(Continued from Part One)

Can we talk about Wright’s idea of Israel still being in exile now?

OK, we should probably get back to that.  Part of Wright’s offense, as it were, is that he does real covenant theology; which means, he understands that the God revealed in the Bible is a God who is bound to an identifiable and visibly-marked out people or society.  As you might have noticed, both those two parables I mentioned to you involve a more “corporate” emphasis than is often realized.

This corporate  emphasis has commonly been linked–in Wright’s writings and in the minds of his critics–with the claim that Israel had never really returned from exile and that Jesus was finally announcing the real return from exile for the nation.  Basically, in Wright’s understanding, the prophecy of Moses in Deuteronomy 30, and re-asserted by Jeremiah and Ezekiel had not yet been fulfilled, even though Israel had been brought back from exile and given the land.

Is this related to that weird interpretation of the Prodigal Son in his Jesus & the Victory of God?

Oh, puh-leeeze!  That insight that the Prodigal Son story would remind listeners of the return from exile is extremely helpful and convincing.  Ever since childhood I have wondered about the weird metaphor that simply appears without warning, “he was dead, and is alive.”  Wright showed me where the concept came from, the return from exile as prophesied in Ezekiel and Isaiah.  The description of the prodigal going to and returning from “a far country” is important.

Well now it sound like you agree that Israel was in exile.

No, Israel was in deep trouble like they had never been before.  They were in Egypt and Babylon, only worse, even though they were geographically in the land.  But just like there is no reason to claim that Israel had never really left Egypt, so there was no reason to believe that Israel never left Babylon.  They had been delivered from Egypt and then they had been delivered from the nations as Moses predicted in Deuteronomy 30, but they had fallen from that greater grace into greater sin.  You look in vain for any time before when Israel was filled with demoniacs the way it was when Jesus came.  Precedents like the spirit tormenting Saul only emphasize how much worse off Israel now was when Jesus appeared on the scene.

Any evidence you want to share with us against Wright’s interpretation?

I have already mentioned Wright’s excellent insight into Matthew 12.43-45, which says that Israel had been cleansed of a demon in the past and was now worse off than before.  Maccabees simply does not cut it as a possible explanation.  The demon was sent away when Israel was again in the land.  But I think Mark 11.17 is also inexplicable unelss the promises of return have been fulfilled.  Jesus says that the Temple should be a house of prayer for all the nations.  He is quoting Isaiah 56.7 which, in context, is probably usually understood as a prophecy of the New Covenant.  But it is not.  Jesus thinks it is already in effect and that the Temple rulers have fallen away from it.

So there was a return from Exile but there was, in a sense, another fall into a different sort of exile.

Right, and this one was worse than the others.  Israel was truly free from idolatry in one sense.  Unlike the Prophets, Jesus never has to denounce the Israelites for their shrines to Baal or unauthorized image-shrines to YHWH.  But something worse has happened.  Critics are right to disagree with Wright, but they are wrong if they think this undermines his point obout Jesus socio-political message?

Socio-political?

This is another point where Wright’s insights are blindingly obvious and yet I’d been entirely blind to them.  The temple was going to be destroyed as a national judgment–but judgment for what?  The Gospels are stuffed with information about that issue, but it all gets lost in a preacher’s felt need to present a view where people don’t think they need propitiation and Jesus is telling them that they do.

Does N. T. Wright believe in the need for propitiation.

Yes, he clearly does.  In his commentary on Romans he makes this clear.  In his lectures on Romans at Regent College in Vancouver, B. C. he ripped into the NIV for not using the term “propitiation” in their translation of Romand 3.25.

So the doctrine of propitiation is not lost on this second look at what the Gospels are saying.

No, not at all. The point is that Jesus was confronting the whole nation over unrepentant sin–sin which they had managed to convince themselves was holiness.  There are several places and ways to show this, but since you asked about propitiation, lets talk about the accusation that sent Jesus the cross.  What does Jesus say to the women weeping over him as he goes to the cross?  He tells them quite directly the he is being crucified for a charge of which he is innocent, but that in a generation, Jerusalem’s children will be so obviously guilty of that accusation that they will be crucified and more.

And this is backed up by the whole choice between Jesus and another “son of the father” Barabbas.  Barabbas is a “robber”–the same word used to describe the two people Jesus is crucified between and also used by Jesus when he claims the Temple has been made into a “robber’s den.  A robber, however, is not someone who steals, but an outlaw rebel.  Barabbas, we are told in the Gospels is an insurrectionist and a murderer.

This is going to show how Jesus’ challenge was socio-political?

Yes.  Jesus came preaching the Kingdom, which everyone already wanted and expected.  But Jesus told them they were preparing for this Kingdom in a way that was only making God angrier with them.  Israel loved outlaw killers and thought they looked more like the hope of Israel than Jesus did.  As we have already discussed, Jesus told his generation that, unless they repented, they too would be killed by Roman soldiers and many more Jerusalemites would be destroyed by tumbling buildings.

Israel had adopted as a national way of life a stance toward the world and toward how to live in it that was not Her true calling.  As a nation formed by God for a mission, this covenant calling was, by definition, socio-political.  Jesus was coming and proclaiming a new way of life that was appropriate to God’s calling on Israel.  Jesus was calling for a re-defined “Politics of Holiness.”

To be continued