Protestants using man-made tradition? Wright claims it is so.
I’ve started reading N.T. (“Tom”) Wright’s book called Justification, and I can hardly contain my excitement.
Why? Because Tom Wright, perhaps without knowing it, is cutting the legs out from underneath Protestantism with his (honest, sincere) endeavor to read St. Paul rightly on justification.
As I read through it, I plan to offer some insights in particular regarding how Wright is (unintentionally) making the case for the Catholic Church in his book. This post is focused on one aspect: Wright’s accusation that others are being wrongly influenced by (man-made) tradition and his claim that he is coming at Paul’s epistles without tradition (“fresh’).
Wright:
[T]he arguments I have been mounting…stand for fresh readings of Scripture. They are not the superimposition upon Scripture of theories culled from elsewhere. But the response [that he receives from his Protestant critics] is deeply conditioned by, and at critical points appeals to, tradition. Yes, human tradition–albeit from some extremely fine, devout, and learned human beings.
He later in this same passage claims that the Catholic Church responded to the Reformers by using tradition, implying that his Protestant opponents are acting like those Catholics in using man-made tradition to defend their doctrine on justification!
Wright claims he is reading Paul without the influence of a tradition and that in doing so he has come to a significantly different doctrine of justification than did the Reformers and their followers. He further claims that this is exactly what the Reformers would want him to do, that is, to read critically the Bible without appealing to Luther and Calvin as infallible teachers.
Wright is wrong in claiming he is not influenced by “tradition” of some sort–we all are–the only question is, which one? And is there a Tradition that is the true one, the one that is from God and not from man?
I don’t think his Protestant interlocutors will enjoy being accused of holding onto man-made tradition, but we Catholics have received that accusation for 500 years. The difference is, we admit that everyone has a tradition of some sort and claim that God has established an Apostolic Tradition in his Church, the form of which is Apostolic Succession, and that this Tradition with the Scriptures as expounded upon by the Magisterium is how God has chosen to infallibly communicate his saving truth to us.
Keep in mind Devin, people have wrestled with the meanings of the Scriptures and the fineries of doctrines since before the time of Christ. I mean, you are aware of Church history right? Enjoy your reading either way!
Blessings,
Garret
Devin, this is exciting!
Garret, justification concerns our very salvation, and I can’t help but believe that Jesus wouldn’t leave us to “wrestle with the fineries” of such doctrines when we *need* to get those answers right. I am honestly curious, do you personally think that Jesus meant Christians to be confused about the big issues of our salvation 2,000 years into Christianity? Because to me, it seems that Protestantism is all over the board on the *major* issues of salvation (baptism, justification, Eucharist, eternal security, etc.).
Blessings!
Thanks Leila, and I would like to hear Garret’s answers to your questions a well.
Garret, my response is similar to Leila’s: Tom Wright spends the preface and the first chapter explaining the reason he decided to write an entire book responding to (fellow Protestant pastor) John Piper’s entire book written against Wright’s new doctrine of justification. If it were just fineries, they could all laugh about it and not spend years of their lives debating each other, but as both Piper and Wright point out, and as Leila mentioned, the doctrine of justification is absolutely core, and their differences on it are not merely superficial but affect the understanding of the gospel itself in fundamental ways.
Hi Leila and Devin
A direct answer to your question- No I don’t think there is supposed to be confusion on the issue- but man confuses it all the time. Devin knows I believe this, so it’s a bit of a mystery to me why he would imply that I am perfectly satisfied with a flurry of contradicting ideas. There are many warnings and exhortations in the Bible about false teachers- we are to watch for them- because, obviously they will be there. If they weren’t going to be there by God’s will, we wouldn’t get the numerous warnings and could just rest on our theological notions without pondering and searching the Scriptures, and for that matter- turning to learned men.
NT Wright is a learned man- so we watch his interactions with other learned men and see how this thing settles out. This is how doctrines new and old have been wrestled with throughout the history of Christianity. God must have a purpose for it- I imagine that it is to keep peoples noses in the word and discussing it, for His greater glory. Satan is still busy at work assaulting God’s children- until the very end of time.
God bless you!
Garret
PS A interesting series of articles that deal directly with NT Wright is here-http://basketoffigs.org/NewPerspectives/venemaIndex.htm
I find it so intriguing that Bishop Wright, as an Anglican, has such crossover appeal. He’s one of the few religious academics beloved by people of almost all Christian traditions; he’s very much like Lewis in that regard. Many Evangelicals love Wright’s books–though maybe his style more than anything else–while Catholics and Anglicans alike also enjoy his writings.
However, he tends to lean toward Catholicism in many areas, and there have been many Anglicans that have crossed over to Rome, walking over the Bishop Wright bridge to get there.
What I smirk at is his “re-discovering” of doctrines like his “new” Pauline understanding and his “new” understanding of the Resurrection and Heaven as things wrapped up in the here-and-now. He comes off as the “innovator” who discovered these insights without any of those pesky, dusty “traditions” clogging his mind. I guess it matters very little though; whether readers feel they’ve “discovered” authentic doctrines that have been hidden throughout history–only bring recently revealed by Wright–or they “re-discover” the same doctrines that have existed in the Church for thousands of years, we welcome them all. The doctrines are the same, whether people hear them from the newly-enlightened Wright or the old, trusty Church.
(All this to say I understand there are some nuances between Wright’s understanding of “justification” and other things, but a large majority of what people have been “turned on” to in his writings is ancient Catholic teachings that are being “re-discovered” by much of the Protestant world, as far as I see it.)