N.T. Wright Project

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?

With his model of critical realism, Wright provides such a philosophical resource. I lay out in brief form what I take to be Wright’s understanding of critical realism in another post. Here, I want to point out the significance of this model of in the context of our earlier lament. All efforts to speak of God and interpret Scripture involve human beings choosing a particular way to tell a story. Critical realism, by acknowledging this human element, allows one to see the judgments taking place when people say Paul is all about justification by faith (and forget what he says about love); or Jesus is all about love and justice (and forget what he says about self-denial). More importantly, critical realism presupposes that one can appeal to a norm - a grand Story if you will - by which one may judge other narratives.

For many, the creeds at Nicea and Chalcedon tell the grand Story, hitting all the essentials about Christian faith. For others, it is the magnum opus text of their favorite Christian thinker: say, John Calvin and the Institutes. Karl Barth and Church Dogmatics. Or, more grimly, R. J. Rushdoony and the Institues of Biblical Law.

I would argue that the grand Story is about Creation, Sin, Redemption in Jesus, and the Consummation of God’s Kingdom. Some Christians would place a stronger accent on one part of the story as opposed to another, but the agreement about the content of the story amongst Christians - that the four things that are mentioned actually happened - is there.

Wright composes a helpful variation of the grand Story, one that can close of discussion. He writes:

“The fundamental theological position is a view of creator and creation, of evil within creation and the rescue of creation from that evil, of hope fulfilled and hope to come, of a peope who are both rescued and rescuers.”

(Wright, New Testament and the People of God, p. 458)

May we always remember that human beings are talking about God and interpreting scripture. And never forget that we do not do these things unaided, for as Wright loves to say, we speak of a God who has “come from the fog” in the Incarnation, and as I want to say, indwells our very bodies by the Holy Spirit.