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Tom Wright and the Search for Truth: A Theological Evaluation
The Search for Truth is an impressively comprehensive critique of Tom Wright’s scholarship. It covers his theological method, the controversy over his theology of justification, and even his Christology. Not only that, but Holland also provides a rival constructive theology and narrative substructure in his new exodus motif. There are very few scholars who could have written this book, but Tom Holland has risen to the challenge, and he has left the church and the academy a wonderful gift that will prove to serve as a useful guide for years to come. Whether you are relatively new to the current debates in Pauline theology or are well versed in the field, you will gain much theological fruit and edification from the time spent reading Tom Holland’s The Search for Truth.
Mark Baker part of a review in Books at a Glance
Tom Holland provides a long overdue and thorough critique of the biblical scholarship of Tom Wright. Holland poses many excellent questions that point to fundamental, unrecognized, and potentially very damaging flaws in many of Wright’s methods and arguments. In an uncomfortable number of instances, Holland argues, Wright is just plain old wrong! Holland particularly identifies how the Second Temple Literature, as well as Hellenism as a whole, provides an unnecessary and unjustified foundation for Wright’s interpretations, especially of Paul. Holland does more than simply show how and where he believes Wright is in error; he presents numerous constructive and viable alternatives that merit further consideration. Regardless of whether one accepts these alternatives, if Holland is right in his fundamental criticisms, then Wright has a lot of explaining (and revising) to do!
Stanley E. Porter, President and Dean, Professor of New Testament, Roy A. Hope Chair in Christian Worldview, McMaster Divinity College, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
I have long felt that someone ought to write a comprehensive, probing critique of N. T. Wright’s theological thought. I’m very grateful to Tom Holland for tackling this challenging, yet much-needed task. Holland rightly, I believe, raises serious concerns regarding Wright’s methodology, which tends to elevate Second Temple literature above the Hebrew Scriptures. While Wright is correct in his efforts to peel back layers of Reformation tradition in reading Paul, Holland shows that Wright’s own methodology does not always live up to the noble aims of the critical realism he espouses. No doubt there is much to learn from Wright’s scholarly contribution. The way forward, however, I believe, is subjecting Wright’s work to the kind of constructive critique Holland has provided. It is my hope that this volume marks the beginning of an even more thoroughgoing scrutiny of Wright’s reconstructed synthesis-with the result that Paul’s thought can be discerned more cogently from the New Testament documents against the most important ancient background, which surely must be the inspired canonical contributions of the Old Testament writers. Even the most ardent followers of Wright, not to mention Wright himself, will want to take note of this measured, yet pointed and sustained interaction.
Andreas J. Kostenberger, Senior Research Professor of New Testament & Biblical Theology, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and Founder of Biblical Foundations (www.biblicalfoundations.org)
Dr Holland presents a careful, eirenic, and thorough examination of the influences and assumptions that have shaped Tom Wright’s approach to the theology of Paul. He treats his arguments to critical but fair scrutiny. It is important that widely popular claims are made accountable in an informed manner. In achieving this Dr Holland provides us with a resources that will prove invaluable for reaching a coherent evaluation.
Mark Baker part of a review in Books at a Glance
Tom Holland provides a long overdue and thorough critique of the biblical scholarship of Tom Wright. Holland poses many excellent questions that point to fundamental, unrecognized, and potentially very damaging flaws in many of Wright’s methods and arguments. In an uncomfortable number of instances, Holland argues, Wright is just plain old wrong! Holland particularly identifies how the Second Temple Literature, as well as Hellenism as a whole, provides an unnecessary and unjustified foundation for Wright’s interpretations, especially of Paul. Holland does more than simply show how and where he believes Wright is in error; he presents numerous constructive and viable alternatives that merit further consideration. Regardless of whether one accepts these alternatives, if Holland is right in his fundamental criticisms, then Wright has a lot of explaining (and revising) to do!
Stanley E. Porter, President and Dean, Professor of New Testament, Roy A. Hope Chair in Christian Worldview, McMaster Divinity College, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
I have long felt that someone ought to write a comprehensive, probing critique of N. T. Wright’s theological thought. I’m very grateful to Tom Holland for tackling this challenging, yet much-needed task. Holland rightly, I believe, raises serious concerns regarding Wright’s methodology, which tends to elevate Second Temple literature above the Hebrew Scriptures. While Wright is correct in his efforts to peel back layers of Reformation tradition in reading Paul, Holland shows that Wright’s own methodology does not always live up to the noble aims of the critical realism he espouses. No doubt there is much to learn from Wright’s scholarly contribution. The way forward, however, I believe, is subjecting Wright’s work to the kind of constructive critique Holland has provided. It is my hope that this volume marks the beginning of an even more thoroughgoing scrutiny of Wright’s reconstructed synthesis-with the result that Paul’s thought can be discerned more cogently from the New Testament documents against the most important ancient background, which surely must be the inspired canonical contributions of the Old Testament writers. Even the most ardent followers of Wright, not to mention Wright himself, will want to take note of this measured, yet pointed and sustained interaction.
Andreas J. Kostenberger, Senior Research Professor of New Testament & Biblical Theology, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and Founder of Biblical Foundations (www.biblicalfoundations.org)
Dr Holland presents a careful, eirenic, and thorough examination of the influences and assumptions that have shaped Tom Wright’s approach to the theology of Paul. He treats his arguments to critical but fair scrutiny. It is important that widely popular claims are made accountable in an informed manner. In achieving this Dr Holland provides us with a resources that will prove invaluable for reaching a coherent evaluation.
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499 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 31, 2017
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December 24, 2017
N. T. Wright is a giant in New Testament studies. It has been 20 years since he published What Saint Paul Really Said, a book which made him internationally famous and changed the way countless pastors and students viewed the New Testament. To be fair, E.P. Sanders and James Dunn had been teaching what came to be called the New Perspective on Paul for many years, but they were mostly confined to “scholarly” circles. N. T. Wright, while not identifying fully with the NPP, popularized many of the ideas associated with that line of reasoning.
Tom Holland has been researching and writing in the same areas as Wright since the 1970s, and, while appreciating many of Wright’s contributions, thinks that Wright has set in place some bad ways of reasoning and doing biblical studies that have the potential to cause major damage in the realm of biblical theology. So this book, Tom Wright and the Search for Truth, is an interaction between two thinkers: from one Tom to another, as it were.
Holland writes: “In the end, I suggest that he [N. T. Wright] has given us ‘What Saint Paul Ought to Have Really Said’ rather than ‘What Saint Paul Really said’. This claim is the burden of this book…” p. 17
Holland is clearly uncomfortable to have to write this book. He seems to find it distasteful to write an entire book as a critique of one person. However, he believes that it is necessary that someone point out Wright’s methodological and theological shortcomings, as they have been so influential on the course of New Testament studies. Despite the critical nature of this book, Holland does appreciate the many helpful contributions made by Wright. He says, “I do not deny that Tom Wright has done some truly excellent work, introducing millions of people to a greater knowledge of Christ and challenging many cherished ideas that needed to be reconsidered. The thrust of my argument is, however, that some of his solutions are badly constructed and that they need to be subjected to the same detailed examination which he performs on other peoples’ writings.” p. 160
Finally, Holland wants to show that Wright’s criticism of the legacy of the Reformation is off target and wrongheaded. “I would suggest that the Reformers are better overall guides to the apostles’ understanding [than N. T. Wright], for they are much more careful in dealing with some of these possible levels of meaning I have highlighted within the term justification.” p. 449
Summary
In chapter 1, Holland introduces his main ideas and sets the course for the book. In chapters 2-3 he focuses on the Apostle Paul’s understanding of himself and his role.
Chapter 2 attempts to refute Wright’s claim that Paul came from a Zealot background. Holland argues that Paul was simply a Pharisee of the Hillel school who wouldn’t have sympathized with the Zealots. Among many strong arguments, the one that struck me the most here was the fact that Paul had kept up his Roman citizen which we see him utilizing multiple times in the book of Acts. A zealot would have repudiated Roman citizenship. In chapter 3 Holland examines how Paul saw his mission after his conversion. Holland shows that Paul utilized imagery from the servant in Isaiah to understand his role as a Christian teacher and missionary rather than intertestamental Maccabean imagery.
In chapter 4, the book shifts to a discussion of N. T. Wright’s methodology. One of the big complaints Holland has about Wright is that he often goes to Hellenistic literature to find context for Paul’s writings when it is far more likely that Paul is referencing the Hebrew Scripture, i.e. the Old Testament, rather than sources of Hellenistic origin. Chapter 4 is not specifically directed at Wright, but rather at other writers who have followed his lead and taken his methods even farther than he would himself. Chapter 5 deals with more examples in Paul’s writings where Wright sees Hellenistic imagery. In each case, Holland attempts to show a more plausible Old Testament antecedent to Paul’s writings as an alternative to Wright. Chapter 6 discusses Wright’s heavy use of intertestamental literature in his interpretation of Paul. He argues that much of the intertestamental literature Wright references was not widely distributed in the 1st century. If Paul had even read some of it, which is not certain, it would still be unlikely that he would be influenced by it. Furthermore, the likelihood that any of his readers would have ever read this literature and be able to understand his context would be even more implausible.
In Chapters 7 and 8, Paul’s Christology and view of the atonement are examined. Holland argues that by taking the story of the martyrs in 2 Maccabees as a major influence on Jesus’ self awareness, Wright creates a “disconnect between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith.” While in his theology Wright is orthodox, in his biblical interpretation he creates a Christ who did not know He was God, did not know the purpose of His death and atonement, and, at best, believed that His crucifixion would avert future political judgment on Israel. Holland says that this is because Wright ignores the birth narratives of Jesus which give a clear indication that Jesus would know who He was and what His purpose was.
Chapters 9-12 deal with Wright’s view of Justification juxtaposed with Paul’s teaching on justification in his many letters. Holland says that Wright has greatly misunderstood the teachings of various Reformers and creates a straw man of the Reformation in the area of justification. “…if Wright had known his historical theology better he might not have ran with the claim s of the New Perspective in the first place.” p. 328 Holland sees a weakness in Wright’s view of the law as wholly positive in the life of Israel and never negative or condemning. Because of this Wright presents justification almost entirely ecclesiologically rather than soteriologically. Holland identifies 9 different uses of the term “justification” in the New Testament, or perhaps more precisely 9 levels of justification. He argues that the fact that Wright misses the various shades of meaning in Paul, mostly due to his missing the Old Testament background, leads to Wright’s narrow view of justification.
The book concludes with Holland giving his own account of the meaning of justification and the atonement for Paul.
Evaluation
This book is certainly relevant given the level of influence N. T. Wright has had on New Testament Studies. When I was writing my thesis on Philippians 3 back in 2003-2004, the New Perspective on Paul was all the rage. While I don’t hear it named as much now, its influence is pervasive. Almost everyone who writes about the New Testament feels the need to interact with intertestamental literature. Holland is certainly making a gutsy move by writing this book. However, I have been uncomfortable in the past with how Wright plays fast and loose with history and his claims for his constructions. I’ve never been able to put my finger on anything specific though. After hearing Tom Holland’s arguments, I think that anyone who has been strongly influence by Wright should read this book and consider it well.
In addition to his direct interaction with Wright, Holland made me think about many passages in new ways. Holland reads Paul’s assertion that the Corinthians were “bought with a price” not as the purchase of a slave from the slave market, but as the bride-price being paid by a kinsman-redeemer. This seems to make much more sense in the context of the passage and sets these passages in a new light. His rules for using historical sources, his various meanings of “justification”, and his emphasis of the Exodus/Passover as the main theme in the life of the church in the New Testament have all given me a lot of food for thought.
I wasn’t persuaded by everything in the book. His seeming denigration of the place of water baptism, for instance, never fully made sense to me. Perhaps he discusses this more in other books he has written, but as it stands I was not convinced by his movements in this direction. On the whole I have a hard time understanding why many theologians today emphasize the corporate aspect of several passages in the New Testament and use this to argue against the individual application of those passages. It would seem that whatever applies to a group would apply to the members of that group by subimplication, and so drawing a sharp corporate/individual distinction is confusing for me. Holland does a better job than many theologians in avoiding this problem, but there are times when I see this tendency creeping in. There were a few other questions I have about Holland’s theology as well, but none of these things detracts from the importance of this book. I enjoyed reading and thinking through Tom Wright and the Search for Truth. Whether you end up agreeing with all of Holland’s positions, if you keep up with theological trends you’ll definitely want to interact with this book.
Tom Holland has been researching and writing in the same areas as Wright since the 1970s, and, while appreciating many of Wright’s contributions, thinks that Wright has set in place some bad ways of reasoning and doing biblical studies that have the potential to cause major damage in the realm of biblical theology. So this book, Tom Wright and the Search for Truth, is an interaction between two thinkers: from one Tom to another, as it were.
Holland writes: “In the end, I suggest that he [N. T. Wright] has given us ‘What Saint Paul Ought to Have Really Said’ rather than ‘What Saint Paul Really said’. This claim is the burden of this book…” p. 17
Holland is clearly uncomfortable to have to write this book. He seems to find it distasteful to write an entire book as a critique of one person. However, he believes that it is necessary that someone point out Wright’s methodological and theological shortcomings, as they have been so influential on the course of New Testament studies. Despite the critical nature of this book, Holland does appreciate the many helpful contributions made by Wright. He says, “I do not deny that Tom Wright has done some truly excellent work, introducing millions of people to a greater knowledge of Christ and challenging many cherished ideas that needed to be reconsidered. The thrust of my argument is, however, that some of his solutions are badly constructed and that they need to be subjected to the same detailed examination which he performs on other peoples’ writings.” p. 160
Finally, Holland wants to show that Wright’s criticism of the legacy of the Reformation is off target and wrongheaded. “I would suggest that the Reformers are better overall guides to the apostles’ understanding [than N. T. Wright], for they are much more careful in dealing with some of these possible levels of meaning I have highlighted within the term justification.” p. 449
Summary
In chapter 1, Holland introduces his main ideas and sets the course for the book. In chapters 2-3 he focuses on the Apostle Paul’s understanding of himself and his role.
Chapter 2 attempts to refute Wright’s claim that Paul came from a Zealot background. Holland argues that Paul was simply a Pharisee of the Hillel school who wouldn’t have sympathized with the Zealots. Among many strong arguments, the one that struck me the most here was the fact that Paul had kept up his Roman citizen which we see him utilizing multiple times in the book of Acts. A zealot would have repudiated Roman citizenship. In chapter 3 Holland examines how Paul saw his mission after his conversion. Holland shows that Paul utilized imagery from the servant in Isaiah to understand his role as a Christian teacher and missionary rather than intertestamental Maccabean imagery.
In chapter 4, the book shifts to a discussion of N. T. Wright’s methodology. One of the big complaints Holland has about Wright is that he often goes to Hellenistic literature to find context for Paul’s writings when it is far more likely that Paul is referencing the Hebrew Scripture, i.e. the Old Testament, rather than sources of Hellenistic origin. Chapter 4 is not specifically directed at Wright, but rather at other writers who have followed his lead and taken his methods even farther than he would himself. Chapter 5 deals with more examples in Paul’s writings where Wright sees Hellenistic imagery. In each case, Holland attempts to show a more plausible Old Testament antecedent to Paul’s writings as an alternative to Wright. Chapter 6 discusses Wright’s heavy use of intertestamental literature in his interpretation of Paul. He argues that much of the intertestamental literature Wright references was not widely distributed in the 1st century. If Paul had even read some of it, which is not certain, it would still be unlikely that he would be influenced by it. Furthermore, the likelihood that any of his readers would have ever read this literature and be able to understand his context would be even more implausible.
In Chapters 7 and 8, Paul’s Christology and view of the atonement are examined. Holland argues that by taking the story of the martyrs in 2 Maccabees as a major influence on Jesus’ self awareness, Wright creates a “disconnect between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith.” While in his theology Wright is orthodox, in his biblical interpretation he creates a Christ who did not know He was God, did not know the purpose of His death and atonement, and, at best, believed that His crucifixion would avert future political judgment on Israel. Holland says that this is because Wright ignores the birth narratives of Jesus which give a clear indication that Jesus would know who He was and what His purpose was.
Chapters 9-12 deal with Wright’s view of Justification juxtaposed with Paul’s teaching on justification in his many letters. Holland says that Wright has greatly misunderstood the teachings of various Reformers and creates a straw man of the Reformation in the area of justification. “…if Wright had known his historical theology better he might not have ran with the claim s of the New Perspective in the first place.” p. 328 Holland sees a weakness in Wright’s view of the law as wholly positive in the life of Israel and never negative or condemning. Because of this Wright presents justification almost entirely ecclesiologically rather than soteriologically. Holland identifies 9 different uses of the term “justification” in the New Testament, or perhaps more precisely 9 levels of justification. He argues that the fact that Wright misses the various shades of meaning in Paul, mostly due to his missing the Old Testament background, leads to Wright’s narrow view of justification.
The book concludes with Holland giving his own account of the meaning of justification and the atonement for Paul.
Evaluation
This book is certainly relevant given the level of influence N. T. Wright has had on New Testament Studies. When I was writing my thesis on Philippians 3 back in 2003-2004, the New Perspective on Paul was all the rage. While I don’t hear it named as much now, its influence is pervasive. Almost everyone who writes about the New Testament feels the need to interact with intertestamental literature. Holland is certainly making a gutsy move by writing this book. However, I have been uncomfortable in the past with how Wright plays fast and loose with history and his claims for his constructions. I’ve never been able to put my finger on anything specific though. After hearing Tom Holland’s arguments, I think that anyone who has been strongly influence by Wright should read this book and consider it well.
In addition to his direct interaction with Wright, Holland made me think about many passages in new ways. Holland reads Paul’s assertion that the Corinthians were “bought with a price” not as the purchase of a slave from the slave market, but as the bride-price being paid by a kinsman-redeemer. This seems to make much more sense in the context of the passage and sets these passages in a new light. His rules for using historical sources, his various meanings of “justification”, and his emphasis of the Exodus/Passover as the main theme in the life of the church in the New Testament have all given me a lot of food for thought.
I wasn’t persuaded by everything in the book. His seeming denigration of the place of water baptism, for instance, never fully made sense to me. Perhaps he discusses this more in other books he has written, but as it stands I was not convinced by his movements in this direction. On the whole I have a hard time understanding why many theologians today emphasize the corporate aspect of several passages in the New Testament and use this to argue against the individual application of those passages. It would seem that whatever applies to a group would apply to the members of that group by subimplication, and so drawing a sharp corporate/individual distinction is confusing for me. Holland does a better job than many theologians in avoiding this problem, but there are times when I see this tendency creeping in. There were a few other questions I have about Holland’s theology as well, but none of these things detracts from the importance of this book. I enjoyed reading and thinking through Tom Wright and the Search for Truth. Whether you end up agreeing with all of Holland’s positions, if you keep up with theological trends you’ll definitely want to interact with this book.
February 23, 2018
This review begins with an introduction to N.T. Wright and the New Perspectives on Paul, before discussing Tom Holland's book itself. Those familiar with the NPP should skip down to this later section.
The New Perspective(s) on Paul (NPP)
The ‘New Perspective on Paul’ really started life as a new perspective on Second Temple Judaism – what Jews believed about the Law and grace around the time of Jesus. E. P. Sanders’ ground-breaking 1977 book, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, based on his extensive survey of intertestamental Jewish literature (including the Dead Sea Scrolls), argued that first-century Judaism was not a legalistic religion of ‘works righteousness’ as Christians (particularly the Protestant Reformers) had generally (mis-)understood it, but instead could better be described as ‘covenantal nomism.’ By grace Israel had been brought into a covenant relationship with God; the Law was God’s gracious provision of the means by which, in response to God’s electing grace, Israel could maintain herself in his covenant and under his blessing: getting in by grace, staying in by works.
If Sanders’ account of first-century Judaism is correct, then it challenges the traditional interpretation of Paul’s attitude toward the Law. It couldn’t be that the Apostle, himself once zealous for the Law and understanding it alongside his compatriots as enveloped in the context of God’s covenantal election and grace, now viewed it as deathly ministration by which burdened Jewish consciences sought in vain to earn God’s favour by the merit of their obedience and good deeds.
Sanders himself characterised Paul’s attitude to the Law as unclear and inconsistent: the Damascus experience had led Paul to the conviction that Christ (alone) is the answer to the human plight – therefore the Law cannot be. There was no deficiency in the Law itself other than that it wasn’t Christ. Other New Testament scholars proposed a range of different solutions. James Dunn preferred that the problem Paul had with the Law was the Jews’ abuse thereof to serve their nationalistic exclusivism. The ‘works of the Law’ against which Paul railed were the ‘boundary markers’ (circumcision, Sabbath, food laws) by which Jews distanced themselves from and even excluded gentiles even in the Church of Christ – precipitating the crises in the early Church with which so much of the Pauline epistles and the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) were concerned.
Tom Wright applied Sanders’ and Dunn’s insights to propose a radical revision of the meaning of ‘justification’ in Paul’s letters. Wright claims that ‘the righteousness of God’ means God’s fidelity to his covenant promises – incapable, therefore, of being imputed to believers. Justification is not about the imputation of moral blamelessness to guilty sinners, but about identifying who belongs to the covenant people: an ecclesiological doctrine rather than a soteriological doctrine. ‘Justification by faith and not by works’ means, therefore, that the only ‘badge’ of membership of Christ’s covenant community is faith – for both Jews and gentiles – not the ‘boundary markers’ of ethnocentric Judaism. Justification, moreover, has a past, present, and future referent. In the past event of the resurrection, Christ was justified (vindicated as the Son of God, the ‘representative Messiah of Israel’, the fulfilment of God’s covenant promise to Abraham [the ‘righteousness of God’]); this becomes a present reality for those united to Christ through faith; which is a bringing-into-the-present of God’s future eschatological verdict of who, by their faith expressed in obedient works, is revealed truly and finally to belong to his covenant people.
Responses
The NPP has helped us to avoid imagining that grace and election had been entirely forgotten in Israel prior to the proclamation of the Christian gospel. We believe the Old Testament teaches that God’s covenant is all of grace through faith; we shouldn’t be afraid to concede that some pre-Christian Jewish groups approximated to that insight. The NPP has also served to highlight the monumental importance and, at times, organising principle of the inclusion of the gentiles in Paul’s thought and polemic – something perhaps our Protestant heritage has obscured.
But there are significant problems with aspects of both the basis and conclusions of the NPP. As for its basis, Second Temple Judaism was not as uniformly grace-centred as Sanders made out. While some texts appear to support ‘covenantal nomism,’ by no means do all. Moreover, ‘grace’ does not always mean the free, prior, unmerited, incongruous, effective favour of God that it connotes in the vocabulary of Reformed theology; and works and/or Law obedience feature prominently and undeniably, in much intertestamental and rabbinic literature, as the basis – in addition to election – of God’s eschatological judgment. For many (most?) Jewish groups, salvation was indeed contingent on both ‘grace’ and accruing the merit of outward good works performed in obedience to the Law (rather like ‘semi-Pelagianism’). That, after all, is how Jesus described the functional beliefs of the Pharisees.
It is perhaps Wright’s recasting of justification that has been most controversial in evangelical circles. Scholars have critiqued Wright’s view from several angles, among which is (i) that ‘righteous/righteousness’ in the OT is unambiguously a moral – not purely covenantal – term in very many cases; (ii) ‘works of the Law’ are impotent to justify not simply because they are superseded by faith as the badge of covenant membership, but also because people are unable to do what the Law requires; and (iii) the clearly forensic sense of the verb ‘to justify’ and its overt association with the reversal of the status of sin, guilt, and judgment to blamelessness, absolution, and salvation in several key Pauline passages. Wright’s view rightly leaves conservative evangelicals nervous, as it substantially qualifies and thereby weakens the traditional Reformed nexus of substitionary atonement, imputation, the instrumentality of faith, and the gratuitousness of grace and divine monergism. Wright’s alternative formulation can be read sympathetically as espousing still a monergistic by-grace-alone-through-faith-alone soteriology, with faith-union and Christ’s representative Messiahship doing all the work previously occupied by the Reformed doctrine of justification by imputation; but so many beloved teachings are abandoned or even mocked, so many hostages left to fortune, and so many studied ambiguities in print and speech, that Wright’s perspective is viewed with a great deal of suspicion by conservative evangelicals on both sides of the Atlantic.
Holland’s book
There are a number of books that attempt to deal directly and specifically with Tom Wright’s presentation of the gospel message and his reformulation of the doctrine of justification. This is not one of those books. Instead, Tom Holland goes beyond treating the symptoms – the substance of Wright’s arguments – to treat what he sees as the underlying disease – the methodological genesis of Wright’s arguments. To be sure, Holland does arrive at a detailed and at times devastating critique of aspects of Wright’s Pauline theology and at his own (nuanced) defence of the Reformers’ doctrine (the book being officially published, fittingly, on the very day of the 500th anniversary of Luther’s first protest), but not without first a sustained examination of its beginnings – both scholarly and, in the first chapters, biographical. If, therefore, you are looking for a brief conservative evangelical engagement with the most egregious of Wright’s claims, you should look elsewhere; but for those for whom Wright’s theology is both familiar and – either in the study, pulpit, or pew – has become confusing or problematic, Holland’s tome provides a thorough examination that convincingly qualifies and/or corrects Wright’s synthesis, and restores confidence in the Reformational perspective on the Apostle’s thought.
This is no hatchet job. Holland clearly counts Wright as a brilliant, evangelical scholar and is effusive in praise of several of Wright’s contributions that have bolstered confidence and delight in biblical faith and weakened the liberal stranglehold in New Testament studies. Nonetheless, Holland’s book raises significant concerns with Wright’s method and conclusions.
Holland demonstrates that Wright’s reliance on intertestamental Jewish literature is profoundly unsatisfactory: Wright’s use is indiscriminate – inattentive to questions of dating, provenance, and circulation; it is exaggerated and crude – making sweeping generalisations from idiosyncratic, isolated texts that belonged to fringe groups, with little recognition of nuance and variation and a brusque dismissal (or ignoring of) counterexamples; and it is unbalanced – apparently preferring the influence of obscure, non-canonical documents on words and concepts to the undoubted familiarity and authority of the Old Testament. Above all, none of the checks and balances that good scholarship demands are in place to defend an Old Testament allusion seem to be applied by Wright in detecting links to and dependence on Second Temple literature.
Applying these tests himself, Holland doubts that the use of 4 Maccabees (on which Wright hangs a great deal for his construction of Jesus’ own conception of his Messianic identity and mission) can survive scrutiny as an influence on the New Testament. Later, Holland finds Wright’s use of 4QMMT (a fragment recovered as part of the Dead Sea Scrolls) vastly exaggerated: a few shared words between this single scrap and a passage in Galatians does not warrant Wright’s univocal application of a covenantal-identification meaning for ‘justification’ throughout the Pauline corpus.
On the matter of ‘justification,’ Holland thinks that while Wright’s definition is true and useful for interpreting Galatians, it is only one of nine facets of the verb’s meaning (for which Holland supplies evidence) that can be demonstrated from the Old and New Testaments – among which are the traditional conceptions of the acquittal of sin and imputation of righteousness alongside other meanings that have been neglected or misunderstood in Reformed dogmatics, such as making a covenant and contracting the divine marriage. Holland then scans through ‘justification’ terms and concepts in Paul’s letters, exegeting passages in no fewer than nine of the epistles, showing both the centrality and variety of the concept of justification in the Apostle’s thought and vindicating much of the ‘old’ over the ‘new’ perspectives on the passages’ meaning.
Though ostensibly a response to Wright’s method and conclusions, throughout the book Holland advances several of his own positive insights. After exposing the flaws in Wright’s methodology and conclusions, Holland offers his own counterproposals, invariably based on his close reading of the Hebrew Scriptures in which he quite reasonably claims Paul was deeply immersed. Holland sees ‘new exodus’ theology and typology as far more pervasive throughout the New Testament than has generally been acknowledged. In particular, Holland detects Paschal allusions that greatly illuminate the nature of Christ’s atonement: as the Firstborn Son who was not redeemed by the provision of a substitute lamb, Christ’s death itself redeemed – bearing sin and buying freedom for the faithful people he leads out of exile. The accompanying theme of the divine wedding by which God takes Israel as his bride is also exposited and applied; yielding one of Holland’s measured corrections of the Reformed tradition (election and the imputation of righteousness is first and foremost a corporate reality, but which individuals appropriate by their own God-given exercise of repentance and faith).
The range and calibre of the endorsements this book has secured (including Stanley Porter, Andreas Kostenberger, and Robert Letham) testify to Holland’s considerable achievement. Although I cannot agree with everything Holland argues (I find his denial of all the Greco-Roman provenance of themes and metaphors in Paul’s letters in favour of Old Testament derivations overstated and his exposition of the positive role of the Law in Paul’s conception of the Christian life insufficient), I am glad to add my own very modest endorsement to such illustrious names! Without jettisoning Wright’s valuable insights, Holland amply demonstrates the latent dangers of Wright’s version of the critical realism method and exposes some of its blatant errors in particular in the areas of Christology and justification. For those exercised by Wright’s persuasive prose, Holland’s Search for Truth is, as it purports to be, a fair though critical theological evaluation.
The New Perspective(s) on Paul (NPP)
The ‘New Perspective on Paul’ really started life as a new perspective on Second Temple Judaism – what Jews believed about the Law and grace around the time of Jesus. E. P. Sanders’ ground-breaking 1977 book, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, based on his extensive survey of intertestamental Jewish literature (including the Dead Sea Scrolls), argued that first-century Judaism was not a legalistic religion of ‘works righteousness’ as Christians (particularly the Protestant Reformers) had generally (mis-)understood it, but instead could better be described as ‘covenantal nomism.’ By grace Israel had been brought into a covenant relationship with God; the Law was God’s gracious provision of the means by which, in response to God’s electing grace, Israel could maintain herself in his covenant and under his blessing: getting in by grace, staying in by works.
If Sanders’ account of first-century Judaism is correct, then it challenges the traditional interpretation of Paul’s attitude toward the Law. It couldn’t be that the Apostle, himself once zealous for the Law and understanding it alongside his compatriots as enveloped in the context of God’s covenantal election and grace, now viewed it as deathly ministration by which burdened Jewish consciences sought in vain to earn God’s favour by the merit of their obedience and good deeds.
Sanders himself characterised Paul’s attitude to the Law as unclear and inconsistent: the Damascus experience had led Paul to the conviction that Christ (alone) is the answer to the human plight – therefore the Law cannot be. There was no deficiency in the Law itself other than that it wasn’t Christ. Other New Testament scholars proposed a range of different solutions. James Dunn preferred that the problem Paul had with the Law was the Jews’ abuse thereof to serve their nationalistic exclusivism. The ‘works of the Law’ against which Paul railed were the ‘boundary markers’ (circumcision, Sabbath, food laws) by which Jews distanced themselves from and even excluded gentiles even in the Church of Christ – precipitating the crises in the early Church with which so much of the Pauline epistles and the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) were concerned.
Tom Wright applied Sanders’ and Dunn’s insights to propose a radical revision of the meaning of ‘justification’ in Paul’s letters. Wright claims that ‘the righteousness of God’ means God’s fidelity to his covenant promises – incapable, therefore, of being imputed to believers. Justification is not about the imputation of moral blamelessness to guilty sinners, but about identifying who belongs to the covenant people: an ecclesiological doctrine rather than a soteriological doctrine. ‘Justification by faith and not by works’ means, therefore, that the only ‘badge’ of membership of Christ’s covenant community is faith – for both Jews and gentiles – not the ‘boundary markers’ of ethnocentric Judaism. Justification, moreover, has a past, present, and future referent. In the past event of the resurrection, Christ was justified (vindicated as the Son of God, the ‘representative Messiah of Israel’, the fulfilment of God’s covenant promise to Abraham [the ‘righteousness of God’]); this becomes a present reality for those united to Christ through faith; which is a bringing-into-the-present of God’s future eschatological verdict of who, by their faith expressed in obedient works, is revealed truly and finally to belong to his covenant people.
Responses
The NPP has helped us to avoid imagining that grace and election had been entirely forgotten in Israel prior to the proclamation of the Christian gospel. We believe the Old Testament teaches that God’s covenant is all of grace through faith; we shouldn’t be afraid to concede that some pre-Christian Jewish groups approximated to that insight. The NPP has also served to highlight the monumental importance and, at times, organising principle of the inclusion of the gentiles in Paul’s thought and polemic – something perhaps our Protestant heritage has obscured.
But there are significant problems with aspects of both the basis and conclusions of the NPP. As for its basis, Second Temple Judaism was not as uniformly grace-centred as Sanders made out. While some texts appear to support ‘covenantal nomism,’ by no means do all. Moreover, ‘grace’ does not always mean the free, prior, unmerited, incongruous, effective favour of God that it connotes in the vocabulary of Reformed theology; and works and/or Law obedience feature prominently and undeniably, in much intertestamental and rabbinic literature, as the basis – in addition to election – of God’s eschatological judgment. For many (most?) Jewish groups, salvation was indeed contingent on both ‘grace’ and accruing the merit of outward good works performed in obedience to the Law (rather like ‘semi-Pelagianism’). That, after all, is how Jesus described the functional beliefs of the Pharisees.
It is perhaps Wright’s recasting of justification that has been most controversial in evangelical circles. Scholars have critiqued Wright’s view from several angles, among which is (i) that ‘righteous/righteousness’ in the OT is unambiguously a moral – not purely covenantal – term in very many cases; (ii) ‘works of the Law’ are impotent to justify not simply because they are superseded by faith as the badge of covenant membership, but also because people are unable to do what the Law requires; and (iii) the clearly forensic sense of the verb ‘to justify’ and its overt association with the reversal of the status of sin, guilt, and judgment to blamelessness, absolution, and salvation in several key Pauline passages. Wright’s view rightly leaves conservative evangelicals nervous, as it substantially qualifies and thereby weakens the traditional Reformed nexus of substitionary atonement, imputation, the instrumentality of faith, and the gratuitousness of grace and divine monergism. Wright’s alternative formulation can be read sympathetically as espousing still a monergistic by-grace-alone-through-faith-alone soteriology, with faith-union and Christ’s representative Messiahship doing all the work previously occupied by the Reformed doctrine of justification by imputation; but so many beloved teachings are abandoned or even mocked, so many hostages left to fortune, and so many studied ambiguities in print and speech, that Wright’s perspective is viewed with a great deal of suspicion by conservative evangelicals on both sides of the Atlantic.
Holland’s book
There are a number of books that attempt to deal directly and specifically with Tom Wright’s presentation of the gospel message and his reformulation of the doctrine of justification. This is not one of those books. Instead, Tom Holland goes beyond treating the symptoms – the substance of Wright’s arguments – to treat what he sees as the underlying disease – the methodological genesis of Wright’s arguments. To be sure, Holland does arrive at a detailed and at times devastating critique of aspects of Wright’s Pauline theology and at his own (nuanced) defence of the Reformers’ doctrine (the book being officially published, fittingly, on the very day of the 500th anniversary of Luther’s first protest), but not without first a sustained examination of its beginnings – both scholarly and, in the first chapters, biographical. If, therefore, you are looking for a brief conservative evangelical engagement with the most egregious of Wright’s claims, you should look elsewhere; but for those for whom Wright’s theology is both familiar and – either in the study, pulpit, or pew – has become confusing or problematic, Holland’s tome provides a thorough examination that convincingly qualifies and/or corrects Wright’s synthesis, and restores confidence in the Reformational perspective on the Apostle’s thought.
This is no hatchet job. Holland clearly counts Wright as a brilliant, evangelical scholar and is effusive in praise of several of Wright’s contributions that have bolstered confidence and delight in biblical faith and weakened the liberal stranglehold in New Testament studies. Nonetheless, Holland’s book raises significant concerns with Wright’s method and conclusions.
Holland demonstrates that Wright’s reliance on intertestamental Jewish literature is profoundly unsatisfactory: Wright’s use is indiscriminate – inattentive to questions of dating, provenance, and circulation; it is exaggerated and crude – making sweeping generalisations from idiosyncratic, isolated texts that belonged to fringe groups, with little recognition of nuance and variation and a brusque dismissal (or ignoring of) counterexamples; and it is unbalanced – apparently preferring the influence of obscure, non-canonical documents on words and concepts to the undoubted familiarity and authority of the Old Testament. Above all, none of the checks and balances that good scholarship demands are in place to defend an Old Testament allusion seem to be applied by Wright in detecting links to and dependence on Second Temple literature.
Applying these tests himself, Holland doubts that the use of 4 Maccabees (on which Wright hangs a great deal for his construction of Jesus’ own conception of his Messianic identity and mission) can survive scrutiny as an influence on the New Testament. Later, Holland finds Wright’s use of 4QMMT (a fragment recovered as part of the Dead Sea Scrolls) vastly exaggerated: a few shared words between this single scrap and a passage in Galatians does not warrant Wright’s univocal application of a covenantal-identification meaning for ‘justification’ throughout the Pauline corpus.
On the matter of ‘justification,’ Holland thinks that while Wright’s definition is true and useful for interpreting Galatians, it is only one of nine facets of the verb’s meaning (for which Holland supplies evidence) that can be demonstrated from the Old and New Testaments – among which are the traditional conceptions of the acquittal of sin and imputation of righteousness alongside other meanings that have been neglected or misunderstood in Reformed dogmatics, such as making a covenant and contracting the divine marriage. Holland then scans through ‘justification’ terms and concepts in Paul’s letters, exegeting passages in no fewer than nine of the epistles, showing both the centrality and variety of the concept of justification in the Apostle’s thought and vindicating much of the ‘old’ over the ‘new’ perspectives on the passages’ meaning.
Though ostensibly a response to Wright’s method and conclusions, throughout the book Holland advances several of his own positive insights. After exposing the flaws in Wright’s methodology and conclusions, Holland offers his own counterproposals, invariably based on his close reading of the Hebrew Scriptures in which he quite reasonably claims Paul was deeply immersed. Holland sees ‘new exodus’ theology and typology as far more pervasive throughout the New Testament than has generally been acknowledged. In particular, Holland detects Paschal allusions that greatly illuminate the nature of Christ’s atonement: as the Firstborn Son who was not redeemed by the provision of a substitute lamb, Christ’s death itself redeemed – bearing sin and buying freedom for the faithful people he leads out of exile. The accompanying theme of the divine wedding by which God takes Israel as his bride is also exposited and applied; yielding one of Holland’s measured corrections of the Reformed tradition (election and the imputation of righteousness is first and foremost a corporate reality, but which individuals appropriate by their own God-given exercise of repentance and faith).
The range and calibre of the endorsements this book has secured (including Stanley Porter, Andreas Kostenberger, and Robert Letham) testify to Holland’s considerable achievement. Although I cannot agree with everything Holland argues (I find his denial of all the Greco-Roman provenance of themes and metaphors in Paul’s letters in favour of Old Testament derivations overstated and his exposition of the positive role of the Law in Paul’s conception of the Christian life insufficient), I am glad to add my own very modest endorsement to such illustrious names! Without jettisoning Wright’s valuable insights, Holland amply demonstrates the latent dangers of Wright’s version of the critical realism method and exposes some of its blatant errors in particular in the areas of Christology and justification. For those exercised by Wright’s persuasive prose, Holland’s Search for Truth is, as it purports to be, a fair though critical theological evaluation.
January 16, 2018
Tom Holland is Senior Research Fellow of Union School of Theology, Oxford. His forty years of scholarship has produced fruit in many fields; preeminent among them is New Exodus Theology. The Search for Truth is, as the subtitle suggests, an evaluation of N.T. Wright’s theology. In the conclusion to The Search for Truth, Holland offers a powerful warning:
“In many ways [Wright] has been a great example of a servant of Christ. My problem is that I don’t believe that he can reach those positions via the arguments he has presented. He has been able to avoid the catastrophes that I fear that others will encounter, because many have never had the foundations put in place in their early years to keep them ‘on the rails.’ In following Tom Wright’s methodology, without having his confessional underpinning, they will be in danger of even more fanciful exegesis than that which he has followed; one which will lead them away from their intended theological home” (554–5).
Holland sounds a strong warning that needs to be heeded, and he has a lifetime of scholarly wisdom to share with the next generation of pastors and scholars. In fact, the similarities between Tom Holland and Tom Wright extend to more than merely their shared first name. Holland’s theology is built on a narrative substructure from Jewish scriptures that reveals rich depth to Paul’s theology. Like Wright’s work, it is always compelling and intriguing. But Holland has provided a narrative and a theology that is closer to the true moorings of Scripture itself and avoids many of the unnecessary false dichotomies that characterize Wright’s work.
All in all, The Search for Truth is an impressively comprehensive work of Tom Wright’s scholarship. It covers his theological method, the controversy over his theology of justification, and even his Christology. Not only that, but Holland also provides a rival constructive theology and narrative substructure in his new exodus motif. There are clearly very few scholars who could have written this book, but Tom Holland has risen to the challenge, and he has left the church and the academy a wonderful gift that will prove as a useful guide for years to come. Whether you are relatively new to the current debates in Pauline theology, or you are well-versed in the field, you will gain much theological fruit and edification from the time spent with Tom Holland in The Search for Truth.
See my full review on Books at a Glance: http://www.booksataglance.com/book-re...
“In many ways [Wright] has been a great example of a servant of Christ. My problem is that I don’t believe that he can reach those positions via the arguments he has presented. He has been able to avoid the catastrophes that I fear that others will encounter, because many have never had the foundations put in place in their early years to keep them ‘on the rails.’ In following Tom Wright’s methodology, without having his confessional underpinning, they will be in danger of even more fanciful exegesis than that which he has followed; one which will lead them away from their intended theological home” (554–5).
Holland sounds a strong warning that needs to be heeded, and he has a lifetime of scholarly wisdom to share with the next generation of pastors and scholars. In fact, the similarities between Tom Holland and Tom Wright extend to more than merely their shared first name. Holland’s theology is built on a narrative substructure from Jewish scriptures that reveals rich depth to Paul’s theology. Like Wright’s work, it is always compelling and intriguing. But Holland has provided a narrative and a theology that is closer to the true moorings of Scripture itself and avoids many of the unnecessary false dichotomies that characterize Wright’s work.
All in all, The Search for Truth is an impressively comprehensive work of Tom Wright’s scholarship. It covers his theological method, the controversy over his theology of justification, and even his Christology. Not only that, but Holland also provides a rival constructive theology and narrative substructure in his new exodus motif. There are clearly very few scholars who could have written this book, but Tom Holland has risen to the challenge, and he has left the church and the academy a wonderful gift that will prove as a useful guide for years to come. Whether you are relatively new to the current debates in Pauline theology, or you are well-versed in the field, you will gain much theological fruit and edification from the time spent with Tom Holland in The Search for Truth.
See my full review on Books at a Glance: http://www.booksataglance.com/book-re...
November 1, 2017
I must begin with a confession. I was one of those who was "prepared to accept [Wright's] statements as truth, whilst not appreciating that the required supporting evidence is sometimes lacking or weak" (p.243). As a 'reviewer' who is heavily indebted to N.T. Wright, this work by Tom Holland raises serious questions that beg scholarly answers. It was N.T. Wright who drove me back into the Old Testament to find the theological context for understanding the New Testament. I was overly enamored and, therefore, not sufficiently critical regarding his evidence, especially his use of the Second Temple Literature (STL). When I read Holland's proposal and the following summary sentence, I sat back and said, "Wow!"
"The passage [2 Corinthians 2:14-17] is not about being led by Christ in the way that a Roman emperor or general led his procession into the Coliseum, but about being led by Christ in the way that Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt." (p.131)
Thank you, Tom Holland, for pointing me back to how Paul - self-described as a 'Hebrew of Hebrews' - would not allow a Hellenistic mindset to override his Hebrew thinking regarding the 'promised eschatological pilgrimage.'
Further, Chapter 6, "Probing Paul's Use of Second Temple Literature," was a truly enlightening experience. For example, why not demand a criterion for evaluating the use of STL, such as Richard Hays' criteria for intertextuality: availability, frequency, recurrence, thematic coherence, historical plausibility, interpretation, and satisfaction? Holland is correct in calling for something to control scholarly methodology beyond 'gut instinct' and 'allusion.'
I am still a fan of N.T. Wright and consider him one of my 'mentors,' as my bookshelf will attest. He has made a significant contribution to conservative theological studies, as Holland notes. (One of many examples found in the book opines, “Tom Wright’s scholarship has achieved much good for the Anglican Communion, to which he belongs, as well as for the wider Christian community.” P.243) However, Tom Holland has broadened my 'bliks' so that future reading of Wright will be given the same scrutiny given to other authors. This book is a must read for anyone who has read and been enthralled with the writings of N.T. Wright (as I was and am).
"The passage [2 Corinthians 2:14-17] is not about being led by Christ in the way that a Roman emperor or general led his procession into the Coliseum, but about being led by Christ in the way that Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt." (p.131)
Thank you, Tom Holland, for pointing me back to how Paul - self-described as a 'Hebrew of Hebrews' - would not allow a Hellenistic mindset to override his Hebrew thinking regarding the 'promised eschatological pilgrimage.'
Further, Chapter 6, "Probing Paul's Use of Second Temple Literature," was a truly enlightening experience. For example, why not demand a criterion for evaluating the use of STL, such as Richard Hays' criteria for intertextuality: availability, frequency, recurrence, thematic coherence, historical plausibility, interpretation, and satisfaction? Holland is correct in calling for something to control scholarly methodology beyond 'gut instinct' and 'allusion.'
I am still a fan of N.T. Wright and consider him one of my 'mentors,' as my bookshelf will attest. He has made a significant contribution to conservative theological studies, as Holland notes. (One of many examples found in the book opines, “Tom Wright’s scholarship has achieved much good for the Anglican Communion, to which he belongs, as well as for the wider Christian community.” P.243) However, Tom Holland has broadened my 'bliks' so that future reading of Wright will be given the same scrutiny given to other authors. This book is a must read for anyone who has read and been enthralled with the writings of N.T. Wright (as I was and am).
January 26, 2018
Overall I believe that this work by Tom Holland has accomplished much to undercut the theological conclusions of the most recognized theologians in our contemporary scene. Holland has raised some very important issues not only about Tom Wright, but also about the academy in general. The tendency in the academy has been to innovate theologically and to bring in outside sources and have those sources unduly influence the way we interpret the Bible. In some cases (Wright for example) theologians will elevate these sources to a level above scripture and this in turn skews the way we view scripture. Instead, we ought to maintain scripture as primary. If there are secondary sources that would shed light on how we interpret scripture, then these sources need to be very carefully evaluated. Unfortunately, in many cases this is being overlooked.
Tom Holland deserves credit for a book which evaluates and demystifies the works of Tom Wright. I believe much more could be said in this regard, and more work needs to be done by others. This will help bring additional clarity and understanding to the task of accurately interpreting scripture. I certainly appreciate the hard work of Holland and his insights into the presuppositions of Tom Wright. He has given me insight into corporate nature of salvation. Although I disagreed with Holland on some points, I think overall he provides valuable insights into Tom Wright and theological method.
A more in depth version of my review:
http://work-of-mercy.blogspot.com/201...
Tom Holland deserves credit for a book which evaluates and demystifies the works of Tom Wright. I believe much more could be said in this regard, and more work needs to be done by others. This will help bring additional clarity and understanding to the task of accurately interpreting scripture. I certainly appreciate the hard work of Holland and his insights into the presuppositions of Tom Wright. He has given me insight into corporate nature of salvation. Although I disagreed with Holland on some points, I think overall he provides valuable insights into Tom Wright and theological method.
A more in depth version of my review:
http://work-of-mercy.blogspot.com/201...
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