Rick Wadholm Jr., “N. T.

Wright’s Justification”

N. T. Wright’s ‘Justification’ and the Cry of the Spirit

Biblical Studies Interest Group
Rick Wadholm Jr.
Providence Theological Seminary
Presented at the 40th Annual Meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies

INTRODUCTION

There is some considerable argument to be made that the Spirit has at times played second fiddle

(at best) to the Father and Son in much of Christian theology and particularly with regard to the

doctrine of justification even among Protestants—perhaps even more particularly among

Protestants.1 While the Spirit is attributed with leading believers to justification and with the

work of sanctification that is typically conceived as flowing from justification…there simply has

been too little thought given to the role of the Spirit in the actual work of justification. One

almost wonders what to make of Paul’s question—of a slightly different nature—to the Galatians

about having begun in the Spirit how they think they should continue by some other means?

This is not to say that Christian theology has not perhaps considered the Spirit in some way

working out the justification of the believer, but that justification has been considered by and

large to be primarily the work of the Father and the Son. In Protestantism, most of the focus on

the Spirit has been given to works considered antecedent and posterior to justification. The

1
Frank D. Macchia, Justified in the Spirit: Creation, Redemption, and the Triune God (Grand Rapids, MI:
Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2010).

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 Rick Wadholm Jr., “N. T. Wright’s Justification”

warning of N. T. Wright seems fitting: “Any attempt to give an account of a doctrine which

screens out the call of Israel, the gift of the spirit, and/or the redemption of all creation is doomed

to be less than fully biblical.”2

One might wonder just how a richer doctrine of the trinity might be fleshed out in relation

to the doctrine of justification. Is there room for a reprioritization of the discussion in order to

better facilitate a more thoroughly pneumatological approach to the doctrine of justification?

There have been those who are turning their focus upon the pneumatological elements of

theology in particular that have been for too long neglected, but the doctrine of justification is

still somewhat in its nascent stage in this regard.3 What might the current debate over

justification have to offer towards this more robust Pneumatology leading to an enriched

Trinitarian doctrine of justification? It will be the contention of this paper that the person and

work of the Spirit in the believer works out the life of the Son as son and thereby assures of that

justification before the Father.4

N. T. Wright has, I will contend, rightly reminded us that the “Spirit is the path by which

Paul traces the route from justification by faith in the present to justification, by the complete life

lived, in the future.”5 My argument defending this statement will be developed through a brief

analysis and discussion of Galatians 4:6 and the “cry of the Spirit” with the pneumatological

implications this might imply for justification. Moving from that brief exposition of Scripture, a

discussion of N. T. Wright’s view of justification with specific attention to his pneumatological

2
N. T. Wright, Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009),
222.
3
For a fine summary of several theologians working in this field of pneumatology in its relation to
justification see Macchia, Justified, 85fn38.
4
John Piper, The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books,
2007), 181-188.
5
N. T. Wright, Paul: In Fresh Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 148.

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 Rick Wadholm Jr., “N. T. Wright’s Justification”

direction will be offered, followed by a critique of John Piper and his own pneumatological

direction as he critiques Wright’s view of justification. Finally, there will be another brief

analysis and biblical exposition, but this time of the more explicitly clear “cry of the Spirit” in

relation to justification in Romans 8:15 and reflections of how this might influence the preceding

discussion. My concluding remarks will suggest some pragmatic points toward a more robustly

pneumatological theology of justification that will (it is hoped) be more thoroughly Trinitarian

than many other typical models that have been postulated.

THE CRY OF THE SPIRIT IN GALATIANS 4:6

“And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba!

Father!’ ” (Gal 4:6).6

While this passage is not as explicitly connected to justification as other passages in

Galatians, it offers a pneumatological fulcrum for a richer Trinitarian appreciation of justification

as will hopefully be evident from the following exposition.

There is some ambiguity present in the text as to the ordo salutis (“order of salvation”)

that Paul has in mind (or whether perhaps he even has an ordo salutis in mind at all). He seems

to have left things open by his use of the conjunctive clause ὅτι δέ beginning this verse in

relation to the preceding clause. Does Paul mean to suggest that the Galatians are sons and

therefore God sent His Spirit or that God sent his Spirit and therefore they are sons? While the

English translations do not seem to recognize this Greek ambiguity, this particular text does not

answer our question as clearly as one might appreciate.7

All biblical citations are from the ESV unless otherwise noted.
7

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 Rick Wadholm Jr., “N. T. Wright’s Justification”

How might one resolve this proposed dilemma (and its relation to justification)? The

wedge which has been too often driven between the gift of sonship and the reception of the Spirit

in Galatians 4:6 has been ruled too long (in the words of Hans Dieter Betz) by “dogmatic and

philosophical categories.”8 “For Paul, it seems, sonship and receiving the Spirit are so intimately

related that one can speak of them in either order…with only the circumstances of a particular

audience, to be used at any given time or place.”9 Richard Longenecker’s conclusion is that

Paul’s argument in Galatians 4 builds from “a Christological confession of the church and so

speaks of sonship as the basis for God’s gift of the Spirit.”10 This does not make the one to be

actually contingent upon the other in an absolute sense, but only to be useful for Paul’s

immediate purposes in developing his Christological basis for the gift of the Spirit. “Paul is not

here setting out stages in the Christian life, whether logical or chronological. Rather, his

emphasis is on the reciprocal relation or correlational nature of sonship and the reception of the

Spirit.”11 F. F. Bruce can even speak of the “instatement as sons” and the reception of the Spirit

as giving every appearance of being “simultaneous” even though Paul may suggest an order here

of the one prior to the other.12 In fact, for Longenecker, the Spirit can justly be called “the Spirit

of the Son”13 because of the “two mutually dependent and intertwined features in the subjective

experience of salvation.”14 This is because there are not two experiences of salvation, but only
“And because” is read by ESV, NAS(1995), NET, NKJV, NLT, NRSV; “As proof that” is read by NAB
with the more abbreviated “As” in the NJB; “Because” is read by NIV(1984).
8

Hans Dieter Betz, Galatians: A Commentary (Hermeneia; Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1979), 209.
9

Richard N. Longenecker, Galatians (WBC 41; Dallas, TX: Word Books, 1990), 173.
10

Ibid.
11

Ibid; and Gordon D. Fee, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (Peabody,
MA: Hendrickson, 1994), 408fn140.
12

F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians (NIGTC; Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1982), 198.
13

Though τοῦ υἱοῦ is omitted by P46, Marcion and Augustine.

14

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 Rick Wadholm Jr., “N. T. Wright’s Justification”

one—the reception of the Spirit and the sonship are identified together though spoken of

separately as two aspects emphasizing the relation as it were to the Son and to the Spirit.

However, even here, one has to do with the “Spirit of the Son” and not simply “the Spirit” (as if

the Spirit could be conceived apart from the Son in Paul’s writings…he lays special emphasis

upon the relation of the Son and Spirit).

“Paul makes clear that hearing with faith, receiving the Spirit, and being justified were all

part of the conversion experience of the Galatians.”15 In what sense though should these

experiences be regarded as distinct experiences or as the single experience of sonship and Spirit

reception? “[I]t is precisely because they are now ‘sons’ that God sent the Spirit of his Son into

their hearts….the two go together, the status and the condition and experience of sonship.”16

While they may be spoken of separately and even with some sense of ordering in this context,

they do not (as will be seen more clearly in the text of Rom 8:15) make the one contingent upon

the other, but speak to an act which is seen to be in some way simultaneous and of such

overlapping significance that to speak of one is to speak of the other—whether explicitly or

implicitly. The “sending of the Son and the sending of the Spirit were two parts of one purpose

and salvific work of God.”17 By the term υἱοθεσία in Gal 3:14, “the blessing of Abraham” is

summed up in “the promise of the Holy Spirit” which Paul draws out in the objective cry of the

Spirit in Galatians 4:6.18 According to our text, “[i]t is the Spirit who cries out to God the Father

on behalf of the believer, though synonymously Paul can also say that the believer cries out to
Longenecker, Galatians, 174.
15

Ben Witherington III, Grace in Galatia: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (Grand Rapids,
MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1998), 290.
16

Ibid.
17

Ibid.
18

John Piper, The Justification of God: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 9:1-23 (Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1993), 39fn44.

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 Rick Wadholm Jr., “N. T. Wright’s Justification”

God the Father as energized by the Spirit (Rom 8:15).”19 “Whereas here it is the Spirit in ‘our

hearts’ that cries ‘Abba, Father!’, in Rom. 8:15f. it is ‘we’ who by the Spirit cry ‘Abba,

Father!’—the same act is expressed either way.”20

“The use of the same verb [for God “sending” His Son] as in iv.4…increase[s] the

parallelism of the two missions….Or it may be in terms of the twin effects of the two missions:

both with a view to effecting sonship that is, not only in (legal) fact (iv.4-5), but also in the

reality of subjective experience.”21 Gordon Fee argues that while the Spirit is not ultimately

responsible for procuring this sonship, the Spirit actualizes the adoption as sons.22 The Son has

been sent by the Father making us to be sons of God and the Spirit of the Son has been sent also

by the Father (even “into our hearts”) who Himself cries out “Abba, Father!” “Paul then has

here spoken of the objective and subjective dimensions of conversion, and in each case it has to

do with being conformed to the image and status of the Son.”23

“As those ‘in Christ,’ believers experience a more intimate and truly filial relationship

with God the Father, one that displaces the legal relationship that existed earlier for God’s own.

Now God’s own, as inspired by the Spirit, address God directly as ‘Father’.”24 This address is

imperative as those who have been and are and shall be justified at the last day. There is in this

sense an authentication that takes effect wherein God gives evidence to and through the believer

of His adoption of them as sons. As indeed those who are sons are indwelt by the Spirit of the
19

Longenecker, Galatians, 174.

20

Bruce, Galatians, 200.

21

James D. G. Dunn, The Epistle to the Galatians, “Black’s New Testament Commentaries” Gen. Ed. Henry
Chadwick. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993), 219.
22
Fee, God’s Empowering Presence, 408.
23

Witherington, Grace in Galatia, 291.

24

Longenecker, Galatians, 175.

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Son crying “Abba, Father!” “The evidential value for Paul’s argument in Gal 4:6 is that the

inspired acclamation ‘Abba! Father!’ shows both the inspiration of those who pray and their self-

understanding as sons by those who address him ‘Father’.”25

Dunn’s extended explanation of this Spirit cry bears an extended quotation:

The experiential character of the subject is also indicated by the particular activity
attributed to the Spirit….The verb used, as in Rom. viii15, indicates a cry of some
intensity, whether of feeling or of volume (cf. BAGD, krazō), inspired and possibly
ecstatic, at all events ‘from the heart’, with the overtones of emotional depth and sincerity
which that implies. This suggests in turn that the prayer thus envisaged was more in the
nature of a brief, spontaneous ejaculation, than that the words recorded here refer to a
more elaborate prayer like the Lord’s Prayer. In fact Paul probably saw the prayer as an
echo of Jesus’ own prayer style, and thus as proof that those who so prayed thereby
attested that they shared his sonship.26

Though F. F. Bruce argues in favor of the “Lord’s Prayer” reading of the “Abba, Father”

cry (following the initial work of Joachim Jeremias and others who quickly went beyond him in

this), yet he also notes that the verb “suggests the spontaneous ejaculation…in any situation…

[including] a Spirit-inspired prophetic utterance.”27 The verbal “cry” would seem to necessitate

against a formal “Lord’s Prayer” reading of the text as would also the curtness of the two-word

statement. It becomes summative of the life-cry of the believer adopted as a son within whom

the Spirit is crying. This would seem a far cry from a liturgical form of prayer. Further, this cry

of the Spirit speaks to the status of those who themselves have received the Spirit of the Son.

They are sons…and the Spirit cries out through them to the Father as sons.

25

Betz, Galatians, 211.

26

James D. G. Dunn, The Epistle to the Galatians (BNTC; Peabody, MA: 1993), 221.
27

Bruce, Galatians, 200; see also Joachim Jeremias, The Prayers of Jesus (SBT 2/6; Naperville, IL: Alec R.
Allenson, 1967). J. Louis Martyn has overstated his case when he argues that Paul has a clear agenda of speaking
about the issues of water baptism in Galatians chapters 3-4 and goes on to declare that the cry of the Spirit in
Galatians 4:6 is “Paul’s reference to a cry by the baptizands as they rise from the water.” He sees the two—water
baptism and Spirit reception—as synonymous or so nearly synonymous as to be an act that would lead to this Spirit
endued ejaculation. See J. Louis Martyn, Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB
33A; New York: Doubleday, 1997), 392. Against this view see Fee, God’s Empowering Presence, 409fn142.

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 Rick Wadholm Jr., “N. T. Wright’s Justification”

This pneumatological (and because pneumatological—ultimately trinitarian) orientation

for understanding justification is the direction that not only Paul has directed us toward, but it is

a path that the Church needs to be re-oriented toward and N. T. Wright seems to have suggested

a way forward upon.28

WRIGHT’S JUSTIFICATION AND ITS PNEUMATOLOGICAL ORIENTATION

First some groundwork as to an understanding of N. T. Wright’s understanding of justification.

Wright's view of justification is firmly rooted in “God's single plan, through Abraham and his

family, to bless the whole world” (a phrase which finds numerous permutations throughout his

written response to John Piper).29 He further defines justification as that righteousness which one

receives as the decision of the Judge, rather than as an imputed righteousness.30 “It isn't that God

basically wants to condemn and then finds a way to rescue some from that disaster. It is that God

longs to bless, to bless lavishly, and so to rescue and bless those in danger of tragedy – and

therefore must curse everything that thwarts and destroys the blessing of his world and his

people.”31

Wright’s primary contention is against the wrong direction he feels the doctrine of

justification has been taken and his desire to see it brought back to (in his understanding) a more

28

Wright made a point to include among his footnotes a comment about his desire to have written more upon
the subject of the role of the Spirit in his chapter on Galatians: see Wright, Justification, 229fn15.
29

Ibid., 48, original emphasis.

30

Ibid., 50.
31

Ibid., 52.

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 Rick Wadholm Jr., “N. T. Wright’s Justification”

Pauline perspective and therefore a more biblical perspective. Wright quotes James McGrath as

saying,

The doctrine of justification has come to develop a meaning quite independent of its
biblical origins, and concerns the means by which man's relationship to God is
established. The church has chosen to subsume its discussion of the reconciliation of man
to God under the aegis of justification, thereby giving the concept an emphasis quite
absent in the New Testament. The 'doctrine of justification' has come to bear a meaning
within dogmatic theology which is quite independent of its Pauline origins.32

According to Wright, “[T]he verb dikaioō, 'to justify'...does not denote an action which

transforms someone so much as a declaration which grants them a status.”33 Wright goes on to

state that “the church has indeed taken off at an oblique angle from what Paul had said, so that,

yes, ever since the time of Augustine, the discussions about what has been called 'justification'

have borne a tangled, but ultimately only tangential, relation to what Paul was talking about.”34

For Wright the early Christians were asking the question of “how we can tell, in the present, who

is implicitly included in the death and resurrection of Jesus?”35 This set the very Jewishness of

the original question of justification in the Old Testament into a new context.

Justification as Covenant

Wright reads justification in tersely covenantal terms and particularly in Old Testament

and Second Temple usage, but with a decidedly Christological reorientation. Citing Richard

Hays he writes, “‘Paul's understanding of justification must be interpreted resolutely in terms of

OT affirmations of God's faithfulness to the covenant, a faithfulness surprisingly but definitively

32

Ibid., 60, original emphasis.

33

Ibid., 70.
34

Ibid., 60.
35

N. T. Wright , The New Testament and the People of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God 1;
Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992), 458.

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 Rick Wadholm Jr., “N. T. Wright’s Justification”

confirmed through Christ's death and resurrection’.”36 “The tsedeqah elohim, the dikaiosynē

theou, is an outward-looking characteristic of God, linked of course to the concern for God's own

glory but essentially going, as it were, in the opposite direction, that of God's creative, healing,

restorative love.”37 At length he argues,

Paul believed, in short, that what Israel had longed for God to do for it and for the world,
God had done for Jesus, bringing him through death and into the life of the age to come.
Eschatology: the new world was inaugurated! Covenant: God's promises to Abraham had
been fulfilled! Lawcourt: Jesus had been vindicated – and so all those who belonged to
Jesus were vindicated as well! And these, for Paul, were not three, but one. Welcome to
Paul's doctrine of justification, rooted in the single scriptural narrative as he read it,
reaching out to the waiting world.38

The covenant was for “dealing-with-sin-and-rescuing-people-from-it, on the one hand and

bringing-Jews-and-Gentiles-together-into-a-single-family, on the other, always were bound up

together, as they always were in Paul.”39 God has at last brought His judgment into the world

and history “precisely in the covenant-fulfilling work of Jesus Christ, dealing with sin through

his death, launching the new world in his resurrection, and sending his spirit to enable human

beings, through repentance and faith, to become little walking and breathing advance parts of

that eventual new creation.”40 This covenant has created “the single multi-ethnic family,

constituted in the Messiah and indwelt by the spirit…designed as God's powerful sign to the

pagan world that Israel's God, Abraham's God, is its creator, lord and judge.”41 Thus,

justification for Wright is intimately related to sonship within the family rather than being

36

Wright, Justification, 62, 63.

37

Ibid., 52.
38

Ibid., 80.
39

Ibid., 78.
40

Ibid., 222, 223.

41

Ibid., 106.

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 Rick Wadholm Jr., “N. T. Wright’s Justification”

myopically focused upon the traditional Protestant legal paradigm (not that this is ever absent

from his own interpretation, but only that it is one part).

Justification in Relation to Sonship

As Wright understands it “for Paul, ‘justification’, whatever else it included, always had

in mind God's declaration of membership, and that this always referred specifically to the

coming together of Jews and Gentiles in faithful membership of the Christian family.”42 This is

explicitly covenantal language rather than moralistic which is why he can state that justification

“denotes a status, not a moral quality. It means ‘membership in God's true family’.”43 For

Wright it is the “faith of the individual” which “marks out those who now belong to him, to the

Messiah-redefined family.”44

The family paradigm as indicative of covenantal relationship is crucial. “There is a

single family, because this is the whole point: the one God, the creator, always intended to call

into being a single family for Abraham. The single plan through Israel for the world has turned

out to be the single plan through Israel's representative, the Messiah, for the world including

Israel, and all those who belong to the Messiah now form the one promised family.”45 The one

family wherein Gentile and Jew are all one in the Messiah has come about through the single

plan of God. This is the work of justification. “God is now creating a worldwide family where

ethnic origin, social class and gender are irrelevant, and where each member receives the

affirmation ‘you are my beloved children’, because that is what God says to his son, the Messiah,

42

Ibid., 96.
43

Ibid., 100, original emphasis.

44

Ibid., 97.
45

Ibid., 109, original emphasis.

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 Rick Wadholm Jr., “N. T. Wright’s Justification”

and because ‘as many as were baptized into the Messiah have clothed themselves with the

Messiah’.”46 Wright conceives the future verdict to have been given concerning faith:

“’righteous’, ‘my child’.”47 These declarations “righteous” and “my child” are understood to be

the very terms of justification and they are best related through the indwelling evidence of the

Spirit.

Thus for Wright, he considers that “we are now and forever part of the family to whose every

member God says what he said to Jesus at his baptism: you are my beloved child, with you I am

well pleased.”48 As Christ received evidence of the Spirit at his baptism testifying to being the

well pleasing Son of the Father, so the Spirit-endowed believers give Spiritual testimony to being

well pleasing sons in the cry of the Spirit to the Father.

Justification in Relation to the Spirit

The Spirit of the Son which we have received necessitates a doctrine of justification that

is pneumatological according to Wright. “The Spirit is the path by which Paul traces the route

from justification by faith in the present to justification, by the complete life lived, in the

future.”49

[T]he ‘spirit of the son’ (Galatians 4.6), the ‘spirit of the Messiah’ (Romans 8.9), is
poured out upon the Messiah's people, so that they become in reality what they already
are by God’s declaration: God's people indeed, his ‘children’ (Romans 8.12-17; Galatians
4.4-7) within a context replete with overtones of Israel as ‘God’s son’ at the exodus. The
extremely close interconnection of Romans 8 and Galatians 4 with the discourse of
justification in the earlier chapters of both letters warns us against attempting to construct

46

Ibid., 112.
47

Ibid., 117.
48

N. T. Wright, “New Perspectives on Paul,” in Justification in Perspective: Historical Developments and

Contemporary Challenges (ed. Bruce L. McCormack; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 261.
49

Wright, Paul: In Fresh Perspective, 148.

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a complete ‘doctrine of justification’ without reference to the spirit. Indeed, I and others
have long insisted that the doctrine is Trinitarian in shape. This is the point at which it is
idle to complain that I, or others who take a similar position, are encouraging people to
‘trust in anyone or anything other than the crucified and resurrected Savior’. Is it wrong,
or heretical, to declare that as well as and also because of our absolute faith in the
crucified and resurrected Savior, we also trust in the life-giving spirit who enables us to
say ‘Abba, father’ (Romans 8.12-16) and ‘Jesus is Lord’ (1 Corinthians 12.3)? Of course
not. For Paul, faith in Jesus Christ includes a trust in the spirit; not least, a sure trust that
‘he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of the Messiah’
(Philippians 1.6).50

The relation of the Spirit to the work of present and final justification is left for his

exegesis...though he says far less than one might like him to say on this subject.

Wright proposes that Paul would have understood the reason Christ was made a curse for

us (negative justification) was “that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles, and

so that we (presumably Jews who believe in Jesus) might receive the promise of the Spirit

through faith” (positive justification). This is to say that the promised anointed one of God

became a curse, in accord with Deuteronomy, successfully passing through that curse “into the

time of renewal when the Gentiles would at last come into Abraham's family, while Jews could

have the possibility of covenant renewal, of receiving the promised spirit through faith.”51

When one trust's in the Holy Spirit “within Trinitarian theology one is quick to say that

this is not something other than trust in Jesus the Messiah, since it is his own spirit; the Father

who sent Jesus is now sending ‘the Spirit of the Son’ (Galatians 4.4-7). But the point about the

holy spirit, at least within Paul's theology, is that when the spirit comes the result is human

freedom rather than human slavery.”52 The Spirit of the Son is the spirit of freedom and

50

Wright, Justification, 85, 86.

51

Ibid., 103, 104.

52

Ibid., 164.

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liberation from sin and all of its consequences. It is thus the reception of the Spirit that means

the justification of the believer into the freedom of new life or real life.

True freedom is the gift of the spirit, the result of grace; but, precisely because it is
freedom for as well as freedom from, it isn't simply a matter of being forced now to be
good, against our wills and without our co-operation..., but a matter of being released
from slavery precisely into responsibility, into being able at last to choose, to exercise
moral muscle, knowing both that one is doing it oneself and that the spirit is at work
within, that God himself is doing that which I too am doing. If we don't believe that, we
don't believe in the spirit, and we don't believe Paul's teaching.53

It is not as if this cry of the Spirit, and this new life lived in the Spirit, is somehow other

than that very life of the vindicated believer. “[T]he spirit is the one through whose agency

God's people are renewed and reconstituted as God's people. And it is by the energy of the spirit,

working in those who belong to the Messiah, that the new paradox comes about in which the

Christian really does exercise free moral will and effort but at the same time ascribes this free

activity to the spirit.”54

How might this be accomplished in Wright’s system? It appears to largely be

accomplished through the preaching of the Word (something which is inherent to all Reformed

theology). “Paul's conception of how people are drawn into salvation starts with the preaching

of the gospel, continues with the work of the Spirit in and through that preaching, and the effect

of the Spirit's work on the hearts of the hearers, and concludes with the coming to birth of faith,

and entry into the family through baptism.”55 While Wright has structured a certain continuum of

the work of salvation, it is centered on the proclamation of the good news in Christ preached in

the power of the Spirit.

53

Ibid., 164, original emphasis.

54

Ibid., 209, original emphasis.

55

N. T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? (Grand
Rapids, MI: Wm.B. Eerdmans, 1997), 125.

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[T]he preaching of the gospel, in the power of the spirit, is the means by which, as an act
of sheer grace, God evokes this faith in people from Abraham to the present day and
beyond. It is a mystery, but it is held within the larger mystery of that same overarching
divine grace. ‘Nobody can say “Jesus is Lord” ‘(the basic Christian confession of faith)
‘except by the Holy Spirit.’ When the word of the gospel is proclaimed, the spirit goes to
work in ways that the preacher cannot predict or control which often take the hearers, and
the responders, by surprise as well.56

How could this be conceived as anything different than the “Abba, Father” cry of the Spirit of

the Son? Is this not the preaching of the Gospel by the Spirit in the mouth of the believing and

vindicated community of faith? Or at the very least a cry of affirmation to that Word and by that

very Word?

In what sense should this be understood to be present (or future) vindication by the

Spirit? Is it merely a hopeful cry or the certain cry of assurance? According to Wright, “You

cannot...have a Pauline doctrine of assurance (and the glory of the Reformation doctrine of

justification is precisely assurance) without the Pauline doctrine of the spirit.”57 “‘Justification

by faith’ is about the present, about how you can already tell who the people are who will be

vindicated on the last day.”58 Wright, however, makes a clear comment as to his understanding

of future justification. It will “truly reflect what people have actually done.” He immediately

explains that this in no way means they will have earned the final verdict or that their works will

be perfect and complete, but that they are “seeking it through that patient, spirit-driven Christian

living” wherein from one perspective it is entirely the work of the Spirit and from another it is

56

Ibid., 184.
57

Ibid., 209, 210.

58

Ibid., 211, original emphasis. He never does exactly explain how others might in the “objective” sense
know those who have been received by the Father as justified by the Spirit in the Son. It seems to remain in the
subjective realm of knowledge for believers as far as Wright’s actual expositions are actually concerned (all his
concluding claims to the contrary aside). Frank Macchia believes that through his motif of being “justified in the
Spirit” there is a way through the typical subjective-objective divide of justification, see his Justified in the Spirit,
133, 215.

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the renewed and recreated humanity freely offering itself in obedience to the Lord.59 Wright’s

conclusion concerning Spirit reception and justification needs bearing in mind as we move on to

discuss the critique offered by Piper and examine the pneumatological implications of his

critique: “What Paul says about Christians could be said about the doctrine of justification itself:

if you don't have the spirit, you're not on the map.”60

JOHN PIPER’S REPLY TO WRIGHT AND ITS PNEUMATOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

John Piper’s contention builds from his complaint about Wright’s redefinition of justification and

the ‘fuzziness’ of it for many that he has encountered in pastoral ministry and the outcome he

foresees for those who would pursue Wright’s interpretation.

Wright's way of speaking about justification will be virtually unintelligible to the average
person in the pew as he or she tries to conceive how the word justify corresponds to
family membership. They can certainly grasp that the justified sinner is also in the family
and that only justified sinners are in the family, and being in the family is an implication
of being justified. But to say that justification was about who was a member of God's
family is going to mislead. It will obscure the denotative meaning of the word justify by
calling one of its attendant implications a denotative meaning.61

Piper reminds the reader that the “historic teaching is that justification is ‘by faith,’ not the

process of coming to faith.”62

“It has seemed to most interpreters of Paul that something decisive and once-for-all
happens at justification. Justification is not a mere declaration that something has
happened or will happen....Paul's words...mean that the justification does not bring about
our knowing that we have peace with God but our having peace with God. In fact, it

59

Wright, Justification, 167.

60

Ibid., 165.
61

Piper, Future of Justification, 40fn6.

62

Ibid., 41, 42.

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seems that the divine act of justification actually establishes the peace because in it God
does not just declare but determines our new identity.”63

It may even be likened to a new creation. Piper explains Wright's definition of justification as

“God's eschatological definition, both future and present, of who was, in fact, a member of His

people.”64 Piper defines righteousness (and by implication that which is “just”) as “the

unwavering faithfulness to uphold the glory of God” rather than the faithfulness of God

Himself.65

Piper’s reply to Wright concerning the Spirit-wrought works of righteousness in relation

to justification leads him to ask the following rhetorical question, “What is the role, if any, of our

Spirit-transformed behavior in forming the basis of the Judge's verdict?”66 I find it troubling that

Piper has phrased his question in this manner despite his conclusions regarding the necessity of

guarding against a works based salvation even at the last. Is there no room for the work of the

Spirit in the justification of the believer? Does not the Spirit work out the vicarious life, death

and resurrection of our Lord Jesus in the life of the believer? The issue of justification in relation

to the lordship and judgeship of Christ Jesus are (as Piper points out) not inherently matters of

rejoicing, nor are they inherently good news.67 This is actually a message of fear and terror that

one has been found wanting and faces judgment as unrighteous. It is actually a matter of the

indwelling Spirit of the Son who cries “Father” and works our salvation out in the justification of

the one accused as a sinner but found to be righteous in Christ that makes this news to be “good”.

That is the “good news”.

63

Ibid., 42, original emphasis.

64

Ibid., 44, 104.

65

Ibid., 64.
66

Ibid., 74fn1, emphasis added.

67

Ibid., 86-91.

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According to Piper, faith, calling, and justification “are parts of one event that brings us

from God's enmity to his acceptance. There is a logical sequence, but to say that justification

only comes after we are 'in' would misrepresent Paul's treatment of justification as essential to

the act of actually putting us in the right with God.”68 He argues that “justifying faith is also

sanctifying faith.”69 Our final justification is considered to have two foundations: Christ bearing

our judgment and the Spirit working in us to produce the obedience to God.70 Piper further

argues “that these works will demonstrate the authenticity of faith that looks away from all self-

wrought or Spirit-wrought obedience in us to the blood and obedience of Jesus as the

punishment and perfection that God requires.”71 Must one drive a wedge between that which is

Spirit-wrought and that which Christ has accomplished? After all, is it not the Spirit which

compels us to say “Jesus is Lord”? Piper seems set on guarding against all forms of legalism

(whether hard or so-called “soft”—the term he uses, but in the end he seems to suggest too far of

a distinction between the work of the Spirit in the believer and the work of Christ that seems to

lend itself to a bifurcation of a more robustly trinitarian theology of justification. Piper clarifies

in his conclusion that the “function of our own obedience flowing from faith (that is, our own

good works produced as the fruit of the Holy Spirit) is to make visible the worth of Christ and

the worth of his work as our substitute-punishment and substitute-righteousness. God's purpose

in the universe is not only to be infinitely worthy, but to be displayed as infinitely worthy.”72

68

Ibid., 98, original emphasis.

69

Ibid., 114.
70

Ibid., 121.
71

Ibid., 149, original emphasis.

72

Ibid., 185, original emphasis.

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“God’s design is that the outpouring of the Spirit (Gal. 4:6) and the giving of life and the act of

justification by faith be clearly attached to the work of Christ. That is why, until Christ came,

God restrained the Spirit and the gift of life and the work of faith.”73

In Piper’s critique, he is quick to note the role of the Spirit as essential to the life of the

believer, though he never explicitly states this as the work and presence of the Spirit. It is,

however, the implication of his critique that the Spirit’s presence and activity are inherent to

justification as one part of the single act of God putting all things right. So while Piper rejects

Wright’s notion of familial justification as declarative of those who are ‘already in’ the family,

he still adopts the language of belonging to the Spirit-wrought new creation. Wright simply

carries the sonship motif as necessary to his overall understanding of justification, while Piper

stays more with the traditional Protestant view of justification as a legal motif.

THE CRY OF THE SPIRIT IN ROMANS 8:15

“For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the

Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Rom 8:15)

Turning at last to the ‘cry of the Spirit’ in Rom 8:15, there may be some further aid for

our understanding of preceding discussion of the covenantal and familial declaration of

justification in accord with the Spirit. “The Spirit enables Christians to share in the unique

relation of the Son but it is not the good works of the Christian that make him a son of God nor is

it his physical descent.”74 This becomes clearer through recognizing justification as related to the

‘cry of the Spirit.’ “The Abba cry is confirmation of sonship, not merely in the reception of the
73

Ibid., 199.
74

E. A. Obeng, “Abba Father: The Prayer of the Sons of God,” ET 99 (1987-1988), 364.

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‘Spirit producing sonship’ but in the actual status as sons and daughters of God.”75 Indeed, it can

and should be argued that “Paul believes it is the Spirit that puts life into believers and gives

them a basis for spiritual kinship with God” and thus any doctrine of justification lacking

pneumatological emphasis is a doctrine of justification lacking altogether.76

Does Paul mean to specify by this passage that adoption has been enacted or only

declared by the reception of the Spirit? Thomas Schreiner’s caution is noteworthy: “The debate

on whether the focus is on the act of adoption or the status of adoption is oversubtle (see

Cranfield 1975: 398, Moo 1991: 537).”77 He further argues that “believers have truly received

adoption but await the consummation and completion of that adoption at the day of their

redemption.”78 The adoption has been both enacted and declared by the reception of the Spirit

and Paul may at one time (as seen in the exposition of Gal 4:6) emphasize one aspect over

another. At another time he will put another forward. These are not to be considered in

absolute terms, but in more pragmatic terms to emphasize the relation of the Spirit and Son in the

justification of the believer. Whereas there is some sense of grammatical ambiguity in the text of

Gal 4:6 (due to the conjunctive ὅτι) as to whether there is something other than the Spirit that

might constitute sonship, yet Paul has cleared that up here in Romans 8. “Spirit-led Christians

are children of God. The gift of the Spirit constitutes the sonship, and it is thus the basis of the

huiothesia.”79

75

Robert Jewett, Romans: A Commentary (Hermeneia; Fortress Press: Minneapolis, MN: 2007), 500.
76

Ben Witherington III and Darlene Hyatt, Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary
(Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2004), 217.
77

Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans (BECNT 6; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1998), 425.
78

Ibid.
79

Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 33; New York:
Doubleday, 1993), 498, original emphasis.

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In relating the Spirit and justification it is really the relation of the Spirit between the Son

and those who are declared and made sons. James D. G. Dunn writes that “the Spirit is the Spirit

of sonship precisely because it is the Spirit of the Son. That is to say, the Spirit for Paul links the

believer directly to Jesus; the Spirit defines the person as Christian precisely by establishing this

link. And it makes this plain by reproducing the prayer relation of Jesus himself with God in

believers; like Jesus, believers cry ‘Abba! Father!”80 It is “the vital dynamism of the Spirit [that]

constitutes the sonship itself and bestows the power to recognize such status.”81 However, Fee,

correctly points out that whereas in Gal 4:6 Paul clarifies that “adoption was secured for us by

Christ…here [in Rom 8:15] it has been made effective in the life of the believer through the

work of the Spirit.”82 Thus, for Paul, sonship is a thoroughly Trinitarian work attributable at one

moment primarily to the Son and at another to the Spirit, but in both cases the Son and Spirit are

intimately involved.

The adoption into God’s redeemed family has been carried out by the indwelling Spirit of

the Son and demonstrated by the prophetic voice of that same Spirit. “It appears Paul is drawing

on a widely available concept of adoption in formulating his thesis, which anchors the

charismatic Spirit in the familial community of the early church.”83 According to Ben

Witherington—and more than what Ernst Käsemann suggests—“Paul believes that through the

Spirit Christ has taken possession of believers’ lives and connected them with his exalted and

glorified self by incorporating them into his earthly body of believers.”84 “Paul experienced the
80

James D. G. Dunn, “Spirit Speech: Reflections on Romans 8:12-27” in Romans and the People of God:
Essays in Honor of Gordon D. Fee on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday (ed. Sven Sodurlund and N. T. Wright;
Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1999), 84.
81

Fitzmyer, Romans, 501.

82
Fee, God’s Empowering Presence, 566.
83

Jewett, Romans, 498.

84

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Spirit as freedom to express his faith in new and previously impossible ways, freedom to live at

the level of person to person rather than of interpreter to written code.”85 The justified

community—the Spirit-filled community—crying out “Abba, Father” was empowered to live as

sons of obedience through the assurance of their adoption.

“Like the pagan in 1 Cor 14:25, the congregation learns from the acclamation of ecstatics

that God is present in their midst and that both to the whole and to the individual he gives

assurance of sonship as participation in the basileia” or kingdom.86 Käsemann’s reading of Paul

leads him to conclude that it is in freedom that we live as sons and do not live in a state of doubt

as laid out in Romans 8.87 “A doctrine of the Spirit which is not afraid of the catchword ‘being

carried off’ is the reverse side of the justification of the ungodly since it connects this with

abiding in the reign of Christ in which as constant recipients we are under constant demands.”88

James Dunn argues, “The use of just the same phrase [Abba Father] in Gal 4:6 clearly

indicates that it was an established formula in the churches known to Paul,” but the repeated verb

of intensity also “implies that such intensity was a feature of the uttered phrase.”89 However, the

language of “formula” seems too strong. That it was representative of the deep-seated

connectedness to the prayer of Christ as Son and widespread through the churches as such

without being a particular formula or even formulaic should be granted. More to the point, Dunn

Witherington, Romans, 211.

85

James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1-8 (Word Biblical Commentary Vol.38A; Dallas: TX; Word Books, 1988),
461.
86

Ernst Käsemann, Commentary on Romans (trans. G. W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans,
1980), 228.
87

Ibid., 227.
88

Ibid., 226.
89

Dunn, Romans, 461.

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states, “[Q]uite probably he [Paul] had in mind various occasions in worship marked by single or

repeated ejaculation of the phrase.”90 How this might be understood as a “formula” seems beside

the point for Dunn.91

E. A. Obeng similarly argues that the krazein nature of the phrase as a short and soulful

prayer constituted a “complete utterance” unto itself, but one with a baptismal setting.92 While

he briefly mentions the possibility of this as a glossolalic prayer he just as quickly dismisses it.93

He also understands the witness as the testimony of our spirit with the Spirit of God and states,

“[T]he Christian must not only receive the Holy Spirit to become a Son [sic], he must also work

with the Spirit to declare the sonship to the world.”94

Jewett understands the cry of the Spirit in charismatic language terms as opposed to the

sacramental view of Dunn and Oberg, noting that “the nature of early Christian worship…was

much more enthusiastic and participatory than many modern churches.”95 Joseph Fitzmyer states

that “the experience of the Spirit in the earliest Christian communities was dynamic and vital…

full of gladness and joy inexpressible” with the implication being that the earliest churches’ joy

90

Ibid.
91
It is certainly perplexing to explain the Aramaic portion of the “cry” in Greek speaking churches that
apparently were in some way following the “Abba” cry of Jesus, but without formalizing it. See Gordon D. Fee,
Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007), 121fn95. In Fee’s later
work (Pauline Christology) he offers a more carefully considered argumentation, whereas in his earlier work (God’s
Empowering Presence) he actually proposes this was “the deeply fixed language of piety” that led to the “Abba,
Father” cry, God’s Empowering Presence, 412.
92

Obeng, “Abba Father,” 364; though Fee (God’s Empowering Presence, 412) persuasively argues that “the
meaning of the term” krazein and the parallel reference to it coming “from the heart” in Gal 4:6 “suggest that for
Paul a form of intimacy with God is involved” (even a charismatic one) rather than a formal declaration with a
baptismal setting.
93

Ibid., 365.
94

Ibid.
95

Jewett, Romans, 498, 499.

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would find expression in a way not necessarily as formal as found in many modern contexts.96

What seems certain is that this feature was common in churches which Paul had both established

and not established (the churches of Galatia and of Rome) and that this was an emphatic Spirit

inspired cry recognized by the community as the communities’ cry of all having been received

(both Jews and Gentiles).into the one family of God in the one Son.97

Frédéric Godet believes it most likely that Paul was making a case for not fully enjoying

the adoption of sonship (though one is a son by justification) “until he has fully become loyally

submissive to the operation of the Spirit.”98 This makes for a less certain event and would seem

to remove it from the sphere of justification and into the sphere of sanctification, but how he

makes this move concerning “sonship” one is only left to wonder. Instead, Paul seems to propose

a certainty concerning the adoption as sons as evidenced by the Spirit cry. It would be better to

follow the conclusion of Gordon Fee that the “presence of the Son by means of the Spirit of the

Son actualizes our own ‘sonship’” which was “secured for us” by Jesus death, resurrection and

ascension.99

The adoption as sons is something that has happened and yet has “its eschatological

consequences.”100 This eschatological dimension of justification and the cry of the Spirit

recognizes the ongoing work which is both firmly established and yet sought after by the very

being of God indwelling redeemed creation. “The Christian cry is likewise the cry of the Spirit.

The inspired Abba cry reveals that Christians are children of God and destined for glory.”101
96

Schreiner, Romans, 426.

97
Fee, Pauline Christology, 217-219, 526, 531, 549.
98

Frédéric Louis Godet, Commentary on Romans (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 1977), 308, 309.
99
Fee, Pauline Christology, 590.
100

Fitzmyer, Romans, 497.

101

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“The divine sonship is and remains an eschatological reality.”102 For Paul, “the confident

articulation that God is one’s Father stems from a certainty in the heart that transcends human

comprehension.”103 This cry of the Spirit is offered in the deeds of the body as well. Cranfield

writes:

This is what it means to live after the Spirit, to mortify by the Spirit the deeds of the
body, and to be led by the Spirit of God—simply to be enabled by that same Spirit to cry,
‘Abba, Father.’ And it is here expressed not as an imperative but as an indicative:
Christians do as a matter of fact do this. The implicit imperative is that they should
continue to do just this, and do it more and more consistently more and more sincerely,
soberly and responsibly. This is all that is required of them….Nothing more is required
of us than that we should cry to the one true God ‘Abba, Father’ with full sincerity and
with full seriousness.104

Cranfield goes on to say, “In the accomplishment of this work of obedience the δικαίωμα τοῦ

νόμου is fulfilled (Rom 8:4)” and in this: sonship, justification, and the Spirit cry are bound up

in the finished work of the Son.105

TOWARD A SPIRIT—TRINITARIAN—THEOLOGY OF JUSTIFICATION

Where to from here? Is the “cry of the Spirit” nothing more than a subjective ground by

which one recognizes the community of those who are justified – who are being declared as

justified? Is there a sense in which the “cry of the Spirit” is also the objective declaration of the

Father that indeed we are sons? Has there been any positive move towards a more

Ibid., 501.
102

Käsemann, Romans, 227.

103

Schreiner, Romans, 427.

104

C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (2 vols.; ICC;
Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975), 1:401.
105

Ibid., 1:401, 402.

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pneumatological doctrine of justification whereby the Spirit might be recognized as working our

justification?

The familial/covenantal motif of N. T. Wright offers far more towards a Spirit theology

of justification than the more traditional motif of the legal setting for justification. Where,

however, might the Spirit be found in such a legal motif if it is not to be discarded (as it most

certainly should not be)? In what sense might the indwelling and imparted person of God as the

Spirit of God be related through such a motif?106 How should justice be done to the doctrine of

justification as understood and articulated according to Scripture without doing an injustice to

the person and work of the Spirit?

Two theologians in particular may offer some helpful direction for us in conjunction with

the forgoing exegesis of Romans and Galatians and the theological work of N. T. Wright—Karl

Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Their reflections on Scripture and theology offer much in the

way of careful exegesis and Trinitarian fullness and so we shall turn to them for some closing

suggestions toward a fuller Spirit—i.e., Trinarian—theology of justification. Barth suggests the

necessity and privilege of our justified praying in the Spirit of the Son to the Father. Bonhoeffer

writes regarding the Christological and communal (Spirit-inspired?) word spoken aloud as our

justification before the Father. I believe they both offer, in their own way, a further affirming

word to the Church concerning the necessity of the justified (and justifying) cry of the Spirit.

Karl Barth wrote in his Church Dogmatics concerning prayer and the relation of the

Spirit and Christ:

It is not a twofold but a single fact that both Jesus Christ with His prayer and also the
Holy Spirit with 'unutterable groanings' is our Mediator and Intercessor. This can and
must be said both of Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit, and in both cases it concerns the
one event of laying a foundation for prayer, i.e. for the cry, Abba, Father. It is He—Jesus

106

Macchia, Justified, 121-127, 131-185.

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Christ through the Spirit, the Spirit as the Spirit of Jesus Christ—who makes good that
which we of ourselves cannot make good, who brings our prayer before God and
therefore makes it possible as prayer, and who in so doing makes it necessary for us. For
Jesus Christ is in us through His Spirit, so that for His sake, praying after Him as the one
who leads us in prayer, we for our part may and must pray, calling upon God as our
Father. And the Spirit who frees us for this and incites us to the power in which we are
with Him the children of God and are addressed as such, so that irrespective of what we
ourselves can offer and perform we can call God our Father and go to Him with our
requests.107

In other words, Barth proposes that our prayer, even (or perhaps especially) our “Abba,

Father” cry is permitted, enabled and necessitated by the Spirit of the Son within us. There is a

divine imperative wherein we are compelled by our justification to cry to our Father, but where

we are also freed to cry and enabled to do so. This is the glory of our sonship whereby the Spirit

within makes and declares us to be sons of the Father. This is also why Paul could both say that

the “cry of the Spirit” is our cry and the Spirit’s cry. Neither contradicts the other, because there

is a divine indwelling, enabling and compulsion of transformation towards the ultimate

redemption of the sons (and of all creation) in the Son. These words also serve to remind the

Church that while there may be an inward witness of the Spirit that we are indeed sons, Paul has

gone to lengths to state this as a “cry,” and Barth recognizes it as that outward prayer and

confession.108 The Spirit will always give evidence of sonship. By the indwelling Spirit of the

Son, our prayers are necessary, though freely given. We cry “Father!” because we can and must.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his little work entitled Life Together wrote about the Reformed

perspective of fremde Gerechtigkeit (“alien righteousness”) which in Luther’s doctrine of

107

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, III.4, (Ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance; Trans. A. T. Mackay and T.
H. L. Parker; reprint; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2010), 94.
108
Fee, God’s Empowering Presence, 569.

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justification was extra nos (“outside of us”).109 He explained the need, based upon this doctrine

of “alien righteousness,” for community and the spoken Word of Christ:

If they are asked ‘Where is your salvation, your blessedness, your righteousness?,’ they
can never point to themselves. Instead, they point to the Word of God in Jesus Christ that
grants salvation, blessedness, and righteousness. They watch for this Word wherever they
can. Because they daily hunger and thirst for righteousness, they long for the redeeming
Word again and again. It can only come from the outside. In themselves they are only
destitute and dead. Help must come from the outside; and it has come and comes daily
and anew in the Word of Jesus Christ, bringing us redemption, righteousness, innocence,
and blessedness. But God put this Word into the mouth of human beings so that it may be
passed on to others. When people are deeply affected by the Word, they tell it to other
people. God has willed that we should seek and find God’s living Word in the testimony
of other Christians....They need them again and again when they become uncertain and
disheartened....They need other Christians as bearers and proclaimers of the divine word
of salvation.110

The extra nos righteousness of Luther, which Bonhoeffer has taken up, seems to fail to

do justice to the justification of the believer in the Spirit in the very midst of the believing and

confessing community. I believe Bonhoeffer has in some respects redeemed Luther in this

(though Luther may in fact do so himself) by reminding the Church that we speak the Word of

God as righteousness…one to another. We confess the forgiveness of sins as fully granted. We

are a community that is redeemed and redeeming, justified by the Spirit which cries aloud

“Abba, Father!” that others may hear, believe and take heart. Let this be the cry of the gathered

worshipping community full of the Spirit of the Son confessing the Father as our father.111 Let us

confess, hear, believe and take heart…together having been justified that we may also be

glorified with our Lord Jesus Christ.

109

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, Prayerbook of the Bible (Ed. Geffrey B. Kelly; Trans. Daniel W.
Bloesch and James H. Burtness; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1996), 31fn10.
110

Ibid., 32.
111
Fee, God’s Empowering Presence, 409, 410.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics. 14 vols. Edited by G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance.

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Betz, Hans Dieter. Galatians: A Commentary. Hermeneia. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press,
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Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together, Prayerbook of the Bible. Edited by Geffrey B. Kelly.
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Bruce, F. F. The Epistle to the Galatians. New International Greek Testament Commentary.
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Cranfield, C. E. B. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. 2 vols.
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Dunn, James D. G. The Epistle to the Galatians. Black’s New Testament Commentaries.
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———. Romans. 2 vols. Word Biblical Commentary. 38A-B. Dallas: TX, Word Books, 1988.

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———. “Spirit Speech: Reflections on Romans 8:12-27.” Pages 82-91 in Romans

and the People of God: Essays in Honor of Gordon D. Fee on the Occasion of His 65th
Birthday. Edited by Sven Sodurlund and N. T. Wright. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B.
Eerdmans, 1999.

Fee, Gordon D. God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul. Peabody,
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———. Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson,

2007.

Fitzmyer, Joseph A. Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. Anchor
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Jewett, Robert. Romans: A Commentary. Hermeneia. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007.

Jeremias, Joachim. The Prayers of Jesus. Studies in Biblical Theology. Second Series 6.
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MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1980.

Longenecker, Richard N. Galatians. Word Biblical Commentary 41. Dallas, TX: Word
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Martyn, J. Louis. Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. Anchor
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Obeng, E. A. “Abba Father: The Prayer of the Sons of God.” The Expository Times 99 (1987-
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Piper, John. The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright. Wheaton, IL: Crossway
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———. The Justification of God: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 9:1-23.
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