Wright is a historian by training and has in a number of places expressed dissatisfaction with traditional dogmatic categories. In particular, he seems to have an aversion to forensic/imputation language. I think it is more than just not giving sufficient attention; he sees the traditional language as not making sense. In his little book “What St Paul Really Said” he says something like, “Righteousness is not something that can be imputed / infused / passed across the courtroom….” (I paraphrase). I would say more than clarification is needed.

Secondly, I think you have put your finger on Wright’s weak spot, and I completely agree with you. While Wright often speaks of God’s covenantal faithfulness, and the faithfulness of Jesus to God’s plan, I feel he has not given the adequate attention, and the emphasis due, to the role of Christ’s righteousness. This makes me, as Lutheran, uncomfortable. I think this is in line with concerns about lack of imputation. Here, Wright needs to clarify things. Perhaps this weakness is because of Wright’s emphasis on the over-arching narrative?

Anglicanism started going wrong on justification when, in the 1830′s, the Oxford Movement began flirting with Romanizing in the doctrine of justification, gradually discarding the “solas” of the Reformation. (Some Lutherans look kindly on the Oxford Movement, because of its revival of the teaching of the real presence of Christ’s Body and Blood in the Communion, but that very welcome development is far outweighed by the wrong turns it took on justification, on the authority of Scripture, the role of tradition, and the importance of maintaining canonical succession.)

Anglicanism at first resisted this repudiation of the Reformation stoutly, but gradually Anglo-Catholicism moved Anglicanism away from a sound doctrine of justification and toward an attempted rapprochement with Rome. It is in that context that one must see the British writers who are engaged in the “New Perspective on Paul.” In the United States, Presbyterianism is much infected with the NPP; the Episcopal Church is so preoccupied with pink or lavender pulpits that it doesn’t even address serious theological issues any more.

Some of the stoutest resistance to the NPP has come from relatively liberal European Lutherans like Ernst Käsemann and Peter Stuhlmacher. Stendahl cannot be viewed as typical even in liberal Lutheran circles. However, it is true that Europeans, Lutheran, Reformed and Roman alike, are so anxious to exonerate themselves from any guilt in the Holocaust that anything that seems to condemn Judaism in any way is pushed to the side, no matter how basic it is to Christian theology.

Afterward, it bothered me to hear about it because it is alluding to something German again. The teaching about justification is not German, but biblical, Luther belongs to everybody, standing up for justification by faith with vigor is not German, and we need no mention of STASI, here.

The reason it piqued me, also, is because I just finished Uwe Siemon-Netto’s book on the “Fabricated Luther”, in relation to WWII. The subject is quite different here. But the implication that things too German may not be appealing to British, and that the ear might not hear so well, could be true. But that would be a big mistake and very unfortunate. If he truly feels persecuted, maybe can use a different image. Theologians of all stripes should be able to take each other seriously no matter their origin or language.