N.T. Wright Project

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.

Thought it would be fitting to cut the ribbon of this blog with a quote from Tom:

“The world is out of tune with God, its maker. How and why that is so is a deep and dark mystery. At the heart of Jewish and Christian theology is the story of how God made a world distinct from himself, and how this world, tragically, has gone its own way. Now it is not merely distinct from God; it is in rebellion against God, though still loved by him. What God has done in Christ is to turn the world gently round to face him again. In his great love, his desire is to smile the world back into life. He gazes at his world with the love which shines from the cross, from the dying and rising Christ.” (Reflecting the Glory, 51)