Wright’s public conversation about which god, if any, is the true God who made and is responsible for the world centers from beginning to end on the New Testament documents and how they can possibly be accounted for.
N. T. Wright introduces his subject by retelling the parable of the wicked tenants and the vineyard. The NT documents are the vineyard and the question is who are the proper tenants, who the proper landlord, and what the proper rent. (BTW, this is all massively based on memory; I simply don’t have time to do serious book reviews these days.) He spends a large part of the book dealing with philosophical issues regarding scholarship in general and the history of first-century Palestine in particular. He advocates “critical realism.” “Critical” refers to the fact that there are no “neutral” observers of brute data, contrary to the enlightenment myth of rational scholarship. “Realism” refers to the contention that the world really exists and that we all live in it and can, in principle, talk about it and even be challenged by one another. The consequence of “critical” is that we must not only allow, but expect, a scholar’s basic values and commitments to affect his perceptions and conclusions. The consequence of “realism” is that it is still worth talking to him about what really happened to Jesus.
There is some great stuff here about worldviews and how stories are basic to them, but I don’t trust myself to summarize it.
Wright’s basic question is, given what we know about ancient Christianity and ancient Judaism, how do we account for the birth of the Church? The idea is to work back to Jesus as a middle term between first-century Judaism and late-first century Christianity. Wright, thus spends a great deal of time analyzing the basic similarities and differences between Judaism and the Church.
One of Wright’s most helpful points is his summarizing of the Jewish worldview. He is able to reduce it to a few points without at all seeming reductionistc. The basic points are creational monotheism, eschatology, and election.
Creational monotheism distinguishes Israel’s theology from pantheism and polytheism. There is one God who created and is responsible for all things.
Several points strike me as memorable and worth passing on here.
First, this is a political slogan as much as a theological doctrine (think of the riot in Ephesus and the chant, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians”). Monotheism means God is king and Caesar is not. (Thus the similarity and difference with the Church’s gospel, which is, “Jesus is Lord” and Caesar is not.) For Israel in the first century this entailed a variety of disputes, riots, outlaw bandits, and outbreaks, and ultimately outright war with the pagan world empire Rome (another note of dissimilarity: while we see similare accusations on the part of Rome against Christians, we see a much differnet view of social ethics).
Second, God’s unity never precluded the possibility of Trinitarian theology. It was a unity over against all other powers, real or imagined, not a unity within God’s substance or personality.
Third, it entails comprehensive providence. While God could do obvious miracles Wright shows that all Jews viewed ordinary events in history as also God’s work, including both natural occurences and human decisions.
Fourth, it entails that God is committed to doing something about the presence of evil in the world, which leads us to the next part of Israel’s world view.
I wanted to ask you about your interpretation of Wright, if I may. It seems, in some of Wright’s work, that he both questions and, in places, outrightly denies that Jesus either was or saw Himself as “the second member of the Trinity.” He openly denies the Christological formulations of the basic creeds (such as Chalcedon) where they speak of Christ’s divinity and Wright often refers to Christ as “in some sense, on God’s side of the equation.”
Do you think that Wright would say of himself that he agrees with and holds to an “orthodox” Christology (as that has been most often understood and championed in the history of the Church)?
I saw you make that claim elsewhere. You’re just wrong. Wright does affirm the basic creeds and does affirm that Jesus was “the second member of the Trinity.” I’ll deal with Wright’s view of Jesus’ understanding of his identity when I write about the second “big book,” Jesus & the Victory of God.
Believe me, Mr. Horne, I would be happy to hear that I am wrong and it is certainly possible that I am… but, if you would, as you are explaining his view of Christ’s divinity and His view of Himself, would you help me to understand why Wright said the following:
“. . .forget the pseudo-orthodox attempts to make Jesus of Nazareth conscious of being the second person of the Trinity; forget the arid reductionism that is the mirror-image of that unthinking would-be orthodoxy.” (http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Historical_Jesus.htm)
“After fifteen years of serious historical Jesus study, I still say the creed ex animo; but I now mean something very different by it, not least by the word “god” itself.”
(http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_JIG.htm)
I do not want to misrepresent Wright, to be sure. Yet, I must respect him enough to speak of him as he has already spoken himself. When Wright denies that Jesus had “a human body but a divine mind,” I must ask whether he disagrees with Christ’s statements about the perpetual unity of His mind with the Father’s. Any help in this would be greatly appreciated as I am receiving conflicting perspectives on Wright.
Thank you so much.
First quotation: I did say I would deal with this when I came to the book about Jesus, right?
Second quotaton, the “very different” meaning of Wright has nothing to do with a denial of chalcedonian orthodoxy.
As far as the unity of Christ’s mind with the Father’s, the Word of God is quite clear that Jesus grew in wisdom and knowledge, and that he was ignorant as a man of some of the Father’s plans about the day of judgment. I’m not signing onto everything that Wright says here, but plainly some sort of ignorance with respecting Jesus’ human nature is compatible with Jesus’ claim of “perpetual unity” with the mind of the Father.
But again, I’d prefer to talk about one thing at a time.
Human body + divine mind is Apollinarianism, not orthodoxy.
Thank you very much for the response, Mr. Horne. I appreciate that you are taking the time to discuss this and I look forward to the next entry in your blog.
There was only one thing that should be pointed out, for the sake of clarity…
When N. T. Wright spoke of saying “the creed” but using the words to express a “very different” meaning, he wasn’t talking about Chalcedon. He was referring to the Nicene creed which is what Anglicans regularly recite.