I just took a silly quiz for fun about the type of Christian a person is. You could be like Billy Graham, Joel Olsteen, "Bishop" Spong (I so hoped I wasn't a Christian(?) like he is!) etc. My result listed a lot of people I'd never heard of except Bishop Wright. What do you think of him? Would you call him orthodox?
I would like to take that quiz. I haven't read N.T. Wright, but I have heard him referenced when someone wants to say something that goes right up to the line, but doesn't quite cross it.
Hmmm... I can't remember the specific site, but I'm sure you'll see that quiz if you Google something like Christianity quiz.
This?https://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/christianity/quiz/what-kind-of-christian-are-you.aspx I got N.T. Wright and Tim Keller. I have read Wright’s biography of Paul and it was OK.
I read his book on St. Paul also (well, part of it) and I agree with you, "it was ok". But I've heard a lot of really good things about his book on the Resurrection But you are a principled and orthodox Anglican, @Stalwart. What do you think of his orthodoxy?
A Brian McLaren Christian A.k.a. a Rob Bell, Phyllis Tickle, N.T. Wright, Tim Keller, Eugene Peterson Christian. . . Your Christian history is rooted in St. Francis, who leads (through Gandhi) to Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King, Jr. You emphasize social justice as an element of God's kingdom. You might be "emergent" or "progressive," but you're probably post-evangelical. I'm insulted. I think the emergent movement is nonsense and I'm no progressive. But then, I think this quiz is geared to an evangelical audience and I'm not that either. Some of the questions lacked a satisfactory answer.
Thanks for the mention. For me N.T. Wright is famous for two reasons: 1. He was extremely good on the Historicity of Jesus in the 80s and 90s. Namely, proving the historical veracity of the New Testament, and specifically the historic fact of our Lord's existence, which he demonstrated even to a bitter skeptic. Believe it or not, it is actually very difficult to prove the existence of historical figures, and as early as the mid-1800s were have seen arguments raised that Christ's existence can't be factually demonstrated; perhaps it could be that he was an apocryphal legendary figure 'written in' to unite the later Christian community. N.T. Wright pretty definitively annihilates this thesis, so that after his work it is no longer possible to question the facts of the New Testament as historical facts. And that there was a man called Jesus Christ, whose existence is more verifiable than that of Julius Caesar. 2. However he went off the deep end with the "New Perspective on Paul" in the 90s and the 2000s, trying to reformulate from scratch -- from scratch -- what St. Paul meant by justification, arguing that the Church has misunderstood him and his whole era, for the last 2000 years. He has been severely chastened by other scholars following the issue of his first inflamatory book on this subject, and his last book on the "New Perspective" basically walks back the claims he made in the first book. I don't know where he is with that now, if he fully retracted his hypothesis or not. But it tarred my reputation of him. So in short, he is excellent on natural law and scientific evidence; and is pretty terrible on dogmatic theology. He's also made some comments on the crises in Anglicanism, when he was a Bishop of Durham: if I'm not mistaken he came out against gay marriage, but in favor of women priests. Maybe he was given no choice by the pagan mafia running the UK government, but still, he is not an authoritative interpreter of the Scriptures to me (he did resign from the bishopric shortly thereafter). I wouldn't read him on anything that concerned the faith. He is great on history and science though, so if you know anyone who still doubts the facts of the New Testament, just throw an N.T. Wright at them and sit back in satisfaction.
I didn't think that was a very accurate description of me, either. I'm only progressive on a few political items (mostly because of my Christian faith). I do like St. Francis, Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King Jr. but don't know that much about Ghandi. What's "post-evangelical" mean?
Thank you for that complete analysis. I knew I could count on you! Hopefully, the reason I wasn't wild about the book of his on St. Paul (New Perspective I think) is that I didn't feel I could trust him. I'll remember what you said about his writing on dogmatic theology! That's very helpful. I do love history tho' so if I find book of his on that, I'll read it. And I won't look to him for Scriptural exegesis. Interesting!
I don't think N.T. Wright is particularly original. He is really a second generation author on the new perspective on Paul. The whole approach is something of a synthesis of the ideas of C.H. Dodd on 'realized eschatology' and the Christocentric emphasis of Karl Barth. Dodd and Barth had a common link in having both studied under the notorious liberal Adolf von Harnack. The new perspective is a rejection of Reformed theology but a return to the emphasis on the kingdom found in the Fathers up until close to the advent of Scholasticism. N.T. Wright is a notable author in the study of partial preterism as well.
It's disappointing that N.T. Wright is such a poor author, except on a few things. I've enjoyed listening to some of his interviews.
I have a different take. The New Perspective has a number of components in it. You're looking at NP's emphasis on the covenantal community, and how everything has to revolve around that. So far so good, but there's nothing new or dramatic about that. Anglicanism has always had that built in. On top of the 'covenantal' emphasis, he wanted to redefine the very concept of Justification away from the meaning it has today of imputed righteousness. Wright (and the other theologians in the New Perspective) thought that St. Paul's theology had to be cardinally reformulated. What was their reasoning? The seemingly plausible discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which they assumed was the foundational framework that St. Paul (also a Jew himself) would have thought in. They thought that our understanding of the Scriptures was tainted by "foreign" classical concepts, and thus all theologians for the last 2000 years are tainted and have missed St. Paul's "actual" and "pure" meaning. The biggest targets for their attacks were the Reformation theologians who they claimed were 100% wrong and misinterpreted a fundamentally "judaic" theology using alien terms and concepts. In short, the entire medieval and modern edifice of theology (they argued) should be swept away. There are only a few problems with that: concepts like Justification were not somehow created at the Reformation. Nor was Justification's definition as "imputed righteousness" very original, or much contested by anyone. These concepts literally go back to Luther's Roman Catholic teachers, and further back to Aquinas, and then to Anselm, and further back St. Augustine and finally to the Scriptures themselves: not only St. Paul's writings, but the Old Testament: "And this is the Name whereby they shall call him, The LORD our Righteousness" (Jer. 23.6). Following Harnack, the "New Perspective" theologians looking at the Dead Sea Scrolls thought they found a treasure trove of judaic philosophy/theology untainted by classical concepts, and that St. Paul was in that mold as well. However, this antithesis between judaic and classical thought itself is an artificial construct itself was only formulated 100 years ago by Adolf von Harnack (the famous Athens vs. Jerusalem thesis). It has no precedent or pedigree in the history of the Church, and was never even countenanced by any of our doctors or divines. You have the jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria writing many books on Plato and Aristotle; you have the (jewish) historian Josephus writing classical history; you have St. John the Evangelist (a Jew) with his (classical) language of the Logos. The Scriptures themselves assume a fusion of judaism and classicism that Harnack rejected. In short, I would argue that the New Perspective thesis is a castle in the sky built entirely on assumptions of proud and vain academics living in Late Modernity. The New Perspective argument fell apart, once more scholarship was done and more people showed that the NP assumptions were completely without any foundation: the Dead Sea Scrolls in fact weren't authoritative for St. Paul. the Dead Sea Scrolls actually weren't against classicism. concepts like Justification understood during the Reformation always had that meaning, even in the NT, and even in the OT itself. the Harnack thesis of "Athens vs. Jerusalem" is factually wrong. the Harnack thesis (like any other "deep captivity" thesis) is a direct affront against the Holy Ghost.
Lousy quiz. Many of the questions needed more answer choices; I sometimes had to choose which answer was least imperfect. And none of the Bible choices matched mine (I prefer MEV or KJV). Putting the NKJV and NIV together as one choice was utterly ridiculous; they are miles apart!