FAKE Interview with John Piper and N.T. Wright Part 1

Here's a FAKE interview with John Piper and N.T. Wright on justification. I am doing this so that people can get a better understanding of Wright's view on justification in comparison to the traditional view of justification (represented by my hero, John Piper).

It's important to note that I am no expert on Wright or Piper, but I think I know them both well enough to make this at least educational. Also, I tried to use direct quotes from both Piper and Wright in their responses to my fake questions. Please also note that anything that's in a bracket, I have added to their responses in order to make the interview more real.

Interviewer to Wright: Do you believe that justification is forensic and declarative?

Wright: [Yes], “It is God’s declaration that a person is in the right; that is, (a) that their sins have been forgiven, and (b) that they are part of the single covenant family promised to Abraham. Notice that opening phrase: God’s declaration that. Not ‘God’s bringing it about that’, but God’s authoritative declaration of what is in fact the case. This is the point, of course, where some have accused me of semi-Pelagianism. That might be so if I intended to denote, with the word ‘justification’, what the tradition has denoted. But I don’t. Paul, I believe, uses vindication/justification to denote God’s declaration about someone, about (more specifically) the person who has been ‘called’... Vindication is not the same as call. [4]"

Interviewer to Wright: "Forgiveness of sins?", so you don't believe that justification deals with just ecclesiology and not soteriology?

Wright: "This present declaration constitutes all believers as the single people, the one family, promised to Abraham (Gal. 2.14 - 3.29; Rom. 3.27 - 4.17), the people whose sins have been dealt with as part of the fulfilled promise of covenant renewal (Jer. 31.31-34). Membership in this family cannot be played off against forgiveness of sins: the two belong together." [2]

Interviewer to both: What is the ground or the basis for this justification?

Piper: "the righteousness of God, expressed in the alien, imputed, active obedience of Christ, climaxing in his sin-bearing, substitutionary death is the sole ground of our justification, and faith is distinct from its fruit, the obedience of faith, yet faith is of such a nature that it must and will produce love for people and a life of genuine, though imperfect holiness in this world. Therefore, as the Westminster Confession of Faith (11.2) says, the faith that alone justifies (as the instrument which unites us to Christ, not as the ground or content of our justifying righteousness) is never alone; Therefore, this reality of forensic righteousness, which is imputed to us on the first act of saving faith (as the seed of subsequent persevering faith), is different from transformative sanctification, which is imparted by the work of the Holy Spirit through faith in future grace.*

Wright: [First], “this vindication occurs twice. It occurs in the future, as we have seen, on the basis of the entire life a person has led in the power of the Spirit – that is, it occurs on the basis of ‘works’ in Paul’s redefined sense. And, near the heart of Paul’s theology, it occurs in the present as an anticipation of that future verdict, when someone, responding in believing obedience to the ‘call’ of the gospel, believes that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead" [4]

Interviewer to Wright: Sorry, what I meant with "grounds" or "basis" for justification, I was trying to refer to the idea of whom or what "accomplishes" or "merits" justification.

Wright: [I wouldn't use the word "merit"] ,but "justification is made possible by grace incarnate: sins are dealt with on the cross, the blood of the new covenant is poured out. In biblical terms, the way to deal with sin is to punish it: in Gethsemane, and on the cross itself, Jesus obeys his Father's saving purposes by drinking the cup of the wrath of God, so that his people may not drink it. Justification and atonement are not the same thing: justification presupposes an objective dealing with sin. There can be no present justification if atonement is merely a process within the sinner, or merely a readiness on God's part not to take sin seriously after all. Justification safeguards, because it presupposes the centrality of the cross and resurrection. [3]

Wright: Likewise, secondly, justification presupposes the work of the Spirit, promised in the Old Testament as the one who would write God's law on the hearts of his new covenant people. Justification takes place on the basis of faith because true Christian faith— belief that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead —is the evidence of the work of the Spirit, and hence the evidence that the believer is already within the covenant. If a man believes this Gospel, his religious stance is clear. He can be neither Jew nor Greek, but only Christian. This is where it is vital to distinguish justification from regeneration. Justification is not how God makes someone a Christian: it is his righteous declaration that someone is already a Christian. Faith is not an achievement which earns salvation, but the evidence of saving grace already at work. Only the renewed heart can believe in the resurrection: only the penitent heart can submit to Jesus as Savior and Lord. Because of the work of the Son and the Spirit, God rightly declares that Christian believers are members of the covenant family. The basis of justification is the grace of God freely given to undeserving sinners.

Interviewer to Wright: Thanks for clarifying. So justification is "based" on Christ and the Holy Spirit, and it's entirely gracious? But what do you mean when you say that future justification is based" on the entire life of a person, which has been led in the power of the Spirit"? Does mean that we are somehow meriting, earning, or providing the legal grounds for justification?

Wright: "The ‘works’ in accordance with which the Christian will be vindicated on the last day are not the unaided works of the self-help moralist. Nor are they the performance of the ethnically distinctive Jewish boundary-markers (sabbath, food-laws and circumcision). They are the things which show, rather, that one is in Christ; the things which are produced in one’s life as a result of the Spirit’s indwelling and operation [4]"

Interviewer: So the works in final justification are evidences that you are a Christian and not meritorious.