosen people are now bound up in the problem instead of being the bringers of the solution.”
[28]Wright, Pauline Perspectives, 490 (emphasis added).
[29]Wright, Romans: Part One Chapters 1 – 8, 42.
[30]Wright, Pauline Perspectives, 491.
[31]Wright, Pauline Perspectives, 503. (Wright’s does not identify a cause or source for his use of inverted commas.) See also p. 504, “My point then remains that what I have seen as the instrumentalizing of Israel now emerges as the instrumentalizing of Jesus himself: his death is the supreme faithfulness-to-God (which Israel should have offered but did not), through which God’s saving plan for the world is now put into effect.”
[32]Wright, Pauline Perspectives, 506. Wright collects four references from Romans 11: (1) By their trespass, salvation has come to the nations… (11.11); (2) Their trespass means riches for the world… (11.12); (3) Their casting away, you see, means reconciliation for the world… (11:15); (4) You… have now received mercy through their disobedience… (11:30). “This is the ultimate secret of God’s plan, the ‘mystery’ which has been unveiled in the gospel (11:25).”
[33]Wright, Romans: Part One Chapters 1 – 8, 60.
[34]It is here, where, in his “Romans and the Theology of Paul,” that Wright begins to emphasize Rom 10:4 – τέλος γὰρ νόμου Χριστὸς: There can be “no covenant future for those Israelites who refuse to abandon their ‘own’, that is, their ethnic, status of covenant membership (10:3). Christ is the end of that road, the final goal of the covenant purpose which always intended to deal with sin and its effects (10:4)…”; originally published in Romans, vol. 3 of Pauline Theology, eds. David M. Hay and E. Elizabeth Johnson, Society of Biblical Literature 21 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1995) 57–8; reprinted in Pauline Perspectives: Essays on Paul, 1978 – 2013, 117. Wright’s nine alphabetical-bulleted points are how he understands “Paul’s train of thought” in regards to Romans chs. 9–11. See below.
[35]Wright, “Paul and the Patriarch: The Role(s) of Abraham in Galatians and Romans,” in Journal for the Study of the New Testament 35, no. 3 (2013): 210; reprinted and lengthened in Pauline Perspectives, 554–92 (citing 558). See further, p. 562: “My proposal, then, is that when Paul spoke of Abraham’s misthos in Romans 4.4, he intended to refer to this promise and to his worldwide family, starting with the life-out-of-death Isaac and moving on to the creation-out-of-nothing ‘many nations’.” Cf. Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, ed. and trans. Frederick W. Danker, William F. Arndt, and F. Wilber Gingrich [BDAG], 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), s.v. “μισθός.”
[36]Wright, Pauline Perspectives, 559–60; idem, Romans: Part One Chapter 1 – 8, 72. On the universalizing of the land promise by Paul in Rom 4:13 see Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, 849–50.
[37]Wright, Romans: Part One Chapter 1 – 8, 68; idem, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, 848, states it as “seal of the righteousness of faith.”
[38]Wright does include Gal 4:1–11 in this section but it is not clear how it contributes to his argument, so it will not be treated.
[39]See also Wright’s chapter on election in Paul: In Fresh Perspective, pp.108–29; esp. 113.
[40]Wright, Galatians and Thessalonians, in Paul for Everyone [part of The New Testament for Everyone series] (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2004) 24.
[41]See further, “It was, rather, a way of saying that the necessary and appropriate curse of the covenant had fallen on the Messiah as Israel’s representative. He had born in himself the result of Israel’s failure, so that the blessing promised not just to Abraham but through Abraham could now flow to the Gentiles.” (1035)
[42]Contra BDAG, s.v. “σπέρμα,” which notes Gal 3:16. But see further Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, 868 n.267; idem, “Messiahship in Galatians?” in Galatians and Christian Theology, ed. by M. W. Elliott, S. J. Hafemann, and N. T. Wright (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, forthcoming); pre-printed in Pauline Perspectives, 510–46; note esp. 526.
[43]“…the events of Jesus’ death and resurrection compelled Paul in this direction”; Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, 827. See also Wright, Paul: In Fresh Perspective, 113, citing Gal. 2:20: “The Messiah represents his people, so that what is true of him is true of them.”
[44]Wright, Galatians and Thessalonians, 24 and 35.
[45]Wright, Romans: Part One Chapters 1 – 8, 31.
[46]Wright, Romans: Part One Chapters 1 – 8, 51.
[47]Cf. Wright, Pauline Perspectives, 564–5 for further work concerning Abraham, covenant, and justification by faith. Wright seems to miss the pointedness of Paul’s conditional statement εἰ γὰρ Ἀβραὰμ ἐξ ἔργων ἐδικαιώθη (“After all, if Abraham was reckoned ‘in the right’ on the basis of works…” Romans: Part One Chapters 1 – 8, 64), which sets up much of the contrast between grace and works that follows. It is either lost or buried, by his covenantal and ecclesial emphases. See 584–5: “I hold to a version of the view made popular by James Dunn: that the ‘works’ which Paul says do not justify are the ‘works’ which, through their obedience to the distinctive marks of Israel’s Torah, mark out the Jews from their pagan neighbours,” (584). Wright’s fresh reading (following Dunn) significantly alters the textual logic in Romans to an extent that such unmistakable emphasis on the “horizontal” dimension (i.e., Jew and gentile, together, justified by faith) necessarily results in confusion of the “vertical” (i.e., God forgives sinners). It is difficult to understand how Wright can claim so boldly: “People still try to make out that the ‘New Perspective’ on Paul is a matter of sociology rather than soteriology, of the removal of minor inconveniences for Gentile converts rather than God’s victory over sin and death through Jesus the Messiah. There may be some who have taken it that way, though neither Ed Sanders himself nor Jimmy Dunn has been guilty of any such reductionism. Romans 4 shows how the whole picture hangs together,” (591). His exegesis clearly has the effect of doing just that.
[48]Wright, Paul: In Fresh Perspective, 121.
[49]Wright, Paul: In Fresh Perspective, 113,
[50]Wright, Justification; understood within his narrative formulation: 66–8; 94–9; 103–4, 105; within his exegesis of Galatians: 122–4; 122–32 passim; within “the righteousness of God,” 164–5, 179; within his exegesis of Roman 194-6, 200–209, 243–4.
[51]Wright, Paul: In Fresh Perspective, 121.
[52]Wright, Paul: In Fresh Perspective, 121. See also the material under the Galatians 2–4 subheading above for further development.
[53]Wright, Romans: Part Two Chapters 9 – 16, in Paul for Everyone [part of The New Testament for Everyone series] (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2004) 46. Wright also correctly cautions against taking “mystery” in its English meaning, which retains the quality of hiddenness. This is not so in the Greek (cf. BDAG, s.v. “μυστήριον.”) The mystery Paul speaks of, as in Ephesians 3, is always a revealed mystery, something previously hidden but now disclosed (see 1234–6). Concerning 11:25 Wright’s translation in Paul for Everyone takes the grammar temporally, so Wright seems to have progressed in his thoughts here.
[54]Wright, Romans: Part Two Chapters 9–16, 57.
[55]Wright neatly summarizes the difference: (1) In the temporal reading, “it opens up a forward perspective in the text: ‘and then, something ne will happen…’” (2) “But if we read it as an indication of manner, it looks back: ‘and that, the entire sequence of 11.11–24 summed up in 11.25…” (1241).
[56]Wright, Romans: Part Two Chapters 9–16, 5.
[57]As one example among many in chapter ten, see esp. p. 859, with added emphasis: “The basis of that new reality – to repeat – is the Messiah’s death and resurrection as the strange fulfillment of Israel’s vocation and destiny, and the believer’s participation in that death and resurrection.” Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, 859.
[58]Michael S. Horton, Introducing Covenant Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2009) 105.
Jesus and Paul and the New Testament 