Interestingly, Dunn acknowledges that prior to Christ’s arrival people were justified by faith, that from man’s side salvation is “wholly and solely of faith.”54 Yet, having said this he appears to associate God’s people with those within the old covenant. To quote Westerholm, “The law spelled out how those who were already God’s people were to live within the covenant. Its righteousness was this ‘secondary righteousness,’ to be practiced by those already in possession of ‘primary righteousness’ based on faith.”55 The problem I have with this is simply that Dunn is here associating salvation with the old covenant, making the assumption that all Israel was somehow in possession of a “righteousness based on faith.”
Again, like Sanders, Dunn has a very different understanding of Justification from that of the Protestant Reformers. In the words of Venema:
Because Paul’s doctrine has its roots in the traditional Jewish understanding of God’s ‘righteousness’ as his covenant faithfulness, he uses the term, ‘to be justified’, to refer to God’s gracious acknowledgement of his covenant people. Though Judaism also taught Justification by faith, the Christian gospel fulfils and surpasses Judaism by teaching that God now graciously acknowledged all who believe in Christ as his covenant people. The gospel announces that God in his righteousness has declared that all who believe in Christ, whether Jews or Gentiles, are acceptable to him. Justification is by ‘faith alone’ in the sense that faith in the crucified and risen Christ is now the chief badge of covenant membership.56
It is important to note that in recent years Dunn has come to see the weakness of his position and now believes that when Paul refers to “the works of the law” he means all that the law requires.57
N. T. Wright
Nicholas Thomas (Tom) Wright is undoubtedly the greatest publicist for the new perspective, and it is principally his views I want to examine before criticising them in the light of Baptist covenant theology. Wright is a New Testament scholar who has authored over fifty books. He is currently Distinguished Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at St Andrews University in Scotland. He has held a number of prestigious roles in the Church of England, and prior to his present position, he was, for seven years, Bishop of Durham. His position in the Church of England provided him with an essential vehicle for the dissemination of scholarly debates to the man in the pew, and he has, in the words of Waters, “done more than any other single individual to mediate NPP exegesis into the mainline and evangelical churches.”58 He possesses that rare gift of making complex ideas intelligible and extremely interesting. This has enabled him to bridge the gap that usually exists between the rarefied world of academia and the average churchgoer. Wright claims to be thoroughly evangelical. His credentials were clearly manifested in his work on the resurrection.59 He said in an interview, “My only agenda here is to be as close as I can possibly get to what Paul actually says. And I really don’t care too much what the different later Christian traditions say. My aim is to be faithful to Scripture here.”60 No evangelical would disagree with this. It is somewhat ironic that Wright’s position concerning two justifications and the idea of imputed righteousness are similar to the 17th century Puritan Richard Baxter (1615–91).
When Wright is discussed, people tend to converge to polar extremes, to quote Schreiner, “Some are inclined toward an uncritical adulation of his scholarship, while others to an uncritical denigration.”61 Wright has a lovely engaging writing style, and secondly, he makes one think and ask questions about one’s own position. Many have been convinced by his arguments due to the forthright way he puts his points across. I was somewhat surprised, especially in light of Wright’s refusal to believe in God’s wrath, and the imputation of righteousness, to find Tom Holland saying in reference to Wright’s many books, “These works have assured many that he is a trustworthy teacher of the church and that for the most, the early suspicions concerning his proposals concerning justification have evaporated.”62It is because of this that many readers can come away believing the case to be settled, especially if they are not grounded in Reformed theology. What Carl Trueman said about the new perspective’s understanding of Luther is relevant here:
The story is told of Bernard Shaw being taken to see the lights of Las Vegas late one night. `It must be beautiful’ he commented, `if you can’t read.’ I confess that the New Perspective approach to Luther strikes me a little that way. It too must be beautiful, but only if you don’t know the primary texts. Its portrait of the Reformer certainly appears persuasive and impressive but that is because of the confidence with which it is presented to an audience whose culture generally considers novelty a good thing and tradition to be bad. A close examination of his theology in context reveals this portraits [sic] manifest deficiencies and palpable errors.63
Wright puts his points across with a marked degree of rhetorical flourish that encourages the unwary and unsuspecting reader to accept what he says. Again, many find themselves agreeing with Wright because they have been swayed by his academic credentials. They assume that he must, because of these, have researched all there is to research, and that such a man’s approach is candor personified. Such a person, however, does not exist, not only in the field of theology but in any discipline. We also need to bear in mind that there is nothing new under the sun. So-called new theologies are usually, on closer examination, reworked versions of what has gone before. The Christian needs to realize that the truth of God’s word is revealed not to the clever or the wise but to the foolish and that God uses the foolish to confound the wisdom of the wise (1 Cor 1:18–24).
Evangelicals then listen to what Wright has to say, and it is this that makes his thoughts on Paul dangerous. I say dangerous because error is mixed in with much that is right (excuse the pun). Surprisingly, as well as Tom Holland, Wright’s work has been endorsed by a number of evangelicals, for example, Peter Enns, a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, in positively reviewing a two-volume work of Wright’s sermons could write, “I recommend these volumes without reservation to all who wish to know better the biblical Christ and bring the challenge of this Christ to those around them.”