N. T. Wright Interview: Bible Study, Original Languages, Favorite Books, and More

Jayson,

I found it really difficult to find the blog post because:

1. It's not showing up on the home page of http://blog.logos.com/
2. You didn't link to it in your initial post.

I eventually got to it from a forum sidebar. For others who struggled, here's the link: http://blog.logos.com/archives/2011/02/n_t_wright_interview_bible_study_original_languages_favorite_books_and_more.html

Stephen Smith said:

When I reset my ff cache it rendered properly. Not sure why it would be a widespread issue though....

I suppose, in these tough days, more people's cache is tight and they don't want to give it up.

Jayson Bradley said:

Tell us about your favorite N. T. Wright quote.

Thought I'd better get back on topic. This from his book on Resurrection:

Jesus’ resurrection was the divine vindication of him as Messiah, ‘son of God’ in that sense, the representative of Israel and thence of the world.… God has done what the Torah could not do, condemning sin in the flesh of the Messiah, as the representative of all his people, and by his Spirit giving life, in the present in terms of a new orientation and mindset ([Romans] 8:5–8), in the ultimate future in terms of bodily resurrection… If, then, Jesus has been vindicated as Messiah, certain things follow at once. He is to be seen as Israel’s true representative; the great turn-around of the eras has already begun; ‘the resurrection’ has split into two, with Jesus the Messiah as the first-fruits and the Messiah’s people following later, when he returns.… ‘Resurrection’ was a key part of the ‘eschaton’; if it had happened to one man whom many had regarded as Israel’s Messiah, that meant that it had happened, in principle, to Israel as a whole. The Messiah represented Israel, just as David had represented Israel when he faced Goliath.

Now all you have to do is figure out why Wright spread those sentences over about 500 pages! (pp 248, 256, 395, 726)

The best way to talk about N T Wright is to let him speak for himself:

"The best way to talk about N T Wright is to let him speak for himself"

"The best way to talk about N T Wright is to let him speak for himself:"

Hmmm.

Such as the following comments taken from a number of his books.  Some of these ideas are repeated many times throughout most of his works:

"The Gospel is not about how to get saved."

"Future justification is on the basis of a complete life lived."

"First century Judaism had nothing of the alleged self-righteousness and boastful legalism."  (Right, and neither does this new covenant people today.  sarcasm)

And Wright has stated a number of times in various ways that justification is not about sinners being made righteous or declared righteous, but its simply Gentiles being included in a covenant that formerly only accepted Jews.  .He insists that mere covenant membership is justification of the Gentiles.  (But what did mere covenant membership do for all Jews who perished throughout Biblical history?  They died because they were not justified, even though they had the sign of covenant membership marked on their flesh).

I know that some will insist that these are comments taken out of context, but when I read them in context in Wright's works I don't feel any better about them.  Many of us would be put out of the ministry for remarks like this, but Wright has such a witty way about him that he can get away with it, and those who would otherwise be alarmed stay right in the back seat of his car.

There are literally dozens of critiques written about Wright's views, and most of them will point out many other comments that most people who read their Bibles everyday would find dubious or disturbing.

One critique I could suggest is John Piper's, The Future of Justification, which does a good job of analyzing exegetically a long list of disturbing statements by Wright.  This is important, because Wright keeps insisting in his books that none of his "opponents" ever answer him with sound exegetical arguments from the Scripture alone, but always base their arguments on the creeds of the Reformation of the 16th century.  Actually, however, there are a number of books that analyze Wright's views using Scripture.  He seems to refuse to acknowledge their existence in books I've read by him.

You'll find Piper handles Wright's work very kindly and graciously, crediting him often for things he does get right, even thanking him at times.  But taking him to the carpet nonetheless for comments that are obvious errors in very important matter like justification, where souls of real people are at stake.

On the other hand, I have often observed Wright writing-off all who argue against him as if their views and exegetical arguments are from the same lump of the old worthless way of thinking, yet refusing to interact directly with them on the specific exegetical issues, and casting a slur on those who disagree with him, as if no one ever understood God's Word, or the gospel, or justification for 2000 years until Wright and other New Perspective on Paul authors came along to reinterpret the entire Bible for all of us who are too blinded by Martin Luther's understanding of justification to see for ourselves what Scripture really means.

There are things that can be learned even from a neo-orthodox author like Wright.  But one should read him with a critique written by someone else in hand, someone whose exegesis you have learned to trust over the years. Piper is only one of many who have risen to the task of helping us out on this one.

I disagree with Wright...and I disagree with those who disagree with Wright. [:P]

Jayson Bradley said:

Tell us about your favorite N. T. Wright quote.

N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (London: SPCK, 1992), 141-42:

"Among the detailed moves available within this model, which I hope to develop further elsewhere, is the possibility of seeing the biblical story as itself consisting of five acts. Thus: 1—Creation; 2—Fall; 3—Israel; 4—Jesus. The writing of the New Testament—including the writing of the gospels—would then form the first scene in the fifth act, and would simultaneously give hints (Romans 8, 1 Corinthians 15, parts of the Apocalypse) of how the play is supposed to end. The fact of Act 4 being what it is shows what sort of a conclusion the drama should have, without making clear all the intervening steps. The church would then live under the ‘authority’ of the extant story, being required to offer an improvisatory performance of the final act as it leads up to and anticipates the intended conclusion. The church is designed, according to this model, as a stage in the completion of the creator’s work of art: as Paul says in Ephesians 2:10, autou gar esmen poiema, we are his artwork."

At 4:40 into the interview Wright says that C.S. Lewis' "view on the historical Jesus is very worrying". Anyone have any idea what in particular he's talking about?

Brad Fry said:

At 4:40 into the interview Wright says that C.S. Lewis' "view on the historical Jesus is very worrying". Anyone have any idea what in particular he's talking about?

I think he's referring to The Screwtape Letters, chapter 23. (See Jesus and the Victory of God, pg 10, fn. 17). As I'm sure you know, the letters are written from the Devil's perspective. Here's a partial extract from that chapter (and it's stirring stuff from my perspective!):

…Now this idea must be used by us to
encourage once again the conception of a "historical Jesus" to be found
by clearing away later "accretions and perversions"… The advantages of
these constructions, which we intend to change every thirty years or so,
are manifold. In the first place they all tend to direct men's devotion
to something which does not exist, for each "historical Jesus" is
unhistorical. The documents say what they say and cannot be added to;
each new "historical Jesus" therefore has to be got out of them by
suppression at one point and exaggeration at another, and by that sort
of guessing (brilliant is the adjective we teach humans to apply
to it) on which no one would risk ten shillings in ordinary life, but
which is enough to produce a crop of new Napoleons, new Shakespeares,
and new Swifts, in every publisher's autumn list.

In the second place,
all such constructions place the importance of their Historical Jesus in
some peculiar theory He is supposed to have promulgated. He has to be a
"great man" in the modern sense of the word—one standing at the
terminus of some centrifugal and unbalanced line of thought—a crank
vending a panacea. We thus distract men's minds from Who He is, and what
He did. We first make Him solely a teacher, and then conceal the very
substantial agreement between His teachings and those of all other great
moral teachers. For humans must not be allowed to notice that all great
moralists are sent by the Enemy not to inform men but to remind them,
to restate the primeval moral platitudes against our continual
concealment of them. We make the Sophists: He raises up a Socrates to
answer them.

Our third aim is, by these constructions, to destroy the
devotional life. For the real presence of the Enemy, otherwise
experienced by men in prayer and sacrament, we substitute a merely
probable, remote, shadowy, and uncouth figure, one who spoke a strange
language and died a long time ago. Such an object cannot in fact be
worshipped. Instead of the Creator adored by its creature, you soon have
merely a leader acclaimed by a partisan, and finally a distinguished
character approved by a judicious historian. And fourthly, besides being
unhistorical in the Jesus it depicts, religion of this kind is false to
history in another sense.

The earliest converts were converted by a single historical fact
(the Resurrection) and a single theological doctrine (the Redemption)
operating on a sense of sin which they already had—and sin, not against
some new fancy-dress law produced as a novelty by a "great man", but
against the old, platitudinous, universal moral law which they had been
taught by their nurses and mothers. The "Gospels" come later and were
written not to make Christians but to edify Christians already made.

The "Historical Jesus" then, however dangerous he may seem to be to
us at some particular point, is always to be encouraged.

Mark Barnes said:

Brad Fry said:

At 4:40 into the interview Wright says that C.S. Lewis' "view on the historical Jesus is very worrying". Anyone have any idea what in particular he's talking about?

I think he's referring to The Screwtape Letters, chapter 23. (See Jesus and the Victory of God, pg 10, fn. 17). As I'm sure you know, the letters are written from the Devil's perspective. Here's a partial extract from that chapter (and it's stirring stuff from my perspective!):

I also posted a reply to this question on another thread (which Brad has now seen, but which I link to here in case anyone else is coming along and reading this thread who doesn't know about the other one): http://community.logos.com/forums/p/30438/226059.aspx#226059