John Piper's New Book--Free!
...but it is online.
For those of you who are interested John Piper's response to NT Wright's version of the New Perspective on Paul can be read online for free (HT: DG Blog).
Or you can buy it at Westminster Books (HT: JT)
Here is a quote from the book regarding John Piper's view of NT Wright and Wright's views:
"My conviction concerning N. T. Wright is not that he is under the curse of Galatians 1:8–9, but that his portrayal of the gospel—and of the doctrine of justification in particular—is so disfigured that it becomes difficult to recognize as biblically faithful. It may be that in his own mind and heart Wright has a clear and firm grasp on the gospel of Christ and the biblical meaning of justification. But in my judgment, what he has written will lead to a kind of preaching that will not announce clearly what makes the lordship of Christ good news for guilty sinners or show those who are overwhelmed with sin how they may stand righteous in the presence of God." (p. 15)
2 comments:
Free is definitely the right price. I'm not impressed with this book at all. I think the failure of the book is summed up in Piper's opposition to Wright's statement that "The church and the academy both urgently need a new generation of teachers and preachers who will give themselves
totally to the delighted study of the text and allow themselves to be taken wherever it leads, to think new thoughts arising out of the text and to dare to try them out in word and deed." This is page 37 by the way, and Piper's response is "That last sentence is a way of writing that summons us to something
good while in the same breath commending something that may not be good." When a man just tells you straight up that he doesn't think throwing away preconceived ideas and just going with what the text of Scripture says is a "good idea" I think he he just admitted that his stake in the present controversy is to keep some sort of a papal authority over the word rather than letting the word have authority over him.
To be fair to Piper, however, he goes on to attempt to redeem himself from my criticism above, saying, "My own assessment of the need of the church at this moment in history is different from Wright’s: I think we need a new generation of preachers who are not only open to new light that God may shed upon" continuing on page 38 "his word, but are also suspicious of their own love of novelty and are eager to test all their interpretations of the Bible by the wisdom of the centuries." How very Romish that sounds! Turn to the church fathers first, then to Scripture. In fact he explicitly says this even in another place!
Piper says "One of the differences between Wright and the Reformers is that the latter labored to link their thinking
to the writings of the church fathers (hence the Reformers’ adoption
of the slogan, ad fontes, “back to the sources”)." So, going back to the "fathers" and considering them rather than Scripture to be "the sources" or fonts of the Christian faith is hailed as being good? May I suggest that this is why the Reformation failed. It failed to remove infant baptism. It failed (the Reformers certainly did and you must admit it) to remove the ever virginity of Mary doctrine. It failed to remove original sin and inherited guilt. Many of these things were handled by subsequent reformers in better reformations by better men who didn't hold themselves in slavery to Augustine and the rest of the Romish clergy of bygone days, but truly followed Sola Scriptura. As long as Sola Scriptura remains a lying slogan and the Protestant faith is really based on Augustine et al. as the fonts and the sources, there will always be a need for the so-called Reformed faith to finally have a true reformation.
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