Jesus and the Victory of God

I’m currently reading Simply Christian by Tom Wright. It’s my first (but certainly not my last) Wright book. In my pile of ‘to read’ books in my office I’ve also got his book on Paul.

I’m in the States at the moment singing at a conference in South Carolina and Bishop Tony Miller has been one of the speakers. He related the story of a time that he spent $69 on a biography and gave it to one of his interns.

The intern said “I can’t believe you would spend that much money on a book!”
Miller said “You just told me how ignorant you are. That book contains 40 years worth of life experiences and knowledge. $69 for 40 years worth of knowledge is a bargain.”

Books are an investment.
So are Records.

Steve.

(ps – trust you had a good time in Europe.)

amen amen amen.
OK, I think I’m ready to graduate to the BIG Wright books. I’m glad Peterson said that it’s OK if it takes me a year to read each of them… cuz’ that’s what it’s going to take.

Bruce (and the rest),

For most of my decades long reading career I have been, as you describe, reading old books, or as I say it, “I read books by dead people.” However…

It’s not that I read OLD books — I read TIME TESTED books. The winds of time have a way of separating the wheat from the chaff. If a book is around a hundred, five hundred, a thousand years later, there must be a reason. However…

The trick is to find the books that will pass the test of time in contemporary time. To recognize the Augustine, the Luther, the Wesley, the Lewis among us. Our time is no less rich in literary contribution than other times (I could make a case for it being more so), but it’s a challenge to separate the wheat from the chaff without the help of the winds of time. It takes more effort to find the contemporary classics, but worth the effort. Of course we can’t really recognize the great ones when they live in the home town of our own time. However…

If I were a betting man, I would put my money on NT Wright being read a hundred years from now. His influence is huge and wide. I have no agenda for pimping the Bishop of Durham other than his writings have been an ENORMOUS help to me personally. For Christians who are willing to (and capable of) thinking seriously, I recommend no one higher than Tom Wright. However…

His three BIG academic books (“The New Testament and the People of God”, “Jesus and the Victory of God” and “The Resurrection of the Son of God”) are not necessarily the place to start. Perhaps the starting point would be books like, “Surprised By Hope”, “The Challenge of Jesus”, “Evil and the Justice of God”, “Simply Christian”, “Paul In Fresh Perspective.” However…

You must be willing to be challenged in your thinking or theology. If you are not, I would recommend leaving NT Wright alone. Which is what you would have said about the likes of Luther and Wesley in their day.

BZ

As we have seen, he seems to have regarded Jerusalem itself, tragically compromised as it was, as the new abode of the satan. His response to Caiaphas meant, among other things, that he was playing David to Caiaphas’ Goliath; that he was playing the Danielic ‘son of man’ to Caiaphas’ fourth beast. Small wonder Caiaphas tore his robe.

Granted all we know about Jesus, he must have believed that he was also to fight the real battle, the messianic battle, when he faced the might of Rome, the enemy whom every Messiah for a hundred years either side of Jesus had to confront. The pagan hordes, with their blasphemous beliefs and vile practices, were widely regarded as the sons of darkness. Jesus, however, believed he had to fight the darkness itself, not simply its offspring. Hence, Gethsemane, the moment when the vocation was tested to the limit. He could have chosen, then and there, to slip away and establish a private counter-Temple movement, like the Essenes. He could have chosen to call for the twelve legions of angels or their earthly equivalent; there would have been plenty of people in Jerusalem ready to rally to him. The scene in Gethsemane, involving Jesus in weakness, fear, and (apparently) an agony of doubt, is hard to comprehend as a later Christian invention. It is entirely comprehensible as biography. It was, after all, failed Messiahs who ended up on crosses. The Jesus we have described throughout must have had to wrestle with the serious possibility that he might be totally deluded.[…]

As such, he must have known that he might have been deeply mistaken. The aims and goals which we must postulate if we are to make sense of his praxis, stories and symbols must have involved him in what we might call a great Pascalian wager, staking all on his vocation and vision. It was, after all, a huge gamble. Messiahs were supposed to defeat the pagans, not to die at their hands. Worse, dying thus actually demonstrated that one was not after all the Messiah; followers of a Messiah who was then crucified knew beyond question that they had backed the wrong horse. At every point, then, the messianic vocation to which he seems to have given allegiance led him into a dark tunnel, where the only thing left was sheer trust. But we can be confident of what he thought he was thereby going to achieve. He would bring Israel’s history to its climax. Through his work, YHWH would defeat devil, bringing the kingdom to birth, and enable Israel to become, after all, the light of the world. Through his work, YHWH would reveal the he was not just a god, but God.[…]

The servant-vocation, to be the light of the world, would come true in him, and thence in the followers who would regroup after his vindication. The death of the shepherd would result in YHWH becoming king of all the earth. The vindication of the ‘son of man’ would see the once-for-all defeat of evil and the establishment of a worldwide kingdom.

Jesus therefore took up his own cross. He had come to see it, too, in deeply symbolic terms: symbolic now, not merely of Roman oppression, but of the way of love and peace which he had commended so vigorously, the way of defeat he had announced as the way of victory. It was to become the symbol of victory, but not the victory of Caesar, nor of those who would oppose Caesar with Caesar’s methods. It was to become the symbol, because it would be the means, of the victory of God.

pages 606, 609, 610

PBZ,
I want to thank you for sharing your journey with us as emerging leaders in the Church.

I have wrestled for a few years now with many of the things that are now coming to light, i.e. Jesus and the temple, the law, 70AD, and much about the new Jerusalem.

I especially appreciate your illumination about “theology in a nutshell most likely belongs there” and “if someone is telling you something new that no one has ever seen before, watch out, in 2000 years of history someone surely would have written about it.”

I have used that rule of late to sort out many things that the Spirit has spoken to me and I am finding repeated by you and many of the authors of late and old. That is when it is very exciting, the journey. Every word established in the mouth of 2 or 3 witnesses.

N.T. Wright tells the historical Jesus story so very well. It really shines light the time, the place, the politics, the history. It’s like I am reading the Bible for the first time after 33 years of being a Christian and 20 years of preaching the Gospel.

Your testimony of how your journey started in 2004 has really helped me experience my own journey. Now, celebrating my 20th year in preaching and embarking on a new church plant, I feel as fresh as ever.

I thank you for your blog as it has helped me be able to launch my own local blog with our local newspaper. My hopes of a Theological Consortium linked by the access to the world wide web is closer than ever.

We have got to spread the Gospel of the Kingdom as quickly as possible!

Keep up the good work and lead on!

MY

A new book!?!? That is wonderful! This news just made my day.

And the cherry on the top is a future autobiography.

I echo Matthew’s prodding: keep up the good work and lead on!