[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 2 –
Jesus and the Victory of God.]
The final chapter of Wright’s analysis presents his most
innovative, and hence, most questionable assertion. Here, he allows the
consequence of his idea of Jesus being the return of Israel from exile and God
becoming king to its logical conclusion – God apocalyptically inhabiting Zion.
Here, he argues that this was done through Jesus’ action in Jerusalem – namely
his being crucified. Here, Wright creates a very Lukan portrait of Jesus and so
long as he keeps this priority, then his view functions. However, if that
priority is challenged in any way, then there are difficulties.
Wright closes his book with what he sees as the final
question of Jesus’ ministry – his clear vocation. He argues that Jesus’
vocation would not be complete if it did not include God returning from Zion.
He summarizes the scheme he has argued earlier:
We have seen Jesus’ Temple-action
as symbolic enacting of YHWH’s judgment on the Temple, and as a symbolic claim
to Messiahship. We have seen his Last Supper as a symbolic enacting of the
great exodus, the return from exile which he intended to accomplish in his own
death. So, I suggest, we should see his final journey to Jerusalem, climaxing
in those two events and in that which followed from them, as the symbolic
enacting of the great central kingdom-promise, that YHWH would at last return
to Zion, to judge and to save.[1]
This would, in some sense, designate Jesus as divine (for
God to be returning to Zion is to see Jesus as returning to Zion). However,
Wright does a good job showing that he cannot historically argue whether Jesus
was divine or not. However, he can argue that Jesus saw himself as such:
Let me stress that I am not asking,
in this chapter, whether Jesus actually was or is ‘divine’, whatever we might
mean by that. I am asking about Jesus’ own aims and beliefs: the sense of
vocation that led him, as a first-century Jew, to do and say what he did and
said, and the belief system within which those actions and words made sense.[2]
Wright is attempting to ask whether Jesus saw himself as a
divine figure that saw himself as worthy of worship.[3]
The challenge of Jesus seeing himself as enacting the coming
kingdom then asks how he is still functioning in an apocalyptic sense as the
son of man. Wright argues that his action fits within a Danielic sphere of
apocalyptic expectation wherein the actor would come from earth and then move
to heaven:
Jesus did speak of the ‘coming of
the son of man,’ but that this whole phrase has to be taken quite strictly in
its Danielic sense, in which ‘coming’ refers to the son of man ‘coming’ to the Ancient of Days. He is not
‘coming’ to earth from heaven, but the other way around.
Second, I propose that Jesus did speak of a ‘coming’ figure in the more usual
sense of ‘one who comes to Israel’. This coming figure was YHWH himself, as
promised in the texts we have set out above. Jesus, I suggest, thought of the
coming of YHWH as an event which was bound up with his own career and its
forthcoming climax.[4]
In this scheme, then, it is possible for Jesus to be both
the son of man and not lead a violent revolution. However, serious question has
to be asked of Wright whether this is the best understanding of Jesus’ message.
Wright’s argument makes good sense if, and only if, we see
Jesus’ view being accurately portrayed by the Gospel of Luke. Luke argues that
at the coming of Christ, all people are in some sense already within the
kingdom of god. Jesus’ actions have ushered
in the kingdom in the present. If this is the premise, then Wright exposition
makes perfect sense. Consider his following analysis:
YHWH is visiting his people, and
they do not realize it; they are therefore in imminent danger of judgment,
which will take the form of military conquest and devastation. This is not a
denial of the imminence of the kingdom. It is a warning about what that
immanent kingdom will entail. The parable functions, like so many, as a
devastating redefinition of the kingdom of god. Yes the kingdom does mean the
return of YHWH to Zion. Yes, this kingdom is even now about to appear. But no,
this will not be a cause of celebration for nationalist Israel.[5]
Jesus’ judgment upon the people is in the present rather than the eschatological
future.
For this to be the case, Jesus needs to be divine. For Jesus
to usher in God’s enthronement of Zion – as strange a manner as he did so – he
must be divine so that this can be enacted. He argues that this is explained in
the wisdom theology presented in the Gospels and that this wisdom theology goes
back to Jesus himself:
By themselves [Jesus as divine
wisdom], I do not think these sayings would be strong enough to bear the weight
that is sometimes placed on them. They cannot sustain a complete explanation of
Jesus’ self-understanding. But they are entirely at home within the wider
context of Jesus’ symbolic journey to Jerusalem, and his varied explanations of
that all-important action. Indeed, it is not easy to suppose them coming into
existence except in some such context. Once again, we have no reason outside
the synoptic tradition itself to suppose that anyone after Jesus’ day made such
sayings and symbols central to their understanding of who Jesus was and the
role he was playing. It looks as though we are in touch with his own aims and
beliefs, his own sense of vocation.[6]
The only problem with Wright’s analysis is his assertion
that the wisdom sayings would not have been created by the early church. Seeing
Jesus as divine was very much an essential element of Christology that was
popular in the centuries following Jesus’ death, so there is little reason why
we would not expect them to perpetuate such an idea. However, eventually, I
think Wright is correct – that Jesus did see himself as the embodiment of
divine wisdom.
Where Wright’s analysis could use supplement is in his
discussion of whether Jesus has already been
enthroned in Zion in the Lukan style that he suggests, or if that action is to
be ushered in at the parousia – an idea that would be supported more carefully
by Matthew, Mark, and Paul. The “return” to Zion is not so much controversial
for its function – most all people argue that Jesus saw himself as calling for
and embodying that role. The question is simply if it already happened. Many would argue it has not. That when Jesus
returns in the future, is when he
plans on embodying this role.
Wright’s analysis, then leads logically to the problem he
proposes in his conclusion to the book – that what Jesus seemed to call for did
not happen. He sets up the problem thus:
Make Jesus a teacher, and you can
translate that teaching into other modes. Make him a one-dimensional
revolutionary (social political, military even), and you have a model to
imitate. But see him as an eschatological prophet announcing, and claiming to
embody, the kingdom of the one true God, and you have a story of a man gambling
and apparently losing.[7]
Here, Wright argues that there was a crisis in that Jesus
saw himself having already filled the messianic role and not seeming to have
accomplished it.
Wright has to explain this problem with a single point –
that he would have lost if he was not
resurrected. He argues that the value in Jesus’ action is dependent upon a
belief in the resurrection:
Why then did people go on talking
about Jesus of Nazareth, except as a remarkable but tragic memory? The obvious
answer is the one given by all early Christians actually known to us (as
opposed to those invented by modern mythographers): Jesus was raised from the
dead.[8]
Here, at some level, Wright is, of course, correct. If the
early Christians did not believe Jesus rose from the dead, then they would not
very well be able to uphold much of a belief in him. The problem, is what he
thinks this proves. This does explain why people found him valid, but it
doesn’t prove that Jesus has already accomplished the apocalyptic goals. If one
held that Jesus would fill this role in the future, it also would be necessary
that he rose from the dead (a dead person cannot very well return).
Wright is aware of this problem, so he has reoriented the
question to discuss how this enthronement will be implemented throughout the world. The apocalyptic end has been
accomplished, but the effects of it have not yet been realized:
But if he was an eschatological
prophet/Messiah, announcing the kingdom and dying in order to bring it about,
the resurrection would declare that he had in principle succeeded in his task,
and that his earlier redefinitions of the coming kingdom had pointed to a
further task awaiting his followers, that of implementing what he had achieved. Jesus, after all, as a good
first-century Jews, believed that Israel functioned to the rest of the world as
the hinge to the door; what he had done for Israel, he had done in principle
for the whole world. It makes sense, within his aims as we have studied them to
suppose that he envisaged his followers becoming in their turn Isaianic
heralds, lights to the world.[9]
Here, aside from the side note that Wright makes of opening
salvation to the gentiles – which should be a serious topic of discussion
rather than a mere side note – Jesus has already accomplished everything
messianically, he has just not enacted that role to its fullest. This idea is
fully Lukan – the idea that Jesus already established the kingdom and is merely
waiting for the final stage to destroy evil – so that history can be fulfilled
and all those who need to be saved will be saved.
The view, then, is not outlandish, but it is very much
dependent upon one gospel. A real question should be considered as to whether
that is the best approach or not. Throughout this book, Wright has consistently
and competently presented a Lukan Jesus. While that is certainly something that
is very possible, it is also something that needs to be proved. Why has Mark –
usually presented as far earlier than Luke – not gotten the same amount of
space and attention? This, I suspect will be a theme that needs to be further
explored in his upcoming volume The Resurrection
of the Son of God.
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