Chapter 4 - "History and the First Century"

[This is an ongoing project that is analyzing N.T. Wright’s 5 volume series, Christian Origins and the Question of God. This series is widely read and bridges the gap between the academic and devotional world. It is therefore worthy to be carefully analyzed so that all readers can understand his key points while at the same time gaining a critical eye to some of his rather bold claims. This series of posts are concerning volume 1 – The New Testament and the People of God.]

Chapter Four: “History and the First Century”

N.T. Wright’s chapter on his theory of history is dependent upon his theory of “knowledge” but unfortunately has even poorer execution than his theory of knowledge. His historiographic methodology is rife with very vague points and counterpoints that end giving Wright a license to dismiss any scholar with relatively little evidence. Further, Wright does not seem to take seriously the challenges that face the ancient historian.

Wright first makes his claim that those who question how well one can know history. He writes, “We simply can write history. We can know things about what has happened in the past.”[1] He has as his thesis for the chapter that history can be accomplished. He argues this against his straw man “relativists” who deny that we can know anything outside ourselves. This reading, of course, depends upon the idea that “knowledge” according to “relativists” is static. One assumes he is now referencing the post-structuralists he discusses in his chapter on knowledge. However, post-structuralist thinking does not consider “knowledge” all one thing – it is surely the case that Peter Ochs considers true knowledge something that can be known only in the present time for the present person about oneself – it cannot be something that transcends. However, one would not find that so minimalistically – just because we cannot know that water is blue the same way we can know “who I am” does not mean that we cannot know anything about water at all.

Wright uses this straw man of “relativism” to vaguely challenge those he is not interested in struggling with. He minimizes this challenge to the concept that the New Testament is a biased document. He writes the following:

The fear that ‘actual events’ will disappear beneath a welter of particular people’s perceptions is a fear of this sort, and is to be rejected as groundless. As a particular example, it must be asserted most strongly that to discover that a particular writer has a ‘bias’ tells us nothing whatever about the value of the information he or she presents. It merely bids us be aware of the bias (and of our own, for that matter), and to assess the material according to as many sources as we can.[2]

Wright is certainly correct – that a bias is not the same as knowing nothing. However, that is not the challenge that Wright himself develops as coming from the post-structuralists.

Wright seems to make a straw man argument in which he seems to assume that the primary argument against making positive statements about history is that history is interpretation rather than “bare facts:

Our apparently bare historical remark is the product of multi-faceted interpretative decision. Nor is this unusual. It is typical of all history. All history involves selection, and it is always human beings who do the selecting.[3]

Here Wright has simply made a null statement. He argues essentially that history is history. Of course it is something that humans construct – who else would be doing the construction? He makes his obvious point again: “History, I shall argue, is neither ‘bare facts’ nor ‘subjective interpretations,’ but is rather the meaningful narrative of events and intentions.”[4] Once again this is obvious – history is always a narrative that explains why it is certain events occurred.

The problem with Wright playing these games is that he gives himself allowance to do whatever he wants. He seems to suggest that because logical positivism has failed – and as much as we all love A.J. Ayer, it has failed – that then apparently there is simultaneously no objectivity and objectivity at the same time. He knows this would not stand up to any real scrutiny in the historical world and is so bold as to suggest that “new” principles be established for the New Testament.

What we require, I believe, is a set of tools designed for the task at hand, rather than a set borrowed from someone who might be working on something else. Just as the gospels and epistles embody genres somewhat apart form their closest non-Christian analogues, so the study of them, and of their central figures, are stakes which, though they possess of course several analogies with other closely related disciplines, require specialized tools, that is, a theory of knowledge appropriate to the specific tasks.[5]

Wright has essentially argued that the study of the New Testament should not fit within the normal category of the study of history. He wants a special status. That status, of course, can be like other histories, but when push comes to shove, he wants the ability to say that he can finally make the call because he essentially likes it.

To be fair to Wright, he does not suggest it is dependent upon whether he “likes” it or not, rather, he guises this in his theory about “story.” He argues that one considers something and decides whether it “fits” into the general framework of one’s story (which of course is developed from communal worldviews). Wright argues the following:

The task of the historian is not simply to assemble little clumps of ‘facts’ and hope that somebody else will integrate them. The historian’s job is to show their interconnectedness, that is, how one thing follows from another, precisely by examining the ‘inside’ of the events…To display this, the historian needs (it will come as no surprise) to tell a story.[6]

The “story” or “narrative” is a preconditioned idea that is presented and then it is simply a matter of “fitting” data into that story.

I appreciate Wright’s honesty in his approach – many historians do not come out and admit that they do this type of thing. Further, everyone uses a theoretical framework from which they judge their analyses. However, I do not appreciate his conclusion. Take, for instance, something that does not fit his general “story.” Here, he discusses many scholars who emphasize a disconnect between some of the data in the New Testament with the life of Jesus:

It has been assumed that we know, more or less, what Jesus’ life, ministry and self-understanding were like, and they were unlike the picture we find in the gospels. But hypotheses of this sort are always short on simplicity, since they demand an explanation not only of what happened in the ministry of Jesus, but also of why the early church said something different, and actually wrote up stories as founding ‘myths’ which bore little relation to the historical events.[7]

Wright has not completely explained why it is that such a hypothesis is so wrong – he simply says it is not “simple” enough.

The problem with Wright’s analysis is that he does not explain why it is that scholars have discussed disconnect between the Gospels and the figure of Jesus. I agree that not all of this speculation is particularly helpful; however, it is important to recognize that it is not some conspiracy to destroy faith. Scholars have suggested such a thing for a variety of factors. First, ancient history on the whole is very difficult to reconstruct. To simply suggest that a “simpler” explanation should be proffered is not very helpful – there are no simple explanations. We simply do not have enough data for the simplest explanation. All explanation requires a development of stories – one way or the other. Second, he does not tell the reader why it is that scholars came to such a conclusion – a large part of the reason is that the gospels are not consistent with one another. Someone along the line did shift form the historical event so that a theological point could be made. If this is the case, then it led some scholars to question how historical any of the gospels were. I, myself, do not necessarily agree with all of those scholars, but Wright simply dismissing them because he feels that it is a hypothesis that is not “simple” is not a very convincing argument.

Finally, Wright is not a theorist and it becomes blatantly obvious in this book. The remainder of the book is far superior – in that he applies his theory to actual texts. However, his theory is important to consider because of how common it is. I am thankful for Wright for taking the time to spell it out for us, but hopefully most readers will see many of its challenges.

---

[1] NTPG, 81.

[2] Ibid., 89.

[3] Ibid., 84.

[4] Ibid., 82.

[5] Ibid., 96.

[6] Ibid., 113.

[7] Ibid., 106.

Chapter 3: “Literature, Story and the Articulation of Worldviews”

[This is an ongoing project that is analyzing N.T. Wright’s 5 volume series, Christian Origins and the Question of God. This series is widely read and bridges the gap between the academic and devotional world. It is therefore worthy to be carefully analyzed so that all readers can understand his key points while at the same time gaining a critical eye to some of his rather bold claims. This series of posts are concerning volume 1 – The New Testament and the People of God.]

Chapter 3: “Literature, Story and the Articulation of Worldviews”

N.T. Wright’s approach to the concept of reading, as presented in the third chapter of NTPG, illustrates the difficult position he has painted himself into by attempting to bridge the gap between the scholarly and devotional fields of inquiry. By simultaneously dismissing and using literary criticism, he attempts to create a middle way that recognizes what he considers the valid points of literary criticism while still holding to a relatively traditional approach. He calls this approach “critical realist reading” – extending his concept from the previous chapter on knowledge.

First, Wright attempts to address – but then dismiss – two sections of his audience. He first addresses the devotional reader who naively believes that things can be read “as is.” Wright comments, “English people tend to think of themselves as robust realists: we observe the facts and describe them, we just read the text as it is.”[1]  He attempts to challenge conservative readers that pretending one is able to read without “bringing something to the table” is foolish. He rightly recognizes that we must admit we do apply theory when we read texts – whether we know it or not.

While I would usually be praising Wright for such a comment, he follows this directly with a challenge to the very people who are attempting to have integrity in this field. Wright argues that Georg Strecker - using him as an example of figures who want to suggest that one think of books as reflections of authors rather than reflections of history – is at fault because he is using theory:  

That, I submit, is not primarily an exegetical or even a historical judgment: it is a philosophical one. Strecker is inviting us to move form the risky ground of making claims about Jesus himself to the apparently safer, more secure ground of saying that this is the state of Matthew’s own mind. We read the Sermon on the Mount and we ask ‘Is anybody there?’ The answer is no: not in the sense of an original speaker, a Jesus sitting on a mountain talking to the crowds. There is only Matthew. We have jumped from realism, right over an empiricist reading (Matthew’s impression of Jesus) and landed in phenomenalism (Matthew’s state of mind). The apparent force of Strecker’s proposal has comparatively little to do with first-century history, and a great deal more to do with late-twentieth-century habits of mind and reading.[2]

Many of Strecker’s claims in the Sermon on the Mount can be challenged. However, criticizing Strecker for using theory responsibly is not one. Wright had just finished arguing theory must be used when considering ancient documents. After doing this, he accuses Strecker of this apparently grave mistake. He is the one to denounce Strecker’s agenda (which of course is clear in Strecker’s book) that Strecker has the gall to use modern theory of reading.

This beginning to Wright’s chapter is indicative of the entire chapter – he wants competing things – to create a critical theory that allows for a reading of the text while at the same time making it so “homespun” that it is not a theory that needs to be addressed all that much and would be relatively common sense – so as to not offend his traditional readers. It seems on the surface, then, that Wright wants to do the very thing he claimed to avoid – avoiding theory because it can be inconvenient.

Wright furthers this point a few pages later: “Many ‘critical’ methods look so properly ‘neutral,’ but in fact encapsulate whole philosophical positions which are in themselves contentious and highly debatable.”[3] Wright then considers what for him is a major problem – the ability for the reader (modern or ancient) to reach the intent of the author. In much of modern literary criticism, authorial intent has been discarded as impossible and impractical. Rather, literary criticism looks toward texts rather than authors. Even if one did know an author, an author might have been intending something that he or she did not express in a text and further, a text can easily hold something that the author never intended at all. Intent is not a sufficient argument for the presence or absence of a product. This modern challenge – which Wright does address – is a particular problem for Wright who asks whether we can know anything at all. Being fair to the Derridean reading group who might be observing this blog, I know that this is not fair to modern literary criticism – just because one cannot find authorial intent does not mean that one cannot find meaning – I avoid describing it only because Wright himself does not.

Wright’s problem is not really in the theory, it is in what it means for a devotional text like the New Testament. He seems concerned that if it is true that we cannot know the intent of the author, then how can we really “know” what reading is “right?” This brings us back to his challenge with knowledge in the previous chapter – here he simply applies it forward to reading. He makes this quite clear by suggesting the problem with modern literary criticism is that of control: “One problem with the attempt to provide an analysis which goes beyond the text but not to the author is the lack of control.”[4] Here, Wright resurrects a regula fidei – a “rule of faith” wherein in Irenaeus and Tertullian presented their “rule” which based itself on conclusions rather than methods. Wright is not bothered by the method per se – as he struggles to find adequate responses to the reasons literary critics have come to their conclusions. Instead, Wright does not like what results those methods could find – he wants a system that has more checks and balances with more control. Essentially, he wants a system that will surprise the traditional reader far less.

To accomplish his goals, Wright presents a “both, and” approach – that we recognize we cannot know the mind of an author completely (and that a text is not confined to that one author), but that it still uses that author as a kind of base for meaning:

What we need is a theory of reading which, at the reader/text stage, will do justice both to the fact that reader is a particular human being and to the fact that the text is an entity on its own, not a plastic substance to be moulded to the readers whim. It must also do justice, at the text/author stage, both the fact that the author intended certain things, and that the text may well contain in addition other things – echoes, evocations, structures, and the like – which were not present to the author’s mind, and of course may well be present to the reader’s mind.[5]

Here he seems to want to suggest that there are things in the text which were not intended by the author and things that were intended but that we as readers cannot know – but also that we can basically still have enough grounding to avoid getting too off track.

The only way this is possible is through his understanding about the nature of people who work in the context of “story.” He argues that all people live in a “story” which here he describes as “worldviews” and that those worldviews are similar enough beyond time and space, for these stories to be able to be analyzed in meaningful ways:

A critical-realist reading of a text will recognize, and take fully into account, the perspective and context of the reader. But such a reading will still insist that, within the story or stories that seem to make sense of the whole of reality, there exist, as essentially other than and different from the reader, texts that can be read, that have a life and a set of appropriate meanings not only potentially independent of their author but also potentially independent of their reader; and that the deepest level of meaning consists in stories, and ultimately the worldviews, which the texts thus articulate.[6]

He essentially argues that because humans wrote the works and humans are reading the works, that there is enough commonality, that we can see into another’s “story” or “worldview,” experience it in that sense, and therefore find meaning. He clarifies his position:

There are other worldviews; they are expressed in works of literature; and they interact with our own. Critical-realist reading is a lectio catholica semper reformanda: it seeks (that is) to be true to itself, and to the public world, while always being open to the possibility of challenge, modification, and subversion.[7]

He argues that reading should be interactive between the reader and the text and that this interaction is what provides the meaning.

Wright’s analysis eventually will fall or rise depending upon how one considers his application of this theory rather than the theory itself. Nevertheless, it is certainly concerning how difficult this theory is to achieve. His critical realist reading is something that attempts to have its cake and eat it too – he somehow feels that one can productively analyze the mind of the author merely because both the reader and the author are humans. This seems to be far more an issue that shows his inability to square the theoretical and devotional – he can’t argue that the reader will intrinsically “know” the meaning while at the same time argue that there will be any measure of reasonable “historical” control which he suggested earlier. Instead, there is some kind of middle ground that is murky at best.

---

[1] NTPG, 51.

[2] Ibid., 52.

[3] NTPG, 54.

[4] NTPG, 56.

[5] NTPG, 62.

[6] NTPG., 66.

[7] NTPG., 67.

Chapter 2: “Knowledge: Problems and Varieties”

[This is an ongoing project that will analyze N.T. Wright’s 5 volume series Christian Origins and the Question of God. This series is widely read and bridges the gap between the academic and devotional world. It is therefore worthy to be carefully analyzed so that all readers can understand his key points while at the same time gaining a critical eye to some of his rather bold claims. This series of posts are concerning volume 1 – The New Testament and the People of God.]

Chapter 2: “Knowledge: Problems and Varieties”

N.T. Wright, in his second chapter of his magnum opus begins to set out a very important theoretical base which will govern the following 5 volumes (and at least one more is forthcoming). It is necessary, then, for us as readers to carefully analyze his approach to historiography. Wright does a good job of having the presence of mind to set out his governing theory that organizes the remainder of his work. Wright is to be lauded for his attempt to take seriously the challenge of modern epistemology to move beyond the shackles of fundamentalism. However, while his intentions are quite good, his application is weak – he attempts to show that one simultaneously interprets all data while at the same time still making positive claims about an object. He presents this well in theory, but his application by means of the concept of “story” fail to hold up to his original theory.

First, Wright is correct that “historiography” is simply one element of a much larger debate on epistemology – how well we can “know” something. Wright explains well that the differences of opinion among scholars are far less due to application of exegetical theory as much as the acceptance of the larger governing theory in the first place.[1] For example, for Lutheran readers who accept the hermeneutic of Law and Gospel, there are relatively few major differences of opinion based upon exegetical reading. However, as soon as one introduces a non-Lutheran reader who does not accept that hermeneutic, no agreement can be found at any level.

To explain this, Wright moves in the parlance of “worldviews.” This common term is his way of suggesting which of the epistemological frameworks one accepts. This, he argues, is the determinative reason there are clear distinctions and disagreements among scholars on readings of the New Testament. At this point, it is not at all surprising what he says and he should be praised for his insights.

Where Wright presents his particular argument, however, is that worldviews are best expressed through his concept of “story.” He argues that story is the thing that creates a worldview:

The basic argument I shall advance in this Part of the book is that the problem of knowledge itself, and the three branches of it that form our particular concern, can all be clarified by seeing them in the light of a detailed analysis of the worldviews which form the grid through which humans, both individually and in social groupings, perceive all of reality. In particular, one of the key features of all worldview is the element of story. This is of vital importance not least in relation to the New Testament and early Christianity, but this is in fact a symptom of a universal phenomenon. “Story,” I shall argue, can help us in the first instance to articulate a critical-realist epistemology, and can then be put to wider uses in the study of literature, history, and theology.[2]

He attempts to focus completely on the aspect of “story” as he believes it is the most productive element of worldview and is the basis upon which one can find knowledge about things.

Wright then tries to make the key argument that “story” is valuable because it moves beyond the myth of “objective” knowledge. Instead, he argues that people can never “know” something in that sense – all things are interpreted at least at some level. He argues that people will not “know” things from data that they then build into a narrative, but rather that they have a preexisting narrative that they then use to interpret a story:

Instead of working as it were upwards from empirical data, in however chastened and hence cautious a fashion, knowledge takes place, within this model, when people find things that fit with the particular story or (more likely) stories to which they are accustomed to give allegiance.[3]

His argument, then, is the idea that one values a particular “story” – or more academically mythos – wherein new data will either fit or not fit. Based upon the coherence of the new data with the old leads one to accept or deny this as something “known.”

Wright further explains that given this framework there is a process wherein one can truly know something. He argues that when this knowledge is processed through what he calls “critical realism,” then it is possible to make positive statements concerning “reality.”

Over against both these positions, I propose a form of critical realism. This is a way of describing the process of ‘knowing’ that acknowledges the reality of the thing known, as something other than the knower (hence ‘realism’), while also fully acknowledging that the only access we have to this reality lies along the spiraling path of appropriate dialogue or conversation between the knower and the thing known (hence ‘critical’). This path leads to critical reflection on the products of our enquiry into ‘reality,’ so that our assertions about ‘reality’ acknowledge their own provisionality. Knowledge, in other words, although in principle concerning realities independent of the knower, is never itself independent of the knower.[4]

He essentially argues that so long as we recognize that we interpret data, we should be able to still value the reality of the object.

This argument is a very paired down presentation of what Charles Sanders Peirce presented in his semeiotic triad. Peirce, studying logical semiotics (signs), argued that a sign can relate to the object only via the interpreter. Pierce argues that there any interpreter of an object (the thing that is actually there), actually dialogues with 2 objects – the object and the representation of that object in the interpreter’s mind. Pierce’s views are therefore called a “triad” in that the interpreter sees and interprets both the actual object and the way that object is represented. Further, the way the object is represented should have a natural relationship with the actual object – therefore, all three elements of the triad are in relationship with each other. The value in Peirce’s logical semeiotics is that it recognizes the human interpreter as one who changes the real object and still allows the real object to exist and be part of the discussion.[5]

Wright’s argument for a Peircean semeiotic – if he is thinking in that complex a manner (he never mentions Peirce in his discussion though his argument seems based upon it) – is a valuable theory. It can be criticized in a variety of ways, but it is a good theory that deserves some attention as it is applied to the New Testament. If Wright were to use this theory and apply it carefully for the first century, his book would be a fascinating triumph. The problem is that he is not able to accomplish this task when he tries to apply this theory to the concept of “story.”

When Wright discusses “story,” he unwittingly abandons Peirce’s triads and moves far closer to a Structuralist idea that gives far less practical place for individuals. First, Wright argues that “stories” are essentially the worldview of individuals: “Stories thus provide a vital framework for experiencing the world. They also provide a means by which views of the world may be challenged.”[6] He considers “stories” – the framework for how we understand the world – as the key interpretant for all experience.

When he applies this process, though, he suggests how it is a story is supported/supplanted, organized by processing new data:

When we examine how stories work in relation to other stories, we find that human beings tell stories because this is how we perceive, and indeed relate to, the world. What we see close up, in a multitude of little incidents whether isolated of (more likely) interrelated, we make sense of drawing on storyforms already more or less known to us and placing the information within them. A story, with its pattern of problem and conflict, of aborted attempts at resolution, and final result, whether sad or glad, is, if we may infer from the common practice of the world, universally perceived as the best way of talking about the way the world actually is. Good stories assume that the world is a place of conflict and resolution, whether comic or tragic. They select and arrange material accordingly. And, as we suggested before, stories can embody or reinforce, or perhaps modify, the worldviews to which they relate.[7]

Here Wright applies his theory to the way people function. He argues that stories are the thing that we already know and the way we manage information by placing new pieces of information into preexisting stories.

This idea, while having some merit, moves away from Peirce’s good model into a more questionable model that is more familiar to us in the figure of Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure is a semeiotician and is in the same “field” as Pierce. However, Saussure spoke rather differently than Pierce did. He does not speak of any triads. Instead he focuses on a general system which a person knows (which he calls a “langue”). This is the “way of speaking” that governs how we think of things. He argues that this langue was present before we were born and persists outside of ourselves. He further argues that this whole system becomes “real” in that from the langue we can accept and express “parole” – essentially words. He argues that when we see an object, we give it a “parole” so that it fits within our “langue” – essentially, that we form reality to fit our system.[8] This seems to be precisely what Wright suggests a “story” does for a person – it allows the person to place a new piece of information – an “object” – into a system (langue/story) by labeling it in ways that correspond (parole).

The problem with using Saussure when one originally argued that one agreed with Peirce is that Saussure did not take seriously the third element that made Peirce’s model a triad. Peirce was insistent that the way one interpreted the actual object created a new object. In that sense, most all knowledge was not based upon the actual object and how it was signified – rather, most knowledge is based upon the representamen – the way the interpreter has created this “second object.” To deny this is to deny that the individual has much of a role at all.

Therefore, Wright begins laudably – he wants to address the challenge of individual subjectivity while at the same time not falling into the negative trap of logical positivism. He further presents a reasonable (if somewhat controversial) theory to do this by means of Peirce. However, his analysis of “story” – while it might be quite practical and useful – denies the very nuance he wanted to achieve with Peirce. Instead, he essentially has limited the individual to merely be a cog in a much larger machine. This machine is societal and it makes the whole system far less messy and less complex. The problem will be seen is if he has simplified this too much. At best, he has begun a chapter with a goal and then counteracted that same goal.

---

[1] Wright, NTPG, 31.

[2] Ibid., 32.

[3] Ibid., 37.

[4] Ibid., 35.

[5] For a brief and relatively clear presentation of Peirce’s semeiotics, see Crystal L. Downing, The Changing Signs of Truth: A Christian Introduction to the Semeiotics of Communication (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press Academic, 2012), 198-220.

[6] Wright, NTPG, 39.

[7] Ibid., 40.

[8] See Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics trans. Wade Baskin (New York: McGraw Hill, 1959).

An analysis of N.T. Wright - The New Testament and the People of God chapter one “Christian Origins and the New Testament"

In the 1990s, N.T. Wright published three volumes on the New Testament and Jesus – The New Testament and the People of God, Jesus and the Victory of God, and The Resurrection of the Son of God. These three volumes were a series called by him “Christian Origins and the Question of God” that proposed to discuss Christian origins, Jesus, Paul, and the Gospels showing the interconnectedness of each. After a ten-year hiatus, Wright has published the subsequent volumes in the series: the two volume work Paul and the Faithfulness of God. One can only imagine that it will take him some time to produce the final volume in the series on the gospels.

This new book on Paul deserves some very critical analysis (and much has already been offered). However, to understand his place in this field of Paul scholarship, it is necessary to remind us of what the entire series is doing. Wright’s approach is not unique but it is unusual. His odd combination of the devotional and the academic presents a very different picture of Paul than one might expect (neither being in the “New Perspective” nor the “Traditional/Lutheran” view). Further, there are moments in his book on Paul where Wright stands alone. These can only be understood if one considers very carefully his premises. Unfortunately he does not really discuss his premises in the two volumes on Paul. To find these odd premises, one must consider the first three volumes of the series on the world of the New Testament and the historical Jesus. Therefore, this is the first of several blog posts that discuss Wright’s series from beginning to end.

Wright’s series is eminently practical to study. Wright bridges the gap between the popular and the academic. The first three volumes of this series have sold very well both to the devotional layperson and the scholarly community. While some readers have found this mutually disappointing (the layperson finding it too technical and the scholar not finding it scholarly enough), equally have both found something in it quite interesting. I therefore choose this series to analyze because – for all its merits or faults in either particular community – it is a book that finds it own niche and should be treated as its own product.

With my training in the academic world, I happily recognize that I am a reader who is more “scholarly” than devotional – in at least the sense that will address this book series. I will attempt to critically analyze what Wright says in these volumes in the fold of the wider interests of scholarship to show Wright’s assumptions, biases, strengths, and weaknesses.

I recognize that Wright’s first volume published in 1992 is necessarily out of date. I would completely forgive him this except that he did revive this series in late 2013. Had he never mentioned this work again, I would not feel the need to analyze his work in a rigorous way. However, when he revived the series, it forces us to be very critical in looking at this work and asking if the assumptions therein are helpful or not. The moments that are out of date and troubling are still present and being used in the new volumes on Paul. Therefore, the work needs to be scrutinized.

In order to truly scrutinize Wright’s series which accumulates cumulatively, it is more helpful to consider his work chapter by chapter rather than book by book. His writing is relatively dense and to generalize is not nearly as helpful for discovering tensions as a careful exposition of what he is arguing. Therefore, this is the first of a long series on the blog site that will carefully discuss Wright’s work in stages.

Analysis of Wright's Preface and Chapter 1

To understand the assumptions of the whole project of N.T. Wright’s analysis will take the exposition of many posts carefully examining his work. However, the preface and first chapter of his first volume show what he considers as his assumptions. The value of carefully examining these two chapters are that these present his stated purpose and assumptions. This is necessary to consider as it shows how he is justifying his whole project. Later we will consider many of the unstated assumptions behind other sections of the text and recall this preface and introduction in order to analyze whether those assumptions would fit under his original stated premises.

Wright constructs his preface to explain why he is writing this book, where it fits in the scholarly continuum of books on the early Jesus movement, and presents the book’s importance. He argues that the two most powerful trends in New Testament studies are the “theological” and the “historical.” He attempts throughout the book that these two trends (which he argues are being treated as mutually exclusive), need in some way to be unified:

I believe it is important that the synthesis be attempted, but without false compression or over-simplification. I hope, then, to offer a consistent hypothesis on the origin of Christianity, with particular relation to Jesus, Paul and the gospels, which will set out new ways of understanding major movements and thought-patterns, and suggest new lines that exegesis can follow up.[1]

Wright then argues that these two great streams of scholarship need someone to wade in between them to bring sanity back to the conversation.

Wright explains in more detail his point in his introduction – that there are two claimants to the New Testament who are mutually excluding each other. He argues that neither can possibly hold the New Testament (which he here metaphorically compares with a land) for themselves:

There have been two groups, broadly, who have tried to inherit this territory for themselves, to make this book their own preserve. Like the two major claimants to the land of Israel in our own day, each contains some who are committed to the entire removal of the other from the land, though each also contains many who persist in searching for compromise solutions…There are those who, having seized power a century or two ago, and occupying many major fortresses (eminent chairs, well-known publishing houses, and so forth), insist that the New Testament be read in a thoroughgoing historical way, without inflicting on it the burden of being theologically normative…There are, on the other side, those who have shown just as much determination in resisting the advance of the new regime. Some still regard the New Testament as a sort of magic book, whose “meaning” has little to do with what the first-century authors intended, and a lot to do with how some particularly contemporary group has been accustomed to hear in it a call to a particular sort of spirituality or lifestyle.[2]

Wright argues that these two camps are at one another’s throat and they need someone – seemingly anyone – to attempt to manage this problem. He suggests that readers of the New Testament are terribly confused by these seeming warring factions and what is lost is the understanding of the New Testament itself.

Before showing how Wright claims to solve this problem, it is important to analyze this dialectical straw man. It is not surprising that Wright wants to argue that his book is important and that he does so by characterizing the field of New Testament studies to show how they fail to provide a solution that he then will provide - after all, this is how most argument is made. What is more troubling is how he chooses to characterize these two figures. To say that there are only two groups - the fundamentalist, literalistic, reader of the New Testament who pretends there are no contradictions in the Bible in contrast to the completely relativist reader who has no interest in the theological message of a book – is completely unfair. There are some who do hold these views – but they are not what would be considered “normative” either for scholarship or for any devotional community who was not themselves fundamentalist. This rhetoric starts to sound like the rhetoric of the “academic conspiracy theory” argument – that “scholarship” (which apparently means one thing) has the set agenda of depietizing its readers with no other goal. “Scholarship” apparently has the goal to destroy all faith in any religion (which apparently was the goal of the enlightenment) and its offspring survive at Harvard and Oxford. What Wright does to balance this ridiculous notion, is to present an equally ridiculous position for all devotional readers – they (again being apparently all the same thing) are nonreflective readers who pretend they don’t use hermeneutics but instead gain some kind of divine inspiration that magically presents itself in a consistent and edifying way for one’s faith. This idea is equally ridiculous – there are certainly some churches who at least claim this type of interpretation, but nearly all the mainstream denominations hold hermeneutical principles which they happily admit are their interpretive keys – hardly unreflecting fools who believe in a magic book in the way that Wright presents.

With this dichotomy presented, Wright will therefore be our salvation in creating a more balanced approach. This is not too hard to do, as his rhetorical opposites could almost not be less balanced. Wright argues he will provide a message based upon the “story” of the text:

A word must be said here about the category of ‘story,’ which I have found myself using increasingly frequently. It has already proved fruitful in a variety of areas in recent scholarship, not only in literary criticism but in areas as diverse as anthropology, philosophy, psychology, education, ethics, and theology itself.[3]

His argument is that there is a kind of “master narrative” – which he calls “story” – that governs the reading not only of the text, but also of all aspects of life. He wants to create continuity between the reading of the text and the historical perspective by positing a consistency between seemingly all living things. This type of argument would be wonderful if it could be accomplished – but serious questions remain as to how carefully this can be done.

Practically for the New Testament, Wright explains how this “story” concept can be applied to solve the rhetorical chasm between “theological” and “historical” readings which he presented above:

The New Testament, I suggest, must be read so as to be understood, read within appropriate contexts, within an acoustic which will allow its full overtones to be heard. It must be read with as little distortion as possible, and with as much sensitivity as possible to its different levels of meaning. It must be read so that the stories, and the Story, which it tells can be heard as stories, not as rambling ways of declaring unstoried ‘ideas’. It must be read without the assumption that we already know what it is going to say, and without the arrogance that assumes that ‘we’ – whichever group that might be – already have ancestral rights over this or that passage, book, or writer. And, for full appropriateness, it must be read in such a way as to set in motion the drama it suggests[4]

Wright wants to present that one needs history and theology – so then his universal “story” of the human drama can appropriately be acted out. This is the great solution to the great problem he has created.

It is this interest in explaining “the whole of everything” that not only is he going to use both theological and historical readings, but he is somehow going to incorporate all approaches to the scripture in his analysis in some kind of pan-hermeneutical approach:

We must try to combine the pre-modern emphasis on the text as in some sense authoritative, the modern emphasis on the text (and Christianity itself) as irreducibly integrated into history, and irreducibly involved with theology, and the post-modern emphasis on the reading of the text.[5]

Wright attempts to unite all things and all readings together in a balanced way.

If Wright is able to make this case, it should strike even the passing reader that the chasm between the interpretative methods must not be as great as he suggested. Wright even admits as such by showing that “historical” and “theological” readings are never actually separate:

It is, nevertheless, a matter of fact that most people who have tried to write about Christian theology have felt it appropriate to devote some space to the historical questions, and that the vast majority of people who have read the New Testament seriously from a historical point of view, and who have written about it thus, have in some way or other intended to address the theological questions as well, albeit of course reaching a wide range of answers.[6]

While what Wright says here is obviously true, he also creates an odd logic that needs to be carefully considered. His logic is both circular and contradictory. He implies the following proposition:

1.     There is a problem in that the current interpretations of the New Testament are deficient in their radical duality between one another (the historical and theological).

2.     The chasm is too great and we need a more balanced approach which takes the best part of both interpretations creating a “whole world” that includes both theology and historical context.

3.     Most all scholars already agree with Wright in his approach and practice it regularly.

4.     Proposition 1 does not truly exist, so Wright’s position can’t be wrong – but it does challenge why he is bothering with this book.

Wright has presented an argument that fulfills its own veracity. However, serious challenges can be asked as to what it is that he is truly doing.

The above analysis shows Wright’s stated goals. We should not, however, given the above challenge to these goals, discard Wright completely. First, Wright has overstated the importance of his book – but that does not mean that the book has no importance. Just because his straw men are not nearly as large as he hopes – and his solution is not nearly as unique as he hopes – it does not mean he does not have anything to add. Further, the one stated goal that does deserve serious examination is his argument for a “story” that will be encompassing. This, by Occam’s razor is valuable. If it were possible to discover a simple unifying theory that explained everything then that would be preferable to a far more chaotic presentation with contradictions.

Given these stated goals of the book, it will be up to the remainder of these blog posts to analyze what Wright is doing in his actual arguments – the ways that he holds to this and applies these theories as well as implying other assumptions and biases which he did not state at the beginning of his study.

---

[1] N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), xiv.

[2] Ibid., 4.

[3] Ibid., xvii.

[4] Ibid., 6.

[5] Ibid., 26-27.

[6] Ibid., 12.