Craig Blomberg on N.T. Wright's new book

My friend Craig Blomberg offers some glowing thoughts on N.T. Wright's new book on justification. He writes:

"In the past, Wright has often made sweeping pronouncements about how the Reformation was wrong on some key point, but if one keeps patiently reading one later discovers him saying instead that it’s merely a case of putting Reformation concerns into a larger perspective. Piper, on the other hand, has not always represented Wright well, I suspect in large part because he has not always understood him well.Wright’s new Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (London: SPCK; Downers Grove: IVP, 2009) is an outstanding book. Written in lively, if somewhat polemical style, not encumbered with many footnotes, Wright has here laid out his views with exemplary clarity. In fact, he is affirming all the major Reformation perspectives on justification. The only one he denies is one that was unique to one wing of Calvinism and not even to the entire Calvinist movement. While warmly embracing the representative, substitutionary atonement of Christ through his crucifixion and emphasizing the legal, courtroom context of justification as a metaphor for the declaration of right standing before God not based on anything of our meriting, Wright does deny that Paul, or any other Scriptural author, teaches that the righteousness God imputes to us on the basis of Christ’s cross-work has anything necessarily to do with combining what has been called Jesus’ active obedience (his sinless life) with his passive obedience (his atoning death). And when one looks at the texts often cited in support of such a doctrine (most notably 1 Corinthians 1:30 and 2 Corinthians 5:21), one does indeed look in vain for such a distinction."

Note the critiques by Scott Clark and Justin Taylor of Craig Blomberg's understanding of Christ's active obedience. Part of the issue is how one understands the difference between Christ's active and passive obedience (apart from the question is whether the distinction is even biblical). See Daniel Kirk's excellent discussion of the subject published in SBET and introduced here.

A few thoughts. First, Craig Blomberg much like N.T. Wright, does not engage in a concerted historical discussion of Christ's obedience in Reformed thought and obviously they do not qualify as experts on the subject. Second, as Dan Kirk shows, the WCF mentions only the "obedience" of Jesus Christ and the devisers of the Confession decided to omit the adjective "whole" leaving option the possibility that it is only Christ's passive obedience that is reckoned to believers. Third, the NT clearly (in Rom. 5.17-18; Phil. 2.8; Heb. 5.8) emphasize Jesus' passive obedience. Fourth, we have to distinguish between the imputation of obedience and views of the imputation of merit. Merit is a medieval idea and not a biblical idea. Jesus does not rack up a bunch of frequent flyer points and then give them to you so you can fly to heaven. Instead, as the obedient second Adam and as the faithful Israel he is qualified for his task of redemption. He dies on the cross to take our sin, and he is raised for our justification. Jesus is justified in his resurrection and we are justified insofar we have union with him. And in that union his justification and the basis for it are counted as ours! In other words, Jesus' obedience is not an abstract transaction of merit, but it is the fulfilment of a redemptive-story and is part and parcel of our participation in Christ.

A Case for Historic Premillennialism

Another book on my hit list for the future is the Case for Historic Premillennialism edited by Craig Blomberg and Sung Wook Chung (due out in February, published by Baker). The blurb reads:

"Many evangelical readers who have learned the basics of eschatology from popular authors and more recently from novelists assume that dispensational premillennialism, with its distinctive teachings about the pretribulation rapture of the church, is the only reliable view of the end times and the return of Christ. This volume, however, offers a compelling case for an alternative perspective--one that was widely prevalent throughout church history. The contributors, all respected scholars in their respective fields, suggest that classic premillennialism offers believers a more coherent and viable approach to understanding eschatology. Their studies, which examine eschatology from biblical, theological, historical, and missiological approaches, provide a broadly accessible argument for returning to the perspectives of historic premillennial eschatology."

Although I wouldn't bet my house on it, I still think a historic premillenial position is the one that best accounts for 1 Cor. 15.20-28 and Rev. 20.1-10 (with some good support from Papias and Justin Martyr - see Andrew Chester's study of millennarianism in the early church in his book Messiah and Exaltation) Besides short volumes by Ladd and Gundry, there aren't too many decent books that give a good exposition of historic premillennialism which is, despite protestations of my presbbie friends, quite different from dispensational millennialism (see the charts here).