N.T. Wright Project

A long passage toward the end of Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God is helping re-hatch and expand my Christology. Moreover, it’s put me in touch with the humanity of Jesus in a profound way. A broad statement, but nonetheless true, is that most Christians today have no problem thinking of Jesus as the lofty and divine second person of the Trinity, yet find themselves uneasy if forced to grapple with his raw humanity.

Perhaps it’s because the church has developed an allergic reaction to anything that smells like Arius (or his contemporary sibling, the Jesus Seminar). Whatever the case, most Christians don’t take seriously the fact that Jesus would have caught common colds, made mistakes in carpentry, and struggled as he got older with what he perceived to be his vocation – unless of course you think baby Jesus knew he was the divine Son of God while still in the crib.

This is the second part of my review of Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision. I stated in the first part the two historical events that kept coming to mind while reading through Wright’s book: (1) the sixteenth-century theological dispute that set the Reformation in motion and (2) Karl Barth’s monumental and explosive Romans commentary published nearly twenty years after the turn of the twentieth century. My earlier post covered how Wright’s new book came about, the fundamental differences between Wright and Piper on justification, what exactly is at stake in their dispute, and why this resembles the Reformation in various ways (if this last line sounds melodramatic then read the earlier post). We now turn to the second half of Justification where Bishop Wright really rolls up his sleeves and does nitty-gritty exegesis. I’ll focus particularly on his treatment of Romans and how its bomb-like effect on the theological world is akin to the one caused by Barth’s commentary ninety years ago.

The Proof of the Pudding is in the Eating (and Exegesis)
Wright has already put his cards on the table by the time we arrive at the second half of the book; he’s defined righteousness and justification in terms of God’s faithfulness to the Abraham covenant, argued that justification is only one part of human salvation, and drawn a distinction between how justification works in the present and in the future. He now turns directly to the text to show he’s built his case on Paul’s writings rather than some later tradition of interpretation (he accuses Piper of doing of the latter).

InterVarsity Press was gracious to send me a copy of Wright’s new book to review. While reading Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision, two historical events kept coming to mind. The first is the sixteenth-century theological showdown now referred to as the Reformation; the second is Barth’s landmine commentary on Romans published almost ninety years ago. My review of Justification will be in two parts, with the second to be posted in two weeks. In this post I’ll tell how Wright’s book came about, outline its overall argument, and then explain how it corresponds with the first of these historical events, the Reformation. The next post will deal with the exegetical part of Justification as well as its relation to the second of these historical events, Barth’s commentary.

Geocentric vs. Heliocentric
Justification was written in reply to a book published in 2007 by John Piper, The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright. Piper’s book is straightforwardly polemical (a PDF version is free online, and whether or not you agree with his writings, you have to respect the fact that he makes them free), with the chapters arranged one punch after another, each aiming at a different aspect of Wright’s teaching on the doctrine of justification. I read The Future of Justification shortly after it came out, and I will say that though Piper has little patience for any view other than his own, the overall tone of his book is courteous. (Unfortunately the same can’t be said for many of Wright’s other critics who have used Piper’s book as angry ammunition in their own writings and blogs; hence, Wright’s comment in his first chapter: “It really is high time we developed a Christian ethic of blogging.”)

I’m back from a long break and there’s a nice blanket of white snow here in Princeton. Perfect time to start working through Wright’s big blue book, Jesus and the Victory of God (hereafter JVG), which is the second volume in his Christian Origins and the Question of God series.

He begins with a thorough overview of the history of Jesus studies and some of the biographies of this Galilean Jew that have resulted. Playing off of a Schweitzer tune, he says that most historians looking for Jesus in the past were “inclined to see [their] own face at the bottom of a deep well and mistake it for the face of Jesus” (XV). There’s an old jibe that says God made us in his image, so we turned around and returned the favor.

I’ve got a stack of books about Jesus sitting on my desk, and it’s been stimulating (to say the least) to read some other folks’ perspectives on this man from Nazareth alongside my study of JVG. In Mark 8 Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do you say I am?” and here’s a sampling of some of the answers I’ve come across:

Pope Benedict XVI
“What was true of Moses only in fragmentary form has now been fully realized in the person of Jesus: He lives before the face of God, not just as a friend, but as a Son; he lives in the most intimate unity with the Father. We have to start here if we are truly to understand the figure of Jesus as it is presented to us in the New Testament; all that we are told about his words, deeds, sufferings, and glory is anchored here.” (Jesus of Nazareth, 6)

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“The average Jews would hear a lot of scripture read aloud or sung, and might well know large amounnts by heart…In particular, the psalter, with its continual emphasis on the importance of the Temple and on the promises made to David, would have formed an important part of the mental furniture of the average Jew.”

Tom Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, p. 241

Wright argues that every worldview answers four basic questions. Who are we? Where are we? What is wrong? And what is the solution? (NTPG, 123). Using this framework, he summarizes Israel’s worldview. The people of Israel are the chosen people of God, living in the Holy Land under the wrong rulers, and thus expectantly adhering to Torah while waiting on God “to act again” (NTPG, 243). The question then becomes: what grounds this worldview, or, on what basis might someone respond differently to these four questions? Wright’s response: scripture. He mentions the Essenes, Philo of Alexandria, and the chief priests of the Temple as different ways of employing Scripture within the Jewish worldview.

Drawing from our conversation earlier this week, here is the video camera analogy Tom sets forth to explain how history can never be ‘merely reporting the facts’, since history always includes interpretation:

“…even a video camera set up at random would not result in a completely ‘neutral’ perspective on events. It must be sited in one spot only; it will only have one focal length; it will only look in one direction. If in one sense the camera never lies, we can see that in another sense it never does anything else. It excludes far more than it includes.” (NTPG, 83)

He is not saying we can’t know what really happened or took place in the past, but that history is a much more dynamic process involving a back and forth exchange between the interpreter and the events. We not only see from a certain perspective, we are selective in what we see.