N.T. Wright's theological DNA, part 1

 

A rogue among the Reformed?[1]

     “…Like it or not, we are embarked on a pilgrimage[2] in theology and cannot determine exactly where it will lead and how it will end.”  Thus spoke Clark H. Pinnock (1937 – 2010), the acknowledged leader of postconservative evangelical theology.[3]  Since evangelicalism has never had a distinctive theology, those evangelicals for whom the articulation of a coherent theology was important have usually turned to the Reformed tradition for their dogmatic identity.[4]  However, some now claim that the Reformed hegemony[5] in formal evangelical theology is at an end.[6]  Indeed, in approximately the past quarter-century, many New Testament scholars and theologians have emphasised the need for a distinctly “evangelical” theology which will engage postmodernity and will be explicitly biblical with a “Jesus-focused, gospel-centred vision of God and God’s kingdom”[7] which will take seriously both Scripture’s narrative character[8] and “missiological” thrust.[9]  N.T. Wright is one of the pilgrims on “the way” towards the articulation of a theology which is “evangelical” – not merely in the sense of shoring up the identity of one particular sub-branch within Protestantism – but rather in the sense of enabling the church catholic to fulfill, in light of the scriptural narrative, its mission in this world, the world that the Trinitarian God has made and has promised to re-make.

     During the past twenty-five years, a new cult figure has emerged from within the world of New Testament scholarship.  Tom Wright has been acclaimed as both “the most important” NT scholar in the world today[10] and apologist for the Christian faith since C.S. Lewis[11].  Though he was born, raised and educated in England, Wright has strong ecumenical appeal[12] on both sides of the Atlantic and is a frequent guest lecturer in many American universities.  However, despite his international cult following, Wright has not, perhaps unsurprisingly, managed to avoid controversy.  An unashamed “evangelical”[13] who strives to integrate his faith and his scholarship,[14] Wright still manages to draw literary fire from many conservative Protestants who perceive his exegetical work on the letters of Paul to be undermining the very foundations of the Reformation, not to mention the “gospel” itself![15]  And yet, Wright’s insistence on the authority of the Bible leads to some labeling him a fundamentalist.[16]  Indeed, Wright has often had difficulty in having his views accepted even within his native evangelical Anglicanism.[17]  Wright is indeed a prolific writer, and no aspect of his work has proved to be as controversial, especially among evangelicals in the Reformed tradition, as his perspective on justification by faith[18] in the letters of Paul.  Despite what might appear at first blush as impeccable evangelical credentials[19], Wright is considered all the same by many in the Reformed tradition to be somewhat of a “rogue theologian”[20].  New Testament scholar Michael Bird often plays the role of peacekeeper in the “war[21] being waged in evangelicalism about justification, the New Perspective on Paul[22], and N.T. Wright”.[23]

We will briefly recount some of the key moments of Wright’s “formative period” (approx. 1970 – 1990), and thus see how both Lesslie Newbigin and Brian Walsh influenced Wright’s thought during his student years as well as the period during which the idea of his multi-volume project (Christian Origins and the Question of God: COQG)[1] began to gestate.[2]  This series of academic works purports to be a complete historical-literary-theological analysis of Jesus, Paul and the Gospels as well as the hermeneutical ramifications of all this for “tomorrow’s” [3]church.[4]  The volumes of this series are indeed Wright’s theological legacy and constitute the primary context for the discussion of any aspect of his thought.[5]  We will consider Wright’s understanding of the nature of his multi-volume series as well as its underlying missiological emphasis and how Wright pursues a double objective throughout the series: firstly, to ground the NT in first-century history and secondly, to equip the church for mission in the 21st century world, a world that strangely resembles that of the apostle Paul.[6]

1. Man on a mission: Wright’s project of “New Testament Missiology”
   1. The making of a missional theologian

     So who is Tom Wright?  Which thinkers helped shape his theological vision?  How did the categories of “story”, “worldview” and “mission” come to determine his (idiosyncratic?) reading of the New Testament?  We suggest that Wright’s vision was crafted in the period between the early 1970’s and the early 1990’s.  It would appear that at the dawn of the 20th century’s final decade, Wright’s thought was fully formed[1] and from that point on, Wright has simply been fleshing out the vision which he had unveiled in a popular-level 1992 publication entitled Bringing the Church to the World: Renewing the Church to Confront the Paganism Entrenched in Western Culture[2], where all of his subsequent thought about Jesus in his historical context and the relevance of this for the contemporary church is contained in nuce.[3]  Already in this early publication, we witness Wright’s desire to engage contemporary culture with his New Testament scholarship.

1. Newbigin’s vision for “mission” to a paganized western world

     As far as missiology is concerned, Wright is to be numbered among the disciples of Lesslie Newbigin[4] (1909-98), the Scottish missionary-bishop to India who became, following his “retirement”, the “missiologist to the West”.  Newbigin founded “The Gospel and our Culture”[5] movement in the 1980’s with the objective of (re-)evangelizing post-Enlightenment Western culture.  Among the perceived problems with much evangelistic activity undertaken by Westerners was the fact that missionaries would often undertake cross-cultural work all the while being unaware that the “gospel” they were proclaiming was thoroughly shaped by their own context.[6]  Hence the importance of contextualization – i.e. being aware, not only of one’s own cultural assumptions, which often colour one’s understanding of the gospel, but also of what “the gospel” meant in the world of the first century as it was proclaimed by Jesus, Paul and the early Christians.

     The epistemology of critical realism that Wright expounds in The New Testament and the People of God is heavily indebted to the work of Newbigin (among others[7]).  Newbigin argued for an integrated epistemology that would allow Christians to proclaim the gospel as public truth,[8] in a way that would be credible in a post-Enlightenment Western world where religion has been privatized and where a sharp distinction had been made between “facts” (i.e. science) and “values” (i.e. religion).[9]  As he develops his theory of critical realism, Wright follows closely Newbigin’s use of Peter Berger’s notion of “plausibility structures” and Newbigin’s insistence on the importance of understanding the concept of “worldview” in order to communicate the Christian message.[10]  Newbigin rejected the claim of modernity that it was impossible to believe the Christian message in a world that had witnessed the invention of the light bulb (pace Bultmann)[11] and insisted that it was the nature of one’s worldview[12] (not the reality of modern science) that would determine whether or not the gospel made sense, i.e. seem plausible or compelling.

     Most of Wright’s proposals for evangelism and mission are derived from Newbigin – Wright’s rhetoric about the church’s mission being that of planting “signposts” of the kingdom of God in the world,[13] his mantra that “the church must be for the world what Jesus was for Israel”[14], the importance of Christian “social action” as being the necessary context for the proclamation of the gospel,[15] the emphasis on the “public” nature of the gospel,[16] the Bible as being a story that Christians must “indwell”[17] – all of these ideas (and more) can be found within Newbigin’s retirement publications.  Consider this excerpt from Newbigin’s 1986 book, Foolishness to the Greeks, where, commenting on postmodern Western culture, he affirms:

“The result [of the Enlightenment] is not…a secular society.  It is a pagan society, and its paganism, having been born out of the rejection of Christianity, is far more resistant to the gospel than the pre-Christian paganism with which cross-cultural missions have been familiar.  Here, surely, is the most challenging missionary frontier of our time.”[18]

     We think that this is the closest thing to a “mission statement” for Wright’s entire theological project that one can hope to find.[19]  By looking at Wright’s early publications, and by considering those authors with whom he was collaborating at the end of this “formative period”, one can infer the missional vision that has been driving his theological project ever since.

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[1] Cf. Wright’s remarks in 2013 about his views on Paul not having substantially changed since 1978: Pauline Perspectives, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013, p. xvii; cf. http://ntwrightpage.com/Wright_My_Pilgrimage.htm (accessed December 21, 2015), where Wright lists John Stott, Jim Packer and Michael Green as those (evangelical Anglican) thinkers who were especially influential in shaping his thought, though Wright acknowledges that he has gone beyond (behind?) them as he developed his own vision of the New Testament and the mission of today’s church.

[2] Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1992 (published in Britain as New Tasks for a Renewed Church); cf. http://ntwrightpage.com/Wright_My_Pilgrimage.htm (accessed December 21, 2015).  In the third-to-last paragraph, Wright explains how this book reflects “the most significant change of [his] theological life”.  Wright has recently re-issued this book under the title of Spiritual and Religious: The Gospel in an Age of Paganism, London: SPCK, 2017 [1992].

[3] The volumes of COQG, we believe, could also be (substantially) described as an expansion of the thought of G.B. Caird, as found in Caird, G.B. & L.D. Hurst, New Testament Theology, New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.  Caird, who passed away in 1984, was Wright’s doctoral supervisor.  Hurst, another former student of Caird’s, undertook to complete and publish the latter’s NT Theology posthumously.  In 1987, Hurst and Wright edited a Gedenkschrift in Caird’s memory: The Glory of Christ in the New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press).

[4] Interestingly, it was academic study of the Letter to the Romans that would turn out to be a point tournant in the spiritual and theological development of Newbigin: Weston, Paul, Ed. Lesslie Newbigin: Missionary Theologian – A Reader, Grand Rapids & Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2006, p. 5.

[5] http://www.gospel-culture.org.uk/autobiog.htm (accessed November 18, 2017).  Wright is listed as a patron of the movement: http://www.gospel-culture.org.uk/intro.htm (accessed November 18, 2017).  Among the “streams of reflection” mentioned on the Gospel and our Culture’s website is the kuyperian tradition, especially as mediated to evangelicalism via the work of Brian Walsh: http://www.gospel-culture.org.uk/resources.htm#gen (accessed November 18, 2017).

[6] Weston, Paul, Ed. Lesslie Newbigin: Missionary Theologian – A Reader, Grand Rapids & Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2006, pp. 107-8.

[7] E.g. Meyer, Ben F.  Reality and Illusion in New Testament Scholarship, Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1994.

[8] Cf. NTPG, pp. 41-42; idem, “Whence and whither Historical Jesus Studies in the Life of the Church?” in Perrin, Nicholas & Richard B. Hays, eds., Jesus, Paul & the People of God, Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2011, p. 127.

[9] Cf. Newbigin, Lesslie, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986, pp. 1-20; idem, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989, pp. 14-26.

[10] NTPG, pp. 32-34.

[11] “We cannot use electric lights and radios and…avail ourselves of modern medical and clinical means and at the same time believe in the spirit and wonder world of the New Testament”: New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1984), p. 4: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Demythologization (accessed July 26, 2018); cf. Bultmann, Rudolf, Jesus Christ and Mythology, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1958, pp. 35-44.

[12] Cf. Naugle, David K.  Worldview: The History of a Concept, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002, pp. 310-21.

[13] Wright, Surprised by Hope, New York: HarperOne, 2008, pp. 207-12; cf. Weston, Paul, Ed. Lesslie Newbigin, pp. 138-42.

[14] Cf. Weston, Paul, Ed. Lesslie Newbigin, p. 134.

[15] Ibid. p. 140.

[16] Cf. Newbigin, Lesslie, Truth to Tell, London & Grand Rapids: SPCK & Eerdmans, 1991, passim.

[17] Idem. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989, pp. 89-102, esp. 97-102.

[18] Idem. Foolishness to the Greeks, p. 20, (emphasis added); cf. Wright, Tom, Bringing the Church to the World, p. 12; cf. Weston, Paul, Ed. Lesslie Newbigin, p. 115, where Newbigin underlines the fact that Reformation theologies were a product and reflection of Christendom, i.e. the medieval synthesis.

[19] Cf. Begbie, Jeremy S. “The Shape of things to come?  Wright amidst emerging Ecclesiologies”, p. 203, where Begbie notes the affinity between the thought of Newbigin and Wright, especially regarding the church.

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[1] The first Volume, The New Testament and the People of God (NTPG), was published in 1992; Volume 2 (Jesus and the Victory of God: JVG) appeared in 1996, Volume 3 (The Resurrection of the Son of God: RSG) in 2003 and Volume 4 (Paul and the Faithfulness of God: PFG) in 2013, all published in the UK by SPCK and in the U.S.A. by Fortress Press.  Volumes 5 and 6 are forthcoming.

[2] In 1989, Wright would spend a summer sabbatical in Jerusalem, drafting what would become volumes 1, 2 and 4 of COQG; cf. NTPG, p. xix; the, at the time, unforeseen Volume 3 (RSG) would finally appear in 2003.

[3] As is the case, in Wright’s work, with most classic theological vocabulary, “church” is always spelled with a lower-case “c”: cf. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, Philadelphia: Fortress, 1992, p. xv where Wright offers a justification for his refusal to capitalize “god”.  However, Wright abandons this practice in Volume 4: Paul and the Faithfulness of God, p. 610.

[4] Cf. NTPG, pp. 11-28.

[5] Though he draws much flak from (mostly American) conservative Reformed evangelical quarters, Wright situates himself, for those with eyes to see, firmly within the neo-Calvinist (Kuyperian) tradition.

[6] Cf. Gorman, Michael J. Reading Paul, Eugene: Cascade Books, 2008, pp. 8-9; Bird, Michael F., Introducing Paul, Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2008, p. 170.

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[1] On the (perhaps) provocative subtitle of this thesis, cf. the words of Paul in Galatians 4.19.

[2] Cf. Wright’s reference to his own “pilgrimage”: http://ntwrightpage.com/2016/04/05/my-pilgrimage-in-theology/ (accessed July 6, 2018).

[3] Olson, Roger E. Pocket History of Evangelical Theology, Downers Grove: IVP, 2007, pp. 133-34.

[4] Cf. Holmes, Stephen R. “British (and European) evangelical theologies” in Larsen, Timothy & Daniel J. Treier, Eds.  The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology, New York: Cambridge, 2007, pp. 241, 255-56.

[5] Cf. the oft-heard (sneering) remark that all biblical theology is inherently “Calvinistic”.

[6] Vanhoozer, Kevin J. & Daniel Treier, Theology and the Mirror of Scripture, Downers Grove: IVP, 2015, pp. 34-5.

[7] Cf. a lecture given by Wright (2009) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1W2poQDtks (accessed July 8, 2018).

[8] Cf. the description of Clark Pinnock’s turn from traditional Reformed evangelicalism towards a pilgrim, narrative theology which prioritized the story of Scriptural revelation and which was suspicious of attempts at systematization: Olson, Roger E. Pocket History, 2007, pp. 132-38; cf. idem. The Journey of Modern Theology, Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2013, pp. 638-48.

[9] E.g. Pinnock, Clark H. Tracking the Maze, Eugene: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1990; Spykman, Gordon J.  Reformational Theology, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992; Bird, Michael F. Evangelical Theology, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013.

[10] Cf. Vreeland, Derek, Through the Eyes of N.T. Wright, U.S.A.: Doctrina Press, 2015, pp. 1-3.

[11] Schliesser, Benjamin, “Paul and the Faithfulness of God among Pauline Theologies” in Heilig, Christoph, J. Thomas Hewitt and Michael F. Bird, eds. God and the Faithfulness of Paul: a critical examination of the Pauline Theology of N.T. Wright, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017, p. 21 n. 1.

[12] Cf. Vreeland, Derek, Through the Eyes of N.T. Wright, p. 2.

[13] As early as 1980, Wright was calling for a new vision of what it meant to be an evangelical Anglican: Cf. Wright, Tom, “Evangelical Anglican Identity: The Connection between Bible, Gospel & Church (1980)” in Packer, J.I. & N.T. Wright, Anglican Evangelical Identity: Yesterday and Today, Vancouver, Regent College, 2008, pp. 73-120, esp. pp. 116-20; As an evangelical Anglican, Wright situates himself, broadly, within the Reformed tradition: http://alastair.adversaria.co.uk/?p=371 (accessed November 9, 2017).

[14] Cf. the remarks of R.B. Hays on the back cover of Book I of Wright, N.T. Paul and the Faithfulness of God, Philadelphia: Fortress, 2013: “…no one can grapple seriously with Wright’s readings without also being brought face to face with the world-transforming message that Paul proclaimed”; cf. Stephen Neill’s description of the work of NT theologians: “…they are concerned with the issue of revelation.  Who is the God who speaks and shows himself in the New Testament? …In the light of this manifestation, how do we understand the world in which we live, how do we understand ourselves, our society, our destiny? …The New Testament is concerned with proclamation.  It is a kerygma, the loud cry of a herald authorized by a king to proclaim his will and his purpose to his subjects…When the New Testament scholar has done his utmost in his sphere, his work remains lifeless, until it is transformed into the living voice of proclamation… from generation to generation, the New Testament has taken on new life, as the ancient words have asserted their relevance in every changing scene of human existence, have clothed themselves afresh in human understanding, and have come home to the heart and conscience as challenge, enlightenment, and consolation”: cf. Neill, Stephen & Tom Wright, The Interpretation of the New Testament (1861-1986), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988 [1964], pp. 448-49 (emphasis original).  Indeed, as one reads Wright, it is not always easy to determine where historical exegesis ends and where proclamation begins!

[15] Although at times, Martin Luther’s definition of “the gospel” very closely resembles that of Wright: cf. Bird, Michael, The Saving Righteousness of God, Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2007, p. 69.

[16] Cf. Kuhrt, Stephen, Tom Wright for Everyone, London: SPCK, 2011, p. 10; cf. Wright’s remarks: “I have done my best to preach and pray as a serious historian; and do my historical work as a serious preacher and pray-er.  Result: some fellow historians call me a fundamentalist; some fellow believers call me a compromised pseudo-liberal”: quoted in Watling, Marlin, The Marriage of Heaven and Earth, Sandhausen: Marlin Watling, 2016, p. 11.

[17] Cf. Ibid., pp. 5-10.

[18] Cf. Eddy, Paul Rhodes et al., “Justification in Historical Perspective” in Beilby, James K. & Paul Rhodes Eddy, Eds.  Justification: Five Views, Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2011, p. 52.

[19] Wright clearly believes in the authority of Scripture and the Lordship of Jesus; his obviously rich, deep and personal faith shines through all of his published work, not to mention that he has written an 800-page book defending the reality of the bodily resurrection of Jesus (COQG 3).

[20] Cf. Vanhoozer’s remarks about C.S. Lewis: “He occupies that sparse territory between fundamentalists and modern critics that is contiguous to but does not coincide with Evangelicalism”: “On Scripture”, p. 82.

[21] Cf. Wright’s remarks about the New Perspective having led to (so far) “thirty-five years of trench warfare”: “Historical Paul and ‘Systematic Theology’”, p. 150.

[22] Wright takes credit (“Historical Paul and ‘Systematic Theology’”, p. 150) for being the first to use the term “New Perspective on Paul” in his 1978 Tyndale lecture, although there is debate as to whether it was he or James Dunn who first coined the phrase: cf. idem. Pauline Perspectives: Essays on Paul, 1978-2013, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013, pp. 3-20; cf. idem. Justification, p. 28 & Visscher, Gerhard H. Romans 4 and the New Perspective on Paul, New York: Peter Land, 2009, p. 1 n.1 who traces the genesis of the term to Dunn’s 1982 Manson Memorial Lecture; cf. Ibid. p. 19 n. 56.

[23] Bird, Michael, The Saving Righteousness of God, Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2007, p. 1.