Lux Lucet

Like a lot of kids growing up in the 70s and 80s, I was a huge comic book fan.  I had a subscription to Spiderman for several years – yes, just like Peter Parker I was a bit of a nerd – and did more than my fair share to help pay the local bookstore’s rent by constantly raiding their collection of overpriced back issues, all wrapped in special comic book protective covers.  Those wrappers were very important.  They added gravitas to the comic books, transforming them – in my mind – from kids stuff to real, serious collectors items.  As far as I know, I still have most of them too.  That is, unless mom threw them out…hmm, maybe I’d better go check on that first. 

At any rate, though I can’t recall much in the way of detail about the stories I read, one thing I do clearly recall from those comic books was an ad run by Charles Atlas.  The famous one we’ve all seen.  You know, where the beach bully kicks sand in the face of the 98 pound weakling and steals his girlfriend.  Determined not to let it end like that, the wimpy kid goes and orders a Charles Atlas book, bulks up and in the end gives the bully a good thrashing.  He gets his girlfriend back too.  Not a bad return on a ten-cent stamp.  

Now growing up in Cincinnati, I didn’t have a lot of opportunity to go to the beach, so I can’t say that I ever had a bully kick sand in my face.  But of course bullies aren’t found only on the beach.  They’re on playgrounds and at the office too.  Some bullies teach in seminary and preach from the pulpit on Sundays.   

In the New Testament, Diotrephes was such a man.  Writing about him, the Apostle John says,

I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to have the preeminence among them, does not receive us.  Therefore, if I come, I will call to mind his deeds which he does, prating against us with malicious words.  And not content with that, he himself does not receive the brethren, and forbids those who wish to, putting them out of the church (3 John 9-10).          

A few years ago, I had a personal encounter with a theological bully named Warren Gage.  He was Professor of Old Testament at Knox Theological Seminary when I was a student at the school. For three hours every Monday morning I’d sit in his class and become physically ill listening to him attack the Reformed faith.  The same faith I heard him swear to uphold at the start of the semester.  He was kicking sand in the face of all of us: any student who came to Knox expecting to get Reformed seminary training, the school that hired him, and the people who donated to Knox thinking it was doctrinally sound.  But unlike the skinny kid in the comic book ad, when Knox had the opportunity to confront the bully and defend Christianity, the school backed down and the bully won the fight.  Today, Warren Gage still teaches at Knox Seminary and has added the title Dean of Faculty to his name.         

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The Westminster Confession begins with a chapter on the doctrine of Scripture.  And it does so for good reason:  all other Christian doctrine depends on it.  A sound view of Scripture will tend to produce sound doctrine in other areas.  Likewise, a defective view of Scripture will tend toward heresy.  The New Perspective on Paul theologians have a defective view of Scripture in at least two areas:  they deny both the inerrancy and sufficiency of Scripture.

Early on in his book What Saint Paul Really Said, NT Wright makes known his low view of Scripture by ironically insinuating that he’s not sure what Saint Paul really said, 

Most of what I say in this book focuses on material in the undisputed letters [of the Apostle Paul], particularly Romans, the two Corinthian letters, Galatians and Philippians.  In addition, I regard Colossians as certainly by Paul, and Ephesians as far more likely to be by him than by an imitator.  But nothing in my present argument hinges on this one way or the other.  – What Saint Paul Really Said, p.8

When Wright says that he regards Ephesians, “as far more likely to by by him [Paul] than by an imitator, he is spaking the subtle language of unbelief, for the epistle begins, “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God.” For a man with the correct view of Scripture, the authorship of Ephesians is not a question to be pondered, it is a truth to be believed.   

Wright also shows evidence of basic epistemological confusion.  While the word epistemology can sound rather intimidating, the idea it expresses is fairly simple.  Epistemology is the study of how we know what we know.  The proper Christian position on epistemology states that we know what we know because God has revealed it to us in his word.  All truth is graciously given by God in his word, and apart from his word man can know nothing.  The statements of all scientists, philosophers, historians and theologians are to be tested against Scripture.  If they do not agree with the Bible, they are false. 

But Wright doesn’t see it that way.  For him and contrary to the Westminster Confession, the apocrypha are indeed of authority in the church.  Wright writes,

Sanders’ major work on Paul is entitled Paul and Palestinian Judaism.  The echo of Davies was deliberate; Davies was one of Sanders’ teachers, and Sanders saw himself as continuing his emphasis, though in various new ways.  Instead of reading Paul simply against his rabbinic background, he sketched out a much broader canvas of Palestinian Judaism in Paul’s day, looking at the Dead Sea Scrolls (which of course were not available when Davis first wrote), the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, the wisdom literature, and so on.  His major point, to which all else is subservient, can be quite simply stated.  Judaism in Paul’s day was not, as has regularly been supposed, a religion of legalistic works-righteousness.  If we imagine that it was, and that Paul was attacking it as if it was, we will do great violence to it and to him.  – What Saint Paul Really Said, pp. 18-19     

The problem here is that Wright, along with his mentors Sanders and Davies, does not know what proves what.  Wright erroneously believes that we use the Dead Sea Scrolls, the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha to interpret the Bible, when, in fact, it is the Bible that informs our understanding of these other documents.  We do not use Second Temple Judaism to establish our understanding of the Bible, we use the Bible to establish our understanding of Second Temple Judaism.  

John Robbins made the point that when philosophical (and theological) systems go wrong, they tend to go wrong at the very beginning.  This is certainly the case with NT Wright and the other New Perspective on Paul writers.  Their erroneous and unbiblical epistemology leads them to their erroneous and unbiblical doctrine of justification.

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