N.T. Wright responds to John Piper: Who got Paul wrong?

Mike Bird (0:09)

The Ask NT Wright Anything Podcast.

Hello, and welcome to this bonus episode of Ask NT Wright Anything, our special episodes for special friends where we do a deep dive into hot topics and Tom's latest projects. But Tom, today, I want us to take a trip down memory lane to a time in the early noughties, before AI, before the global financial crisis, before COVID. It was a much simpler time back then. We could solve so many of our problems with this new thing called Google. People were experimenting with Google Earth and the like. It was a very different time. But it was during this time that American pastor and theologian John Piper wrote a very pointed critique of your own work and that was called Counted Righteous in Christ by John Piper. A book which I believe is now available freely on the Internet. Now, for those who don't know, Piper is a Baptist pastor. I tend to think of him as inhabiting a mixture of the world of biblical scholarship. I mean, he wrote two monographs on the love command in the New Testament and God's glory and righteousness in Romans. I think he did his PhD in Germany, so he's no academic slouch. But he inhabits the world of the Puritan tradition. So he's coming out of a reformed Christianity, to be the reformed Baptist tradition, where you might think of someone like a Charles Spurgeon or the London Baptist Confession, that world.

He was noticing that a lot of people were taking an interest in the works of a certain NT Wright.

He was confused and concerned about it because, Tom, you've articulated your own vision and understanding of Paul, which doesn't always resonate with what the reformed tradition teaches. A good example of that would be the idea of how we are justified. So in the reformed tradition, they say we're justified on the basis of faith, that is faith in Jesus and Jesus' own righteousness, his active obedience, his obedient law keeping is imputed to us, and that is how you become righteous. Now, that made a lot of sense if you're debating Catholics in the 16th century about whether you're justified by what you do or are you justified by the infusion of grace from the sacraments that enables you to do works of charity, something like imputation was a way of warding off that medieval sacramental and ethical synergy that was prevalent at the time within the Catholic tradition.

But it may not be what Paul is discussing in Galatians chapter 2 If anyone's wondering, I don't think Paul is writing about whether justification as merit, is it imparted by grace infused into you like an antibiotic, or is it imputed like a legal declaration, or like money that's been put into your bank account or like frequent flyer miles that have been shared with you that did not originally belong to you. And while I have a certain degree of respect for Piper because he writes out of that Puritan tradition, he wrote a great book about mission, let the nations be glad. He's got that wonderful statement that mission exists because worship doesn't. He's inspired men and women to have a passion for God's glory and to desire God. I'm all up with that. But when it came to his critique of you on justification, I could see where he's coming from. But I felt like he was kind of missing the forest for the trees. He wasn't quite getting into what you were seeing. And I don't think he really appreciated how what you were doing, Tom, when you speak of justification, is you're showing how justification by faith is not solving the 16th century debates about where justified by impartation or the imputation of the merits of Jesus. You're saying, what if there are no merits of Jesus to be imputed or imparted? What if justification by faith is answering a different question? That's not like, am I justified by imputation and impartation of righteousness? It's answering the question, who are God's people and how do you tell?

And it's interesting that when Paul does mention justification by faith, I think particularly Galatians 2, Romans 8, it is definitely in the sense of people asking the question, who are God's people and how do you tell? Because the biggest debates in the early church were not over forensic versus a sacramental righteousness, they were whether Gentiles have to become Jews in order to be followers of Jesus. Now, that's my understanding of the debate between yourself and Pastor John Piper. Tom, what's your recollection of that debate? When did someone tap you on the shoulder and say, Tom, I don't know whether you know this, but people in Minneapolis are talking a lot of smack about you. I mean, this is like Madonna throwing some shade at the Spice Girls. You cannot let this go. Attention must be paid.