Wright Well Interviewed

The guys at Said at Southern conducted an outstanding interview with N.T. Wright. In it Wright clarifies his thinking on a whole host of issues ranging from personal conversion to interaction with Piper’s The Future of Justification. Here are some notable quotes:

On the Gospel: “When Paul talks about “the gospel,” he means “the good news that the crucified and risen Jesus is the Messiah of Israel and therefore the Lord of the world.”

Timing & Terminology of Justification: “Let’s be clear about this because many Christians in the evangelical tradition use words like “conversion,” “regeneration,” “justification,” “born-again,” etc. all as more or less synonyms to mean “becoming a Christian from cold.” In the classic Reformed tradition, the word “justification” is much more fine-tuned than that and has to do with a verdict which is pronounced, rather than with something happening to you in terms of actually being born again. So that I’m actually much closer to some classic Reformed writing on this than some people perhaps realize…But the word “salvation” and the word “justification” are not interchangeable.”

Evangelicals as Liberals in Selective Pauline Interpretation: “It’s interesting that many evangelicals have done implicitly what liberal scholarship has done explicitly and put Ephesians and Colossians in a kind of sub-category and elevated their reading of Romans and Galatians to a primacy. Now, the liberal scholarship has said, “Well, Ephesians and Colossians were written later. That’s sort of deutero-Pauline.”

But many evangelicals have actually held that view as well. Because Ephesians and Colossians have a very high view of the Church, which many evangelicals have been suspicious of, and it’s actually often ecclesiology which is driving evangelicals to be suspicious of the New Perspective.”

No comments yet

Leave a comment