Thoughts on Faith and the "Big Picture" of Piper's Critique of Wright in "The Future of Justification"
As I near the end of Piper's book, I was tempted to call this post "Final Thoughts on Piper's...," but as I was thinking through what I would write here, I thought that there may be more to say later. Or maybe not. I'm not sure.
Like Bishop Wright, I'm a big fan of trying to glean the "big picture" of any particular issue, and then to tackle the details within the matrix of that big picture. I find that doing so makes the job of tackling details easier, and it also gives you a good basis to assess the validity of the detailed analysis, inasmuch as if you find that analysis conflicting with the big picture, that's a good sign that you may be on the wrong path with regard to that particular detail. Or if that is the case enough times, maybe you've gotten the big picture wrong.
And I think something like that is going on with Piper's book, in ways too subtle to analyze in a blog post.
But one aspect that did strike me at the "big picture" level is this. This is a book about the Pauline doctrine of "Justification by Faith," yet take a look at the title. Then take a look at the chapter titles. The word "justification" appears there nine times. The word "faith" appears exactly zero times. And I think that's a big clue about Piper's missing the big picture. Does Piper discuss the issue of faith in the book? Of course he does. Do I disagree with everything Piper is saying in the book? Of course not. But I'm finding that the issues with which I agree with Piper are more at the microscopic level, with issues about which I'm tempted to say, "So what?"
I would never even be tempted to say "So what" about the doctrine of justification by faith through grace. The rich and nuanced story which that doctrinal title encapsulates is precisely the story that saves, and will save, the whole cosmos. But let's not forget that that doctrinal statement is precisely that, a doctrinal statement, i.e., a shorthand summary of a centuries-old, worldview-level metanarrative. It's principal utility is that it is a time-saving mechanism, bringing to the hearer's mind the entirety of that metanarrative without taking hours (or pages) to recount the entire story each time it is referenced.
What Piper is doing, and what most Christians, myself included, are tempted to do with the major doctrinal statements, is to reductionistically treat them as if they are the metanarratives themselves. And when we do that with the doctrine of "Justification by Faith" in a manner that further emphasises the term "justification" and almost ignores the term "faith," we run the giant risk of engaging in an exercise of intellectual shadow-boxing.
So what about this omitted term "faith." “Faith” is an action word. It does not mean “belief,” though it incorporates it. It does not mean “trust,” though it incorporates it. Faith means trusting your beliefs to such an extent that you are willing to act in accordance to them, whatever the consequences. The word “loyalty” comes close, but I don’t think it gives us the full picture. One can be loyal to a person or to a cause, “faithful” in that sense, but that does not necessarily stem from “faith,” though it can. I think we must also remember that we act in faith every day, several thousand times a day, in fact. It’s not a morally praiseworthy thing to act in faith, in and of itself. It is not something done solely by the chosen few. I have such a strong belief in the mechanical reliability of my body that, hundreds of times a day, I lift a leg, thrust my body forward, and trust that, when that leg lands on the ground in front of me, it will support the weight of my forward-plunging body.
In other words, I walk in faith.
Notice also, and sticking with the example of walking, the significance of the beliefs underlying one’s faith. If I believed, for example, that my forward-thrust leg was incapable of supporting my body when it landed on the ground in front of me, my life would be pretty dull. On the other end of the spectrum, if I believed that my leg would support my body no matter the distance to the ground below me, say, even if I were to step over the edge of a cliff, then my life would be pretty short. And in fact, erroneous beliefs usually do lead to faithful acts in one of those two directions, toward danger or toward stagnation.
The moral of the story is that “having faith” is not terribly significant. Everybody has faith. The critical question is what do we have faith in?
And that is the critical question for Wright, as well. What do we have faith in? If the answer is "In the believe that Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified and risen Messiah of Israel, is the Lord of the world" (which is itself a shorthand doctrinal statement), then we are justified, saved, redeemed, part of the covenant people, or whatever you want to call it. And an analysis of that "whatever you want to call it" is important but, I think, not very important.
It's not the big picture.
Grace and Peace,
Raffi
