Justification or Gratitude

First of all, this is an excellent post that could bear some serious meditation on the part of Reformed and/or Evangelical readers.

Second, I wasn’t there so I didn’t here the historical and cultural particulars about Rich Bledsoe’s case for gratitude. I’m only resonding in an ahistorical way. Because if we’re talking about abstract principles one might want to prioritize from Scripture, my instinct is to say that trust comes first, gratitude second. This is what Daniel Fuller has convinced me is true.

Of course, gratitude is important. Romans 1.18ff makes ingratitude a central feature of human depravity. But Paul also deliberately contrasts human depravity with faith. Human depravity doesn’t trust God. Here are the texts; first, the negative:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

Now here is Paul’s counter-example:

That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

Humanity desperate for someone to trust, certain that the one who is trustworthy cannot possibly be god, search for that on which they can rely. They will attribute absurd majesty to unreliable things to comfort themselves.

What was the issue in the wilderness for Israel. Were they ungrateful? Yes. But why? Because they didn’t trust God to take care of them in the future. They invented cruel rationales for their past blessings (“You brought us out here to kill us in the wilderness.”). And this is exactly what we see in Genesis 3 as well. Satan tells Adam and Eve that God is just trying to keep them down.

And I can’t help but wonder if that is not at the root of ingratitude today. God cannot be trusted to care about us, to take care of us, to provide for us, to guide us, or for just about anything else. Jesus, if he is respected at all, is more or less an idiot savant at best–a guy who managed to transmit some wisdom but who didn’t hold down a job and eventually got himself killed. In presenting Jesus, the pressure a Chritian typically feels is to convince the hearer that most of his life will remain under control if he becomes a Christian. The idea that people actually ought to respect Jesus so much that they would be glad to follow him is almost as stange in the church as anywhere else.

This is why, by the way, it is so important to remember that the blessings we receive are supposed to be interpreted as tokens of the future. Otherwise, the deliverances God gives us will always be attenuated in our minds by the stresses. “God just provided us with a new job, but why did he let my car break down? I can’t afford that!” Well, if you’re looking for a complete victory, that’s called the resurrection, and it’s not here yet. We’re supposed to let the small victories assure us that the future is not in doubt. But instead, it is all too easy for us to let doubts make us ungrateful.

Postscript:
In writing this post, I remembered to put the Daniel Fuller book on my wishlist. I read it in seminary and found it was an excellent treatment on the centrality of faith throughout the Bible. However, I think Fuller doesn’t portray Calvin at his best. If you read it, I suggest following up with Pete Lillback’s study.

I wrote this in 2001. I was recently reminded of it. Let me know what you think, if you’re interested in reading it.

A. It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised, and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ.

B. For even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law,

C. but they desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh.

C’ But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

B’ For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.

A’ And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God. From now on let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.

Part One
Part Two

This is simply amazing. I’m not even sure I believe it. How does a multi-billion dollar corporation do this to itself?

Dvorak thinks MS needs to start again and acknowledge that everything after “Windows 2000 Professional or even Windows NT 4.0” was a mistake.

Of course, none of this is possible if the code isn’t well enough documented, and you get the distinct feeling that half of Windows is poorly documented. I’ve been convinced for years that one of the reasons Microsoft does not want to reveal its source code to the European Union under edict (or to anyone else) is because the code is so sloppy and poorly documented that it would be subject to extreme ridicule. Seriously, it probably is.

Part of the problem is what I’ve been hearing for years. Microsoft does not keep anyone on the Windows team who understands how it works. So it’s become a mishmash of spaghetti code. It’s a mess—and running on spit and a prayer.

Only Microsoft management can be blamed for this, because they don’t have a “Windows Pope” who would be expected to understand the innards of the OS and be able to pass the secrets on to a protégé who would become the next Windows Pope. Instead, you had a bunch of guys who wanted to do this or that and float around the company as middle managers or “idea men.” Over time, I’m told, not a soul at the company has a grip on the overall nature and structure of Windows itself. Thus, you have a mess because of ambitious coders who all want to be bosses.

This reads like an expose of the economy under the USSR.

To the good people at Mactopia,

I am not sure how an open letter from a Mac user is received, but I need to get this off my chest, so sending it is just a courtesy. If a loyalty test is needed, not only to I use the Microsoft office suite (yeah, I downloaded neoOffice, but I don’t use it; geekiness is really only an affectation for me thus far in my life), but I recently abandoned the mail, address book, and iCal apps and gave myself, body and soul, into the tender care of Entourage. I’m not threatening to change my mind about that. I am reporting as neutrally as I possibly can, that every single week I look around for something better. Some day someone is going to make it, and I don’t understand why you shouldn’t beat them to it.

Let’s start with something basic. Why not swallow your pride and copy iCal and offer email notifications? This is not really a luxury for many but a necessity. You must have many customers who operate with both a desktop and a laptop. Yes, it is possible to synchronize them, but it is easy to do it wrong or not often enough. Providing email notifications would be a great back up so that the appointment I forgot to put on whatever computer I happen to be working at would still receive a reminder.

Now, about tasks and projects. Your project center is what is going to keep me faithful to you and resistant to the wily and winsome attractions of iCal for the time being. But why is it so difficult to use? If I want to associate an email address with a project, I should be able to type the name in a blank somewhere and find it. I shouldn’t have to run through a long list. The same is true of events.

Also, while this may not have been true when entourage was first developed (or Outlook), it is now common knowledge, in the era of Getting Things Done, that task lists can be useless if they are not broken down to the smallest tasks possible. What this means is that I need overtasks that break down into subtasks. There should be multiple levels available. Merely associating tasks with a project is not enough. I should be able, under the project “trip,” to put a task “pack” with then the ability to open that and see “remember robe” and “remember swim trunks.”

Why can’t we have “reminders” of things put in our calendar without having to make a decision in advance about the exact amount of time I will spend on it? This is the sort of all-or-nothing forced decision that makes people find organizing their time so difficult. Give us a middle option please. And, while you’re thinking about it (ha!), why not think about ways of putting reminders about other people or other things that you need to know are happening, but aren’t activities that you are planning to do. I can attempt this with the color coding, but there are only so many colors I can remember at once. After I list all my own actions, and then come up with colors for co-workers etc, I’ve pretty much broken up the spectrum beyond human vision.

Finally (for the moment), why on earth did you save the two-column week view for only Outlook users? Is this punishment for not owning a Dell? It is time consuming and anti-intuitive to have to scroll down narrow columns. (A minor point, but related to Outlook envy: is it really so hard to code the point and click option so that you can bring up a chosen week buy using the mouse to designate it from a preview calendar).

If I’ve missed something obvious, I’ll receive correction. But if I’ve missed one of your features my prejudice (until you enlighten me) is to think that you need to make it more intuitive.

Sincerely,

Mark Horne

Since I recently posted about him, I should point out that The Call of Grace: How the Covenant Illuminates Salvation and Evangelism is still available. You should get it. Ignore the trolls at Amazon; trust my review.

As one can see from my side notes, Norman Shepherd wrote about part of the OPC report on justification.

Dr. Scott Clark of Westminster Seminary made the following retort:

What do we hear from Rev Shepherd?

Quote:
Now there can be no objection to calling good works the fruit and evidence of saving faith.

No objection? This is the language of concession not affirmation. Let’s try this: “There can be no objection to speaking of the deity of Christ….” What? “No objection?” How about: “We confess that good works are ONLY the fruit and evidence of justification”? That is REFORMED language. That a trained theologian and minister of the gospel cannot get the ABC’s of our doctrine of justification correct is really shocking.

I don’t agree with Dr. Clark’s appraisal. One reason I would disagree is that I can think of when the “language of concession” can be a true affirmation of the truth. Imagine that you are defending the humanity of Christ against those who insist that such affirmations are denials of Christ’s deity. One day, an old friend and former comrade accuses you of denying Christ’s deity saying that your affirmations of Christ’s humanity entail this result. It is easily imaginable that you might gently say, “There can be no objection to speaking of the deity of Christ,” and then go on to assert that Christ is also truly human. There would be nothing in such a statement that would warrant the claim that you didn’t really believe that Jesus is God.

A second reason I don’t agree: Ironically, the “reformed” language of the Westminster Confession of Faith does not affirm that “good works are only the fruit and evidence of justification.”

First, because nowhere do the confession or catechisms ever refer to fruit from justification or evidence of justification. Why does Dr. Clark not refer to “fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith,” if he is so concerned about Reformed language? I don’t know. I do know that in his theses he states,

40. # The doctrine of “obedient faith” as formulated by Norman Shepherd teaches a complex instrument of faith and therefore denies sola fide and solo Christo.

I have no idea how “obedient faith” can be a denial of “sola fide and solo Christo” without “true and lively faith” being guilty of exactly the same crime. Are the divines not guilty of “a comples instrument”? (The claim that faith must be “simple” is itself an addition to the Confession and Catechisms of the Presbyterian Church as far as I can tell; though I’ll happily be corrected if someone can show me where I missed it). In fact the divines explicitly explain what a “lively faith” is in their chapter on justification (11):

Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification: yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love.

So this faith is not “dead” and that means it does not fail to “worketh by love” (c.f. Galatians 5.6). So how is this not an “obedient faith”? In what sense is Norman Shepherd teaching anything novel?

The second reason the “reformed” language of the Westminster Confession of Faith does not affirm that “good works are only the fruit and evidence of justification” is because in the affirmation about the fruit and evidence of “a true and lively faith,” the Westminster Confession does not say that this is all that can be said about good works. Like Luther inserting “alone” in Romans 3, Dr. Clark has inserted and capitalized “only” in chapter 16, paragraph 2 of the Confession. Here is the true Reformed doctrine:

These good works, done in obedience to God’s commandments, are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith: and by them believers manifest their thankfulness, strengthen their assurance, edify their brethren, adorn the profession of the gospel, stop the mouths of the adversaries, and glorify God, whose workmanship they are, created in Christ Jesus thereunto, that, having their fruit unto holiness, they may have the end, eternal life.

The last phrase is a partial quotation of Romans 6.22 from the English version of the Bible contemporary with the Westminster Assembly. Here is the verse in the ESV in context:

[20] When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. [21] But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. [22] But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. [23] For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So, in addition to being fruits and evidences of “a true and lively faith,” they are also means to an “end”: eternal life. This coordinates with what the Westminster Larger Catechism says about the covenant of grace:

Q. 32. How is the grace of God manifested in the second covenant?
A. The grace of God is manifested in the second covenant, in that he freely provideth and offereth to sinners a mediator, and life and salvation by him; and requiring faith as the condition to interest them in him, promiseth and giveth his Holy Spirit to all his elect, to work in them that faith, with all other saving graces; and to enable them unto all holy obedience, as the evidence of the truth of their faith and thankfulness to God, and as the way which he hath appointed them to salvation (emphasis added).

One can read standard Reformed Orthodox sources to see this spelled out (e.g. Francis Turettin, Benedict Pictet).

I am still of the opinion that Dr. Norman Shepherd is a faithful preacher of the Gospel and a truthful teacher of the Reformed Faith. It certainly seems, at this point, that he is far more able to teach the Bible and the Reformed Heritage that the later Gaffin. If anything, Dr. Clark’s rhetoric only confirms me in this opinion. How else can I respond to someone who condemns others for not using “Reformed language” when he himself is the one deviating from it and even revising it?

Because when you report that your kill score was double your death score, because you were Masterchief incarnate on a ghost in the sidewinder map, and that you got the flag and were the top scorer, your sons lack any inhibitions about doing a victory dance in your honor.

Life is good.

From a Baptist News story

— Traditional Protestant theology wrongly caricatures first century Judaism as a religion of works or legalism, whereby Jews believed they had to earn their salvation by keeping the law. Instead, NP theology claims that Judaism was a religion of grace. This is the foundational tenet to the New Perspective and “if it goes, everything else goes with it,” Waldron said.

Yet neither the Westminster Confession, Catechisms, nor the 1689 London Baptist Confession saw fit to articulate this essential belief to “everything” in the Gospel.

Waldron’s claim about a domino effect from a change of opinion about the religion of first-century Judaism(s) is doubtful (and, since unargued, unworthy of acceptance). In Romans 4 we read,

For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about; but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? “And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Now to the one who works, his wage is not reckoned as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness… (vv. 3-5).

Clearly, Paul is arguing against boasting in “the works of the law” by virtually equating such boasting with earning favor from God. Clearly, also, Paul’s argument presupposes that his opponents would recoil from such an idea. Paul’s critique will work only if Paul’s opponents think that it is wrong to claim to be earning God’s favor–otherwise Paul would need to include an actual argument to the effect that it is wrong to boast in one’s good deeds. But there is no such argument. Rather, equating the works of the Law with boasting requires no further argumentation. This is evidence of the NPP thesis that Waldron finds so dangerous, but it also shows that the positive content of justification by faith alone can be presented without needing such an historical foil.

Whether or not all find the above interpretation convincing, there is plenty of reason why Paul would teach the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith alone in the context of arguing against nationalistic-covenant pride. For example:

Hear, O Israel! You are crossing over the Jordan today to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, great cities fortified to heaven, a people great and tall, the sons of the Anakim, whom you know and of whom you have heard it said, “Who can stand before the sons of Anak?” Know therefore today that it is the LORD your God who is crossing over before you as a consuming fire. He will destroy them and He will subdue them before you, so that you may drive them out and destroy them quickly, just as the LORD has spoken to you. Do not say in your heart when the LORD your God has driven them out before you, “Because of my righteousness the LORD has brought me in to possess this land,” but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is dispossessing them before you. It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD your God is driving them out before you, in order to confirm the oath which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Know, then, it is not because of your righteousness that the LORD your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stubborn people (Deuteronomy 9.1-6).

Here we have a statement that condemns self-righteous nationalistic pride and applies (and has been applied by Reformed preachers for centuries) to all forms of self-righteousness. Thus (1) the Bible does condemn merit theology in this passage and many others whether or not it was a widespread phenomenon that Paul had to deal with; and (2) Paul might well have found reason to mention the theology of grace found in passages like Deuteronomy 9.1-6 even if there were no merit legalists to refute (I have never heard of any Biblical scholar that the above passage only makes sense if there were widespread merit theologians throughout the ancient NearEast at the time Moses spoke).

Or to look at this another way, there are lots of passages that support the theology of grace of the Reformation in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. For example:

For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised, God has chosen, the things that are not, that He might nullify the things that are, that no man should boast before God. But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, that, just as it is written, “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1.26-31)

Now these things, brethren, I have figuratively applied to myself and Apollos for your sakes, that in us you might learn not to exceed what is written, in order that no one of you might become arrogant in behalf of one against the other. For who regards you as superior? And what do you have that you did not receive? But if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it? (4.6-7)

You know that when you were Gentiles, you were led astray to the dumb idols, however you were led. Therefore I make known to you, that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus is accursed”; and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit (12.2-3).

Now, one can simply read through this letter to see that some in the Corinthian Church believed they were especially spiritual and above the “weak” around them. Paul rebukes their boasting and emphasizes Christ crucified, just as he does in Galatians (c.f. First Corinthians 1.17, 23; 2.2; Galatians 2.20; 3.1; 5.24; 6.14). Furthermore, in both cases he appeals to their baptismal identity to deny the divisions they are maintaining (c.f. First Corinthians 12.12-13; Galatians 3.26-29). Yet, despite these striking similarities, no one has ever found it necessary to actually hypothesize a form of merit legalism behind the boasting of the Corinthian elite–even though Paul’s critique can be, and often is, used as a refutation of merit legalism.

So in the case of First Corinthians, Reformed pastors don’t seem to need merit legalists to exist as Paul’s opponents in order to derive and defend the doctrines of grace against more recent merit theologies. Why could not the same hold, in principle, for Galatians or Romans?

— Paul’s doctrine of justification was not about his opposition to the concept of “salvation through works” but about “Jewish exclusivism” that used the works of the law to socially exclude Gentiles from numbering among God’s people.

Well “about” can be more or less specific. Both Dunn and Wright have insisted that Paul’s polemnic against Jewish exclusivism was properly used by Luther against Roman Catholic merit theology. Since Dunn is widely known as the less orthodox and the non-Evangelical of the two, I’ll produce one highly representative statement from him. This is from his Theology of Paul’s Letters to the Galatians (Cambridge University Press; 1993):

These extracts are enough to show that Luther had fairly grasped Paul’s principal thrust on the sufficiency of faith. His own experience had taught him thoroughly that any attempt to add conditions to the acceptability of human beings before God is a breach and distortion of the essential truth of the gospel. And his restatement of this insight, not least in his lectures on Galatians, lit a torch which has continued to illuminate western Christianity ever since….

The corollary of Luther’s restatement, however, was less fortunate. For in understanding “works of the law” as good works done to achieve righteousness his thinking was beginning to run at tangent to Paul’s…. he lost sight of the whole corporate dimension of Paul’s doctrine… The gain which Luther’s emphasis brought to theology is in no doubt and has often been explored. But an interpretation of the theology of Galatians more closely related to the historical situation of the letter itself will want to bring out other aspects too.

It is important to appreciate that both emphases are rooted in a fundamental assertion of the sufficiency of faith; both protest against any attempt to add or require something more than faith on the human side when computing what makes a person acceptable to God. The difference which became apparent in earlier chapters is that the added factor against which Paul himself was protesting was not individual human effort, but the assumption that ethnic origin and identity is a factor in determining the grace of God and its expression. Ethnic origin and identity is a different way of assessing human worth, but one more fundamental than the question of ability to perform good works. What Paul protested against was even more insidious — the assumption that the way people are constituted by birth rules them in or rules them out from receiving God’s grace. Paul’s protest was not against a high regard for righteousness, against dedicated devotion to God’s law. It was rather against the corollary to such devotion: that failure to share in that devotion meant exclusion from the life of the world to come, and that the majority of peoples in the world were in principle so excluded.

One sees here that Dunn does think that Luther misunderstood some aspects of Paul’s message, but he doesn’t at all disagree with Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone. On the contrary Luther has “illuminated Western Christianity” and his discovery is to be considered a “gain” that hinges on the “sufficiency of faith” as “what makes a person acceptable to God.”

— “Works of the law” in Paul’s epistles refer not to works of righteousness or acts to earn salvation, but primarily refer to “Jewish boundary markers” that established who could and could not claim to be God’s chosen people.

Well, so what? What if Galatians and Romans were referring to such a thing? As I pointed out, Romans 4 still says what it says. Furthermore, what about other letters? Paul writes:

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them (Ephesians 2.8-10).

Sadly, many in New Testament scholarship don’t believe that Paul wrote Ephesians. That is too bad for them. But I note that we Evangelicals have here Paul’s statement about salvation by grace through faith apart from works and the context demands that these works are not “boundary markers” like circumcision, dietary code, or cultic calendar, but rather generic good deeds.

Paul also writes:

For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that being justified by His grace we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life (Titus 3.3-7).

Granted, Paul doesn’t mention faith explicitly, but do we not find here an affirmation of salvation by grace and mercy rather than anything we have done? Again the problem is the higher critical consensus that Titus is not a genuinely Pauline Epistle. But that is not a problem for Evangelicals.

My point is that reinterpreting Galatians and Romans could not, even at its worst, threaten justification by grace through faith apart from any and all good deeds. The only thing at stake is the possibility that mortal men whom we respect such as John Calvin and Martin Luther might have made some exegetical mistakes.

— “The righteousness of God” or the idea of a sinner being “made righteous” does not refer to a new doctrine of non-works-oriented justification as claimed by traditional Protestantism, but refers to law-keeping and good works as a sign of being among the covenant people.

It is not the case that “the New Perspetive” makes such claims about “the righteousness of God.” You can read any number of severe criticisms of Wright to confirm this fact. Wright claims that “the righteousness of God” [dikaiosune theou] is God’s own character which compels his to be faithful to his gracious promises to bring salvation to the world. Here is a series of blogs (like most blog series, still unfinished) I wrote on the subject:

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART THREE

PART FOUR

PART FIVE

It has nothing to do with the idea of good works being a sign that one is a member of God’s people.

By the way, what if NPP did define the righteousness of God in this way? Is Waldron claiming it is wrong to regard “good works, done in obedience to God’s commandments, are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith”? Surely not. Is he claiming that the New Perspective has no place for an alien rightousness from God in Christ. If so, he is simply mistaken. If one wants to read about a righteousness from God, one needs to turn to the place where Paul actually talks about a “righteousness from God” (ek theou): Philipppians 3.9.

If one wants a forensic justification based on an alien righteousnees, here is N. T. Wright

…the key point is that, within the technical language of the law court, “righteous” means, for these two persons, the status they have when the court finds in their favor, Nothing more, nothing less (What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul the Real Founder of Christianity [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1997], 98).

God vindicates in the present, in advance of the last day, all those who believe in Jesus as Messiah and Lord (Rom. 3.21-31; 4.13-25; 10.9-13). The law court language indicates what is meant. “Justification” itself is not God’s act of changing the heart or character of the person; that is what Paul means by the “call”, which comes through the word and the Spirit. “Justification” has a specific, and narrower, reference: it is God’s declaration that the person is now in the right, which confers on them the status “righteous”. (We may note that, since “righteous” here, within the law court metaphor, refers to “status”, not “character”, we correctly say that God’s declaration makes the person “righteous”, i.e. in good standing.)…

The “faith” in question is faith in “the God who raised Jesus from the dead.” It comes about through the announcement of God’s word, the gospel, which works powerfully in the hearts of hearers, “calling” them to believe, or indeed (as Paul often puts it) to “obey’ the gospel” (Rom. 1.16f.; 1 Thess. 1.3f., 2.13; 2 Thess. 1.8). This faith looks backwards to what God has done in Christ, by means of his own obedient faithfulness to God’s purpose (Rom. 5.19; Phil. 2.6), relying on that rather than on anything that is true of oneself [emphasis added].

A forensic verdict that we receive in relying on Christ’s faithfulness rather than anything true in ourselves–how can anyone complain?

— Faith is the true fulfilling of the law by a sinner and is the badge of covenant membership on the basis of which one is declared to be a covenant member — or a Christian. Historic Christianity holds that the sinner is made righteous by trusting in Christ who perfectly obeyed — or fulfilled — the law. Thus, salvation comes by grace.

It is hard to know what Waldron was trying to say. If he is saying that NP believes one’s faith is so good in God’s eyes that he rewards it with salvation, then he is wrong. See Wright’s definition of faith above. Is Waldron denying that a profession of faith is a badge that one is a Christian? It is hard to see how this could be. If he’s trying to deal with the details of Wright’s views he needs to stay away from those who publish soundbites.

— Contrary to traditional Christian thought, justification has nothing to do with the righteousness of Christ being “imputed” — or given by God — to sinners who trust in Christ.

False. Here: “‘Justification’ is thus the declaration of God, the just judge, that someone is (a) in the right, that their sins are forgiven, and (b) a true member of the covenant family, the people belonging to Abraham.” And another example I discuss here: Wright argues that for Paul (and, no doubt, for Wright as well), the title, Christ, bears an “incorporative” meaning: “Paul regularly uses the word to connote, and sometimes even denote, the whole people of whom the Messiah is the representative” (boldface added).

But why should “Messiah” bear such an incorporative sense? Clearly, because it is enemic in the understanding of kingship, in many societies and certainly in ancient Israel, that the king and the people are bound together in such a way that what is true of the one is true in principle of the other.

Thus, since one is incorporated into Christ by faith alone, by faith one receives all that Christ has done. One is forgiven and regarded as righteous. “Because Jesus is the Messiah, he sums up his people in himself, os that what is true of him is true of them.

I arrived this morning at my usual Bible study appointment and found the building dark. Power is out all over town after a brief windstorm. It is amazing. I could stand on the front steps of the office building and look at a hotel accross the streets that was still using its outdoor lights even though it was day. Waste and deprivation only a hundred yards apart.

I’ve got a lump in my throat about what will happen with our roof, since it is missing shingles, but at least I am air conditioned and have a usable home. Many are without electricity still. The shopping center in walking distance from us and the Schnuck’s have all been closed for two days. Just down the street.

Places that are open and working have been incredibly crowded from heat refugees deciding to spend a few hours browsing books or grocery shopping or mall shopping in the electric coolness. Outside it is oppressive. Yesterday, it was actually breezy, reminding me of the tropical winds in the tropical heat of Kwajalein. But the wind died down and the air simply became oppressive.

Yuck.

By the way, can you imagine being a business suddenly losing two days while your competitor gets all your customers and your hourly employees start wondering about other places to work? Next time you hear someone judged for “price gouging” remember that they have just as unpredictable a future as you do.