A Review in Life and Work

In the September Life and Work my review of Stephen Kuhrt's book 'Tom Wright for Everyone' was published. I know that there are constraints of space in L&W, however some of the editorial changes left the review making less than obvious sense. Here is a copy of my review as submitted. (see my earlier post here)

Tom Wright for Everyone:
Putting the theology of N. T. Wright into practice in the local Church
Stephen Kuhrt
SPCK: 2011
xiv+108 pages
Biblography 20 pages; Notes 11 pages; Indices 7 pages

It is surely too soon for a thorough review of the theology of NT Wright, not least since we still await some crucial elements of that theology to be published. However, Stephen Kuhrt does great service both to NT Wright, and to the church in this brief volume.

An opening chapter helpfully reviews the career of NT Wright as scholar, theologian and Churchman. This is followed by a chapter outlining Kuhrt’s own story and his interest in NT Wright. In this chapter Kuhrt, writing from an evangelical Anglican tradition Kuhrt poses some thoughtful questions to that evangelical tradition which still await an answer. Of course, he goes on to suggest the NT Wright does begin to offer an answer to these questions. This chapter should not be passed over by readers of Life and Work, as the questions raised by Kuhrt reflect questions that need to be asked and answered by an evangelical reformed/Presbyterian tradition just as much as by evangelicals within the Anglican tradition.

The central chapter of the book somewhat optimistically offers ‘A summary of the theology of N. T. Wright’. A seemingly impossible task which is well attempted by Kuhrt, using the device of taking 39 words or phrases around which key elements of Wright’s theology can be gathered. As good as this chapter is it should not be a substitute for reading Wright, his work on Christian hope, Jesus and the Kingdom, Paul and Gospel especially. In Kuhrt’s brief concluding summary we read of Wright’s proposal that,
In its reading of the New Testament, the Christian Church needs to shed the dualist lens introduced by the Gnostics … the recovery of a properly Jewish theology of creation that will enable us to understand Jesus as coming to inaugurate that new creation and renew the world rather than destroy it. … the Church’s role is to live within the story of Scripture, demonstrating, by word and deed, radical and Spirit-filled signs of the resurrection life that Jesus Christ has come to bring. (page 64)

Stephen Kuhrt has been vicar at a Church of England congregation in New Malden since 2007. The exciting conclusion to this volume is his account of the impact of Wright’s theology upon the life and ministry of this congregation. In three chapters Kuhrt gives accounts of changes in pastoral work, mission activity, worship and sacramental ministry, development of Christian character and the involvement of the people of God in active service. While some parts of this will be familiar to readers of Life and Work, using Wright, Kuhrt gives a deep biblical and theological foundation for these revisions of the life and ministry of a congregation. In his concluding chapters Kuhrt writes wisely and sensitively about both the ministry of women and responding to the challenge of homosexuality and these passages I hope will prove very helpful within our present situation.

Kuhrt writes well, this is a short and easily read book. Writing as an evangelical Kuhrt brings a great challenge from the theology of NT Wright to all evangelicals. If you don’t like his answers you at least have to answer his questions. For non evangelicals I think Kuhrt’s book demonstrates the vitality of evangelical theology and practice when it is radically committed to being biblical rather than entrenched in a nineteenth century form of a sixteenth century tradition! While commending this book most warmly I would nevertheless more warmly commend a long and detailed engagement with Tom Wright (and am sure that Stephen Kuhrt would agree with this).

Tom Wright For Everyone

Stephen Kuhrt has done us a great service in this short book on Tom Wright.

Yes, it is too early to offer a fully rounded reflection on Tom Wright's work, however, this is a very valuable book.

I especially like Stephen's focus upon the impact the theology of Tom Wright has had upon the local church. This is where all good theology should impact. Many who read this blog will find the final three chapters of this book helpful and challenging.

In his chapter summarising Tom Wright's theology, under the heading 'Gospel', Stephen writes,
According to Wright, the gospel does not refer to the means by which individuals can be 'saved' and 'go to heaven when they die'. It refers to the royal proclamation that in and through Jesus, declared by his resurrection to be Messiah and Lord, YHWH the God of Israel has become King and begun his processs of putting his world right. Wright shows how this understanding is completely consistent with the original use of the term 'good news' in Isaiah 40:9 and 52:7, with its implicit challenge to that term being used in a similar way by pagan emperors. An integral part of this gospel proclamation is that through the coming of God's Spirit everyone, without restriction, is summoned to be part of this renewed world that he is remaking. (page 48)

I think this is an excellent summary of what Wright means by the 'gospel' and shows how Wright then goes onto rework our Christian hope, our understanding of justification, the implications of creation and redemption. Make no mistake, Tom Wright's theology is a big project, dealing with the big themes of our Christian faith.

Stephen Kuhrt's book is a good one. If you read it I hope it inspires you to go on and read Wright: both Tom and NT!

Another book on justification

Just finished another book from my 2010 target list. Mark A Seifrid Christ, our Righteousness: Paul's theology of justification, IVP, 2000.

Seifrid has obviously decided not to write an apologia, he is not in discussion with any of the new perspective school. Rather by setting forth plainly a reasonably traditional reformed view of justification in Paul he hopes to commend this to us.
He does a good job at this, certainly it is a better book than John Piper on Justification - see my earlier post here. In brief, Siefrid is at least concerned to be biblical, not just reformed.

I do think Seifrid's book fails in the lack of engagement with NT Wright. He is aware of Wright's work and seems at times to be kicking against Wright, without directly engaging him. Although Wright does merit 6 referneces in the index, these are all to minor comments or footnotes.

While helpful in its own way Seifrid's book does not advance the conversation on justification, and certainly will not draw it to any kind of conclusion.

Tom Wright Virtue Reborn

Over the summer I read Tom Wright's Virtue Reborn.

Wright tells us that this book is a follow on to his Simply Christian and Surprised by Hope. I've read Surprised by Hope, before starting blogging, I thought it was a great book, a companion to The Resurrection of the Son of God.

Wright's contention in Virtue Reborn is that since the Christian's future hope 'is not simply "going to heaven," but resurrection into God's new creation, the "new heavens and new earth"' (page ix), this hope has 'radical implications for every aspect of how we think about Christian faith and life.' (page ix)

My sense is that the focus in this book is very much on how we live the life God has called us in Christ to live, until he comes again.

I like Tom Wright's books, and this one is no different. I think I want to re read Surprised by Hope and then Virtue Reborn to see if I've got the connections sorted before commiting myself to blogging about something that might not be right.

Whether we agree with Wright's view of the Christian hope or not, we cannot avoid thinking deeply about what kind of life we are called to live today and tomorrow. So at the very least this book is helpful in prompting us to this exercise.

If anyone else has read Wright here, let's hear what you think. And watch out for some more detailed posts in the next few months.

NT Wright on Evil and the Justice of God

This is a short book on a big topic, only 109 pages. NT Wright gives his usual and expectedly thorough treatment of an important theme, evil, and its relation to the justice of God.

Beginning as a set of five lectures and then finding their place in a tv programme, this extended examination of this subject is well worth reading.

The challenge of evil is to be faced by our Christian living, our prayer and holy living in a world troubled by evil. Wright challenges Christians to imagine the Kingdom in which evil is no more and then to live as though it were already so. This is a creative use of imagination which I think will stretch many, but is worth the effort.
The chapter on forgiveness is very challenging, forgiveness set us free to live without the burden of evil and removes the bitterness of evil from our communities. Wright expands forgiveness beyond the inter-personal to our forgiveness as a nation of the unpayable debts of other nations, or the forgiveness of terrorists.

Two interesting points in passing.
"Within the larger cannonical context it ought to be clear that re-emphasizing the doctrine of creation is indeed the foundation of all biblical answers to questions about who God is and what he is doing." (page 41)
Whether in response to the strident atheism of Dawkins and others, or for some other reason, I sense that there is a lack of confidence in our confession of God as Creator. We must stand firm here, not least for the reason given by Wright. The constant refernecing of God as Creator in Scripture is not insignificant. Having created and declared it to be good, God is now at work renewing and redeeming creation for his own glory. Our salvation in Christ is connected to God being creator in ways that those trying to be Christian but denying creation do not yet appreciate.

"Indeed, we might even say that the gospel writers were telling their whole story so as to explain why the resurrection happened to make it clear that this was not simply an odd, isolated bizarre miracle, but rather the proper and appropriate result of Jesus' entire, and successful, confrontation with evil." (pages 55-56)
If we read the gospels with the question, 'Why did the resurrection happen?' at the front of our thinking, what difference does this make to the story we read? Is this God ushering in new creation (2 Cor 5:17) after judgment had fallen upon the old creation and the evil that rampaged through it?

As I say, a really good book and well worth reading.

A Smooth Gem

Thanks to Jeol Willits at Euangelion for a quote from NT Wright on Christ being applied very early to Jesus as a title appropriate to him.

Here's the quote:
But, as I say, even if this is not so, it merely tightens the screw of the argument even tighter, because clearly it would mean that the very early Christians used the word so frequently for Jesus that it had worn smooth (557, The Resurrection of the Son of God, N T Wright).

Read Joel post here.

Bible Fresh Podcasts

The EA have posted two download podcasts here.

One is from Krish Kandiah and the other from Bishop Tom Wright. These were recorded at the biblefresh launch in Durham in January.

There will be a biblefresh lauch in Scotland in May, watch out for dates and venues coming soon.

Essay on N T Wright

I picked up this link from Mike Bird at Euangelion.

Mike writes,
Nijay Gupta has put together a very brief guide to N.T. Wright for those attending the upcoming Wheaton Theology Conference (gosh I wish I was going now!). It is designed to introduce N.T. Wright and the dialogue that he has started to the uninitiated. It includes essays on N.T. Wright on Jesus, Paul, and Biblical Theology. Nijay's essay is about N.T. Wright and the Apostle Paul.



Find the link and the essay here. It is worth looking at if you read N T Wright and want another opinion on his theology.

Biblefresh and N T Wright

Over at slipstream on the EAUK site - here - a video clip has been published of N T Wright, one of the biblefresh bible champions talking about bible reading and Christian leadership. Just in case you don't want to go over to the EA site, which you should some time, here is the clip:

Tom Wright Justification 2

Chapter 2 – Rules of engagement.

In the long term, this may be one of the most important chapters in Wright’s book. Here Wright sets out a methodology for the study of Paul and/or justification. So often in church life today there is disagreement about theology or praxis which arises in large part from the different starting places and varied assumptions made by those taking part in the debates.

Wright contends that exegesis “close attention to the actual flow of the text, to the questions that it raises in itself and the answers it given in and of itself” (page 23) is the beginning and end of the task of understanding Paul and justification.

Systematise all you want in between; we all do it, there is nothing wrong with it and much to be said for it, particularly when it involves careful comparing of different treatments of similar topics in different contexts. But start with exegesis, and remind yourself that the end in view is not a tidy system, sitting in hard covers on a shelf where one may look up ‘correct answers’, but the sermon, or the shared pastoral reading, or the scriptural word to a Synod or other formal church gathering, or indeed the life of witness to the love of God, through all of which the church is built up and energized for mission, the Christian is challenged, transformed and nurtured in the faith, and the unbeliever is confronted with the shocking but joyful news that the crucified and risen Jesus is the Lord of the world. That is letting scripture be scripture. (pages 23-24)

Yes, what a wonderful paragraph! Any attempt to study scripture, to know God in any meaningful way involves theology. We cannot but have a theology, so we might as well have one that is well thought through and holds together well (a good systematics). But, too often we have allowed the system to control our reading of the text. We instinctively reject readings of scripture that don’t fit in with the system we hold. We look for answers in the big system rather than in the text of scripture. I heard Phillip Jensen at the EMA in 1997 tell us that he thinks Calvinists have a real problem with this. Thinking that Calvin’s system is so good we cannot imagine the text of scripture ever disagreeing with Calvin, so we amend our understanding of scripture to fit in with what we think Calvin wrote, although most times we have that wrong as well! So a big yes to having a good systematic theology, but a massive no (or even a Pauline me genoito) to allowing our system to take priority over our exegesis. It is good exegesis that will bring God’s word with power into all of the situations described by Wright at the end of the paragraph, and how great is the need for a clear statement of scripture in our churches and church courts.

Wright makes a good case for the inclusion of Ephesians in any study of Paul and justification, pages 26-28. It is curious how often conservative readings of justification do not attend to Ephesians, or Colossians for that matter.

Wright then suggests that we need to develop ‘A Hermeneutics of Doctrine’ (page 28 and following). There is a hermeneutic circle of theology and theological interpretation. Luther and Calvin were not only influenced by Augustine and the New Testament, but by all the theology that had been written and taught in between. It is important to consider which theological technical terms are not biblical, e.g. ‘the imputation of Christ’s righteousness’ and what associations are gathering into theology by the use of the Latin term iustitia? Now this is not to say that non biblical terms cannot be wisely used to help us understand scripture, rather that we do this too often without being aware of it and we do need to remind ourselves of the theological baggage we bring to scripture.

As an historian Wright is always concerned about historical questions.
We come with the questions and issues we have learned from elsewhere [other than scripture]. This is a perennial problem for all of us, but unless we are to declare, here and now, that God has no more light to break out of his holy word – that everything in scripture has already been discovered by our elders and betters and that all we have to do is read them to find out what scripture says – then further research, precisely at a historical level, is what is needed. I know that John Calvin would have agreed wholeheartedly with this. (page 33)

Wright is not saying that God will give fresh revelations of himself other than scripture (that’s a whole different discussion!). His point is this: can we in our study of scripture understand God’s word more clearly than earlier generations of students? If not, why do we study scripture, we should print text with Augustine, Luther and Calvin, like some Christian Gemora, and learn to interpret the few chosen interpreters. But, if we do believe that God will lead us in our study of scripture into his ways, not previously known, then historical study, not only of scripture but of theology is urgently required.

Wright ends this chapter with a complaint against contemporary English translations of Paul, particularly the NIV. In particular Wright mentions the translation of Rom 3:21-26

NIV - Romans 3:21 But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished-- 26 he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

I’ve copied the text above and you can see that the NIV has used ‘righteousness’ in vv. 21, 22, but justified, justice, just, justifies in vv. 24-26, which the same dikaisoun- root is used in the Greek. (I tried to copy the NA27 text but this blog post doesn't hold that font) Wright’s point is that this variety in English usage sets up a particular way of reading vv. 21-22 which is not what Paul intended. This point will be picked up in great detail in chapter 7 when Wright offers comments on Romans.

Three main things then:
1. Exegesis needs to have priority over systematic theology.
2. History is important, both in relation to scripture and theology.
3. Read the text, and make sure what you are reading is the text.

Tom Wright Justification 1

In 2008 John Piper published The Future of Justification: A response to NT Wright. This short volume from 2009 is Wright’s response to Piper. See my earlier post on Piper, in short, I think his book seeks to show that Wright is not following a main line, traditional reformed interpretation of justification. We didn’t need a book to tell us that.

In a number of posts I’m going to offer comments on Wright’s response.

Chapter 1
In this first Chapter Wright sets out to show what this discussion is all about and why it matters.

“Ever since I first read Luther and Calvin, particularly the latter, I determined that whether or not I agreed with them in everything they said, their stated and practised method would be mine, too: to soak myself in the Bible, in the Hebrew and Aramaic Old Testament and the Greek New Testament, to get it into my bloodstream by every means possible, in the prayer and hope that I would be able to teach scripture afresh to the church and the world. The greatest honour we can pay the Reformers is not to treat them as infallible – they would be horrified at that – but to do as they did.” (page 6.)

I have not yet found a human author with whom I can say I agree with everything they said (or wrote). And I do not expect to find one. By definition a human author is human and therefore even the best author and their best work will be tainted by sin in some part. We cannot allow ourselves to be blindly chained to any human author, however much we value any tradition of interpretation of Scripture that derives from them.
I am not one of those who denies the value of theology and the systematic study of theology. However, if I am forced to choose let me study Scripture and only Scripture. There is no greater need in our generation than for Scripture to be heard and obeyed. If I find my study of Scripture to lead me to disagree with any tradition or part of Christian theology then I will humbly do that. That is what Augustine, Luther and Calvin did. Are they the only ones to be given this duty?

“But the real point is, I believe, that the salvation of human beings, though of course extremely important for those human beings, is part of a larger purpose. God is rescuing us from the shipwreck of the world, not so that we can sit back and put our feet up in his company, but so that we can be part of his plan to remake the world. We are in orbit around God and his purposes, not the other way round.” (page 8 – Author’s emphasis)

Yes, read that one over again and then lower your peacock feathers. Salvation is for God’s glory alone, not our glory. This doctrinal debate is not about some obscure point of theology. Justification is that doctrine by which the church stands or falls. It does very closely touch the work of redemption God has achieved in Christ. It is about the heart of the gospel.
It matters that we get this right, because if we get it wrong we will end up mistreating the gospel and misrepresenting the purposes of God in his great work of redemption.

In this opening chapter Wright comments on the vast field of contemporary literature on this theme. Noting that he will not engage with it all, but promises us a larger more detail work on Paul as part of his on going Christian Origins and the Question of God series. In this introduction Wright promises much. He will offer us three further chapters of introduction in which he outlines his thinking on justification before a final four chapters of detailed exegesis of the key Pauline texts on this theme.

Alpha, The Guardian, NT Wright and the Resurrection

I've copied below the post from Friday Night Theology from the Evangelical Alliance (7/8/09).

It appears that Adam Rutherford who writes for The Guardian is attending an Alpha course and writing of his thoughts on this. In his recent article he strongly questions the historicity of Christianity in general and the resurrection of the body of the Lord Jesus in particular. Bishop Wright offers a brief response to this and points to his two wonderful books - 'The Resurrection of the Son of God' and 'Surprised by Hope'.

I hope you find this helpful, and please do check out the EA site for Friday Night Theology.


Wright on the Resurrection

This week’s ‘special’ FNT first appeared on the Guardian's commentisfree site. It is reproduced here with the permission of Bishop Tom Wright.

Various things could be said of Adam Rutherford's take on the resurrection (apart from the fact that the criticism doesn't seem to be engaging with the central issues, so it's hard to tell whether he's really heard the point or not).
1. The historical basis of Christianity is vital precisely because Christianity isn't just a moral philosophy or a pathway of spirituality, however much many in late western culture (including in the church) have tried to belittle it by treating it as such. Of course sceptics want Christianity to be "simply a moral philosophy". That's not nearly so challenging as what it actually is.
2. The reason many of us refer to the New Testament in dealing with early Christianity is not just that it's "The Bible", but that it's the close-up, often first-hand evidence both for what happened and for what Jesus' first followers made of it all.
3. The historical evidence for Jesus himself is extraordinarily good. I have no idea whether the Alpha teachers have gone into the detail of how we know about things in Palestine in the first century, but the evidence dovetails together with remarkable consistency, as I and many others have shown in works of very detailed historical scholarship. From time to time people try to suggest that Jesus of Nazareth never existed, but virtually all historians of whatever background now agree that he did, and most agree that he did and said a significant amount at least of what the four gospels say he did and said.
4. Just as Christian faith is far more than a moral philosophy or spiritual pathway (though it includes both as it were en passant), so it is more than a "how to get saved" teaching backed up by a dodgy "miracle". Christian faith declares that, in and through Jesus, the creator of the world launched his plan to rescue the world from the decaying and corrupting force of evil itself. This was (if it was anything at all) an event which brought about a new state of affairs, albeit often in a hidden and paradoxical way (as Jesus kept on saying): the "kingdom of God", that is, the sovereign, rescuing rule of the creator, breaking in to creation. If this stuff didn't happen then Christianity is based on a mistake. You can't rescue it by turning it into a philosophy.
5. Of course, this was nonsense in the ancient pagan world, as it is nonsense in the modern pagan world. Nothing new there. The Jewish worldview (in which there is a creator God who has promised to rescue the world, and whose people are somehow a vehicle of this rescue operation) was and is always offensive to pagan worldviews of every sort. The sceptics of today add nothing to the sceptics of the first and second century AD.
6. And, of course, we all know that dead people don't rise. Actually, the early Christians knew that too; they didn't suppose that people did rise from the dead from time to time and that Jesus just happened to be one of them. (The other "raisings" in the NT are of course what we would call "near death experiences" – people who are clinically dead and then find themselves called back.*) Rather, they claimed that Jesus had as it were gone through death and out the other side into a new form of physicality for which there was no previous example and of which there remains no subsequent example. They knew as well as we do how outrageous that was, but they found themselves compelled to say it. As one of the more sceptical of today's scholars has put it, "It seems that they were doing their best to describe an event for which they didn't have the right language."
7. You can't explain how they came to say what they said unless there were both several "sightings" of and meetings with someone they took to be Jesus, alive again, and an empty tomb where he had been. Without the first, they would have said the grave had been robbed. Without the second, they would have known it was a hallucination (they knew as much about those as we do). But if both occurred, how do we explain them? All other explanations fail to account for the reality of what they said and the change in their lives and their sense of call. (Which can't, by the way, be rubbished by likening it to Jones or Koresh; read Acts and compare and contrast with that sort of stuff.)
8. Jesus' resurrection was not, for them, a kind of odd phenomenon which validated a particular atonement theology (though of course all these things are joined up). It isn't an extra thing, bolted on to the outside of a moral philosophy. It is the launching-pad for God's new creation. "Christian spirituality" is learning to live in that new creation. "Christian ethics" is learning to let the power of that new creation shape your life. A Christian political theology is discovering what it means that, through the resurrection, Jesus is the world's true Lord.
9. Ridiculous? Of course. It was in AD 35 and it is today. But actually it makes sense – historically, culturally, philosophically and even dare I say politically. We've tried all sorts of other stuff recently and got fairly stuck, haven't we? But actually that shoulder-shrugging pragmatism, though it might alert people to the fact that normal western scepticism may not have the last word, isn't enough. It is possible to argue historically for the truth of Jesus' resurrection. I and others have done so and the case is remarkably good. But I'm not sure, to be honest, that the writer attending the Alpha course is really interested in the historical argument. If he is, he might look at Surprised by Hope, especially chapters 3 and 4. And if he wants a fuller account, he could tackle The Resurrection of the Son of God.
Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham
*For more details on what Tom Wright means by this, please see his Surprised by Hope (Chapters 3,4) and The Resurrection of the Son of God (pp440ff).

On Justification

Mike Bird has a post which is well worth reading on NT Wright and Justification, you can find it here.

This debate between NT Wright and traditional reformed views of Justification will run for some time yet. Much better to carry on the debate with an attitude of submission to Scripture and a desire for the glory of God in Christ. Thanks for this post Mike.

N T Wright - An Easter Message

Mike Bird at Euaggelion, has a link to an article by N T Wright at The Times.

The Bishop makes a good case that the Church has colluded with the world in trivialising Easter and so missing the wonderful good news of the Resurrection. It is well worth reading.

Justification: Piper on Wright

I've been reading John Piper's book on 'The Future of Justification: A response to N T Wright'.

It is good to have such books as this which engage with other major scholars.

My concern about Piper's book is that all the way through he seems concerned only to show where N T Wright diverges from Reformed Orthodoxy. I'm not sure that Piper has taken seriously the possibility that Reformed Orthodoxy may itself need reformed. As Wright claims, it is not impossible that Christian thinking about theology and biblical interpretation went wrong with Augustine and has been on the wrong foot ever since. This is a bold claim, which I am not yet endorsing, however, we know that every great theologian of these past 1600 years has been human and therefore fallible, there is no a priori reason why the work of Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Edwards and other might not need reformed. A critque of N T Wright needs to do more than demonstrate that the Bishop is out of step with received Reformed Orthodoxy.

I rejoice to read the following:

"... Wright loves the apostle Paul and reverences the Christian Scriptures. That gives me hope that engaging with him will be fruitful. I know I have learned from him, and I hope that our common ground in Scripture will enable some progress in understanding and agreement." Piper, page 27.

We have had more than enough of name calling and anathematising between Christians, between those who love the Scriptures, between those who are sisters and brothers in the Lord Jesus Christ. This example of recognising a brother in Christ, of desiring to learn and to share from what one has learned is an example we should all aspire to follow.

Some questions on Jesus from N T Wright

I’m still in the introduction to N T Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God (ok, I’m reading this excellent book for the second time!).

In his chapter on the ‘Third Quest’ Wright offers five, or six, questions that have emerged from this ‘Third Quest’ and are worthy of being answered.

1. How does Jesus fit into Judaism?
2. What were Jesus’ aims?
3. Why did Jesus die?
4. How and why did the early Church begin?
5. Why are the Gospels the way they are?

Clearly these questions belong together. It is possible to offer an answer to one without addressing the others, but any such answer will necessarily have implications for the other four.
These questions cannot be answered either by theology or by history alone, but require a combination of history and theology to provide any reasonable answer.

The historical fixed points are:
1. Second Temple Judaism
2. About 100 ad the existence of a vibrant and growing Christian Church.
Between these two points we have the life and death of Jesus, the beginnings and expansion of the early Church and the writing of the Gospels. N T Wright is correct to challenge us that any account of Jesus must address all of these points.

The rejection of history as important in the study of Jesus has been made in a number of ways. Amongst others Bultmann rejected the Jesus of history as compromising the Christ of faith. One should encounter Jesus afresh in the existential moment of encounter and there is no need for a Jesus of history. A certain type of piety also rejects the Jesus of history, this is done for faith, or as it is claimed to promote faith, we approach the Gospels, and other New Testament writings with faith and when challenged by history retreat into a form of faith which rejects all need for evidence from history.
Both of these forms of rejecting history are themselves to be rejected.

Our Christian faith rests upon the history of God’s work of Salvation in and through Jesus Christ his Son, who is this Jesus of history. This Jesus must recognisably be located within second Temple Judaism and there must be in his life and death something of such significance as to explain the growth and expansion of the Church within just a few decades of his death.

The possible sixth question is, ‘So what?’ Why after all these years are we still bothering with Jesus? Why is it we can leave him alone and carry on without him? What difference does a historical account of Jesus, his life and death make? Or, what difference would an historical account that disproved the Gospels historical claims make? These are questions that thinking disciples of the Lord Jesus cannot fail to address.

I'm re reading N T Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God. If you haven't read it then give it a try, it is well worth it.

His section on Burton L Mack (and the Question of Q) pages 35-44 is interesting as it connects with a post on reading the bible I made earlier.

Wright suggests that Mack has allowed his antipathy towards late 20th Century American Christianity colour his reading of the gospel of Mark in a major way. Mack reconstructs a Jesus who resembles a 'Cynic sage, spinning aphorisms designed to subert his hearers social and cultural worlds' (p. 37) Mack achieves this by excluding from his consideration of Jesus any material that is apocalyptic or eschatological. Well if you leave out half the gospel material no wonder you end up with a view of Jesus quite different from that presented in the gospels!

In my earler post - On Bible Reading, Sat 7 March - I was challenging that way of reading the bible which ignores passages or material which the reader doesn't like, or doesn't want to submit to. One of my Professors, the late Bob Carroll, was fond of saying 'Read the text', all of the text. If at the end of an exposition there was surplus text left lying on the table Bob would be hugely critical. (And those who knew Bob would not know him as a conservative Biblical scholar!).

We simply cannot read the parts of the bible we want to read and ignore all the rest and then claim to be scholarly, or historical, or whatever. This is not to exclude the valuable work of textual criticism which highlights for us passages we should rightly be suspicious of, e.g. the endings of Mark's gospel. What the Church has always needed is a commitment from her members to the whole word of God: to read with faith and reverence, to study with all the tools and ability God has given us, to obey in lives given to following this Jesus who is both Christ and Lord.

An Excellent Book For Easter Reading

I've just finished reading this book, Jesus, The Final Days, by Craig Evans and Tom Wright in the last five minutes and wanted to share how good a book I found it to be.

Not a long book, just 107 pages plus a short index, only three chapters based on lectures given in the Symposium for Church and Academy at Crichton College, Memphis, Tennessee.

Two chapters, on death of the Lord Jesus and the burial of the Lord Jesus by Craig Evans and one on the resurrection of the Lord Jesus by Tom Wright.
Both these rightly respected scholars offer a historical opinion on the events of Easter, asking about these central elements, did they happen? After so many years of Enlightenment hubris it is exciting to read two such able scholars and historians dealing with the historical evidence and showing that historically the death, the burial and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus are credible, if not more than that!

History is important, as Tom Wright comments, 'The "truth" of the crucifixion story would be totally undermined if it could be proved that Jesus died of pneumonia in Galilee, even though of course the crucifixion sets of all kinds of metaphorical resonances in the minds of people ancient and modern. And the "truth" of the resurrection story is like that too. If it didn't happen, it isn't true.' (page 103-104, emphasis added)

If it didn't happen, it isn't true. Let's give thanks to our God that he has raised up in his Church and for his world such scholars to give us great assurance in the events of our salvation. Let us with joy and confidence celebrate the festival as we remember all that our Lord Jesus did for us in those final days.