Customer Reviews

Justification: God's Plan & Paul's Vision

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Since reading Wright's Paul: In Fresh Perspective, I have been waiting for Wright to expound on the doctrine of justification. This book fills the bill, and it goes far beyond what I expected.

I disagree with those reviewers who say that Wright's use of historical context violates the "sola scriptura" model of the Reformers. In fact, the Reformers were making their own assumptions about the historical context of Paul's writings; they assumed either that Paul's issues were identical to their own (Renaissance/Enlightenment) issues or that the epistles could be treated as ahistorical expositions of universal truths (in spite of the fact that Paul contextualized each of his letters by addressing them to particular churches and even to specific people in those churches). The bottom line is that the much-vaunted "sola scriptura" of the Reformers was far from "sola"! Wright's practice of exploring Paul's teaching within a specific historical context is right on. (By the way, many Christians in the Reformed tradition, and I include myself in that number, have been guilty of treating the Reformation as God's last word on theology. But if the Reformers could claim that Augustine and Anselm and Aquinas weren't the last word, who are we to say that the Reformers were? They have no special claim to truth that wasn't possessed by their predecessors, without whom the Reformers would have had little to say about theology.) Wright is not claiming that he has the last word. As more is learned about first-century Judaism, he will no doubt adjust his current thinking. That approach is more biblical, and certainly more humble, than that of those who think they already have the last word.

But as much as I appreciate Wright's desire to locate his exegesis within a historical understanding of Paul's context, there's something about this book I appreciate even more. The following passages from pages 23 and 24 will show what I mean:

"Salvation is hugely important.... Knowing God for oneself, as opposed to merely knowing or thinking about him, is at the heart of Christian living.... But we are not the center of the universe. God is not circling around us. We are circling around him. It may look, from our point of view, as though 'me and my salvation' are the be-all and end-all of Christianity. Sadly, many people--many devout Christians!--have preached that way and lived that way. This problem is not peculiar to the churches of the Reformation. It goes back to the high Middle Ages in the Western church, and infects and affects Catholic and Protestant, liberal and conservative, high and low church alike. But a full reading of Scripture itself tells a different story.

"God made humans for a purpose: not simply for themselves, not simply so that they could be in relationship with him, but so that through them, as his image-bearers, he could bring his wise, glad, fruitful order to the world. And the closing verses of Scripture, in the book of Revelation, are not about human beings going off to heaven to be in a close and intimate relationship with God, but about heaven coming to earth."

Then on page 94: "Paul's view of God's purpose is that God, the creator, called Abraham so that through his family he, God, could rescue the world from its plight.... Paul's understanding of God's accomplishment in the Messiah is that this single purpose, this plan-through-Israel-for-the-world, this reason-God-called-Abraham ... finally came to fruition with Jesus Christ."

Wright masterfully develops the above themes in this book. As he has done in many of his other books, Wright has opened my eyes to the big picture of God's purpose and activity. His call to a God-centered reading of Scripture rather than a self-centered reading is long overdue in Christian scholarship.

I highly recommend this book. It is a masterpiece. Your mind and heart will be stretched; and as in physical exercise, stretching can cause discomfort and even some pain. But the effort is worth it. You will never be the same again.

Book title: Justification
Author: N.T. Wright
Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press, 2009
Number of pages: 252

Leading New Testament scholar N.T. Wright has taken C.S. Lewis's seat at the table. As Lewis changed the way people looked at Christianity, read their Bibles and thought about God in the twentieth century, Wright will do the same in the twenty-first. Like Lewis, Wright has a talent for making difficult biblical concepts accessible to the average person.

He is a primary scholar in the New Perspective on Paul. Wright sheds light on aspects of Paul and his theology that have left to gather dust in the dark corners of church tradition.
Wright's rise to popularity makes him a lightning rod for controversy. He intends to educate, but theological sacred cows are kicked over in the process. Incoming criticism rains down on him from several theological strong-holds. Some he deflects and some he absorbs. His most public fire-fight revolves around his treatment of the Doctrine of Justification.
Opponents say that Wright's New Perspective is out of balance; that examining Paul in a historical Jewish context is a mistake. Wright's answer: "...we end up reading [Paul] as though was really a 17th-century theologian born out of due time..." Wright posits in his book Paul: In Fresh Perspective that most of what we accept about Paul is based on scholarship that has been delivered to the world since the Reformation. But Paul pre-dates the Reformation.

Author Scot McKnight attempts to sum up the New Perspective in three bullet points:
1. Judaism was not a works-earns-salvation religion.
2. Paul was therefore not opposing a works-earns-salvation religion.
3. Therefore, the Reformation's way of framing the entire message of the New Testament as humans seeking to earn their own redemption rests on shaky historical grounds.

"Right or wrong," writes McKnight, "the New Perspective is the most Protestant move made in the 20th Century -- and by that I only mean that it seeks to get back to the Bible and challenge our beliefs in light of what we find in that Bible."

John Piper leads the assault. In his 2007 book The Future of Justification, Piper attempts to punch holes in Wright's position.

Wright's new book, Justification, is a response to his critics. Wright gives a thorough explanation of justification doctrinally and exegetically from Paul's epistles. Piper, in his book, explains justification against the backdrop of Reformed Tradition appealing mostly to Luther and Calvin rather than re-examining the Bible in its historical context.

Piper's position on the doctrine of justification is that the righteousness of Christ and His perfect obedience is imputed to the believer once faith is placed in Christ. That is, Christ's perfect obedience, morality and virtue becomes the believer's perfect obedience, morality, and virtue. Piper makes the point that Wright believes God merely declares us righteous based on the work of Christ and includes us in His family.

Wright does not hide the fact that this is what he believes: That Jesus defeated evil and sin and took our place on the cross. God vindicated Jesus by raising Him from the dead and in our identification with that (the resurrection) we, too, are vindicated. This is what Justification does. Wright says that we are given status as righteous, but that - and here's where the Calvinist's cages get rattled - obedience, morality and virtue are worked out in the believer's life through the Holy Spirit.
But this looks like a works based way of pleasing God the Calvinist traditionalist will say. It looks like "works of the law" are what please God and we all know that this can't be true because only faith pleases God.
Piper disputes Wright's take on the doctrine of Justification. Piper is convinced that Paul teaches the necessity to know what Justification IS, not just what it DOES. If one doesn't know what it IS, then one's understanding of what Christ accomplished on the cross will be misunderstood. In fact, Piper fears that what the church believes about Justification may be distorted for years to come due to Wright's ever expanding influence.
"Discovering that God is gracious," writes Wright, "rather than a distant bureaucrat or a dangerous tyrant, is the good news that constantly surprises and refreshes us. But we are not the center of the universe. God is not circling around us. We are circling around him. It may look, from our point of view, as though 'me and my salvation' are the be-all and end-all of Christianity. Sadly, many people--many devout Christians!--have preached that way and lived that way. This problem is not peculiar to the churches of the Reformation."
Wright presents justification less in terms of personal conversion and more in terms of "who is in the people of God."

Piper, seems to think covenantal readings belittle Paul. To this, Wright says, "Dealing with sin, saving humans from it, giving them grace, forgiveness, justification, glorification -- all this was the purpose of the single covenant from the beginning, now fulfilled in Jesus Christ".

Justification is embedded in the covenant -- "the saving call of a worldwide family through whom God's saving purposes for the world were to be realized."

Wright uses the imagery of a divine court of law as the controlling environment for justification and he sees God as judge finding in favor --giving righteous status-- of those who believe in Jesus Christ.

The emphasis of Wright's writing is that Christianity runs deep within a person and effects every part of a person's life; it changes the way a person sees the world (as God's New Creation) and his or her own participation in the world (building for God's Kingdom here on earth).

"It isn't that God basically wants to condemn and then finds a way to rescue some from that disaster. It is that God longs to bless, to bless lavishly, and so to rescue and bless those in danger of tragedy - and therefore must curse everything that thwarts and destroys the blessing of his world and his people."

Wright's hope is that this robust dialogue between himself and his critics "will send the next generation of thoughtful Christians back to Scripture itself, not to this or that tradition."

A high church Reformed Anglican bishop, NT Wright, has just written a book called Justification, which (as you can guess) is a summary of his thought on this much-debated issue within the Western Christian world.

His impetus for the book is a book published in 2007 by Dr. John Piper called The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright which probes the underpinnings of Wright's understanding of Paul and if this is a helpful or harmful understanding.

What is N.T. Wright's essential point, contra-the traditional Reformed/evangelical point of view? Because it is spread throughout the book, I will say essentially this: that the purpose of Christ's life, death, and resurrection was not merely about individual salvation (restoring "my relationship with God" and "getting to heaven") nor was it about fulfilling the Torah for us (the "active obedience" of Christ which is "imputed" to us, but that it was about fulfilling the promises made from way before the law was established and then transgressed. It was about fulfilling the promises made to Abraham to restore and bless the whole world and reconcile all the children of God in an eschatological way. This, therefore, makes the scope of the Jesus story much larger than a restoration of Israel from under the law, but more broadly the fulfillment of the covenant promise to Abraham to restore the whole world into the covenant. Therefore, justification is the declaration that one has been become a member of the covenant family, not an act of God which brings you into the covenant family (the traditional understanding).For Wright, the traditional view has formed by asking and answering questions in Medieval ways, not Pauline ways.

The book is in two parts: the first is "theologizing" and providing a background the objections against Wright; the second is exegesis from Galatians and Romans. Regardless of what you think of his conclusions, the writing is intelligent and clear (even if mildly scattered, making it sometimes difficult to get the core points).

Another way of putting this:

N.T. Wright: Justification is eschatological (it looks toward the future reconcilation of the Chilren of God) and ecclesiological (through Christ, it defines who is in the covenant community and who is not)

Reformed View: justification is primarily soteriological (about my salvation) and only secondarily eschatological and ecclesiological

This is primarily the reasons I have given this book three stars: it is genius, but Wright creates misleading distinctions between the Reformed view (which seeks to mine the richness of a narrow view of justification) and his view (which views the richness of a macro level view of justification). In trying to create room for his view (as if it didn't already exist), and in reacting to some of the more extreme criticism which has painted him as a heretic, he turns up the rhetoric to make it seem like it's his way or the near-heresy highway. An untrained reader may come into this debate (which is long-standing) and be misled that they have to accept or reject his views to the exclusion of all others. This is not necessary, and Wright does a disservice to the task of theology by (purposely or not) making these exclusive distinctions.

It is a good book for those interested in NT Wright's thought and vision or who are interested in the debate. But if you want a good overview of the doctrine of justification, or an introduction, this is not it. Try instead The Justification Reader (Classic Christian Readers)

N. T. Wright's response to John Piper's critique (The Future of Justification) is his most thorough book on Paul yet. It is, in many ways, a masterful unpacking of Paul's thought. Wright shows how Paul's theology of justification is grounded in God's covenant with Abraham and plan to bring redemption to the world through Israel, and ultimately through Jesus. He explores how justification is informed by Jewish law-court imagery, eschatology, and Christology. Wright's unpacking of the narrative substructure to Paul's thought is, at times, brilliant. And after reading this book, I think that Wright and Piper are actually much closer in their thinking than either one of them may think.

However, confusion and misunderstanding continues, and this due not least of all, to Wright himself. It's unfortunate that he sometimes caricatures positions that he rejects out of hand and misconstrues the thought and theology of his opponents. (Can anyone who knows John Piper seriously believe that there is no place for the Holy Spirit in his theology?!) Wright's reasons for rejecting imputation are not fully convincing. I still suspect that he takes some wrong steps in his exegesis at some crucial points. And his articulation of how justification by faith in the present relates to future judgment according to works is still a little fuzzy and subject to misunderstanding.

With that said, I think Wright's unpacking of the believer's union with Christ comes fairly close to achieving what imputation achieves for Piper and traditional Reformed theology. Not all his critics agree, but Wright should at least be carefully read and listened to before stones are cast.

I've heard Don Carson say before that Wright's problem is in backgrounding what should be in the foreground and foregrounding what should be in the background. I think I understand that critique. But after reading both Wright and Piper (and Waters, and Westerholm, and Carson, and Moo!) I am wanting to see a synthesis of the different insights and strengths these pastors and scholars bring to the table.

I recommend this book to those who are following the conversation on the New Perspective on Paul. If you've read Piper, definitely read Wright. But in my opinion, it would be better to read neither than to read only one side of the argument. 3 1/2 stars.

I expected this book to be downright heretical and controversial. I found was that it was neither. In fact Wright is a lot more orthodox than most people give him credit for - myself included. Wright's specialty is to tie the text to history and the overall story of scripture. I must say that this way of looking at scripture has been an eye opener for me over the past few years. I read some of the reviews of this book, and many reviewers claim that Wright is not letting Paul speak for himself. I find that a strange comment. If we locate Paul within first century / 2nd temple Pharisaical Judaism, something which Paul claimed to be a part of, is that not the best way to hear Paul? How else are we to make sense of what he says? He did not write his letters in a vacuum, but was just as socially conditioned as any of us are today.

I was not particularly convinced by Wright's exegesis of 2 Corinthians - it was very brief to be fair and Wright did make an excellent point about imputation. If we are going to speak of imputed righteousness, why don't we speak of imputed sanctification and imputed wisdom? The passage would demand that. While I accepted the point I didn't feel that his exegesis there was strong. Sorry if that seems vague. However, the more I read the book the harder it was to to argue with his exegesis. When you tie the text to history, and the overall biblical narrative, you make a very strong case. What I think Piper should have done in writing his book was to do a brief chapter on his concerns about Wright's interpretations, and then take him to task exegetically showing where he believes him to be in the wrong. Instead Piper I felt Piper appealed more to "tradition" - if I can use that word - instead of to Biblical exegesis. I found that ironic coming from someone who claims to be Reformed. Semper Reformanda? Ad Fontes? What happened to that? What I didn't like is that at times Wright seemed to Caricature the "old perspective". The standard reformed view of the Law is that people did not use it as a way to earn their salvation. The law was given after God had rescued his people from Egypt. That's a given in good evangelical reformed theology. But I admit that as a Christian for much of my life I grew up thinking Jews were legalistic self help moralists who used the Law to earn their salvation.

Whether or not you agree with Wright's assesment is not my concern. I think everyone should read this book to be at the very least, informed about current debates. As Paul said - each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. Wright & His new perspective theology is not the threat I once it thought it was. For a long time I found myself caricaturing Wright. Now that I've read most of his books (including all 3 Christian origins and the question of God series) I see that much of what the Reformed tradition asserts Wright affirms, but he takes us deeper and forces us to rethink our traditions in light scripture. He could certainly tone down his own polemic for sure, but his exegesis for the most part is sound. I welcome his challenge and reccomend this book to anyone interested in the debate.

I would give this book five stars, but if you are coming late to the discussion (as I am - I am familiar with Piper et al, and have grown up in his denomination so I skipped their books), the book loses something. This is a quasi-academic book, so if you have no background in systematic and historical theology, and aren't that familiar with traditional/Reformation readings of Paul, you will probably struggle to follow. That said, it is far more engrossing and easy to read than many theology books, and offers a fascinating framework for interpreting Paul based on a particular definition of "righteousness" and a translation of the Greek word for faith in a certain grammatical case as "by Christ's faithfulness" instead of the traditional "faith in Christ." The four-faceted framework he offers for understandin Paul's view of justification attempts to locate Paul in the whole of Scripture as well as in his first century Jewish context. Using his grid, Wright offers some convincing interpretations of passages that have traditionally been hard to make sense of. I appreciated that Wright seems to be starting with the assumption that Paul is coherent and his arguments are brilliant and logical, so if they don't make sense to us, we need a different key to unlock them, instead of just pushing aside the parts that we don't understand and fitting the rest into our existing theological systems. I really liked his attempt to bring a more Trinitarian understanding to the work of justification which acknowledged the important role of the Holy Spirit. I have heard some folks complain about the tone of the book (that it is snarky and condescending and dismissive of people who disagree) but then those critics go on to stubbornly misstate Wright's positions ("He advocates works-based justification!") so maybe they deserve it. I personally prefer an occasional snarky aside to the more typical tone in theology books on the conservative side which is to invoke all the "false teacher" curses on your ideological opponent and warn they are threatening to bring the Church to the edge of the pit of hell. I think Christians, especially conservative Evangelicals, should read this book and try out the ideas for a while before running to their favorite website to get all the nit-picky points of why Wright is "dangerous." The fact is, he is a theological conservative (even if a lot of his fans in the Emergent crowd are less so) and reading his book is not going to upset any major apple carts in anyone's faith. We could all use a little reminding that God's plan is bigger than me and my personal salvation. You get that plus a lot more to mull over in this book.

I grew up on Piper, Carson, Grudem and others in response to my semi-pelegian pentecostal upbringing. I found in their reformed theology a focus on God's grace, the love of God, and a proper following of scripture. And while I will always have a deep respect for this heritage, it has now become apparent that with Wright's focus on a first-century context (instead of a 16th century), his work (even if not right in every aspect) is at least taking biblical studies and general theology in the right direction: beyond the questions of "me and my salvation" to what Paul was saying in his letters - "How is God saving the world through Israel".

In this book, you will find an amazing focus on what Paul said in his own context and will come to see that Justification is not the center of Pauls thought but to be firmly placed within (what Wright numerously hammers home) Gods-single-plan-through-Israel-for-the-world, covenant, christology, the Holy Spirit and eschatology. As such, it is clear that the idea of imputed righteousness (with all its good intentions) is not only foreign to Paul, but unnecessary as Paul's theology (according to Wright) has the same result with even more! It is hard not to feel the frustration Wright has throughout his book at times with those, such as Piper, who use their own well-known reformed theological system of belief to then use as a yardstick for interpreting Wrights work and totally misunderstand what he is saying.

It is hard to predict the response Wright will receive from from the American army of conservatives who think they are the only ones who know the Bible. At times Wright is a little patronizing; but as i said, he seems sick of having to lay it out over and over again. As wright says at the end of his introduction: "for too long we have read scripture with nineteenth-century eyes and sixteenth-century questions. It's time to get back and read with first-century eyes and twenty-first-century questions" (p. 21). Can't agree more! Can't wait for his next Pauline volume!

Stimulating read

I have spent the last several months reading through N.T. Wright's fairly intimidating series of books on 'Christian Origins and The Question of God' looking at the 'Historical Jesus' as well as the beginnings of the Christian faith from the scholastic and historical viewpoints. At the same time I have spent a fair amount of time reading various essays from both sides of the so-called New Perspective on Paul. Although the NPP covers a broad spectrum of theological ideologies, the debate in recent years has seemingly coalesced between the writings of John Piper, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis and those of the Anglican bishop of Durham and have quite often centered on the doctrine of Justification.

In his latest book, Wright has sought to clarify his views on justification as well as his stance on the NPP as it relates to the topic. He repeatedly claims that he feels that he perhaps has not been clearly understood by his detractors. I get the sense that he thinks that if he and Piper were able to sit down over tea for the afternoon that Wright thinks that he would be able to elucidate to Piper that they are not as nearly far apart on the topic as Piper and his supporters claim that they are and are in fact for the most part standing on common ground.

In many of the books that Wright has written he focuses on what he terms the 'metanarrative', or the grand view that God has had from the very beginning to rescue mankind and restore the cosmos. In this book Wright continues in that theme, looking at justification as having it's roots in the covenant made with Abram, extending through Israels (failed) vocation to be the light of the world which would draw all nations to the one true God and culminating in God's faithfulness to to the covenant made with Abram to have all nations be blessed by his seed by sending his only Son to fulfill the purpose for what Israel had been intended for.

In his book, Wright repeatedly talks about his understanding of dikaiosune theo which is usually translated as 'God's righteousness' as being God's 'covenant faithfulness' which Wright terms as God's 'single-plan-through-Israel-for-the-world.' Beginning with God's promise to Abram in Genesis 12 where God promised to bless the entire world through Abrams 'seed', this promise has been fulfilled through Jesus Christs' perfect obedience, obedience even to the Cross. The result of having faith in Jesus is to unite Jew and Gentile into the one family of God thus fulfilling the promises made starting with Abram and extending all the way through the law and the prophets. In essence, justification becomes 'covenant membership' through faith in Christ into God's family which prior to Jesus' atoning death and resurrection was limited to the Israelites. The badge of 'membership' which had previously been Torah has now been expanded to all of those who put their faith in and confess as Lord the arisen savior Jesus Christ.

In my mind the Reformation theologians really don't have a lot to argue with Wright about. He repeatedly reaffirms that salvation is through faith alone and I don't really see any of the semi-Pelagianism that he has sometimes been accused of in this book. He stands firmly on Reformation ground with all of the most central doctrines of the Reformation, especially those of John Calvin. He constantly reaffirms the fact that Jesus died a substitutionary, atoning death. The main point where he diverges from the Reformers is the notion of imputed righteousness, an idea that I've read Calvin himself had doubts about.

On the subject of imputed righteousness, which in my mind is supported by a slender reed of only a couple of New Testament scriptures, Wright pens on page 232:

'It is therefore a straightforward mistake, however venerable within some Reformed traditions including part of my own, to suppose that Jesus 'obeyed the law' and so obtained 'righteousness' which could be reckoned to those who believe in Him.' To think that way is to concede, after all, that 'legalism' was true after all - with Jesus as the ultimate legalist. At this point, Reformed theology lost its nerve. It should have continued the critique all the way through: 'legalism' itself was never the point, not for us, not for Israel, not for Jesus.'

Throughout the book, Wright focuses on the metanarrative ideas of God's plan for salvation, not just for the individual but for the entire cosmos, moving from God's 'single-plan-through-Israel-for-the-world' to how 'Gods plan was a plan through Israel -(even-though-Israel-too-was-part-of-the-problem)-for-the world and culminating in God's-single-plan-through-Israels-faithful-representative(Jesus Christ)-for-the-world. The book focuses on how the New Perspective Pauline conception of justification has covenant, soteriology, Christology, eschatology and yes, even ecclesiology all magnificently interwoven. As I read through the book, I was consistently left with the feeling that the NPP concept of justification actually was increasing my own conception of the God who loves his creation and has been working throughout time and history for His creations salvation and glorification.

Some critics of Wright have written that he sometimes seems to indicate a semi-Pelagian concept of salvation through works, and there were a couple of times that I began to see how this conception of Wright has arisen, especially when he distinguishes between initial justification and final justification at the great Assize. But Wright is quick to point out, as some of the Reformation theologians don't always do, the work of the Holy Spirit in accomplishing these 'works.' On page 235-236 he writes:

And as Paul's doctrine of final Justification is solidly based on the fact that this great rescue operation, this renewal of all things, has already been launched in Jesus Christ, and is already being put into operation through the Spirit.' This is Paul's framework for what we call 'Christian ethics.' Let me put it like this: if we begin simply with 'Justification by Faith,' as traditionally conceived within much Protestantism, we have the obvious problem that 'what we now do' appears to get in the way of the faith 'from first to last' by which alone we are justified. But as we follow Paul and see justification by faith (as in Romans 3:21-4:25) within the larger framework of biblical theology of God's covenant with and through Abraham for the world, and now fulfilled in Christ, we will discover that from within that larger, and utterly Pauline, framework there is a straight and easy path to understanding (what is sometimes referred to) as the place of 'works' in the Christian life, without in any way, shape or form compromising the 'justification by faith' itself.

Ironically, I find that Wright's conception of God's plan for the redemption of mankind and indeed the entire universe gives a much fuller and richer view of God and His plans than those of most Reformation theologians, especially Piper, who claim that their view of a sovereign God and his soteriological plan is primarily for God's glory. It seems to me that the traditional Reformation view focuses much more on the individualistic soteriology and reduces the larger social, eschatological and ecclesiological view of salvation that Wright puts forth in this book.

I found the book very easy to read (for an N.T. Wright book!) and his polemics very convincing. He spends a lot of time defining all of the key words used in the language of justification, both Greek and Hebrew, and his exegesis of the key scriptures were very easy to follow. I found his exegesis of Ephesians ( which he strongly thinks is of Pauline authorship) and Roman especially compelling. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has been interested in the New Perspective on Paul or who has been following the debate on justification. I think that the clarifications that Wright puts forth should allay the fears that many, although of course not all, of his detractors may have of his views on the subject. I gained a much deeper understanding of the subject of justification and will probably read through this book again sometime in the future.

I love this book! Bishop Wright has again offered us a mountaintop view of the great love our God has for us, and he does it with a keen eye to scripture, a hermeneutic of wisdom and integrity, and a method offering a loving hand out to his accusers and critics.

I have read several of Wright's works and this is by far the most polemical. He engages in hand-to-hand not only with Piper but also with Carson, Harink and others. One of the most subtle and powerful moves comes during Wright's discussion of Romans 1.18-3.20. He writes, "Within the logic of love is the rich, theological logic of the work of the Holy Spirit. This brings us back to a point made much earlier. When, by clear implication, I am charged with encouraging believers to put their trust in someone or something 'other than the crucified and resurrected Savior,' I want to plead guilty - to this extent and this extent only: that I also say, every time I repeat one of the great historic creeds, that I trust in the holy spirit."

Beautiful! Wright's exegesis wins the day by a huge margin. Those of you who have been duped into thinking that Wright is outside the scope of orthodoxy need to read this book. You will find that not only is Wright mostly misunderstood by his critics (they really don't get it), but he is laying an exegetical foundation for coming generations to build a strong and faithful house of love for those outside the promises. That they may come and experience the heart of the Father demonstrated through the death and resurrection of Jesus and the powerful work of the Holy Spirit.

NT Wright spells out his view of justification, and delivers with chapter after chapter of solid exegesis. Wright continues in his characteristic approach to the Pauline epistles by laying out the over-arching framework in which Paul thinks and by tracing Paul's line of thought through several key passages. The result? A coherent picture of God's plan and Paul's vision. And, equally as important, Wright returns the respectful tenor of conversation that was extended to him by Piper. A Great Buy!