[Oh … sorry! This is what I get for skimming and reacting too fast … now I realize you were sharing a nicer link to the whole lecture set. Thanks! - I’ll edit your post and make the link.]
Warning - they are academically dense (which for me was most apparent in the very first one where I found myself reeling from all his name-dropping … ‘Heidegger this’ … and ‘Hegelian that…’) I felt like I was a fish out of water who had just dropped into a philosophy class without having taken any of the necessary pre-reqs. But it got better a few lectures in when I warmed up to his major themes and they became much more apparent. Even though I’m not through the sixth one yet, I already know I want to go back and listen to the first one again now.
[It might also be a good drug if you’re ever struggling with insomnia. Because despite my intense interest in the subject matter - one hour is just a long time to listen to even the most delightfully stuffy British accent, and I find my lids getting heavy. ]
I started with #2 since it was about the Gospels. I am presently cheering his analysis of Schweizer a la Wagner.
Boy, he’s referencing a lot of scholars I used to be able to talk about knowledgeably, but now they’re just names I recognize.
Love this: “. . . to think into the minds of people who think very differently from ourselves”. That’s where YEC totally fails: there is no attempt whatsoever at understanding what any of the writers of the scriptures understood concerning the words they were writing.
I also love his depiction of fans of historical criticism doing altogether too much criticism and not enough history, in part because that puts into words some of the misgivings I had in grad school about the whole historical-critical endeavor.
At the conclusion of his Gifford lecture #6, Wright quotes this poem “Love” by George Herbert - the exact text of which I was unable (at least with any brief search) to locate on the internet. So I literally typed it down below as he gives it in the lecture. The words of the actual poem (easy to find) are not these, but Wright referred to this as an ‘epistemologically transposed’ version of the poem. Here is that ‘transposed’ version, which is … well … you be the judge.
George Herbert’s poem ‘Love’ transposed to epistemology
(as quoted by N.T. Wright at the close of his Gifford Lecture #6)
Love bade me welcome; yet my mind drew back,
Eager for fact and proof;
But quick-eyed love, observing my sad lack
Of larger modes of truth
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
Why I stayed wondering.
Knowledge I need, I said, worthy the name.
Love said: it shall be yours.
I, the perverse, the ‘objective’?
I, the same who thought to grasp at powers?
Love touched my eyes, and smiling did reply,
Who made the mind, but I?
‘My mind is darkness, hostile, crushed beneath the load,
A stranger and to blame.’
Come to me then, said Love, the Stranger on the road.
Why then, my heart will flame.
You must sit down, says Love, and hear my voice.
Knowledge and Love rejoice.
Way behind you. Just finished lecture 1. The conclusion and, particularly the discussion of epistimology (about 55:00) was terrific. I hope there is a real, well-edited transcript somewhere. This will take a good deal of review. But well worth it. @klw, @Jay313, @Paulm12, @Trippy_Elixir, @beaglelady@NickolaosPappas, @adamjedgar and @MarkD you all might enjoy this one. I’m sure I missed some people.
No transcript because the lectures were published as a book. Here’s a review.
I like the vast majority of what Wright has to say, but as the reviewer pointed out, his analysis of the last 300 years is one of declension that systematically kicked God out of every realm. He lays blame for all our modern ills at the feet of the Enlightenment and wipes away all of Christian thought and history for the previous 1000+ years by invoking Plato. Weak sauce and cliches to that point, if you want my opinion.
I’d be glad to hear more of your analysis, but I have only listened to the first lecture. I’d be interested in hearing more what you believe is missing regarding Christian thought. If that should alter his conclusions and how. So, feel free just to direct me to rest first.
Thanks for that review link, Jay. It was itself, quite a lot to absorb, and in the end (I think), not at all dismissive of Wright’s project - but even affirming of its possility. And it is good to see Wright’s weak spots and vulnerabilities through the eyes of a peer more fitted to raise such criticism than I could ever hope to be. I do think Wright does exhibit the requisite scholarly humility to know he hasn’t built some unassailable case, and in fact - as this very reviewer credits Wright with admitting - to pretend he has would be to “fall prey to the very thing he is criticizing.”
I am reminded of one of Wright’s comments from somewhere among all these talks (to this effect): theologians are obliged to try to say everything all at once, because if they don’t, they will be accused of leaving important things out.
That is a super fascinating review. I got well over half way and will likely finish it before the end of the day. I also will be looking for Wright’s lectures on hoopla and scribd.
I can’t help but wonder what Wright could do with an awareness of what pure reason can and cannot tell (determine?) about the world, and Peter’s argument in Acts 2:14-36 that concerns three types of evidence: Scripture, history, and personal revelation.
I’d also like to see if Wright has anything to say about the Asbury revival which occurred shortly after he was speaking at the campus the same seminary where Keener teaches
Painting with a broad brush, everything since the Enlightenment has systematically excluded God, and everything from AD 300 to the Reformation was tainted by Neo-Platonism, which tosses out Aquinas, Anselm, and 1000 years of Catholic thought.
I’m a big fan of historical research and context to better understand Jesus, the gospels and the Hebrew Bible (OT). That’s where I think Wright shines. However, I don’t think it’s possible to completely recover a 1st-century “biblical” worldview today, let alone baptize the result as the antidote for what ails the modern world. (As the reviewer notes, Wright’s own reconstruction of 2nd Temple Judaism is controversial, to say the least.) Seriously, the attempt to recover a historically “authentic” Christianity is a quest that has launched a thousand sects.
To my mind, we can’t and shouldn’t ignore nearly 2000 years of Christian thinking. Maybe, just maybe, some progress has been made in all that time. (Unless the Holy Spirit left the building.)
From somewhere in the last few lectures - Wright also said this that I really liked regarding our proclivity to shift our focus away from the cross and toward worldly kingdoms and methods.
“When we fight fire with fire … it is fire that always wins.”
I don’t think Wright would or has disagreed with this. He’s likening all our historical and sometimes atrocious track record to being a bunch of “broken signposts” that nonetheless still indicate something significant and true, even when at times we fail to point in the right or true direction at all. But we are all testimony, nonetheless, that there is something true to point at. And Wright isn’t arrogant enough to think that he himself or his current project is now suddenly for the first time in 2000 years finally getting something right that nobody had ever done since the early church. I’ll suggest that he’s engaging in a time-honored tradition of reformation - of a revitalization that would (and this is quite ambitious enough!) join in with many echoes up and down history of trying to return to higher callings that tend to get lost among all our idolatries that creep in and plague every age in their unique (and yet common) ways. And Wright identifies the old Greek Epicurianism and Platonism as one of those common distorting influences to be aware of - and is quite aware that he isn’t the first thinker (either pre- or post-enlightenment) to identify and challenge that.
Yes. I think I started off saying I agree with the vast majority of what Wright says. I’m mostly nitpicking.
I’m not sure which way the influence goes, but this reminds me of Scot McKnight (maybe Middleton?) calling humanity a “broken icon” in relation to our bearing the image of God.
Speak for yourself, buddy. haha
Okay. I’m just saying he’s wrong on this point. Pre-Enlightenment Christian theologians/philosophers wrestled with Neo-Platonism and other philosophies that were current in their day. Pascal wrestled with his contemporary Descartes at the birth of the Enlightenment and made a similar case against natural theology – it doesn’t bring a person any nearer to knowledge of Christ. Granted.
Nevertheless, at some point in history Christians themselves began to ask, “Setting aside scripture (special revelation), what can we know about God from studying nature (general revelation)?” That’s a perfectly legitimate and expected question. The corollary is equally legit: “Setting aside God and the supernatural, what can we know about nature from studying nature?” The first is natural theology, and the second is the scientific method. I’m much more a fan of the latter, but even natural theology has yielded a few worthwhile insights. (Just not ID.)
Back to my point about Neo-Platonism … Christian thinkers from Paul to the present have addressed the philosophies that were current in their day, often gleaning insights from general revelation/reason that yielded progress in theology. Cutting to the chase, ancient Greek philosophy isn’t the problem, post-modernism isn’t a bogeyman, and the idol that needs to be slain isn’t of modern invention. It’s the same of cult of empire and emperor-worship that can be traced from the builders of the Great Ziggurat of Ur to Babylon to Rome.
I wouldn’t mind hearing you unpack a bit more about where you think Wright is wrong. Because what you go on to suggest that Neo-Platonism was wrestled with, and if I understand you (and Wright) accurately, it sounds to me like you’re agreeing with each other. At least in the sense that he too named some of the figures who also challenged it - including Pascal I’m pretty sure. He also mentions Kierkegaard as one who “saw through the whole thing” in a more complete sense.
I don’t think Wright was spending much powder or shot on post-modernism. It is modernism that he saw as the descendent of Epicurus.
Which is absolutely to agree with Wright. He identifies the idol as a quite old one. At least as old as Epicurus (and Democritus and Lucretius before him) in fact!
This echoes a lot of where Wright goes with all this (if I understand him and you accurately). I’m seeing a lot of agreement here.
Someone said “The human mind [and heart] is a perpetual idol factory”, or words to that effect. That is true of every generation and every individual – the bogeyman is me.
the same seminary where Keener teaches