What is Wrong with Wright?

About a month ago James B Jordan posted What's Wrong with N. T. Wright? The same day Steve Wilkins chimed in here. Jordan gives a list of things that make many Reformed Christians uncomfortable, but that he, of course, has no problem with whatsoever. Wright, he says, 1) believes in paedocommunion, 2) believes in theocracy, 3) is basically a postmillenialist, 4) is a member of the Church of England and therefore believes in sung, liturgical worship, 5) is a bishop, but that he has a low church view of the office of bishop, 6) denies the imputation of the active obedience of Christ, which Jordan believes is part of the original Calvinist Reformation (see my post on the Reformed Doctrine of the Imputation of Christ's Active Obedience as a rebuttal of this position), 7) Wright claims to be a Calvinist, though many Calvinists have a hard time believing him, 8) Wright believes in women's ordination, which Jordan disagrees with, and finally 9) Jordan concludes by saying, "There is absolutely nothing in anything N. T. Wright has ever written that even in the slightest compromises the Protestant doctrine of salvation by faith alone. Anyone who says otherwise is just ignorant."

At the risk of being called ignorant, I shall proceed to give a brief evaluation of what is wrong with Wright. But first, let's look at what Steve Wilkins said.

Here is a man who is getting a hearing around the world--who actually believes in Sola Scriptura and in a literal resurrection and sincerely believes the finished work of Jesus is absolutely necessary for salvation (and on top of all else, is a self-professed Calvinist). You'd think that the "Reformed" and other evangelicals would be dancing in the streets. But instead, they have fallen over one another to see who can be the most extreme in their denunciations. It's been nothing short of amazing.

Wilkins cites the formal cause of the Reformation Sola Scriptura. Wright believes in Sola Scriptura, and there I can gladly join hands with N. T. Wright (although Wright has said some things that make me think he does not hold to the classic Protestant doctrine of inerrancy). But what about the material cause of the Reformation--Sola Fide? Here Jordan makes the claim that Wright has not compromised in anyway the Protestant doctrine of salvation. But according to Jordan, Wright denies the imputation of Christ's active obedience; furthermore, Wright has downplayed the forensic nature of justification, made faith a badge of covenant membership rather than the hand that grasps the righteousness of Christ, made obedience to the law a part of our justification, and made the entrance into Christianity and its saving benefits more to do with baptism than with faith. These several things put together do, in fact, compromise the Protestant doctrine of salvation. Wright has gone off in a different trajectory regarding the doctrine of justification than where Luther, Calvin, and Post-Reformation theologians have gone. That is what is wrong with N. T. Wright. He has abandoned the material cause of the Reformation, and given us a doctrine of justification that is as compromised as the Lutheran-Catholic Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification and the Evangelical-Catholic Evangelicals and Catholics Together and Gift of Salvation.

I am not the resident expert on these matters. I have certainly not read everything by N. T. Wright, but I have read enough to both be profited and alarmed by him. Wright has done many things right, but when it comes to the gospel of justification by faith alone, the heart and material cause of the Reformation, he is wrong.