Wright, N. T. The New Testament and the People of God. 1st ed. Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1992.

Superb! What a great introduction to 2nd Temple Judaism and 1st century Christianity! N. T. Wright first lays out his epistemological presuppositions and then works through different elements of Israel’s worldview in order to understand Christianity’s self-understanding.  He maps out the worldview of first-century Judaism (or Judaisms), considering its symbols: Temple, Land, Torah, and racial identity. This worldview is explained in terms  of creational monotheism, election, and eschatology. The result is a highly enjoyable and challenging read that lays the foundation for his other volumes.

“The great story of the Hebrew scriptures was… inevitably read in the second-temple period as a story in search of a conclusion. This ending would have to incorporate the full liberation and redemption of Israel, an event which had not happened as long as Israel was being oppressed, a prisoner in her own land. And this ending would have to be appropriate: it should correspond to the rest of the story, and grow out of it in obvious continuity and conformity” (Wright 1992: 217).

A discussion panel entitled N.T. Wright and the Doctrine of Justification just came to my attention. The panelists are Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., Dr. Denny Burk, Dr. Tom Schreiner, Dr. Mark Seifrid and Dr. Brian Vickers. I have expressed before frustration with the tone of such panels and surprise that people of the caliber of these scholars keep making distorted statements about what N. T. Wright has to say about justification. But, what I found particularly interesting was the quote below by Dr. Mohler which probably says a lot about the way some Evangelicals perceive N. T. Wright:

“In reading through his [Wright’s] work, listening to his lectures, having met him and having heard him, engaging in discussion with him, I think of the British meaning of the word “clever.” He is extremely clever. And, in this sense, I dare say that this cleverness is a real issue because it also comes hand in hand with an incredible, almost unspeakable, audacity because his claim is no less than that the protestant reformers and their heirs have misunderstood not only Paul and not only first century Judaism, but the doctrine of justification and thus the gospel.”

I wonder what the British meaning of the word “clever” is.

I am currently reading N. T. Wright’s book Justificaion: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision which is basically a response to John Piper’s book The Future of Justification. Although he interacts with Piper at various points in the book, it is not a point by point response which, in my opinion, makes it a much better read. I have read the first part of the book and gotten through his exegesis of Galatians. For those familiar with Wright’s work on this subject, there is probably not going to be a lot that is new, but I am finding that Wright is (re)explaining things in this book in a way that is proving to be extremely helpful for my understanding of justification and Paul in general. I specially appreciated his spending some time explaining exactly what he means by “covenant” (as in God’s righteousness being God’s faithfulness to the covenant). I won’t attempt to summarize it here because it is exactly within the context of all that he is saying in this book that “covenant” makes sense. All I can say is that people should read this book and try to listen to what Wright is saying.

Of course, this doesn’t mean people will get on board and change their worldviews or shift their paradigms. One good example is the Boyce College’s panel Assessing the Piper-Wright Debate on Justification. This was done before the book was released in the US, and I am already surprised at the comments from the panel (after only reading half of the book). As a matter of fact, I recommend that you read the comments at Denny Burk’s blog which, in my opinion, proved to be a lot more helpful than the panel itself. Now that the book has been released here, we are starting to see some helpful reviews, and one that may bring a little balance to this discussion is Scot McKnight’s review.
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Daniel Kirk, author of Unlocking Romans, shared a few thoughts on his blog about J. Richard Middleton’s book The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1.
You can read his thoughts in Image as Function in Gen 1, Liberating Image: Imago Dei in ANE Context, and Liberating Image: Some concluding remarks. Although I have not read the book yet, it looks like the type of book I would enjoy reading.

Here is what Peter Enns has to say about it:

“The Liberating Image is a balanced yet challenging articulation of the Imago Dei in Genesis, its ancient Near Eastern context, and its present-day theological implications. By locating himself in his postmodern context, Middleton brings a refreshing hermeneutical self-consciousness to the scholarly task, which is aimed at providing a substantive and compelling argument without posing as the last word. His analysis of Imago Dei in Genesis in the context of ancient Near Eastern religions leads Middleton to the conclusion that the Israelite theological traditions of Genesis 1-11 are recontextualized in conscious opposition to ideological categories of Mesopotamia. That Israel’s story promotes the dignity of all humans, not just of the royal or priestly classes, should have vital ethical implications for today.”

I accidentally ran across a few lectures by Dr. Middleton, and, although at first I had not recognized his name, I immediately recognized the title of his book. There is one lecture entitled In the Beginning God Created the Heavens and the Earth: Responsible Interpretation of Genesis 1 in Ancient and Contemporary Contexts where Dr. Middleton talks about how one goes about interpreting Genesis 1 responsibly (i. e. you should read it “literally,” but you have to listen to the lecture to find out what he means by “literal”). Those familiar with John Walton and G. K. Beale’s works will find some similarities in his approach in terms of Genesis’ function and temple imagery. The Q and A was interesting with some provocative answers. There are also two Chapel talks at Greenville College that are somewhat short but well worth listening. In the first he talks about creation and in the second about redemption. The second lecture pretty much covers the content of his essay A New Heaven and a New Earth: The Case for a Holistic Reading of the Biblical Story of Redemption (Journal for Christian Theological Research 11 [2006] 73-97). This lecture and essay will resonate with those who liked N. T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope. I really enjoyed reading the essay and it is a great way for those who have not read Wright’s book to become familiar with the premise that what the bible envisages for the eschaton is not heaven as the final destination but new heavens and a new earth (i. e. new creation).
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One of the passages used to illustrate the NT use of the OT in Three Views on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament was Galatians 3 concerning Paul’s use of the word “seed.” I was especially interested in this passage because I remember being quite impressed with N. T. Wright’s treatment of it in The Climax of the Covenant a few years ago. In this post, I would like to do three things: 1) summarize each author’s understanding of this passage; 2) bring N. T. Wright into the conversation and explain, in broad strokes, his exegesis; and 3) ask which of the three views best reflects N. T. Wright’s approach.

Since Peter Enns chose the “seed” passage as one of his examples and elaborated on it in his essay, we get a fuller picture of Enns’ approach related to this particular issue. Kaiser and Bock merely responded to Enns so there will be some inevitable reading between the lines. But since I am only interested in the approach and not a full exegesis of the text, I believe each position can be fairly outlined (at least I will attempt to do that).
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There are two resources this week that reminded me of the role of “stories” in shaping our worldviews. The first one is from a new blog by students at Princeton Theological Seminary that focuses on Tom Wright and his writings called N. T. Wright Project. The particular post on story is Tell Me a Story in which Laura quotes a thought-provoking paragraph from The New Testament and the People of God which I would like to reproduce here in full:

“Stories are, actually, peculiarly good at modifying or subverting other stories and their worldviews. Where head-on attack would certainly fail, the parable hides the wisdom of the serpent behind the innocence of the dove, gaining entrance and favour which can then be used to change assumptions which the hearer would otherwise keep hidden away for safety. Nathan tells David a story about a rich man, a poor man, and a little lamb; David is enraged; and Nathan springs the trap. Tell someone to do something, and you change their life-for a day; tell someone a story and you change their life. Stories, in having this effect, function as complex metaphors. Metaphor consists in bringing two set of ideas close together, close enough for a spark to jump, but not too close, so that the spark, in jumping, illuminates for a moment the whole area around, changing perceptions as it does so. Even so, the subversive story comes close enough to the story already believed by the hearer for a spark to jump between them; and nothing will ever be quite the same again” (NTPG, p. 40).

Laura emphasized the line “Tell someone to do something, and you change their life-for a day; tell someone a story and you change their life.” This is a strong statement and, had I not read elsewhere about stories functioning as “complex metaphors,” this statement would not make much sense to me. This brings me to my second resource, a lecture by Dan Taylor, an English Teacher, entitled The Life-Shaping Power of Story: God’s and Ours. This is one of the lectures in the 2008 National Conference by Desiring God Ministries which would seem like an unlikely source for lectures on story-telling, and maybe this is why the lecture stood out to me. His main thesis is the following:

“The single best way of conceiving of faith and the life of faith is as a story in which you are a character.”

He continues on to say, “your task is to be a character in the greatest story ever told, that’s what you are created for. If you want to know why you are here, that’s one way of expressing the answer to that.”

The lecture goes through twelve reasons supporting this thesis. There is something fresh about his approach and he gives us lots of things to think about in terms of stories and their roles in our lives.

Wright, N. T. Paul: In Fresh Perspective. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005.

A few years ago, a friend of mine recommended a book by N. T. Wright called “The Climax of the Covenant.” The author was unknown to me and the book’s title wasn’t particularly appealing. But because of some of the discussions we were having, he said that this book would help me see where he was coming from. I read the book and was captivated by it. I have to say that quite a bit of the book was way over my head and a lot just seemed like too much information for me to be able to process at the time. But I was able to get the gist of the issues involved and the solutions that Wright was attempting to put forth. This is one of the reasons why I need to read the Climax again because, since then, I have become more familiar with the issues and little more in tune with the process of exegesis. This is why I first started to read N. T. Wright. He was the author who really got me interested in N. T. exegesis and Paul in particular.

After many lectures, articles and books, I finally came around to reading “Paul.” I had read “What Saint Paul Really Said” before and I was glad to know that Wright had written a book that seemed to go beyond it and would become a sort of thumbnail sketch of what is to become his fourth volume in “Christian Origins and the Question of God.” Read more »