By: Wayne Schuller

Wayne Schuller — Sun, 11 Jul 2004 21:08:50 +0000

Thank you David for your comments. It sounds like your experience with Wright is very similar to mine. He deserves more of an audience, especially with evangelicals. Though I think the tide is turning.

I have found Wright’s defense of resurrection, propitiation (in his Romans commentary), Jesus’ Jewishness, the foundational importance of the Old Testament, biblical theology and more all very rewarding from a conservative evangelical perspective.

Your comment on a “Berean” attitude is very helpful. Maybe so many of us who are pastors and teachers are used to expecting others to have a “Berean” attitude to our own teaching, but we fail to have the same attitude ourselves?

Note, I’ve not read alot of Wright on “hell”. There is the little chapter in “Following Jesus”, but that is a little light on content. (strange why the popular level Wright stuff isn’t as satisfying as his full-on scholarly stuff)

Thanks again for your post.

By: David

David — Sun, 11 Jul 2004 02:19:11 +0000

I first read Tom Wright back in the early 1990s not realizing that “Tom Wright” picks out the same person at “NT Wright”. I kept saying of NT, “He sounds like Tom.” To my delight Wright is prolific. I think the hardest thing people find at reading NT Wright is reading him without our various filters/lenses. So many folk missread Wright because they cannot set aside their own preconceived understandings long enough to give Wright a fair reading/hearing. I’m trained in philosophy and find this rather easy to do. Wright is a wonderful guide to what an entire letter or book says. I once heard him say that (paraphrase): If when you are done expounding a passage that there are bits and pieces of the passage on the floor, then something has gone wrong with your exposition. Wright takes VERY seriously the author’s intent (thus, e.g. “What Saint Paul Really Said”). Part 1 of interpretation is finding out what an author SAYS using that author’s own language in its context. Wright is so very good at helping us learn to do this well. But we have problems with Wright’s interpretation of particular passages typically because we have learned to read those passages differently. We think we know what a text is SUPPOSED to mean so that when Wright challenges us to read it differently, we jump on him without first taking the Berean attitude toward Wright’s interpretation. People jump on Wright for “disagreeing with Luther” as though Luther IS Paul. My guess is that those same critics–had they lived in the time of Luther–would have jumped on Luther for his interpretation over against that of the Papacy! I don’t find it problematic in principle for Wright to disagree with Luther (or Calvin). I want to see if Wright is reading Scripture rightly GIVEN Wright’s challenge to me on how to read a passage. I think we do ourselves and the kingdom a disservice to dismiss Wright because he challenges how our various traditions’s have taught us to read the Bible. I have found Tom Wright to actually take ALL of the Bible more seriously and with more authority than most of his critics. Wright forces us to take seriously what the biblical authors SAY.

So many of Wright’s critics take their own/their traditions own interpretation with authority (confusing that with the authority of the text) that they dismiss Wright with mistaken criticisms. I’ve read enough criticism (attacks?!) from pastors who misread Wright’s writings that it causes me to make the following sobering comment: If THIS is how they read a text from Wright, I worry about their biblical expositions they give their congregations!

It’s easy to label people (as being ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’, e.g.). But when a person fails to fit neatly into our categories we don’t know what to do with them. Well, it’s too easy anyway to say “He’s not with me, therefore he’s a bad guy.” I see this with Wright frequently. People say, “He’s liberal” meaning “I’m conservative, take the Bible seriously, am against ‘sin’, etc. AND Tom Wright doesn’t follow MY interpretation of the Bible.” But…

But I cannot think of ANY ‘conservative’ critic who takes more seriously (for example) the PHYSICAL, BODILY resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God than does Tom Wright. For Wright resurrection is everything! It opens up the Age to Come in the midst of the Present Age. It is not merely a proof of “life after death”! It is the guarantee of the PHYSICAL, BODILY resurrection of ALL who are “in Christ”. The New Humanity is destined for life after “life after death”, that time when the New Creation reaches its consummation and the Triune God comes to the Renewed Earth to finally dwell with his people.

Now take a “hot topic”: homosexuality. In the midst of a church gone to the world in so many ways (insert here all churches who believe in same-sex unions), here is Tom Wright saying of homosexuality that it is precisely what you would expect of humanity that no longer reflects the Triune God!! According to Wright, homosexuality is EVIDENCE of humanity in sin, in brokenness. To endorse same-sex unions is precisely the wrong way to go, FOR it institutionalizes or normalizes the brokenness and fallenness! Homosexual practice is not just something the apostle Paul happens to be against and so he tosses it in his list of things he’s against in Romans 1! It goes to the heart of what it means to be created in the image of God! Thus the presence of homosexual practice in a society is evidence of its fallenness. (See here Wright’s commentary on Paul’s letter to the Romans). And so liberal Christians find Wright’s view of this too “conservative.”

Wright challenges us to abandon our labeling of fellow Christians and look at the Scriptures afresh–letting the biblical writers freedom to use their own language they way they want to as God’s revelation. Think here of those who blast Wright for suggesting that the apocalypic language in Matthew or Mark does NOT at first instance speak of the “end of the age” but rather of the more immediate “end of Jerusalem”. Wright again takes seriously the language the author’s use. Does this mean that Wright does not believe in a literal hell? Of course not. Does that meant that Wright is “soft” on biblical authority? Of course not.

Of course one need not agree with what Wright says. But let’s at least work hard first to understand what Wright really says before we dismiss him. I’ve found this to be very helpful for me to do and it has rewarded me handsomely!

Sorry to go on so. I appreciate your comments on his little volume, WHAT SAINT PAUL REALLY SAYS (Eerdmans). I find Wright’s thinking refreshingly helpful in this post-Christian, increasingly pagan age. Let us spend time understanding Wright and using his thinking to help us be the salt and light to the world. Again and again and again with non-Christians–both explaining the Good News that Jesus is the Lord of the world AND doing apologetics–I have turned to the thinking of Tom Wright!

Comments on: Review of NT Wright’s “What St Paul Really Said”

By: Wayne Schuller

By: David