Third Way Thursday: An Individual-In-Community of Justification

Last week on Third Way Thursday I proposed the two different ways that many Protestants have come to see justification, the Reformed view and the New Perspective.  The Reformed view is individual oriented and the New Perspective community oriented.  Both have room for their opposite but it is not often voiced in a conversation that easily slides into drawing a line in the sand.

Personally, I am a big proponent of the New Perspective.  I think theologians like N.T. Wright, who calls himself a Calvinist, present a way of thinking about justification that balances the Reformed view with an understanding of the "righteousness of God" and the corporeality of the body.

What I have found to be a big help in discussing justification, as well as other theological distinctions, is Grenz and Franke’s term "individual-in-community," a new social unit that encompasses both the individual and the community as a composite social unit. What is helpful about forcing the individual/community tension into a third way, which Grenz and Franke’s term is, is that it fuses the tension of two views together into a more holistic and meaningful understanding that leads to a practical theology.  There is a praxis that flows out of a third way, much like McKnight makes th atonement "practical" with his A Community Called Atonement’s golf bag metaphor (all the different ways of thinking about the atonement are all clubs in a theological golf bag).

We need to be free to think about what lies beyond the definition and discussion and paves the way of practical presence in the lives of Christ followers.  That is what the third way is all about.

The next third way topic will be about pacifism and "the sword."