Concerning “the works of the law” Wright takes the same position as Sanders in regard to covenantal nomism, and adopts Dunn’s understanding that the works of the law are concerned with boundary markers, i.e., the apostle does not have in mind a legalistic keeping of the law in an attempt to gain God’s favor, but those aspects of the law that certain Jews were using to exclude Gentile membership of the covenant, namely, dietary laws, circumcision, the Sabbath and other holy days. One of the problems with this view, although not what Wright articulates, but his references to Israel certainly imply it, is that it assumes that Israel of old was a justified people and that these boundary markers marked them out as such. The Jews were all circumcised, they kept their holy days and the Sabbath, and this marked them as being in the covenant. Again, because of Wright’s mono-covenantal position, it seems that he deems the new covenant to be a continuation of the old covenant, only in the new covenant Jesus, as the faithful Israelite, has kept the covenant that Israel was supposed to keep but didn’t. It is a position that fails to appreciate the fact that these external regulations marked Israel out as being a people under, not the covenant of grace, or new covenant, but the temporal and conditional old covenant.
The law’s function was not to vouchsafe acceptance before God but to show that without perfect conformity to its moral demands there could be no acceptance. To quote Holland, “The law is not evidence of acceptance, but of separation. Israel was a prisoner of sin.”96 The apostle advised the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15:6–11, saying that the law should not be imposed on the Gentiles, Why? because it was a yoke that they were unable to bear. Clearly, he is not speaking of “boundary markers” because these could hardly be considered as being too difficult to bear, as Holland tells us, “It would have been inconceivable for a Jew not to be circumcised, so it would have been meaningless to say that the Jews were not able to bear it. The same would be true of the other boundary markers, dietary law, and Sabbath keeping.”97
The problem with Wright’s position, as with all new perspectives on Paul, is that he relies on Second Temple Judaism to understand justification and the role of the law. It may be an extreme example, but if a thousand years from now one wanted to know about the Triune God one would not go to those documents provided by today’s Jehovah’s Witness to explain it. By the same token, in wanting to understand the New Testament and the place of the law, one should not go to Second Temple Judaism. This is because there were a variety of different views being propounded by the Judaism of the time. As I said in the case of Sanders, the danger is that one might take one of these views, perhaps the wrong one, and seek to interpret the Scriptures accordingly. I’m not saying that we cannot learn much from Second Temple Judaism, but I am saying that great care must be taken when one tries to interpret the Scriptures in the light of this.
Wright, Calvin and, the Reformation.
Before moving on, I want to briefly examine what Wright has to say about Calvin and the imputation of righteousness. He clearly believes his position on justification to be something akin to that of the Reformer:
As with Calvin himself, and many subsequent Reformed theologians, Sanders saw that Paul’s doctrine of justification meant what it meant within the idea of ‘participation’, of ‘being in Christ’.98
The irony is that at this point Sanders and others, including the present writer, are standing firmly in line . . . with Calvin himself, though it is from would-be Calvinists that some of the sharpest criticism has come.99
The idea of imputed righteousness’, whether of God himself or, as some constructs, of Christ himself, is not the only way of addressing the question. The idea of ‘imputed righteousness’ was in any case, a latecomer to Reformation theology.100
So is Wright’s position “firmly in line with” the great Reformer? In regard to the believer’s “participation” and “being in Christ,” one would have to say yes. One must be fair to what Wright is saying, he maintains that because of believers’ union with Christ, they are in possession of all that Christ’s work achieved.
The sticking point concerns the meaning of justification, and one would have to say that Wright’s position is far removed from that of Calvin. This is because he fails to acknowledge imputation; something that lay at the heart of the Reformer’s understanding of justification. He tells us that contemporary Calvinists consider justification as a first-order doctrine in our salvation, when, in fact, it is of secondary importance. He states that “from reading many today who claim Calvin’s heritage but would be shocked to find ‘justification’ as a ‘secondary crater.”101 Calvin, however, does not consider justification as a secondary anything, rather, he sees being “in Christ” and justification as soul mates. Yes, one can correctly say that justification is the result of the believer being in Christ, however, one cannot be saved without being justified, and one cannot be justified without being “in Christ.” So important was justification for Calvin that he considered it “the main hinge on which religion turns.”102This is because there can be no peace with God without it. Both our union with Christ and our justification, although we separate them logically, in terms of chronology, occur simultaneously, with one being no more important than the other. To call justification a “secondary crater” is to misunderstand Calvin
I find Wright’s statement, “The idea of ‘imputed righteousness’ was, in any case, a latecomer to Reformation theology” rather bazaar, to say the least. Does he perhaps think that it is something Calvin and the other Reformers103 did not fully endorse? In all probably the concept was introduced to Luther in 1519 by his close companion Philip Melanchthon. He was a Greek scholar, and it was his study of the New Testament that convinced him that the Greek word dikaioo meant, not as the Latin maintained, to make righteous intrinsically, but to declare righteous. It was a forensic act that takes place outside the sinner and amounts to a legal declaration by God that the sinner is righteous. It is based on the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the sinner, with the sinner’s sin imputed to Christ.
A cursory look at what Calvin said about justification should dispel any notion that it was a latecomer to the Reformation:
Therefore, we explain justification simply as the acceptance with which God receives us into his favour as righteous men. And we say that it consists of the remission of sins and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.104
He is said to be justified in God’s sight who in both reckoned righteous in God’s judgment and has been accepted on account of his righteousness.105
Now he is justified who is reckoned in the condition not of a sinner, but of a righteous man.106
On the contrary, justified by faith is he who, is excluded from the righteousness of works, grasps the righteousness of Christ through faith, and clothed in it, appears in God’s sight not as a sinner but as a righteous man.107
Therefore, “to justify” means nothing else than to acquit