169. n. t. wright, res. of son of god- review

7/30/2019 169. N. T. Wright, Res. of Son of God- Review

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244 BOOK REVIEWS

The Resurrection ofthe Son ofGod, by N.T. Wright. Minneapolis: Augsburg

Fortress Press, 2003. 740pp.

At certain points in reading N.T. Wright's The Resurrection ofthe Son of

God, one can see a likeness to the long German treatises, rigorous in

method and comprehensively attentive to one textual issue. Perhaps

even more frequently, appears the shadow of first generation Roman

Catholic critical biblical scholars whoagain in books longer than one

expecteddelighted in summarizing all the historical-critical possibili

ties, but never dared draw the conclusions that would challenge church

doctrine. Then, there is the lather of rhetoric, citations, and historicalbackground running a total of 740 pages, bubbling up facts rarely seen in

print, encyclopedic textual surveys, and seven pointed answers. One

cannot help but admire the discursive ambition.

However, easily visible through the veneer of Wright's work is an

embarrassingly self-serving and shoddily presented apologetic for reac

tionary Christian religion. There is, of course, truth to the suspicions that

both the 20th

century Germans and the first generation critical Roman

Catholic scholars were invested in some kind of "normative" Christianity, and so one should not be surprised at Wright's apologetic tone or the

calculating rhetorical defensiveness. Even more disturbing and only

slightly less obvious in the reading of this book are a set of questions

not on the many pages of the book, but at least subliminally present in

the minds of many readersabout the ethics of interpretation of the

Bible.

These questions about the ethics of interpretation are as follows: (1)

What responsibility does an author have to readers to represent substan

tial interpretations different than those of the author's? (2) How much

does an author's drive to defend "the faith" justify ignoring texts, setting

up straw opponents, and superimposing doctrinal concerns on ancient

texts? (3) How much is an interpreter of the Bible today obliged to raise

questions posed by modern and post-modern thinkers? (4) In an era and

discipline pulsing with energy around gender consciousness, how much

must an author address issues about the role and status of women in

interpreting biblical texts?

Th ti b t h t li th h i i t ti th


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cal scholarship, or enters into any of the prolific consideration of gender

issues in the Bible. At the same time, he relentlessly ploughs doctrinal

considerations into his own interpretation. I do not mean to say that oneis never allowed to write apologetic books favoring doctrinal issues. Yet,

I question strongly whether it is ethically responsible as an interpreter of

the Bible to do so, when the book explicitly claims to be a part of the

mainstream biblical scholarship and is published by a major mainstream

press.

The Book's Aim and Structure

There is a consistent and thorough thesis to the book: "The proposal

that Jesus was bodily raised from the dead possesses unrivalled power to

explain the historical data at the heart of early Christianity" (718). In

other words, it is not nearly sufficient for Wright to demonstrate a theo

logical or spiritual integrity to the various early Christian references to

resurrection from the dead. Nor can he be satisfied with articulating

what early Christians might have meant when they said that Jesus wasraised from the dead. For Wright, the goal is to connect these articula

tions of meaning and faith with an actual empty tomb historical event.

His five part endeavor is classical in shape, if not in ethics or rigor.

Part I, "Setting the Scene," is 206 pages of "background," with the obliga

tory, if outdated, division between "pagan" and "Jewish" materials. Part

II considers at length "Resurrection in Paul," with a concentration on the

Corinthian correspondence. Part III surveys "Resurrection in Early Chris

tianity (Apart from Paul)," except for all of the empty tomb passages inthe canonical gospels. With the empty tomb stories successfully brack

eted from their authorial voices, Wright then frames what he sees as the

crucial Part IV, "The Story of Easter," which boldly dodges and weaves

its way to a case for the canonical empty tomb storieseven with their

substantial variationsreflecting (an) actual event(s). The title of Part V,

"Belief, Event, and Meaning," could lead a reader to think that this sec

tion draws on the complex and enlightening considerations of20th

cen

tury literary critics, post-modern philosophers of the last 25 years,and/or mid-20

thcentury existentialists. This impression unfortunately is


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The More Obvious Problems

In addition to the above-mentioned failures to consult thoroughly or

represent fairly contemporary biblical scholarship and to meet interpre-

tational ethical norms of both contemporary scholarship and Christian

faith, this book comes up short conceptually on numerous counts. I will

cite a few major examples.

Wright's chapter two survey of "Life Beyond Death in Ancient

Paganism" sets out to demonstrate that nothing like Jesus' resurrection

occurs in any "pagan" literature of the ancient world. Such a foregoneconclusion buttresses his larger goal of showing that the empty tomb

stories must not be anything but historical accounts. His "pagan" survey

achieves its purpose by bracketing all the ancient texts which most schol

ars have cited as paralleling to one extent or another the early Christian

literature about Jesus' resurrection. Wright acknowledges this material:

"there emerged, gradually and with far too many variations even to list,

the well-known dying and rising gods and goddesses of the ancient near

east" (80). But, rather than pursue most scholarship's interest in howthese stories are similar to early Christian discussion of the resurrection

of Jesus, Wright quickly dismisses all of this material because "these mul

tifarious and sophisticated cults enacted the god's death and resurrection

as a metaphor" (80). Avoiding the possibility that early Christians also

used the resurrection of Jesus as a metaphor, Wright simply dismisses the

parallels because they are not interested in historical events (which in his

circular logic, he has already determined is the main interest of the

gospel resurrection texts).

Most of Wright's Part II on Paul and resurrection strains to show that

what mattered to Paul was an historical event that happened to Jesus.

But since Paul himself never even tells a story of the empty tomb and

Paul's rhetoric abounds in symbolic discourse, Wright is finally over

whelmed by his own ambition. Even he cannot read the classic passages

in Romansespecially the extended symbolic comparison in chapter 6

between baptism and resurrectionas primarily interested in an historical event. In Romans 6, Wright admits that Paul is speaking of "the

t h i l th h till t ' ti ' f di l h f


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dodge the obvious conclusion that the first early Christian discussion of

Jesus' resurrection was indeed primarily metaphorical. Nor does Wright

seem to remember that it was exactly metaphorical understandings ofresurrection that made him rule out all of the "pagan" texts which have a

divine figure dying and rising.

One of the most striking examples of Wright's conceptual slippage is

his handling of the presence of women in the empty tomb stories.

Despite more than a generation of scholars' focus on the ways this narra

tive presence corresponds directly with each gospel's larger and particu

lar portrait of women's leadership, Wright dismisses the possibility of the

gospels' interest in women's roles in early Christianity without. In histhree line footnote, he lists three (rather than the some fifty existing)

women authors' last names without comment, but directs the reader to a

Waco, Texas, based man's survey of possible issues around gospel inter

est in women's roles. The argument published in Waco is Wright's

favorite for "noting the weakness" of the majority opinion of the last gen

eration of scholarship. In the one paragraph on this frequent (and femi

nist) interpretation of the empty tomb stories, Wright does not present

any of the textual evidence or scholarly arguments for the empty tomb

stories demonstrating lively interest in women's presence in early Chris

tianity. The less-than-two-page section entitled "The Strange Presence of

Women in the Stories" is used rather to assert that it is obvious that the

only reason early Christian authors would have even considered women

at the empty tomb is that it must have happened.

A Call for More Rigorous Ethics of Scriptural Interpretation

Wright's energetic, deceptive, and facile "defense" of what he deems

"Christian" orthodoxy is a central example of the re-emergence in our

day of a brand of biblical scholarship, allegedly within the bounds of crit

ical scholarship, but thoroughly committed to re-inscribing pre-modern

consciousness and Christian faith with blinders. I will not judge how suc

cessfully Wright defends Christian faith. I will, however, raise as explicitly as possible the issue of whether Wright's work meets minimal


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ity and integrity. A pressing set ofjustice, gender and ecological agendae

have forced Christians to new kinds of self-examination about who

needs to be included in Christian community and conversation. Out ofthis comes both monumental crises for Christian self-understanding and

vital new spiritual searches for new kinds of Christian expression and

integrity. Fueling this search have been new modern and postmodern

movements within biblical scholarship to take both these crises in under

standing and renewed spiritual search seriously. Wright manages to

avoid all of this.

Wright completely avoids the pressing issue of what Christian claims

about resurrection mean in the light of the many other world religions.He ignores the crises of Christian corruption and hypocrisy and the

demands for new consciousness of gender, justice, and ecology. He

writes as if some kind of return to Christian Tightness is all that today's

spiritual seekers need. Perhaps most deceptively, while writing over 700

pages, he leaves out almost all competing scholarly perspectives on mat

ters of Jesus' resurrection.

Most ethically offensive is Wright's writing as both a scholar and a

churchperson. I write this challenge to Wright's ethics, especially because

I share with him the intersection of the church and the academy. Having

spent my entire adult career in both the professorate and the pastorate, I

am all the more worried by the interpretational ethics of Wright, the

Canon Theologian at Westminster Abbey. Since what is represented as

biblical scholarship is also the cultural and theological positioning of a

major church leader, he places church as an enterprise in a highly ques

tionable light. It only confirms to the larger skeptical modern Western

consciousness that church institutions are hopelessly defensive and thor

oughly uncaring relative to the many new questions occurring to so

many spiritually thirsty, but complexly conscious, persons.

In this age and culture of complex consciousness, do not the people

of the churches deserve biblical scholarship that actively interrogates

both orthodoxy and secularism? It is simply not enough for the develop

ment of articulate and growing postmodern faith that Wright be satisfied

with providing a series of ways to rationalize orthodoxy. Contemporaryreaders need pro-active engagement of complex thinking that integrates


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scholars have worked energetically to integrate the discipline of critical

scholarship with the demands for meaning. Biblical scholarship and pro-

gressive church voices are positioned today to lay new claim to the Bibleas a source of spiritual power and social meaning. The complex ethical

demands for honest and rigorous biblical interpretation in this postmod-

ern world of seekers and multilaterality can be met, though are sorely

neglected in N.T.Wright's work.

Hal Taussig

Union TheologicalSeminary, New York, New York


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169. n. t. wright, res. of son of god- review

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