Justification According to NT Wright Part One
Background
Posted
Friday, February 15, 2008
by
Charlie Trimm
Categories:
Theology
N. T. Wright is a very important figure in the debate about justification going on today. While N. T. Wright may not be the founder of the New Perspective on Paul, he seems to be the one who has brought it to the church. I have many friends who have never heard of E. P. Sanders or James Dunn but who love N. T. Wright. He is one of those unique individuals who seem to be equally at home in academia as in the church. His series Christian Origins and the Question of God demonstrates his academic ability and the influence his work has had on a wide variety of scholars. But he also actually lives in the real world, as he is not only the active bishop of Durham but also has written a sizeable number of popular level works.1 This ability to write for a popular audience in clear terms has helped New Perspective on Paul views to spread to a much wider audience than they would have otherwise.2
Having said this, Wright dislikes being put into the broad “NPP” category and takes many opportunities to show how he differs from E. P. Sanders and James Dunn.3 He says he came to his view on his own before E. P. Sanders published his watershed work Paul and Palestinian Judaism in 1977.4 Wright began his justification journey because he was confused as to how to reconcile the anti-law view of Galatians with the pro-law view of Romans. One night he read Romans 10:3 in a new light, seeing the righteousness of God not as a moral issue but as an “ethnic status based on the performance of Torah,"5 and everything came together for him. He read the entirety of Galatians that night and his new outlook on righteousness helped him to understand it in a way that made sense to him.
1. Douglas Wilson comments about Wright that “one of the gentleman's strengths appears to be that he can write faster than I can read” (“N. T. Wright and All That,” Anvil 13.3, n. p. [cited February 8, 2008], Online: www.credenda.org/issues/13-3anvil.php).
4. E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977).
6. Wright, “New Perspectives on Paul,” 245.
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