Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Atonement

  • Quotes on Imputed Righteousness

    The translator’s difficulty with this passage arises from the lack of a single English verb to express both “do right” and “be right with God”; of a noun that means both “righteousness” and “acceptance with God as righteous”; and of an adjective to describe the man who is both “righteous” and “accepted as righteous,” or to use the Latin, both “just” and “justified.” The resulting obscurities and inconsistencies give aid and comfort to human nature–Paul would say “the flesh”–in its habit of divorcing faith from faithfulness and justification from righteousness. The interpreter has to guard against basing “justification by faith” upon a fictive or imputed righteousness rather than presenting it as an actuality inseparable from the Christian’s present life in Christ. When Paul says that the righteous man who is both just and justified is to live on the basis of faith, he is describing a way of life that is present as well as future. His faith is the determinant of action which makes righteousness actual even now.
    — The Interpreter’s Bible on Galatians 3:11

    But to him that worketh not – It being impossible he should without faith. But believeth, his faith is imputed to him for righteousness – Therefore God’s affirming of Abraham, that faith was imputed to him for righteousness, plainly shows that he worked not; or, in other words, that he was not justified by works, but by faith only. Hence we see plainly how groundless that opinion is, that holiness or sanctification is previous to our justification. For the sinner, being first convinced of his sin and danger by the Spirit of God, stands trembling before the awful tribunal of divine justice ; and has nothing to plead, but his own guilt, and the merits of a Mediator. Christ here interposes; justice is satisfied; the sin is remitted, and pardon is applied to the soul, by a divine faith wrought by the Holy Ghost, who then begins the great work of inward sanctification. Thus God justifies the ungodly, and yet remains just, and true to all his attributes! But let none hence presume to “continue in sin;” for to the impenitent, God “is a consuming fire.” On him that justifieth the ungodly – If a man could possibly be made holy before he was justified, it would entirely set his justification aside; seeing he could not, in the very nature of the thing, be justified if he were not, at that very time, ungodly. — John Wesley on Romans 4:5

    Note that I’m not quoting these as authority for the position, but rather as expressions of this view of imputed and imparted righteousness to spark thought. I do consider both of these statements very good expressions of my own view on the matter.

    I would place these expressions alongside what Adrian Warnock quoted from Wayne Grudem.

    If I could add my own note, God counted (not “thought of”) Jesus as one of us (sinners), to bring an end to that reality. He counts us as righteous upon our justification, in order to begin bringing an end to the reality of sin in our lives. This is one of the problems I see with making PSA the central metaphor of the atonement. One almost has to see God in error. He sees Jesus as sinful, even though he is not, and he sees us as righteous, even though we are not. I would say that God intentional mixes the categories–counting Jesus as one of us, and then us with Jesus–to bring about the reality. He always knows what he is doing, and I think it’s better to express it in that way.

  • Exclusion and Inclusion and Vague Boundaries

    A community must have some sort of definition in order to exist. This may seem fairly obvious, but often in discussions of religion we lose sight of that fact in efforts to be inclusive. It’s important to remember that there is a difference between saying somebody is a bad person and saying that they don’t fit into a particular community.

    I could go on and on here, talking about communities within a community, such as congregations and denominations within the broader community of the Christian religion in general. There are different requirements for different communities. That’s not the particular issue I want to write about, however. I simply want to note that I’m aware that boundaries are necessary for there to be communities.

    Having said all that, I’ve observed with interest the advent of exclusion talk in the atonement debates (recent discussion of PSA). While these specifically deal with the evangelical movement in the UK, I think many of the same questions are applicable on this side of the pond.

    What’s interesting to me is that having heard the suggestion over the years (not just in the current debate) that liberals are not really Christians because of their view of the atonement, suddenly it is conservatives, specifically conservative proponents of PSA, who are concerned with exclusion.

    I have noted the same thing in recent discussion with United Methodists. Some evangelical pastors and/or candidates are feeling exclusion from sponsors or from boards of ministry. This is an issue that concerns me a great deal. If the exclusion is real, and is not part of setting the appropriate bounds of the community, then we have folks on the liberal side not living up to their principles.

    There is an alternative. Some people who have had the power to exclude become very irate when that power is taken from them or restricted. I have encountered more than one church in which established membership has become extremely angry and has felt excluded simply because newer members have gotten power and as a result have restricted the power of people who thought of themselves as permanent leaders.

    A very specific case of this is when one restricts someone else from exercising the power of exclusion themselves. Let’s take a couple of hypothetical situations. (Though these two situations may resemble broadly some real situations, I do not intend to duplicate any real-world situations.)

    Situation #1: A candidate for ministry expresses a very conservative view, supporting the United Methodist position (per UM Discipline) that homosexuality is not compatible with Christian practice. The candidate’s liberal mentor makes every effort to block this candidate’s continuation toward ordination.

    Situation #2: A minister is accustomed to reject for church membership anyone he can identify as being homosexual in orientation, irrespective of whether such a person is celibate or not. He is instructed by his DS that such behavior is inappropriate. He claims he is being persecuted for his conservative views.

    These are not well-rounded situations. Fill in the blanks as you wish. Even better, fill in the blanks in different ways, potentially producing different results. A key difference between the two situations, in my view, is that the first candidate believes nothing that is contrary to the accepted beliefs of the community, and has given no indication that he will not carry out his duties appropriately. (You may, of course, fill in the blanks with contrary information.)

    The second candidate is potentially acting contrary to church discipline, yet he feels persecuted, and perhaps excluded by the actions of church authorities. (Note that I’m not a United Methodist pastor, and I don’t have a finely tuned notion of just how important an “admonition” for one’s DS actually is.)

    Is the second person actually persecuted? I would suggest not. He can remain and carry out his duties as instructed.

    Let’s compare these ideas to the PSA issue. Supposing we have a pastor of a church who believes in PSA and has been teaching people that in order to be regarded as Christians, they must understand and accept PSA. When new members transfer from another church, they are immediately indoctrinated into this position and are only made welcome as part of that church community if they accept that position.

    If a superior authority in that denomination admonishes this pastor is he being exclusive? Consider the fact that if this pastor is ordered not to act as he has, he will feel that he is not truly bringing people to a saving faith in Jesus. Is it possible for him to minister honestly under those circumstances?

    The boundary lines become somewhat difficult to draw under these circumstances. I’m simply exploring them. Off hand, I would suggest that the liberal mentor I mentioned is wrong to attempt to exclude the conservative candidate, but that the denominational authorities in my two other examples are acting appropriately. If these two pastors cannot function in a way that they feel is faithful to the gospel, they need to find a different congregation/denomination in which to exercise their gifts.

    Membership in a loosely defined “evangelical movement” is a bit more difficult. Nobody holds the keys there. How much does the word “evangelical” mean? I’m not certain of the answer to that.

    I would like to see moderates and liberals to support the maximum amount of inclusion possible consistent with creating a coherent community.

    Dave Warnock made a couple of very cogent comments in his post :

    I do not believe in a Christianity, or an Evangelical Christianity which does not welcome Adrian and those like him who believe so strongly in PSA. Mind you I also do not believe in a Christianity which demands that all believe in PSA nor an Evangelical Christianity which demands the same understanding and acceptance of PSA that Adrian has.

    . . . and again . . .

    We do need to recognise though that it is always a difficult challenge to include in a community those who continually attempt to exclude others.

    He’s responding to an update by Adrian Warnock to his post Christianity Magazine reviews Pierced For Our Transgressions, in which Adrian says:

    Since writing this article, I came across a piece from Carl Trueman that alleges that some UK ministers feel that they are being leant on quite strongly on the issue of the atonement.

    Now Dave is right when he notes (in the same post) that there are a number of feelings and vague accusations going around (my paraphrase of his words). But those feelings and vague accusations are precisely what most exclusion is made of. It is rarely a matter of direct confrontation. It is a matter of suggestion and pressure, often subtle and not clearly expressed.

    I advocate bringing these suggestions out into the open. We need to examine the boundaries we can accept openly. This is essentially what I was advocating in my post from June 2, 2006 Unity, Diversity, and Confusion. Sometimes we’re so afraid of setting explicit boundaries that we allow vague boundaries to contict our appropriate freedom.

  • Expressing the Multifaceted Nature of the Atonement

    Peter Kirk has a post, The personal relevance of the atonement, that expresses what I have been trying to say about the atonement much more precisely than I have managed to do it. I commend it strongly.

    At the same time, Adrian has posted again regarding a review of Pierced for Our Transgressions. Since I haven’t gotten hold of a copy of the book yet, I’m not going to comment on the review itself, but Adrian said one thing that has left me wondering.

    It is ironic that the more inclusive the evangelical movement in the UK aims to be – by including people who attack or minimize PSA the more they seem to exclude those who hold a more traditional evangelical position.

    I don’t call myself evangelical, but after talking to a few evangelicals from the UK I probably could. (I’m absolutely not going to fight over labels.) I’ve even encountered a few folks on this side of the pond who call themselves evangelical and appear to be even more liberal than I am.

    But even from my more liberal perspective I have no desire to exclude those who hold a “strong view” of PSA from any tent. They believe that God has provided redemption through Jesus Christ. I know of none of them who reject the incarnation. The feel I get from Adrian’s post is that if one doesn’t join in excluding the more liberal elements on this issue one must be excluding the more conservative.

    It would be a total denial of my view of the importance of non-essential doctrines (and I regard the specific metaphor used for atonement as a non-essential) for me to deny someone the one expression of the atonement that best brought the message of God’s reconciling grace home to them.

    I’m wondering if it’s really true that any evangelicals in the UK want to exclude advocates of PSA from their big tent. Could any of my UK readers help me with this?

  • In Which My Wife Uses the Language of PSA

    This morning as I was listening to my wife’s message for our Running Toward the Goal podcast, I heard her use some distinctly PSA-like language. I thought I’d link to it. Today’s podcast was first broadcast on local radio here in Pensacola on July 21, 2003 and is titled I Surrender All. This is the first time it has been podcast. (The speaker is my wife, Jody Neufeld.)

    Those on the PSA side who also are complementarian may not want to listen to a woman teach, but I’m fullly egalitarian and enjoy sharing both blogs and platform with my wife.

  • Notes and Links on Atonement

    I’ve gotten severely behind in reading the current atonement debate, but I haven’t ceased being interested. I note that Adrian has taken to throwing passages at his opponents, ones which we’re sure to have read before, including Isaiah 53, and 2 Corinthians 5. Because I accept substitution and even penal substitution as valid metaphors, but not as the key or sole metaphor, I am not surprised to find some substitution in scripture.

    I wrote two items on the atonement in partial response to the debate. The first is an entry for my wife’s devotional list, which was posted this morning and expresses my view that understanding the details of doctrine is not nearly as important as many seem to think. The second is a few notes on Isaiah 53 and the suffering servant.

    There is quite a bit of good stuff on the atonement going around the web right now. I got a link to Is Your Gospel Robust Enough, and I wish I could give a hat tip to the right person, but I can’t find where I got the link. The post discusses our excessively individual view of salvation, a problem that is common to many advocates of PSA–and to many of the rest of us as well.

    Dave Warnock is preaching from Ephesians 2:11-22, one of my favorite passages, and is doing a wonderful job of it. At the same time Peter Kirk is keeping active, with a post titled UCCF Director contradicts the Bible and the Apostles’ Creed which he starts from a comment he made here.

    I plan to get back to talking about literary genres tomorrow, but I may be tempted to say more about the atonement. You can always hope not!

  • Narrowing a Doctrine: Penal Substitution and Isaiah 53

    In a previous post, Adrian Warnock said there were two reactions to his interview with the authors of Pierced for our Transgressions. I’m guessing he referred to the favorable and unfavorable, and intensely so in each case. In the rest of that post, he implied pretty strongly that those of us who are opposed to PSA [as the sole metaphor for the atonement I would add, but Adrian did not] are not spending enough time with the scriptures.

    I also note two sets of reactions. I see one set of reactions that deal with the actual position of opponents, and one set of reactions that prefer to make accusations. I don’t want to spend much time on this, but let me just quote one example, from Grave Updates

    Isn’t off how it is always those with robust theology who are told to become broad and drop our distinctives, as if the greatest sin is to offend those who hold to vague and are like those Paul speaks of in 2 Timothy 3:7, “always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.”:

    I would simply like to note here that my position on PSA has nothing to do with avoiding offense to anyone. I’m also not afraid of giving offense to the proponents of PSA as the exclusive or “real” teaching of the atonement when it is, in fact, one metaphor for the atonement. I am quite open in saying that such teaching is wrong and presents a stumbling block. It’s very easy in Christian circles to attribute “truth value” to being persecuted, and to give great credit to teachings which are exceptionally offensive. After all, the gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing (1 Corinthians 1:18). But Paul never said that every stupid and offensive thing thereby automatically became God’s truth. It is crucially important, I believe, for us to make sure that it is the gospel that is offending people when they are offended, and not our behavior or our made up teachings.

    Now Adrian hits us with Isaiah 53. It’s not a bad chapter to use in discussing the atonement, but I find it amazing to have Adrian quote it and let it “speak for itself” as though nobody who rejects his view of PSA has ever read the passage. Well, I have read, memorized, studied, and restudied that passage many times. Having Adrian quote it one more time is unlikely to change a thing, unless he can point out how that scripture challenges my view that:

    1. Substitution is broader than penal substitution
    2. Atonement is broader than substitution

    I have never denied substitution. I took a class Exegesis of Romans (from the Greek text) from a professor who believed in the moral influence theory. He tried to teach it from Romans. It didn’t work. He massacred Paul’s teaching. I did my very best to see it his way. I was inclined to see it his way. I liked the professor and enjoyed his lecture style. Nonetheless, I just couldn’t do it. Nonetheless there is an element of moral influence in the atonement.

    There is also an element of substitution in Isaiah 53, though very little of it is penal in nature. Isaiah 53 needs to be viewed in the broader context of the servant passages of 2nd Isaiah (40-55), but even that is not the primary point. I’m not arguing that Jesus is not described here, though that interpretation will not work as an exclusive look at the chapter. That is another debate. But let’s look at the substitution in this case:

    Notice in verse 4 that it is the people in general who esteem the servant “smitten by God.” They view him as suffering for his own sin, and thus under the wrath of God when in fact the servant is suffering for their sin. The servant gets all the suffering for the guilt of the whole people, and he submits to it. That is absolutely substitution, but there is no indication that God’s anger is directed at the servant. He certainly dies as a substitute, but the notion that God turns his anger purely on the person of that righteous person is simply not there.

    The debate here, at least with me, is not that Jesus did not suffer and die for our sins. It is rather with the penal aspect, and with the exclusivity of either substitution or the penal aspect. I see nothing whatsoever in Isaiah 53 that denies my position. Even verse 10, that especially in the ESV sounds most like penal substitution can be read quite easily and appropriate as the Lord allowing the stroke to fall on the servant rather than the whole nation.

    Incidentally this goes well with the view that the servant is in the first instance the remnant of Judah, taken into exile, and viewed as the greatest transgressors by those left behind. But they were the ones God was using to preserve the future of his people. In the second instance, Jesus fulfills the remainder of the prophecy as the pure remnant, the final representative of the people who took the punishment on himself. It is consistent both with God’s action and with the action of Jesus in laying down his own life (John 10:18).

    The problem I see repeatedly here is that texts that fit well with more than one view of the atonement are being cited as exclusively supporting one narrow view. I do not regard this approach to interpretation as scriptural. That is my problem with PSA. It cuts a square inch out of a large tapestry and then declares the square inch to be the whole. That’s too close to idolatry for me.

  • Slippery Language on the Atonement Debate

    Adrian Warnock is again posting on the penal substitutionary atonement (PSA) issue, now about an interview with the authors of Pierced for Our Transgressions.

    Now I’m not going to post on PSA today in detail. But Adrian manages to demonstrate some aspects of this discussion from his side of the fence that annoy me-no, that’s not strong enough. I think these statements are just plain wrong.

    At the end of his post Adrian says:

    Where do you stand? Will you join arms with Andrew, Steve, and a whole generation of those of us who feel this issue is quite literally one of life and death?

    Or will you seek to compromise, maybe downplay the importance of precisely how Jesus saves us, and adopt a gospel message that, whilst sounding more acceptable to the modern ear, is in the opinion of many of us nothing less than “another gospel.”

    The stakes couldn’t possibly be higher.

    I’m willing to allow most of the first paragraph. My answer to that would be a resounding NO!. I do not in any sense stand with them on this issue. But I do think that for some people it may be an issue of life and death. Those who malign the character of God through their doctrine may well have to answer before God for those they have driven away. I don’t want to overplay that point, however, because as imperfect humans I suspect we all have those moments and even years when we do not perfectly represent the gospel of Christ. Nonetheless, grace abounds! Where is there evidence that such grace is comprehended on the PSA side of the debate?

    But my major concern here is with the second paragraph: “Or will you seek to compromise . . .” This is the method of extremist madness. You dismiss the opposite extreme, and divide the rest of the world into people who are right and people who have compromised. The compromise, of course, is with that unmentionable evil that has been cut out of the spectrum. It’s “us good guys” versus the compromisers.

    Adrian continues with “maybe downplay the importance of precisely how Jesus saves us . . .” Downplay? Who’s downplaying? I reject absolutely and utterly the notion that precisely how the atonement is accomplished is a critical piece of knowledge. I call that view “salvation by correct doctrine” and I reject it along with all other human based systems of salvation. However Jesus did it, he did it.

    And again: “and adopt a gospel message that, whilst sounding more acceptable to the modern ear, is in the opinion of many of us nothing less than ‘another gospel.’” Of course I adopt what Adrian and many others regard as “another gospel.” Why? I regard what they are preaching as dangerously close to “another gospel.” The only reason I don’t call it another gospel outright is that I think many people sincerely grab hold of the message of PSA and are saved, never understanding any other aspects of atonement. The preachers of PSA are grabbing a part and making it the whole, and it gets twisted on the way. But even further, I do not adopt my view because it is “more acceptable to the modern ear.” I adopt my view because I believe it is right. I believe scripture teaches a multifaceted understanding of the atonement and I also believe scripture teaches that we should realize that we don’t fully comprehend any doctrine, but most especially the incarnation and the atonement.

    I’m not heading again into writing on PSA in detail right now. I’ve written a few things before. My response here is simply to the dismissive type of language that tries to pretend opponents are not working from conviction, but rather from a desire to be more acceptable to the modern world, and to “compromise,” that compromise being with something that is dismissed without discussion.

    Almost Instant Update: Just after I hit the “Publish” button, my RSS feed showed a new post by Peter Kirk which is well worthwhile reading.

  • NPP: A Starting Position

    I’ve been reading some more on the new perspectives on Paul, and particularly focusing on a <a href="http://www.thepaulpage.com/Summary.html"summary written by Mark W. Mattison and provided by The Paul Page, and a response to that summary by Chan Lai Ping. I’m going to use the list of key points in the response as a starting point. In this entry I’m merely stating where I start from as I study, and am not really trying to support that more than superficially.

    Chan Lai Ping lists five issues, giving the traditional position (since Martin Luther) and the summary position of the new perspectives. Note that there are many scholars involved in what’s loosely called the “new perspectives on Paul” and they do not necessarily agree on all issues.

    The five key issues are:

    1. Individualism – whether justification is primarily about the individual or the community
      My own view is that we tend to misread the entire Bible in the western world because of our individualistic view. The Biblical writers were always more concerned with community than we are, and this applies to Paul as well. Paul writes pastorally, as the pastor of church with the intent of building the health of those churches. This involves individual action and individual choices, but all of that is on the way to community
    2. Judaism – whether Judaism in the first century was a religion of legalism, and whether Paul’s attacks on the old Jerusalem can be read as an attack on Judaism
      Until I studied Galatians through the commentary by J. Louis Martyn I would have said that while Judaism is not primarily a religion of legalism, and the old covenant was not intended as legalistic, Paul was combating folks who made it into something legalistic. I think Martyn makes a good case that Paul’s “earthly Jerusalem” is that element based in the Jerusalem church that opposes his mission. Their particular legalism was in requiring the gentiles to be circumcised, and so become Torah observant Jews in order to be Christians. Now I believe it was Christian Jews who were placing this requirement on gentiles, one that was not actually a requirement of Judaism itself.
    3. The core of Paul’s message – was it more narrowly justification or a broader view of Christ’s death and resurrection
      This is a hard one for me to answer, because it seems to me that for Paul the opening of the door to the gentiles was the key element of the meaning of the death and resurrection of Jesus. This act of grace made it possible for the old age and it’s barriers to be removed and exchanged with the new age. Justification is a key fruit of that.
    4. What Paul meant by the law – was Paul against all actions that might become regarded as a work, or just the misuse of the law
      Here I believe Paul was strongly opposed to misuse of the law, including the law as a means of gaining God’s favor. He obviously had no problem with admonitions and requirements, however, because he gave his churches quite a number of them. I suspect our theology might be different if students of Paul spent more time in 1 Corinthians and less in Galatians. Paul was pastoral first, which I believe is one reason that sometimes he doesn’t seem as clear and consistent as we’d like in his theology. If we just knew the pastoral situation he was addressing, I think things would make more sense.
    5. Paul’s conscience – did he face a constant battle, or was he convinced of his own standing
      This one I’ll have to work on. It seems to me that Paul had a testimony of struggles that ended in victory, so that his writing doesn’t speak with one voice. My guess as I start looking at him more seriously is that he lived a life of victory, but didn’t spend all his time on the mountaintop, much like many of us today.

    (For discussion, please see the <a href="http://www.thepaulpage.com/Summary.html"summary and response cited above.)

    I expect to spend some time going through various of these articles on Paul and making further notes on some of the key passages.

  • Doctrine and Reality – The Need for Balance

    In a recent post Dave Warnock looks through the preface by John Piper to Pierced for Our Trangressions, and quotes the following:

    This is how I feel today about teachers of Christ’s people who deny and even belittle precious, life-saving, biblical truth.When a person says that God’s ‘punishing his Son for an offence he has not even committed’ would be as evil as child abuse, I am angered and grieved. For if God did not punish his Son in my place, I am not saved from my greatest peril, the wrath of God.

    (The whole post by Dave is worthwhile reading, but this post is just a tangent from that.)

    The more I read about this the more I realize that I will be reading this book eventually. But right now I’m not trying to review the book, or even directly to argue with John Piper. He has written and said much that I value, and also much with which I disagree. Often I even value the disagreement more than the agreement.

    But I want to respond to this point of doctrine. It is clear from scripture that good teaching is a good thing. In other words, it does matter what we teach. At the same time it’s very easy to make our doctrine, especially detailed doctrinal issues into something that stands instead of God. If Christ did not die for me, I am still in my sins, but if I fail to understand in a detailed way just why Christ died for me and how the atonement was accomplished, that does not diminish the fact that Christ died for me.

    This is where I am troubled by the teaching about Penal Substituionary Atonement (PSA). It is not that I think the teaching in and of itself is wrong, it is that it seems to be taking the place of the reality in some people’s theology. PSA is a metaphor, a limited human expression of the meaning of the atonement. As with most metaphors, it conveys some of the meaning of the atonement, but it can easily obscure other parts of that meaning.

    But in conversation with many advocates of PSA I can’t simply affirm my acceptance of PSA as a single metaphor among many for the atonement. I am asked to affirm that PSA is the central meaning of the cross, essentially making it the reality, rather than a metaphor. That I will not do, because I believe that is not worthy of the cross. That reduces the cross to a sense of human retribution and punishment, and reduces God to a human judge. It does not adequately express the trinitarian view of God himself becoming one of us and dying for our sins. It does not adequately express the depth and breadth of God’s love and forgiveness. Seeing it in that light, for me–and I reemphasize for me–it would be idolatry to put a lesser thing in place of the reality that is God, in Christ, reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19).

    There is no language to adequately express the incarnation and atonement. No matter how well we express it, we run up against the difficulty of describing and encompassing infinite God with finite human expressions. Our doctrines on this and every other topic will always contain some taint of the traditions of men.

    For that reason, we need to allow our doctrines and our perceptions to constantly come up against the scriptural presentation and against our experience of God’s presence. This is true whether those doctrines be modern, liberal, post-modern, conservative, or any other label we might put on them. It is true even if we believe our doctrines are scriptural.

    I read a report by a committee in the PCA, examining the New Perspective on Paul and another movement to see if they are in accord with the Westminster Standards. In explaining how they do this, and also elevate scripture above the standards, they wrote the following tortured paragraph:

    In addition, we are a confessional church. The PCA has affirmed that “the Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms of the Westminster Assembly, together with the formularies of government, discipline, and worship are accepted by the Presbyterian Church in America as standard expositions of the teachings of Scripture in relation to both faith and practice” (BCO 29-1; cf. 21-5.2; 26-1; 39-3). The church has historically understood that this claim does not elevate the Standards over Scripture itself; and yet, our Constitution does recognize the Standards as our “standard expositions of the teachings of Scripture.” Because this is the case, the main focus of our study will be to determine whether the views of the NPP and AAT/FV are in conformity with our Westminster Standards.

    It’s not my intention here to criticize the PCA any more than specifically John Piper. The question I have is whether you can say that a certain set of standards is not elevated above scripture, and at the same time make the assumption that those standards define what scripture says. The NPP scholars believe they have found good, new interpretations of Paul, and they think their interpretations are closer to Paul’s intention than were earlier studies. Would not the correct question be this: Are these new interpretations more accurate? If you ask instead whether those interpretations are in accordance with the standards, does that not place the standards in the superior position?

    I grew up as a Seventh-day Adventist, and the writings of Ellen G. White were frequently placed in that position. In seminary I began to forcefully reject the claim that Ellen White was not above scripture, and yet when I went to interpret scripture, what Ellen White said was supposed to be definitive. If the Bible was superior, then I could test Ellen White by scripture, not the scripture by her.

    I feel the same way about doctrinal statements and confessions. Confessions are good for denominational unity, but if I am ever studying a proposed new interpretation my question will not be whether it is consistent with a particular confession, but whether it is more accurate. The confession can be adjusted.

    I think that all metaphors and all doctrines (as a subcategory of metaphor) need to be subject to revision at any time. Many have been and will be reaffirmed over and over, but the examination is still good. I think God will be grieved if we don’t allow his presence to shatter our limited understandings.

  • Look at New Perspectives on Paul

    This will be a slightly different post than my usual for this blog. Normally I grab a Bible passage or a principle of interpretation and comment on it. In this post, I want to tie together several threads of my blogging and teaching and point the direction toward some new questions that I’d like to examine as I continue some of my current study.

    I was launched in this particular direction by a post at Adrian Warnock’s blog, The PCA Considering Excluding the Followers of N. T. Wright. Now I’ve been watching Adrian’s blog lately because of the various atonement wars (as I call them), and things about N. T. Wright are bound to catch my attention. I have truly appreciated reading Wright’s material on the historical Jesus. His thorough scholarship and remarkably courteous form of dialog are quite refreshing. It’s not my plan to criticize anyone’s readings of the Westminster Confessions. I am, after all, not Calvinist. But the broader issues involve are very important to me.

    In addition, I just started podcasting a series on Mark that came from the older Bible Pacesetter Radio Program. This series was started 11/24/2003, and continued into 2004 until we canceled that program. Now I’m using the old programs, and then planning to continue through Mark. In listening to my teaching, I couldn’t help but notice some dependence on N. T. Wright for things that I said about Mark’s view of the proclamation.

    Further, I just completed a read through Galatians alongside J. Louis Martyn’s commentary, and I have saved more than 20 note items intended for future blogging out of Galatians. I’m not going to call that a series, because I have no idea when I’ll get to them. I already have numerous items for my series on Hebrews that I simply haven’t had time to post.

    I would note here that my primary training was in the ancient near east and in Old Testament, rather than New Testament. Yes, my concentration was Biblical languages, but at the graduate level that involved a very small amount of Greek, and a very large amount of Hebrew, but since I now spend my time teaching lay audiences, the New Testament is more in demand. This whole issue has become somewhat more important to me.

    So I followed this all up by starting to read from The Paul Page which is dedicated to the new perspective on Paul. One key item immediately caught my attention. As argued by Martyn, the new perspective relates the controversy over circumcision more to the identification with God’s people than to a faith-works issue. In a related point, Martyn argues that the “Jerusalem” of Galatians was not Judaism, but the circumcision oriented mission to Judaism which was based in, if not supported by, the Jerusalem church.

    A second key item is the view of Judaism, and particular the view of the law in the Old Testament/Hebrew scriptures. It has always seemed to me that New Testament scholars do not characterize this view accurately. It seems more like a caricature, but I haven’t taken the time to work on that in detail.

    This leads to the following comment, also from The Paul Page (Summary):

    Translating the doctrine of justification into contemporary terms, Wright notes with irony that this doctrine, which was principally concerned with unity and acceptance in the body of Christ regardless of social barriers, has been one of the most divisive doctrines in the history of Christianity, particularly between Catholics and Protestants who have traditionally interpreted it as a question of precisely how salvation is to be attained.

    I think this is a point of critical importance. How is something that is supposed to bring joy, freedom, and unity so often construed as a way to divide the body of Christ?

    In discussing this and other issues related to the atonement, I’m going to be working through these materials and becoming better informed on this new perspective.

    Update: Since I’m not Calvinist, I won’t be interacting with this that much, but I think it is only fair to present a link to the PCA preliminary report.