Driscoll and the ESV 6

I've been responding to the 6 reasons Mark Driscoll says Mars Hill uses the ESV. Bottom line: None of them bear up to the barest of examinations. He basically doesn't know what he's talking about.

Throughout, I have affirmed the ESV as a pretty good formal equivalence translation.  I've also suggested that on the few occasions where its biases come out, they are not Wesleyan-Arminian.  That's why I've suggested the NIV2011 is still probably the best translation for Wesleyan churches to use.

I debate whether I should have written in such a sarcastic tone.  I don't know. I don't expect Driscoll to read or even hear about these posts.  I promise I would have been the model of courtesy if he or any of his friends had engaged me. My point was not really to attack Mark Driscoll but to give you just a hint of how flimsy his understanding of the Bible is. Why? Because I don't want his thinking to infect my part of the Christian world.

Previous posts include:
1. The letter kills, the Spirit gives life.
2. All translation involves interpretation.
3. Stay out of semantics; keep your day job.
4. Driscoll likes big words.
5. It was translated for the elect.

Now his final point:
6. The ESV is complementarian.
Now we hit pay dirt.  All the rest of that stuff, all the theorizing?  Smoke and mirrors.  The final point is the real point.  Let me tell you a story.

There are differing versions of the origins of the ESV.  Obviously there was talk of it before the Colorado Springs guidelines that opponents said Zondervan violated when it came out with the TNIV. A sizable group opposed Zondervan coming out with a translation that used "brothers and sisters" where the Greek read "adelphoi," and when Zondervan published the TNIV, it lost the support of fundamentalist America.  This is the real reason the ESV is enjoying so much political support.

Regardless of how long the ESV was in the works, it has only taken the place Driscoll's church and others are giving it because of the backlash against Zondervan over "inclusive language." Driscoll himself corroborates this in his last point. In his last point, he connects together versions like the NIV2011 and the NLT with the extreme The Bible in a More Just Language, which intentionally tries to change the meaning of the text.  Suffice it to say, the NIV2011 and NLT are dramatically different from this revisionist version.

First, let me address the "brothers and sisters" debate.  Perhaps "brothers" is a more formal equivalence translation.  The reason I debate even this statement is because in patriarchal languages, you use the masculine plural if there is a male in the group, even if most of the group is female.  That is to say, "brothers" can actually refer to a group that is technically "brothers and sisters." For that reason, "brothers and sisters" is at least a legitimate dynamic equivalence translation of the masculine Greek "adelphoi."

Here is an important point. The NIV, NLT, NRSV have only translated adelphoi as "brothers and sisters" when they believe women were also being addressed. So is Paul only addressing the men in the Thessalonian church when he tells them to flee sexual immorality (1 Thess. 4)?  Only when these translation committees believed women were also being addressed did they include the sisters or the mothers.  They did not see themselves making the Bible more inclusive but as bringing out an inclusivity that was already there.

Now I respect those who prefer a translation that does not do this sort of thing.  But I do think the more dynamic sort of translation is probably more effective at communicating the biblical meaning to people today than the older approach.

However, once again, Driscoll seems off in his interpretations.  Take the Hebrew word 'adam.  It certainly can be used of a male, but the best reading of Genesis 1:27 seems to include women in it.  Here's a straightforward translation of the Hebrew: "And God created the 'adam in his image. In the image of God he created him. Male and female he created them."

The "him" in the second clause seems to include both male and female, because the third clause unpacks it as including male and female.  And the "him" in the second clause is expanding on the 'adam of the first clause. Therefore, the best translation of 'adam in this verse seems to relate to all humans, both male and female--all humankind.

And why is it so important to Driscoll in Psalm 8 that 'adam only refer to men? Surely it is because his misguided theology doesn't have room for women leaders. Surely it is because it is important to him that God have only subjected the earth to men, not to women as well.

Sorry Charlie, the command to rule the earth in Genesis 1:28 is in the plural, given to both male and female from the previous verse. (At this point you should here the swirling sound of Pac Man when the little fellow dies, indicating the failure of Driscoll's apparent attempt to cut women out of the dominion of the earth).

You can see why I don't think the ESV is the best translation for Wesleyans. It's subtle biases rub against our grain, not to mention accuracy.  We're a denomination that believes that sons and daughters prophesy (Acts 2:17), that Priscilla may have taken the lead in instructing Apollos (Acts 18:26), that Phoebe was a deacon of the church of Cenchrea (Rom. 16:1), and that Junia was quite possibly an apostle like Barnabas (Rom. 16:7).

The Greek word anthropos is just as generic as 'adam, maybe even more.  1 Peter 3:4 says that a woman's adornment should be the hidden anthropos of the heart.  Clearly it isn't saying women have a little man inside of them.  The word itself means "person."

These are reasons why the TNIV translators considered it "gender accurate" rather than "gender neutral" or "gender inclusive."  They intended only to translate generically when that's what the Bible actually meant.  In that respect, it is the ESV that has more likely screwed up the gender connotations by making them sound less inclusive than they were.

The ESV is a pretty good formal equivalence translation, but not quite ready to be crowned king of the universe.

Are you chosen to understand? 5

Almost done watching Mark Driscoll jump the shark on the ESV... I'm wondering if his church has had just about enough of his noodle whippings.

Previous posts include:
1. The letter kills, the Spirit gives life.
2. All translation involves interpretation.
3. Stay out of semantics; keep your day job.
4. Driscoll likes big words.

His fifth point is:
5. Scripture isn't always easy to understand.
I believe there is a touch of Driscoll's 5 point Calvinism hiding in this one.  Not everyone is predestined to "have ears to hear" and therefore there's no point in trying to make the Bible as clear as possible, because God has just made some people seed to be eaten by the birds. Notice how he words the first couple lines: "God loves the whole world... and we should seek to reach as many people as possible" (italics mine).  Subtext--God himself is not trying to reach everyone, although we should because we don't know who is predestined.

This undertone is mixed with other comments: "There’s no doubt that we should make every effort to have the Bible translated in words that as many people as possible can understand. But we must also be careful not to cross a line where we change God’s words in hopes that more people will be willing to accept them." That doesn't sound too bad in itself, but he's just plain wrong in where he thinks the line is, as we've seen in the previous posts.

So does translating "justify" with "put us in right standing" (the Message) cross the line? Not in the slightest. IMO this is an excellent translation that makes the sense of "justify" really clear.  Are modern translations avoiding "propitiation" because they don't like the idea of God's wrath? I seriously doubt it. And, like I implied in the last post, "propitiate" contradicts Driscoll's earlier desire only to translate what it says and to leave the interpretation to commentaries.

In the end, I don't think Driscoll really means it when he says, "we should make every effort to have the Bible translated in words that as many people as possible can understand." His approach is filled with the theological orientation that says, God will enable a lucky few to reach up to him rather than that God tries to reach down to everyone. By contrast, God's revelatory principle is the incarnation principle. Revelation is God reaching down to us, meeting us where we are and moving us along. It is not God bringing us up fully to where he is.

God has always "dumbed down" the message--our human minds are not capable of understanding him fully or on a completely literal level.  God would rather people understand something rather than nothing. His normal operating mode is to speak to us like children who can only understand the barest amount.  The only full revelation of God is Jesus Christ.  Anything else is idolatry, setting up an image of God in our minds.

Driscoll Likes Big Words 4

The ESV is a fine formal equivalence translation with the occasional low-Calvinist dynamic translation. Mark Driscoll, however, wants to crown it king of the universe and discourage you from using the NIV or the NLT.  I think you should use multiple versions if you don't know Greek and Hebrew, and that it's perfectly fine to use dynamic equivalence translations.

My previous posts include:
1. The letter kills, the Spirit gives life.
2. All translation involves interpretation.
3. Stay out of semantics; keep your day job.

His fourth argument is
4. The ESV uses theological nomenclature.

Basically, the ESV uses big theological words you should know like "justification" and "propitiation." Driscoll objects to translating the word "justify" with the NLT's "declare us righteous" or the Message's "put us in right standing."

Really?  Does Driscoll really think that we will always be able to find one word in English that corresponds to each word in Greek?  Shall I critique the ESV for using the word "guarantee" to translate the Greek word arrabon in 2 Cor. 1:22 and Eph. 1:14?  The KJV's "earnest" would be better, and fits Driscoll's fetish for archaic words.

But frankly, the NIV does a great job of unpacking the agreed meaning of this Greek word: "a deposit, guaranteeing..."  Unless you want to use the word "earnest" (which the ESV apparently didn't want to use), it's going to take more than one word to get the meaning as much into English as possible. It's really hard to believe Driscoll could really think you're usually going to be able to translate one word for one word. Is he really that linguistically incompetent?

And does he really think that the translation, "propitiation," is any less interpretive than "put us in right standing"? Frankly, there's more agreement among scholars on "put us in right standing" as the meaning of "to justify" than there is on "propitiation" as a translation of the Greek word hilasterion.  I personally think the NLT's "sacrifice for sin" and the NIV's "sacrifice of atonement" are much less interpretive translations than the ESV's "propitiation."

I like "theological nomenclature" too.  I'm delighted to see people learn it.  But like God "I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words" in theological nomenclature.

P.S. His use of proof-texts is just atrocious. What is 1 Corinthians 4:6 about, not to go beyond what is written? It sure doesn't have anything to do with translation philosophy. And does he really think Proverbs 30:5-6 is about translating word for word? A word from the Lord is something bigger than a single word.

Driscoll Linguistic Confusion 3

This is now my third post burning Driscoll's hermeneutic in effigy. Again, the ESV is an excellent formal equivalence translation with a few Reformed edges.  I don't recommend it for Wesleyans, but it's a fine translation if you're a Calvinist. I'm attempting to excoriate Driscoll's arguments for why he thinks the ESV should stuff your NLT or NIV down the toilet.

So far:
1. The letter kills, the Spirit gives life.
2. All translation involves interpretation.

His third reason he thinks the ESV is the best is because...
3. Words carry meaning.

I was a little puzzled at what he was arguing here.  Was he going to mount a sophisticated argument against deconstruction, which holds that words do not have stable meanings and that the meaning of texts is inevitably uncertain?  If so, I do believe that words can have stable meanings when we know the context in which they are used.

Was he going to mount an attempt to undermine Wittgenstein and the sense that the meaning of a word is in the way it is used?  Was he going to argue for the picture theory of language Augustine had?  That would have been foolish, because a few simple examples would have unraveled that attempt.

Was he even going to argue against the likes of card-carrying conservative evangelical D. A. Carson and pooh-pooh the very notion of word fallacies like

• the lexical fallacy (which supposes that all instances of a word carry around some root meaning), 
• the etymological fallacy (which supposes that the history of a word in some way tells you the meaning of a word today), or 
• the overload fallacy (which reads too much ideology into an individual instance of a word).

Carson's pretty scary.  I think he would have lost.

Nah, nothing that sophisticated.  I think he's just sayin' that the meaning of a sentence somehow adds up the meanings of the individual words, such that if you try to translate thought for thought instead of word for word, you've changed the meaning.

Is that what he's really saying, because that's just plain dumb? Let me give you a word for word translation of Galatians 3:17: "covenant having been ratified by the God the after four hundred and thirty years having come to be Law not nullify into the to cancel the promise." You can't really recapture the emphasis of this sentence in English because you pretty much have to put the object after the verb: "The Law [that] came into existence after 430 years cannot nullify a covenant that was ratified by God with the result that it cancels the promise."

That would be a pretty good formal equivalence translation, with some words added even there. Notice that it's impossible to come up with a good translation without moving the words around, adding some to make the English flow and taking away a couple others.

Now how about this as a dynamic translation: "The Law of Moses, which did not exist until 430 years after God made his promise to Abraham, cannot cancel that promise." Have I changed the meaning by adding words like Moses and Abraham?  Or have I actually clarified the meaning that was already there?

Basically, Driscoll seems to be making a fool of himself here. Paul Ricoeur has in fact argued against the deconstruction I mentioned above by suggesting that meaning is more a matter of sentences than individual words. The meaning of individual words is slippery in themselves. What does the word "fire" mean?

• Ready, aim, fire!
• You're fired.
• Come on, baby, light my fire.
• Fire!
• Is that a fire?

It is the sense of word collections, coupled with the likely context each sentence assumes, that equates to a sense of the meaning. Driscoll's way out of his depth on this one.

Driscoll Shark-Jumping 2

OK, I couldn't wait till tomorrow.  Mark Driscoll has, in my opinion, gone too far in trying to make the ESV the new KJV of evangelicalism.  He has six reasons why his church uses the blessed ESV.

In a previous post, I was a bit mocking of the contradiction of saying God is obsessed with the precise wording of the Bible and yet using an English translation at all, let alone one that does not represent the wording most Christians have used in worship throughout church history. Let's call that post, "The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life."

In his second point, his eminence tells us all not to use dynamic equivalence translations like the NLT or the Message.

2. What it says comes before what it means.
Driscoll is saying that commentaries should unpack what the Bible means but that a translation should try its best to render the text as it is.  A translation that tries to stick fairly closely to the sentence structure of the original is called a formal equivalence translation.  One that tries to render the thought in idiomatic English is a dynamic equivalence translation.  A free translation or paraphrase is one that is very free in trying to translate the basic thoughts in equivalent categories in the target culture.

Again, don't get me wrong. I myself prefer formal equivalent translations like the ESV and RSV. But for preaching, I prefer a translation that brings out the message the sermon is about. It should be a both/and, not an either/or.  Even among formal equivalence translations, it is good to use more than one.

There are two rubs here.  The first is that all translation involves interpretation.  It is impossible simply to translate "what it says" and leave the "what it means" to the interpreter. A translation often has to choose to go one way or another. That's why it is good to use more than one if you do not know Greek and Hebrew.

In fact, it is with fiendish delight that I notice Driscoll contradicting himself on his #6, where he compliments the ESV for translating in a complementarian way.  So take Romans 16:7.  The NIV2011 gives us exactly the kind of translation Driscoll is talking about: "Greet Andronicus and Junia... They are outstanding among the apostles."  No doubt he prefers the ESV's version: "Greet Andronicus and Junia... They are well known to the apostles."

The ESV wants to make sure you don't think Junia, a woman, was an apostle.  Accordingly, the ESV has given us a "dynamic" translation that is possible, but it does exactly what Driscoll is condemning the other translations for--doing the interpretation for us.

Physician, heal thyself.

The more important rub is that the NT authors wouldn't know what the heck he's talking about.  As I mentioned in the last post, the NT authors felt entirely free to change the wording of OT texts they were quoting because it was the spirit rather than the letter of Scripture that they were interested in.  A free translation like The Message is a far better example of how the NT authors used the OT than the ESV.

I came across one such passage this afternoon in John 7:38: "Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them."  The problem is, what text is Jesus/John quoting???  The best suggestion I've heard is Isaiah 55:1--"Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters."

Yep, you know what you're talking about, Mark.  Jesus sure was preoccupied with a literal translation, wasn't he?

Driscoll Jumps the Shark on the ESV (part 1)

Mark Driscoll occasionally has some good things to say, I believe. But in general, I think of him as someone whose overall effect on American Christianity is more negative than positive.  Today, however, I would like to talk about him being the occasional idiot.

Before well meaning Wesleyans read his recent, almost "ESV only" rant, I want to make my position clear. You see, when some well-meaning Wesleyan takes up his ideas, I'll be very civil in my disagreement.  But since I don't know Mark Driscoll and it isn't an issue in my circles--and I want to keep it from being one--I feel quite free to mock his nonsense with all the gift of satire you know me to possess.

Now don't get me wrong.  The ESV is a pretty good translation for the most part, I think.  It is not a Wesleyan-preferred translation, because of Driscoll's #6 (complementarian). But in most places it is a very good formal equivalence translation.  I like formal equivalence translations myself, not because they are the best translations but because I personally like my translation to be as close a window into the original languages as possible. In other words, I use them to slack off reading the Greek and Hebrew itself.

In any case, here are Driscoll's 7 reasons why Mars Hill uses the ESV.  P.S. I kept thinking of "KJV only" people as I read this.  Of course he has the same spirit as those people.  He's just a twenty-first century version.  I think of these sort of people as conservative in their ignorance.  They try to hold on to as much of the ignorance of the past as possible, while only becoming just as much more enlightened as reality forces them to. The next generation of them will mock Driscoll, but maintain the same attitude in relation to whatever the issue is then in the future.

1. ESV holds that the Bible is the literal words, not just thoughts of God.
I had a talk with a former KJV only person a couple weeks ago.  Funny, he brought up these sorts of verses. I pointed out Galatians 5:14 where Paul says the Law is fulfilled in one word--"Love your neighbor as yourself." A word, in this context, is an entire thought, as we would expect in an oral, non-literate culture (rather than a literary one).

There is an inevitable circularity to arguments like these from people like Driscoll and Piper. This verse means what words mean in my twentieth century vocabulary so that I can tell you what they mean today. But these weren't words written in twentieth century English. Their meanings come from what words meant in the ancient Hebrew and Greek used at the time and place when they were written down, informed by their socio-cultural context (such as the fact that it was an oral culture). This is why NT Wright was able to give John Piper a thorough spanking on justification some time back. Piper insists on defining Paul using Calvin's sixteenth century definitions to words instead of those the Jews were actually using two thousand years ago.

Everything we know about the way both the biblical authors and the copyists of biblical texts operated suggest that it was the spirit of the text that they were interested in. Listen to Matthew's paraphrase of who knows what verse in Matthew 2:23.  The words of the prophets, plural, somehow suggest that Jesus will be born in Nazareth?  Nazareth didn't exist at the time.  The sentence structure is a little like Judges 13:7, but that's talking about a Nazirite, something completely different. A word similar to Nazareth is used in Isaiah 11:1, but read that verse and see if Matthew 2:23 comes across as paying close attention to the word-for-word like Driscoll is talking about.

In short, Driscoll has NO IDEA what he is talking about.  An actual examination of the way the NT interprets the OT undermines his claim here so seriously that he runs the risk of causing a faith crisis in the lives of any in his congregation who ever go on to do serious study of the Bible. As is typical, he makes his points by his modern definitions of the Bible's words, but he does not look at what the Bible actually does with those words, which is where their real meaning is revealed.

More to the point, if the wording is that important, he'd better stop using an English translation altogether. He should go like the Muslims and only read the Quran in Arabic. If the individual words are that important, then ANY English translation mucks it up.

And why isn't he arguing for the text of the King James then?  If the word-for-word is that important to God, why did God allow Christians to use the "wrong" text for fifteen hundred years?  The ESV is based on the older manuscripts, not the majority of manuscripts.  The ESV implicitly does not assume that God preserved the exact text of the Bible in the worship of believers for over a 1000 years.

I'll tell you why. It's because that's not the social group in which Driscoll is located or its issues.  In his inherited tradition, the KJV thing isn't an issue, but complementarianism is. He supports the ESV ultimately because of the politics of the ESV's creation.  All the rest is smoke and mirrors, arguments invented after the fact to maintain as conservative an ignorance as possible.

More to come tomorrow...

"Brothers and sisters" in translation

I had an "I'm stupid" a-ha moment a week or so ago in relation to the use of "brothers and sisters" to translate the Greek word "brothers" in the New Testament.

Ever since the TNIV, I've been explaining to others that versions like the NRSV, the NLT, the TNIV, and now the NIV2011 only used "brothers and sisters" when they thought Paul already included them.  So when Paul tells the brothers to flee sexual immorality in 1 Thessalonians 4, he was surely not letting the sisters in the congregation off the hook.

That's all true, but I (stupidly) just caught on that this is not just a dynamic equivalent translation.  It actually can be justified grammatically.  Up until recent days, when you were speaking or writing to a mixed group of people in a gendered language, the convention has been to go with the masculine plural ending.  This has previously been true, for example, in Spanish.  If you were speaking to a group of men and women, you would normally say "amigos" and use the masculine plural ending.  You have to pick a gender, so up until recent times you would have naturally used the masculine for a mixed group.

It hit me like a ton of bricks.  It would be normal for a Greek speaker to address a mixed group of men and women with "brothers," fully including the women in the masculine plural ending.  The implication is that in an age where it has become appropriate to be explicit about references to women in one's language, the best translation of "brothers" actually becomes "brothers and sisters."  This is not just because they are implied in Paul's meaning.  They are implied grammatically as well.

So I repent of my stupidity.  Brothers and sisters actually becomes a more accurate translation, and versions like the ESV actually turn out to be inferior translations in this regard.

ESV not best for Wesleyans... another reason

Here's a promo quote on the collected study notes of the ESV: "Understanding Scripture: An Overview of the Bible’s Origin Eighteen of the ESV Study Bible articles, published separately in book format. The articles have been edited by Wayne Grudem, C. John Collins, and Thomas R. Schreiner."

These are not names that should be primary sources for anyone who is Wesleyan in theology.

Review of new NIV

Ben Witherington posted this link on his blog to an excellent review of the NIV.  It's excellent because of the way it breaks down the issues of choosing a translation.  If you're interested, have a look!

I'm over the ESV

For some time now, I've been telling my classes that the ESV is possibly the best formal equivalence translation of the New Testament out there right now, but that I refused to buy one because I had it on Logos and didn't like the politics of why it was created. Today, after actually finally breaking down and committing to buying a copy, I suddenly found myself disavowing my confidence in its literality.

I've never claimed it was the most literal OT translation. It often confuses Christian readings with most likely readings, like when it goes with the OT manuscripts from 900AD over the Dead Sea Scrolls and Septuagint from 100BC: it can bring itself to go with the most likely translation of Deuteronomy 32:8--that the Most High divided up humankind according to the number of the gods, not the Sons of Israel. So I guess I'm sticking with the NRSV as the best formal translation of the OT, although it can also be dynamic at times.

But yesterday we came across this ESV translation of Romans 11:25-26, "a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved." A good formal equivalence translation would read something like, "And so all Israel will be saved." It seems to me that the ESV goes beyond a literal reading and inserts a replacement theology--the fullness of the Gentiles coming in = all Israel being saved.

Throughout the passage I found many points where the ESV was less than helpful in doing detailed observations on this passage. So I'm done with the ESV before I began. I'm back to the drawing board with no favorite formal equivalence translation of the New Testament. Maybe I'll end up with the NASB again.

Gupta's review of ESV Study Bible

I just noticed Nijay Gupta's review of the ESV Study Bible. I've been leaning toward using the NRSV too in my writing. We'll see what the revision of the NIV turns out to be. I was shifting to the TNIV in my writing, but I guess it's a gonner.

Oh me, Oh Translations

I was writing on Paul this morning and came to a place where I wanted to quote 1 Corinthians. I had planned to use the TNIV going forward in my popular writing. But now I hear Zondervan is phasing it out. They're going to revise the NIV with Doug Moo in charge.

So now the TNIV is a bad choice for both the philosophy book and the Paul books and Bible studies I'm under contract to write--a bad choice for promoting in our new seminary or in our undergraduate program. I'm not going to use the outdated NIV or wait till 2011 to finish these books. Frankly I haven't felt that Zondervan is very Wesleyan-Arminian friendly anyway. Why reward them by supporting their translations?

What version to use? There is the ESV, which I suspect is the best literal translation overall currently on the market. But I eschew the politics of its origins. It was created in reaction to the pro-women in ministry trajectory of Christianity. Although thankfully I don't think these political dynamics have harmed the translation I find myself hating to associate myself or Wesleyan institutions with it given what it represents sociologically. Perhaps I will eventually give in but I am still holding off stubbornly, not wanting to support these forces in evangelicalism.

There is the NLT, which is great for preaching, but is a dynamic translation and so not suitable for detailed study of individual passages. Its strength is overall communication, not being able to hear the details of the original meaning.

So I find myself this morning using the NRSV in the quote. It is the choice of mainstream biblical scholarship anyway and bests the ESV in literalness if you understand its dynamic translation of "brothers" with "brothers and sisters" and such. I am not opposed to that dynamic translation for the purposes of communication and it was, after all, part of the TNIV too. Its just that the male-orientation of the original texts was, whether I like it or not, an aspect of the original text, just as those who do not use inclusive language today implicitly function in a male-oriented way.

We have to accept the fact that the original context of the Bible was sexist in its orientation. We can't be as Christians in our context, not and be faithful to the core message of Christ. But when we are studying the original meaning of the Bible, we simply have to deal with the fact that we are reading male-oriented texts, as all the texts of the day were. This is one area, interestingly, where Western society as a whole--even the fallen world at large--has thankfully moved closer to the kingdom than the New Testament itself, since its books were truth incarnated within the thought patterns of its day.

God took where they were, met them there, and pointed them in the direction of the kingdom. Pity those like the Grudems and Pipers of the evangelical world who mistake the wineskins for the wine.

Tom Wright: Justification 7.4

This is the fourth dying gasp of my review of the seventh chapter of N. T. Wright's, Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision, Wright's response to John Piper's book, The Future of Justification.

Chapters reviewed thus far:

Chapter 1: What's it all about and why does it matter
Chapter 2: Rules of engagement
Chapter 3: First Century Judaism
Chapter 4: Justification: Definitions and Puzzles
Chapter 5: Exegesis of Galatians
Chapter 6: Interlude: Philippians, Corinthians, Ephesians
Chapter 7.1 Romans 1:16-17
Chapter 7.2 Romans 1:18-2:16
Chapter 7.3 Romans 2:17-3:20

And now 3:21-26 (pp.176-85). One day I'll have the mental strength just to plow through the rest. I finished the book Sunday on a plane, but I'm just sooo tired mentally.

Now righteousness of God has been revealed... "'God's righteousness', in the light of 2.17-3.8, must mean, and can only mean, God's faithfulness to his single plan, the plan through which he will deal with the problem of human sin and put the whole world to right at last" (176). Sounds familiar. I still think he reads too much meaning into the phrase, although I certainly agree more with him than Piper.

I did enjoy his rag on the NIV, again! "... fudging the evidence by translating dikaiosyne in verses 25 an 26 as 'justice', not noticing what a mess they are thereby making of the inner coherence of the paragraph" (177).

By the way, Steve Lennox is doing a review on the ESV Study Bible. I guess it has lots of bells and whistles... and of course is endorsed by several key wrong people for Wesleyans--John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Albert Mohler. I won't speak ill of all the names who have endorsed it, but Wesleyans should be aware that the individuals I just named hold views fundamentally incompatible with the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition (there is good in them, but you should treat anything you read from them as a hostile witness). The translation itself is a good translation, although I do not recommend it to Wesleyans (I'm endorsing the NLT and TNIV as our replacements for the NIV--I'll wait to see some of the other new ones). But I explicitly oppose the use of the ESV Study Bible by Wesleyans.

Now back to Wright: "faithfulness of Jesus Christ..."

"It was not so much that 'God needed a sinless victim', though in sacrificial terms that is no doubt true as well, as that 'God needed a faithful Israelite' (178). I agree with the first part, just don't see the second part.

I very much am sympathetic to his read of "the one from the faith of Jesus." Wright says it "looks as though it is a telescoping together of both halves of 3:22, 'through the faithfulness of Jesus for the benefit of all who have faith'" (179). Yes!

That's about as much of this section I feel like wading through today...