I have to wonder. Are Wright’s views on justification controversial because they misrepresent the teaching of Paul or because they contradict the historic Protestant confessions? This is difficult to answer honestly, because historical exegesis and confessional fidelity are so often mixed up together. For example, see the article “Why Wright is not Reformed” by Fred Greco. Greco takes Wright to task not because Wright has misunderstood Paul but because he has proposed a theory of justification that departs from the historic Reformed confessions. And Greco is correct. Wright does assert that justification in Paul is different from justification as formulated by confessional Protestantism. And so McMahon is correct in his anathema of Wright, if the Reformed confessions infallibly state the true undertanding of justification.

But when did the Reformation confessions or the views of Luther and Calvin achieve irreformable status? If Scripture, and Scripture alone, is our final authority, and if the Apostle Paul’s teaching on justification is what the Church should and must teach on justification—and I believe that most Protestants would agree with both premises—then must not the Church, as understood by Protestantism, be willing to reform its understanding of justification in light of superior critical-historical exegesis? I am not asserting that Wright is indubitably correct in his views—scholars are going to be debating these questions for decades—but I am claiming that given our vastly expanded knowledge of both 2nd Temple Judaism and the first-century Church, we are in a much better position to understand the writings of Paul than were Martin Luther and John Calvin.

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