Towards a Christian Cosmology

As people who know me will be aware, I am a ‘dabbler’ in astronomy. One area that fascinates me in particular is cosmology — a few years ago I even managed to stagger my way through Brian Green’s The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and the Texture of Reality. (And for a bit of fun, click here to see Brian Green being ribbed by Sheldon and Amy on an episode of The Big Bang Theory — a show which is another of my favourite things.)

The subject matter of cosmology comes down to how the universe got to be here and why it is the way it is. Phenomena such as cosmic background radiation, or the red shift of most objects in the universe challenge cosmologists to put forward theories and models that fit what we observe about the physical world.

It is all great fun. The problem, however, is that in many cosmologies, and certainly in the prevailing ‘pop-cosmology’ written for folks like me, human beings wind up as an accidental by-product. Indeed in the worst cases, we almost seem to fit the apostle Paul’s description of himself and his companions as “the offscouring of all things” (1 Cor 4:13).

And this is somewhat ironic, when you consider that it is these same ‘persons’ who have the ability and inclination to seek an understanding of the universe that they then interpret as denying them any ‘universal’ significance.

There are, of course, some exceptions. Paul Davies, for one, appeals to the ‘anthropic principle’ as a possible basis for cosmology — in his case the view that the emergence of minds like ours retrospectively determined the physical constants that made their emergence inevitable. For the most part, however, modern cosmology uses its astonishing insights and suggestions to relegate us to the margins of the very reality it sets out to study.

This is one reason why I think it is important for Christians to develop their own cosmology, drawing not on physical data but on the data of revelation, particularly that found in Scripture. And whilst what we might call ‘natural cosmology’ addresses the existence universe at the level of its physical components, a ‘spiritual cosmology’ would address the ‘big picture’ which includes ourselves as persons and all that ‘personhood’ represents.

Indeed a Christian cosmology begins with a person — the person of Christ. Perhaps the most significant statement regarding whom in this regard is found in Colossians 1:16, where it says that “all things were created by him and for him” (NIV).

Speaking from this passage, I have often said that if you want to make a cup of tea for me, you need to start with my tastes in tea, not yours. Two sugars and plenty of milk is not going to evoke my happy face (such as it is).

Thus we need to look to the character of Jesus if we are to understand what sort of world would be made ‘for him’. And in this regard, I believe Scripture says something profoundly important (which I have explored in my booklet The Eternal Cross) to the effect that Christ’s character in relation to the world is always and essentially that of the ‘slain lamb’. Thus Peter writes,

For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. (1 Pe 1:18-20, NIV, cf Eph 1:4; Rev 5:6)

That being the case, however, we ought not to be surprised that the world — our ‘cosmos’ — is one appropriate to a dying Saviour. In other words, sin, death, illness, disease, decay, etc are exactly what we ought to expect (just as they are, of course, exactly what we find).

Similarly, we ought to expect that we ourselves are of necessity creatures who need saving by a dying Saviour. As has often been said, it is not that God had a ‘plan A’ which then had to be turned into a ‘plan B’ when sin came along. However, this observation follows not just from the sovereignty of God but from the character of Christ.

I have often mused on the fact that according to Genesis 3:22, it would seem that the post-Fall human couple were more like God than they were pre-Fall. What the serpent promised (“you will be like God”, 3:5) has come true (“the man has now become like one of us”). Of course this is why we also need the one who will strike the serpent’s head at the cost of the serpent striking his heel (3:15). But given that Christ had already been ordained for this “before the creation of the world”, it raises in my mind the question as to whether the achievement of becoming “like one of us” could have been brought about any other way.

Implicit in this, therefore, is what I would term a ‘benign necessitarianism’. This, if I have understood him correctly, is essentially the view put forward by the Christian philosopher Norman Kretzmann. In answer to the question ‘Why would God create anything at all?’, his answer, essentially, is ‘Because he is like that.’

The term ‘necessitarianism’ refers, therefore, to the way in which creation is, to some extent, a ‘necessary’ action on God’s part. But it is ‘benign’ because, rather than being constrained by some external factors, God is impelled by his own nature.

And this brings us to a further feature of a Christian cosmology, which is to suggest that the nature of Christ entails the existence of the Church. Indeed arguably it is the Church of which it can most truly be said, ‘This was made for him.’ One of the reasons for taking this view is found in Kretzmann’s own arguments (drawing, amongst others, on Thomas Aquinas) that it is God’s love that drives the act of creation. The Church is thus supremely the object of the love of God shown to us in Christ Jesus.

I have argued elsewhere (though I drew some flak for doing so) that the account of the creation of the woman in Genesis 2 is itself an example of biblical ‘typology’ in this regard. Adam is ‘self-sufficient’ as regards his physical existing and his imaging of God in his personhood. There is no deficiency in him, yet it is ‘not good’ that there should be ‘only him’ (Gen 2:18, the proper sense of the Hebrew word translated ‘alone’ in most English versions). And the woman — taken from him and participating in his life rather than being a further derivation from the dust of the ground — is both the remedy to this ‘not good’ and a forerunner of the bridal Church in relation to her husband in Christ, an image in which the one imaged finds a separate self to love as his own self.

Furthermore we need to be aware that this ‘spousal relationship’ between the Creator-Redeemer God and his created-redeemed people goes to the very heart of the nature of our salvation (consider 1 Cor 6:16-17, for example) and again points back to factors relating to our ‘cosmology’.

All this is by way of very preliminary thoughts, but I sometimes worry that I won’t ever get round to developing these ideas more fully. I therefore offer them for your consideration and, perhaps, for your own further development.

Please give a full name and location when posting. Comments without this information may be deleted. Recommend:

A Clarification from Tom Wright

Tom Wright has sent the following, which he wanted to post as a comment, but which is too long. I commend it for people who have been following the debate here (Baffled by Wright - or maybe not!) and here (Clarifying Wright - maybe! - and can I just add I'm entirely with him on anonymous posting, please see the comments policy which appears at the bottom of every article here and still gets ignored!):

I'm glad to see that some clarification is coming. The confusion around the blessed word 'basis' is instructive. The word itself, of course, is not biblical. None the worse for that; as you say, the word 'Trinity' isn't, either, and I agree with those who say it's a fine and solid summary of things that are firmly there in scripture. That's not my problem. The problem is that words like 'basis' -- and other terms such as the 'heart' or 'centre' of Pauline theology, and so on -- can be far more slippery than they sound. I notice, John, that in your own original posting you say that I said something which meant that 'this transformation will be the basis of a 'final verdict' on their lives' -- whereas I had done my best to keep the word 'basis' out of it for the moment! It creeps back in. You likewise say in a later post something about present justification 'on the basis of faith' -- on which see below. Now I don't think that's a bad thing. The trouble is that clearly for some in the neo- or hyper-Reformed camp (I'm not sure how strictly Reformed they all are) the word carries far more freight than it has ever done, in my experience, for most English Reformed Christians. The strict (Piperesque?) interpretation seems to use it to mean 'the sole foundation upon which everything rests'. But that's tricky, isn't it? After all, even Paul could use 'foundation' in 1 Cor 3 to refer to Jesus Christ himself and in Eph 2 to refer to the apostles and prophets -- with Jesus Christ as the cornerstone holding them together. Why not shift metaphors if it helps? But there has crept in a kind of word-concept fallacy about slippery terms like 'basis' where it can only mean one thing. (One of your correspondents, trying to put me right, suggests that Piper and I are saying the same thing in different words. That is sometimes true -- and I have said so myself, quoting Newman about the difference between words and things-- and sometimes it is clearly, manifestly, not the case, for instance in the imputation question.)

When I used the word 'basis' (as I obviously did -- when I was preparing for the conference I was surrounded by unopened boxes and all the stuff of moving house, so couldn't check; and I knew I hadn't taken the theological position that the Piperites were accusing me of), I was not meaning it in that strict and narrow sense. I was using it in the way people speak of being justified in the present 'on the basis of faith'--which a lot of people do say without intending any heresy!, but which we know is shorthand for 'on the basis of God's action in Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection, and by the work of the Spirit through the proclamation of the gospel which leads to . . . faith'. Phew! In other words, I wasn't meaning 'this and only this, without reference to Jesus and the Spirit'. I was meaning -- as I make abundantly clear in several passages -- that Paul insists in Romans 2 and elsewhere that 'to those who by patience in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, he will give eternal life'. Again and again over decades I have stressed to students, readers, and anyone else who will listen, that this isn't a proposal for a Pelagian-style self-effort moralistic auto-justification, such as everyone from Augustine to Luther and beyond declared to be off limits. It's a way of saying -- which Paul then elaborates as the letter goes on -- that when the Spirit works in someone's life the transformation which is effected will show up in a changed direction, a different tenor of life, which, even though not perfect (Philippians 3.12-16), nevertheless indicates the work of the Spirit.

Part of the problem is that the debate has regularly been conducted at one or two removes from exegesis, and people have a truncated view of what Paul said as a result. Paul's exposition of justification in Romans doesn't stop with chapter 4 (still less with 3.28 as you might think from some!). Romans 8.31-39 is all about justification -- but you only get that glorious conclusion as a result of working through 8.1-30, with the bracing imperatives of 8.12-16 in particular: if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live! Pretty clear stuff, that. And it doesn't mean a smuggling in of 'works' by the back door; nor does it mean a diminution of the solid assurance given in justification by faith, as some have absurdly charged me with implying.

One of the great problems is that many on both sides of the Atlantic who have been taught 'justification by faith' in a simple (simplistic?) format have never spotted that in the NT there are three tenses of justification. I have highlighted present and future, and there is a major difference between them (present, as in Romans 3.21-26; future, as in Romans 2.1-16). Part of Paul's whole argument in Rom 1-8 hinges on the apparent tension between these, and how Paul resolves it so splendidly in 8.1, running on to 8.31-39. That is the arena in which debate should be held -- discussion of what Paul really meant -- rather than discussing whether this or that view is 'more properly reformed'.(By the way, you seem at one point in your post to identify 'Reformed' with Luther, which is surely precisely the wrong point -- Luther had a negative view of the Law, Calvin a positive one.) If you want to know my position on the Reformed doctrine, I think I agree with most of it (though I try to put it in a more biblical and less mediaeval framework) except 'imputed righteousness', which as I've argued in great detail is trying to do an important job but is doing it in a strictly less-then-fully-biblical way. But, as I said in Atlanta in the meeting which started all this (well, it didn't exactly start it, but in that loose sense it was ... shall we say, the 'basis' for it ...), this is a debate about scripture and tradition. Evangelicals have always said we must assess all traditions, including our own, in the light of scripture. That was Luther's and Calvin's principle, and it has been mine ever since I was old enough to understand these things.

I don't think, by the way, the parable of the sower is germane to this. It's about the way the Kingdom works... Nor is 1 Cor 3 strictly relevant, since it isn't about everybody's final judgment but about church leaders/teachers/apostles who are building on the foundation. Still, it could be thought to apply obliquely I suppose.

I was particularly struck (as in, surprised) by your formulation of 'salvation (how we are saved) and justification (that we are saved)'. At first I wondered whether you'd deliberately said that the wrong way round to see who was awake at the back of the class... Surely if we are to have a serious discussion one must be a bit more nuanced and sharp than that? Salvation means 'rescue', which in Paul means rescue from sin and death (as opposed to the Gnostics for whom it meant rescue from the material world/body). It therefore connotes resurrection, the new immortal body which will be incapable of both sin and death (and pain etc). Justification means 'the verdict "in the right" which is the precondition for that salvation. God utters that verdict "in the right" whenever someone believes that God raised Jesus from the dead (Rom 4.24f., 10.9-19). But that verdict, issued firmly and irrevocably in the present, will be reaffirmed in the future . . . when, however, the Spirit who (through the proclamation of the gospel) inspired that faith in the first place continues his work to produce the fruits of which Paul speaks again and again from Rom 2.25-9 through Rom 6 and 8 to Rom 12-15. And what will the Spirit actually do at that point? Why, raise us from the dead. So, in terms of final justification, the actual event in question will be the same event resurrection into the life of God's new world) as 'salvation', but the two will connote quite different thing. I agree with you, by the way, that baptism is the public event, corresponding to faith as the private event, which marks out God's people in the present. But, on final justification, as I said on someone else's blog, I wonder why nobody has mentioned Galatians 5.5f., where it's future justification on the basis of . . . whoops, I mean of course in accordance with ... 'faith working through love'. Has Paul thereby gone back on the great 'faith-alone' statements of Gal 2, 3 and 4? Of course not. They are about the present justification; this is about the future. The same Spirit who inspired faith will inspire such 'working through love' as will be the sign for the future.

I hope all this is reasonably clear. I didn't know whether to be amused or insulted by the chap on your blog who said I must be unclear because I'd never been a parish priest. (I suppose being Dean of a cathedral doesn't count either.) I would like to show him the files and files of letters, postcards, emails and so on from the Old Mrs Joneses of this world who have thanked me heartily for explaining things, in sermons and books, in a way they can understand and in a way that their own vicar had never made clear . . . But maybe he doesn't realise (some don't) that the NT Wright of the academic books is also the Tom Wright of the Everyone series...

I was also struck by the attempt by Ro Mody to systematize a Wright-says-this and Reformed-says-that view. It really doesn't work like that though I haven't got the time to explain why. But please be it noted: I have always, always, stressed penal substitution as being right at the heart of things, both for Jesus and for Paul. I do that in preaching and teaching as well as writing. It is one of the saddest slurs I encounter when people suggest I don't really believe or teach this. It's a way of saying 'we don't understand Tom Wright and he's saying things we didn't hear in Sunday School so he's probably a wicked liberal, and since wicked liberals don't believe in penal substitution he probably doesn't either.' In fact, chapter 12 of Jesus and the Victory of God is, I think I'm right in saying, the longest ever modern justification of seeing Isaiah 53 at the very centre of Jesus' own self-understanding -- which is at the very heart of everything else about the meaning of the cross. That is not to say, of course, that I agree with every way in which penal substitution is expressed. Like all doctrines, it's possible to state it in less than fully biblical ways, which then introduce their own new distortions. Put it back in its biblical context -- which includes Jesus' message about the kingdom of God, though you'd never know it from some evangelical writing -- and it makes glorious sense. Gospel sense.

Enough for now. Perhaps it's no bad thing for casual bloggers, slagging someone off cheerfully as some of your folks do, to know that the person concerned may actually read what they say from time to time... but then if they hide behind anonymous alias identities I suppose that makes it all right ...?

Greetings and good wishes, not least for Advent Sunday which is almost upon us,
reminding us of the great future in which all our past and present is finally resolved.

Tom Wright

N T Wright, St Andrews

Anonymous users wishing to paste in the comments box need first to select 'preview', then close the preview box. When posting your comments please give a full name and location. Comments without this information may be deleted.

Baffled by Wright - or maybe not!

Can anyone unpack this sentence by Tom Wright for me, which he posted as a ‘clarification’ in a blog discussion (adding that he doesn’t usually read or respond to blog posts)?

The point … is that by the Spirit those who are already justified by faith have their lives transformed, and the final verdict will be in accordance with that transformation, imperfect though it remains.

As it stands, Wright says that justification is, quite simply, “by faith”, that those who are so justified have their lives transformed by the Spirit, and that this transformation will be the basis of a “final verdict” on their lives.

Now I know that Wright wants to distinguish salvation (how we are saved) from justification (that we are saved). Nevertheless, he does not add a ‘plus’ to his statement about ‘justification by faith’, and I therefore take it he means justification is ‘by faith alone, through grace alone’. I may be wrong, but that is a legitimate inference from the sentence as it stands.

Allowing for the nuances between ‘salvation’ and ‘justification’, I cannot see how this differs from the classical Reformed position, even though Wright says this is based on a misunderstanding of Paul.

As to the ‘final verdict’, if one is justified (ie, in Wright’s terms, a member of the people of God), the content of this verdict can presumably only be with respect to how well, or badly, one has done in regard to living out one’s ‘calling’ into God’s people.

As Jesus taught in the parable of the sower, some will bear fruit thirty fold, some sixty fold and some a hundred fold. Or as Paul remarks in 1 Corinthians,

If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames. (1 Cor 3:12-15)

According to this, then, the final verdict is on the quality of one’s Spirit-transformed life as a ‘justified’ member of the household of God.

Once again, however, I cannot see any tension between this and the classical Reformed position.

Is it just, then, that Wright and Luther reach the same position by (what Wright thinks ought to be) a different route?

I have a feeling I am missing something, but if Wright’s statement above is a summary of his actual position, I cannot work out what it is!

John Richardson
25 November 2010

Anonymous users wishing to paste in the comments box need first to select 'preview', then close the preview box. When posting your comments please give a full name and location. Comments without this information may be deleted.

Witnessing to Jehovah's Witnesses

Last Thursday was a bit curious — I actually had a scheduled visit from the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Typically, this had started with the ringing of the doorbell (at an inconvenient moment, but then what moments are convenient for such a visit?) by a young woman with child in tow.

It is usually easy to spot JWs , and tempting simply to tell them to go away, but I think being a Jehovah’s Witness must be like working for a call centre. It must be awful knowing everyone hates you and wants you to go away. So I usually try to be pleasant, both on the phone and at the front door.

Anyway, this time one thing led to another, and I said I’d be quite happy for her to call again, which she duly did, with her ‘supervisor’, as arranged, last Thursday.

Personally, I’ve long since given up wondering whether JWs might just be right. My first encounter with them was in 1972, when they were still forecasting the end of the world in 1975, and might reasonably have claimed to have still been in with a chance.

However, I think any organization predicting the date of Christ’s return (unwise in itself) ought to operate on a ‘three strikes and you’re out basis’, and so having been wrong in 1914, 1925 and 1975, the JWs really ought to call it a day.

Nevertheless, my encounters with them in ‘72 resulted in the purchase of my first theological book: A A Hoekema’s The Four Major Cults, which I read avidly. As a result, I reckon I’m pretty well informed about what the Witnesses believe and teach — sometimes more so than a novice Witness. But the important question is surely not so much, “How can I prove the Witnesses wrong?” (especially since they are approaching the conversation exactly with the intention of proving you wrong) as, “How can I get through to this person with the gospel?”

Sometimes this may indeed be by proving them wrong. Back in the ‘70s I had a ‘result’ with two Witnesses over the issue of the 144,000 in the Book of Revelation. ((I basically objected that if the number itself was 'literal', then so, too, ought to be their description as being male Jewish virgins.) One of them later told a friend of mine they’d given up being Witnesses after their conversation with me. But I’ve also had unfruitful and unproductive conversations which have gone nowhere, on whether Jesus was God, on whether the doctrine of the Trinity is true, and so on.

More recently, therefore, I’ve tended to concentrate on another question, namely, “How are we saved?” This has, I think two advantages. First, it isn’t part of the JW training and, secondly, it gets really to the heart of the matter.

I did actually bone up a bit before our Thursday meeting, from the book the woman had left with me previously, so I did know the ‘right’ answer was that Jesus had paid a ransom for us. (Of course, JWs have a very different understanding of ‘Jesus’ from orthodox Christianity.) What our discussions revealed, however, was that this ransom provides no assurance of salvation. Thus the younger Witness said to me at one stage, “I don’t sin at all.”  And the reason was because if she did, Jehovah would condemn her.

This naturally led to a discussion about God’s answer to sin — in fact I kept trying to press the point, “What does God do about our sins?”, though without getting a clear answer.

Then came the wonderful moment when the older Witness asked me, “So do you think you could just go to the confessional and say you were sorry and then go out and sin again, and keep on being forgiven?”, to which I said, “It’s funny you should say that, because if you turn to Romans 6, you’ll find exactly that question. And,” I went on, “It’s a question you’ll only ask if you’ve really understood the gospel, because only the gospel will ever allow you to think that is possible — no other religion will ever make you think that way.”

After that, we talked on for a bit, but I felt we’d reached the most useful point, and I think they felt they weren’t getting anywhere. Certainly they left without trying to book another appointment.

But it left me wondering, “Can you be a Witness and be saved?” I think my answer would be, “Yes, but accidentally, and without really knowing it, or being in a position effectively to bring others to salvation.”

Today on the train back from the Reform conference in London, I was reading John Stott’s classic Your Confirmation. In it, he talks about salvation in these terms:

We must believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who died on the cross to be the Saviour of the world. This is about all you need to believe in order to become a Christian. Of course, there is much more to believe later. Once you are committed to Jesus Christ, you will be in a better position to think through the rest of the Christian creed, than if you remain uncommitted. You do not have to believe the whole Bible to become a Christian; nor to be well versed in the Christian philosophy of religion; nor to know the Catechism by heart! These things can wait. What you do have to believe is first that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God, uniquely divine, who came down from heaven and became man; and secondly that He deliberately went to the cross to die for the sins of the world.

Of course, JWs explicitly deny that Jesus is ‘uniquely divine’, but on the other hand, many of them do indeed believe that Jesus ‘went to the cross to die for the sins of the world’.

The fundamental problem, as far as I can see, is that identified by Stott later in the same book:

If you are hoping that you are forgiven and that you are going to heaven when you die, in what are you trusting for these things? ... If you reply (as many people do to whom I have put this question): “Well, I have tried to lead a good life; I go to church regularly; I say my prayers; I ...” I must stop you. You need go no further. The first word of your answer was “I”. Exactly! You are trusting in yourself and in your own works, your good deeds and religious observances. No wonder you have no assurance of salvation. The answer to my question in one word is “Christ” ...

Of course, it could be argued that the answer, “Because I,” means I am in a wrong relationship with God, and therefore not saved. But it also means that the first issue to address with my two Witnesses was the effectiveness of Christ’s death, and their own need for assurance.

Clearly, their own assurance came from their own works, even though they explicitly said they weren’t ‘earning’ their salvation. But the equally important point is that an argument about the nature of Christ or the precise status of ‘Hell’ would have taken us off on a diversion, rather than getting to the heart of the matter.

Naturally, I would also want to challenge their view of Christ, but I suspect it would be easier to do so when the extent of Christ’s saving work was properly understood. Arguing about whether Jesus was divine, or whether, as Witnesses teach, he was an incarnation of the Archangel Michael, is less ‘academic’ when his nature means his death is capable of dealing with all the sins of the whole world.

Meanwhile, though, I also find myself asking whether new understandings of the atonement, which see Christ’s death and our works acting ‘cooperatively’ do not undermine assurance just as much as the teachings of JWs, and therefore whether we shouldn’t be just as inclined to proclaim the fullness of salvation as the truth in opposition to error in these cases as well.

John Richardson

14 October 2008

When posting your comments please give a full name and location. Comments without this information may not be posted.

Theology, 'shmeology' - who cares about Tom Wright, anyway?

I must admit to being very disappointed by the reaction so far to my posting on Bishop Tom Wright’s understanding of the ‘order of salvation’ — or rather the lack of reaction.

First, I was hoping for some help in understanding precisely what is being put forward. I am far from sure I am understanding Wright correctly.

But secondly, the theology of salvation is surely far more important for the future of the Church of England generally and Evangelicalism in particular than who speaks at mini-NEAC. Yet when I look at the balance of comments, it seems the latter evokes far more interest (29 comments) than the former (2 comments).

Perhaps it would have ‘helped’ if I’d been more political — if, for example, I’d headlined the piece ‘Tom Wright is not an Evangelical!’. Then, maybe, it would have got the attention of the people who are worked up about NEAC.

Well, I didn’t (and don’t) want to go down that road.

But it is true that an Evangelical’s theology may not itself be Evangelical. And that is why I think this is so important. Tom Wright may be an Evangelical, but if (repeat, if) I’m right about the theology of salvation, the generations who follow this theology won’t be.

One of the features of religious life is the problem with passing on the vitality of one generation to the next. And one of the reasons for this is that theological errors take time to ‘mature’.

Rather like a rocket going off course, the first generation which deviates from the truth may hardly notice the effects. Several generations down the track, whole denominations may have gone off the rails, as I believe happened with the Quakers. George Fox’s small deviation was to believe he could speak ‘apostolically’ beyond the Bible. Nevertheless, for many years, the Quakers were exemplary in the way they lived the Christian life and rigorously applied the Bible. Today, however, Quakerism is a haven for people who find ‘doctrine’ itself an anathema, which is a shame.

It may be perfectly true, then, to say that someone is themselves an Evangelical, but that their theology, at least in some respects, is not. And if that person is an influential teacher or speaker, then the results for later generations may be very serious. (To take an historical example, look at the problems created for the Church of England by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s views on the role of the Head of State in the economy of God. It seemed like a good idea at the time!)

My concern, then, is not with Tom Wright, but Tom Wright’s theology — but it is a serious concern. If my analysis is wrong, fair enough. But if it is right, then Wright’s theology is, at a fundamental point, not Evangelical. And if it is influencing a generation of Evangelicals who, with good reason, are enthusiastic about Tom Wright as a teacher, the results need not be that they cease to be Evangelicals themselves, but down the line their descendants will certainly have done so.

John Richardson
16 August 2008

When posting your comments please give a full name and location. Comments without this information may not be posted.