Villagersonline : blogs : russ : NT Wright on Justification by Faith

From: russ
Date: Thu Feb 10 22:29:15 MST 2005
Subject: NT Wright on Justification by Faith

Responses
Patricia: Ahhh (2/11/05)

NewRyan: question (2/12/05)

russ: Copout...not really (2/13/05)

GaryG: funny... (2/15/05)
russ: Then again... (2/18/05)

paulmo: No Subject (2/19/05)

Responses (sorted by date)
paulmo: No Subject (2/19/05)
russ: Then again... (2/18/05)
GaryG: funny... (2/15/05)
russ: Copout...not really (2/13/05)
NewRyan: question (2/12/05)
Patricia: Ahhh (2/11/05)

Eric gave me "What St. Paul Really Said," by N.T. Wright. There was a great paragraph there that I thought I'd quote here:

There follows from this [discussion of justification by faith] a vital and liberating point, which I first met in the works of the great Anglican divine Richard Hooker, and for which I shall always be grateful. One is not justified by faith by believing in justification by faith. [Russ: That is, believing in the doctrine of justification by faith is not the same as being justified by faith.] One is justified by faith by believing in Jesus. It follows quite clearly that a great many people are justified by faith who don't know that they are justified by faith. The Galatian Christians were in fact justified by faith, though they didn't realize it and thought they had to be circumcised as well. As Hooker said, many pre-Reformation folk were in fact justified by faith, because they believed in Jesus, even though, not knowing about or believing in justfication by faith, they lacked assurace, and then sought to fill this vacuum in other ways. Many Christians today may not be very clear about the niceties of doctrine; but, however inarticulately, they hold on to Jesus; and, according to Paul's teaching, they are therefore justified by faith. They are constituted as memebers of the family. They must be treated as such. This is not to say, of course, that justification is an unimportant of inessential doctrine. Far from it. A church that does not grasp it and teach it is heading for trouble. It is to say that the doctrine of justification itself points away from itself. Believing in Jesus - believing that Jesus is Lord, and that God raised him from the dead - is what counts.

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From: Patricia
Date: Fri Feb 11 07:13:02 MST 2005
Subject: Ahhh

and this is what my old English teacher Richard Huggett called "simple faith".
Is this perhaps the key to this mysterious concept of a child's "age of accountability"?

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From: NewRyan
Date: Fri Feb 11 17:52:30 MST 2005
Subject: question

Russ, I like that idea a lot. Totally make sense to me. But it raises another question which I'd love to hear your thoughts on:
What does it mean to "believe in Jesus?" How much does one need to know about Jesus to "believe" in him?
-ryanthemoore

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From: russ
Date: Sun Feb 13 13:06:15 MST 2005
Subject: Copout...not really

I know it sounds like a copout, but I really have come to believe that believing in Jesus means exactly one thing: believing what Jesus wants you to believe.
Salvation can't be a thing that is rooted in knowledge, or else those with severe mental issues, or the very young, or the sick (Alzheimer's patients, psychiatric patients, etc.) couldn't be saved. If your salvation was based on what you thought, then are you still saved while you're asleep and not thinking anything?
So I think that I would reject any particular point(s) of knowledge as "required" for salvation. Yet I don't mean to say that it doesn't matter what you believe. It seems obvious from Scripture that we can outright reject certain things that God wants us to believe; we can also fail to believe other things. These choices can and do separate people from God - but wait, do they? Do they separate people from God, or do they simply reflect a preexisting separation?
N.T. Wright's point in the above book is that "justification by faith" was not viewed, by Paul, as the mechanism for salvation. That is, Paul did not believe (as some of the Reformers have believed, and as I was raised to believe) that there was some sort of "faith" in a person (God given, or by human choice) and God responded by imputing a righteousness upon that person. Instead, N.T. Wright argues that Paul believed instead that we came to understand our own status as saved by looking at our faith. "Justification by faith" meant that faith was a badge that marked out those who were "in." You are justified in believing that you are saved because of your faith. He further argues that Paul viewed the mechanism for salvation to be inclusion of the covenantal community, of which Christ was the founder and head, but which is a fulfillment of the OT role of the Jewish people. Jewish identity was supposed to be that they were to show God to people and create the community where people would have relationship with God; since they were fallen humans, they failed, and so Christ came to fulfill their calling. Christ creates a community which is the community that was intended all along, and Jews and Gentiles alike are invited to become part of it. "Justification by faith" then becomes the communal sign of being in that community of Christ, and this sign replaces all of the old signs (such as circumcision and food laws).
I say all this to get back to the point of knowledge and salvation. I battled, several years back, with the question of whether I was saved. I looked at my own depravity and had to say that I had no moral reason to view myself different than anybody else; at best, I was a mildly successful moralist, and even atheists do that. Likewise, my walk with the Lord was full of stumbles and troubles. Worst yet, I couldn't shake the idea that maybe I was just calling myself a Christian because it made me feel like a good person. Was I truly transformed, or simply conformed?
The only answer I found - and it has stuck with me through these years, and I wear it proudly as my sign of salvation - is that I know that my heart really, honestly loves God and wants to please Him. I fail, all the time, yes. But there is something in me which I get a glimpse of, from time to time, which tells me that I have a longing to love God even if it gains me nothing. I would love God even if it didn't get me out of Hell or into Heaven. I just honestly want to love him.
As such, I am "justified by faith." What I claim to know and believe, I do so in submission to that loving faith. I don't want to put any heavier burden on any other person.

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From: GaryG
Date: Tue Feb 15 07:45:11 MST 2005
Subject: funny...

Hello all, greetings from the winter wonderland of New England! I miss the Village very much, hope you are all doing well. It's funny that Russ should post about this book, I remember when I first came to the Village I was steeped in hard core Reformation teachings and was convinced that this book was heresy, because one of my favorite websites identified it as such. It was given the dreaded "another Gospel" label...in fact, I even tried to drag Eric and Rod into a discussion about it, figuring that it would be fun to see the two of them go at it-I can be very twisted sometimes! Thankfully out of that came some great wisdom from Rod about the dangers of over-intellectualizing God, and I look back and believe that God used that to show me that my efforts at being an amateur theologian were doing nothing to help me love Him and His people more. So I think it's time I picked up this book and gave it a read, I read N.T.'s book about following Christ and it was excellent.
So beyond that, Karen and I are doing well. We are both working, I got my first medical coding/billing job, and Karen is working with a designer and focusing on building up a base of her own clients. We are playing together on the worship team at our new church, here is a link:
http://www.harborofhope.org/
I'm also playing with a band that is almost gig-ready and I'm trying out for another tonight that is already playing out. I love the East coast, it's beautiful, vibrant and exciting! Best wishes to all of you, we miss you...
Gary G

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From: russ
Date: Thu Feb 17 22:02:53 MST 2005
Subject: Then again...

I've been thinking about what I wrote (in the response "Copout...not really") and I don't think I was entirely honest.
As all of you know who slog through my blogs, I wrestle with the concept of "necessary beliefs" a lot. I am constantly remarking on another thing that I used to think was "basic" which I have now found a reason to grant flexibility on. I think it's honest to state that my intellectual position is as I stated (that "believing in Jesus means believing what Jesus wants you to believe"), but I think that I still habitually and longingly look for absolutes on which I can hang my hat. I really, really want to know exactly what the limits of "minimum theology" are, for reasons that aren't totally clear to me. Sometimes I want to figure out if somebody is "in" or "out." Sometimes I want to just have some sort of foundation on which I can build everything else. Sometimes there are other reasons that I may or may not understand.
I also was rather cavalier about this subject in that I didn't discuss what I believe are some more hard-nosed realities of community. I don't think that a Christian community should be without beliefs; in fact, I believe that any such community should have many highly valued beliefs. But I don't think that the community should think of themselves as "right." Instead, the community should believe that these beliefs - whatever they are - are the ones appointed by God for this little group of people, at this point in time.
This is a terrifying perspective on truth. It removes from us any certainty that "that other group over there" will have Godly theology. What if they decide to believe some hideous, Satanic thing? How do we control them and protect their members from this annihilating heresy? They will think that they are serving God "in their particular context," but in fact they will be rebelling against him in the most terrible ways!
To answer that question, we have to point it at ourselves. How do we ensure that we will not in the future believe some despicable heresy? Worse yet, how do we know that we are not believing one today?
The only answer I have here is faith. I have faith in the action of God to move in the lives his people, to cultivate the theologies and practices that he wants them to have. Inherent in that faith is the understanding that some will turn their backs on him, and put his name on terrible things that are not from him.
If there are people who reject God despite his own best efforts, who are we to believe that we can construct some theological edifice which will do any better? If God is rejected, then our best attempts at theology will be twisted to evil ends no matter what we do.
So, do we just check out? Absolutely not! We are called to action by God, called to move into the lives of the people around us, to contextualize God for them. God is the great Common Context in all contexts, and we are to be part of that context in each other's lives.
But we are part of more contexts than just our little community. We are part of a worldwide context, a city wide context, a catholic (universal) Christian context, an early 21st century American context. We are obligated to contextualize God for people in all of those contexts. In some contexts, we will have a lot of impact; in some we are only one pebble in the avalanche. But we are called to utilize the power we have been given and we will be held accountable for whether we used it well or not.
So, we are free to explore God in a personal, dynamic relationship with him. But we are obligated to contextualize that relationship to others. We are to live inside our own context. But our context includes the theological perspectives of others. We are free to live without fear or constraint. But we are not isolated monads; we are members of community.
So, I go back to the beginning. Believing in Jesus means believing what he wants you to believe. But part of how he reveals what he wants you to believe is through community. Community with past Christians (the Bible). Community with a local body (the local church). Community with those around us (the culture). Community with those who fervently disagree with us (the hardest).

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From: paulmo
Date: Sat Feb 19 03:07:11 MST 2005
Subject:

Russ, I think you're right on. One of the core prayers in the lexicon of the Orthodox Church is the Jesus prayer. It simply and profoundly echoes the call of the blind man to Christ as he passed by:
"Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."
There's a lot of levels to that prayer that seem to apply here. Like the blind man, we reach out blindly and desperately to Christ in the middle of our darkness. Like the blind man, we are in need. Like the blind man, we recognize that need and our inability to extricate ourselves. And like the blind man, we sense that there just may be mercy to be had for us if we take the risk of calling out for it.
To me, that raw cry at the core of all faith and justification. Before there were creeds and codices, before there was the genius of St. Paul and the many many theologians that have come since, there was that cry. The Reformation, and many modern churches, run aground on the idolatrous worship of the intellect -- that somehow to attempt to frame a thing with language is the thing itself. I think I've heard somewhere that belief without guidance from reason is merely superstition, but reason without the raw act of faith is bone-dead and seriously in danger of falling into an exercise of power.
Faith is, by it's nature, humble and without pride or self-preservation. Scripture says that even the demons believe, and tremble. But they will not surrender. And faith is that surrender, that trust that if we ask for a line to be thrown to us in the middle of our downhill slide, that it will actually be thrown to us. To believe that there is love and righteousness is one thing, but to surrender to it (once, and then over and over as a practice) is another thing entirely.
I think when we are connected to that practice of surrender to Christ, the world around us literally takes on a new shape as our crooked spots are straightened out (justification). We are free to mature and grow in knowledge, but all of the wisest saints in the history of the Church have understood that knowledge only remains powerful when it leads you ultimately to what connected us to Christ in the first place:
"Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."
(PS. I was inspired after some thought to write more on my blog. Click here to read the entry.)

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