Thursday, May 19, 2005 AD
The three tenses of justification
Following on from my introductory post about NT Wright yesterday, a closer look at the essay I mentioned on The Shape of Justification.
In this, Wright gives a threefold account of justification: future, past and present. Each aspect involves a declaration made by God by means of an event, which we can summarise as follows:
FUTURE
Declaration: "The one true God will finally judge the whole world," says Wright. "God's vindication of these latter on the last day is his act of final 'justification'". There are two aspects to this declaration:
PAST
"Moving from the future to the past," continues Wright, "God's action in Jesus forms Paul's template for this final justification."
Declaration: Jesus was faithful to death, and "God has now declared decisively that he is the Son of God, the Messiah, in whom Israel's destiny has been summed up".
Event: The event in which (and by which) this declaration was made "was, of course, the resurrection of the crucified Jesus", which for Paul was "the evidence that God really had dealt with sin on the cross" and that God had "accomplished what had been promised to Abraham, and 'what the law could not do'".
PRESENT
Declaration: Our present justification is thus a declaration made by God now in anticipation of the final, definitive declaration that He will make in the future, based on His past accomplishment in Christ. Again, this present declaration has two aspects:
Now you see why I said that Wright is "more Lutheran than he thinks he is". Our pastor suggested that when Wright refers to "Lutherans", he has in mind German state-church Lutherans in the tradition of Bultmann. Also, Wright seems to be under the impression that Luther's focus was on an individual's decision rather than on God's declaration in Baptism (he says as much in a lecture our pastor heard: one of the ones here, I think). Our pastor's suggestion is that Wright could well find himself in greater sympathy with confessional Lutherans than he thinks.
(Now, if only we could think of a confessional Lutheran of sound exegetical training and with ready access to Durham, to act as our ambassador to the court of the Prince Bishop. Hmmm... any suggestions? Maybe someone with time on his hands after giving up blogging...).
And equally, perhaps confessional Lutherans may find Wright more congenial than we might expect (certainly this confessional Lutheran has, at least so far), once we get past the irritating rhetorical sideswipes at some imaginary Luther of Wright's own creation, and his apparent unawareness that any sort of "Lutherans" exist other than the ahistorical existentialists he meets at Porvoo Communion get-togethers.
In this, Wright gives a threefold account of justification: future, past and present. Each aspect involves a declaration made by God by means of an event, which we can summarise as follows:
FUTURE
Declaration: "The one true God will finally judge the whole world," says Wright. "God's vindication of these latter on the last day is his act of final 'justification'". There are two aspects to this declaration:
- First, it is a legal declaration that those vindicated by God at the judgment are "righteous" (and that those condemned by Him are "guilty").
- Secondly, however, is a family, or covenantal, aspect to this declaration. "When God, as judge, finds in favor of people on the last day, they are declared to be part of this family".
PAST
"Moving from the future to the past," continues Wright, "God's action in Jesus forms Paul's template for this final justification."
Declaration: Jesus was faithful to death, and "God has now declared decisively that he is the Son of God, the Messiah, in whom Israel's destiny has been summed up".
Event: The event in which (and by which) this declaration was made "was, of course, the resurrection of the crucified Jesus", which for Paul was "the evidence that God really had dealt with sin on the cross" and that God had "accomplished what had been promised to Abraham, and 'what the law could not do'".
PRESENT
Declaration: Our present justification is thus a declaration made by God now in anticipation of the final, definitive declaration that He will make in the future, based on His past accomplishment in Christ. Again, this present declaration has two aspects:
- A lawcourt image: justification is "God's declaration that the person is now in the right, which confers on them the status 'righteous'".
- A family/covenantal image: "This present declaration constitutes all believers as the single people, the one family, promised to Abraham".
Sometimes the "family" image of justification is presented as an alternative to the "lawcourt" image, but as Wright says, "Membership in this family cannot be played off against forgiveness of sins: the two belong together."
The event in the present which corresponds to Jesus' death and resurrection in the past, and the resurrection of all believers in the future, is baptism into Christ. Baptism is not, as some have supposed, a 'work' which one 'performs' to earn God's favour. It is, for Paul, the sacrament of God's free grace. Paul can speak of those who have believed and been baptised as already 'saved', albeit 'in hope'.And before anyone thinks that Wright has in mind here some Reformed notion of a "spiritual", "inner" baptism of which "water baptism" is merely a covenantal symbol, his lecture on "The Paul of History and the Apostle of Faith" (PDF) makes it clear that he is talking about the wet version of baptism:
The Messiah’s people, like Moses’ people in 1 Corinthians 10, are a visible community entered by a real (and not a metaphorical) passage through water.Returning to "The Shape of Justification", Wright says towards the end:
...the classic Pauline way in which God makes this declaration, stating publicly and visibly that this person is indeed within the family, is through baptism.While Wright goes on to point out, quite correctly, that "in the situation of primary evangelism", baptism is saying "in dramatic action what God has in fact said the moment someone has believed", the key point here is that it is the public, visible, watery baptism that Wright identifies as the event by which God declares us publicly, visibly "righteous" in His sight, and a member of the family of all those who have been similarly declared righteous in the waters of baptism.
Now you see why I said that Wright is "more Lutheran than he thinks he is". Our pastor suggested that when Wright refers to "Lutherans", he has in mind German state-church Lutherans in the tradition of Bultmann. Also, Wright seems to be under the impression that Luther's focus was on an individual's decision rather than on God's declaration in Baptism (he says as much in a lecture our pastor heard: one of the ones here, I think). Our pastor's suggestion is that Wright could well find himself in greater sympathy with confessional Lutherans than he thinks.
(Now, if only we could think of a confessional Lutheran of sound exegetical training and with ready access to Durham, to act as our ambassador to the court of the Prince Bishop. Hmmm... any suggestions? Maybe someone with time on his hands after giving up blogging...).
And equally, perhaps confessional Lutherans may find Wright more congenial than we might expect (certainly this confessional Lutheran has, at least so far), once we get past the irritating rhetorical sideswipes at some imaginary Luther of Wright's own creation, and his apparent unawareness that any sort of "Lutherans" exist other than the ahistorical existentialists he meets at Porvoo Communion get-togethers.
