But he plainly does have much to say. I know this because he writes about it.  I reviewed one book dedicated to almost nothing else here:

Mark Horne » Blog Archive » For All The Saints.

Just to make sure I am being clear, there are two different questions here (or more):

1. Does N. T. Wright have a robust belief and teaching about the justification and salvation of individuals?
2. Does N. T. Wright’s exegesis or hermeneutics or theological method or worldview or something else rationally allow or lead to a robust belief and teaching about the justification and salvation of individuals?

Clearly, many are making some kind of claim about #2.  I am skeptical about most or all of the arguments I have encountered but they are possible in principle.  What isn’t plausible at all are answers to #1 that claim he does not have such a belief or concern.

As a Presbyterian, I have been helped by many scholars associated with the Anglican Church. The ministry of C. S. Lewis, for example, goes back to early childhood in my Baptist home. I have also been greatly helped by Austin Farrer, as anyone who reads my commentary on Mark’s Gospel will see.

Of course, both Lewis and Farrer have problems. Lewis managed to write a basic intro to the Christian Faith (Mere Christianity) that remains agnostic about how one should understand the atonement (though I’m told his personal convictions were better than this). Farrer I am sure had his own problems. I never bothered to find out much, but simply mined his Bible study for all the riches that could be found in it.

But better than both, I believe, because he is more orthodox, more insightful, and more contemporary, is the Jesus and Pauline scholar N. T. Wright, presently the bishop of Durham.

I began reading Wright in seminary-his two “big books” first. His New Testament and the People of God was absolutely astounding. I admit to getting slightly bored with the philosophical material (though it fit well with my “presuppositional” understanding of knowledge), but his New Testament introduction was simply riveting. No one had ever used the “background” material in so useful a way. It suddenly went from being something I had to learn to something I wanted to learn.

Of course, since Wright was “a British Evangelical,” I viewed him with a good deal of suspicion. I assumed his view of Scripture would be horrible and that he would have a great many other problems (a few years later I did see evidence that he espoused a view of Scripture that I believe failed to do justice to it or to his own use of it; but it took awhile). Farrer had insisted that the Bible did not teach propitiation, for example, so I was prepared for Wright to also join him and argue for expiation. Surely he would not fight for propitiation, I thought.  But he did.  In his lectures on Romans for Regent College he castigated the NIV for not using the word “propitiation” in Romans 3.

In my opinion, the first two books in his “Christian Origins and the Question of God” series should be read by just about everyone who reads books and is a Christian in the twenty-first century. But my reasons for this will have to await a later post.

TO BE CONTINUED

Due to time constraints, Bishop Wright’s talk was engaging but brief. In many ways, the talk served primarily as a “trailer” for his new book and provided inspiration but little details. However, it was effective in challenging those in attendance to consider the importance and eternal significance of Christian character. My one critique would be that reliance upon the grace of God to accomplish our sanctification is assumed by Wright but not discussed prominently; at one point in the lecture, Wright parenthetically reminds us that “of course, all this is to be done by [God’s] grace alone through faith [in Christ] alone.” I suspect this oversight is due to deficiencies in Wright’s understanding of Union with Christ and to his convictions regarding the role of good works in the future justification of believers.

via Feeding on Christ » Blog Archive » N.T. Wright’s Redeemer Prebyterian Church Lecture.

Even admitting that Wright has a small amount of time to make his presentation, we still have to find theological error in the absence of certain topics?  I simply don’t think this is fair to Wright, nor do I know of any deficiencies in Wright’s understanding of Union with Christ.

How about this stuff from Peter and Paul?  How does it compare to what is said above about Wright’s lecture?

But this I confess to you, that according to the Way, which they call a sect, I worship the God of our fathers, believing everything laid down by the Law and written in the Prophets, having a hope in God, which these men themselves accept, that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust. So I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man.

Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.  As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”  And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.  For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.  For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.  Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace.

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance.  For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.

Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.

Their ability to do good works is not at all of themselves, but wholly from the Spirit of Christ. And that they may be enabled thereunto, beside the graces they have already received, there is required an actual influence of the same Holy Spirit, to work in them to will, and to do, of his good pleasure: yet are they not hereupon to grow negligent, as if they were not bound to perform any duty unless upon a special motion of the Spirit; but they ought to be diligent in stirring up the grace of God that is in them.

By it [repentance], a sinner, out of the sight and sense not only of the danger, but also of the filthiness and odiousness of his sins, as contrary to the holy nature, and righteous law of God; and upon the apprehension of his mercy in Christ to such as are penitent, so grieves for, and hates his sins, as to turn from them all unto God, purposing and endeavoring to walk with him in all the ways of his commandments. Although repentance be not to be rested in, as any satisfaction for sin, or any cause of the pardon thereof, which is the act of God’s free grace in Christ; yet it is of such necessity to all sinners, that none may expect pardon without it.

Q. 85. What doth God require of us that we may escape his wrath and curse due to us for sin?
A. To escape the wrath and curse of God due to us for sin, God requireth of us faith in Jesus Christ, repentance unto life, with the diligent use of all the outward means [his ordinances] whereby Christ communicateth to us the benefits of redemption.

[Frankly, I suspect N. T. Wright would find the language of Westminster too “conditonal” to be in his comfort zone.]

YouTube – Tom Wright – The Historical Jesus.

Part One

Part Two

You promised more about Jesus, Holiness, and the Politics of Jesus.

Yes, but I haven’t had time to write about that, so I took that out of the last line of part two in this series.

You had questions about specific issues.  And thought I hate to go out of order, it might be good to get some of them in the open now.

There has been accusations made that Wright disbelieves that Christ died in our place so that his righteousness is ours and our sins are punished in Him.  True?

No that is a lie.  We find Wright affirming Evangelical orthodoxy over and over again in both popular and academic works.

For instance, in his first book of essays on Pauline theology he establishes that for Paul, the sin of Adam is central to his whole thought about the salvation in Jesus Christ.

I thought Wright cared more about Israel and ignored the role of Adam and creation?

Yeah, that shows when you tell one lie about a man you are forced to make up more of them.  Here is what he writes:

It is true that in the resurrection Christ became the prototype, and source of life, for the future resurrection of believers. But his task as last Adam was not confined to this. His role was that of obedience, not merely in place of disobedience but in order to undo that disobedience. That is the point made in [Romans 5] vv. 18-19, where the “act of righteousness,” the “obedience” of the one man Jesus Christ, undoubtedly includes a reference to his long pilgrimage to Calvary. This perhaps needs spelling out in more detail. Since Paul does not call Christ “last Adam” in Romans 5, it may be risky to build too much on the passage in answering what is at best the rather artificial question, as to when Christ became “last Adam”; but since the parallel (and imbalance) between Adam and Christ is worked out in more detail here we are perhaps able to gain a more precise grasp of the theology that underlies both this passage and 1 Corinthians 15. There are two tasks, undertaken by Christ, which may be identified. The first, involving the obedience unto death, is essentially (in Paul’s mind) the task by which the old Adamic humanity is redeemed, that is, the task with which Israel had been entrusted. There is a sense in which this is not “Adamic,” in that it was (clearly) not Adam’s task; this is why vv. 15-17 emphasize the initial imbalance between Adam and Christ. The second task, in which there is the more obvious balance, is the gift of life which follows from Christ’s exaltation; this, underscored in vv. 18-21, corresponds more directly to the task envisaged in 1 Corinthians 15.20-28, 45. In this latter task, Christ is the obedient human through whom the Father’s will for the world is put into effect (5.21: through Jesus Christ). If this were all that needed to be said, there might have been something in the view that the post-resurrection task of Christ is more truly “Adamic” than the pre-resurrection one; but this is not the whole story. The obedience because of which he is now exalted is precisely the obedience unto death. And … this obedience is itself, however paradoxically, “Adamic.” The weakness of the view that sees Christ as last Adam only in his resurrection is that … it fails to provide what Paul achieves: an adequate soteriology (Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993] p. 38-39).

Wright further argues that for Paul (and, no doubt, for Wright as well), Xpistos 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.

Wright elaborates:

In Romans 6.11, the result of being baptized “into Christ”… is that one is now “in Christ,” so that what is true of him is true of the one baptized–here, death and resurrection. This occurs within the overall context of the Adam-Christ argument of chapter 5, with its two family solidarities; the Christian has now left the old solidarity (Romans 6.6) and entered the new one. 6.23 may be read by analogy with 6.11; whose who are “in Christ” receive the gift of the life of the new age, which is already Christ’s in virtue of his resurrection–that is, which belongs to Israel’s representative, the Messiah in virtue of his having drawn Israel’s climactic destiny on to himself. Similarly, in Romans 8.1, 2 the point of the expression “in Christ” is that what is true of Christ is true of his people: Christ has come through the judgment of death and out into the new life which death can no longer touch (8.3-4; 8.10-11), and that is now predicated of those who are “in him.” In Galatians 3.26 the ex-pagan Christians are told that they are all sons of God (a regular term for Israel…) in Christ, through faith. It is because of who the Messiah is–the true seed of Abraham, and so on–that Christians are this too, since they are “in” him. Thus in v. 27, explaining this point, Paul speaks of being baptized “into” Christ and so “putting on Christ,” with the result that (3.28) [translating Wright’s reproduction of Paul’s Greek here:] you are all one in Christ Jesus. It is this firm conclusion, with all its overtones of membership in the true people of God, the real people of Abraham, that is then expressed concisely in 3.29 with the genitive [again translating]: and if you are of Christ… When we consider Galatians 3 as a whole, with its essentially historical argument from Abraham through Moses to the fulfillment of God’s promises in the coming of Christ, a strong presupposition is surely created in faovor both of reading Xpistos as “Messaiah,” Israel’s representative, and of understanding the incorporative phrases at the end of the chapter as gaining their meaning from this sens. Because Jesus is the Messiah, he sums up his people in himself, so that what is true of him is true of them (pp. 47-48; boldface added).

As is evident from this quote, and is elaborated many other places in Wright’s work, Paul argues that all who believe the Gospel are now the true Israel so that Jesus’ role as Israel’s “representative” means that he is the representative not of unbelieving Israel (if they remain in unbelief) but of believers whether Jew or Gentile (so that even “the ex-pagan Christians are told that they are all sons of God”).

An example of how this “incorporative” sense of Christ works itself out in Wright’s understanding of the atonement can be seen in his commentary on Philemon [The Epistles of Paul to the Colossians and to Philemon: An Introduction and Commentary Tyndale New Testament Commentaries, Vol 12, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1988)]. There we builds on his essay on Philemon 6 in Climax of the Covenant and shows how Paul uses the doctrine of Christian “interchange”–that each Christian through Christ is a member of all others. Wright argues that there is a double exchange between Paul, Onesimus, and Philemon in vv. 16, 17:

So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me. If he has wronged you at all, or owes you anything, charge that to my account.

Here we have two interrelated requests:

1. Paul is requesting that Philemon regard Onesimus positively as he would regard Paul–and thus receive him with Paul’s standing.
2. Paul is requesting that Philemon draw on the credit Paul has with him to compensate for and make restoration for Onesimus’ debt–confident that he can more than pay (v. 18)

Wright also argues that Romans 8.3 should be translated “… God sent his son… as a sin offering.” Wrights argument is straight out of Leviticus and the context of Romans. He writes:

The person who sins in this way delights in God’s law (Romans 7.22) yet finds again and again that he fails to keep it. The remedy which the Old Testament offers for this very condition is the sin-offering, and when we meet, in the very passage where Paul is showing how God deals with the condition of 7.14-25, the phrase which elsewhere in the Greek Bible regularly means “as a sin offering,” there can no longer be any suggestion that the context does not support the sacrificial interpetation. Though Paul can view Christ’s death in various ways (in, for instance, Romans 3.24ff, First Corinthians 5.7) he here draws attention to that death seen in one way in particular, the way relevant for dealing with sin precisely as it is committeed in 7.13-20… The death of Jesus, precisely as the “sin-offering,” is what is required… (Climax of the Covenant, pp. 224, 225).

Or consider Wright’s much more popularly written commentaries. He writes in one his “For Everyone” commentaries on Mark 1.9-13:

The whole Christian gospel could be summed up in this point: that when the living God looks at us, at every baptized and believing Christian, he says to us what he said to Jesus on that day. He sees us, not as we are in ourselves, but as we are in Jesus Christ. It sometimes seems impossible, especially to people who have never had this kind of support from their earthly parents, but it’s true: God looks at us, and says “You are my dear, dear child; I’m delighted with you” (Mark for Everyone, pp. 4, 5).

In the same series, he writes on the meaning of the Lord’s Supper instituted at Passover and then the exchange of Jesus with Barabbas:

It was, first and foremost, a Passover meal. Luke has told us all along that Jesus was going to Jerusalem to “accomplish his Exodus” (9.31). he has come to do for Israel and the whole world what God did through Moses and Aaron in the first Exodus. When the powers of evil that were enslaving God’s people were at their worst, God acted to judge Egypt and save Israel. And the sign and means of both judgment and rescue was the Passover: the angel of death struck down the firstborn of all Egypt, but spared Israel as the firstborn of God, “passing over” their houses because of the blood of the lamb on the doorposts (Exodus 12). Now the judgment that had hung over Israel and Jerusalem, the judgment Jesus had spoken of so often, was to be meted out; and Jesus would deliver his people by taking its force upon himself. His own death would enable his people to escape…Luke describe the event in such a way that we can hardly miss the point. Barabbas is guilty of some of the crimes of which Jesus, though innocent, is charged: stirring up the people, leading a rebellion… Jesus ends up dying the death appropriate for the violent rebel. He predicted he would be “reckoned with the lawless” (22.37), and it has happened all too soon… [T]his is in fact the climax of the whole gospel. This is the point for which Luke has been preparing us all along. All sinners, all rebels, all the human race are invited to see themselves in the figure of Barabbas; and, as we do so, we discover in this story that Jesus comes to take our place, under condemnation for sins and wickedness great and small. In the strange justice of God, which overrules the unjust “justice” of Rome and every human system, God’s mercy reaches out where human mercy could not, not only sharing, but in this case substituting for, the sinner’s fate (Luke22.1-3; 23.13-26; Luke for Everyone, 262, 279, 280; emphasis added).

But has Wright specifically affirmed propitiation?

Yes, he does.  His lectures on Romans rip into the NIV for using “expiation” instead of that term in Romans 3.  In his commentary on Romans he writes:

The idea of punishment as part of atonement is itself deeply controversial; horrified rejection of the mere suggestion has led on the part of some to an unwillingness to discern any reference to Isaiah 40-55 in Paul. But it is exactly that idea that Paul states, clearly and unambiguously, in Romans 8:3, when he says that God ‘condemned sin in the flesh’—i.e. the flesh of Jesus. Dealing with wrath or punishment is propitiation; with sin, expiation. You propitiate a person who is angry, you expiate a sin, crime (N. T. Wright, The Letter to the Romans, 475-476).

What about the claim that Wright “redefines justification.”

This is an area where I’m only familiar with the earlier absurd accusations.  I haven’t followed up in the many rehashings that have gone on in this area.  Wright was defending Paul for continuity with the OT against the Liberal E. P. Sanders.  In that context he has said some things about justification not being how one becomes a Christian.  I haven’t always understood Wright on this point, but he has been asked to clarify himself.  So I agree precisely with what N. T. Wright says in The Shape of Justification:

The lawcourt 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 lawcourt metaphor, refers to “status,” not “character,” we correctly say that God’s declaration makes the person “righteous, i.e. in good standing.)

This distinction should seem awfully familiar to Reformed pastors. Compare these two questions from the Westminster Larger Catechism:

Q67: What is effectual calling?

A67: Effectual calling is the work of God’s almighty power and grace, whereby (out of his free and special love to his elect, and from nothing in them moving him thereunto he doth, in his accepted time, invite and draw them to Jesus Christ, by his word and Spirit; savingly enlightening their minds, renewing and powerfully determining their wills, so as they (although in themselves dead in sin) are hereby made willing and able freely to answer his call, and to accept and embrace the grace offered and conveyed therein.

Q70: What is justification?

A70: Justification is an act of God’s free grace unto sinners, in which he pardoneth all their sins, accepteth and accounteth their persons righteous in his sight; not for any thing wrought in them, or done by them, but only for the perfect obedience and full satisfaction of Christ, by God imputed to them, and received by faith alone

Not sure why this should be controversial to Anglo-American Calvinists.

What about the accusation of “redefining faith as faithfulness.”

Another lie: As Wright affirms above, Christ died as a substitute for sinners. And this is received from outside oneself by faith apart from anything that is true of one’s own behavior: “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 (“The Shape of Justification”; emphasis added).

To be continued (Wright & imputation)

Remembering the Christian Departed
by N. T. Wright
(Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 2003)
96 pages
$10.00

Bishop Nicholas Thomas Wright of Durham has a reputation as a first-rate Evangelical apologist (in the wider British sense of the word, “Evangelical”), historian, and Bible scholar, whose work on Jesus and Paul has earned a wide hearing. However, this short work shows him not in the academy doing history and evangelism but in the Church applying his Biblical knowledge to liturgical and pastoral issues. As an American Presbyterian trying to understand what Wright is addressing as a British Anglican, it took me awhile to get a full appreciation (assuming I have attained such a thing) of Wright’s situation. The book reads like a theological tract at first and then addresses an issue in the Church. But, of course, the theological tract didn’t appear simply because Wright felt like spilling out a few pages from his systematics notes. The liturgical calendar issue, with all its implications, is what provoked the tract.

The issue is this. In Britain, at least (I have no idea how widespread this is globally in the Anglican communion), All Saints’ Day (November 1) has been supplemented with an All Souls’ Day (November 2) and even a “Kingdom Season” before Advent in which worshipers are to meditate on their future hope of “heaven.” The impetus for the November 2 day seems to be that celebrating the sure salvation of the saints seems awfully exclusive, and some want to hold up hope for souls in general. Yet, ironically, as Wright points out, the “hope” for souls actually seems part of a lessening of hope for the saints. The Roman Catholic doctrine of Purgatory is being re-animated in many Anglican communions. The hope of the saints is not the Biblical “sure and certain hope,” but a vague continuing journey in a disembodied state.

Of All Souls’ Day, Wright tells us, “After attending several of these annual events, I got to the point a few years ago where I decided that, in conscience, I could do so no longer” (p. 47). He obviously feels quite strongly about these issues and has had to deal with them personally. Of course, Wright realizes that the Church calendar itself is a matter of convention and is only as valuable as wise pastoral practice:

There is nothing ultimately obligatory for a Christian about the keeping of holy days or seasons. Paul warns the Galatians against adopting the Jewish liturgical calendar (Galatians 4.10). Elsewhere he declares that those who observe special days do so to honor the Lord, and that those who regard all days alike do so equally in honor of the Lord (Romans 14.5-6). However, many churches have found that by following the liturgical year in the traditional way they have a solid framework within which to teach and live the gospel, the scriptures, and the Christian life (p. 56).

Wright sees that somehow a nineteenth-century revival of Medieval Roman Catholicism within Anglicanism has coupled with Modern Liberalism to give us, at least by strong implication, purgatory for everyone, though a kinder gentler Purgatory that “isn’t very unpleasant, and … certainly not punitive” (pp. 12-13).

Wright obviously wants, instead, the Gospel for everyone, and sees both the Anglo-Catholicism and the liberalism, to be threats to pastoring God’s people. He tries very hard to be calm and persuasive rather than polemical, but his feelings are obviously fully engaged in the issue. After writing about John Henry Newman’s poem The Dream of Gerontius and how it was “brilliantly set to music” so that it gave a powerful emotional and aesthetic argument for purgatory, he admits: “The reader will deduce, rightly, that I find all this musically glorious, humanly noble, and theologically intolerable” (pp. 9-10).

Thus, for the most part, this little book is a primer on why Anglicans should preserve their Protestant Evangelical heritage. This is not only about Purgatory, but also about how we should regard the saints departed.

Who Count as Saints?
On the distinction alleged between “saints” and “Christians,” Wright insists that Bible gives us a different teaching: “If we are to be true to our foundation charter, then, we must say that all Christians, living and departed, are to be thought of as “saints” (p. 27).

Should We Pray to Saints?
After showing how Hebrews 11, while invoking the saints’ example, remains centered on Christ, Wright goes on to question the invocation of the saints simply on the grounds of an absence of such thing in the Bible: “What I do not find in the New Testament is any suggestion that those at present in heaven/paradise are actively engaged in praying for us in the present life. Nor is there any suggestion that we should ask them to do so.” And again on the same page: “I just don’t see any signs in the early Christian writings to suggest that the actually do that [urge the Father to complete the work of salvation for us], or that we should, so to speak, encourage them to do so by invoking them specifically” (p. 39)

Furthermore,

the practice seems to me to undermine, or actually to deny by implication, something which is promised again and again in the New Testament: immediacy of access to God through Jesus Christ and in the Spirit. When we read some of the greatest passages in the New Testament–the Farewell Discourse in John 13-17, for instance, or the great central section (chapter 5-8) of Paul’s letter to the Romans–we find over and over the clear message that, because of Christ and the Spirit, every single Christian is welcome at any time to come before the Father. If then, a royal welcome awaits you in the throne room itself, for whatever may be on your heart and mind, great or small, why bother hanging around the outer lobby trying to persuade someone there, however distinguished, to go and ask on your behalf? “Through Christ we have access to the Father in one Spirit” (Ephesians 2.18). If Paul could say that to newly converted Gentiles, he can certainly say it to us today. To deny this, even by implication, is to call in question one of the central blessings and privileges of the gospel. The whole point of the letter to the Hebrews is that Jesus Christ himself is “our man at court,” “our man in Heaven.” He, says Paul in Romans 8, is interceding for us; why should we need anyone else?

Purgatory?
In the Medieval Western Church, in addition to the Church Militant on earth, there were two divisions among the departed, those in Purgatory (“expectant”) and those in glory (“triumphant”).

This, then, is my proposal. Instead of the three divisions of the medieval church (triumphant, expectant, militant) I believe that there are only two. The church in heaven/paradise is both triumphant and expectant [of the resurrection]. I do not expect everyone to agree with this conclusion, but I would urge an honest searching of the scriptures to see whether these things be so (p. 41).

Wright’s theological objections to Purgatory encompass two concerns: justification and sanctification. Purgatory has been understood as a place needed so that believing sinners can fulfill God’s requirement of penal satisfaction and as a place needed to complete the process of sanctification. In both these cases, Wright finds the rationale of Purgatory to be contradictory to what “our foundation charter” teaches.

First, in regards to Purgatory and justification, Wright appeals to the finished work of Christ on the cross: “I cannot stress sufficiently that if we raise the question of punishment for sin, this is something that has already been dealt with on the cross of Jesus (p. 30). He believes that there have been “crude and unbiblical” versions of this doctrine. Nevertheless “the instincts of the Reformers, if not always their exact expressions, were spot on.” Romans 8.3 assures us that sin has already been condemned by God in the flesh of Jesus on the cross. “The idea that Christians need to suffer punishment for their sins in a post-mortem purgatory, or anywhere else, reveals a straightforward failure to grasp the very heart of what was acheived on the cross.”

With regards to sanctification, Wright thinks that the need for purgatory shows a failure to grasp the Biblical teaching regarding the identity of self with the body, and the role of this life in sanctifying the Christian. For those in union with Christ death puts an end to sin. There is nothing left in the intermediate state to “purge.” The believer is instantly sinless and ready for God’s presence (Wright is quite clear, by the way, that there is an intermediate state, and that believers are present with Jesus immediately at death while they wait for the future resurrection). This world, for believers, is Purgatory. Nothing remains in the next but to enjoy God’s presence and wait for the resurrection.

A major part of this book deals with the Biblical stress on resurrection as the believer’s hope, rather than the intermediate state (though Wright firmly believes in such a state). Wright suspects that the idea of people as essentially disembodied souls leads the need for purgatory. The death of the body becomes an insignificant transition in this view. Thus, the soul is left, essentially unaffected, needing increased sanctification. The result throws the entire Biblical pattern out of shape. According to the Epistles and Gospels, “First there is baptism and faith… The word of the gospel, awakening faith in the heart, is itself the cleansing we require” (p. 32). The struggle with sin continues but the “glorious news” is that the struggle with sin in this life, will give way to the triumph of holiness immediately at death. “Or, to put it the way Paul does: if we have died with Christ, we shall live with him, knowing that Christ being raised from the dead will not die again; and you, in him, must regard and reckon yourselves as dead to sin and alive to God (Romans 6.8-11). ‘Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ … and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God'” (p. 33).

To the accusation that this quick and easy sanctification seems “arrogant,” “cocksure,” and “triumphalist,” Wright replies, “there is a note of triumph there, and if you try to take that away you will pull the heart of the gospel out with it.”

When the prodigal son put the ring on his finger and the shoes on his feet, was he being arrogant when he allowed his father’s lavish generosity to take its course? Would it not have been far more arrogant, far more clinging to one’s own inverted dignity as a “very humble” penitent, to insist that he should be allowed to wear sackcloth and ashes for a week or two until he’d had time to adjust to the father’s house? No: the complaint about the prodigal’s arrogance, I fear, comes not from the father, but from the older brother. We should beware lest that syndrome destroy our delight in the gospel of the free grace of God. We mustn’t let the upside-down arrogance of those who are too proud to receive free grace prevent us from hearing and receiving the best news in the world.

***

This book has many other things including a critique of the novel “Kingdom season” that belongs with ascension rather than before advent, as well as a demythologizing of Mary’s sainthood over against Roman Catholic claims. This might be a great book to give to a Roman Catholic friend since it isn’t so polemical as to simply enrage him or her, but it is nevertheless brutally honest and challenging.

A couple of things Presbyterians will need to be alert to:

First, Wright seems unwilling to rule out the possibility that prayers for the dead might be appropriate. Putting the issue in my own terminology, the question is whether we pray for things that are already happening or promised to happen. Prayers for the dead were rejected by the Reformers as part of the baggage of Purgatory. Obviously, Wright is opposed to any idea that the dead are in a place where they might have to wait or suffer depending on whether or not they receive more or less mercy. All the dead in Christ receive all the same blessings of God’s presence in that estate, and all are still awaiting the resurrection. But according to Wright we can still ask for them what we already know God is doing and going to do.

Second, while I appreciate Wright’s repudiation of universalism and annihilationism and some related statements, I fear his view of sinners ultimately losing their humanity will bring us back to annihilationism (since why bother to torment a nonhuman?). I think Wright’s view of the image of God as vocation has some promise, but we need to remember that God’s call is irrevocable, and will still exist even if people have lost the opportunity to respond to it.

Despite these quibbles, people who have read about N. T. Wright on the internet are probably going to find this little book surprising. More than one source claims that Wright is seeking some sort of convergence with Roman Catholics and is “redefining” (one of the nicer accusations) the doctrine of justification to do so. If this is true then Wright seems to be seriously lacking in strategic intelligence. Why write a book designed to repudiate the cherished beliefs the more Anglo-catholic believers in the Anglican communion? Either Wright’s ecumenical motivations have been overstated or (more likely in my opinion) his desires for unity, no matter how great they are, are simply not strong enough to overturn his core Evangelical commitments which are evident in the theology of this book.

To put it another way, his ecumenicism only exists in an Evangelical framework. His seeking fellowship with Rome entails a desire for them to embrace the truth rather than the error this book is designed to prevent from growing in the Anglican Church. And if that’s the nature of Wright’s ecumenicism, then it doesn’t sound quite as threatening to Protestant Orthodoxy as it is typically described as being. Wanting Roman Catholics to become Protestant in their beliefs is hardly reason for Protestants to be suspicious of Wright.

(In some ways, by the way, I think Wright would be a more accurate Pauline scholar if he had more Anglo-Catholic sympathy. For in such a case his material on gender and ordination to the gospel ministry would probably be substantially better than it is.)

Overall this is a valuable book on what the Bible says about the believers and their hope at death.