"Discerning the Dawn: History: History, Eschatology and New Creation" by N.T. Wright

Faith & Science Conversation
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One reason for that really ought to be obvious when we read the opening Creation account in Genesis in its original literary genres because of what “rest” means there, namely taking the prepared and filled temple realm and running it: we are the images in Gods temple, and the realm is now on Earth, with the church as the realm prepared by Christ, and we are to just step in and run it, i.e. do the tasks of the Kingdom. A Sabbath now would mean taking a day off from living as part of the Kingdom.

That’s so foundational to Orthodoxy that it can be found emphasized in every generation since the students of the students of the Apostles.

That may just be why I really love the work of Dr. Michael Heiser – he just dumps connections into everything he says.

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lecture 6… I was interested in the focus on resurrection since this is a topic which arises frequently with me quoting 1 Corinthians 15.

Wright’s use of the words “bodily resurrection to some kind of body” got me thinking. …perhaps some of the difficulties I have had with other Christians on this topic can be overcome by comparing this with the views of Plato and the Gnostics. For Plato and the Gnostics there is the eternal mind seeking liberation from the body. And Paul clarifies that the promised resurrection is not that! It is a bodily resurrection. So this relationship between mind and body remains. It may be a different kind of body (and maybe a different kind of mind to go with it), but is not the Plato/Gnostic notion of a mind leaving the body behind. That is certainly not what Paul means by his teaching of a physical/bodily resurrection to a spiritual body rather than to a physical/natural body. We see from the story of Jesus’ resurrection that His resurrected body is capable of everything the old body was capable of and more. Something greater and more powerful and not something lesser and insubstantial.

Perhaps this also aids in explaining my frequent denial of a belief in the rational “soul” which is thought to reside in the body and make it live and be a person. Again it is not like the Gnostics where there is this thing called a soul which leaves/escapes from the body when the body dies. So I am not saying we don’t have a spiritual aspect to our existence or that we cannot expect a continued existence after the physical body dies. It is really about rejecting this picture of Plato/Gnostics and other religions in favor of the description by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15.

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  • That was particularly fun to read, inspiring me to contemplate promoting a new Christian denomination: 8th Day Sabbath Adventist. :laughing:
  • I sure thought so.
  • I suppose fascinating things would happen if a loved one died unquestionably, was buried without embalming or cremation, and a couple of days later showed up at my doorstep in time for lunch, stuck around for a couple of months, walked through a wall, and had a new habit of appearing and disappearing in unexpected places, to me and a whole lot of other people.
  • I realize that Wright beliieves, like Barth and many others, in bodily resurrection, I can say that I do too. But … and this is the part that I’m curious about; I suspect that Wright’s version of “bodily” and my version of “bodily” are not the same. I say that because I accept the authenticity of the Shroud, but I have yet to read where Wright says he does too.
  • It’s one thing to say “I believe in Jesus’ resurrection”, and another thing to say, "but I certainly do not believe that, when he was resurrected, that his body was “a sarx”, i.e. flesh and blood. But … that’s a difficult topic for some, so I won’t pursue it further, here.
  • Suffice it to say, I agree with you: This is where the rubber meets the road.
  • I agree.
  • As I told Kendel privately: my experience with Lecture 7’s “versions” had much the same impact on me, … too.
  • Kendel had told me that Wright’s actual book, History and Eschatology was difficult to follow. I wouldn’t have understood why, until I compared (a) the 7-page interview with Wright, (b) an edited transcript of his 7th Lecture, and (c) Wright’s book “Broken Signposts: How Christianity makes sense of the world.”
    The transcript of the interview filled almost 7 pages. I bought the book and discovered that Wright had written 192 pages, liberally quoting quite a few Bible verses. Then … I edited the transcript of Wright’s 7th lecture, on the topics which he covered in the book, And it too fills 7 pages (minus brief introduction and subsequent Questions & Answers) fill 7 pages, Boingitty Boing Boing. Not only does he “speak in tongues”, he writes in tongues.
  • What he says is “new”, and definitely presents material, some of which I’m sure I’ve read or heard before in many places, times, and ways, but I’m beginning to think that my hearing is improving,
  • The 6th Lecture definitely had an impact on me, and expect it continue to do so, I’m glad to have edited a transcript of it that I can read and re-read and refer back to as often as I want.
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It might be near miraculous if they were …since (I am convinced) nobody understands this. I know … you, Mitchell, and others have been all around about this … yes - it’s a spiritual body … - but yes - it’s a physical body … yes, there is somehow some continuity with our existing bodies (temples), and yet, … yes, these present, frail bodies fail and die before resurrection can happen, and the mortal becomes clothed with the immortal. Y’all can throw bible verses at this all day long and it doesn’t contibute one iota towards your or our actually understanding what’s going on there. It just gives us a lot of catch-phrases we can parrot so as to help us hide our lack of understanding behind the safety of trotting out lots of bible phrases in the confidence that somewhere in all that must be the, as yet ungraspable truth, even if it can’t be explained or contained within a scientific scope.

But yet this mystery is at the center of Easter, which is why we are still talking about this particular cross and this particular crucifixion rather than any of the thousands of others.

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Oh, I see I was unclear. Sorry.
I meant that it was hard to follow the lectures with the book, or the book with the lectures. While the overall organization of the book and the lectures is the same, there are enough differences between them that it’s hard to switch back and forth. Thus I ended up listening to the lectures (multiple times) AND reading the book.

I found that pasting the transcript into a word document and printing it off was more useful. I use the timestamps to help me keep track of places I want to review, and I write all over the print outs. Like I do my personal books. (Never in library books.)

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  • And that’s why Peter says, in Acts 4:12, "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to people by which we must be saved.”
  • Not a problem for me. I can read (and will read and write on) an edited transcript of a Lecture quicker than buying a copy of the book, I just don’t have the added benefit of all of Wright’s footnotes and Bibliography. And, I suppose, an edited transcript would be easier to use in a Bible Study group if one engages in such activity,
  • I gyess this would be the place to ask: in Lecture 5, Wright wrote: “Now, in the previous lectures, I have sketched two major problems facing modern theology and the study of Jesus and the Gospels.” I haven’t yet transcibed Lectures 1 through 4. The question is: what would someone miss by starting with Lecture 5, not Lecture 1?
    • Seems to me, I would miss Wright’s lengthy statement of the two problems facing modern theology and the study of Jesus and the Gospels: i.e. (1) the Epicurean takeover and “the Big Divide” (a.k.a. Lessing’s “ditch” and (2) the modern split of past and present that has made history and eschatology both confusing and urgent. Important matters, if I were taking a college course using Wright’s book, History and Eschatology. But I’m not.
    • Personally, I’m inclined to skip editing transcripts of Lectures 1 through 4.
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I suppose what they would miss his background historical sweep - the ‘setting the stage’ if you will that the first four lectures gave - and you alluded some to that.

I have already greedily downloaded your transcript pdfs for these last two lectures just to preserve them in a digital library for myself since you hinted that their presence here may not long endure. Thanks for at least doing these! Maybe they can be considered teasers for people to go back and listen to his first lectures.

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  • Thoughts on Lecture 5:
    • Wright says, early: "So I want to argue now for a fresh retrieval of key elements in the Second Temple Jewish worldview within which the strikingly new things that the early Christians were saying about cosmology and eschatology had their intended resonance.
      • Understandably, “the Second Temple Jewish worldview” was and is Wright’s principal focus in Lecture 5.
      • I note that Wright subsequently said: “New studies have highlighted what we may call Temple Theology, generating fresh ideas about Jewish cosmology and eschatology.” I sez to myself: “Where have I been?”
        • At one point, Wright refers to: a “triple framework—the world, time, humans”. Shortly thereafter. he says: “So Temple and Sabbath and Image are elements of a cosmic narrative”. Here’s where Wright schools me. It’s obvious to me that, historically, I haven’t given a Temple, a Sabbath, or the concept of “Image” or “Image Bearing” the attention and respect that they merit.
        • A minor point: by focusing on The Temple, the pre-Solomonic Tabernacle doesn’t get, Lecture 5, equal attention, no? Perhaps “the new studies” Wright mentioned include Tabernacle Cosmology and Tabernacle Theology, highlighting the significance of the differences between the Tabernacle, i.e. a movable “place” and the Temple, i.e. a fixed “place”; the most obvious one being that the Tabernacle didn’t have–to my knowledge–Courts of Gentiles, Men, Women, and Priests, or did they?
        • More trivia questions:
          • How many Yomim were there in a Shana? I suppose that would depend on what planet you’re on.
          • How many seconds and hours were in a Yom? I probably should be asking a YEC.
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Whoo-eee! I just finished a concentrated listen of Lecture 6 with the transcript and writing tools in front of me. My brain is buzzing. There is a lot here, and I have to review and think through all of it.

Wright is a daring man, spelling out his Epistemology of Love! He answered in detail questions I’ve had and have plagued all of you with since Lecture 1. I liked the way he characterized it at about 41:18:

To know this world with our whole image-bearing selves means coming out from sheltered epistemological safe zones into a new, multi-layered form of knowledge.

What he is proposing is not intellectually “safe.” Is it? Which faith hasn’t felt to me for a long time. I’ve been working over these lectures as both a believer and a skeptic. And I love that Wright seems to get that.

@Terry_Sampson asked about the importance of the first four lectures. The first two might be less important for his purposes, but I think much of the second and third, where he pulls in the actual history and OT theology IS important, although could be condensed. Their importance become clearer in this lecture as Wright makes more statements that feel a lot to me like ID arguments – looking back and imposing an interpretation on the steps that lead to the outcome. Wright’s careful historical and historic theological work is important to his argument, because with them he is trying to argue that the past theology and prophetic beliefs really were necessary in preparing people for understanding the fact and meaning of the resurrection. Unlike ID that only makes sense looking backward, Wright is claiming the outcome of the resurrection would make sense looking forward from the more distant past as well as backward after the fact.
[Sorry I used so many words to say that.]

Me, too. I know where I have been – in churches that are worried about a literalistic concept of Apocalypse that completely misses all of what Wright has been talking about.

Temple vs Tabernacle: I think he specifically mentions the Tabernacle a few times somewhere in Lectures 1-5, but I think he melds them together, because of their similar purposes, along with mountains, pyramids, and other “high places.”

Some other things coming to mind are/have been:
Penner (The End of Apologetics) again – sections: Ethics of Belief, Truth After Metaphysics, and Christian Truth-telling

A book I just started listening to: Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism by James K. A. Smith (have been wanting to read for some time), which deals with postmodern themes that Wright is engaging with (perhaps without knowing, but I find that hard to believe), and (finally for the moment)

@JRM 's book * Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age" which Smith mentioned in his book.

Yeah. Roll your eyes. She can’t stop nattering on about PoMo. This is where the rubber meets the philosophical road I’m trying to get back on. Wright’s proposal is daring in my mind, because he is rejecting the two main contemporary “defenses” of Christianity – attempts at objective certainty (which I gave up on a very long time ago) and entirely internal witness of something subjective, which I by nature cannot trust.

I also have questions relating to some that a former forum participant had asked. But I will have to think about how to ask them.

I’m hoping the mention of Wittgenstein, no matter how small, might entice @Jay313 to join us again.

And @klw, Wittgenstein or no, I hope you can fit this in, in spite of life’s many other demands.

There’s a lot on my mind.

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I remember spouting beer when I came across Martin Luther’s characterization of people who exalted their entirely internal witness: “They have swallowed the Holy Spirit feathers and all”. Even now, whenever I encounter someone who is confident of their internal witness I think of feathers flying.

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Do you consider John 16:8 to be an internal witness?

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You mean is it describing an internal witness?

It’s an interesting passage. Taken in isolation, it seems to be saying that the Holy Spirit will convince/convict the world of the things necessary for repentance, which would be the opposite of what He did with Pharaoh before the Exodus. But taking the matter of God hardening Pharaoh’s heart it’s evident that the Spirit does not act directly but through means – in Pharaoh’s case, through the messages delivered by Moses and Aaron. This fits with what Paul tells us about the necessity of preaching. It also fits the use of the word ἐλέγχω (el-ENG-kho) in a semi-legal sense where an argument is made and the result is to convince/convict the target person of guilt. While it may be assumed that the meaning requires hearing the spoken word of accusation that is not necessarily the case.

So is that an internal witness? In general, sure, just not in a specific sense of the Spirit providing the meaning of some section of scripture or some particular guidance in life (not that the latter cannot happen, but all too often the ‘guidance’ has little relation to scripture but substantial relation to what the person would like to do anyway).

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I nearly went back to edit my comment so that it did not read that I was asking if John 16:8 is an internal witness. But you understood what I meant, as I assumed you would.

Interesting parallel to Pharoah. I had not considered that before, and appreciate being able to see the connection now.

There is also a normal connection between the work of the Spirit and preaching. I often wonder if I would have had a life changing conviction that I deserved to go to hell, if I had not heard preaching that genuinely scared me a few months before. I had also asked God to give me the Gospel a few weeks before it as well :blush:

But it was truly a self-evident experience of seeing my sin. Kind of like Isaiah 6, but without the angels.

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Thanks for the Luther. Someone I have no doubt was filled with the Spirit.
But it’s easy to be mistaken. At least for some of us. It’s also easy to be mislead by charletains, as I have seen happen. It’s easy to have one’s own spirit crushed – much less life ruined and faith destroyed – by manipulative preachers and teachers in the name of the Spirit.

I appreciate Wright’s (and Luther’s) tempered views.

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In fact, Luther himself developed the theology that we are at the same time both righteous and sinful. He knew perfectly well that he was still a sinner, even though in Christ and by faith, God had declared him righteous.

I do wonder if this represents a change I heard Wright was making with his view of justification

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And when some preacher does that, it’s followed by the accusation “you don’t have enough faith”. From my take so far I think that Wright would agree with Luther here that thinking to measure faith is to miss the point, that the nature of faith isn’t something variable such that the efficacy of it depends on the size but is something that depends solely on the One to whom it connects us (IIRC Luther used the illustration of a thread versus a cable).

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As I recall, Luther used the term originally of Christ on the Cross; it applies to believers so long as we are in Christ. Seeing Christ as simul iustus et pecator makes a huge difference in how we see ourselves.

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I’m running behind, but I finally listened to lecture #6.

I thought it was great – a lot of information to grab onto about the epistemology of love. I really appreciated the message, especially as we prepare to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus in community in a couple of weeks. The last part of the lecture, with the Herbert poem, was like an evangelistic message for the scholarly :slight_smile:. I liked Dr. Wright’s statement in answer to the question about why we need the book of Revelation: “the victory must be implemented by the suffering witness of the church”.

Thanks @Terry_Sampson for the edited transcripts. They are much appreciated.

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