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.

This independent arrival at the New Perspective on Paul is important for Wright since it means that he is not simply following Sanders or Dunn, but came to his view through a study of the text.⁶ Wright desires to show that he is not being trendy or rejecting the Reformation, but is just doing what Luther or Calvin would have done, which is paying close attention to the text. He still views himself as a Reformed theologian, he is just “moving some of the labels around in obedience to Scripture”.⁷ This claim to be a consistent Reformed theologian has been challenged by several, however, who do not appreciate his moving around the labels on the theological shelf. While Wright has been skewered by the liberal side of the spectrum for his views on Jesus, he receives considerable more criticism from the conservative side for his view on Paul and justification.

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).

2. Just for some examples of this widespread appeal, Wright’s What Saint Paul Really Said is ranked #11,572 (#1 in books on the theology of Paul) on Amazon.com, while James Dunn’s Theology of Apostle Paul is at #65,357. Wright’s bestselling book is Simply Christian, which is currently at #997 (cited 2-9-2008).

3. N. T. Wright, “New Perspectives on Paul,” in Justification in Perspective: Historical Developments and Contemporary Challenges, ed. Bruce L. McCormack (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), 243-264, 246-248, “The Shape of Justification,” n. p. (cited February 11, 2008), online: http://www.thepaulpage.com/Shape.html.

            Wright does not claim to deny the content of the classic doctrine of justification by faith alone, as he affirms many aspects of it. What he does claim is that this doctrine is not what the words usually translated as “justify” are talking about in the New Testament.¹Justification according to N. T. Wright seems to me to boil down to three essential foundations, although these are not entirely separate and other aspects could also be considered foundation. These foundations are seeing justification as forensic, keeping the focus upon the covenant and viewing justification as past, present, and future.

            The first major foundation for Wright is that justification for Paul is based on a forensic background, especially in the Second Temple Jewish law court.  This law court had three parties: the judge, the plaintiff and the defendant. The righteous of the judge is quite different from the righteousness of the latter two. The judge is righteous when the case is handled in a correct and impartial manner. The plaintiff or the defendant, on the other hand, is righteous in a different sense. Their righteousness does not refer to their moral standing, but to the “status as a result of the decision of the court”.²

The second foundation for Wright’s view of justification is the covenant. The covenant allows him to put justification into the meta-narrative of the Bible, so that it is not an afterthought or an appendage, but an integral part of the Bible as a whole. The sin in Genesis 3 ruined what God had designed in Genesis 1-2, and the nations continue in directions opposed to God in the subsequent chapters of Genesis 3-11. The covenant with Abraham is not made because God has given up on the nations, but the point of the Abrahamic covenant is to save the nations: “Abraham emerges within the structure of Genesis as the answer to the plight of all humankind."¹ The story of the Old Testament is the story of the covenant and God’s faithfulness to it.² The righteousness of God in the Old Testament is to be understood, according to Wright, through the lens of covenant. Righteousness is God’s covenant faithfulness or loyalty, his dedication to stand by his promise.³ 

           Wright moves to the New Testament through the literature of the Second Temple Period. God had not been shown to complete the covenant, and so the Jews were waiting for covenant faithfulness of God to be shown to them and for the exile to be ended. As mentioned earlier, the idea of righteousness was also influenced by the Second Temple Jewish law court: God is the cosmic judge who will make all things right. There is tension between these influences: God must show covenant faithfulness to Israel and he must also be the righteous judge and punish guilty Israel.⁴ How would these conflicting roles be resolved? The conclusion of this covenant faithfulness and righteous judge is what God did in Jesus Christ and that Jesus Christ is Lord, which is the content of the gospel for Wright.

1. N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God 1; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992) 262.

2. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 118-120.

3. Wright, “New Perspectives on Paul,” 252-254; Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 100-103.

4. N. T. Wright, “The Letter to the Romans: Introduction, Commentary and Reflection,” in The New Interpreters Bible, 13 volumes (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), 10: 398-401; Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 117-118.

5. Wright, Romans, 10:402, Wright, “New Perspectives on Paul,” 248-249.

            The third foundation which influences Wright’s view of justification is the time frame of justification. In traditional Protestant theology justification is a one-time event that happens at the beginning of salvation. But for Wright justification is past, present, and future.

“This declaration will be made on the last day on the basis of an entire life (Romans 2:1-16), but is brought forward into the present on the basis of Jesus’ achievement, because sin has been dealt with through his cross (Romans 3:21-4:25); the means of this present justification is simply faith”.¹ 

Justification is past in that it is based on the work of Christ. It is present because it is a forensic declaration that the person is now a member of the people of God on the basis of faith. It is future, most controversially, because of the future judgment before God when the works of a believer will be examined. There is no possible discrepancy between present and future justification because the Holy Spirit will work on the person so that they will, without a doubt, produce the good works that lead to a positive judgment later on in the future justification.²
 

Wright builds on all of these foundations when he defines justification according to Paul. “It is God’s declaration that a person is in the right—that is, (a) that the person’s sins have been forgiven and (b) that he or she is part of the single covenant family promised to Abraham”.¹ The quotation of Genesis 15:6 in Romans 4 is not to be separated from its context in Genesis, but is to be connected with the covenant. Abraham is not a random example, but chosen specifically show Paul’s point about the covenant. Those who are justified are like Abraham not only in their faith but also in that they have become part of his family.² 

Wright says that the initial moment of relationship between the believer and God is not justification, but is referred to by Paul as the “call”. Following the train of thought in Romans 8:29-30, he sees justification as based upon the call and thus reflecting reality.³ Faith is not something done to enter the covenant people, but it shows that one has become a member of the covenant family, in contrast to the Torah and the works therein which many Jews were using as a badge of membership in the people of God.⁴
 As mentioned earlier, justification actually happens twice: once in the future on the basis of the whole life of the person and once in the present in anticipation of the future justification.⁵ 

The result of Wright’s view of justification is that it has profound implications for table fellowship in the church. The boundary lines in the church are not between Jew and Gentile and between other nationalities and social groups, but between those who live holy lives and those who are still living in the flesh.⁶ Jesus Christ is true Israel, and all who belong to him are right with God.⁷