Things We Must Understand If We are to Come to Terms With NT Wright's Thought

1. A large scale understanding of the purposes of God.

This is an understanding that the purposes of God run unbroken from the promise delivered to Adam until the coming of the Christ (and of course will continue onward until the second judgment).

We have to not only be aware of these purposes, but understand our salvation and our personal ministry in this context. We have to reject dispensational thought whole-heartedly, and any notions that divide the purposes of God in any way.

This is overdue!

2. Understand eschatology without ridiculous speculations.

The Rapture! Christ is going to enter the temple mount again! The mark of the beast! The plot of the unbearably terrible Left Behind books!

Eschatology is about the return of Christ, and the work laid out for the church in anticipation of it.

3. A more Biblical understanding of assurance of salvation

We need to take the Bible seriously when it says things like "if you continue in your faith, established and firm." We need to understand what Jesus means when he says "every branch that does not bear fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire." Why does Jesus speak the parable of the sheep and the goats? Wright makes mincemeat of the simplistic understanding of assurance that is common currency in our evangelical circles.

I don't want to spend too long explaining it, but Wright understands the judgment often spoke of in the NT, and particularly in the writings of Paul, as a confirmation of the decree of being "in the right" that is given in justification. After that declaration is made, the Spirit works with our effort to produce good works, which will then be judged on the last day.

Can you counter this argument? He develops it well. Assurance as understood by the early reformers is not what is often taught today. Without a full understanding of it, there are a lot of passages that have to be explained away, and Wright is a master of demolishing these arguments.

4. A Humble Theological Heart

There are two possible reactions to Wright's writings. One is to knee-jerk reject all of his thoughts because he doesn't accept imputed righteousness, or because his thoughts on justification are very foreign. This is a mistake. In fact, Wright has many very good thoughts for us, most particularly in challenging us to think of the purposes of God in a larger frame of reference, and fully appreciate and understand our faith as a continuation of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This is often acknowledged, but not always felt in its depth. In addition, he masterfully exposes many simplistic and weak points in our understanding of the Word and of our doctrine.

The second is to whole-heartedly embrace his works, and become an enthusiastic apostle of Wright. The most at risk of this are young people who have the urge to rebel without rejecting their faith, intelligent people who want to feel superior, and the intellectuals remote from actual gospel work. I know I just laid down a serious gauntlet which might possibly offend, but that is how I see it.

5. Not Following Piper into his Understanding God's Righteousness

If you ever read Piper's books, you may remember that he defines "the righteousness of God" as "God's commitment to act to uphold his Glory." It is an interesting idea that is certainly an outworking of God's righteousness (meaning that God's righteousness CAUSES him to act in defense of his glory), but to DEFINE his righteousness in that way is exegetically unworkable. It often seems like Wright's career has been a long and thorough defense of ideas he came upon in his graduate studies. Unfortunately, this also seems to be what Piper is doing (to be fair, Piper's seems like a smaller deal because the stakes are smaller and the effect of error much smaller). The result is that his critiques of Wright, though often good, are easy to minimize because his mistake there makes his whole argument suspect.

We all have those little insights in the Scriptures that come from a quiet time that seem so fitting to us, but in fact don't carry the weight we think they do. We have to be willing to let them fall to the ground.