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Justification - God's Plan & Paul's Vision by Tom Wright
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About the author
N.T. Wright
461 books2,883 followersN. T. Wright is the former Bishop of Durham in the Church of England (2003-2010) and one of the world's leading Bible scholars. He is now serving as the chair of New Testament and Early Christianity at the School of Divinity at the University of St. Andrews. He has been featured on ABC News, Dateline NBC, The Colbert Report, and Fresh Air, and he has taught New Testament studies at Cambridge, McGill, and Oxford universities. Wright is the award-winning author of Surprised by Hope, Simply Christian, The Last Word, The Challenge of Jesus, The Meaning of Jesus (coauthored with Marcus Borg), as well as the much heralded series Christian Origins and the Question of God.
He also publishes under Tom Wright.
He also publishes under Tom Wright.
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June 1, 2025
WRIGHT EXPLAINS AND DEFENDS HIS ‘NEW PERSPECTIVE ON PAUL’ VIEWS
Nicholas Thomas Wright (born 1948) is an Anglican bishop (Bishop of Durham from 2003-2010), is a senior research fellow at Wycliffe Hall at the University of Oxford, and was formerly Research Professor at St. Mary's College in Scotland.
He wrote in the Preface to this 2009 book, “When I heard about John Piper’s book ‘The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright,’ … I eventually decided that an initial response was called for… Piper is one of an increasing number who, supposing the great Reformation tradition of reading and preaching Paul to be under attack, he leapt to its defense, and every passing week brings a further batch of worried and anxious ripostes to the ‘new perspective on Paul’ and to myself as one of its exponents… I hope… to sketch something which is more like an outflanking exercise than a direct challenge on all the possible fronts…” (Pg. 9)
He continues, “What is so contentious about it, then?... it may help if I set out very briefly where some… of the main pressure points lie… to begin with, the question is about ‘the nature and scope of salvation.’ Many Christians … have seen ‘salvation’ as meaning ‘going to heaven when you die.’ I and others have argued that… In the Bible, salvation is not God’s rescue of people FROM the world but the rescue of the world itself… Second, the question is about the MEANS of salvation, how it is accomplished… salvation is accomplished by the sovereign grace of God… and appropriated through faith alone… I agree 100%... [But] Where is the Holy Spirit?... Part of my plea in this book is for the Spirit’s work to be taken seriously in relation both to Christian faith itself and to the way in which that faith is ‘active through love.’” (Pg. 10-11)
He goes on, “Paul’s doctrine of justification is the place where four themes meet… First, [it]… is about the work of Jesus the Messiah of Israel… Second, Paul’s doctrine of justification is therefore about what we may call the COVENANT… [which] was from the beginning the saving call of a worldwide family through which God’s saving purposes for the world were to be realized… Third, Paul’s doctrine of justification is focused on the divine LAWCOURT. God, as judge, ‘finds in favor of,’ and hence acquits from their sin, those who believe in Jesus Christ… Fourth, Paul’s doctrine of justification is bound up with eschatology… his vision of God’s future for the whole world and for his people…” (Pg. 10-13)
He states, “It is central to Paul… that God had a single plan all along through which he intended to rescue the world and the human race, and that this single plan was centered upon the call of Israel, a call which Paul saw coming to fruition in Israel’s representative, the Messiah.” (Pg. 35)
He asserts, many first-century Jews thought of themselves as living in a continuing narrative stretching from earliest times, through ancient prophecies, and on toward a climactic moment of deliverance which might come at any moment… Scripture was seen… [as] a large-scale controlling narrative whose ending had not yet arrived… It offered the earlier acts in the drama that was still taking place. I find it curious that … critics like John Piper … pass over this theme in silence.” (Pg. 59)
He adds, “Paul’s view of God’s purposes is that God, the creator, called Abraham so that through his family he, God, could rescue the world from its plight… Call it ‘God’s single plan,’ if you like… 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… John Piper … thinks a ‘covenantal’ reading would be a ‘belittling’ of Paul’s meaning… When will it become clear to the [critics]? 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.” (Pg. 94-95)
He argues, “How can you, 'old perspective' diehards, be seduced back into a romantic or existential individualism[?] There is a SINGLE FAMILY, because this is the whole point; the one God, the Creator, always intended to call into being a single family for Abraham. The single plan through Israel for the world has turned out to be the single plan through Israel’s representative, the Messiah, now from the one promised family. ‘There is no Jew or Greek!’… Could it be that… the old perspective was always wary of this message because it had grown precisely out of a fissiparous Protestantism which was bound to see this challenge as a bridge too far?” (Pg. 131)
He summarizes: “1. The promises made to Abraham were a COVENANT… The covenant always had in view the liberation of the entire human race from the plight of Genesis 3-11… 2. [We should]… understand Paul’s uses of … ‘membership within God’s family’ as follows: … ‘membership in God’s eschatological people’ includes as its central element the notion of having one’s sins dealt with… 3. … though covenant eschatology, and Christology are vital, the lawcourt has not been left behind. But it is not front and center… 4. … ‘righteousness’ … is the status of the covenant member… 5. The basis for all this, in theology and eschatology, is the faithful, loving self-giving death of the Messiah… God always intended that his purposes would be accomplished through faithful Israel.” (Pg. 133-135)
He notes, “Here is the point… that was one of James Dunn’s major breakthrough moments in the development of the new perspective. The ‘works of the law’ against which Paul warned were not, [Dunn] suggested, the moral good deeds done to earn justification (or salvation) but the particular commandments and ordinances which kept Jew and Gentile separate from one another.” (Pg. 172)
He says, “the faith of Abraham, which Paul sees as the exact model for the faith of the Christian… is the faith which indicates the presence of genuine, humble, trusting and indeed we might say image-bearing humanity… ‘faithfulness’ has all along… been the thing that God requires from his people, the ‘Israel’ who are the middle term in his single plan. If the plan has been fulfilled by the Messiah’s faithfulness… the badge of the covenant people from then on will be the same: … faith, confessing that Jesus is Lord… Faith of this sort is the true-Israel, true-human sign, the badge of God’s redeemed people.” (Pg. 209)
He asserts, “You cannot… have a Pauline doctrine of assurance… without the Pauline doctrine of the Spirit. Try to do it, and you will put too much weight on human faith, which will then generate all kinds of further questions about types of faith, about faith and feelings, about what happens when faith wobbles. This, in turn, will generate worried reactions, as people … regard strong emotional certainty of being saved as the criterion for being saved in fact. And from that muddle there spring … the anti-moralism which has bedeviled a certain kind of liberal theology, which, whenever it hears a moral command, protests that it believes in grace, not law. All this could be avoided if we would only stick with Paul himself.” (Pg. 237)
He summarizes, “Justification is not just about ‘how I get my sins forgiven.’ It is about how God creates… a single family, celebrating their one-for-all forgiveness and their assured ‘no condemnation’ in Christ, through whom his purposes can now be extended into the wider world.” (Pg. 248)
This (rather detailed) book will be of keen interest to those studying the ‘New Perspective’ on Paul, and similar matters.
Nicholas Thomas Wright (born 1948) is an Anglican bishop (Bishop of Durham from 2003-2010), is a senior research fellow at Wycliffe Hall at the University of Oxford, and was formerly Research Professor at St. Mary's College in Scotland.
He wrote in the Preface to this 2009 book, “When I heard about John Piper’s book ‘The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright,’ … I eventually decided that an initial response was called for… Piper is one of an increasing number who, supposing the great Reformation tradition of reading and preaching Paul to be under attack, he leapt to its defense, and every passing week brings a further batch of worried and anxious ripostes to the ‘new perspective on Paul’ and to myself as one of its exponents… I hope… to sketch something which is more like an outflanking exercise than a direct challenge on all the possible fronts…” (Pg. 9)
He continues, “What is so contentious about it, then?... it may help if I set out very briefly where some… of the main pressure points lie… to begin with, the question is about ‘the nature and scope of salvation.’ Many Christians … have seen ‘salvation’ as meaning ‘going to heaven when you die.’ I and others have argued that… In the Bible, salvation is not God’s rescue of people FROM the world but the rescue of the world itself… Second, the question is about the MEANS of salvation, how it is accomplished… salvation is accomplished by the sovereign grace of God… and appropriated through faith alone… I agree 100%... [But] Where is the Holy Spirit?... Part of my plea in this book is for the Spirit’s work to be taken seriously in relation both to Christian faith itself and to the way in which that faith is ‘active through love.’” (Pg. 10-11)
He goes on, “Paul’s doctrine of justification is the place where four themes meet… First, [it]… is about the work of Jesus the Messiah of Israel… Second, Paul’s doctrine of justification is therefore about what we may call the COVENANT… [which] was from the beginning the saving call of a worldwide family through which God’s saving purposes for the world were to be realized… Third, Paul’s doctrine of justification is focused on the divine LAWCOURT. God, as judge, ‘finds in favor of,’ and hence acquits from their sin, those who believe in Jesus Christ… Fourth, Paul’s doctrine of justification is bound up with eschatology… his vision of God’s future for the whole world and for his people…” (Pg. 10-13)
He states, “It is central to Paul… that God had a single plan all along through which he intended to rescue the world and the human race, and that this single plan was centered upon the call of Israel, a call which Paul saw coming to fruition in Israel’s representative, the Messiah.” (Pg. 35)
He asserts, many first-century Jews thought of themselves as living in a continuing narrative stretching from earliest times, through ancient prophecies, and on toward a climactic moment of deliverance which might come at any moment… Scripture was seen… [as] a large-scale controlling narrative whose ending had not yet arrived… It offered the earlier acts in the drama that was still taking place. I find it curious that … critics like John Piper … pass over this theme in silence.” (Pg. 59)
He adds, “Paul’s view of God’s purposes is that God, the creator, called Abraham so that through his family he, God, could rescue the world from its plight… Call it ‘God’s single plan,’ if you like… 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… John Piper … thinks a ‘covenantal’ reading would be a ‘belittling’ of Paul’s meaning… When will it become clear to the [critics]? 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.” (Pg. 94-95)
He argues, “How can you, 'old perspective' diehards, be seduced back into a romantic or existential individualism[?] There is a SINGLE FAMILY, because this is the whole point; the one God, the Creator, always intended to call into being a single family for Abraham. The single plan through Israel for the world has turned out to be the single plan through Israel’s representative, the Messiah, now from the one promised family. ‘There is no Jew or Greek!’… Could it be that… the old perspective was always wary of this message because it had grown precisely out of a fissiparous Protestantism which was bound to see this challenge as a bridge too far?” (Pg. 131)
He summarizes: “1. The promises made to Abraham were a COVENANT… The covenant always had in view the liberation of the entire human race from the plight of Genesis 3-11… 2. [We should]… understand Paul’s uses of … ‘membership within God’s family’ as follows: … ‘membership in God’s eschatological people’ includes as its central element the notion of having one’s sins dealt with… 3. … though covenant eschatology, and Christology are vital, the lawcourt has not been left behind. But it is not front and center… 4. … ‘righteousness’ … is the status of the covenant member… 5. The basis for all this, in theology and eschatology, is the faithful, loving self-giving death of the Messiah… God always intended that his purposes would be accomplished through faithful Israel.” (Pg. 133-135)
He notes, “Here is the point… that was one of James Dunn’s major breakthrough moments in the development of the new perspective. The ‘works of the law’ against which Paul warned were not, [Dunn] suggested, the moral good deeds done to earn justification (or salvation) but the particular commandments and ordinances which kept Jew and Gentile separate from one another.” (Pg. 172)
He says, “the faith of Abraham, which Paul sees as the exact model for the faith of the Christian… is the faith which indicates the presence of genuine, humble, trusting and indeed we might say image-bearing humanity… ‘faithfulness’ has all along… been the thing that God requires from his people, the ‘Israel’ who are the middle term in his single plan. If the plan has been fulfilled by the Messiah’s faithfulness… the badge of the covenant people from then on will be the same: … faith, confessing that Jesus is Lord… Faith of this sort is the true-Israel, true-human sign, the badge of God’s redeemed people.” (Pg. 209)
He asserts, “You cannot… have a Pauline doctrine of assurance… without the Pauline doctrine of the Spirit. Try to do it, and you will put too much weight on human faith, which will then generate all kinds of further questions about types of faith, about faith and feelings, about what happens when faith wobbles. This, in turn, will generate worried reactions, as people … regard strong emotional certainty of being saved as the criterion for being saved in fact. And from that muddle there spring … the anti-moralism which has bedeviled a certain kind of liberal theology, which, whenever it hears a moral command, protests that it believes in grace, not law. All this could be avoided if we would only stick with Paul himself.” (Pg. 237)
He summarizes, “Justification is not just about ‘how I get my sins forgiven.’ It is about how God creates… a single family, celebrating their one-for-all forgiveness and their assured ‘no condemnation’ in Christ, through whom his purposes can now be extended into the wider world.” (Pg. 248)
This (rather detailed) book will be of keen interest to those studying the ‘New Perspective’ on Paul, and similar matters.
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