As a Presbyterian, I have been helped by many scholars associated with the Anglican Church. The ministry of C. S. Lewis, for example, goes back to early childhood in my Baptist home. I have also been greatly helped by Austin Farrer, as anyone who reads my commentary on Mark’s Gospel will see.

Of course, both Lewis and Farrer have problems. Lewis managed to write a basic intro to the Christian Faith (Mere Christianity) that remains agnostic about how one should understand the atonement (though I’m told his personal convictions were better than this). Farrer I am sure had his own problems. I never bothered to find out much, but simply mined his Bible study for all the riches that could be found in it.

But better than both, I believe, because he is more orthodox, more insightful, and more contemporary, is the Jesus and Pauline scholar N. T. Wright, presently the bishop of Durham.

I began reading Wright in seminary-his two “big books” first. His New Testament and the People of God was absolutely astounding. I admit to getting slightly bored with the philosophical material (though it fit well with my “presuppositional” understanding of knowledge), but his New Testament introduction was simply riveting. No one had ever used the “background” material in so useful a way. It suddenly went from being something I had to learn to something I wanted to learn.

Of course, since Wright was “a British Evangelical,” I viewed him with a good deal of suspicion. I assumed his view of Scripture would be horrible and that he would have a great many other problems (a few years later I did see evidence that he espoused a view of Scripture that I believe failed to do justice to it or to his own use of it; but it took awhile). Farrer had insisted that the Bible did not teach propitiation, for example, so I was prepared for Wright to also join him and argue for expiation. Surely he would not fight for propitiation, I thought.  But he did.  In his lectures on Romans for Regent College he castigated the NIV for not using the word “propitiation” in Romans 3.

In my opinion, the first two books in his “Christian Origins and the Question of God” series should be read by just about everyone who reads books and is a Christian in the twenty-first century. But my reasons for this will have to await a later post.

TO BE CONTINUED