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"I insisted that Christians claiming to have demons were making excuses for problems of carnality or personal lack of discipline; they were avoiding the tough part of growing in grace and maturing in a deeper understanding of Scripture. I overcame this theological prejudice...I discovered that the issue wasn't as conclusive as I had thought...I realized that those pastors and Bible teachers who had repeatedly reinforced the 'Christian can't have a demon' outlook had very little practical experience with the phenomenon"
-- Bob Larson
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News: A Preterist Reviews The Resurrection of the Son of God by N. T. Wright
Posted on Monday, January 26 @ 14:06:25 PST by Virgil |
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wordknight submitted: "by Kent Ross
"In this, Wright does not see, or does not believe, the possibility that though Christ’s resurrection was real and physical, it might serve as a metaphor for believers being raised into the post A. D. 70 Kingdom of God on earth. This is not to say that he does not constantly see the resurrection as a metaphor for the Christian life. He does, and writes some elegant passages about the nature of spiritual resurrection for transformed saints."
N. T. Wright The Resurrection of the Son of God Fortress Press: Minneapolis, 2003.
The resurrection of Christ and his believers is one of the key issues in Bible study, especially as it relates to Fulfilled Eschatology. Is the resurrection physical and literal? Is it future or past? Is it the resurrection of Israel from sin and death? Or is it a resurrection of Christians to heaven? Or is it some amalgamation of various views? Understanding the answers to these questions is at the root of comprehending the hope we have in Christ.
N. T. Wright’s third volume in his series “Christian Origins and the Question of God” is a surprise volume in the series. The section on Resurrection was originally meant to comprise 70 pages of the previous volume, but instead ballooned into a monster tome of its own comprising over 700 pages.
The book, indeed the entire series so far, is a must read for Biblical scholars. It is a landmark that has shifted how we view the Bible. Happily, it is a change toward conservative, historical, exegetical scholarship. It presents a view of Jesus based on reading the Bible in the context of Second Temple Judaism, instead of from the point of view of modern preconceptions.
Wright points out many things that are valuable and affirming to preterists, while at the same time he frustratingly does not follow through on some of his ideas.
The Good News for Preterists
YHWH, The Source of All Life
The Professor begins by surveying the pre-Christian pagan world. He points out that ancient pagans really had no hopeful view of afterlife. In the world of Homer, Hades was a murky realm of gibbering, witless phantoms. Christianity was born into a world in which the average person viewed its central claim of resurrection from the dead as patently false. As Wright says, “The road to the underworld ran only one way” (p. 81).
Platonism introduced the idea that the body was a “prison” for the soul. To die was to set the soul free from its prison. Death was irrelevant and should be faced calmly. This idea of the soul separate from the body was adopted by Greeks and has passed to us today – but it was not the Jewish or Biblical conception.
Wright insists that contrary to the ideas of Platonism about the immortal soul, the Jews of the Bible looked to YHWH as the source of all life. He “breathed” life into Adam, and His withdrawal of breath returns Man to dust. God is the ground and hope of all life. Rather than a progression or growth in awareness about resurrection from the times of the Old Testament to the New, Wright sees a consistency in the Jewish view that always turns to YHWH for life. God for the Israelite is the source of life as seen in YHWH’s creation, His promises of land and offspring, His purposes, His power over forces including death, His love for the world and for His human creatures, His love for Israel, especially the faithful, and His justice and righteousness. YHWH is always at the center of hope for life and resurrection. The faithful follower depended utterly on God for life (Psalm 104). This is an important background for preterists to keep in mind. Whatever may be said about the symbolic nature of resurrection in the Bible, God is life, and life is in God.
Second Temple Judaism as Context
Another area that is vastly helpful to preterists is Professor Wright’s observance of the context of the historical Jesus. Wright constantly grounds his understanding of the resurrection in the context of Second Temple Judaism, their exiled situation, and their hope for rescue. He sees this cluster of ideas as a key theme extending from Daniel 12, Ezekiel 37, through the intertestamental period, and on in to New Testament passages. Daniel 12 and Ezekiel 37, for example, are explained as being about enduring persecution under the pagan yoke, being set free, and achieving a new resurrection for Israel in the re-establishment of the kingdom under God’s just rule. Wright constantly points to the significance of the Land, the City, and the Temple. He never fails to see the Jewish expectation of a Messiah that would rescue them in a literal, political way. Yet he also sees that Jesus fulfilled this in a “double” way. He was the Messiah to rescue them, but his Kingdom was an inner, secret Kingdom of Peace and non-violence. It is when he is observing the Second Temple context that Wright seems like a preterist. His interpretations provide a valuable, unmatched comprehension of these themes so vital to Realized Eschatology. Furthermore, his thorough study of all verses relating to the resurrection is well organized and can be used almost like a commentary when studying various passages.
We have time for only one example taken from Wright’s comments on Philippians. Here Wright sounds like one of Preterism’s best writers.
The resurrection and exaltation of Jesus proclaim and install him as the world’s true lord and saviour; in other words, according to Paul’s gospel it is because of the resurrection that Jesus is lord and Caesar is not. The future resurrection and glorification of Jesus’ followers will vindicate them as the true people of the one true God, despite their present suffering and humiliation, and herald the victory of the gospel over the powers of the world through the final act of new creation. As in Pharisaic belief, resurrection challenges the powers of the world, as no other theology or spirituality can do, with the news of the kingdom of the creator and covenant God (p. 233).
No Rapture
His deep appreciation of the context of Second Temple Judaism leads Wright to criticize anachronistic Western ideas that are “read back” into the Bible. He is refreshingly willing to look anew at the text without the shackles of later church history (be assured he does consider it). He debunks the idea that the Bible is about “dying and going to heaven.” He sees no room for ideas such as “rapture,” or that the Jews conceived of their program as including the end of the “space-time continuum,” or the destruction of God’s good world. Preterists will also find his comments in this area deeply astute and useful.
Witness the writer’s comments on Luke 20:
For many centuries it has been assumed in western Christendom that the ultimate point of being a Christian was to ‘go to heaven when you die’… That belief, expressed in a thousand hymns, ten thousand prayers and uncountable sermons, remains the staple diet of most Christians today. Within this context, the word ‘resurrection’ could be heard, as so many still hear it today, simply as a vivid way of saying ‘life after death’ or ‘going to heaven’…
… We cannot stress too strongly that this whole complex of ideas, developed so massively and many-sidedly over the years, was simply not in the heads or hearts of either Jesus or the Sadducees, or indeed the Pharisees, or indeed ordinary Jews or pagans in the first century. One might as well assume that when Herod wanted music playing in his court he had to choose between Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Within the Jewish tradition, at least, ‘heaven’ was not, and did not become until some while after the first century, a regular designation for the place where the righteous went either immediately after death or at some stage thereafter (pp. 417-418).
Resurrection Insights
Wright thoroughly looks at every passage dealing with resurrection in the Bible and in ancient literature 200 years on either side of Jesus. His comments on the New Testament passages provide valuable insight into their political and Second Temple Judaism context. For example, in his comments on I Thessalonians 4, a passage critical to modern understandings of rapture and the second coming, Wright provides scintillating insights.
The “coming of the Lord” and the people going into the “air” to meet him, is not about bodies floating around going to meet a literally returning Jesus. For Wright, the context is a challenge by Jesus and his followers against the Emperors and Caesars of New Testament times. When a Roman Emperor’s citizens in outlying colonies (such as Philippi) are in trouble they long not to go to Rome, but to receive a visit from their ruler. As he comes to rescue them, and to set things right by making key judgments, they are thrilled, and go outside the city to escort him into the gates with joy. There the sovereign takes his throne and reigns for a period, setting the city back in order, dealing with evil and raising up the righteous by his magnificent presence. For preterists, this makes a lot of sense. Jesus returned as the King of Kings in A. D. 70 to set things right in the world. Christians were ready to meet him and escort him onto his throne where he now sits, making the world on earth bright by his glorious reign.
Another example occurs in his writing on Luke 20 where the Sadducees question Jesus about the resurrection. In pointing out the political context of the scripture Wright casts the Sadducees as the conservative establishment, rich from their collaboration with Rome. They do not believe in resurrection because resurrection means revolution – it means a new age full of God’s righteousness and peace, it means a drastic upending of their age and rule. This dovetails perfectly with the New Kingdom agenda of Jesus seen in the view of many preterists.
Wright also provides a possible explanation for the statement that there is no marriage in “that age.” He points out that marriage as used here is not about “companionship” marriage, but about the law of Levirate marriage (Deut. 25) in which a brother had to marry his brother’s widow in order to maintain a family heir for the land. The Old Covenant Jew achieved a form of “eternal life” by passing down his land to offspring bearing his name. Jesus is saying there will be no need for offspring or land to achieve life in the new age. Instead, a direct relationship with Creator God will provide life.
Life After Life After Death
Another Wright emphasis is his perception of life after death as “life after life after death.” In other words, in Hebrew thought, resurrection was not something expected immediately upon death as moderns tend to think of it, but was rather resurrection from out of the “dead ones” – that is, there was an undefined interim state after death yet before resurrection from which a person could hope to be raised. According to Wright, he Bible writers variously called this being in Paradise, being asleep, or being “with Christ.” This fits in with the view of some preterists that the faithful Old Covenant people living in Sheol were waiting to be raised to life at the parousia of Christ. However, Wright believes the two-step resurrection continues today.
Christ’s Bodily Resurrection
Many Christians reading the book will focus on Wright’s powerful discussion of Christ’s resurrection accounts in the Gospels from an historian’s perspective. He makes a forceful case that these are reasonable historical accounts. Here he stands firmly against liberals who dismiss the supernatural as impossible, and who place the Gospels as “late” writings.
Wright asks some excellent questions. If the Gospels are late, re-worked narratives, why would the writers, trying to prove a case, allow women, who could not even testify in court, to be the first witnesses of the resurrection? Why are the Gospel accounts different in some minor points unless they were truly early and original? Wouldn’t the differences have been smoothed over? And especially important he asks why there is a sudden silence of Old Testament reference and allusion, almost a constant drumbeat in the main part of the Gospels, when the resurrection stories begin? He proposes that this is because the resurrection accounts were fresh, spontaneous reactions to something new and unexpected. Only later, after digging in the Scriptures, did the Christians have time to add Old Testament prophetic references to the resurrection. (Also, interesting is Wright’s discussion of the resurrection body for which he proposes the new term “transphysical” for the resurrection body of Christ.) In the end, Wright’s overall thesis is that the resurrection of Jesus proves and proclaims him to be the Son of God. Most preterists will welcome Wright’s calm and well-reasoned defense of the literal, bodily, historical nature of the resurrection of Christ.
The Not-So-Good News for Preterists
However, Wright is not a preterist. He constantly defends the physical nature of resurrection not only for Jesus, but also for believers. He shows that the Jews always conceived, even though they used resurrection at times as a spiritual metaphor, of literal, bodily resurrection being the root or object of that metaphor. A metaphor makes no sense without a reality behind it. The Jews would never separate body and soul.
In this, Wright does not see, or does not believe, the possibility that though Christ’s resurrection was real and physical, it might serve as a metaphor for believers being raised into the post A. D. 70 Kingdom of God on earth. This is not to say that he does not constantly see the resurrection as a metaphor for the Christian life. He does, and writes some elegant passages about the nature of spiritual resurrection for transformed saints. He constantly traces how Paul and other New Testament writers adopted and transformed the Old Testament metaphorical usage into surprising new metaphors of resurrection for the Christian.
But despite his deep comprehension of the metaphorical uses of resurrection, Wright always makes an effort to retain the physical, bodily meaning of resurrection alongside the political, metaphorical meaning. Here Wright almost works against himself. His proofs and evidence for the political and Second Temple Judaistic understanding are so powerful, convincing, and complete that it is hard to imagine them existing beside a second literal meaning.
For example, in commenting on John 2:20-23, where Jesus says he will rebuild the Temple, and drops hints about his resurrection, Wright comments:
John’s Jesus is here saying that the resurrection will be the ultimate sign that demonstrates both his right to do what he has done and the meaning he gives to it. The present Temple system is corrupt and under divine judgment; Jesus’ own death and resurrection will be the means of the true god doing the new thing through which, as much of the gospel will make clear, that which was hitherto accomplished through the Temple would from now on be accomplished through Jesus himself. The resurrection will inaugurate a new world in which Temple-worship will be thrown open in a new way to all and sundry, irrespective of geography and ethnic background. As the chief priests quickly realized after the raising of Lazarus, Jesus’ actions were indeed pointing to a future in which everything would be changed, and in which the Temple in particular would be ‘taken away.’ John is already indicating to his readers that Jesus’ resurrection has indeed opened up the long promised new world … in which the long-awaited divine blessing would go out to all peoples. P. 441.
Sounds like a preterist!
As can be seen from the quote above, and in many other instances, the Professor’s ideas develop from such a wide range of history, and make such sense of the text, that one might say the political-metaphorical conception has been brought forward as a standard of interpretation that scholars must deal with. To debunk Wright’s use of political Second Temple Judaism as the background of the New Testament, would almost be like putting the wad of tape back in a broken cassette.
It remains to be seen and discussed whether a “double” grasp of the resurrection as both physical-literal, and political-metaphorical, can co-exist in these passages, especially when Wright himself as shown masterfully how they relate to an earthly, political, national realm, with Jesus opposed to Caesar as the proclaimed Messiah, King, and Lord.
Conclusions: Wright and Preterism
Wright stops short of fully developing and carrying out his insights into Israel’s resurrection as a national and political event. He seems to bend the ball both ways in most passages. In other words he states the interpretation he reads – that it applies to national Israel. Then he also makes it a real, physical, future resurrection.
A dialogue between Professor Wright and a knowledgeable preterist, or Realized Eschatology panel, would be valuable at this juncture. It would be especially interesting to learn how Wright might relate his grasp and keen perception of the context of Second Temple Israel to the many statements of the imminence of the Kingdom in the New Testament.
It might be noted there is already more to come. Wright will take on Paul in his next proposed volume in the Christian Origins series, so perhaps the good Professor will deal with the implications of Preterism in a fuller way in that book. He will also soon publish a popular book on the resurrection (“Life After Life After Death: The Resurrection of Jesus,” due March 2004).
In conclusion, it can be said that N.T. Wright has moved mountains. He has shifted the discussion of the historical Jesus onto the ground of Second Temple Judaism. Concerning the resurrection he has shifted the burden of proof concerning Jesus’ bodily resurrection back to liberals; he has firmly shoved our ideas of resurrection away from modernistic, anachronistic, pre-conceptions of “going to heaven when you die,” and taking “The Day of the Lord” as being the end of the “space-time continuum;” and most vitally, he has ushered us gloriously into a deeper and richer discernment of the metaphorical-political nature of resurrection.
Furthermore, he has opened up some interesting debates concerning the resurrection: Is it physical for believers, or is it metaphorical for the end of Israel’s exile? Or is it a combination? Is resurrection fulfilled, as it was for Second Temple Israel? Or is some aspect of its fulfillment still future?
Perhaps even more crucially, Wright has shown that moderns cannot simply read the Bible cold and bare, without a cultural-political awareness of the meaning of its words.
In the end, Wright’s studies open up new vistas of understanding and inquiry into the nature of Christ’s mission and the people he founded, and that can only be welcome to those studying Realized Eschatology.
(A following article will attempt to use some of Dr. Wright’s observations on resurrection and harmonize and syncretize them with preterism.)
Copyright January 2004, by Kent C. Ross"
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Re: A Preterist Reviews The Resurrection of the Son of God by N. T. Wright (Score: 1)
 by davo on Monday, January 26 @ 17:22:49 PST
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Kent Ross: Platonism introduced the idea that the body was a “prison” for the soul. To die was to set the soul free from its prison.
Sounds like shadows of futurism – this world is evil, a prison to be raptured from.
Kent Ross: He debunks the idea that the Bible is about “dying and going to heaven.”
How refreshing. Obviously not denying life beyond the grave, but rather refocusing what "resurrection life" actually means.
Kent Ross: The “coming of the Lord” and the people going into the “air” to meet him, is not about bodies floating around going to meet a literally returning Jesus. For Wright, the context is a challenge by Jesus and his followers against the Emperors and Caesars of New Testament times. When a Roman Emperor’s citizens in outlying colonies (such as Philippi) are in trouble they long not to go to Rome, but to receive a visit from their ruler. As he comes to rescue them, and to set things right by making key judgments, they are thrilled, and go outside the city to escort him into the gates with joy.
In other words, the Coming of Christ was all about the vindication of His people.
Kent Ross: …in Hebrew thought, resurrection was not something expected immediately upon death as moderns tend to think of it, but was rather resurrection from out of the “dead ones”…
Sounds very much like Act 26:23 … that the Christ would suffer, that He would be the first to rise out from among the dead [historic Israel], and would proclaim light to the Jewish people and to the Gentiles."
Thank you Kent for an excellent review, the only problem for me is now I'll have to save some extra pennies and buy the book :)
davo |
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Re: A Preterist Reviews The Resurrection of the Son of God by N. T. Wright (Score: 1)
 by Islamaphobe on Wednesday, January 28 @ 08:05:27 PST
(User Info | Send a Message) | | Thanks for posting this piece. It is a careful review and makes Wright's book sound like a good reference resource. It also makes me want to become more acquainted with the work of Kent Ross. |
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