Justification And The New Perspectives On Paul: A Review And Response by Guy Prentiss Waters

Author:Guy Prentiss Waters
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-01-27T15:18:00+00:00

Romans .3:28. On this verse ("For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law"), Wright argues that Paul's language does not have a resumptive function-that is, it does not recapitulate his argument in the preceding several verses (3:21 ff.). Instead, "Paul is reporting on a calculation that has taken place, not in the present passage, but elsewhere, which he will shortly unveil."60 Wright, then, can divorce Paul's affirmation of Romans 3:28 from his preceding discussion of Christ's death as sacrificial and propitiatory (Rom. 3:21-26). After Wright's reminder that he will be bound to no traditional ordo salutis, and that he is no mere NPP "company man," he tells us that we must "let Paul say what he means by his own key terms" (even if this "does violence to many such well-loved frameworks of thought" ).61 Wright reminds us that present justification does not address the "event of `conversion' or the process of Christian living"; it is, rather, "God's declaration that certain persons are members of the covenant people, that their sins have been dealt with."62 How is justification by faith? "The badge of membership in God's people, the badge that enables all alike to stand on the same, flat ground at the foot of the cross, is faith."63 Faith, so understood, is to be contrasted with works of the law (3:20; 9:32), which Wright takes to be especially "the works that marked out the Jews from their pagan neigh- bors."'4 Jews are faulted, then, for their claim "to possession of Torah as the badge of being God's special people."6 5 Hence, Paul's faith/works dichotomy serves to communicate Paul's point "that all who attempted to legitimate their covenant status by appealing to possession of Torah would find that the Torah itself accused them of sin."66 That Paul is concerned with the Jew/Gentile question in these verses is also borne out by what he says just below in Romans 3:29-30 ("Or is God the God of Jews only? ... God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith...."). These verses also show why justification cannot be by the Torah (to which Wright appears to take "works of the Law" to refer)-"God's impartiality would be impugned (2:11), and the whole fabric of the righteousness of God, the justice and faithfulness of God, would start to unravel," since "God's faithfulness to the covenant with the Jewish patriarch, Abraham, and his descendants, can only be fulfilled through the creation of a worldwide, Jew-plus-Gentile, family."6-

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.