The problem with Wright is that he isn’t right. The first major didactic discussion of justification occurs in James 2, not in Galatians. Further, we get a major clue as to the development of the use of dikaioo in Christian thought in Acts 13:38-39. Here, of course, is the obvious link between justification and the forgiveness of sins. Compare also the language of John 3: while John prefers not to use the word “faith,” he uses the word “believe” constantly. Certainly the two can be considered synonymous, especially seeing how they are used in Galatians 3. In John 3, believing is most certainly a matter of having eternal life or not having it. Futher, throughout the book of John, the two are constantly linked: belief and sharing in Christ’s resurrection. Also see Acts 10:49. While it sounds scholarly and perhaps theologically titillating to speak of eternal life and forgiveness of sins as being a later concern of the church that was hardly momentous during Paul’s day, the biblical data simply does not support such a notion. Also, keep in mind that Wright is essentially a Barthian on inspiration and as such reads the Bible through the lens of higher criticism. While he certainly comes up with many useful insights, he is prone to dismissing large portions of biblical data and over-humanizing the text. Hence he feels quite legitmate at eliminating what the Reformers saw as the concern of Scripture (remission of sins) from the first-century consciousness and seeing it as a natural (but later) development of Paul’s rabbinic Gospel of table-fellowship. An uncritical reading of the Gospels quickly ascertains that Jesus taught a great deal about these things, and that questions of table-fellowship follows from what is now known as the doctrine of justification by God’s grace in Christ through faith alone, not the other way around. He also has been demonstrated repeatedly to have a remarkably poor understanding of medieval Catholicism and the Reformation—the Reformers (*sigh* including the evil and diabolical Calvin) had a much “bigger” idea of Scripture than Wright thinks they did. Luther, for example, read Bible as being concerned primarily with the universal, eternal truth and revealing it in and through history. Hence Galatians is seen as Paul using universal, eternal truth to answer a narrow and focused problem. Wright, by contrast, since he sets the development of Christian doctrine in historical-critical parameters, sees Paul as giving a narrow and focused answer to a narrow and focused problem, and only later did Christians derive (perhaps correctly) universal truths from it. Remember, this is the NT Wright who teaches that Christ neither believed in nor taught his own bodily return, but that it was derived later by Paul as an implication of his teachings.