N.T. Wright

Focusing on the work of N.T. Wright, J. Louis Martyn, and Douglas Harink, in this essay I offer a theological analysis of the debate between salvation-historical and apocalyptic readings of Paul as a debate in Christology. I argue that in the end they are Christologically deficient in ironically similar ways: both positions conceive of Christ as accidental to the divine intent for creation, a notion that falls short of the robust Christology Paul adheres to. I offer an alternative that preserves both the notions of a salvific history and an apocalyptic revelation, but is also imbedded in what I call a supralapsarian Christology

Finding an answer to the question of how the God described in the Scriptures (who is saidto be omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent) could allow the amount of evil we see in the world, has been at the forefront of Christian apologetics throughout church history. One of the  primary reasons why this topic has had such staying power, is its apparent effectiveness in calling into question the existence of the God of the Bible. The early church fathers, such as Augustine and Origen, wrote theodicies that attempted to defend God’s character in light of the  problem of evil. This practice continued in the Scholastic Period, with theologians like Aquinas, and during the Reformation through Calvin and Luther. According to Michael C. Rae, “the  problem of evil has remained as one of the most important and widely discussed topics discussedin analytic philosophy of religion” over the past forty years. While many theologians believe that the development of theodicies is one of the best ways to defend the character and nature of God against these attacks, N. T. Wright holds a different position. He argues that “attempting to solve the philosophical problem of evil is an immature response to the existence of evil—a response that belittles the real problem of evil, which is just the fact that evil is bad and needs to  be dealt with.” If this point is carried to its logical conclusion, it would appear that N. T. Wright is arguing that what Rae said was the focus of analytical Philosophy for the last forty years, has  been a waste of time. Rae agrees with some of Wright’s points, but pushes back on his sweeping indictment against the development of theodicies.

N.T. Wright has offered a proposal to Christian philosophers where it is apparently possible to hold the belief in the intermediate state-resurrection of the body and an ontological holism in the same sense at the same time. I argue that this not only creates a basic contradiction in Wright's ontological paradigm, but also it is not a coherent and tenable proposal despite the fact one might eventually find a potential solution to such a quandary.

This article examines an influential conceptual trope in theology and biblical studies: the distinction between 'individualistic' and 'communal' orientations as a typology for distinguishing soteriological frameworks. This distinction has been widely deployed in Paul studies, in particular, where for decades it has been invoked in order to illuminate problems with traditional Protestant soteriologies. The present article clarifies and extends recent critiques of the 'individualism vs. communalism' trope by drawing on conceptual tools from the fields of social cognition and social emotion. It argues that in appealing to the 'individualism vs. communalism' trope Paul scholars have often been operating with unarticulated assumptions about the shaping effects of soteriological frameworks on Christian experience that are subject to analysis and critique. After identifying four such assumptions, conceptual tools psychologists have developed for understanding the experience of social relation between human and human-like agents are explicated. It is argued that these psychological resources can augment and extend recent suggestions by Susan Eastman, Volker Rabens, and others that individuality and relationality are mutually entangled rather than opposed in Paul. Finally, it is suggested that analyzing Paul's soteriology through the lens of relational experience and social emotion can open up new hermeneutical vistas for both theologians and biblical scholars.

This is a pre-publication draft of a chapter in Paradise Understood: New Philosophical Essays about Heaven, ed. T. Ryan Byerly and Eric J. Silverman (Oxford UP, 2017).

ABSTRACT: Many believe that life in heaven will be characterized by perfect joy. One common objection to this view is that if anyone will be suffering in hell, then the inhabitants of heaven either will experience certain negative emotions about those in hell, thus rendering their heavenly joy imperfect, or they won’t, thus revealing them to be unloving or otherwise deficient. Christian philosophers and theologians, represented here by Thomas Aquinas, C. S. Lewis, and N. T. Wright, have traditionally responded to this objection by denying that those in heaven will experience negative emotions and explaining why such emotions would be inappropriate. In light of the epistemic and moral value of affectively negative (painful) emotions, however, it is plausible that the inhabitants of heaven will experience some negative emotions—for example, heavenly sadness—about the suffering of those in hell and about past evils, without such emotions undermining their perfect heavenly joy.

A critical review of The Day the Revolution Began by Tom Wright.  Key words:  N T Wright, The Day the Revolution Began, critical review, atonement theology, OT narrative & allusion, propitiation, divine wrath, Gospels, substitutionary atonement, Wright’s treatment of the terms hilastērion and dikaiosynē, and the need for ‘whole Bible theology’.

An analysis and comparison of the Christology in Karl Barth's and N.T. Wright's respective Gifford Lectures, for a volume edited by Mitchell D. Mallary and Chris Tilling, responding to Wright's recently published *History and Eschatology: Jesus and the Promise of Natural Theology.*

Christian views on hell and final judgement have ranged greatly over the millennia and recent contributions are no different. In recent biblical literature, views of hell portrayed in nontraditional language and images have been espoused by a variety of significant theological voices, such as Karl Barth, C.S. Lewis, John Stott, and N.T. Wright. Such debate and division on these issues is simply not a modern issue either, for there were a diversity of views amongst the early church as well. The goal of this research project is straightforward: to summarize and synthesize the biblical perspectives reflected in the New Testament scriptures on this topic and survey the resulting interpretive positions around the issues of hell and final judgement. The purpose is thus to equip the reader to hear the range of textual voices, enable them to make an informed evaluation of the text for themselves, and to understand how others arrive at their own positions on this contentious topic.

(From the introduction by the editors:) Volker Rabens considers how Paul approached his mission, to make Christ known, in the urban settings of the first-century Roman Empire, analyzing how Paul chose the cities he visited and how he acted once he arrived in a city. Rabens argues that Paul was no mere pragmatist, but that his highly flexible practice and missiological principles were closely interlocked.
- Includes discussion of scholars such as Tom Wright, Rodney Stark, Thomas Robinson, Robert Sack, Ksenija Magda, Rainer Riesner -

The thrust of this article is to suggest that the theory of Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) as it has been constructed during and after the Reformation is problematic and needs to be reconstructed in order to be faithful to the witness of Scripture.

Bible scholars across the theological spectrum have noted the Apostle Paul's scarce use of the word metanoia and related repentance words in his Epistles. Given the prevalence of metanoia in Judaism and the teachings of John the Baptist and Jesus, the lack of this concept in Paul is puzzling. Many scholars have taken this to be indicative of Paul's diversion from the teaching of Christ or his establishment of a new understanding of salvation that ignores repentance altogether. However, the historical context of Paul's day hints at an alternate explanation. It seems clear that many Jews in the 1 st century had essentially equated metanoia with justification and a work that merits the acceptance of God. Because of this, Paul prefers to use the pistis concept when discussing justification and uses metanoia only when pistis would not precisely refer to the aspect of conversion or the Christian life that Paul was addressing.

N.T. Wright famously has claimed that historical study of Christian origins should be a vital, even constitutive resource for contemporary theology; consequently, the Bishop of Durham has criticized Karl Barth and other 20th century theologians for divorcing doctrinal theology from historical scholarship. Interpreting the theology of Paul, however, is another matter; both Barth and Wright have offered creative and provocative readings of the Apostle’s thought. Spanning the divide between the two thinkers in methodology, specialization, and situation, one finds striking parallels between their respective interpretations of Paul. In particular, both Wright and Barth read the Apostle as reinterpreting traditional ‘monotheistic’ notions of God in light of the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In what follows, I will illustrate some similarities and differences between Barth’s and Wright’s views on Paul, specifically by comparing their respective exegeses of the “Christ hymn” in Phil. 2:5-11. I will not evaluate their exegeses per se, but instead will focus on how they draw strikingly similar conclusions about the character of Jesus’ divinity and his salvific vocation. I will focus primarily on the first half of the Christ hymn, which depicts Jesus as the one who was and is eternally equal with God the Father but, in a radical movement of condescension and humility, assumes the form (morphē) of the fallen human servant (doulos) and carries out his vocation to his obedient suffering of death on the cross. I will only secondarily refer to the second movement of the Christ hymn (vv. 9-11) in which the crucified and risen Servant is exalted as the Lord (kyrios) over the cosmic powers. Wright, as I will show, preserves key Christological and soteriological motifs from Barth’s exposition while proposing a helpful correction of the latter’s interpretation of the Philippians passage. Both interpreters find in
Paul’s appropriation (or composition) of the Christ hymn the following theological claims: 1) The atonement between God and humanity occurs when, in the person of Jesus, God takes on human flesh in a free self-emptying (kenosis); 2) this descent of the Son into human flesh reaches a climax in Jesus’ obedience in facing death on the cross; 3) this occurs without detriment to Christ’s essential deity (as this is vindicated in his exaltation to the right hand of God).

(Follow the link below to navigate to the compete article at the Princeton Theological Review website.)

This chapter attempts what has been called—by one who knows well—an “impossible task.” It traces the major contours of Pauline scholarship over the last century and a half, with an emphasis on the present state of Pauline research. It is hoped that this sketch may lead to greater understanding of the apostle himself, and of the letters through which we principally know him.

At the heart of the Reformation is the doctrine of justification by faith. John Calvin writes: “Justification is the main hinge on which salvation turns." Is justification merely a legal fiction? Is it fundamentally a relational doctrine? Much debate has happened across the history of the church, and recent years has brought about lively dialogue which stems from a theological movement called the New Perspective on Paul. After first discussing the concept of justification in Paul’s letter to the Romans (3:21-26), we will then turn to the scholarly debates in which I will offer a definition that approximates combining both, and afterwards the basis and means of justification are discussed with a focused attention given to the benefits to the believer including time factors, fruits and assurance (4:1-5:11; 8.28-30, 36-39).

“Faith is a divine work of salvation ‘in us’ as well as ‘for us’ in the work of transformation and that the believer may behold God”
-D.H. Williams

N.T. Wright's understanding of the nature of the kingdom of God in Jesus' proclamation has been persuasive and significant. The present article engages Wright's presentation with respect to the particular question of the relationship to between the kingdom of God and Israel's Land promise. For all the focus on the Jewish context of Jesus, the so-called Third Quest for the Historical Jesus, of which Wright is an exemplar, has been reluctant to consider the possibility of an ongoing interest in territorial restoration in Jesus' conceptions of the eschatological hope. Where Wright does address the Land of Israel he argues that Jesus reinterprets it away from a localized territorial conception to a more universal symbol of God's sovereign reign. The argument of the article, while appreciating much in Wright's interpretation of Jesus, seeks to destabilize his 'reinterpretation view' of the Land, on the one hand. And, on the other, the present work presents substantial evidence in support of the hypothesis that the historical Jesus both affirmed Israel's Land promise and promulgated Israel's territorial restoration in his teaching, preaching, and even in his physical movements in Greater Galilee.

PAPER INTRODUCTION: St. Anselm of Canterbury’s Canterbury’s Cur Deus Homo (Why did God become human? or Why a God-human?) was a path-breaking work in theology; the first attempt to explain by means of a systematic theory why the Word became flesh, and how exactly Christ’s life, death, and resurrection achieved our salvation. It was also an important influence on later penal substitutionary atonement models. I here examine Anselm’s work in dialogue with various articulations of penal substitution theories; addressing Cur Deus Homo’s importance, sources and purpose; outlining its theory in detail, and discussing how well the two paradigms integrate Christ’s death with his life, resurrection and call to discipleship. I conclude that there are both important differences and discernible lines of continuity between the two paradigms, both of which demonstrate Cur Deus Homo’s historical significance.

In this address I seek to move away from the modern notion of a seminary as a professional school aimed at instilling professional competencies in its students. I conceive of a seminary rather as an academic community set aside by the church to engage in a common life of theological reflection, a common life aimed at drawing us deeper into knowing, loving, and worshipping God. Such community is educational in that its faculty invites students to join them in these reflective and life-shaping practices. The curriculum of such a school ought not to be determined by the needs and boundaries of the traditional four theological disciplines, but by integrating questions that aim to lead to a particular way of life. As an example thereof I give a theological reading of discussions between traditional Protestant Pauline exegesis and contemporary readings of Paul, exegetical discussions which in turn have important consequences for the life of the church.

In this book, I analyze contemporary Pauline exegesis and its implications for Protestant theology. Over the last several decades, scholars have offered fresh interpretations of the apostle, including the New Perspective on and the apocalyptic reading of Paul. I juxtapose these proposals with traditional Protestant understandings of Paul and argues that the crucial difference between these two readings lies not in how one understands isolated Pauline notions but in different assumed narrative substructures of the apostle's writings. I explore how these new exegetical proposals deepen, broaden, enrich, and challenge traditional Protestant theological paradigms, as well as how they are situated alongside current contextual conversations on theological anthropology, social imagination, and the church's mission.

Augustine’s reading of the Bible and his construction of theology depend on the Bishop’s fantasy of the penis-as-hand, that is, his dream of possessing the elusive perfect penis of Eden, over which Adam (and, vicariously, Augustine) would have had perfect control. Augustine’s great contribution to Christian theology is, therefore, to a significant extent informed by his experience of being unable to control his erections. I examine the temporal dynamics of Augustine's fantasy, in particular its generation of a qualitative experience of time. The concepts are fleshed out with reference to Slavoj Žižek’s analysis of fisting and N.T. Wright's Paul and the Faithfulness of God (2013). The essay has recourse to recent theoretical considerations of time, in particular the ‘striking temporal and historiographical turn’ of queer theory over the last decade and the conception of ‘messianic time’ in the work of Giorgio Agamben. I suggest that Augustine’s queer experience of time has its apotheosis in the ‘coming out’ of the fictional ‘Antipodeans’ in Gabriel de Foigny’s The Southern Land, Known (1676).

In his recent Paul and the Faithfulness of God, N.T. Wright suggests in a discussion of 1 Corinthians that the church’s disciplinary practices are intimately connected with its eschatology, such that when “faced with flagrant scandal, the church must do in the present among its own membership what the one God will do in the future in relation to the rest of the world.”  For Wright, the same inaugurated eschatology that suggests the church is to be a foretaste of the life to come also suggests the future judgment by the saints  is worked out through church discipline in the present by the power of the Spirit. 

This paper will survey New Testament passages on church discipline by examining them in their literary and socio-historical contexts in order to assess to what degree eschatology is linked to exclusionary practices of church discipline so that the appropriateness of N.T. Wright’s claim may be evaluated.  Finally, the paper will conclude with a brief hermeneutical discussion evaluating how these insights may apply to compassionately ministering and serving within the contemporary church.

Wright’s *magnum opus* has many admirable strengths in method and content, including its attempt to overcome “either-ors” in describing Paul’s theology, its analysis of how Paul reworked Jewish theology around the Messiah and the Spirit, its focus on both justice and the church, its consistent interpretation of *Christos* as “Messiah,” its (cautious) embrace of “theosis,” its nuanced defense of counter-imperial themes, and its response to certain persistent criticisms of Wright. However, questions arise about certain aspects of the book, including the meaning of the undefined phrase “Paul’s mature thought,” the descriptions of other approaches to Paul, the assessment of the role of the cross, the analysis of the ethical implications of Paul’s conversion, and the claims about participation in Messiah’s rule. The most significant concerns for this appreciative reviewer involve the book’s treatment of justification. Although Wright argues for the inseparability of justification and participation in Paul’s soteriology, his juridical, declarative account of justification, with an emphasis on forgiveness, is less robust, comprehensive, participatory, and transformative than Paul’s actually is. Ironically, Wright does not seem to recognize fully how Paul has reworked justification around the Messiah and the Spirit. He seems to miss some of the logical consequences of his own arguments about adoption, baptism, and dying/rising with Christ, while also offering an untenable interpretation of baptism as an act of divine reckoning. Wright fails to see that if the mode of justification has radically changed (faith as sharing in the Messiah’s faithfulness—so, rightly, Wright), then its substance has also changed.

Jonathan Bernier recently responded to Stanley Porter and Andrew Pitts' article on epistemology in jshj. In this rejoinder, Porter and Pitts expose Bernier's perpetual failure to understand the central terminology in this debate. Their response to Bernier reveals a clear confusion surrounding technical (even if basic) philosophical nomenclature in contemporary epistemology. Consequently, Bernier turns out to be just as committed to internalism as those he attempts to rescue from it. Their biggest disappointment , however, turns upon Berner's inability to engage the central argument of their original article. Their case rested entirely upon the crippling Gettier-style counterexamples to internalism and, with it, critical realism. Yet, Gettier never makes an appearance in Bernier's article. One can only speculate why Bernier would write an article-length response that neglects to address this argument. Whatever the cause, this oversight deeply undermines Bernier's entire project by leaving Porter and Pitts' original argument unscathed and firmly intact. Keywords critical realism – epistemology – historical method – N.T. Wright

I will critique Roy Bhaskar’s concept of the “epistemic fallacy” from the standpoint of Bernard Lonergan’s critical realism. In the first part I will walk through the first chapter of the first stage of Bhaskar’s philosophical project looking at how, by reflecting on the efficient causality of scientists, we are led to realism. Along the way I will tease out the inchoate presence of something akin to final causality in this account. In the second part I will indicate three reasons why Bhaskar’s focus tends to lack generality: knowing specifically regards the other; the causality specified is efficient; the epistemology critiqued is truncated. This will provide a springboard for a glance at Lonergan’s epistemology which, it is suggested, is free from Humean truncation. I will present what we might call the “epistemological theorem” in which being is presented in terms of knowing, a thesis that might be somewhat shocking to Bhaskarian ears. In view of the summary treatment in this note I will end by offering to locate further elaboration and support of these ideas in papers that may be easily accessed.

There is a significant muddle in the contemporary world of Christian thought about whether and to what extent the Christian faith entails a substance dualism “of the sort that Plato and Descartes held about the body and soul or mind.” In this paper, I seek first of all to clarify the issue by identifying the most fundamental claim that metaphysical dualism represents and the way in which this claim relates to the teachings of scripture and the Christian tradition. I argue that in this primary sense, Christianity is indeed committed inexorably to dualism. That is to say both that Christians do and must hold that there are immaterial things. Moreover, I will argue that it is a very ancient Jewish and Christian view that the human person is an irreducibly composite being and as such is identifiable neither as merely bodily nor merely spiritual beings. This composite anthropology of orthodox Christianity, I suggest, is undeniably dualist in a way that is compatible neither with any materialist anthropology nor with a kind of substance dualism, associated with Plato and Descartes, which identifies persons not with body-soul composites but more narrowly with a soul.
Thus, in section II, I explore certain key anthropological overtures and teachings in scripture in connection with what I argue is a mistaken, though popular, hermeneutic which distinguishes them in light of the presumption of two opposite intuitions about the relationship of human persons to their bodies, which they are thought to express. In, section III, I engage with the arguments of N.T. Wright and Eleonor Stump who in different ways endorse a “two-anthropologies of scripture” position and attempt to distance the Christian tradition from what each regards as a problematic association with dualism. In this section I outline the stakes of the issue and the problems that I see inherent in Wright and Stump’s general aim. Here I also highlight the way that Stump implicates St. Thomas Aquinas in her attempt to distance Christianity from dualism.  Finally, in sections IV and V, I explore Thomas’ metaphysical anthropology in order to show, on the one hand, the way that his view differs from the position that Stump ascribes to him, and on the other, how it harmonizes the apparent tensions in scripture that have given rise to the “two anthropologies” hermeneutic.

Paul and the Faithfulness of God (PFG) encompasses a massive two-volume study of Paul, itself part of Wright's larger (now) five volume project on Christian Origins. No one can deny the industry behind this endeavor. And the breadth of early Jewish and Christian materials assessed, driven by ambitious theological synthetizations, makes the scale of the project one of its most impressive features. In Part I of PFG, Wright takes up the task of addressing " Paul and His World. " Wright is at his best in constructing creative metaphors encoded with rich disciplinary nuances. Wright does just this in the first chapter, as he seeks to present a case for the power of historical analysis in biblical scholarship through the example of a range of background issues surrounding Paul's letter to Philemon. Wright then proceeds in the subsequent chapter to describe Paul's Jewish context, and then in chapters 3–5 he illustrates Paul's Greco-Roman context, discussing philosophy, religion, and empire respectively. Part II provides an overview of the " mindset " of Paul, a term used by Wright to denote an individual's variation of his or her community's shared worldview. Here Wright relies upon the worldview model used in the first volume of the five-part series, in which all worldviews (and, by extension, mindsets) are composed of four basic categories: stories, symbols, praxis, and questions. Chapter 6 is devoted both to Paul's symbolic praxis inherited from his historical context (described in Part I) and his reconstruction of this symbolic praxis in light of the coming of the Messiah and renewal of humanity. In the seventh chapter, Wright describes the foundational stories of Paul's mindset, centered around the drama of God and his creation, with

Atonement theology is quite controversial. Each tradition has its own way of explaining the historic and salvific event of the death and resurrection of Jesus. However, even within the realm of atonement theology there are a couple of issues that reign supreme as the center of most atonement controversies. These two subjects being: justification and substitution. What does it mean that sinners are justified by the blood of Christ? How is Christ a substitute for sinners? These two aspects of the atonement have received considerable scrutiny over the last century. These doctrines have been called unjust, incoherent, and many other slanderous terms. The question is though, are they right? In this essay I intend to give a defense for both the coherence and morality of both of these issues.

This paper is the manuscript from part one of a church seminar on hermeneutics. Part One is entitled, "The Bible is Alien to Us." (The Bible was written for us, but not to us.) Three of the objectives of this session were: 1) To introduce participants to the translation process and compare modern English translations; 2) To introduce participants to the historical and cultural context of the Bible (i.e. the ancient Near East); and 3) To introduce participants to some of the literary elements of the Bible (i.e. genre, metaphor, idiom, myth).

What is the place of Christ in Paul’s narrative? This question is central to the debate between a salvation-historical and an apocalyptic reading of Paul. In this essay I analyze these different understandings of Paul’s narrative, arguing that, in the end, both accounts are christologically deficient, ironically, in structurally similar ways. I then offer a third account as an alternative.