NT Wright: Bishop of Durham

[dekster]

I just thought this would be a good place to discuss a very active political and theological thinker in the Anglican Church. It would be very interesting to see what others may or may not know about him and his views on certain subjects.

It would also be interesting to here what some might think about some of his views on social issues and if there are any British on the forum I'd like to hear your thoughts as well.

Thanks,

dekster

[Hastur T. Fannon]

If any Brits are wondering, Tom isn't that (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Edward_Jenkins) Bishop of Durham - there's been two since Jenkins

I think he's probably the only thing stopping conservative evangelicalism, particularly in the UK, from sliding into fundamentalism

Great writer, very clear, very scholarly and a good bishop by all accounts

[nerfherder]

He has a nice pair of knockers...

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/99/297606590_5b0775a9fd.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/lpmcc/297606590/in/set-72157594376619204/)

(the other one is in the museum)

That's about the limit of my knowledge of him.

[Hastur T. Fannon]

He has a nice pair of knockers...

They are, indeed, a lovely pair of knockers

(this is a reference to an infamous incident on a kids TV show called Blue Peter which did a spot on the restoration of Durham Cathedral, with particular reference to these doorknockers. When handed back to the studio, the presenter couldn't resist making saying something along the lines of "Thanks Sarah, and what a lovely pair of knockers")

[dekster]

Oh, that's funny! Very funny.

So, you think that Tom Wright is holding the line and keeping British evangelicals from becoming fundies.

Why do you think so?

As an aside, I didn't realize fundamentalism was so strong in Britain. Would you care to elaborate?

Thanks

[Hastur T. Fannon]

Well evangelicalism is always a whisker away from Biblical infalabilty, if not full-blown inerrancy, and that's one of the original five fundamentals

Tom Wright's view is that God exercises his authority (primarily? I'll have to check) through the Bible, but that the Bible only becomes authorative when it's read by or taught from someone acting under the influence of the Holy Spirit - at that point it becomes the Word of God (Jesus) because it's acting as a bridge between God and humanity. Sidesteps the debate entirely

There's also been a recent debate about the role of the penal substitution model of the Cross within evangelicalism. Tom wrote a brilliant article (I'll see if I can dig out a link) slapping down both sides

[dekster]

Well evangelicalism is always a whisker away from Biblical infalabilty, if not full-blown inerrancy, and that's one of the original five fundamentals

Tom Wright's view is that God exercises his authority (primarily? I'll have to check) through the Bible, but that the Bible only becomes authorative when it's read by or taught from someone acting under the influence of the Holy Spirit - at that point it becomes the Word of God (Jesus) because it's acting as a bridge between God and humanity. Sidesteps the debate entirely

There's also been a recent debate about the role of the penal substitution model of the Cross within evangelicalism. Tom wrote a brilliant article (I'll see if I can dig out a link) slapping down both sides

Some very interesting points to which I agree. I do not like the terms infallibility or inerrancy but, rather, inspiration where the Biblical texts are concerned. I did not realize that Wright had addressed this issue....I'll have to go back and read his book, "The Last Word."

If you find that article, please post it. I'd be very interested.

[Atticus_of_Amber]

Tom Wright's view is that God exercises his authority (primarily? I'll have to check) through the Bible, but that the Bible only becomes authorative when it's read by or taught from someone acting under the influence of the Holy Spirit - at that point it becomes the Word of God (Jesus) because it's acting as a bridge between God and humanity. Sidesteps the debate entirely ...

... by setting up an elite priestly class who are the only ones qualified to interpret the Bible. Isn't that basically pre-reformation Catholicism?

[And yes, that would be an improvement. But then again, I've always had a soft spot for the Catholic church when it didn't take its theology too seriously and was really a political organisation for the preservation of civilization]

[there_is_no_bob]

If you find that article, please post it. I'd be very interested.
he might be talking about this (http://clubs.calvin.edu/chimes/2003-02-14/essay-interview1.html).

One great controversy—I’m not sure it’s a controversy across the pond—is the role of the Scriptures. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “inerrancy of the Scriptures” or “infallibility of the Scriptures.”


Yes.



What is your position on that? To what extent is a doctrine that says something like infallibility or inerrancy necessary?


Right. I see words like that—inerrancy, infallibility—as attempts to put into a glass case, almost, something that Christians down the years have instinctively felt and known but not until recently have they actually formulated—a Scripture principle of some sort. You know that in the Middle Ages, in the early Church, it just came with the turf. If you were a Christian, the Bible was your book, and they didn’t develop great theories about what it was or how. They said odd things here and there, but it’s very recently that people have done that.

Particularly that a lot of that debate has happened within modernity, within post-Western-Enlightenment modernity, makes me worried because often, then, you get modernist categories about certainty and objectivity dumped on Scripture which really don’t do it justice and really don’t do what needs to be done. I was with a group of Anglican bishops last year, and one of them was asked the question about what he felt about Scripture, and his first answer was, “There isn’t any other book in the world I read every day of my life.” And in a sense that’s a very Anglican answer. It’s to say, “I’m not necessarily going to give a one-word theory, or even a five-word theory, but I am going to tell you that I am on my knees in front of this book day after day after day.”

In fact, I know the bishop in question, and I know there are some parts of Scripture that he would want to distance himself from. I wouldn’t take that view. I really think that if it’s in this book, I need to be doing serious business with it. If I say that I believe X but that the Bible says Y which is different, then chances are I’m making a mistake somewhere, but that doesn’t prejudge all issues of interpretation, you know. There are many, many issues where I say I am committed to believing this text whenever I figure out what on earth it’s supposed to mean, which at the moment I don’t think I know. So that, for me, is often an open question.

I know what the people who say inerrancy are trying to say, and broadly I want to affirm something like what they’re trying to affirm. I do have a sense that that word has got in the way. And as you say, in England this isn’t a big debate. We just don’t have the heat that it generates in the United States.



Well, since we seem to have come full circle—well, almost full circle—back around to Scripture. The gospels have always been an issue that looms large in my mind, because as you say, with modernist categories of objectivity and certainty, and things like that, it seems to me that if you apply those to the gospels specifically that the heat is especially felt there. I’d just like to hear your thoughts—what about the differences among the gospels? What about St. Paul’s influence on Luke, and so forth?


Paul’s influence on Luke would be a very interesting and difficult topic. Yes, of course there are differences among the gospels. My favorite one is that if you try to figure out how many times the cock (or the rooster, as you call it in America) crowed when Peter was busy betraying Jesus, it’s very, very difficult to do. The only way you can actually harmonize all the accounts is by having the rooster crow I think it’s nine times in order to fit in the different ways the gospels tell the story. And of course then you have said they’re all true by saying something which none of them say, and there are some evangelical apologists who have gone that route and have really tied themselves in knots, because you end up saying that they’re all wrong—in order to say they’re all right, you end up saying they’re all wrong, which is just ridiculous. But I really do think that Peter really did deny Jesus two or three times and that there was a cock crowing in the background while he was doing it. In fact, if you’ve ever stood in Jerusalem at four o’clock on a spring morning, there are dozens of roosters crowing all over the place—it’s actually very evocative.

The fact that the gospels tell it slightly differently doesn’t mean that nothing happened. The other important thing to say is that for almost all ancient history we are dependent on, or at most two, sources, plus the odd coin or inscription and that we are always in the business of doing reconstructions, and thinking probably it happened this way, and these sources can be fitted in and made to make sense. People often come to the gospels as though it was like doing 19th-century history, where you can go to the university library and look up all the pamphlets and newspaper and books and articles that were written and form an extremely detailed and accurate map of what precisely happened. In ancient history it is never like that.

The thing with the gospels is that it is more like that than anywhere else in ancient history because you’ve got these four accounts, themselves probably incorporating earlier sources, which converge so powerfully—and I’ve tried in my work about Jesus to show how they converge—but the reason many people say they don’t converge is that they come with skeptical, modernist spectacles on, where you discount all the miracles, where you say Jesus could never have said this because that would have meant he was mad, even though, of course, they said he was mad, and so on and so on.

And so the gospels all collapse into a heap of dust on the floor, and I have come to them and said, “No, I’m an ancient historian. I want to read these documents seriously as ancient history.” Of course they were written later by people within the movement. So? Tacitus and Suetonius were written after the life of Augustus and Tiberius, Claudius and so on, by people who had very definite axes to grind about how they saw the developing Roman Empire. Tacitus was an extremely cynical historian. That doesn’t mean we say his account is all projection, so we’ve got to do all the stuff that good historians do, and when we do the gospels show up remarkably well.



What do you think the writers of the gospels, and the people of the ancient world in general who thought about such things, would have thought about the nature of language, or the nature of narrative as a tool for portraying what actually happened? Would they have some of our modernist ideas about being able to nail it right on the head?


They knew the difference between saying, “Here’s a nice story, and of course it didn’t happen,” and saying, “Here’s a nice story, and actually it did happen.” There’s a lovely moment in Acts 12 when it says that Peter didn’t think what he was seeing was really happening, but that he thought he was seeing a vision. They knew the difference between things that really happened and visions, and from Herodotus on, they know the difference between saying, “Somebody told me this story, and actually I think it’s true,” and “Somebody told me this story, and actually I think it’s a bit odd.” And it’s interesting what they go for.

Herodotus said that “I met a traveler who said he traveled so far south that the sun was going round to the north. These sailors—they make up the most absurd things.” But we know, of course, that the guy was actually telling the truth, so sometimes the skepticism of the ancients was unwarranted. Sometimes, likewise, our modern skepticism of them is unwarranted.

There’s an awful lot of loosening of firm lines that needs to go on. But in particular, Jews of the first century—and the gospel writers were all either Jews or soaked in Judaism; Luke may have been a Gentile, but he knew his Jewish culture—lived within a narrative world where, because one of the principal actors in the narrative was the God who had made the world, as opposed to the pagan gods who hadn’t, it mattered that what they were talking about actually did happen in the real world. Their story was about things that happened in the real world. If that wasn’t true, then their stories were false.

In other words, though the gospels contain parable—stories which didn’t happen but which carry a meaning—the gospels themselves demonstrably cannot have been large-scale parables. The meaning they have is a meaning to do with the real world.

[Hastur T. Fannon]

Some very interesting points to which I agree. I do not like the terms infallibility or inerrancy but, rather, inspiration where the Biblical texts are concerned. I did not realize that Wright had addressed this issue....I'll have to go back and read his book, "The Last Word."

"Scripture and the Authority of God" (I think that's the title, I don't have it in front of me) is the text I was thinking of

If you find that article, please post it. I'd be very interested.

Here you go (http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/news/2007/20070423wright.cfm?doc=205)

... by setting up an elite priestly class who are the only ones qualified to interpret the Bible.

What. The. Fuck.

I'm sorry, but can anyone see how Atticus got to that from what I wrote? Because I'm stumped

You know (of at least if you don't you had a very bad Sunday School), that Christianity teaches that it is a "priesthood of all believers" and the Holy Spirit is given to everyone who believes.

[Varaj]

What. The. Fuck.

I'm sorry, but can anyone see how Atticus got to that from what I wrote? Because I'm stumped

You know (of at least if you don't you had a very bad Sunday School), that Christianity teaches that it is a "priesthood of all believers" and the Holy Spirit is given to everyone who believes.


Several brands of Christianity (including the largest, Catholics) use a priest class for the role you suggested.

[Hastur T. Fannon]

Several brands of Christianity (including the largest, Catholics) use a priest class for the role you suggested.

Yeah, I get that. But Tom's ideas directly undermine that concept.

Seriously guys - who fucked up? Did I really write something that read the exact opposite of how I intended it to be read?

[Varaj]

Yeah, I get that. But Tom's ideas directly undermine that concept.

Seriously guys - who fucked up? Did I really write something that read the exact opposite of how I intended it to be read?

Personally I assumed you were referencing a priestly class but that is likely because of my prejudices against priestly classes and I tend to see them under every rock. I my guess is your statement will reveal personal biases in about Christianity functions in regards to priestly classes.

[Hastur T. Fannon]

I my guess is your statement will reveal personal biases in about Christianity functions in regards to priestly classes.

Yeah. I've been noticing recently that what I mean when I say the word "Christianity" isn't what a lot of people on this board mean.

Words eh? Why can't we just use direct brain transmissions?

[Varaj]

Yeah. I've been noticing recently that what I mean when I say the word "Christianity" isn't what a lot of people on this board mean.

Words eh? Why can't we just use direct brain transmissions?

Amen brother, amen. That lack of clarity is why technical jargon is a good thing. People always jump on me for "arguing semantics" but on a lot of these discussions precision is critical. :)

We might need to actually agree on precise technical definitions for such types of discussions, we can just point people to the KT dictionary for how the word is being used. :lol:

[there_is_no_bob]

Seriously guys - who fucked up? Did I really write something that read the exact opposite of how I intended it to be read?
Uhmm, yes? I read that as in effect creating a class of priests. Either that or it creates imams.

If there's a group of people who can interpret the bible for other people and everyone else is not qualified to interpret the bible then that group of people become, in effect, priests.


His ideas might directly undermine that idea but from that little bit he seems to be either proposing a class of priests, or moving to a model where any idiot can declare himself influenced by the Holy Spirit and thus gain followers based on their interpretation.

[Hastur T. Fannon]

Ok, this is what I wrote:

Tom Wright's view is that God exercises his authority (primarily? I'll have to check) through the Bible, but that the Bible only becomes authorative when it's read by or taught from someone acting under the influence of the Holy Spirit - at that point it becomes the Word of God (Jesus) because it's acting as a bridge between God and humanity. Sidesteps the debate entirely

Uhmm, yes? I read that as in effect creating a class of priests. Either that or it creates imams.

If there's a group of people who can interpret the bible for other people and everyone else is not qualified to interpret the bible then that group of people become, in effect, priests.

I'm sure - in fact I'm absolutely certain because I've just read it back - that what I've said says the exact opposite. Where do I talk about a group of people qualified to interpret the Bible? Did I manage to sneak fnords into that paragraph or something?

The Holy Spirit is granted to all believers, therefore there is no need for a priest or imam to interpret the Bible for you

or moving to a model where any idiot can declare himself influenced by the Holy Spirit and thus gain followers based on their interpretation.

Given that there's 57 varieties of evangelical protestant church, that's pretty much what we have at the moment...

[there_is_no_bob]

The Holy Spirit is granted to all believers, therefore there is no need for a priest or imam to interpret the Bible for you
See, that's the point that I wasn't aware of.



I thought Islam took that angle too and it's just that things are too complicated for the average person, so they've got imams. And interpreting the Bible ain't easy, far as I know...

[Hastur T. Fannon]

See, that's the point that I wasn't aware of.

In that case, sorry guys

I wish there was a good, accurate, but neutral (as possible) "Christianity for Dummies"-type book. The Wiley book is good and accurate, but it's an evangalistic text so I can't really recommend it in discussions like this

[Bagpuss]

the Bible only becomes authoritative when it's read by or taught from someone acting under the influence of the Holy Spirit

Unfortunately to someone not sharing the same views as you about the Holy Spirit (and even Christian's debate about it's exact nature), it does raise the issue of who determines if the person reading it is acting under the influence of the Holy Spirit.

The who appears to be the priesthood to anyone outside the faith since they appear to be the ones in authority. This is the case in many other religions.

[Bagpuss]

Still even if the holy spirit is granted to all believers it still raises the question of who determines if the reader is under the influence of the Holy Spirit?

Is Phelp's "God hates Fags" interpretation equally as valid as a priest that will bless gay marriages?

Is the crusades "Deus Volt!" inspired by the holy spirit or is the "turn the other cheek" conciousness objector who wouldn't even fight the Nazi's in WWII more valid?

On topic, never heard of the current Bishop of Durham until this thread, he seems to keep a lot lower profile (at least in the UK) than Jenkins.

The most recent Bishop I heard about in the press was John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York who cut up his dog collar (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7135087.stm) on T.V. the other day to protest Zimbabwe's leader Robert Mugabe, and said he wouldn't put it back on until he was out of power.

[The Winslow]

I'm sorry, but can anyone see how Atticus got to that from what I wrote? Because I'm stumped

Well, the relevant part is this: the Bible only becomes authorative when it's read by or taught from someone acting under the influence of the Holy Spirit

It all depends on what your guess is for how people will determine whether someone is acting under the influence of the Holy Spirit or not. Is it free-for-all? So that even a mass murderer could claim it? Would there be some tests and rituals and ordination and all that stuff? Then it leads to a priestly caste as Atticus thought.

Or is it just something you have to decide for yourself, based on your own understanding of Christianity and on how you saw that person act, so that you may think (s)he's Holy-Spirit-Influenced while someone else may think not; and vice-versa?

Personally, I think you meant the later, and the influenced status of someone isn't a question of public records but of personal conviction. Which is indeed the best way to entirely sidestep the question, since it ensures plausible deniability whenever someone commits crimes in the name of faith. (Like these Nigerian pseudo-Churches from the other thread.) "Does it look to you like they're really influenced by the Holy Spirit? Of course not!"

[Hastur T. Fannon]

On topic, never heard of the current Bishop of Durham until this thread, he seems to keep a lot lower profile (at least in the UK) than Jenkins.

+Jenkins would have loved to be able to keep a low profile. He wasn't even quoted out of context, the quote was cut so it said the exact opposite of what he mean. Towards then end of his career, every time he preached he'd have three dictaphones in front of him recording his words - one tape when to Church House, one to his lawyers and he kept one tape

The most recent Bishop I heard about in the press was John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York who cut up his dog collar (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7135087.stm) on T.V. the other day to protest Zimbabwe's leader Robert Mugabe, and said he wouldn't put it back on until he was out of power.

Wasn't it great? Real OT-style physical prophecy!

Whoopsie, nearly didn't clarify that. In theological terms, "prophecy" isn't predicting the future, but speaking out what you think God is saying to a particular community. The OT prophets were often called to do bizarre things to illustrate the point (the only one that leaps to mind is Hosea marrying a known prostitute, but there were loads of others)

In this case +Sentamu, was removing and destroying a visible sign of his identity as a priest (his dog collar) to illustrate how Mugabe was destroying the identity of Zimbabwe

Double whoopsie: Bishops sign their names with a cross and then either their surname, the name of diocise or (occasionally in the CofE a mangled Latin name for their diocise). There's a piece of Internet dialect that I think originated on the Ship of Fools, of referring to Bishops using a "+" sign and their surname. It saves having to look up their actual title, particularly as it can change depending on the context you are referring to them

"Does it look to you like they're really influenced by the Holy Spirit? Of course not!"

Bingo. "By their fruits you will know them." Someone acting under the influence of the Holy Spirit should also be exhibiting what are called the "fruits of the Spirit" (love, joy, peace, self-control and a couple of others that I can't be bothered to look up). If their lifestyle doesn't exhibit this and/or their interpretation doesn't appear to promote this stuff then it's probably wrong

But everyone's supposed to test these things for themselves.

[Hastur T. Fannon]

A bit of clarification. The original bit of Tom Wright's work I've talked about on this is really around what the phrase "the authority of the Bible" means. The rest is really just standard Reformed (Anglican and Protestant) theology and can't really remember exactly which bits are which because I got most of it from Tom's writings

[dekster]

Another point on biblical interpretation is that some believe that it becomes authoritative when taught under the influence of God's Spirit but it still must be understood using a good grasp of the historical/grammatical framework in which it was originally written.

Bringing the Scripture to play in modern life is where everything comes full circle.