Love & Blunder

Travis Prinzi gets it right. This is exactly what I was trying to get at in my last post.

Here’s the whole image.

Michael at the BHT recently linked to this post, which discusses John Piper’s critique of N.T. Wright’s definition of righteousness. Wright has long held that righteousness is best understood as God’s covenant faithfulness; the covenant being God’s promise to deal with sin finally and set the world right. Piper, on the other hand, calls Wright’s approach reductionistic, and has this to say in response (from his book, The Future of Justification):

“The essence of the righteousness of God is his unwavering faithfulness to uphold the glory of his name. And human righteousness is the same: the unwavering faithfulness to uphold the glory of God. (64)”

Piper’s statement is typical for his brand of thoroughly reformed theology, which sees God’s glory and sovereignty as the fundamental principal from which all time and history springs. Unfortunately, this kind of thinking often leaves Christ in the role of gatekeeper to God’s glory. In this model, the person and work of Christ is important because He allows us to get in line with God’s glory. God’s glory has become this disembodied thing, an other-worldly standard which must be maintained.

A better reading of scripture, in my mind, is to start with Christ first, then re-imagine ideas like glory and righteousness through Him. Re-read Piper’s statement on righteousness through the fulcrum point of the cross, he ends up a lot closer to Wright. It goes something like this:

• The essence of God’s righteousness is his unwavering faithfulness to uphold the glory of His name.
• He accomplishes this only through the cross and resurrection.
• Throughout the New Testament, the cross and resurrection are explicitly for the life of the world.
• Therefore, God’s righteousness is his unwavering faithfulness to uphold (and resurrect!) the life of the world.
• … and in Wright’s book, that’s pretty much the covenant.

Piper’s approach goes awry when it begins considering God’s glory as an object somehow separate from the communion of the Trinity. We’re headed for trouble any time we try to divorce an attribute of God from the person of Christ.