Discuss Theology

According to Sproul, McGrath views forensic justification from 4 perspectives:

1.It is declarative, forensic and a change in status not nature for the believer.

2.Justification and sanctification differ.

3.This righteousness is alien and not within the believer.

4.God gives both the means and the merit for justification.

This reads a lot like Luther, unlike N T Wright and adherents to the “new perspective”.

[Taken from Justification by faith Alone, p. 43, edited by Kistler]

Now Podcasting on iTunes, click the search engine for “School of Biblical Studies”
non-iPod mp3 players can download us from www.sbsinternational.org/podcast

He got it right years ago.  He wrote in 2001 [in the Sanders, Stendahl, Dunn pre/early N T Wright epoch],

“That some valid insights have emerged in the new perspective on Paul, I do not wish to deny.  I find myself doubtful, however, that the new perspective itself constitutes a major breakthrough to a truer estimate of Paul and Judaism.  This Copernican revolution is taking us down the wrong path.”

Revisiting Paul’s Doctrine of Justification, p. 105

Wow, it would do some of our brethren well to listen to Tim Keller speak about the relationship of sabbath to justification.  A lack of understanding about justification leads to drivenness.  If we don’t know we are justified, we will be driven people looking for significance in what we accomplish.

Wolfhart Pannenberg writes about God and the philosophers in “First Things” magazine. Pannenberg writes nothing about the process philiosophers. Will history find us facing reality? The process philosophers are the most dominant philosophers influencing open theism. Pannenberg wrote nothing about them recently. As I have written before, history is not going to be kind to us.

Justification stands as the biblical/theological doctrine under attack and scrutiny inside evangelicalism.  Beckwith resigns, Wright rules in many evangelical circles and the hits will just keep on coming.  Martin Luther would have words for some of these people that in modern theological parlance would simply be not printable.  God confronts us in the protestant church with our identity.  The further question is: “How will we answer Him?”

Check out this article:

Prominent evangelical returns to Catholic roots | Baylor professor resigns as head of conservative intellectual group. (The Dallas Morning News)

I found myself this morning amidst a jet lagged discussion of NT Wright.  I was once again amazed at the hushed tones of reverential deference afforded his invoked name.–  This time by a missionary friend quoting another missionary friend.  History is not going to be kind to us.  History except for sacred history in Scripture is quite unforgiving.  To quote Alister McGrath from Oxford concerning Wright’s view of justification.  “If Wright is right then Luther was wrong”.–History will indeed view us as a hapless generation of theological thinkers.

I marvel at the number of current protestant theologians and Biblical scholars who question the standard protestant position on imputed righteousness.  This questioning is led by NT Wright and followed by a host of others [probably locked in historical anachronistic theological opinion].  –That is history will look back on us and scratch its head.  The same historical period that produced open theism, produced the New Perspective [which is not really new at all].