A Friend I Once Had, And The Dogmatic Principle

(The latest on) Why I Like N.T. Wright

As I sat in my class today at seminary, our instructor was reading a quote from Wright (not wanting to dig it up "Wright" now...hehe) about how perhaps picking our "theme verses" and putting them on coffee cups, calendars, etc. seems to contradict our claim our claim that it is the Word of God. By de-contextualizing it, we are trivializing it. What a brilliant point. Some people now have a coherent, defensible reason for why they always found that so irritating:) Yea for you. If that weren't enough, I was reflecting on why I enjoyed Jesus and the Victory of God so much, and I figured it out: Wright's view of Jesus and the Gospels in that book is the Frank Herbert Version of the story. Have you read Dune? (Frank Herbert's master-work, the very definition of science fiction, and likely in the top 50 fiction books in English of all time--about a messianic warrior-king who rules humanity in the bleak distant future--read it!) With Wright, (like Herbert) you get all the machinations, the power-plays, the edgy human story. Jesus--being really human, but not only so--is fully aware of the expectations of the people, the politics of the day, and he speaks his message not over those things but through them, even as he aimed to correct much of it. Wright seems to say, 'Assuming the New Testament is a true accounting of what Jesus said and did, here are the things going on around him that might make us see it differently, and better.' Many have tried this, but frankly, not without a predetermined mission to undercut orthodox Christianity. And that changes the task for the better. Other people--like critical scholars, for example--might accuse him of a 'believer's bias,' but the reply seems to be, 'Don't we owe the authors of the NT text that bias, if we are to respect them as people?' Isn't that the one great gift of that loose collection of deconstructionisms called postmodernism? The NT authors had an aim; so? Is this new? Why is this text somehow more invalid than anything else we bother to study since we saw the flaws in positivism? Could it be because it's Christianity? Pascal's Wager is a little too true right now, eh? There's an awful lot riding on this hand for the non-Christian, and you just went "all-in" with 2-9 off-suit. Bigger problem: Jesus is the dealer, and he just dealt the common cards as 4 Kings and an Ace. His meaning: "I'm the King of all Kings, and if you miss the boat, it's over for you, Ace." I'm willing also to hold fire on Wright's contributions to the New Perspectives on Paul, for the simple reason that Wright's motivation seems to be to combat individualism, a worthy goal, even if I conclude that he's basically wrong. (Seems awfully soon to say anyway.) Remember, many people are asking us to reconsider how we read Paul, some orthodox and some not. As for evangelicals who were freaking out about JVG (I had heard that he denied Jesus' Messianic self-awareness) I went looking for this, and if anything, Wright says the opposite. Ask yourself this question: Who is this audience? It's Crossan, (Jesus Seminar) et al. If he writes such a book like (with the utmost deferrence I speak here) Chuck Swindoll, guess where this 'scholarly' opus will end up. In Mr. Crossan's recycle bin, that's where. (BTW, he was so gracious to Crossan and his book that I must read it; he said paraphrase that D. Crossan was incapable of speaking a dull word or writing a dull paragraph, and Wright wished everyone had opponents as gracious as Crossan. Wow.) I say to my brothers in Christ: What are we afraid of, anyway? We invented scholarship! Unless Jesus lied (um, no) true historical inquiry will vindicate Him. Right? Right? Even More Opinionated Sidebar: Christian college/high school/"Christian education"=probable weak faith. "I'll take 'Anti-Intellectualism' for $1000, Alex!" Homeschooling: depends. How gutsy are you? American Christians want Intelligent Design taught in public schools. WHY?!? We should become experts on Darwinism/neo-Darwinism/latest stupidious suppression of truth, not make others learn our thinly-veiled dogma. OK. Rant over. I've got "Tom" Wright's back for the forseeable future, is all I can say.