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A Review of Simply Christian by N.T. Wright (Section 3)
By Mark D. Roberts | Tuesday, December 18, 2007
In the series: Considering N.T. Wright
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In my last post in this series I gave a short overview of N.T. Wright’s synopsis of the grand Christian story in his book Simply Christian. In order to know God, Wright argues, we need more than theological pronouncements. We need to pay attention to the story of God’s work in the world, the story God has revealed to us in Scripture. It is incumbent upon us to pay attention, not only to certain verses and themes, but also to the big story, the narrative that begins with creation in Genesis and ends with the new heaven and new earth in Revelation. This story is centered in Jesus, who proclaimed and embodied the kingdom of God, and who opened up access to that kingdom through His death and resurrection. The biblical story ends with God reigning as King of king and Lord of lords, and with the new creation of heaven and earth. Yet we who have put our faith in Jesus do not simply wait around for the story to end. By God’s grace and by His Spirit, we participate with God in the work of putting the world to rights.
I find Wright’s summary of the biblical story to be a compelling one. It takes seriously the whole of Scripture, and not merely certain favorite parts. The evangelical story that I summarized in my last post, the story that focuses on personal salvation and life after death, is drawn largely from a few passages in Paul’s letters and the Gospel of John. It bears little relationship to the actual preaching of Jesus, not to mention the long story of God and Israel. Now I should say clearly that I believe this evangelical story to be true, but only as part of the larger biblical story that begins with the first creation in Genesis and ends with the new creation in Revelation. Jesus did indeed die for my sins on the cross, thus opening up for me the way to life after death. But Scripture clearly reveals that His death accomplished far more than this, however wonderful this might be (see Ephesians 2, for example).
Wright is not saying that the biblical story leaves me out. But he shows, convincingly, that this story is not primarily about getting me and lots of other people saved so we can “go to heaven” after we die. Rather, the grand story of God’s salvation includes me, not only as a recipient, but also as a participant. As a believer in Jesus, I get to join with God in His saving work. My old evangelical story also drew me in, but almost entirely as one who could tell the good news to others so they might believe in Jesus and go to heaven. The biblical story, according to Wright, draws me in, not just as a sharer of the good news, but also as one who lives out that good news in the world, joining with God and His people in His work of putting the world to rights.
The phrase “and His people” in the last sentence is a crucial one. When we put our faith in Jesus, we are joined to the church, the body of Christ in the world. The Christian life is not to be lived alone. Rather, as a member of Christ’s body, I give and receive mutual care. Moreover, I join with other Christians to live out God’s kingdom in the world. Though the ultimate restoration of creation comes only through God’s effort, we who are His people in the world get to have some part of that effort, even today.
N.T. Wright has spoken of the church as “the people of God for the world.” This is a wonderful summary of who we are together. We are not just the individuals who know God. And we are not just individuals who serve God in the world. We are not the people of God who exist merely for relationship with God. And we are not just the people of God who care for each other. We are the people of God, bound together as one through the Spirit. And we are the people of God who exist, not just for God and ourselves, but also to serve God in the world.
As you can tell, I respond rather favorably to N.T. Wright’s summary of the Christian story. It’s not just that I like what he says, but that he takes the whole of Scripture seriously. There may well be better versions of the Christian story. But, from my point of view, they will only be better if they do a better job narrating the whole of Scripture. I’m sure Wright’s critics will pick at this or that part of his narrative, perhaps with valid criticisms. But I would challenge them to see if they can tell the the whole biblical story more accurately.
Today, if someone were to ask me, “Where can I find the best summary of Christian faith?”, I’d point people first to the Bible. But this is a rather long summary, and it won’t be helpful to all people at first. So, next, I’d point people to pages 55-140 of Simply Christian. I know of no better synopsis of what Christianity is really all about.
Yet this isn’t the end of Simply Christian. Tomorrow I’ll address the last part of the book.
Topics: N.T. Wright | No Comments »
Advent Calendar for December 17
By Mark D. Roberts | Monday, December 17, 2007
Click here for the December 17 Advent Calendar entry!
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Sad News . . . Surprising News
By Mark D. Roberts | Monday, December 17, 2007
Many of my readers will have heard the sad news of Dan Fogelberg’s death on Sunday. He died after a three-and-a-half year battle with prostate cancer.
If you’re under 30, you may never have heard of Dan Fogelberg. And, I’m sad to say, you may associate his music only with Muzak tunes. Fogelberg was a folk singer whose popularity grew in the 70s. While I was in college his first album, Home Free, was my favorite album. I probably listened to it 200 times. (Photo: Dan Fogelberg with his wife, Jean, in 2003. Photo from his website by Bernie Boyle.)
Fogelberg wrote soft rock ballads, rather in the mode of James Taylor. I enjoyed his love songs. But by far my favorite of his compositions was “Leader of the Band,” a song Fogelberg wrote in honor of his father (on the Innocent Age album. For a touching interview of Dan’s father Larry concerning “Leader of the Band,” check out this link.) I first heard this song when my own father was struggling with cancer. Since his death in 1986, “Leader of the Band” has helped me to get in touch with ways I am like my own father and am, in a sense, his “living legacy.”
When I heard about Dan Fogelberg’s death, I felt sad over the passing of an artist who touched my life over so many years, mostly through his recordings. My wife and I once attended one of his concerts, driving from Los Angeles to Irvine, California (years before we lived there) during rush hour on a Friday afternoon. It took us more than three hours to make the fifty mile trip. We enjoyed the concert, nevertheless.
Examining Fogelberg’s website, I was surprised to learn that he did a Christmas album: The First Christmas Morning (1999). It contains several Christmas favorites (”Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” “What Child is This?”) as well as several original compositions. Ordering the album from iTunes (here’s the iTunes link), I was not surprised to hear the first song, “At Christmas Time,” celebrate the Winter solstice (”At Christmas time we raise our hearts and celebrate the solstice”). I have never had any reason to think of Fogelberg as a Christian, though his music had not offended my Christian sensibilities. But I was surprised when “At Christmas Time” ended with: “At Christmas time we praise the Lord and count His blessings so many.”)
My surprise was multiplied by a couple of the original compositions on this album. Check out these lyrics:
“The First Christmas Morning”
Away in the east shines a star in the sky
That leads us to where He is born
And bearing good tidings and gifts we shall give
To Him on this first Christmas morning
To Him on this first Christmas morningHoly our journey and holy our love
That takes us to find and adore Him
And blessed the baby that sleeps in his bed
And wakes on this first Christmas morning
And wakes on this first Christmas morningAhhh-Ahhh Alleluia
Ahhh-Ahhh Alleluia
Ahhh-Ahhh Alle
Ahhh-Ahhh Alle
Ahhh-Ahhh AlleluiaThe Lord in His wisdom, the Lord in His grace
Has given to man a redeemer
To save us from sin and to show us the light
That shines on this first Christmas morning
And will shine ever each Christmas morning“Christ The King”
Christ the King, born in a manger
Christ the King is born on this day
All of nature joins the rejoicing
Banish misfortune away
Banish misfortune awayLift your voice, join in the singing
Lift your voice in a song of goodwill
Lift your heart to the glorious season
Bid all your sorrows be still
Bid all your sorrows be still
I don’t know anything about Dan Fogelberg’s religious faith. But these two songs certainly get the essence of Christmas, don’t you think?
Thanks, Dan Fogelberg, for making my life richer, even today, as I listen to your sweet Christmas songs.
Topics: Tributes | 3 Comments »
Advent Calendar for December 16
By Mark D. Roberts | Sunday, December 16, 2007
Click here for the December 16 Advent Calendar entry!
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Advent Devotion: The Lighting of the Third Candle
By Mark D. Roberts | Sunday, December 16, 2007
This is an excerpt from my Advent Devotional Guide that uses the Advent wreath. If you have a real wreath, you can use it, either alone, or with others. If you don’t have a wreath, follow this guide, and you can “light” the Advent candle for today online. (I originally wrote this guide for families at Irvine Presbyterian Church.)
We Remember the Meaning of Advent
Advent is a word that means “coming” or “visit”. In the Christian season of Advent we prepare for the “advent” of Christ at Christmas. Our preparation includes many things:
• We remember Israel’s hope for the coming of God’s Messiah to save, to forgive, and to restore them.
• We remember our hope for the second coming of Jesus.
• We remember our need for a Savior to save us from our sins.
• We prepare to welcome Christ at Christmas into our world . . . and into our hearts.
By lighting one candle each week of Advent, we help ourselves to get ready for the birth of Jesus. So far we have lit two candles. The first helped us to hope for God our Shepherd; with the second we asked God to come and forgive our sins.
Today we remember the joy of waiting — because we know how the story ends!
Prayer for God’s Help
Dear God, thank you for this season of Advent that helps us to prepare for the coming of Christ at Christmas. As we read the Bible and light a candle, may excitement for Christ’s coming burn in our hearts. Amen.
Topics: Advent | 1 Comment »
Advent Calendar for December 15
By Mark D. Roberts | Saturday, December 15, 2007
Click here for the December 15 Advent Calendar entry!
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Christmas at the Riverwalk in San Antonio
By Mark D. Roberts | Saturday, December 15, 2007
This past week the choir from Boerne Middle School North and South sang at the Riverwalk in San Antonio. Since my kids are in the choir, we went to watch. They caroled from a barge that made a lap of the river. Quite wonderful! In the photo below, you can see their barge.
The photo below shows another scene of the Riverwalk, wonderfully decorated for Christmas.
Topics: Only in Texas | No Comments »
Advent Calendar for December 14
By Mark D. Roberts | Friday, December 14, 2007
Click here for the December 14 Advent Calendar entry!
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A Review of Simply Christian by N.T. Wright (Section 2)
By Mark D. Roberts | Friday, December 14, 2007
In the series: Considering N.T. Wright
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In my last post I began to review N.T. Wright’s book, Simply Christian. I explained how we starts by examining four echoes of a voice: the longing for justice, the quest for spirituality, the hunger for relationships, and the delight in beauty. These echoes don’t prove God’s existence, but they do point in His direction.
The second major section of Simply Christian focuses not on the echoes of God’s voice, but on God, something Wright says is like “staring at the sun” (p. 55). He does not enter into a systematic inquiry into the nature of God, however. Rather, he attempts to tell the story that reveals God to us. Simply Christian attempts something truly extraordinary: to tell the whole Christian story in only 85 pages. This story, according to Wright, “claims to be the true story about God and the world” (p. 55).
Notice that although Wright employs one of the major tools of postmodernism, namely story or narrative, he is not a postmodernist who believes that every story is more or less equal in value, and that no story is ultimately true. Wright tells the Christian story as the true story, thus aligning himself with Christian orthodoxy even as he seeks to communicate into a postmodern world of conflicting stories.
If you’re familiar with the Bible, Wright’s telling of the story will sound familiar, but it may be quite different from the core story many of us identify with Christianity. For example, I grew up with a succinct evangelical version of the Christian story. It went something like this:
God created us for relationship with Himself. But we sinned, breaking this relationship and earning eternal death. God, because He loves us, sent His Son to die on the cross for our sins. Jesus paid the price for our sin, thus opening up a way for us to be reconciled with God and to experience eternal life in heaven with God after we die. If we believe in Jesus, we receive the gift of salvation, and thus enter into eternal life. We can have confidence that when we die, we will be with the Lord forever. In the meanwhile, we can live in relationship with God and invite others to know God through Jesus Christ.
As near as I can tell, N.T. Wright believes every part of this evangelical story as I have just told it. But he does not believe it is the fundamental Christian story. Rather, it’s only part of a much grander Christian story. The “salvation from my sins through Jesus” story is true and wonderful, but not nearly as true and wonderful as the full story of God’s effort to save the world, in which the “salvation from my sins through Jesus” story makes sense.
It’s easy to see how Wright is skating on thin ice with some Christians. Though he seems to believe what evangelical Christians believe, his telling of the Christian story is different from what many evangelical Christians would tell. Without denying personal salvation and going to heaven after death, he does not make it the main point of the story.
What is the Christian story, according to N.T. Wright. It begins with God’s good creation, a creation in which God has a significant investment and participation. But this creation becomes corrupted through human sin. Rather than abandoning His creation, God chooses instead to redeem it, to “put the world to rights” as Wright often says. (He mentioned to me that he has learned that this phrase doesn’t work well in American contexts, but that he hasn’t come up with a better one. I suggested “putting the world back together,” which he agreed is more or less than same.)
How does God endeavor to put the world to rights? He begins by choosing a people to represent Him in the world, through whom He will redeem the world. This people, the children of Israel, do not complete the task, though they do prepare the way for the One through whom God will save the world: Jesus, Israel’s Messiah.
Jesus begins to usher in the kingdom of God through His earthly ministry. Yet this kingdom will not come until Jesus takes upon Himself the sin of the world by dying on the cross, through which God’s new covenant would be established. The cross is not some afterthought, some Plan B for Jesus when His kingdom message didn’t take. Rather, the cross is at the center of the coming of the kingdom. Here’s what Wright says, in summary, about the death of Jesus on the cross:
The meaning of the story [of Jesus’s death] is found in every detail, as well as in the broad narrative. The pain and tears of all the years were met together on Calvary. The sorrow of heaven joined with the anguish of earth; the forgiving love stored up in God’s future was poured out into the present; the voices that echo in a million human hearts, crying for justice, longing for spirituality, eager for relationship, yearning for beauty, drew themselves together into a final scream of desolation.
Nothing in all the history of paganism comes anywhere near this combination of event, intention, and meaning. Nothing in Judaism had prepared for it, except in puzzling, shadowy prophecy. The death of Jesus of Nazareth as the king of the Jews, the bearer of Israel’s destiny, the fulfillment of God’s promises to his people of old, is either the most stupid, senseless waste and misunderstanding the world has ever seen, or it is the fulcrum around which world history turns.
Christianity is based on the belief that it was and is the latter. (p. 111)
The Christian story does not end at the cross, according to Wright. In fact, were it not for the next part of the story, the resurrection of Jesus, there would be no Christian story to speak of. The resurrection, which Wright defends as a genuine event of history, not as some bit of wishful thinking or theological symbolism, did not so much demonstrate the divinity of Jesus as it showed that He was indeed Israel’s Messiah and the Savior of the world. Moreover, the resurrection shows us the something of the new creation,
introducing a world full of new potential and possibility. Indeed, precisely because part of that new possibility is for human beings themselves to be revived and renewed, the resurrection of Jesus doesn’t leave us as passive, helpless spectators. We find ourselves lifted up, set on our feet, given new breath in our lungs, and commissioned to go and make new creation happen in the world. (p. 116)
In order that we might fulfill this commission, the very Spirit of God lives within and among us, allowing us to experience something of God’s future yet to come and to bring this future into the present day, however partially. Thus we join God’s project of putting the world to rights, living by the power of God’s own Spirit.
How do I evaluate N.T. Wright’s retelling of the biblical story? Since this post is already plenty long, I’ll offer my evaluation in my next post in this series.
Topics: N.T. Wright | 2 Comments »
Advent Calendar for December 13
By Mark D. Roberts | Thursday, December 13, 2007
Click here for the December 13 Advent Calendar entry!
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A Review of Simply Christian by N.T. Wright (Section 1)
By Mark D. Roberts | Thursday, December 13, 2007
In the series: Considering N.T. Wright
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As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, when N.T. Wright was at Laity Lodge, he based his teaching on his book Simply Christian, with connections made to several passages from Acts of the Apostles. Before I finish up this mini-series on N.T. Wright, I thought it would be helpful to put up a brief review of Simply Christian.
This book tries to do for our generation what C.S. Lewis did for his generation in Mere Christianity. That book laid out in readable, engaging terms what Christianity was all about. It spoke powerfully to the modern reader, whether Christian or not.
Following Lewis, Simply Christian is an attempt to describe Christianity for today’s reader, for today’s postmodern reader. thus it follows quite a different course than Lewis’s, though with several sensible overlaps because, after all, their basic subject matter is the same. Wright describes his purpose this way:
My aim has been to describe what Christianity is all about, both to commend it to those outside the faith and to explain it to those inside. This is a massive task, and I make no pretense of having covered everything, or even of having faced all the questions some might expect in a book of this sort. (p. ix)
If you’re not familiar with Simply Christian, and if you’ve done some reading in Christian apologetics (the genre in which Simply Christian most naturally fits), you may be surprised by Wright’s approach. He doesn’t start with proofs. In fact, he doesn’t even try to prove anything in Simply Christian: neither the existence of God, nor the deity of Christ, nor any of the things apologists often try to prove. The subtitle of Simply Christian is Why Christianity Makes Sense. Wright does not seek to prove that Christianity is true, only that it makes sense, especially to people in today’s world.
Wright begins with what he calls “the echoes of a voice.” These echoes are the longing for justice, the quest for spirituality, the hunger for relationships, and the delight in beauty. We hear these echoes in our hearts, Wright contends, and they suggest that something, or perhaps Someone, first spoke that of which we hear echoes. The fact that we long for justice, desire spirituality, and so forth doesn’t prove that there is a first speaker. But it does point us in the direction of God, indeed, the God of the Bible.
For example, Wright focuses first on our longing for justice. He wonders where this comes from:
How does it happen that, on the one hand, we all share not just a sense that there is such a thing as justice, but a passion for it, a deep longing that things should be put to rights, a sense of out-of-jointness that goes on nagging and gnawing and sometimes screaming at us – and yet, on the other hand, after millennia of human struggle and searching and love and longing and hatred and hope and fussing and philosophizing, we still can’t seem to get much closer to it than people did in the most ancient societies we can discover? (p. 6)
Among several possible answers to this question, Wright proposes:
Or we can say, if we like, that the reason we have these dreams [of justice], the reason we have a sense of memory of the echo of a voice, is that there is someone speaking to us, whispering in our inner ear – someone who cares very much about this present world and our present selves, and who has made us and the world for a purpose which will indeed involve justice, things being put to rights, ourselves being put to rights, the world being rescued at last. (p. 9)
When I first read Simply Christian a couple of years ago, my response to Wright’s first chapter on justice was: Brilliant! There is a longing for justice in people today, even if this longing takes different and sometimes contradictory forms. Some may long for laws that protect unborn children, while others long for guaranteed freedoms for women. Wright does not argue that the content of our longing for justice necessarily tells us what justice really is. Rather, his point is that the fact that we have such longing constitutes the echo of a voice, of God’s voice, in fact.
By beginning with justice, rather than with the existence of God or the evidence for the resurrection, Wright is connecting with people in today’s world. His is a powerful beginning, on that ultimately points to the God revealed in Scripture and the gospel of God’s salvation in Jesus Christ.
I’ll have more to say about this in my next post.
Topics: N.T. Wright | 4 Comments »
More on the Gospels by James Arlandson
By Mark D. Roberts | Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Check out the latest entry in his excellent series on the Gospels, this time on Matthew. Thanks, James.
Topics: Can We Trust the Gospels?, Guest Bloggers | No Comments »
A Coffee Lover’s Dream for Christmas
By Mark D. Roberts | Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Can’t quite figure out a Christmas gift for a coffee lover? I’ve got a great suggestion. Give Aloha Island Coffee. It is, truly, the best coffee I have ever tasted: rich, smooth, delightful. Check out the Aloha Coffee website for more info. (By the way, I don’t do paid ads on this website. I promote that which I consider to be excellent, for the sake of my readers and to encourage those who are seeking excellence in their businesses or ministries. I have met the owners of Aloha Island Coffee, when they visited my church in Irvine. They are fine folks, and make unbelievably fine coffee.)
Topics: Recommendations | 4 Comments »
Advent Calendar for December 12
By Mark D. Roberts | Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Click here for the December 12 Advent Calendar entry!
Topics: Advent Calendar | No Comments »
N.T. Wright and the “New Perspective on Paul”
By Mark D. Roberts | Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Part 12 of series: Sharing Laity Lodge
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N.T. Wright is part of a movement among scholars that is sometimes called the “New Perspective on Paul.” In this movement you’ll find a wide range of opinion on many things as well as plenty of internal disagreement. But all the scholars connected with this New Perspective see Paul differently than he has been interpreted by Lutheran and Reformed theologians for the past few centuries. And this, as you might imagine, has stirred up the pot.
The New Perspective comes, on the one hand, from an effort to understand more accurately the Judaism of Paul’s own day, as well as the passages in Paul’s letters where he sounds quite positive about the Jewish Law (Philippians 3:5-6, for example, where Paul says he was “as to righteousness under the law, blameless.”) On the other hand, advocates of the New Perspective attempt to read Paul in light of his own issues and concerns, rather than in light of historic Protestant issues and concerns. They see Paul as much more interested in the problem of the Jewish and Gentile relationship in the covenant than Martin Luther’s struggle with his own guilt. In the New Perspective, certain key tenets of Protestantism, such as “justification” become revised. “Justification by faith” continues to be a key Pauline and theological concept, but it doesn’t bear the weight that it has within classic Protestant and Reformed theology.
Some of the Reformed and evangelical critics of N.T. Wright have blasted him with language usually reserved for the worst of heretics. They see him as undermining, not only Protestantism, but also the core of Christian orthodoxy. In an astounding move, one denomination has threatened its pastors with explusion if they adopt the New Perspective. Other of Wright’s critics are less inflammatory and dogmatic, but they nevertheless express great concern about his New Perspective reading of Paul.
I’ve been surprised by some of the arguments used against Wright’s exegesis of Paul. One of the common lines is that Wright has abandoned the Reformation’s view of Paul and justification by faith. Even if this were true, and I think it’s a bit of an exaggeration, I find it curious that Wright’s effort to go back to the Bible rather than endorse Reformation theology receives such scorn from the very people who base everything on going back to the Bible (or at least they used to). Isn’t sola scriptura at the base of the Reformation? Wouldn’t it be contrary to the very spirit of the Reformation to demand that theologians echo Reformation doctrine rather than going back to Scripture itself? It’s certainly true that Wright may have misinterpreted Paul. But we aren’t going to know this by quoting Luther and Calvin, or even by using extra-biblical theological language (like “imputed righteousness”). Rather, the Reformation itself sends us back to the Scripture itself. If N.T. Wright is wrong about Paul, then this needs to be demonstrated by the same kind of exegesis that he has practiced so assiduously.
Another common argument against Wright’s view of Paul is that it doesn’t support powerful evangelical preaching. Again, I think this argument substantially misreads Wright, but even if it’s true, does it miss the main point? Those who worry that Wright’s view of Paul might undermine preaching is perilously close to an “end-justifies-the-means” argument, rather than an argument that upholds the truth of Scripture no matter what the implications. Once more, the question that matters above all else is whether Wright’s reading of Scripture is true or not. If, in the end, we must change our preaching, so be it. Yet I’m quite confident that the truth will lead to powerful preaching, whether that truth is ultimately consistent with traditional interpretations of Paul or not.
If it sounds like I’m defending Wright’s view of Paul, let me say that my personal jury is still out on the matter. Honestly, I haven’t been able to take the time to work through all of the issues, and, most importantly, all of the texts. But I will say that I find the arguments used by many of Wright’s critics to be way too ad hominem, way too utilitarian, and, ironically, way too Catholic for my taste. I have not yet read one of the latest responses to N.T. Wright, John Piper’s The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright. Knowing Piper’s other writings, I expect that this will be a measured criticism of Wright, one that will advance the conversation because it will deal carefully with Scripture. Moreover, Piper did Wright the service of sending an early draft of his book, and Wright did Piper the service of sending back an extensive response. This alone guarantees that Piper’s book will be much better than most critiques of Wright, which usually misinterpret him.
Here is my fear, however. John Piper is very influential, especially among the kinds of people who would be troubled by Wright’s take on Paul. I’m afraid that many will buy and read Piper’s book before and even without ever reading Wright himself. Then they’ll quote or paraphrase Piper, without even going back to read Paul once again to see if Piper is actually right. This, I suggest, is neither Reformed, nor evangelical, nor even especially Christian. One who reads Piper should also read Wright himself, and, more importantly, should dive into a fresh examination of Scripture. Even if Wright is wrong, it’s hard to believe that he doesn’t have many valuable insights into the text, including many correctives for those of us who have always read Paul in a certain way.
My sincere hope is the Wright will pen a response to Piper (well, keyboard a response, I suppose). Bishop Tom mentioned while at Laity Lodge that he might do this. My greater hope is that the two of them might team up, much in the way Wright and Marcus Borg did on Jesus in their book, The Meaning of Jesus. What could be better than having two articulate teachers and brothers in Christ engage in mutually-respectful dialogue on the meaning of Paul? It’s certainly better than some of the flame throwing that Wright has endured from pugilistic Christians.
When I read Piper’s critique and any other, and as I continue to wrestle with Wright’s own view, my main question will be: Who does the best job interpreting Paul? If it turns out that the Reformation misconstrued some of what Paul actually meant, that’s too bad, but so be it. If it turns out that we preachers have to revise what we’ve preached about justification and righteousness on the basis of what the Bible actually says, so be it. Of all people, we who stand in the line of the Reformation should seek, above all and at any cost, to grasp the true meaning of Scripture and to stake our lives and ministries on it.
Resources
If you’re looking for more information on N.T. Wright and the New Perspective on Paul, let me recommend:
Scot McKnight, a series of blog posts on the New Perspective by a top evangelical New Testament scholar.
Collin Hansen, “From the Seminaries to the Pews”; a short history of the recent controversy over the New Perspective
Simon Gathercole, “What Did Paul Really Mean?”; an fine introduction and criticism that appeared in Christianity Today in August 2007
John Piper, The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright
Transcript of an interview of N.T. Wright conducted by Trevin Wax. An extraordinarily interesting and helpful resource.
N.T. Wright, “New Perspectives on Paul”
N.T. Wright, “The Shape of Justification”
N.T. Wright, “Paul in Different Perspectives”
“A Conversation on Paul with James D.G. Dunn and N.T. Wright”
Topics: Sharing Laity Lodge | 17 Comments »