| June 10, 2012 |
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Renewalists—those who find themselves within and/or identify with pentecostal and charismatic Christianity—need to take up and read Tom Wright’s many books, if they have not begun to do so already. For the uninitiated, this volume under review will serve as an excellent introduction to what Wright has been up to, in particular his two chapters concluding each part of the book. Four major points of intersection deserve mention (among many others that constraints of space and time prevent from registration here). First, Wright’s dogged quest for the historical Jesus presents us with a fresh perspective on the identity of the Galilean Jew occluded by the theological tradition. This is a fully-human Jesus who yet fulfills through his life, death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven God’s plans to restore Israel and redeem the world. The Gospel is thus about what God accomplishes in Jesus of Nazareth. I wonder what might ensue in a conversation about Jesus, about God, and about God’s saving purposes when, for instance, Oneness pentecostals engage with the work of N. T. Wright? Renewalists in the pentecostal tradition—both Oneness and trinitarian—love Jesus; it is also palpably evident that N. T. Wright does as well. How might a reconsideration of the person and work of Christ unfold in a dialogue between pentecostal renewalists and Wright’s understanding of Jesus? Such a conversation may be best positioned to revisit the scriptural witness afresh, especially in light of the anti-creedal postures that animate Oneness readings of the Bible.
Renewalists—those who find themselves within and/or identify with pentecostal and charismatic Christianity—need to take up and read Tom Wright’s many books.
Second, renewalists are people of mission. What shows forth plainly in Wright’s scholarship is not only that Jesus was a person on a divinely ordained mission, but also that those who embrace his name—beginning with St. Paul, for example—are also called and empowered to engage with that same mission, one that involves the renewal of Israel and the redemption of the world. Renewal missiologies, however, can receive a major boost in light of Wright’s insistence that the salvation intended by Jesus involves not only individual hearts and lives but also has sociopolitical and economic dimensions. Renewalists who proclaim a “five-fold” or “full” gospel often still are not as holistic as they might be. N. T. Wright shows how the basic thrust of the Gospel involves these domains as well. In turn, might renewalists also show that the full Gospel includes the charismatic and empowering work of the Holy Spirit that transforms even the ends of the earth?
Here is a vision of the coming reign of God.
Third, renewalists are eschatologically oriented. They are, as Steven Land notes, people who have a passion for the kingdom or reign of God. Wright’s Jesus is the eschatological king who inaugurates God’s final plans to save the world, and Wright’s Paul proclaims this eschatological Gospel while inviting the people of God to inhabit, embrace, and work out its meaning in the world. Here then is a vision of the coming reign of God that does not get hung up with elaborate “end-time” charts but is nevertheless deeply and palpably motivated by what the Spirit of Jesus is doing in these “last days” (Acts 2:17) to save the world. What emerges is a partially realized eschatology, but one that is replete with ecclesiological, discipleship, ethical, and missional implications. In conversation with Wright, renewal missiologies not only can affirm the basic thrust of at least some versions of the prosperity theology (those emphasizing the difference God makes in the material aspects of our lives) without embracing its greed, consumerism, and materialism, but also can be emboldened to bear the kind of prophetic witness to the world that characterized the ministry of Jesus and the message of Paul.
Tags: N.T. Wright, new perspective on paul, NPP
Category: In Depth, Pneuma Review, Spring 2012
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