The first book addresses three main issues: i) Wright’s critical-realist hermeneutic; ii) the situation of Judaism within the first century Greco-Roman world; and iii) some general questions relating to primitive Christianity, in particular the importance of stories in shaping the Christian mindset.
Wright identifies four methods of reading the New Testament: pre-critical, historical, theological, and postmodern (7-9). Each developed as a corrective to the perceived failings of the method that preceded.
A particular problem emerges from this sequence, however: ‘the tension between a reading that seeks to be in some sense normatively Christian and that which seeks to be faithful to history’ (9). Christians have not dealt with this tension especially well. On the one hand, what has been conceived as a defence of orthodox Christianity against Enlightenment rationalism may in fact be merely the defence of a pre-critical worldview that is “no more specifically ‘Christian’ than any other”. On the other, we have failed to understand how the Enlightenment critique of Christianity may lead to the recovery of authenticity:
Here is the paradox that lies at the heart of this whole project. Although the Enlightenment began as, among other things, a critique of orthodox Christianity, it can function, and in many ways has functioned, as a means of recalling Christianity to genuine history, to its necessary roots. Much Christianity is afraid of history, frightened that if we really find out what happened in the first century our faith will collapse. But without historical enquiry there is no check on Christianity’s propensity to remake Jesus, never mind the Christian god, in its own image. Equally, much Christianity is afraid of scholarly learning, and in so far as the Enlightenment programme was an intellectual venture, Christianity has responded with the simplicities of faith (10).
Wright proposes an approach to reading the New Testament that combines the three methods: the pre-critical emphasis on the authority of the biblical text; the Enlightenment interest in history and theology; and the postmodern concern with the relationship between the reader and the text (11-28).
The basic argument I shall advance in this Part of the book is that the problem of knowledge itself, and the three branches of it that form our particular concern, can all be clarified by seeing them in the light of a detailed analysis of the worldviews which form the grid through which humans, both individually and in social groupings, perceive all of reality. In particular, one of the key features of all worldviews is the element of story. This is of vital importance not least in relation to the New Testament and early Christianity, but this is in fact a symptom of a universal phenomenon. ‘Story’, I shall argue, can help us in the first instance to articulate a critical-realist epistemology, and can then be put to wider uses in the study of literature, history and theology (32).
Wright sets out his ‘critical-realist epistemology’ as distinct from positivism, on the one hand, and phenomenalism, on the other. These alternative theories of how we know things are broadly ‘the optimistic and pessimistic versions of the Enlightenment epistemological project’. Positivism asserts that there are at least some things ‘about which we can have definite knowledge’ (32). Phenomenalism is less confident about our knowledge of the external world: all we can know for certain are the sensations of the knowing subject (34-35).
Over against both of these positions, I propose a form of critical realism. This is a way of describing the process of ‘knowing’ that acknowledges the reality of the thing known, as something other than the knower (hence ‘realism’), while also fully acknowledging that the only access we have to this reality lies along the spiralling path of appropriate dialogue or conversation between the knower and the thing known (hence ‘critical’). This path leads to critical reflection on the products of our enquiry into ‘reality’, so that our assertions about ‘reality’ acknowledge their own provisionality. Knowledge, in other words, although in principle concerning realities independent of the knower, is never itself independent of the knower (35).
This dependence of knowledge upon the knower is a matter not merely of the individual’s point of view: it also brings into play both the worldview and the community or social context of the perceiver. Wright stresses, therefore, that ‘critical realism… sees the knowledge of particulars as taking place within the larger framework of the story or worldview which forms the basis of the observer’s way of being in the world’ (37). He goes on to argue at some length that stories are constitutive of our worldviews and of human life generally (38-44). He concludes that a critical-realist theory of knowledge i) is essentially relational, and in that respect overcomes the traditional dualism of subjective and objective knowledge; ii) “acknowledges the essentially ‘storied’ nature of human knowing, thinking and living, within the larger model of worldviews and their component parts” (45).
Wright next attempts to describe a ‘critical-realist account of the phenomenon of reading’ (61). He takes the view that conservative models of reading the Bible which emphasize the immediate personal relevance of the text to the reader and ignore the historical dimension are, ironically, little different from postmodern approaches:
The devout predecessor of deconstructionism is that reading of the text which insists that what the Bible says to me, now, is the be-all and end-all of its meaning; a reading which does not want to know about the intention of the evangelist, the life of the early church, or even about what Jesus was actually like. There are some strange bedfellows in the world of literary epistemology (60).
The critical-realist position is differentiated from the positivist or naïve realist stance, on the one hand, which assumes that the text stands in a straightforward relationship to the world, and the reductionist stance, on the other, which entirely disallows the common-sense assumption that the text expresses the thoughts of its author and refers to objects in the real world. At this point Wright suggests a rather surprising solution to the problem of reference: a hermeneutic of love. Just as love ‘affirms the reality and otherness of the beloved’ rather than attempt to ‘collapse the beloved into terms of itself’, a hermeneutic of love ‘means that the text can be listened to on its own terms, without being reduced to the scale of what the reader can or cannot understand at the moment’ (64).
A theory of literature is required that secures both the public or historical relevance of the text and the dynamic of private or personal address. We examine the text ‘in all its historical otherness to ourselves as well as all its transtemporal relatedness to ourselves, and being aware of the complex relation that exists between those two things’. The importance of the public dimension lies particularly in the fact that by means of the ‘historical otherness’ of the text a worldview is brought to birth. ‘By reading it historically, I can detect that it was always intended as a subversive story, undermining a current worldview and attempting to replace it with another. By reading it with my own ears open, I realize that it may subvert my worldview too’ (67).
At this point Wright briefly introduces structuralist analyses of narrative (Propp, Greimas), arguing that such approaches force us to attend more carefully to the story that is being told (69-77). He suggests that the basic charge that the early church levelled against Judaism was a failure to listen to the story of the Old Testament. More importantly: ‘It might also be suggested that a similar failure on the part of contemporary Christians is widespread, and is moreover at the root of a great deal of misunderstanding of the Christian tradition in general and the gospels in particular’ (70). To address the question of Christian origins, in Wright’s view, is fundamentally to engage in the discernment and analysis of first-century stories and of their relation to the larger stories and worldviews of which they form a part (78-79).
A critical-realist theory of history recognizes, first, that history is always constructed from a particular point of view. ‘All history… consists of a spiral of knowledge, a long-drawn-out process of interaction between interpreter and source material’ (86). Wright makes some comments here about the capacity of ancient historians to differentiate facts from the interpretation or distortion of facts (84-85). But this does not mean, secondly, that there can be no factual basis for history. A critical-realist approach must take into account the impact of perspective and bias on the recording of events, but we are not, for that reason, obliged to assume that the events described did not actually take place (88-92).
Wright then considers the long-standing reluctance on the part of scholars to read the gospel narratives as authentic history. He suggests some reasons for this: i) there is the natural distrust of miracle stories; ii) many critical methods ‘were devised not in order to do history but in order not to do history: in order, rather, to maintain a careful and perhaps pious silence when unsure where the history might lead’; and iii) there has been a concern that contingent historical events cannot have universal relevance (92-95). Wright argues against this position that ‘it is appropriate for humans in general to listen to stories other than those by which they habitually order their lives, and to ask themselves whether those other stories ourght not to be allowed to subvert their usual ones’. This appeal is not addressed only to the modernist sceptic: it is often precisely the ordinary old-fashioned conservative or fundamentalist Christian ‘who needs to be open to the possibilities of ways of reading the New Testament, and ways of understanding who Jesus actually was, which will call his or her previous stories into serious question’ (97).
In the next section Wright examines how hypothesis and verification function within an appropriate historical method and how they may be applied in the case of New Testament history (98-109). His central contention here is that in the field of the historical study of Jesus scholarship has reached the point where we may assert a coherent hypothesis that accommodates all the data about Jesus and so is able to make sense of the gospels ‘as they stand’ (106-107).
Finally, to the idea that history is knowledge of what happened we must add three further levels of historical understanding. First, history must encompass human intentionality: we are concerned not only with the ‘outside’ of an event but also the ‘inside’ (109-112). Secondly, the task of the historian is not merely to record isolated facts but to describe the narrative that connects and makes sense of the facts: ‘a great many people within the guild of New Testament specialists have written very little history as such’ (113). Finally, we may inquire as to the meaning of historical events. ‘The meaning of an event, which… is basically an acted story, is its place, or its perceived place, within a sequence of events, which contribute to a more fundamental story; and fundamental stories are of course one of the constituent features of worldviews’ (116).
Wright summarizes the aim of this chapter: ‘to suggest what might be involved in a ‘theological’ reading that does not bypass the ‘literary’ and ‘historical’ readings, but rather enhances them; and to explore one possible model of letting this composite reading function as normative or authoritative’ (121).
After some general remarks on worldview and theology (122-131) Wright addresses the question of how to do ‘a specifically Christian theology’, which must include a normative element: not only what is believed but also what ought to be believed (131). He describes two traditional approaches: one which attempts to systematize ‘timeless truths or propositions’, another which ‘seeks actively to engage with current concerns in the world, whether through confrontation or integration’. Wright proposes, instead, a ‘narrative theology’ with a strong historical orientation (132) on the basis of the preceding analysis of how worldviews work:
i) Christian theology tells a coherent story about a creator and his creation;
ii) this story provides a set of answers to four central worldview questions: Who are we? Where are we? What is wrong? What is the solution?
iii) the worldview ‘has been given expression in a variety of socio-cultural symbols, both artifacts and cultural events’;
iv) the Christian worldview ‘gives rise to a particular type of praxis, a particular mode of being-in-the-world’ (132-134.
In the last section Wright proposes a rather creative model for a normative biblical theology. He rejects both a pre-critical ‘biblicistic proof-texting, as inconsistent with the nature of the texts’ and the modernistic dissociation of descriptive and normative readings of the Bible. Instead he argues for a narrative model for linking what is and what ought to be:
Suppose there exists a Shakespeare play, most of whose fifth act has been lost. The first four acts provide, let us suppose, such a remarkable wealth of characterization, such a crescendo of excitement within the plot, that it is generally agreed that the play ought to be staged. Nevertheless, it is felt inappropriate actually to write a fifth act once and for all: it would freeze the play into one form, and commit Shakespeare as it were to being prospectively responsible for work not in fact his own. Better, it might be felt, to give the key parts to highly trained, sensitive and experienced Shakespearian actors, who would immerse themselves in the first four acts, and in the language and culture of Shakespeare and his time, and who would then be told to work out a fifth act for themselves (140).
A good fifth act will show a proper final development, not merely a repetition, of what went before. Nevertheless, there will be a rightness, a fittingness, about certain actions and speeches, about certain final moves in the drama, which will in one sense be self-authenticating, and in another gain authentication from their coherence with, their making sense of, the ‘authoritative’ previous text (141).
He takes the argument a step further by suggesting that the first four acts correspond to creation, fall, Israel, Jesus; the writing of the New Testament constitutes the first scene of the fifth act and provides hints (Rom.8; 1 Cor.15; parts of Revelation) as to how the play should end.
To sum up: I am proposing a notion of ‘authority’ which is not simply vested in the New Testament, or in ‘New Testament theology’, nor simply in ‘early Christian history’ and the like, conceived positivistically, but in the creator god himself, and this god’s story with the world, seen as focused on the story of Israel and thence on the story of Jesus, as told and retold in the Old and New Testaments, and as still requiring completion. This is a far more complex notion of authority than those usually tossed around in theological discourse. That is, arguably, what we need if we are to break through the log-jams caused by regular over-simplifications (143).
The third part of the book consists of a survey of first century Judaism. Rather than summarize this very detailed historical overview of historical setting, social groupings, worldview, beliefs, and eschatological expectations, I will simply highlight what appear to be the most salient observations.
Wright defends himself against the charge that he is reading Christian ideas or modes of thought back into Judaism by pointing out, among other things, that this project will have the effect of correcting certain Christian misconceptions: “Many ‘Christian’ readings of the gospels have screened out the political overtones of Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom; a fresh examination of the Jewish background will put that straight’ (149). He insists that first century Judaism and Christianity have a central worldview-feature in common: ‘the sense of a story now reaching its climax. And, most importantly, it is the same story. It is the story… especially of exile and restoration – or rather, of puzzlement as to whether the exile was really over or not…. It is here that fundamental continuity is to be sought; and this legitimates the attempt to study Judaism in such a way as to shed light on emerging Christianity’ (150).
The impact of the Maccabean crisis (167-164 BC) on Jewish identity and life is highlighted (158, 167), not least because it was the prototypical revolt against oppression:
From our review of the historical situation in the previous chapter it appears that the pressing needs of most Jews of the period had to do with liberation – from oppression, from debt, from Rome. Other issues, I suggest, were regularly seen in this light. The hope of Israel, and of most special-interest groups within Israel, was not for post mortem disembodied bliss, but for a national liberation that would fulfil the expectations aroused by the memory, and regular celebration, of the exodus, and, nearer at hand, of the Maccabaean victory. Hope focused on the coming of the kingdom of Israel’s god (169-170).
This leads to a survey of the main groupings within first-century Judaism (170-214): movements of revolt against Rome; the Pharisees; the Essenes; priests, aristocrats and Sadducees; and ‘ordinary Jews’. While this section is of general importance inasmuch as it describes the immediate religious and political context within which we must make sense of the story about Jesus, two particular emphases stand out. The first is the now quite well established view (associated especially with Sanders) that Pharisaic religion was not ‘the system of self-salvation so often anachronistically ascribed to them by Christians who knew little about the first century but a lot about the Pelagian controversy’ (189). ‘Their goals were the honour of Israel’s god, the following of his covenant charter, and the pursuit of the full promised redemption of Israel.’ Secondly, the point is made that within the context of first-century Jewish belief the idea of resurrection had more to do with the hope of national restoration than with speculation about life after death for the individual (200, 211).
Chapter eight considers how story, symbol and praxis together constitute Israel’s worldview. Wright argues that the great story of the Hebrew scriptures would have been read in the second-temple period as ‘a story in search of a conclusion’ (217). ‘This ending would have to incorporate the full liberation and redemption of Israel, an event which had not happened as long as Israel was being oppressed, a prisoner in her own land.’ How fundamental this was to the Jewish worldview is demonstrated by the fact that the inconclusiveness of Israel’s story expressed itself not only through narrative but also through religious symbolism and praxis. Of particular importance in this regard was Torah observation. Wright again insists that at issue here is not some legalistically motivated attempt to earn salvation but the overriding need to ‘maintain their god-given distinctiveness over against the pagan nations’ (237). He underlines the significance of this distinction for New Testament theology:
This conclusion, as we shall see later, is a point of peculiar significance for understanding both Jesus’ controversies and Pauline theology. The ‘works of Torah’ were not a legalist’s ladder, up which one climbed to earn the divine favour, but were the badges that one wore as the marks of identity, of belonging to the chosen people in the present, and hence the all-important signs, to oneself and one’s neighbours, that one belonged to the company who would be vindicated when the covenant god acted to redeem his people. They were the present signs of future vindication. This was how ‘the works of Torah’ functioned within the belief, and the hope, of Jews and particularly of Pharisees (238).
The Jewish worldview was constructed around a narrative core that consisted of three basic elements: monotheism, election and eschatology:
There is one god, who made the entire universe, and this god is in covenant with Israel. He has chosen her for a purpose: she is to be the light of the world. Faced with national crisis (and the story of second-temple Judaism is, as we have seen, one of semi-permanent crisis), this twin belief, monotheism and election, committed any Jew who thought about it for a moment to a further belief: YHWH, as the creator and covenant god, was irrevocably committed to further action of some sort in history, which would bring about the end of Israel’s desolation and the vindication of his true people. Monotheism and election lead to eschatology, and eschatology means the renewal of the covenant (247).
Monotheism: first-century Jewish monotheism is creational, providential, and most importantly covenantal, because this is the means by which the problem of evil is addressed: ‘The creator calls a people through whom, somehow, he will act decisively within his creation, to eliminate evil from it and to restore order, justice and peace’ (251-252). Jewish belief in monotheism had nothing to do with ‘the numerical analysis of the inner being of Israel’s god himself. It had everything to do with the two-pronged fight against paganism and dualism’ (259).
Election and covenant: covenant theology functions on three levels: i) the creator ‘has not been thwarted irrevocably by the rebellion of his creation, but has called into being a people through whom he will work to restore his creation’; ii) Israel’s own sufferings are the consequence of infidelity to the covenant but holds that ‘our god will remain faithful and will restore us’; and iii) the sufferings and sins of individual Jews are met with forgiveness and restoration (260). Wright also maintains that ‘Israel’s covenantal vocation caused her to think of herself as the creator’s true humanity’ (262). But the implications of this belief for Israel’s relation to the nations are ambiguous. On the one hand, Israel was to be a light to the nations (cf. Is.49:6): ‘When Zion becomes what her god intends her to become, the Gentiles will come in and hear the word of YHWH.’ On the other, when Israel was oppressed by the nations, the thought is more that of resisting and destroying the forces that oppose the true god and his people (267).
Covenant and eschatology: here we come to the central argument that Jews of the second-temple period, despite the physical return of the people to the land and the rebuilding of the temple, regarded themselves as being still in ‘exile’. The present age, therefore, remained an ‘age of wrath’: ‘until the Gentiles are put in their place and Israel, and the Temple, fully restored, the exile is not really over, and the blessings promised by the prophets are still to take place’ (270). This problem is often defined in second-temple literature in terms of the covenant faithfulness (ie. ‘righteousness’, tsedaqah) of god: ‘when and how would Israel’s god act to fulfil his covenant promises?’ Wright underlines the extreme importance of this formulation of the problem for Paul’s theology.
The biblical prophets consistently articulate a two-fold motif: ‘Israel’s exile is the result of her own sin, idolatry and apostasy, and the problem will be solved by YHWH’s dealing with the sin and thus restoring his people to their inheritance.’ It must be emphasized, therefore, that to the first-century Jew the phrase ‘forgiveness of sins’ would most naturally apply to the nation as a whole, not to the individual. Wright argues that the sacrificial system should be understood ‘as a way of enacting and institutionalizing… the belief that Israel’s covenant god would restore the fortunes of his people’ (275). He then suggests that the national experience of exile may be interpreted not only as punishment but also as a sacrifice, a ‘righteous bearing of sin and evil’. The quite common belief that a period of intense suffering (‘birthpangs’) would precede the inauguration of the new age should also be brought into view here: ‘Israel will pass through intense and climactic suffering; after this she will be forgiven, and then and thus the world will be healed’ (278).
Wright begins by considering the nature of apocalyptic writing. The most important observation is that Jewish apocalyptic language cannot be read in ‘a crassly literalistic way’ to signify the end of the world; rather the ‘metaphorical language of apocalyptic invests history with theological meaning’ (284). ‘Far more important to the first-century Jew than questions of space, time and literal cosmology were the key issues of Temple, Land, and Torah, of race, economy and justice’ (285). The result of the literalist reading, which has dominated both modern popular Christian thought and modern New Testament scholarship, is a ‘dualistic belief in the unredeemableness of the present physical world’ that is in fact closer to Gnosticism than to biblical apocalyptic.
Central to Jewish apocalyptic literature is Daniel 7. Wright argues that ‘those who read this (very popular) chapter in the first century would have seen its meaning first and foremost in terms of the vindication of Israel after her suffering at the hands of the pagans’ (292). In other words, the ‘Son of man’ would generally have been understood as a representative figure only in a literary sense. The interpretive context is provided by Daniel 1-6: ‘Pagan pressure for Jews to compromise their ancestral religion must be resisted: the kingdoms of the world will finally give way to the everlasting kingdom of the one true god, and when that happens Jews who had held firm will themselves be vindicated’ (294).
In the context of first-century Jewish expectation ‘salvation’ is to be understood not as the enjoyment of a non-physical, ‘spiritual’ bliss following the destruction of the space-time universe but as national restoration. ‘The age to come, the end of Israel’s exile, was therefore seen as the inauguration of a new covenant between Israel and her god’ (301). This restoration is part of what it meant for Israel’s god to become king (307).
From a survey of Jewish beliefs regarding the messiah six conclusions are drawn: i) expectation was focused primarily on the nation; ii) under certain circumstances this expectation could be narrowed to a particular individual; iii) in this case the portrait of the individual messiah could be redrawn to fit the situation or person involved; iv) the main task of the messiah was ‘the liberation of Israel, and her reinstatement as the true people of the creator god’; v) the messiah will be the agent of Israel’s god, not an independent transcendent figure; and vi) there was no expectation that the messiah would suffer (319-320).
Wright argues that belief in resurrection arose in conjunction with ‘struggle to maintain obedience to Israel’s ancestral laws in the face of persecution…; it is what will happen after the great tribulation’ (331). But this belief also functions metaphorically as an expression of the hope of eventual national renewal following the continuing experience of exile. “As such, ‘resurrection’ was not simply a pious hope about new life for dead people. It carried with it all that was associated with the return from exile itself: forgiveness of sins, the re-establishment of Israel as the true humanity of the covenant god, and the renewal of all creation” (332).
Finally, in a similar fashion, the word ‘salvation’ is defined as the gift of Israel’s god to the whole people; individual Jews would find their own salvation within the context of national liberation and restoration, through membership of the covenant community. ‘The first-century question of soteriology then becomes: what are the badges of membership that mark one out in the group that is to be saved, vindicated, raised to life (in the case of members already dead) or exalted to power (in the case of those still alive)?’ (335).
In the fourth part of the book Wright outlines a history of the early church – a ‘quest for the kerygmatic church’ analogous to the well-established programme of a ‘quest for the historical Jesus. He begins by plotting a spectrum of scholarly opinions regarding the constitution of early Christianity: at one end of the scale, there is the view that the early church quickly became a Hellenistic movement (also incorporating Gnosticism); at the other, the view that the church emerged as ‘a Jewish messianic sect, going out into the world with the news that the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had now revealed himself savingly for all the world in the Jewish Messiah, Jesus’ (344). Currently the debate is quite finely balanced. ‘Many scholars are now of the opinion that the main problem in describing the origin of Christianity is to account fully both for the thorough Jewishness of the movement and for the break with Judaism that had come about at least by the middle of the second century.’
Wright sets out nine historical fixed points, in reverse chronological order, for an investigation of the development of the early church up to the middle of the second century: i) the martyrdom of Polycarp around AD 155/6; ii) Pliny’s letter to Trajan between AD 110 and 114 regarding the treatment of the illegal sect of Christians; iii) the letters of Ignatius written during his journey to Rome to face martyrdom under Trajan (AD 110-117); iv) the interrogation of certain blood-relatives of Jesus by Domitian around AD 90, recounted by Hegesippus and record in Eusebius’ History; v) the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70; vi) Nero’s scapegoating of Christians in Rome after the great fire in AD 64; vii) the stoning of ‘James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ’ in AD 62, recorded by Josephus; viii) the activity of Paul in the first half of the 50s; and ix) Suetonius’ evidence for the expulsion of the Jews from Rome because of ‘continuous disturbances a the instigation of Chrestus’ around AD 49.
As with the history of first-century Judaism, Wright proposes to begin not with particular writings but with the elements that made up the early Christian worldview: praxis, symbols, questions and answers, and, most importantly, the characteristic stories told by early Christians (358).
Under praxis he examines mission, sacrament (baptism and eucharist), worship with reference not only to God but also to Jesus, ‘a strong and clear ethical code’, the non-performance of animal sacrifices, and a willingness to suffer martyrdom for the sake of Christ (359-365). The early Christians constructed their world view around rather subversive alternatives to the regular symbols of both Judaism and paganism: the highly offensive symbol of the cross, supplemented by the symbolic status of Christian martyrs; mission to the whole world in place of the Land and ethnic identity in the Israel’s symbolic universe; the person of Jesus instead of the temple – a transfer of symbolism that “was forcing them to articulate the meaning of the word ‘god’ itself in a new way”; creeds and baptismal confessions as the new ‘badges of community’ membership instead of circumcision, kosher laws, and sabbath (365-369). Early Christians also, naturally, had a different set of answers to the four worldview questions (369-370): Who are we? Where are we? What is wrong? What is the solution?
Stories in early Christianity fall into two categories: large and small. Wright first considers the large stories told by the major writers of the New Testament: the Gospel writers, Paul, and the author of Hebrews. The central contention here is that in each case the overarching story about Israel is retold and subverted. So, for example:
Paul’s theology can… be plotted most accurately and fully on the basis that it represents his rethinking, in the light of Jesus and the divine spirit, of the fundamental Jewish beliefs: monotheism (of the creational and covenantal sort), election, and eschatology. This theology was integrated with the rethought narrative world at every point (407).
Much of chapter 14, which considers the place of smaller stories within early Christianity, has to do with the description of an appropriate method of form-critical analysis especially in reaction to the traditional form-critical assumption that the stories in the Gospels “reflected the life of the early church rather than the life of Jesus, in that the early church invented (perhaps under the guidance of the ‘spirit of Jesus’) sayings of Jesus to address problems in their own day’ (421). There are also some important remarks here about the nature of ‘mythological’ language: ‘the language of myth, and eschatological myths in particular (the sea, the fabulous monsters, etc.), are used in the biblical literature as complex metaphor systems to denote historical events and to invest them with their theological significance’ (425). Wright also addresses here the question of the sayings sources, Q and the Gospel of Thomas, and refutes the modern hypothesis (cf. Kloppenborg, Downing, Mack, Crossan) which asserts that Q and Thomas bear witness to a primitive conception of Jesus as ‘a teacher of aphoristic, quasi-Gnostic, quasi-Cynic wisdom’ (437).
Part four concludes with a ‘preliminary sketch’ of the early Christians:
Aims: the motivating force behind early Christian mission is found in ‘the central belief and hope of Judaism interpreted in the light of Jesus’. Added to this belief that Israel had now been redeemed and that, therefore, the time of the Gentiles had come, was the experience of the divine spirit:
…the overwhelming sense of being sustained and driven on by a new kind of inner motivation, which they could only attribute to the outpouring of the divine spirit, compelled the early Christians to the conclusion that the strange events concerning Jesus that they had witnessed really did constitute the fulfilment of Israel’s covenant expectations, really were the end of exile and the beginning of the ‘age to come’ for which Israel had longed (446).
By themselves, however, this new belief and new experience were not enough to account historically for the development of early Christianity. We must also take into consideration the context of the new community within which belief and experience functioned.
Community and definition: community is defined in the first place sacramentally by baptism and eucharist, both of which ‘draw the eye up to the most striking feature of the life of the early community: the worship of Jesus’ (448). This worship was not ‘a sign that the communtiy was moving away from creational or covenantal monotheism, but rather a sign of a radical reinterpretation within that monotheism’. The common life of the church, centred sacramentally on Jesus, ‘functioned from the first in terms of an alternative family’. It also entailed a ‘new socio-political orientation’, which meant that the church was somewhat alienated from Jewish and pagan society and inevitably suffered persecution.
Development and variety: Wright identifies a number of axes along which early Christian diversity was expressed: various aspects of Jewish-Gentile diversity; salvation-historical continuity with Israel or an ahistorical faith with a ‘vertical eschatology’; flexible or fixed forms of ministry; literalist or metaphorical interpretations of apocalyptic imagery; low christology or high christology; the cross made central or marginal to a doctrine of salvation; charismatic enthusiasts or ‘early catholics’ (455). What held this diversity together was that the early Christians told consistent form of Israel’s story ‘which reached its climax in Jesus and which then issued in their spirit-given new life and task’ (456).
Theology: ‘Early Christianity was monotheistic in the sense in which Judaism was monotheistic and paganism was not; that is, the early Christians embraced creational, covenantal and hence eschatological monotheism’ (457). The doctrine necessarily entails two central dualities: of the creator and the creation, and of good and evil. The early Christians addressed these themes on the basis of the Jewish sources, but they consistently reorganized them around the fixed points of Jesus and the spirit. So for example, to the question, How is the creator active within the creation? they gave the answer: ‘this creator god had acted specifically and climactically in Jesus, and was now acting through his own spirit in a new, Jesus-related way’. To the question, How is the creator dealing with evil within his creation? they reaffirmed the original answer, which was that God intended to address the problem of evil through Israel, with two amendments: first, that through Jesus God had dealt with the problem of the evil that was within Israel; and secondly, that it was the people of Jesus, as a ‘continuation of Israel in a new situation’, who were to ‘fulfil Israel’s vocation on behalf of the world’ (458). Finally, the church took over the Jewish doctrine of salvation and transposed it to a law court setting so that it becomes fundamentally a question of the ‘righteousness of God’.
The major underlying difference between the Christian and the Jewish views at this point was that the early Christians believed that the verdict had already been announced in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Israel’s god had acted decisively, to demonstrate his covenant faithfulness, to deliver his people from their sins, and to usher in the inaugurated new covenant.
Hope: ‘Precisely because Jesus’ resurrection was the raising of one human being in the middle of the history of exile and misery, not the raising of all righteous human beings to bring the history of exile and misery to an end, there must be a further end in sight.’ This ‘further end’ consists of four elements, each of which is a ‘rereading of Jewish hopes in the light of Jesus and the divine spirit’ (459). i) Jesus will be vindicated as a divine prophet when Jerusalem and the temple are destroyed. ii) The kingdom of Israel’s God will spread into the whole world. iii) Christians believed that Israel’s God would ‘physically recreate those who were his own, at some time and in some space the other side of death’ (460). iv) Finally, there was a expectation of the return of Jesus. This is not the subject of texts which speak of the ‘coming of the son of man on a cloud’, which have to do rather with his vindication through resurrection and exaltation and through the destruction of Jerusalem. The return of Jesus belongs instead to the renewal of the whole created (462).