New Perspectives on Paul
Dec 29, 2004 Print This Post
{ MOOD: Thoughtful | NOISE: Kid’s playing }
I don’t know tons about N T Wright or the New Perspectives on Paul, although I am just beginning to read about them. A friend of mine has been trying to get me into Wright. Today, as I was reading my Bloglines, I came across this post that referred to this article on NPP. Interesting stuff. I am definitely not very well read on all of this. Here are three quotes that struck me:
“I find, in talking with evangelical students who are enamored of Wright and the NPP, that they are often dismissive of anyone who has a criticism of Wright, and assume that the only reason that you are critical is that you haven’t read Wright, or that you haven’t read Wright right, or that you haven’t read enough of Wright, or that if you had only read more of Wright, you would believe that Wright was right, and so on.”
“American evangelicals have always been more individualistic than our British Christian friends. British evangelicals (from the days of the Whiggish Covenanters to the Clapham sect to John Stott) have always had a better balance between the individual and social dimensions of Christianity than we have. We are more individualistic, more suspicious of pressing the social dimensions of New Testament ethics, for fear of falling into the social Gospel or confusing “the two Kingdoms.” Frankly, a lot of my students feel very guilty about that. They feel very guilty about the individualism that their tradition has perpetuated. And along comes a “new, biblical solution” to that individualism: the NPP! Unfortunately, the solution being offered by the NPP is less than healthy and biblical. But evangelicals fall for it nevertheless.”
“Preterism is all the rage in some conservative Reformed circles these days. The “already and not yet” is out, and the “been there, done that” is in. NT eschatology, for the preterist, is retrospective and realized. Well, along comes Wright, with his very this worldly eschatology, and provides a high-powered academic justification for the low-rent forms of preterism circulating in some places today. And they love it.”
I need to read this stuff some more.
Facebook comments:
Leave a Reply