N.T. Wright Project

There’s a favorite hymn lyric that goes “They’ll know we are Christians by our love”.  These words are sung in churches every Sunday.  But I wonder if many of the people singing them really want to be known as Christian.  It seems to me that lately we will do anything possible not to be identified as a Christian.  Whether this is because we don’t want to seem intolerant, weak, prissy, or boring, claiming the identity of Christian has become something we do with reluctance rather than pride.  And we take great care to make sure our lives are indistinguishable from everyone else around us.

In reading Tom Wright’s discussion of the very beginnings of the early church in The New Testament and the People of God, I came across a passage which paints a very different picture of Christian identity than the one I just described.  “But that there was a striking difference in general praxis as between pagans and Christians there can be no doubt.  That there was even a viable expectation of a striking difference is remarkable in itself…  Early Christians took it for granted that in the details of their behavior they should be significantly different, in clearly defined ways, from their pagan neighbors” (NTPG, p. 363).

Five minutes ago I finished reading New Testament and the People of God. It is hard to describe the sense of accomplishment that I feel right now. On the one hand, I just finished reading 476 pages. On the other, Wright’s text is so rich that it demands a second reading - perhaps even a third. Tomorrow or maybe the day after, I will begin the critical task of engaging views of Wright’s text within the scholarly community. But for now, I want to bask in the celebration by briefly laying out three reflections about Wright’s work. I will post them in succession.

1. Critical realism

Many evangelicals have a difficult time accepting the mediated character of theologizing and biblical interpretation. By mediated, I mean coming to terms with the fact that theology and biblical interpretation involves human beings making claims about God; and further, that in making those claims, they are inevitably making choices about the meanings of words, the themes of a particular book, the leading images for taking about God, etc. The deep suspicion - which is not an unwarranted one I might add - is that acknowledging the the mediated character necessarily means that talk about God is nothing more than projecting human dramas onto a divine cansas that may or may not exist. Out of disquieting fear, the question then arises: are there any philosophical resources for evangelicals - who rightly believe that we can speak truly of God, and of God in relation to Scripture - desiring to acknowledge the mediated character of theology without subscribing to “your guess is as good as mine” relativism?

The church I grew up in didn’t observe the liturgical year, nor is it part of the larger evangelical tradition I come from. Other than Christmas and Easter, I never knew there was something called the “Christian calendar.” Strictly speaking, the church’s liturgical year revolves around the key events in the life of Jesus: Advent, Christmas, Lent, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost. Over the past few years, as I’ve learned more about this liturgical tradition, I’ve also come to understand the reluctance that many Protestant streams have in going down this path. Stemming back to the Reformation of the 16th century, many Protestant leaders chose to preach through whole books of the bible rather than follow the church’s liturgy which bounced around in different books of the bible each week. The  liturgy of the Catholic church was blamed (and rightly so) for much of the biblical literacy permeating the Christian landscape of the time, infecting both clergy and parishioners. The liturgical year was limiting (such as not including any Old Testament passages) and had become empty ritual rather than tradition loaded with significance.

Reform is good. In fact, it’s essential. Christianity has an element of self-critique built into itself, dating all the way back to Israel’s prophets.

But, as always, one mustn’t throw the banana out with the skin.

Over the past few years I’ve begun to reclaim some of the ancient liturgical tradition that Christians down through the ages have observed. I’m learning how to anticipate the gift of Christ long before December 25th, remember death while having ash smeared on my forehead, repent and make a sacrifice during lent, and party like it’s 1999 when Easter rolls around. And part of my learning curve has been figuring out what the heck All Saints Day is. So last week I read Wright’s small book, For All the Saints?, and saw just how goofy we are in America for dropping the real celebration at the end of October/beginning of November (’All Hallows Day’ or All Saints Day on Nov 1st) for a pagan offshoot of it instead (’All Hallows Eve’ or Halloween on Oct 31st). Not only have we embraced this weird pumpkin-carving, death-dressing festival with open arms, we’ve cultivated it into a full-blown money making scheme. Sounds like one big fat adventure in missing the point (instead of tossing the banana out with the skin, we ditched the banana and are eating the skin). Ah, it’s times like this that make me proud to be an American.