Resonant Reading

From the Sacred Sandwich

. . . we must of course guard agains over-exegesis.  Under-exegesis, though, is also risky, sometimes even more so .  Historical exegesis is not simply a matter of laying out the lexicographical meanings of words and sentences.  It involves exploring the resonances those words and sentences would have had in their contexts.  Like anthropologists learning a language and culture simultaneously, we have to be prepared to hear more in a word or phrase than could be caught by a dictionary equivalent.  A small saying can function like a spyglass through which one can glimpse a large and turbulent world.  To object to this exercise, whether through pedantry or positivism, is like protesting that houses, fields and ships cannot be contained within the physical body of a telescope.

From NT Wright, JVG, xvii

Three Tips for Church Leaders

Thanks again to Sarah on FB :-)
If the previous post got you down, here is some hope.  

Two Helpful Paul Resources

A brief and helpful summary and comparison of tradition protestant readings of Paul against three different "new perspective" scholars.

Some interesting discussion of the "missional" Paul and his approach to church evangelism.

In both instances hat tip to Michael Gorman

Wright on Colbert

I don't know how I missed this the first time round, but on a clue from John Byron (thanks John!), I sought and I found.  To be honest, it is not as much fun as I thought it would be, but still worth watching Tom in a less typical situation.  The time Bart Ehrman appeared on the Colbert report was much funnier though.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Bishop N.T. Wright
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election March to Keep Fear Alive

When blogging fails

Extraordinary!  Tom Wright actually takes the time to reply to a blogpost about his views on justification and gets completely ignored by those discussing him. And then he even comes back again, but only manages to inspire some guy to tell him to take up blogging. D'oh! I can't help but feel we missed an opportunity to convert another scholar to the ranks of bibliobloggers, and what a trophy convert he would be.  :-D

NT Wright on being "Literal"

This is well worth sharing, not least for the first 30 seconds where Wright explains the difference between literal and metaphorical, and concrete and abstract.



Hat Tip

Apocalyptic Parables

I know it is really trendy to whinge about N.T. Wright at the moment, but I really enjoy reading him and will usually find something interesting every few pages. If we can legitimately have (and we can) indigenous, feminist, post-colonial, queer, and postmodern readings of scripture, I don't see why some jolly Anglican bishop shouldn't get to put forth his own with out everyone getting in a tizzy because he isn't reformed enough (but Paul didn't MEAN that mummy!) or because he believes in the resurrection (but it's not HISTORICAL mummy!) or doesn't want to ordain gays (but it's not TOLERANT mummy!).  Honestly, get a grip, he's just some dude with a beard.  I digress.

 pic from here

An "aha" moment for me today was Wright's (NTPG) definition of Jesus' parables as apocalyptic, as against "earthly stories with heavenly meanings" or "stories making only one point" (p393).  He suggests that Mark's gospel is a "meta-apocalypse" as it "tells the story of Jesus telling the story of Israel by [apocalyptic] means" (p394).  For me this makes great sense and is a helpful way of steering between outright and uncontrolled allegory and the previously mentioned exegetical deadends.  Wright doesn't at this point mention a particular parable, I'm sure there'll be plenty in the next book, but the one that springs to mind to illustrate this is Mark 4:30-32 (pars. Matt 13:31-2, Luke 13:18-19).

And He said: "How can we illustrate the kingdom of God, or what parable can we use to describe it? It's like a mustard seed that, when sown in the soil, is smaller than all the seeds on the ground. And when sown, it comes up and grows taller than all the vegetables, and produces large branches, so that the birds of the sky can nest in its shade."   (HCSB)

To me there was no way anyone who had read the Hebrew Scriptures would not see in this an impossible to miss reference to Israel's story, in particular Israel's final vindication.  Don't see it?  Try reading Ezek 17 where the image of a tree sheltering birds is used as a parable of the hoped for restoration of Israel.  Or Ezek 31 where the same image is used to describe the extent and power of world dominating pagan empires.  Or even Dan 4:9-16 where the image is used to describe the reign of a world dominating pagan emperor.  (cf also Psalm 104)  Suffice to say, by preaching first, "the Kingdom of God is near," and then saying in a parable, "all the birds of the sky will nest in its shade," Jesus is signalling that the kingdom he is preaching is the fulfillment of the Jewish hope for Israel's restoration and that it will be a force that will grow to dominate the whole world.  The seemingly small beginning of Jesus and his raggedy disciples is going to eventually rival the greatest of empires.  The humble mustard tree (see pic above) is thus dangerously political and eschatological imagery with a clear meaning that should not be reduced to a single principle or a sentimental "heavenly thought."  By evoking such imagery Jesus is tapping into a deep well of deferred national hope and culturally embedded theological interpretation of history.

Surely on this one, Wright is not wrong?   :-)

Missional Church is not a New Thing

The idea that mission should not just be a ministry of the church, one of its offered services, but actually a fundamental and foundational aspect of its whole life is at the heart of the idea of missional church.  With its new title, and the coining of a new word, "missional," the missional church sounds like something cutting edge and new and trendy.  However, while such an idea and emphasis may seem new to those of us who grew up in a church environment when mission was what was done in some other country by a unique and slightly doubtful class of people known as missionaries, it actually represents the character of the earliest church: 

The single most striking thing about early Christianity is its speed of growth.  In AD 25 there is no such thing as Christianity . . . by AD 125 the Roman emporer has established an official policy in relation to the punishment of Christians; Polycarp has already been a Christian in Smyrna for half a century; Aristides is confronting the emporer Hadrian with the news that there are four races in the world, Barbarians, Greek, Jews and Christians; and a young pagan called Justin is begininng the philisophical quest which will take him through the greatest of the pagan thinkers and lead him, still unsatisfied, to Christ.

(N.T Wright, NTPG, p359)

After pointing out the blindingly obvious but often overlooked fact of the early church's incredible expansion and what this tells us about early Christian praxis, Wright goes on to confront the fallacy that the early church grew so rapidly because the pagan world was such fertile soil for it.  Having established that for both the pagan and the Jew becoming a Christian would be a difficult, dangerous, and counterintuitive thing to do, he then aks,

Why then did early Christianity spread? Because early Chistians believed that what they had found to be true was true for the whole world.  The impetus to mission sprang from the very heart of early Christian conviction.  If we know anything about early Christian praxis . . . it is that the early Chistians engaged in mission, both to Jews and Gentiles . . . This missionary activity was not an addendum to a faith that was basically 'about' something else. 

(N.T Wright, NTPG, p360)

If Wright is right about this (no pun intended), then is a missing ingredient from our churches' conviction that what is true for us is also true for everyone else?  Have we secretly, or perhaps not so secretly, bought into the lie that everyone gets to have their own private version of the truth and that that is OK?  Are the churches in the West not doing mission because they and their constituents no longer believe they know the truth or that the truth is worth knowing?

More good stuff

So much good stuff landing online at the moment, check out:

• NT Wright on CS Lewis
• Gordon Fee on Revelation and understanding scripture
• Ben Witherington on Atonement
• Clayboy's review of a book on "liturgy"
• James McGrath musing and enthusing about education
• Larry Hurtado suggests a reason for Mark's "ommissions"
• Rod points out the contradictions in the way early Christianity is used to bolster people's agendas

NT Wright on the Kingdom of God

The phrase 'kingdom of God', therefore, which occurs only sporadically in texts of this period, functions, when it occurs, as a crucial shorthand expression for a concept which could be spoken of in a variety of other ways, such as the impossibility of having rulers other than Israel's god, or the divine necessity of reversing the present political situation and re-establishing Israel, Temple, Land and Torah.   This complex concept picks up and join together the whole social, political, cultural and economic aspiration of the Jews of this period, and invests it with the religious and theological dimension which, of course, it always possessed in mainline Jewish thinking. (p303)


To speak of the kingdom of this god does not, therefore, mean that one is slipping into a dualistic mode of thought, or imagining that the event which is to come would be related only marginally to space-time events.  This kingdom was not a timeless truth, nor an abstract ethical ideal, nor the coming end of the space time universe.  (p307)

from NT Wright, NTPG

The texts in question are those of 2nd Temple Judaism, but if we accept Wright's analysis of them then this should also factor in our interpretation of the NT use of the same phrase.  The question is not whether or not Jesus re-interpreted the phrase when he used it, he did, but how did he do so and what areas of conceptual and aspirational overlap remained?

Politics and Theology in 1st Century Israel

Cartoon from here

According to Josephus, the Sadducees believed in free will. Just as I am inclined to think that Josephus’ description of the Pharisaic blend of free will and fate is a depoliticized code for their balance between waiting for Israel’s god to act and being ready to act on his behalf if necessary, so I am inclined to think that the Sadducean belief in free will has little to do with abstract philosophy and a great deal to do with the politics of power: Israel’s god will help those who help themselves. This is a comfortable doctrine for those in power, who maintain themselves there by taking whatever measures seem necessary, just as its mirror image, belief that divine action can only be awaited, not hastened, is a consoling doctrine for those out of power, who see no hope of regaining it by their own efforts.

NT Wright NTPG p211

Which is funny because I would have thought it was the other way round, that conservatives (i.e. those who rather like the staus quo) would be more inclined to assert that the way things are is a matter of unavoidable fate, whereas those who desire to challenge it, radicals, are more likely to emphasise the importance of taking action according to free will rather than the current social norms.  Of course both free will and fate are almost impossible to hold to in absolute terms for any one.  But I think Wright is totally right (no pun intended) that theology and politics tend to actually be the same thing just presented in more or less pious language depending upon the perceived audience.  Which is why you cannot take religion out of politics, and vice versa, all political discourse is inherently theology, and vice versa.

Lindbeck's Typology

I am currently reading George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, in its 2009 25th anniversary edition.  It is a very important book and is one of the seminal works of the "Yale School" of theology.  I intend to review it properly after I have read it, but long before reading it I have encoutered and used Lindbeck's typology of theories of religion.  Like all typologies its usefulness comes from the ease with which you can use it to categorise the things you come across, but also, again like all typologies, you have to be careful to realise that it is not in itself neutral but comes with its own implicit assumptions and agenda.  For Lindbeck you can approach religion (or doctrine) in one of three ways (although you can also combine two or more of these ways to different extents):

1  The congnitive-propositional

This first approach assumes that religious language is concerned primarily with propositions of "fact". This tends to treat religion much like a philosophy or a science.  This is the default setting, i think, for most evangelical theology if not for practice.

2 The experiential-expressivist

This approach is (a part of) the legacy of Schleiermacher who understood the essence of religion to be "religious experience."  As such religion and doctrine are purely symbols which we use to make sense of and organise inner feelings.  If a Buddhist and a Christian have exactly the same experience they will describe it very differently, using the symbols of their respective religions but they will still be actually having the same experience.  Thus under this model you can argue (but you don't have to) that all religions are essentially differing attempts to give expression to the same reality.  This is of course the default setting for much liberal theology (e.g. Tillich).

3 The cultural-linguistic

This approach (and this is the one that Lindbeck will champion in the book) instead aims to treat religions as a culture or a language.  In this model doctrines are neither propositional truth claims (model 1) or arbitrary symbols (model 2) but instead rules or regulative principles for the discourse, attitudes and actions of the religious community.  This approach to religion is both an attack on liberalism (this model does not allow for all religions to be essentailly the same) but at the same time those used to more conservative patterns of thinking can'y help but feel that their presious doctrines are being shortchanged and relativised.  Probably the best know exponent of a cultural-linguistic approach to Christianity is NT Wright with his "Five act play" concept of biblical authority. 

As you can hopefully see, regardless of how you might feel about the validity of each model per se this is an extremely useful way of analysing what is going on behind different people's discussion of religion.  You may, for example, save yourself a lot of time and effort by realising that the person you are trying to engage on a cognitive-propositional level only considers it possible to talk about religion in  experiential-expressivist terms.  Most of us, i believe actually use a mixture of all three in our actual religious life, even if intellectually we tend to only allow one model primacy.

let me know what you think :-)

Around the blogosphere

after the Christmas and New Year lull the blogosphere is heating up like crazy.

There's much more on innerrancy even Enns joins in!
NT Wright in this video has annoyed John Hobbins.
Big-Ears makes an appearance without Noddy
Glenn Peoples wants to change the world (in NZ at least)
Alan Knox warns about glossing.
James McGrath rebutts the slippery slope and dances on a volcano instead.
Tim Bulkely preaches against certainty.
I get a guest slot to talk about preaching here.
And Antony Billington reflects on how theology of scripture affects interpretation of scripture.

Enjoy!   :-)

NT Wright on Reality

Reality as we know it is the result of a creator god bringing into being a world that is other than himself, and yet which is full of his glory. It was always the intention of this god that creation should one day be flooded with his own life, in a way for which it was prepared from the beginning. As part of the means to this end, the creator brought into being a creature which, by bearing the creator's image, would bring his wise and loving care to bring upon the creation. By a tragic irony, the creature in question has rebelled against this intention. But the creator has solved this problem in principle in an entirely appropriate way, and as a result is now moving creation once more towards its originally intended goal. The implementation of this solution now involves the indwelling of this god within his human creatures and ultimately within the whole creation, transforming it into that for which it was made in the beginning.

[NT Wright, NTPG, 97-8]

One thing I like to do with groups who want a Bible overview is to get them to describe what they think the big story (metanarrative) of the Bible is in five or six sentences. It is always really interesting to see what they come out with. (Wright is deliberate here in not mentioning Jesus only because the next two books in the series are on the subject and he didn't want to preempt himself.) It is a good excercise to do. Of course for Wright, as for many Christians, the metanarrative of the Bible describes reality itself and our own personal stories find their true context and meaning only within that. I quite like Wright's summary (apart from the ommission of Jesus and his unqualified use of the male third person pronoun for God), it is concise and simple and effectively highlights three of the most important characters of the biblical story, God, creation, and humanity. What I think is missing from this summary is God's people, but then it is only a summary, you can't include everything. Interesting, too, how in a six sentence summary the first four of those sentences cover Genesis 1-11 while the last two cover Gen 12 -Rev 22!!

Why don't you have a go? Let me know what you think :-)

Wright on Story, Worldviews and Theology

Telling stories was (according to the synoptic gospels) one of Jesus' most characteristic modes of teaching. And . . . it would clearly be quite wrong to see these stories as mere illustrations of truths that could in principle have been articulated in a purer more abstract form. They were ways of breaking open the worldview of Jesus' hearers, so that it could be remoulded into the worldview which he, Jesus, was commending. His stories, like all stories in principle, invited his hearers into a new world, making the implicit suggestion that the new worldview be tried on for size with a view to permanent purchase. . .

If it is true that all worldviews are at the deepest level shorthand formulae to express stories, this is particularly clear in the case of Judaism. Belief in one god, who called Israeli to be his people, is the very foundation of Judaism. The only proper way of talking about a god like this, who makes the world and then acts within it, is through narration. To 'boil off' an abstract set of propositions as though one were thereby getting to a more foundational statement would actually be to falsify this worldview at a basic point.

NT Wright, NTPG, p77

NT Wright at CTI

He starts talking about his new book around the four minute mark



Hmmm, i'm gonna have to hurry up and read the first three aren't I?



"Paul is always three steps ahead of me," I know the feeling. :-)
"What you are looking at when you are doing serious research is the things that people are going to take for granted in a generation or two." No pressure then . . . ;-)

Wright on Rights and Sex

"Sex and ‘rights’... someone, sooner or later, needs to spell out further (wearisome though it will be) the difference between (a) the ‘human dignity and civil liberty’ of those with homosexual and similar instincts and (b) their ‘rights’, as practising let alone ordained Christians, to give physical expression to those instincts. As the Pope has pointed out, the language of ‘human rights’ has now been downgraded in public discourse to the special pleading of every interest-group. The church has never acknowledged that powerful sexual instincts, which almost all human beings have, generate a prima facie ‘right’ that these instincts receive physical expression. Indeed, the church has always insisted that self-control is part of the ‘fruit of the Spirit’. All are called to chastity and, within that, some are called to celibacy; but a call to celibacy is not the same thing as discovering that one has a weak or negligible sexual drive. The call to the self-control of chastity is for all: for the heterosexually inclined who, whether married or not, are regularly and powerfully attracted to many different potential partners, just as much as for those with different instincts."

from this enormous document

Ever wondered what it will be like when Jesus returns?

Fighting over Paul's legacy

NT Wright is currently involved in something of a scrap with those defenders of protestant orthodoxy. It is always interesting watching people fight over an issue by publishing books, usually a year or more after the one which they are taking issue with. This video is the promo for Wright's latest book, mainly in response to John Piper's critique as well as his other critics. But these are by no means the only people involved in the debate. Personally I think this is a highly inefficent way of doing things. They should hold a big conference and get together and thrash the whole issue out over a week or so over some quality tea and scones. Failing that you can always follow other people's conversations about it, for instance this, or this, or this, or even this. Which reminds me that I need to finish my conversation with this blog community's own defender of protestant orthodoxy Phil Baiden soon. So I'll try and fit that in this week. But back to the video, great words from Wright, appalling cheesy sound track (why oh why???), and the whole thing is totally undermined by soft focus video fade ins of the Anglican faithful going about their business somewhere old in Britain. But here is my question for the defenders of protestant orthodoxy, does it honour the reformers more to cleave unerringly to their doctrines or to honestly search the scriptures they held to be the final authority even if that risks disagreeing with them occasionally? Second question, who gives a rip about honouring the reformers anyway? God didn't send a theologian, God sent Christ; God didn't give one systematic theology to his people to follow, he gave the Holy scriptures (yes, plural!) to them. Anyway this waffle is over :-), peace out!

NT Wright on the Jesus and Paul problem

"The question of the relationship between Jesus and Paul has normally been posed in the wrong terms... One normal way of stating it goes like this: Jesus preached about God but Paul preached about Jesus. Or, if you like, Jesus announced the kingdom of God, Paul announced the Messiahship of Jesus. This plays out in other ways: Jesus called people to a simple gospel of repentance, belief and the practice of the sermon on the mount; Paul developed a complex theology of justification by faith, something Jesus never mentioned, with all kinds of hard and gritty bits quite alien to the original message... These various ways of polarising Jesus and Paul, and other variations, simply miss the point. They assume that Jesus and Paul were both trying, essentially to do the same kind of thing, namely, to preach and teach a set of theological, religious, and or ethical truths, and that one can therefore line up the various elements of what we know of their sayings and play them off against one another... The framework in which we have to look at Jesus and Paul is not at all that of abstract teaching and preaching, so that one might compare them as one does with Plato and Aristotle, or even Luther and Calvin... The relationship between them, as Paul himself conceived it, was not at all like that of a second generation rabbi determined to pass on as much as possible of what the original master had said. Nor was it like that of a second generation reformer - to think again of Luther and Calvin - developing the original insights with certain modifications. The relationship between them, as far as Paul was concerned, was much more like that between a composer and a conductor; or between a medical researcher and a doctor; or between an architect and a builder... They were not intending to do the same sort of thing, not because they were at loggerheads but because they were at one in the basic vision which generated their very different vocations."

[Source: NT Wright, Paul in Fresh Perspective, p154-161]

And that heavily abridged quote will have to be the last from that book, of which I have quoted far too much already. But Wright is so interesting because what he says makes so much sense and answers so many questions that have been operating like the proverbial elephant in the room for so long. Wright is also impressive in his ability to write enormous tomes of scholarly work at the same time as churning out accesible but serious popular level stuff. This is the only reason why he gets so much flack. many other writers in the 'new perspectives' movement of Pauline scholarship are far more antagonistic to traditional protestant understandings of Paul, but they are making no attempt to engage a popular audience, which Wright does so well. Anyway the next task on my Wrightian reading list is to start his massive Christian Origins and the Question of God series. He has only written 3 out of the 5 projected volumes and if I start soon, I may get to read the first three before the next one is published! Let me know what you thought about the quote :-)