I think this is a pretty important discussion, and we have to keep working at not talking past one another, and not reducing each others’ intentions to the worst of each of our traditions.

I agree. And that’s part of what I was getting at–Wright and Piper have quite a lot in common, but their emphases are different. As Kristy points out above, Piper is heavily Christ-centered in many of his other works; he’s in no way trying to leave Jesus in the margins.

My question is this, however: Which definition of righteousness (and more broadly, which framework for understanding redemption) are you going to carry around and live inside every day? The answer cannot be purely doctrinal; it must also be pastoral. And in that, Wright wins this one hands down. As you say, Jesus is a whole lot like the Father, and the Father a whole lot like Jesus. Wright’s approach gives a fuller picture of this relationship than Piper’s.

“Without Christ as its beginning, middle, and end … ”

“As” makes your point reductionistic. We’re trinitarian. “Christ Alone” is NOT our doctrine of God. The fourth gospel’s prologue has Christ exegeting not himself but the Father. Our doctrine of God has to be interreferential (is that a word?) and inter-exegetical (that’s hyphenated, so it doesn’ thave to be a word) in order to be trinitarian and not Christomonic (is that a word?)

And you also used that hideous “nothing but” in the same sentence. Again, reductionistically obnoxious. And in context, it doesn’t actually say much since you don’t use it substantially, but only in an ad homenim.

That said, I think that what you all are fighting for here is really important, if often less than adequately articulated. No one has seen the Father. We’ve only seen Christ. No one knows the Father but the Son, and the Son has made him known. So we know the Son primarily as a Father-knower and Father-exegete. And of course the Son is the one who has both seen and shared the glory of God. So I agree that whatever we want to think of as the glory of God (a very difficult concept, of course), we must look to the one who was sent, to glorify him and to glorify those he makes partakers of this glory-sharing relationship that our triune God had before the world was made.

Also, we have to keep in mind that though Christ’s first advent was as suffering servant, the bible also teaches his return in glory. There was glory in his first advent, but we can’t reduce our concept of glory to act one, especially when the same sources that narrate act one to us make it absolutely clear that act two is on the horizon, and has already dawned in the resurrection.

Anyway, just some thoughts. I think this is a pretty important discussion, and we have to keep working at not talking past one another, and not reducing each others’ intentions to the worst of each of our traditions.

I didn’t read either of the original articles, so I can’t say much about Wright and Piper’s viewpoints on the subject of righteousness.

Kristy

A quibble: in your second bullet point, you emphasize ‘only’. This exclusivness may be right, but it isn’t obvious. If you said something like ‘climactically’, then I don’t think it’s nearly as controversial (although it may shift the significance of what you wanted to say).