Paul and the politics of the Wright
Despite the plethora of posts about the SBL, most of the lucky bibliobuggers who were there have said comparatively little about the content of what was actually delivered and a great deal about food, hotels, book-buying and weather conditions. One of the few remarked on debates/presentations was that between Tom Wright and John Barclay, by Loren Rosson and Mark Goodacre among others. The good news is that there’s an opportunity to listen to this (scroll to the bottom), and I intend to take it soon.
The other big issue around involving Tom Wright is nothing to do with SBL, but is the ongoing reaction against his work on Paul by those of a conservative Reformed view. I commented briefly on this here. In listening to some of the debate on Wright’s version of the New Perspective, one is struck, over and over, by the way in which Wright seems to be doing a better job of appealing to sola scriptura in articulating his views, while his opponents are found to be reiterating the tradition they’ve received. As I noted before, Jacob Paul Breeze, who sadly has given up blogging, commented delightfully:
If you observed the art on the two Dr.’s books you’ll see the presuppositions: Piper has Luther on the cover and Wright has Paul on the cover.
It strikes me that Wright’s argument for Paul’s coded references to empire, which has always seemed a little over-egged to me, is the negative flip-side of Wright’s sola scriptura emphasis. He wants, in my view rightly, to encourage Christians to reflect on the serious political implications of the gospel. Rather than appeal to broader and more theological work, he chooses to find them encoded in Paul’s language, so he can present them as “what the Bible teaches” in a straightforwardly expository way. The problem is, of course, that once his exegesis is unpicked, then it looks as though he’s lost the political implications. There are all sorts of ways in which Wright is not a conventional or straightforward evangelical, but in this overemphasis on finding everything in the “plain”(!) text of scripture, he surely looks like one.
November 25th, 2007 at 1:28 am
Regarding Piper and Wright, I was very impressed to read Tom Wright’s discussion of their dialogue. It seems to me that the way they are going about their disagreements is both wise and Godly. I wish their followers (in particular on the reformed side) would take heed of the way that the two are in dialogue. Tom Wright talks about this in an interview here: http://trevinwax.wordpress.com/2007/11/19/trevin-wax-interview-with-nt-wright-full-transcript/
November 25th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Thanks for this post. Historian Wright, by his methods, is a good example for most Bible translators too. Traditions that ossify the text, rather than enliven and envigorate it, do vary from sola scriptura ironically. I think Wright writes history like the late Barbara Tuchman does: we readers today don’t know the outcome until, well, until we read it. What a shock, then, for Joshua (aka Jesus) to be crucified by Romans and Hellenes and Hebrews. Who would have predicted that? And how can I believe it? It’s like believing the awful daily news in the morning papers! Good translations are as “literary” or as parabolic or as novel (as in encouraging the readers, now in both languages, to have to suspend disbelief).
Eddie, Thank you for the link and the comment! Yes, Wright and Piper are very impressive, disagreeing and lovingly so!
November 25th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Eddie, I add my thanks for the link to the very useful interview with Wright.
November 28th, 2007 at 5:41 am
Well said on Wright and the NPP. I especially loved the comparison of the book covers!
-d-