Matthew Henry John Bartlett

Said Tom Wright in a recent seminar:

[I have been saying that] the Covenant preceeds the obedience within the Covenant. I find this very ironic for this reason: if you were to go onto Google and were to type in “tom wright justification by faith” you would turn up a lot of American websites from the Presbyterian Church of America and various other strongly Reformed centres like Westminster Seminary which would be extremely rude about the two people [Tom Wright and James Dunn] sitting on this platform for having sold Paul down the river and given up the genuine Reformed doctrine of justification by faith. And this is really quite bizzare because I think that actually what we have both done in taking Sanders proposal theologically, and Sanders really is not a theologian — I mean his putting Paul together theologically is not very convincing — he’s more of a historian pointing out the historical context etcetera. But Jimmy and I and others have tried to take this forward theologically. And I see what we’re doing is actually much more on a Reformed map than a Lutheran map, precisely because of the emphasis on the Covenant and Grace as basic, and on the Law — from the start — as being the way of life for the redeemed people. Which corresponds to Luther’s ?tertsius hertius? legacy if you like but it’s much easier to do it in a Reformed or Calvinist framework.