Which Gospel, which theology?

"Humans are rational and capable of accurate theological reflection, and thus ethical. God is just and is known to everyone, and his ethical demands are revealed to Jews through written legislation, but are known to everyone else innately. Reward and punishment will be appropriated by God on the basis of righteous actions -- "on the basis of desert" -- with any earthly injustices rectified by a final judgment. Since humans are inherently sinful -- that is, they violate God's ethical demands, and probably often -- honest self-reflection concludes that God's final judgment will be largely negative. Fear of the final judgment causes people to either renew their attempts at righteousness (falling into a "loop of despair") or retreat into self-righteous denial, boasting, and hypocritically judging others (the "loop of foolishness"). God generously redirects the punishment due sinners onto Christ, who being sinless and divine offers limitless satisfaction through dying. He stipulates a manageable criterion, faith, so that humans who choose it will receive a positive evaluation on the day of judgment and so inherit eternal life. Ethical guidance is still necessary, but it doesn't provide the basis for salvation. The relationship between humanity and God thus remains conditional and contractual, but much more manageable with the single criterion of faith in place."


"Humans are ignorant and incapable of accurate reflection -- a disorderly mess. They inherit Adam's being, or "flesh", and are oppressed by evil forces that were released in the garden of Eden. They need to be rescued before they can even begin to think and behave properly. God initiates an elective saving action by sending his son to be martyred in the flesh and raised to an existence which provides a new template for humanity. Christ entered the human condition, assumed it, terminated it, and is now reconstituted in heaven where he continues to intercede -- through the spirit -- for people still mired in the flesh. Through no choice of their own, humans are rescued from slavery (in Adam) into a new form of slavery (in Christ), which leads to eternal life. Only in hindsight does it become clear how desperate the prior condition was in Adam. Only now is it seen that humanity is trapped and enslaved under all sorts of forces -- including the law. But with the spirit no further ethical guidance is necessary, for that would only provide more opportunity for sin and the flesh to exploit. The relationship between God and those in Christ is unconditional and apocalyptic, liberating the believer who participates in death to await resurrection."


Both are from Doug Campbell's "The Deliverance of God", you can have a guess which one he likes

Theological Exegesis with Michael Gorman

People who write great books have blogs too!

Michael Gorman, who has a new book out on justification Inhabiting the Cruciform God also blogs.

hereis a series of his on theological exegesis.

Enjoy

Is it ok to say nice things in biblical language?

Tom Wright has come out swinging, and personally, I think it is about time.

In his new book on justification called, imaginatively, "Justification", Wright takes John Piper to task.
It isn't a gloves off fight, from either side, but you get the feeling that Piper has taken on someone a few weight divisions up, who is faster and hits harder.

Take this gem.
Here's Piper
"Please do not be seduced, by N.T Wright or anyone else, into imagining that you need to read the New Testament within its first-century Jewish context"

Ahem.
Consider me seduced, though not by Wright alone.

Then Wright, working off a Alister McGrath quote, that basically conceeds that the systematic theology term 'justification' has come to mean something entirely different to what Paul meant by ' justification'.

"Does this matter? Is the church free to use words and concepts in fresh ways which do not correspond to their biblical origins, while at least by implication claiming, through the biblical echoes that these words and concepts awaken, that they are thereby authorized by scripture itself? Most systematic theologians of my acquaintance would be quick to reply, Of Course! The church can and must, under the guidance of the holy spirit, develop words, concepts, discourse of all sorts, out beyond the narrow confines of exegesis. This is what happened with Athanasius, holding out for the non-biblical term homoousion to express, against Arius, the radically biblical view of the divinity of Jesus Christ. We cannot reduce the task of theology to that of biblical commentary.
But notice what then happens. The word homoousion was not in scripture, but the word 'justification' was. As the church, within its own life and proclamation, uses a scriptural word or concept but denotes by that word or concept something more than, or even different from, what is meant by the word in its scriptural origin, three effects are almost inevitable. First, it will then misread scripture at that point, imagining that when the Bible uses that word it is talking about the thing which the church normally talks about when it uses that word. And that may well not be the case. Second, such a reading will completely miss the thing that scripture was talking about at that point; it will fail to pay attention to the word of God. Third, it wll imagine itself to have a biblical warrant for its own ideas, when all it has are 'biblical' echoes of its own voice" pp61

We've seen this before people. Think of medieval readings of 'repentance' as 'do penance'

In my experience, I've seen people get hot under the collar when their theological system is challenged by Wright reading scripture. It is good to see Wright get hot under the collar here. The issue is that we blind ourselves to the word of God, we shut our ears to its voice, if we don't humbly and carefully listen to what it ACTUALLY is saying. ie. in the flow of its argument, in its original context, with its worldview
Plenty of people have questioned Wright's orthodoxy because his reading of scripture weakens their traditions. It is about time the tables were turned and some questions were fired at those whose traditions chop up, mangle and discard the scriptures.

Give them the Bird

Whenever people pester me about justification, I give them the bird.


Mike Bird's "The Saving Righteousness of God".

Michael Jensen recommends his "Birds eye view of Paul" which seems to say similar things, only quicker

and here is the Bird man himself on the horizontal aspect of justification

Alister McGrath on Justification notes

Sorry to those of you who do RSS, this is the easiest way for me to get notes home from college

Alister Mc Grath, opening chapters on Justification

Distinguish between the concept and the doctrine of justification.

The term justification came to be the dominant metaphor for the entire soteriological action
1.Pauline scholarship in 12th Century
2.High Scholasticisms rationalisation of divine action to justice
3.Generally high regard for jurisprudence
4.Luthers wrestling with God is justification
5.The discussion at Trent of Soteriology under this heading

Not in the East though, they are more interested in theosis.

The problem boils down to
God is righteous
Man is a sinner
God justifies man The rest is working out how this can be the case

Sedeq
-rooted etymologically in 'conformity to a norm'
first used Judges 5 as 'victory', as the condition of continuance of covenant
acting in accordance to the claims of a relationship

dikaiosun- Aristotle, is part of the human contract polis for greater good
usually translated sdq, but sometimes the LXX traslated sdq with elemosuvn, mercy!

Iustitia- Cicero 'giving each one his due'
importantly, Jerome translated the Psalms from latin for the vulgate

hasdiq- to justify (not condemn but vindicate, aquit). Yet the greek can mean punish too, in fact, applied to an unjust person, it almost always means punish.
Not only this, but the Latin iustifacere and merit introduces the idea of merit,a quality of deserving, and the reward due because of this quality followed by Augustine and tertullian. If the greek had the sense of being estimated righteous, the latin had the sense of being righteous.

This results in an anthropocentricity to the argument. Ie What is the nature of righteousness in man, how did it get there, where did it come from?

The righteousness of God
Augustine- not God's personal righteousness, but the righteousness he bestows on sinners
Gabriel Biel- God's own moral righteousness.
Luther- objective genetive 'a righteousness which is valid before God
Bultmann- a relational term, a genitive of authorship
Kasemann-subjective genetive, attribute, God's saving action
Stendhal- Yes but God's saving action through History of his people
Cranfield- a genitive of origin, the status which comes from God
One thing is clear. NOT A MORAL CONCEPT

The whole tradition can be reduced to four questions: How is the concept of the justification of the ungodly to be understood? How is it possible? In what sense is it relevant? How may it be the legit and necessary interpretation of the history of Jesus?

Premodern was interested in the first two, 20th Century mostly interested in existential answers to the second two