N.T. Wright Project

This post is the second of three dealing with what a Wrightian ecclesiology looks like. In the first post I offered a critique of the Niebuhrian typology found in Christ and Culture which has largely shaped how North American churches negotiate their place in and relationship with culture. I then began constructing an ecclesiology using Wright’s work in hopes that it would render a more theologically faithful approach.

His ecclesiology begins with an understanding of the church as the “fifth act community,” meaning if scripture is a five-act drama, then the church is living in the fifth and final act. This speaks to not only the role scripture plays in the life of the church, but also the role the church plays in God’s salvific purposes. God’s desire to put the world back to rights has always involved God forming a community. First Israel (act three), then the Church (act five). In the present post I will outline the second major theme in Wright’s vision for and of the church.

2. The Cross and Resurrection as Paradigmatic

The cross and resurrection of Jesus stand – in Wright’s ecclesiology – as the two pillars of the church’s engagement with the world. Or, using a different image, if the church’s movement into the world is an ellipse, then the cross and empty tomb form its foci; they define the very shape and substance of the church’s mission. Put simply, Wright says that Christians are to be both cross-bearers and kingdom-announcers.

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).

Back in April I spent a week closely reading Karl Barth’s treatment of war in Church Dogmatics and writing an essay that affirmed some aspects and critiqued others. Over the last few years I’ve developed strong convictions in favor of nonviolence and pacifism through my reading of the Gospels, Martin Luther King, Jr., and John Howard Yoder. I’m currently studying N.T. Wright’s Following Jesus: Biblical Reflections on Discipleship with a group of friends, and this morning I read a chapter about the ascension of Jesus that deals with power and empire. I’d like to revisit Barth’s argument in light of Wright’s chapter and see what it adds to the discussion.

To summarize (and grossly oversimplify) Barth’s argument in Church Dogmatics (hereafter CD), I should begin by saying he comes much closer to the position of pacifism than he does just war. In CD III/4 he asks, “Can there ever be a time when war is justified?” He asserts that any affirmative answer to this question is wrong from the very outset and a betrayal of the Gospel. To even discuss the question of just war, one must first admit that the arguments for absolute pacifism are “almost infinite” and “almost overpoweringly strong” (455).

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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