Jesus and the Victory of God

Abstract

Average Customer Rating: 4.5 Rating: 5 A Jesus Worth Believing N.T. "Tom" Wright is the most prolific and influential New Testament scholar of our day. I'm convinced that his solid and extensive exegetical work - which yields rich theological fruit - will continue to influence Christian leaders of my generation for decades to come. Jesus and the Victory of God (JVG) is volume 2 in Wright's multi-volume project entitled "Christian origins and the question of God." It's unclear how many volumes his research will yield. His first volume, The New Testament and the People of God, explained Wright's method of research in painstaking detail. But it's well worth it! It lays the groundwork for overturning one of the most abused and dubious doctrines of modern biblical studies: the criterion of dissimilarity, sometimes called the criterion of embarrassment. Simply put, this criterion says that anything embarrassing to the early church in the gospels must be true because you don't make up embarrassing things about yourself or your founder. Likewise, if something in the gospels is dissimilar from early church teaching, it's likely true. There are many problems with the criteria used by modern (mostly secular) biblical studies in studying the historical Jesus, too many in fact to cover here. Wright argues, however, that Christians should not shrink before the historical task. He then defends a criteria of double SIMILARITY and double DISSIMILARITY. Jesus, he argues, should be both appropriately similar to the Judaism of his day and to the early church, and appropriately dissimilar from the two, respectively. Example: Judaism had a variegated expectations of a Messiah. Though there was no one definitive expectation, it was largely assumed that the Messiah would violently overthrow Israel's enemies (re: pagans like Rome) through military means. In this regard, Jesus was similar to his Jewish context. However, though Jesus explicitly acted in certain ways characteristic of the Messiah, he also did so in ways to subvert the very militarism that he saw as counter to Israel's God-given mission to be the source of God's blessing to all nations. Other examples of this kind abound in JVG. Wright behaves a bit like the Jesus he describes. Wright comfortably fits both his academic context and church context (he is a bishop, after all) in many ways. However, he also subverts traditional expectations in each. Wright refuses some assumptions of modern biblical scholars, such as ruling out of hand that any sort of "god" can exist and act in human history. On the other hand, though Wright affirms the core of Christian theological orthodoxy, he also denies particular readings of the Bible long held by many evangelicals and Protestants in general. For example, Wright does not believe that Jesus ever predicted what we call "the second coming." The texts most often pointed to (Matthew 24, Mark 13, etc) refer to the destruction of Jerusalem and Jesus' vindication by God, not to his floating back to us on a cloud. But Wright's goal is never to overturn treasured interpretations for the sake of change. His goal is always to discover how we moved from Second Temple Judaism (i.e. 1st AD) to the early church. At the end of the day, Wright discovers a Jesus that bridges that divide. It may surprise some but Wright's portrait of Jesus manages to include what we actually find presented in the gospels. He doesn't blacken out bits of the story that disagree with his own assumptions. In fact, Wright has publicly said again and again that the Jesus he finds in the gospels constantly challenges his own creaturely comforts. I find Wright's description of Jesus compelling and intellectually coherent. I was first introduced to Wright's work in college when I read The Challenge of Jesus. Challenge distills JVG into a more accessible popular format. I then read "The New Testament and the People of God." Volume 3, The Resurrection of the Son of God is on my soon-to-read list. It's unclear how many volumes Wright will complete. He plans at least one more to address Paul. I'm not sure how he finds time to complete these tomes of biblical exegesis, given his other writing projects of distilling his exegesis into accessible theology (cf. Simply Christian, Surprised by Hope) and his translation-commentaries of the entire New Testament (his "For Everybone" series). One thing is sure. If Wright doesn't complete this series, generations of Christians will be the lesser for it. Rating: 5 On the money If only everyone had the time to read this entire series. When freed from the restraints of ones predetermined views a historical study of Jesus and Christianity itself is priceless for ones faith and Wright does it best. Rating: 5 Unique historical insight I first became familiar with N. T. Wright through some of his shorter books: What Saint Paul Really Said, Simply Christian, and, of course, Surprised by Hope. Somewhere along the way I found out that he has written a three-volume set specifically about Jesus, and so I requested one of the volumes for Christmas back a year ago. (Why I requested Volume Two of a three volume set is beyond me... but I did.) Sure, there have been a million books written about Jesus. So why does Wright's stand out? Wright takes the angle of exploring what I'll call the "historical" Jesus. What was Jesus, the man, thinking? What were his goals? How did the things he said fit into the theological and political scene of first-century Palestine? Wright answers these questions brilliantly, with clarity and insight. As just a small example, Wright at one point asks this question: Did Jesus know that he was the Son of God? Certainly we affirm that Jesus was fully man and fully God, but how did Jesus the man know that he was God? Wright gives by way of answer this analogy: Jesus knew he was the Son of God in the same way a musician knows they are a musician. They have the skills and abilities of a musician, and something deep within them says `I simply must make this music'. As such, a person knows they are a musician. Similarly, Jesus knew he had the skills and abilities of the Messiah, and had the internal calling. It may not be a perfect analogy, but it certainly provides opportunity to stop and think. Jesus and the Victory of God deals with Jesus' life and teaching, leading right up to his death. Wright then devotes the entire third volume in his series to the Resurrection. (I got that book for Christmas this year.) Jesus and the Victory of God isn't a simple read - it's more like a college-level scholarly text. But if you're willing to make the effort to dig through it, it will reward you with insight into the life and purposes of Jesus. Rating: 5 Life after Life after Death! Two weeks ago I started reading this book, it is one of three volumes, the first; Jesus and the Victory of God the second; The New Testament and The People Of God This book can only be described as truly magisterial in its scope, it is magnificently comprehensive and the work of one of our most outstanding New Testament scholars in recent times. Such is the influence of this book and the integrity, credibility of its author that Anthony Flew was compelled to admit to the following after reading it (The resurrection) The claim is defended by one of today's premier New Testament scholars, Bishop N. T. Wright. In my view Wrights responses to my previous critiques of divine self revelation, both in the present volume and in his books comprise the most powerful case for Christianity that I have ever seen" In his book There is a God Flew wrote the following; "I am much impressed with Bishop Wright's approach, which is absolutely fresh. He presents the case for Christianity as something new for the first time. This is enormously important; especially in the UK...it is absolutely wonderful, absolutely radical and very powerful" This is high praise indeed when one considers Flews background. On the inside cover of his latest book it says this; (Antony Flew) is a renowned philosopher who was arguable the best-known atheist in the English-speaking world until his announcement in 2004. He was considered the darling within the elitist circles of academic atheism, somebody held with the highest of regard by Dawkins, Dennett, Wolpert, Harris and Stenger. Wright has this amazing ability to describe deep theological treaties, free of all hype, free of all Christian cliché's and like C S Lewis has this uncanny ability at the same time to bring an irresistible attraction to all things theological, this is a rare gift indeed, coupled with this is his skill in bringing (much like Lewis did!) it all down to the common language of the day, almost to a street level of comprehension. This book requires a little `enduring' it is over 700 pages in duration, but its utterly compelling, and creates such a foundation of believability and credibility that I found it most inspiring. For me its greatest contribution is to remove the romanticism, dualism, the flaws, brought about primarily through fundamentalism and its beloved; Platonism. He brings in to this picture all the precision of a surgeon, he takes it right back to original text and explains, as only a scholar can, the real meaning and the real context of the Pauline epistles. He takes away the curtain of ignorance and bias and with baited breath encourages all to take a look he draws one beyond the curtain time and time again and with delight says, "Look at this" His main sources of referencing are books such as; Daniel, Isaiah, Hosea and Genesis He looks at the culture and history of the Hebrews, and prizes out the innumerable references to the `resection' to `the afterlife' to life after death these themes run like a torrent throughout the Old Testament with direct quotes form David in the book of Psalms and also Job. Wright has coined a wonderful phrase, one that he uses a number of times throughout the book life after life after death" I