N. T. Wright and the Restorative Plan of God
Reading N.T. Wright is not easy proposition. I have finished How God Became King and The New Testament and the People of God, and am reading Paul (not his major work, but a series of lectures that covers his general arguments about Paul.
From these books I think I have gleaned a pretty good idea of his arguments and proofs. It is essentially a book about hermeneutics and intepretation principles, hinging on narrative structures and a deep, truly immersive historical/cultural investigation of how Jews, Greeks, and Romans would have seen their own time and the faith in relation to it.
1. We must read the New Testament and Paul particularly in terms of Second Temple Judaism, its view of Messiahship, and its view of Jews in relation to the rest of the world and God's plan.
2. We must see the overall narrative structure of creation/covenant that is about the eventual restoration of the creation through the covenantal death of Jesus and His resurrection to be King.
This is a simple statement, and the books are not simple, although for a person willing to read deeply, he has a pretty good style and avoids pretentious academic language. He can write some unnecessarily long sentences, though, with a lot of "not unhappy" kinds of constructions. In doing so, however, he is able to distinguish his position from many other theological and hermeneutical ones of the last sixty years. I learned that hermeneutics in terms of Jewish influences in the New Testament were influenced by WWII and the Holocaust.
My main take-away, though, is that we evangelicals have totally missed the point of who is at the center of the redemptive process. We think it's ourselves, and not just in the plural, but in the singular. I have heard all my life (and disliked) the saying, "If you were the only person in the world, Jesus would have died for you." Well, that is wrong "on so many levels" as they say, that I don't think I need to explain it here. I go to church and sing songs where the primary pronouns are "I," "me," and "my." I have taken to singing "we," "our," and "us" instead.
Wright solidly addresses this (specifically American) penchant for making the restorative work of the whole creation by Jesus the Messiah about me and me only. This is not a message we want to hear now; COVID has made everyone more self-absorbed than we already were. But I hope we can recalibrate our thinking that redemption of creation and fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant (both of which include all humans, not just Jews) are the goals of the Jesus' work.
From these books I think I have gleaned a pretty good idea of his arguments and proofs. It is essentially a book about hermeneutics and intepretation principles, hinging on narrative structures and a deep, truly immersive historical/cultural investigation of how Jews, Greeks, and Romans would have seen their own time and the faith in relation to it.
1. We must read the New Testament and Paul particularly in terms of Second Temple Judaism, its view of Messiahship, and its view of Jews in relation to the rest of the world and God's plan.
2. We must see the overall narrative structure of creation/covenant that is about the eventual restoration of the creation through the covenantal death of Jesus and His resurrection to be King.
This is a simple statement, and the books are not simple, although for a person willing to read deeply, he has a pretty good style and avoids pretentious academic language. He can write some unnecessarily long sentences, though, with a lot of "not unhappy" kinds of constructions. In doing so, however, he is able to distinguish his position from many other theological and hermeneutical ones of the last sixty years. I learned that hermeneutics in terms of Jewish influences in the New Testament were influenced by WWII and the Holocaust.
My main take-away, though, is that we evangelicals have totally missed the point of who is at the center of the redemptive process. We think it's ourselves, and not just in the plural, but in the singular. I have heard all my life (and disliked) the saying, "If you were the only person in the world, Jesus would have died for you." Well, that is wrong "on so many levels" as they say, that I don't think I need to explain it here. I go to church and sing songs where the primary pronouns are "I," "me," and "my." I have taken to singing "we," "our," and "us" instead.
Wright solidly addresses this (specifically American) penchant for making the restorative work of the whole creation by Jesus the Messiah about me and me only. This is not a message we want to hear now; COVID has made everyone more self-absorbed than we already were. But I hope we can recalibrate our thinking that redemption of creation and fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant (both of which include all humans, not just Jews) are the goals of the Jesus' work.
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