Tom Wright is recognized generally as the English-speaking world’s leading
‘Evangelical’ New Testament scholar/theologian. (Though he mostly prefers to
describe himself as an historian).
Not all ‘Evangelicals’ like his ideas. Alister McGrath, perhaps the most
prolific published author in this genre, reckons that Wright, his fellow
Anglican churchman and former Oxford colleague, has ‘lobbed a hand grenade
into the world of traditional evangelical theology’ [1]. In particular, ‘when
it comes to reading the Apostle Paul on justification, the works of the law
and the nature of Christ’s death, if Wright is correct, Martin Luther is
wrong’ [2].
Anyway, here’s a little book (just 64 pages, excerpted from The Challenge of
Jesus) with five chapters (sermons?) about Easter, which is readable,
scholarly, but life-related.
Its message: The Easter-event actually happened (there was an empty tomb),
and the followers of Jesus came to believe that his death/resurrection
comprised the fulfilment of all the promises God had made to their
ancestors. This new era extends to our day, where we celebrate God’s
‘aliveness’ among us, making everything new.
However, this book is not for the ‘Left Behind’ folks: N T Wright has a strong commitment to social justice which is almost totally absent from Premillennialist/Dispensational theologies. He’s not a fundamentalist (though people to his left accuse him of being one – which he says is ‘painful’. As he feels the same also about those on his right accusing him of being a ‘pseudo-liberal’).
Consider this, and wonder what theological ‘box’ you’ll put him in:
‘Current accounts of knowing have placed the would-be objective scientific knowledge (test-tube epistemology, if you like) in a position of privilege. Every step away from this is seen as a step into obscurity, fuzziness and subjectivism, reaching its peaks in aesthetics and metaphysics. That is why, for instance, people have often asked me when I have spoken about Jesus whether I am really saying that Jesus did not “know” he was God. My answer to that is that if by “know” you mean what the Enlightenment meant, no, he did not. He had something much richer and deeper instead.’ (pp. 58-59).
A full article on that theme is here:http://jmm.org.au/articles/26744.htm
Now, if you got lost a bit there, please note that Wright is a pastor (he
recently resigned as a Bishop of Durham) and knows human nature, applying
his theological expertise to real-life situations.
Like these:
* ‘There is a real danger that [some] [from] the sour grapes of disappointed
ambition… will hide their incompetence behind a cheap dismissal [of
others]…’
* ‘Sitting smugly on the sidelines [believing he/she] has all the answers…’
But he’s also humble – eg. ‘At the risk of trespassing in areas I know
little or nothing about…’
Here are some bits I marked:
* ‘Was the early church right? We must postulate something that will account
for this group of first-century Jews, including a well-educated Pharisee
like Paul, coming so swiftly and so strongly to the conclusion that, against
their expectations of all the righteous dead being raised to life at the
end of the present age, one person had been raised to life in the
middle of the present age’ (p. 18, italics his)
* ‘All attempts to show that the resurrection narratives in the Gospels are
derived from other literature have conspicuously failed. Meanwhile it is
often noted that the tomb of Jesus was not venerated in the manner of the
tombs of the martyrs…’ (p.29)
* ‘Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord…
your labor is not in vain’ (1 Cor. 15:58). ‘When the final consummation
comes, the work you have done – in Bible study or biochemistry, preaching or
pure mathematics, digging ditches or composing symphonies – will stand, will
last.’ (39-40)
If you enjoy this ‘Open Evangelical’ approach, you’ll also want to read
scholars like Gary Habermas, James Dunn, and E.P. Sanders… and, I would
suggest, the two volumes where he dialogues with his friends from the Jesus
Seminar – with Marcus Borg in The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions [3], and
with John Dominic Crossan in The Resurrection of Jesus.
Endnotes:
1. Carey Newman, ed., Jesus and the Restoration of Israel: A Critical
Assessment of N.T. Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God (Downers Grove,
Illinois: InterVarsity, 1999), 178.
2. Jesus and the Restoration of Israel, 169
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