The Theological Interpretation of Scripture has turned in to quite the hot topic these days among Bible scholars and theologians. As a way of reading the scripture, this approach tends to be either loved or hated. On one side, people see it as a way to correct the excesses of historical critical scholarship and as a way to reclaim the Bible as the church’s book. On the other side, some people feel that the approach removes the text from its historical location and obscures authorial intent. This is an important discussion, and I don’t intend to resolve the issues here. But I do want to pass along some recent items…

Tom Wright has written-in to clarify that he in fact did not intend his ETS plenary address to signal a change in his position on justification. He writes, “I haven’t retracted anything that I meant in my many, many earlier statements on this subject.” His step back from “on the basis of” language was only a change in terminology, not a change in substance. In short, he says that his current views on the matter are what they have always been. There are at least three items that I want to respond to from the two comments that Wright contributed under my earlier post (his comments are here and here).…

I have been in Atlanta this week attending a series of professional meetings for theologians and Bible scholars. The first meeting was the annual gathering of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS). This year, the theme of ETS was “justification,” and our special guest in one of the plenary sessions was N.T. Wright. Tom Schreiner gave an excellent critique of Wright’s views on justification and actually teased out of him a rather remarkable concession. In fact, I would say that this concession was the most significant thing that happened this week at ETS on the topic of justification. Schreiner critiqued Wright’s published view that justification occurs “on the basis of the…