The New Testament & the People of God
The book is divided into five parts, the first two of which examines critical historical issues such as epistemology, worldviews, and critical history. Wright seeks to bridge the gap between modernist and postmodern approaches to historical study, carving a path through the ambiguous waters of historical theory. Wright argues that while history isn't comprised of bare-boned facts but interpretations of events, the events remain and thus history can be done. This is one of my favorite parts, and his work here was foundational for my 2012-2013 "Quest" regarding the justifiability of the Judeo-Christian worldview. Earlier blog posts from 2012 highlight some of Wright's key points, and here they are if you're interested in a trip down Memory Lane:
(hint: the above four lines are links)
Part three examines Wright's take on 2nd-Temple Palestinian Judaism. He looks at the history of Israel from the Babylonian exile to the Roman oppression, sketching out Judaism's plurality of beliefs, practices, and hopes. He sets the overarching Jewish worldview as follows on page 243: "Who are we? We are Israel, the chosen people of the creator god. Where are we? We are in the holy Land, focused on the Temple; but, paradoxically, we are still in exile. What is wrong? We have the wrong rulers: pagans on the one hand, compromised Jews on the other, or, half-way between, Herod and his family. We are all involved in a less-than-ideal situation. What is the solution? Our god must act again to give us the true sort of rule, that is, his own kingship exercised through properly appointed officials (a true priesthood; possibly a true king); and in the mean time Israel must be faithful to his covenant charter."
In the final chapter of Part Three, Wright examines the facets of the Jewish hope: the inauguration of the age to come, liberation from Rome, the restoration of the Temple, and the enjoyment of their own Land. Believing they were still in exile, despite being in their own land, the Jewish people put their hopes on the renewal of the covenant prophesied through Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. Wright observes on page 301, "When Israel finally 'returned from exile,' and the Temple was (properly) rebuilt, and reinhabited by its proper occupant--this would be seen as comparable with the making of the covenant on Sinai. It would be the betrothal of YHWH and Israel, after their apparent divorce. It would be the real forgiveness of sins; Israel's god would pour out his holy spirit, so that she would be able to keep the Torah properly, from the heart. It would be the 'circumcision of the heart' of which Deuteronomy and Jeremiah had spoken. And, in a phrase pregnant with meaning for both Jews and Christians, it would above all be the 'kingdom of god.' Israel's god would become in reality what he was already believed to be. He would be King of the whole world." When this happened, there would be a vast renewal: a renewal of Israel, a renewal of humanity, a renewal of the world.
In Part Four, Wright looks at the emergence of the Christian church, seeking to sketch out its worldview, beliefs, and practices. He's straightforward, acknowledging that it's difficult to know much of anything about the earliest days of the church; nevertheless, Wright does an excellent job of examining some of the key facets to early Christianity that marked it out from its Greek and Jewish neighbors: its emphasis on global mission, sexual purity, baptism, the eucharist, a shocking ethical code, the absence of animal sacrifices, and the readiness of its adherents to suffer and die for their confessions of Jesus as Lord. On pages 369-370 Wright outlines what he believes were the "Worldview Q&A" of the early church:
Who are we? We are a new group, a new movement, and yet not new, because we claim to be the true people of the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the creator of the world. We are the people for whom the creator god was preparing the way through his dealings with Israel. To that extent, we are like Israel; we are emphatically monotheists, not pagan polytheists, marked out from the pagan world by our adherence to the traditions of Israel, and yet distinguished from the Jewish world in virtue of the crucified Jesus and the divine spirit, and by our fellowship in which the traditional Jewish and pagan boundary-markers are transcended.
Where are we? We are living in the world that was made by the god we worship, the world that does not yet acknowledge this true and only god. We are thus surrounded by neighbors who worship idols that are, at best, parodies of the truth, and who thus catch glimpses of reality but continually distort it. Humans in general remain in bondage to their own gods, who drag them into a variety of degrading and dehumanizing behavior-patterns. As a result, we are persecuted, because we remind the present power-structures of what they dimly know, that there is a different way to be human, and that in the message of the true god concerning his son, Jesus, notice has been served on them that their own claim to absolute power is called into question.
What is wrong? The powers of paganism still rule the world, and from time to time even find their way into the church. Persecutions arise from outside, heresies and schisms from within. These evils can sometimes be attributed to supernatural agency, whether 'Satan' or various demons. Even within the individual Christian there remain forces at work that need to be subdued, lusts which need to be put to death, party-spirit which needs to learn humility.
What is the solution? Israel's hope has been realized; the true god has acted decisively to defeat the pagan gods, and to create a new people, through whom he is to rescue the world from evil. This he has done through the true King, Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, in particular through his death and resurrection. The process of implementing this victory, by means of the same god continuing to act through his own spirit in his people, is not yet complete. One day the King will return to judge the world, and to set up a kingdom which is on a different level to the kingdoms of this present world order. When this happens those who have died as Christians will be raised to a new physical life. The present powers will be forced to acknowledge Jesus as Lord, and justice and peace will triumph at last.
Wright launches into a survey of some of the earliest Christian materials we have in our possession, beginning with the Synoptics (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), the writings of Paul, the letter to the Hebrews, and the Gospel of John, asking, "What story are these writings telling?" Wright argues that these earliest Christian writings look at Jesus and the early church as the culmination of Jewish hopes and the dawn of the promised New Age, marked by forgiveness of sins, the defeat and dismantling of evil, and God's kingdom coming to birth in the world. Wright argues against the prevalent current in gospel studies, that thread-of-thought that sees Jesus in the guise of a Stoic or Cynic teacher, deeply indebted in Greek thought, by highlighting the Jewish themes, motifs, and ideas saturating the New Testament. Gospel studies have advocated that these Jewish undertones were added to Jesus at a later date, invented by the second century church to address issues within the church. This paradigmatic approach to the gospels stands on the shoulders of a certain type of form-criticism, the criticism of which Wright devotes an entire chapter.
Traditional form-criticism looks at the forms of the gospel stories under the assumption that the majority of these stories were fabricated by the early church. This early church isn't seen as Jewish in origin but Gnostic in origin. In his damning criticism of this approach to form-criticism, Wright points out the obvious: if the gospels were created to address issues within the early church, why don't we once see the issue of circumcision? Meat sacrificed to idols, Gentile inclusion in the church, speaking in tongues... Why are these historically divisive issues barely touched upon, if mentioned at all? Wright doesn't suggest tossing out form-criticism; the logic behind form-criticism is steady, but it's missed its mark in its assumption. Wright argues for a new approach to form-criticism, an approach highlighting the Jewish forms of prophetic acts, controversies, and parables. Wright further criticizes the attention given to the supposed "Q" document (from which Luke and Matthew drew their material) and The Gospel of Thomas. Much attention has been given to the Gnostic, aphorism-driven Thomas, which Wright finds unwarranted. "It is simply the case that, on good historical grounds, [Thomas] is far more likely that the book represents a radical translation, and indeed subversion, of first-century Christianity into a quite different sort of religion, than that it represents the original of which the longer gospels are distortions."
So what is this "primitive early church" which The Gospel of Thomas subverts? In the final chapter, Wright looks at different facets of the early church, drawing on material and arguments throughout the earlier chapters, and simultaneously laying the groundwork for the next book in his series, Jesus & the Victory of God. He identifies the church as beginning as a Jewish movement and then branching out into the Gentile world, over against the recent hypotheses that the church began as a philosophical movement indebted to Greek thought and then became distorted with a Jewish atmosphere. Tying together the two main questions of the book--"What was the Jewish worldview in 2nd century Palestinian Judaism?" and "What was the worldview of the early church?"--Wright says, "First-century Jews looked forward to a public event, a great act of liberation for Israel, in and through which their god would reveal to all the world that he was not just a local, tribal deity, but the creator and sovereign of all. YHWH would reveal his salvation for Israel in the eyes of the nations; the ends of the earth would see that he had vindicated his people. The early Christians, not least in the writings that came to be called the New Testament, looked back to an event in and through which, they claimed, Israel's god had done exactly that. On this basis, the New Testament, emerging from within this strange would-be 'people of god', told the story of that people as a story rooted in Israel's past, and designed to continue into the world's future. It repeated the Jewish claim: this story concerns not just a god but God. It revised the Jewish evidence: the claim is made good, not in national liberation, but in the events concerning Jesus." (476)
Who are we? We are a new group, a new movement, and yet not new, because we claim to be the true people of the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the creator of the world. We are the people for whom the creator god was preparing the way through his dealings with Israel. To that extent, we are like Israel; we are emphatically monotheists, not pagan polytheists, marked out from the pagan world by our adherence to the traditions of Israel, and yet distinguished from the Jewish world in virtue of the crucified Jesus and the divine spirit, and by our fellowship in which the traditional Jewish and pagan boundary-markers are transcended.
Where are we? We are living in the world that was made by the god we worship, the world that does not yet acknowledge this true and only god. We are thus surrounded by neighbors who worship idols that are, at best, parodies of the truth, and who thus catch glimpses of reality but continually distort it. Humans in general remain in bondage to their own gods, who drag them into a variety of degrading and dehumanizing behavior-patterns. As a result, we are persecuted, because we remind the present power-structures of what they dimly know, that there is a different way to be human, and that in the message of the true god concerning his son, Jesus, notice has been served on them that their own claim to absolute power is called into question.
What is wrong? The powers of paganism still rule the world, and from time to time even find their way into the church. Persecutions arise from outside, heresies and schisms from within. These evils can sometimes be attributed to supernatural agency, whether 'Satan' or various demons. Even within the individual Christian there remain forces at work that need to be subdued, lusts which need to be put to death, party-spirit which needs to learn humility.
What is the solution? Israel's hope has been realized; the true god has acted decisively to defeat the pagan gods, and to create a new people, through whom he is to rescue the world from evil. This he has done through the true King, Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, in particular through his death and resurrection. The process of implementing this victory, by means of the same god continuing to act through his own spirit in his people, is not yet complete. One day the King will return to judge the world, and to set up a kingdom which is on a different level to the kingdoms of this present world order. When this happens those who have died as Christians will be raised to a new physical life. The present powers will be forced to acknowledge Jesus as Lord, and justice and peace will triumph at last.
Wright launches into a survey of some of the earliest Christian materials we have in our possession, beginning with the Synoptics (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), the writings of Paul, the letter to the Hebrews, and the Gospel of John, asking, "What story are these writings telling?" Wright argues that these earliest Christian writings look at Jesus and the early church as the culmination of Jewish hopes and the dawn of the promised New Age, marked by forgiveness of sins, the defeat and dismantling of evil, and God's kingdom coming to birth in the world. Wright argues against the prevalent current in gospel studies, that thread-of-thought that sees Jesus in the guise of a Stoic or Cynic teacher, deeply indebted in Greek thought, by highlighting the Jewish themes, motifs, and ideas saturating the New Testament. Gospel studies have advocated that these Jewish undertones were added to Jesus at a later date, invented by the second century church to address issues within the church. This paradigmatic approach to the gospels stands on the shoulders of a certain type of form-criticism, the criticism of which Wright devotes an entire chapter.
Traditional form-criticism looks at the forms of the gospel stories under the assumption that the majority of these stories were fabricated by the early church. This early church isn't seen as Jewish in origin but Gnostic in origin. In his damning criticism of this approach to form-criticism, Wright points out the obvious: if the gospels were created to address issues within the early church, why don't we once see the issue of circumcision? Meat sacrificed to idols, Gentile inclusion in the church, speaking in tongues... Why are these historically divisive issues barely touched upon, if mentioned at all? Wright doesn't suggest tossing out form-criticism; the logic behind form-criticism is steady, but it's missed its mark in its assumption. Wright argues for a new approach to form-criticism, an approach highlighting the Jewish forms of prophetic acts, controversies, and parables. Wright further criticizes the attention given to the supposed "Q" document (from which Luke and Matthew drew their material) and The Gospel of Thomas. Much attention has been given to the Gnostic, aphorism-driven Thomas, which Wright finds unwarranted. "It is simply the case that, on good historical grounds, [Thomas] is far more likely that the book represents a radical translation, and indeed subversion, of first-century Christianity into a quite different sort of religion, than that it represents the original of which the longer gospels are distortions."
So what is this "primitive early church" which The Gospel of Thomas subverts? In the final chapter, Wright looks at different facets of the early church, drawing on material and arguments throughout the earlier chapters, and simultaneously laying the groundwork for the next book in his series, Jesus & the Victory of God. He identifies the church as beginning as a Jewish movement and then branching out into the Gentile world, over against the recent hypotheses that the church began as a philosophical movement indebted to Greek thought and then became distorted with a Jewish atmosphere. Tying together the two main questions of the book--"What was the Jewish worldview in 2nd century Palestinian Judaism?" and "What was the worldview of the early church?"--Wright says, "First-century Jews looked forward to a public event, a great act of liberation for Israel, in and through which their god would reveal to all the world that he was not just a local, tribal deity, but the creator and sovereign of all. YHWH would reveal his salvation for Israel in the eyes of the nations; the ends of the earth would see that he had vindicated his people. The early Christians, not least in the writings that came to be called the New Testament, looked back to an event in and through which, they claimed, Israel's god had done exactly that. On this basis, the New Testament, emerging from within this strange would-be 'people of god', told the story of that people as a story rooted in Israel's past, and designed to continue into the world's future. It repeated the Jewish claim: this story concerns not just a god but God. It revised the Jewish evidence: the claim is made good, not in national liberation, but in the events concerning Jesus." (476)
The next book in Wright's series is Jesus & the Victory of God.
It's a voluminous work, and to prepare, I'm reading his book, The Challenge of Jesus.
Be prepared to be hearing about that book over the next month or two. It's a doozy.
No comments:
Post a Comment