If any should consider the NPP to be more of an annoyance, what might be called: a storm in a teacup” than a serious threat, they should bear in mind the words of Kim Seyoon:
Since the Reformation, I think no school of thought, not even the Bultmanian school, has exerted greater influence upon Pauline scholarship than the school of the New Perspective. With its radical reinterpretation of Paul’s gospel, especially the doctrine of justification, on the basis of Ed P. Sanders’s definition of Second Temple Judaism as covenantal nomism, the New Perspective in many respects overturning the Reformation interpretation of Paul’s gospel. The potential significance of the school for the whole Christian faith can hardly be exaggerated.66
The very fact that one can read Wright’s works, e.g., What Jesus Really Said, and be no wiser at the end of the book; that one can expend so many words and still leave many readers confused should be a sign that something is askew. While I would not go as far as John Macarthur, his words speak for many of Wright’s readers: “I have read his writings and they are a mass of confusing ambiguity, contradiction, and obfuscation, academic sleight of hand. I cannot tell you what he believes.”67
When reading Wright one should bear in mind that heresy never enters the church under a placard declaring itself to be a deviant teaching, but usually on the back of an orthodox teaching, and even then when one is least expecting it. Wright says much that Reformed believers can wholeheartedly agree with, yet, like the Trojan Horse, error is allowed to creep in unawares, as it has done in many evangelical churches, contaminating some of Protestantism’s most cherished beliefs. This has especially been the case in some Presbyterian churches in North America. I would have to agree with Eveson that Wright’s “interpretation of the Pauline texts is arguably the strongest challenge to the traditional Protestant approach that has yet appeared.”68
The new perspective tends to employ the same terminology as Reformed Protestantism, but changes the meaning. Many get caught out by this because they only hear what they believe to be orthodoxy.
Wright is not slow in criticizing the old perspective, yet he does not interact with any of the primary sources. For example, while he does not shy away from criticizing the Reformers, he never appears to interact with their teachings. One will find in Wright’s work very little in regard to actual quotes from the Reformers’ many works. One can only draw the same conclusion as Fesko, namely, that when Wright “does allude to its teachings he usually does so with superficial caricature. Because Wright does not examine primary sources and their historical setting, his claims of distortion lack cogency; they are suspended in mid-air apart from any factual foundation.”69This may well be because “For NT scholars, the history of interpretation usually starts somewhere in the early nineteenth-century with little to no attention given to the previous eighteen hundred years of church history.”70
Although he does not see eye-to-eye with Sanders and Dunn on everything, the main trajectory of Wright’s thought is similar. He tells us that Sanders’s new take on Paul “dominates the landscape [of Pauline studies], and, until a major refutation of his central thesis is produced, honesty compels one to do business with him. I do not myself believe that such a refutation can or will be offered; serious modifications are required, but I regard the basic point as established.”71
He accepts Sanders’s views when they fit with his purpose. Wright says that “one of the great ironies in Sanders’ position is that he has never really carried through his reform into a thorough rethinking of Paul’s own thought. He contents himself with a somewhat unsympathetic treatment of Pauline themes.”72 It appears that Wright sees himself as having picked up the mantle and considers himself to be a modern-day Luther, ushering in a new Protestant Reformation.
Wright and the Righteousness of God.
In traditional Protestantism, the “righteousness of God” manifests itself in two ways. First, it denotes God’s righteous anger against sin, for example, as manifested in Romans 1-3. Secondly, it represents God’s faithfulness to the new covenant in that God himself has achieved through the work of his Son a righteousness for all who believe. What Wright considers to be the main motif, namely, God’s faithfulness to his covenant promises, the old perspective takes as a given and it is found in Christ’s fulfillment of the original covenant of works.
Wright is of the opinion that the Reformed school has “systematically done violence to that text for hundreds of years, and . . . it is time for the text itself to be heard.”73 He believes it is wrong to perceive of righteousness as something that can be given or imputed to another. Rather, God’s righteousness must be seen as representing his unfailing loyalty to his covenantal promises:
God’s ‘righteousness’, especially in Isaiah 40-55, is that aspect of God’s character because of which he saved Israel, despite Israel’s perversity and lustiness. God has made promises; Israel can trust those promises. God’s righteousness is thus cognate with his trustworthiness on the one hand, and Israel’s salvation on the other. And at the heart of that picture in Isaiah there stands, of course, the strange figure of the suffering servant through whom God’s righteous purposes are finally accomplished.74
God’s righteousness is then covenant orientated; it is God demonstrating his faithfulness to his covenant. He initially chose Israel to be his people; a people who were to be a light to the nations, and, although Israel failed in its mission, God, however, has remained faithful, and he has through Jesus, the faithful Israelite, done what fallen humanity was incapable of doing.
Of course, both Reformed Baptists and paedobaptists believe in God’s faithfulness to his covenant; it is what God secured in his Son’s preceptive and penal obedience to his covenantal requirements. None would disagree with Wright in maintaining that there must be covenant faithfulness before there can be salvation. As we will see, however, Wright’s idea of covenant faithfulness and that of Reformed Baptists is markedly different. The latter’s understanding of the old perspective takes umbrage with him because, not only has he mixed up the covenants, but he has essentially limited God’s faithfulness, separating it from his faithfulness to himself as the just God, denying entirely the imputation imputation of God’s righteousness in Christ.
Wright and Justification
Justification for Wright is very different from what one finds in orthodox Protestantism. It is not concerned with how sinners find favor with God, indeed, it is not even about soteriology, but, rather with ecclesiology, with the identification of those who are in the covenantal family. Furthermore, justification has nothing to do with the imputation of righteousness, but with God finding one to be in the right because one is counted among the covenant people.
Carl Trueman, while he does not specifically mention Wright, clearly has him in his sights when referring to the new perspective’s deviant understanding of justification:
To