N.T. "Tom" Wright

Canon of Westminster Abbey, London | Teacher of New Testament Studies at Oxford, Cambridge, and McGill Universities | The Dean of Lichfield, one of England's oldest cathedrals. The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (1991); The New Testament and the People of God (1992); and Jesus and the Victory of God (1996). Popular studies include: Who Was Jesus? (1993); The Crown and the Fire (1992); Following Jesus: Biblical Reflections on Discipleship (1995); The Lord and His Prayer (1996); The Original Jesus: The Life and Vision of a Revolutionary (1996);  and What St. Paul Really Said (1997).

“When Jerusalem is destroyed, and Jesus’ people escape from the ruin just in time, that will be YHWH becoming king, bringing about the liberation of his true covenant people, the true return from exile, the beginning of the new world order” (JVG, 364)

Enemy to the Reformed Faith | New Book Defends Gospel Account of Resurrection Story | Did Jesus' body rise from the dead?  In new book, British theologian and cleric says yes | January 2003 Lecture at Calvin College, MI | Paul's Gospel and Ceasar's Empire | Web | Images | Groups | Directory | News | N.T. Wight 3 | N.T. Wright 4 | N.T. Wright 5 | N.T. Wright Page

" ... supporting the present regime in Israel in some kind of christian ground is laughably and dangerously simplistic and non-sense... "

 ' ... for the heavens and the earth will listen to his Messiah ... For he will... (be) freeing prisoners, giving sight to the blind, straightening out the twisted ... and the Lord will perform marvellous acts ... for He will heal the badly wounded and will make the dead live, he will proclaim good news to the meek, give lavishly to the needy, lead the exiled and enrich the hungry;"   Qumran Scrolls  4Q521  (From 'Jesus and the Victory of God' N T Wright)

Jesus' "Broad Strokes" By N.T. Wright:

"1) Jesus was a first-century Jewish prophet announcing God's kingdom (33).

2) He believed that the kingdom was breaking in to Israel's history in and through his own presence and work (37) ...

3) and summoning other Jews to abandon alternative kingdom visions and join him in his (40) ...

4) and warning of dire consequences for the nation, for Jerusalem, and for the temple, if his summons was ignored (42).

5) His agendas led him into a symbolic clash with those who embraced other ones, and this, together with the positive symbols of his own kingdom agenda, point to the way in which he saw his inaugurated kingdom moving toward accomplishment (47).

6) [Jesus indicated] in symbolic actions, and in cryptic and coded sayings, that he believed he was Israel's messiah, the one through whom the true God would accomplish his decisive purpose (50)." ("The Mission and Message of Jesus" chapter 3)

(On Mark 13; the Significance of AD70)
"When the gospel is announced, says Paul, God's righteousness is unveiled."  (Paul's Gospel and Ceasar's Empire)

"One of the main reasons, I suppose, why the obvious way of reading the chapter has been ignored for so long must be the fact that in a good deal of Christian theology the fall of Jerusalem has had no theological significance. This has meant not only that Mark 13 is found puzzling, but also that all the references to the same event elsewhere in the gospels -- even where it stares one in the face, as in Luke 13:1-5 -- have been read as general warnings of hellfire in an afterlife, rather than the literal and physical divine-judgment-through-Roman-judgment that we have seen to be characteristic of Jesus' story." (Jesus and Victory of God, pp. 343-344) 

"the word "gospel" carries two sets of resonances for Paul. On the one hand, the gospel Paul preached was the fulfilment of the message of Isaiah 40 and 52, the message of comfort for Israel and of hope for the whole world, because YHWH, the god of Israel, was returning to Zion to judge and redeem. On the other hand, in the context into which Paul was speaking, "gospel" would mean the celebration of the accession, or birth, of a king or emperor. Though no doubt petty kingdoms might use the word for themselves, in Paul's world the main "gospel" was the news of, or the celebration of, Caesar." (Paul's Gospel and Ceasar's Empire)


(On the "Israel of God")
"We can be virtually certain that Jesus, like other leadership prophets of the first century, thought of his followers as the true people of Israel, who would survive the coming moment of crisis and form the renewed people of the covenant God." (JVG, p.321)

(On Parousia/Second Coming)
"The word 'parousia' is itself misleading, anyway, since it merely means 'presence'; Paul can use it of his being present with a church, and nobody supposes that he imagined he would make his appearance flying downward on a cloud..  The church expected certain events to happen within a generation and happen they did, though there must have been moments between AD30 and 70 when some wondered if they would and in consequence took up the Jewish language of delay.  Jerusalem fell; the good news of Jesus, and the kingdom of Israel's God, was announced in Rome, as well as in Jerusalem and Athens." (The New Testament and the People of God, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, p. 463).

(On the "End of the World")
"Within the mainline Jewish writings of this period, covering a wide range of styles, genres, political persuasions and theological perspectives, there is virtually no evidence that Jews were expecting the end of the space-time universe.  There is abundant evidence that they knew a good metaphor when they saw one, and used cosmic imagery to bring out the full theological significance of cataclysmic socio-political events.   There is almost nothing to suggest that they followed the Stoics into the belief that the world itself would come to an end; and there is almost everything to suggest that they did not." (NTPG 333)

"To the list of sources there in favour of the position advanced should be added Horslet 1987, 138f., 337; and (cited by Horsley) Wilder 1959.  Among many passages which could be cited, the three which Allison 1985, 89 quotes, against the drift of his own argument (on which see above, 209 n. 38, and the next note, below), will do for a start: Ps. - Philo 11.3-5; 4 Ezra 3.18-19; and bZeb. 116a." (Jesus and the Victory of God, p. 321f.)

"If Jesus and the early church used the relevant language in the same way as their contemporiries, it is highly unlikely that they would have been referring to the actual end of the world, and highly likely that they would have been referring to events within space-time history which they interpreted as the coming of the kingdom.  It will not do to dismiss this reading of 'apocalyptic' language as 'merely metaphorical'.   Metaphors have teeth; the complex metaphors available to first-century Jews had particularly sharp ones."  (Jesus and the Victory of God, p. 321)

"The days of Jerusalem's destruction would be looked upon as days of cosmic catastrophe.  The known world would go into convulsions: power struggles and coups d'etat would be the order of the day; the pax Romana, the presupposition of 'civilized' life throughout the then Mediterranean world, would collapse into chaos.  In the midst of that chaos Jerusalem would fall."  (JVG, p. 362)

(On the Resurrection)
"The early Christian hope for bodily resurrection is clearly Jewish in origin, there being no possible pagan antecedent. Here, however, there is no spectrum of opinion: Earliest Christianity simply believed in resurrection, that is, the overcoming of death by the justice-bringing power of the creator God. " (The Resurrection of Resurrection)

(On King Jesus/Caesar Cult Controversy)
"What is the immediate significance of this Jesus-and-Caesar contrast? It was of course a challenge to an alternative loyalty. Jesus is the reality, Caesar the parody."

"The most exciting developments today in the study of St Paul and his thought are not, I think, the recent works on what is usually called Paul's Theology. I would highlight, rather, the study of the interface and conflict between Paul's gospel, the message about the crucified Jesus, and the world in which his entire ministry was conducted, the world in which Caesar not only held sway but exercised power through his divine claim. What happens when we line up Paul's gospel with Caesar's empire?"

"The evidence now available, including that from epigraphy and archaeology, shows that the cult of Caesar was not simply one new religion among many in the Roman world. Already by Paul's time it had become the dominant cult in a large part of the Empire, certainly in the parts where Paul was active, and was the means whereby the Romans managed to control and govern such huge areas as came under their sway. Who needs armies when they have worship?" 

"Theologically, it belongs completely with Isaiah's ringing monotheistic affirmations that YHWH and YHWH alone is the true god, the only creator, the only sovereign of the world, and that the gods of the nations are contemptible idols whose devotees are deceived, at best wasting their time and at worst under the sway of demons. Politically, it cannot but have been heard as a summons to allegiance to "another king", which is of course precisely what Luke says Paul was accused of saying (Acts 17.7). Practically, this means that Paul, in announcing the gospel, was more like a royal herald than a religious preacher or theological teacher." 

"What the older history-of-religions argument failed to reckon with was the Jewish understanding that, precisely because of Israel's status within the purposes of the creator god, Israel's king was always supposed to be the world's true king. "His dominion shall be from one sea to the other; from the River to the ends of the earth" (Ps. 72.8). "The root of Jesse shall rise to rule the nations; in him shall the nations hope" (Isa. 11.10, cited Rom. 15.12). Paul endorsed this train of thought, and he believed it to have been fulfilled in Jesus." (Paul's Gospel and Ceasar's Empire)

Jesus and the Victory of God" (Fortress Press, 1996). Referring to the 13th chapter of Mark and the parallel Gospel accounts in Matthew and Luke, where Jesus prophesies the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem, Wright observes (pp. 343-344): "One of the main reasons, I suppose, why the obvious way of reading the chapter has been ignored for so long must be the fact that in a good deal of Christian theology the fall of Jerusalem has had no theological significance. This has meant not only that Mark 13 is found puzzling, but also that all the references to the same event elsewhere in the gospels -- even where it stares one in the face, as in Luke 13:1-5 -- have been read as general warnings of hellfire in an afterlife, rather than the literal and physical divine-judgment-through-Roman-judgment that we have seen to be characteristic of Jesus' story."

Wright goes on to note that today's scholars, preachers, and laymen tend to read Jesus' apocalyptic discourse on the Mount of Olives, where he makes his fall-of-Jerusalem prophecy (Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21) as an account of the end of the space-time universe and of Jesus' downward travel to earth in a cloud. But Wright rejects this view as anachronistic -- that is, as totally out of sync with the time and place of Jesus' 1st-century ministry. Wright points out (pp. 345-346): "We must...stress again: as far as the disciples, good first-century Jews as they were, were concerned, there was no reason whatever for them to be thinking about the end of the space-time universe. There was no reason, either in their own background or in a single thing that Jesus had said up to them at that point, for it even to occur to them that the true story of the world, or of Israel, or of Jesus himself, might include either the end of the space-time universe, or Jesus or anyone else floating down to earth on a cloud."

"The disciples WERE, however, very interested in a story which ended with Jesus' coming to Jerusalem to reign as king. They WERE looking for the fulfillment of Israel's hopes, for the story told so often in Israel's scriptures to reach its appointed climax. And the 'close of the age' for which they longed was not the end of the space-time order, but the end of the present evil age...." Jesus' apocalyptic discourse on the Mount of Olives therefore has to do with his "'coming' or 'arrival' in the sense of his actual enthronement as king, consequent upon the dethronement of the present powers that were occupying the holy city."

(On Aion)
"The present age was a time when the creator god seemed to be hiding his face; the age to come would see the renewal of the created world. The present age was the time of Israel's misery; in the age to come she would be restored. In the present age wicked men seemed to be flourishing; in the age to come they would receive their just reward. In the present age even Israel was not really keeping the Torah perfectly, was not really being YHWH's true humanity; in the age to come all Israel would keep Torah from the heart." (New Testament and the People of God, 299-300)

WHAT OTHERS HAVE SAID

Stein, Robert H.
"First, as with any overarching theological system, when Biblical texts get in the way, they tend to be squeezed to fit the system. Wright’s “system” is no different, but Wright time and time again forces various texts to fit his system, and this weakens his argument. Some examples are:

• Jesus’ teaching that when struck on the right check one should turn the left also refers primarily to his followers not becoming part of the resistance movement against Rome (291).

• Making friends with one’s accuser before going to court is understood not as advice for individual believers but advice that Israel should make peace with Rome lest she be handed over to the judgment and destruction of ad 70.

• Jesus’ warning about building one’s house on rock and not sand refers to the coming destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and its replacement by Jesus as thetrue temple (334).

• The warning concerning the danger of possessions refers to the Jewish people’s love for the land of Israel. Jesus’ sayings concerning selling one’s possession involves the need of the Jewish people to renounce their nationalistic and idolatrous (331) hopes concerning the land of Israel (403–4).

• The saying about having faith enough to cast a mountain into the sea refers to the Temple (422).

• The parable of the rich man and Lazarus is interpreted primarily as a call to Israel to repent of their revolutionary zeal and violent nationalism (246–58).

• The parable of the soils “tells the story of Israel, particularly the return from exile, with a paradoxical conclusion, and it tells the story of Jesus’ ministry, as the fulfil[l]ment of that larger story, with a paradoxical outcome” (230; Wright’s italics).

• The seed is interpreted as the “true Israel, who will be vindicated when her god finally acts . . . ” (232).

• The parable of the prodigal son is the story of Israel’s exile and restoration. This is the main theme. Babylon had taken the people into captivity; Babylon fell, and the people returned. But in Jesus’ day many, if not most, Jews regarded the exile as still continuing. The people had returned in a geographical sense, but the great prophecies of restoration had not yet come true.

• The saying about fearing not those who kill the body but the one who can cast a person into Gehenna refers not to God but to Satan. The one who can kill the body is Rome, but the real enemy to be feared is Satan (454–55)

• In the cleansing of the Temple Jesus says that God’s house had become a den of robbers. Wright interprets this as meaning that the Temple had become a den of revolutionary zealots and brigands. "

I would like to finish my brief critique of Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God with two concluding questions. The first is the question, “How does the fall of Jerusalem in ad 70 vindicate Jesus?” Wright’s reply is that “[Jesus], and his people, would be vindicated when Jerusalem, having rejected his message of peace, chose war and suffered the consequences” (324)
[i.e. when Jerusalem was destroyed]. “So closely do [Jesus’ Messiahship and his prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem] belong together . . . that the destruction of the Temple . . . is bound up with Jesus’ own vindication, as prophet and also as Messiah” (511). “When [Jesus’] prophecy of its destruction comes true, that event will demonstrate that he was indeed the Messiah who had the authority over it” (511). The destruction of Jerusalem for Wright serves as a vindication of Jesus’ message, since he spoke of its destruction. Like the OT prophets, Jesus’ verification as a true prophet would come through the fulfillment of his prophetic message. “As a prophet, Jesus
staked his reputation on his prediction of the Temple’s fall within a generation; if and when it fell, he would thereby be vindicated” (362). Yet exactly how this would vindicate him as not just a prophet but as the Messiah is not altogether clear, since the prophecies of all true prophets were fulfilled."

The NT does not place the vindication of Jesus in ad 70. Rather, it sees this as taking place in his resurrection. Paul states that Jesus was “designated Son of God in power . . . by his resurrection from the dead” (1:4). It is because of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, not the fall of Jerusalem in ad 70, that Peter says, “Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36). Nothing is said here concerning ad 70. Jesus, himself, when asked to give a sign to vindicate his claims said, “No sign shall be given to [this sinful and adulterous generation] except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt 12:39–40). It is clearly the resurrection of Jesus that is the vindication of his message and claims. The followers of Jesus were not waiting in some sort of limbo for forty years until the fall of Jerusalem in order to discover if God would vindicate Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah. The almost complete absence of any mention of ad 70 in Acts, Paul, and the rest of the NT, together with the church’s central teaching that, “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom 10:9), indicates that the church saw Jesus’ vindication in the resurrection, not the fall of Jerusalem." (“N. T. Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God: A Review Article,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 44.2 (June 2001) 207-218.)

"Hahn then built a whole theology around this concept, using Protestant N.T. Wright as his mentor - the very scholar who is still fostering the Reformation concept of forensic imputation as the means of justification." (Art Sippo and the Demise of Catholic Apologetics - Catholic Apologetics International

"Sippo: Scott is very well read in the Patristic literature and is on the cutting edge of modern biblical scholarship. Anyone who has tried to keep up with the field knows that the movement for "biblical theology" is a new and exciting area of study that crosses confessional lines and participates in the New Pauline Perspective which has been systematically dismantling the classical Protestant interpretation of Scripture in favor of a view of soteriology that is more favorable to the traditional Catholic position. R. Sungenis: Thanks for proving my point. In case you didn't catch it, Sippo has admitted by the statement "crosses confessional lines and participates in the New Pauline Perspective," that he and Hahn have received their newfound ideas on soteriology from Protestants. Need I say more?" )