+Wright: The Bible and Tomorrow’s World

David, I honestly don’t see your problem with this passage - so I would like to hear more.

David+,

This reads like typical +Wright. He’s always been a mix with a bit of existentialism in it. It’s been a tad quirky and I understand why you might have hairs standing on edge with a more complete rational approach to the Scripture (my prejudgment of your Reformed training, please feel free to correct if in error), but it’s one of +Wrights appeal to those who find the Reformed approach ridged and unattractive for it’s over-emphasis of use of reason (criticism taken from converts to Eastern Orthodoxy from Reformed background).

I actually tend to agree with +Wright in a certain way. I tend to desire a both/and solution with grounded reasoned textual investigation but also an existential reading to “own” the story. Often on SFIF, I’m not so much pulling up esoteric verses off the top of my head as much as I do esoteric stories or vignettes from Scripture because I’m drawn to the narrative pattern of remembrance.

I’ve read this blurb and skimmed the whole article on Fulcrum, but don’t see the red flag that you do other than +Wright’s approach maybe very different from yours but not enough to say either you or he is in error.

i love wright when he writes positively. i.e., instead of his absurd attacks on gafcon, when he actually writes his interpretation of things (which, ultimately is an indictment probably of many on the “right” and “left”). even when i disagree with him, i come away feeling as if he’s caused me to genuinely re-examine my understanding of things. this is what i admire so much about writers like paglia, foucault, and zizek.

what i worry about in this article on wright is the possibility that the church become an “existential” activity (as one commenter already pointed out). we participate in some great narrative structure that can only be enacted in church, thus returning the church to a sort of post-modern medievilism. this passage, however, seems to speak to my fears:

Along with the radical dualism goes Gnosticism as a religion, not of redemption, but of self-discovery. This is the real ‘false gospel’ at the heart of a good many contemporary debates. The Gnostic does not want to be rescued; he or she wants to discover ‘who they really are’, the inner spark of divine life. There is even a danger that we Anglicans spend time discussing ‘who we really are’, as though there were some inner thing, the Anglican spark, and if only we could identify that then we’d be all right. And in some of our most crucial ethical debates people have assumed for a long time that ‘being true to myself’ was all that really mattered (at this point the existentialism and romanticism of the last two hundred years reinforce the underlying gnosticism). This is a religion of pride rather than of faith, of self-assertion rather than of hope, of a self-love which is a parody of the genuinely biblical self-love which is regard for oneself, body and all, as reflecting the image of the creator.

i really enjoy it when wright seems to anticipate my own fears. makes me think that we’re reading the same page. ironically, this passage reminds me a lot of the indaba groups at lambeth. “the bishop and…” give me a break…

also, perhaps ironically, his 5 act play sounds quite a bit like dispensationalism. obviously it isn’t…and he draws immensely different conclusions from his division of history, but still…interesting to see where he’s going with this.

I would tend to agree with +Wright.  I think he is just emphasizing that scripture is the living word and has to be lived out in each person, each culture and each generation because we are all being transformed because that is God’s plan.  I do not read at all that he is talking about equating experience with scripture.

Having read +NT Wright fairly extensively and had a couple electronic exchanges with him, I see him as quite different than what is portrayed here. His view, as I see it is not a matter of compromise between “the “experiences of believers” and “word of God” lines of argument”.  Rather, he is simply telling us that rather than viewing scripture through the lens of our own experience, we need to view our own experience through the lens of scripture.
My own view of what he is saying is something along these lines:
We will have experiences in our own lives in current times never mentioned by Moses or St. Paul simply because the experiences were not possible in those times. This does not mean that God has nothing to say to us about those experiences, and how we should judge ourselves.  His Word is still alive for us.  The Book is not an historical document to read only in the context of 700 BC Palestine or 100AD Roman Empire, and it is not, strictly speaking, an instruction manual for modern life (in the sense that it says nothing about retirement plans, nuclear arms, or internet use).  It is, however, the guide for our lives, for bringing us to Christ, and for our eventual resurrection at the last day.