…and … I’ll keep prattling on here since I seem to have the floor!
I also love how, in a single run-on sentence one can feel like they’ve almost taken a philosophy 101 course just from the singular (if run-on) sentence! Wright would do the Apostle Paul proud. Here is what I mean (a little after 9 minutes in).
If you eliminate the biblical eschatology of new creation, as so much theology and biblical studies has done in the last several generations, you’re left with an escapist eschatology, to be activated in the present by existentialisms (Bultmann), or with the lie that we live in the best of all possible worlds (Leibnitz), or with the shoulder-shrugging Epicureanism: “This is how it is. Get used to it.”, or with a Sartrean despair.
And the lecture continues the above as follows … just to give the rest of that paragraph.
If, in fact, a natural theology tries to find a full doctrine of God from within the present creation, then, in terms of the model I’m outlining, it looks as if it’s trying to get the full eschaton in advance. It’s trying to leap forwards to the final new creation, while bypassing the darker route that the New Testament goes to get there. And this goes with the problem of a natural theology trying to discern the being and activity of God by rational inquiry alone, screening out once more the epistemology of love. Rational knowledge won’t be able to grasp what is already true, or to see the significance of the broken signposts we explored in the last lecture. And it certainly won’t glimpse the eschatological promise of new creation. In
Prattle away, @Mervin_Bitikofer. I like the quotes you are highlighting. This is probably my favorite lecture, because it is so hopeful. I will try to pull together some thoughts soon.
That sentence from about 9:00 is, however, not a run-on. It is a long, beautiful, perfectly grammatical, complex sentence.
I will try to add something much more insightful soon. But, in the meantime, you get three more posts before you are stalled again!
I’m finally starting to go over the transcript of Lecture 8 after having listened a number of times. The visual helps, along with the ability to mark up – respond to – the text. I know I’m going to have other questions, but here’s one for now that’s been on my mind since the last lecture:
About 4:39, when Wright is summing up the major points from his previous lectures, and he says:
Their [the seven broken signposts he had mentioned in the last lecture] very failure points to the wounded God of the Gospels, inviting us to start with the natural world of failed human aspirations and to see on the cross the revelation of the true God.
Theologically, in faith, I can attest to this. And maybe that’s what Wright intends, particularly with his emphasis on love a few sentences later:
I have argued throughout that part of our problem in our contemporary epicurean atmosphere is to have banashed from our agenda the one thing which makes us truly human and grounds all true knowing, namely love itself.
But outside of faith, can this carry any weight?
Aren’t the broken signposts he mentions all explainable through sociology, social psychology, evolution, or evolutionary psychology? If that is the case, then does he have any argument that actually reaches outside the context of theology?
This question, or ball of questions, has bothered me since I first listened to all the lectures months ago. I want Wright to be right, I am still wrangling with his ultimate point and the lectures’ application, particularly in light of what continues to feel apologetic to me.
If he is not attempting an apologetic argument, or series of them, I’m not entirely sure what his application of the lectures is in the end. There are some outstanding calls to the church in understanding and carrying out its role in light of its nature. And maybe that is ultimately what Wright is hoping to accomplish.
The majority of the German theologians and philosophers he discusses were self-idenified Christians. So, maybe he intends to correct error in the church’s thinking.
Well, sorry to be thinking out loud here, and sorry if I’ve forgotten a great point that was made earlier. I’m sure I have.
I’m looking forward to better insights from the rest of the group who has been putting in the work.
Like @Mervin_Bitikofer , I was amazed at the overview of the previous lectures, and allusions to the various philosophers and philosophies that Wright could pack in to a single sentence!
@kendel, like you I’m still a bit hazy here, but this is what I took from the broken signposts: Wright is not attempting a full-on apologetic for the existence of God here, but is arguing against the old approach to “natural theology” as the main theme of these lectures. Specifically arguing against that one can derive God´s character by looking at nature. So, he makes the point that the “signposts” in the material world are a mixed bag…broken (I do think some of the brokenness can be explained by evolution, or sociology, etc. but I don’t think that’s Wrights intended focus here–explaning such things would drift into details of theodicy which is another entire series of lectures, I assume). Rather, I gathered that Wright´s main point is that you can’t look up from nature to see a clear “perfect watchmaker God” as in classical Natural Theology. Rather, one needs to see how God intervened from the top down into the world (Jesus and the Resurrection) to get the true picture of his character which is love (delivered in suffering and brokenness). So his point is that the broken signposts are not necessarily an argument against a perfect God, but can be seen (retrospectively), in the light of the cross, as an expression of his perfect character of Love. If Wright is attempting any apologetic here, it seems to be a negative apologetic in the sense that the broken world may not clearly display a perfect, controlling, designing watchmaker God, but neither is it an argument against the type of God that He really is… a suffering God who is relationally involved in the material world and works through brokenness to renew it.
A little later in Wright’s lecture, perhaps we can find something of (a summary?) of his own about it all; especially in the 2nd paragraph here (about 33 min into lecture) where he says “…a renewal characterized by love, both as ethics and as epistemology.” But here is that thought set up and more fully quoted.
Paul’s proposal here doesn’t have a name, but it deserves one. The word panentheism—the idea that everything is in God—expresses the opposite of what Paul says. I don’t normally like neologisms, but we might propose theenpanism—the view of God being all-in-all. Panentheism, like its tired old cousin, pantheism itself, has glimpsed a truth, something about the world in God getting together as over against Epicureanism, but has seen it the wrong way round and tried to arrive at it by a shortcut. We are not there yet. Paul’s vision is of an eschatological theenpanism, the ultimate filling of the chalice with the rich, outpoured wine of his love: the powerful messianic love which has already resulted in his inaugurated rule and which will go on loving and ruling until all the dark powers that still tyrannize us, including ultimately death itself, are put under his feet. Pantheism and panentheism offer an over-realized eschatology which does indeed reflect dimly the Creator’s eventual intention. That’s why they’re often popular with people who are escaping from forms of Christian dualism, but they ignore the ongoing reality of evil; perhaps because, whether consciously or not, they want to avoid the only solution, namely the cross. But the cross is the only route to the promised goal.
Now it’s hard to hold all these things in your minds together, to put into the same sentence or paragraph the visions of creation renewed in Romans 8, the new city in Revelation 21, the spring garden, and the outpoured Spirit of John 20, and the final victory, and ultimate filling in 1st Corinthians 15. But we cannot doubt that the early Christians were consciously retrieving, in the light of Jesus and the Spirit, the biblical theology of cosmos and Temple which I sketched earlier. And they were doing so with a conscious and biblically-rooted vision of Jesus as the truly human one, the true image, and of his followers indwelt by the Spirit, as themselves, Colossians 3, renewed in knowledge according to the image of the Creator, a renewal characterized by love, both as ethics and as epistemology. At the heart of early Christian theology, we find precisely: the Temple, the cosmological overlap of heaven and earth, and the Great Sabbath, the eschatological overlap of past, present, and future, both of them focused on Jesus and the Spirit, both of them offering a vision of the world and God and of the relation between them which enables us to open up the modern questions of natural theology in a whole new way.
I do think Wright would find it interesting to consider what a new philosophical synthesis, one that brings together classical and presuppositional apologetics, would mean for natural theology.
That was a great lecture series – I’m thankful I stuck with it. Thanks for pointing it out, and for the discussion thread.
Dr. Wright’s exposition of “the scientific quest and the ‘two books’” was relevant to people here, I think. I like this depth to the Parable of the Sower:
Think about it: Jesus suggests that the kingdom of God comes like a sower sowing seed, some going to waste, snatched by birds, trampled underfoot; some finding good soil and bringing forth a great crop. What does that make you think of? Ought we then to be surprised to discover that the cosmos seems to have originated with an enormous broadcast sowing of life potential, much of which appears to go to waste? But some of it takes root and produces life as we know it. That parable holds all sorts of things together.
I was just going back over the lecture again with my beat up transcript and puzzled a bit over that section, wondering if he had something in mind, that I’m sure he doesn’t. So I decided this is probably Wright’s way of including the reality of evolution, including abiogenesis as part of that “life potential,” which could take place elsewhere in the universe as well as it did here.
Andy, I’m glad you stuck with the lectures and participated in the discussion. I’m going to try hard in the next few days to pull some other thoughts together. I really appreciate the great contributions in the last few days (and weeks and weeks ) from @klw and @Mervin_Bitikofer.
I have found this series of lectures a good introduction to many areas of Wright’s work as well as an interesting way to reconceive the idea of Natural Theology.
From Wright’s recent book … which I’m finding to be a seamless continuation (or repetition) of themes from this lecture series.
Do we regard the Church’s association with empire as a marriage of providential convenience or an act of spiritual adultery? Did Christ defeat Caesar or did we merely turn Christ into Caesar?
Wright, N. T.; Bird, Michael F… Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies (p. 34). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
Yes, I think Dr. Wright was saying that the seeming wastefulness/inefficiency of biological evolution is NOT contrary to the way God does things. We cannot fully comprehend God’s ways, and the Parable of the Sower shows that He works in ways that seem inefficient to us.
@Mervin_Bitikofer “Jesus and the Powers…” another book to add to my reading list .
@Andy7 this thread has really added to the ever growing mountain of self-imposed reading demands. Wright’s New Perspective on Paul, and now “Jesus and the Powers.” (Thanks @Terry_Sampson !)
I took too much time this morning, trying to go over my marginalia to try to think of something to write. So, I will throw out a question I hope to get to later:
Thoughts on Wright’s 5 areas he attributes to the missio Dei?
What do you think of the list?
Any items of particular importance?
Any items he failed to include that he should?
I am particularly interested in his 4th (The Political Challenge) and 5th (Refreshed Sacramental Theology).
The 5th item is one that simply interests me, coming from a background with a fairly bare-bones sacramental theology (which we would never call by that name).
The 4th item, The Political Challenge, is in my opinion, the most important on the list and is really a restatement of the 1st point. What Wright is proposing, and that HE is proposing it, rather than, say Brian McLaren or Steve Chalke, is profound.
If I’m not mistaken, the ‘missio Dei’ is the first of the list of five you’re referring to - right? And for my own sake, I’ll write that list out again here since my mind doesn’t easily hold onto entire lists of things.
Missio Dei - the Creator’s aim to fill the world with His glory and to rest and reign within his proper home.
Artist’s vocation. - artists telling us that the world ‘truly is charged with the grandeur of God…’
the sciences. - thinking God’s thoughts after Him. - the ‘two books’.
Politics - affirming the world by holding powers to account.
A refreshed sacramental theology, pointing both ways.
(The above list partially lifted from the graphic helpfully provided in the transcript, and partly searched out from the text for myself before I reached the helpful graphic!)
I really like Wright’s phrase regarding the original ‘Missio Dei’ - that the project is not the Platonic scheme ‘to rescue humans from the world, but to rescue them for the world.’ (my own emphasis added.)
@Mervin_Bitikofer , thanks for typing out the whole list.
This is the list that Wright had labeled on his Powerpoint as:
Natural Theology and the Missio Dei
I checked on “Missio Dei”
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Missio Dei is a LatinChristiantheological term that can be translated as the “mission of God”, or the “sending of God”.
It is a concept which has become increasingly important in missiology and in understanding the mission of the church since the second half of the 20th century.
I think Wright uses the term in this wider sense, not just as applied to God, but including God’s mission for the church.
I do to! In 2 or 3 colors on my transcript. Just under that part, I also have marked the following, related components that Wright mentioned:
bringing healing and justice to the world (34:43)
holding the powers of the world to account (34:49)
saying that the present creation matters so it’s worth putting right (35:00)
I think these 3 as a group are probably most closely related to what he calls “The Political Challenge: Affirm the world by holding the powers to account.”
Is that ever different thinking from what I’m used to hearing from Christians I spend time with! I hear a lot of condemnation of the world and “culture” (with no introspection about our own favorite sins within the church). I’m not used to hearing Christians talk about healing and justice in the world, or holding powers to account who benefit our middle class, white, evangelical interests.
THE POLITICAL CHALLENGE
I said earlier that I think point 4 is the most important in this list. Overall, no, I guess it’s not the most important thing on the list; God’s work is. But God’s work of filling the world with his glory is HIS work. It’s thrilling. I love Wright’s emphasis on this. But we have work to do as well. And of that work, I think holding human powers to account is the most important, because it is the way that the church can speak to the world in ways that make sense, even when the theology doesn’t.
What if, because of its loving service in the world, the church really did demonstrate itself to be God’s hands and feet? What if the church really did demonstrate the things that Wright mentions about 44:40:
a vision of the true ruler doing justice and mercy
by the spirit convict the world of sin, righteousness and judgement
and affirm the good and god-given structures of the world
by support without collusion
by critique without dualism
Part of what I find so thrilling in this section is that Wright is not promoting a particular political agenda; he’s not siding with either “liberal” or “conservative” but seems to be endorsing action that defies the simple categories that we are so used to. Christianity itself ought to defy them.
SACRAMENTAL THEOLOGY – a merely personal interest
This is my other favorite point on his list of the Missio Dei. I have no interest in starting an argument about sacramental theology. I mention this point because I’ve been hoping to find a more robust theology of the “sacraments” (which I am used to calling merely “baptism and communion” or now “means of grace”). I find the age-old Catholic-Reformation fights over where Christ’s body is entirely beside the point. Wright is getting at the real point for me here:
(46:12) The Sacraments ought to embody a wise, scripturally resourced natural theology. In Scripture heaven and earth overlap and interlock. God’s future comes to merge in the present, and the image-bearing humans, the royal priesthood, share in that double overlap, exercising their human vocation in bringing to to birth again and again. This is the context in which sacraments make sense.
THEOLOGY OF NATURE?
His mention here of “natural theology” reminds me: I’ve thought for a few lectures that maybe what Wright is really addressing in these lectures is a Theology of Nature.
Not Traditional NATURAL THEOLOGY
@klw This makes sense. I like Wright. A lot. But sometimes I feel I’ve lost his point in layers of metaphor. I appreciate your targeted vision!
I don’t remember if Wright mentions Walter Wink in his Gifford Lectures, but he does in “Jesus and Politics” and calls Wink his friend: Walter Wink
Walter Wink (May 21, 1935 – May 10, 2012) was an American Biblical scholar, theologian, and activist who was an important figure in Progressive Christianity. Wink spent much of his career teaching at Auburn Theological Seminary in [New York City. He was well known for his advocacy of and work related to nonviolent resistance and his seminal works on “The Powers”, Naming the Powers (1984), Unmasking the Powers (1986), Engaging the Powers (1992), When the Powers Fall (1998), and The Powers that Be (1999), all of them commentaries on the Apostle Paul’s ethic of spiritual warfare described here:
“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” — Ephesians 6:12 (ESV)
Breaking with Christian hermeneutic tradition of Christian demonology, he interprets Paul’s hierarchy of “rulers” to refer to imperial powers, with corresponding and political theologies and ideologies of state violence. Giving examples from ancient Babylon through the popular media of today, these are supported by, in a phrase he coined “the myth of redemptive violence.”.
He was known for his work on power structures, his commentary on current political and cultural matters, and his contributions to the discourse on homosexuality and religion, pacifism, the relationship between psychology and biblical studies, and research related to the historical Jesus. Neal Stephenson likens some of Wink’s ideas to “an epidemiology of power disorders”, a phenomenology of oppression. Author Philip Yancey references Wink frequently in his work.
One of Wink’s major avenues for teaching has been his leadership of workshops to church and other groups, based on his method of Bible study (The Bible in Human Transformation, 1973), and incorporating meditation, artwork, and movement. These workshops were often presented jointly with his wife, June Keener-Wink, a dancer and potter.
Partial Bibliography in Wikipedia.
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The interesting thing, IMO, about Wink is the profound (?) effect on his early worldview by William Stringfellow.
Frank William Stringfellow (1928–1985) was an American lay theologian, lawyer and social activist. He was active mostly during the 1960s and 1970s.
If anyone thinks Wright is “lite” on political theology, they might want to take a “swim” in Wink’s writings, Or one could skip Wright and Wink, and let Stringfellow “baptize” them.
Until just a little while ago, what I knew about William Stringfellow was 2nd hand, i.e. written or spoken by others.
Until just a little while ago, that is…when I listened to and read a sermon delivered by William himself, on May 10, 1975, in Duke University Chapel, to Baccalaureate for Advanced Degree Candidates.
Spoiler Alert: What can be said of the witness task of the Christian in the university in America?
For that I commend to you the word foolish.
In the midst of demonic reality, while the power of death is most awesome, in the present age, the Christian is called to be foolish: to be an agitating, patient, resistant presence in the university confessing the power of the word of God to renew the mind: to replenish our
university.
I know now why a prophet is somebody who gets invited to dinner … once.
I’m looking forward to following up with Wright’s and Bird’s book and now Wink. At least in my segment of the church, we lack a well- and biblically-developed theology related to politics, or really engagement in the world. We tend to pick and choose the passages that reinforce what we want to focus on or do, and hang on to those for dear life.
How many times have I heard emphasized “especially of the household of God” when talking about giving to those in need?! People from church don’t like it, when I point out that Jesus our Lord never put those qualifications on the commands, when he gave them.
I expect to dislike things they say. I have already heard one interview with Wright on the book, where he made me squirm. But this is where the church engages directly with the world and is actually able to work on the issues of justice and mercy that Wright kept mentioning in the last lectures.
Looking forward to learning more about the theology as well as the outflowing practice.
.