N.T. Wright Project

Young global optimism, typified in the Obama generation, seems to be on the rise, as does the growing conviction in others that the new leaders and promises of today are simply new faces and voices for the same age-old power structures of yesterday. This is simply one of the many complexities and contradictions amid our culture. What is the church’s calling in all this? And how is the church to engage (or disengage) these cultural currents?

This is part one of a three-piece post on how N.T. Wright’s ecclesiology might be used to navigate the church through the complexities of today’s global, postmodern culture. The idea for this post first came to me while having lunch with Wright a few months back when he was in Princeton. I asked him about his ecclesiastical commitments, how they’re informed by and connected to the rest of his theology. Soon after I began constructing a Wrightian ecclesiology – and mainly for two reasons.

First, I’ll be planting a church with a group of friends in Miami this coming fall, and I’ve come to believe that the picture Wright paints of the church is not only relevant, but also strongly evangelical while being deeply ecumenical. Second, while the academy has critically engaged Wright’s perspectives on, for example, justification, eschatology, and narrative theology, not much scholarly writing has been done on his ecclesiology (Jeremy Begbie’s recent paper being perhaps the one exception). Thus, one idea I’ve had for future study involves developing an ecclesiology using Wright, John Howard Yoder, and Martin Luther King, Jr., since each have their own different yet (in my view) complementary understanding of the church’s mission that’s important for us today.

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).