A few months ago, at the 2006 Symposium on Exegetical Theology at Concordia Theological Seminary (Ft. Wayne, Indiana), Mark Seifrid--professor of New Testament at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary--delivered an importance address critiquing N.T. Wright's narrative approach to theology and his exegetical and theological conclusions on justification, entitled, The Narrative of Scripture and Justification by Faith: A Still Fresher Reading of Paul.
Though I disagree with--and/or don't fully understand--Seifrid on some aspects of justification or exegetical decision, I nevertheless think this is an important critique to consider. I don't recall having yet seen a fellow exegete-biblical theologian make these criticisms of Wright's narrative theology. And, it seems to me, this is precisely the point where Wright's devotees are approaching him most uncritically.
(BTW, here I will insert the disclaimer that Wright has many good things to say and things to offer evangelicalism.)
Below I've reproduced Seifrid's outline, as well as some key quotes that stood out to me:
1. Introduction: A Fresher Reading of Paul
2. Wright’s Reading of Scripture and Justification
2.1. Narrative and Interpretation
2.1.1. The Necessity of Explanation
2.2. “The Covenant” and Idealism
2.2.1. The Covenant: Conditional or Unconditional?
2.2.3. The Covenant: Exclusive or Universal?
2.3. Wright’s Reading of Justification
3 . Justification Still Fresher Yet: Paul’s Witness in Romans
3.1. God’s Righteousness Through Faith From the Crucified and Risen Christ
3.2. Theses on Justification
Quotes:
Fresh questions demand still fresher answers. I intend to offer a relatively lengthy critique of Wright’s reading of Paul, concentrating on his recently published, Paul in Fresh Perspective, followed by a brief reading of Romans 3:21-26, from which several theses emerge, which offer, I believe, a still fresher and yet faithful reading of Paul.
Wright’s reading of Paul ultimately entails a nearly Platonistic moral idealism.
There is something to be appreciated in the current narrative approaches to theology and to the interpretation of Scripture, in so far as they illuminate the life-setting(s) of doctrinal propositions in outline. Yet it would be false to imagine that the narrative approach is free from the temptation to radical systematization, the attempt to reduce the message of Scripture to a single, unified vision of God and God’s dealings with the world. The narrative approach can be in its own way just as radically systematic as any doctrinal outline. It is worth reminding ourselves that just as the Scripture has not been given to us as a dogmatic outline, neither has it been given to us as a single, unified story. It is a collection of narratives, which not only complement one another, but also overlap and stand in tension with one another.
As appropriate as it is to insist on the narrative unity of Scripture, the laying out of a story-line does not constitute an interpretation of Scripture. Interpretation is completed by the form of explanation which accompanies that narrative. In Wright’s work the drive for a unified interpretation leads to an idealistic interpretation of the text, which overruns the radically and irreducibly different ways in which God encounters humanity in and through the Scriptures.
Those who adopt this sort of reading generally appeal to an implicit narrative which informs the statements which appear in the text. The text stands in constant danger of being overrun by the imagination of the interpreter, rather than being illuminated by a story to which it alludes.
Moreover, there is a substantial difference between detecting an allusion to a biblical narrative in a brief statement or phrase in Paul’s letters and proposing a sweeping narrative sequence which shapes the interpretation of the whole of Paul’s letters. The larger claim demands stricter and more careful application of the criteria. A further “criterion of explicit markers” suggests itself: the more extensive the claim, the more interpretive power which the interpreter accords to it, the more the interpreter is obligated to locate explicit words, phrases and statements within the text that may be demonstrated to express the proposed theme or narrative sequence.
This loss of assurance and of the knowledge of our Creator go largely unnoticed in Wright’s scheme because through the lens of his moral idealism he views salvation primarily as a corporate reality, and substantially overlooks divine judgment as an essential element of the saving event. That you and I must die alone and stand before God alone hardly comes into his view at all. We therefore return to Paul for a still fresher reading of justification.
(HT: Michael F. Bird)
