A Passing Comment

Please take the following as a passing comment as I work through this stuff, and not as a definitive statement, since I haven't read enough of Wright or his critics to even make definitive statements yet.

I found the following on the N.T. Wright Page:

Anyway, Paul's point in the present passage is quite simply that what now marks out the covenant people of God, in the light of the revelation of God's righteousness in Jesus, is not the works of Torah that demarcate ethnic Israel, but "the law of faith," the faith that, however paradoxically, is in fact the fulfilling of Torah. There is no problem in adding the word "alone" to the word "faith"--a tradition that goes way back to Aquinas--as long as we recognize what it means: not that a person is converted by faith alone without moral effort (that is true, but it is not the truth that Paul is stressing here), nor that God's grace is always prior to human response (that is equally true, and equally not Paul's emphasis here), but that the badge of membership in God's people, the badge that enables all alike to stand on the same, flat ground at the foot of the cross, is faith."

--From the Commentary on Romans, by N.T. Wright

Now, I'm just a normal guy and all, but doesn't it seem that Wright is not denying some of the most beloved truths of Reformed theology, but rather making us look at texts more closely to see which ones are communicating those truths and which ones are addressing other issues? That's how it looks to me. It sounds like he's calling us back to the Bible and away from applying the statements in our Reformed confessions to any and every text, as though Paul was addressing in Romans the exact same questions that were being hashed out when the Westminster Confession, or any other such statement of faith, was written.

I could be wrong. It's just a passing thought based on one comment, but struck me as interesting nonetheless. Anyone who's read more Wright than I, feel free to add your thoughts.