N.T. Wright has attracted interest among Lutherans for his other work, but on the subject of his views of the doctrine of justification, is not merely wrong, but his views are deadly dangerous. I appreciated Justin Taylor’s blog post on this today:

Dan Wallace has a new article online, examining what N.T. Wright thinks about the “righteousness of God” and what the relevant passages in Romans mean in context. In particular, Wallace looks at Rom. 1:17; 3:5; 3:21, 22, 25, 26; 10:3. With each text he summarizes Wright’s view, compares Wright’s comments with the biblical text, and then summarizes his findings. Here are two lines from Wallace that summarize his conclusion about the success or failure of Wright’s exegesis in Romans: “it has coherence when it is not interacting with the particulars of the text, but it wreaks havoc at the lexical level for it is self-defeating.” Further, “I would view Wright’s synthesis of Romans as a brilliant failure—brilliant because of how coherent it is, but a failure because it sits three feet above the text at all points where it would be inconvenient to wrestle with what the text actually says.”

Since 1963, when Krister Stendahl wrote a paper titled ‘The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West’ in The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 56, No. 3 (Jul., 1963), pp. 199-215; republished in Paul Among Jews and Gentiles, (Augsburg Fortress Publishers) 1976. the view has been put forth that basically the Reformation got the doctrine of justification wrong. These views explain how it is that so-called Lutherans embraced the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, which was a wholescale betrayal of the Reformation. Since Stendahl, have been various protestant theologians who have come along challenging the Reformation doctrine of justification, or, to be more precise, the Reformation rediscovery of the Gospel itself: that we are saved by grace alone, by faith alone, apart from any works, entirely on account of Christ alone. James Dunn has more formalized advanced this movement, labelling it “The New Perspective on Paul” in 1982.

Most recently, it has been N.T. Wright who has popularized the “new perspective” through a series of books and articles. Sadly, even some Lutherans, who should know better, have been sucked into these erroneous views and claims about “chief article” of the Christian faith, as our Lutheran Confessions refer to it: justification. One of the fundamental premises of Wright’s positions [and there are a good many nuances, to be sure] is that whereas the “old perspective” [read: the view of the historic Lutheran Church!] is that when Paul refers to trying to save ourselves by our “works” he is referring to works we do in order to merit God’s favor. The “new perspective” asserts that in fact when Paul talks about works he is referring rather to those who wanted to try to be following rituals associated with the Torah and Judaism, or even ancient Greek religious customs.

Let’s be clear on where Wright is wrong. He has made many important and helpful contributions in support of the historical reliability and accuracy of the New Testament, has been a champion defending the resurrection of Christ, and has been outspoken in support of the Biblical view of homosexality, all for which we must be thankful, but on the doctrine of justification, Wright is simply wrong.

The “new perspective” movement effectively turns the Biblical doctrine of justification on its ear, and contradicts the beating heart both of the Sacred Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions, by a redefinition of key terms like “works” and “faith” and it simply opens the door widely to a reintroduction of the errors of Romanism. Lutheran professors today who are dabbling with these views are doing themselves and their students a tremendous disservice, to say the very least, if they are advancing these views as helpful. These views need to be engaged and refuted, not embraced and welcomed.

Recently, on the campus of Southern Baptist Seminary there was a panel discussion which I found to be quite information and helpful, offering reactions to, and refutations of, N.T. Wright’s perspectives on Paul. Here is the presentation