Catechumenate Guy

I went to both of Wright’s lectures at Fremont Presbyterian Church.  At this point I don’t remember the dates.  The first lecture was followed by a panel of people from Fuller Theological and elsewhere, all Wright fans, who did not challenge Wright’s premises but rather raised incidental critiques of parts of his approach to Paul.  There was an opportunity for questions from the audience after that.  I stayed in my seat.

The evening lecture was on Wright’s perception of the gospels.  In this one he moved into how we are challenged beyond saying “The Second Coming is close at hand, so save yourself!”  We are stilled called to work for social justice.  Why, because we are in the period of “life after death (to sin), i.e baptismal life.  I agree with his message. We just come to it from very different perspectives.

In the end, I am reflecting on words by Brian Baker and Marcus Borg:  So what?  What if people believe different characterizations of the ‘Easter event’?  This is not the important matter.  What is important is what we do as Christians, as those who believe that the Lord is risen and live according to his message.

In the couple of months since my Wright saga, I have pondered this stuff.  I can’t say that I’m resolved about it, but it does help when working with those who’s perspective is more literal in terms of the scriptures.

I shared the review with several people in the office whom I thought might find it of interest.  When I found Wright’s e-mail address, I sent a copy to him.  Much to my surprise he e-mailed back very quickly.  Here is the conversation:

October 18:

Professor Wright,

I send the attached review with some trepidation and much boldness.

The Very Reverend Dr. Brian Baker, Dean of Trinity Cathedral recommended that I read Surprised by Hope as a way to prepare for your visit to Sacramento, California in November.  I plan to attend both lectures on November 16 but suspect that I will have very little if any opportunity to express an opposing perspective on your work.  Besides others more qualified than I have already done so.  But I do want you to hear me so I send you the attached review.

The matter that continues to perplex me is your obscuration (at best) of the contrast of sarx and soma in St. Paul and in the subsequent distinct use of the two terms for  “body” in the New Testament canon, as well as elsewhere in primitive church literature.  I am also bewildered by your sense that there is the need for such language as “life after life after death.”  I agree with much of your material in the final section of Surprised by Hope about how Christians ought to live.  But I see no reason for your lack of hope that God through the Spirit can inspire us to advance the Kingdom without the “carrot” that you imagine and describe.

I have ministered in the catechumenate for thirty years.  I witness the miracle of new life in Christ through the Spirit every year and during the celebration of this at the Easter Vigil.  People being initiated and others participating in the initiations testify to the same.  This is not “life after life after death.” This is life after death to one’s old self, a life that can and will carry the transformed through the rest of their life on earth.  When Christians get discouraged, there is the community and the Eucharist to revive them.  This is real.  This is as it has been, is, and will be  to the end of time as humans know it.  As to the eschatological question, we can only see through a glass darkly.

Thank you for your attention.

I look forward to hearing and perhaps meeting you here in Sacramento.

—
Jerry Pare’
Catechumenate Director

Wright responded within the hour!

Hi Jerry, thanks for this.I appreciate your sending it though of course I think you have completely misunderstood what I’m doing.

St Andrews

I then responded to him on November 19:

Professor Wright,

I do not plan to take any more of your time after this e-mail.  However I want to say several things.

First, thank you for responding to my e-mail and as quickly as you did.

Second, I apologize for the harsh words of the review’s opening.  I have no plans to publish it anywhere.  It is for local reading only for those at Trinity Cathedral who can understand such issues.  I also wanted you to read it for reasons I stated earlier.

Third, where I am “coming from” is an intellectual development that includes being in a seminary run by Benedictines in the heady days just after Vatican II.  I followed that with completion of my undergraduate work at the University of California, where I became strongly attracted to existentialism and phenomonology.  I then did graduate studies in Scripture at the School of Theology in Claremont, California under the tutelage of Rolf Knierim (Hebrew Scriptures), Marcus Borg, James Robinson & Hans Dieter Betz (New Testament).  (“Ah ha,” you say.  That is where he was corrupted!”)  The most influential course on my understanding of Scripture was Dr. Robinson’s course on the post-resurrection accounts, a course that led to his SBL paper.  I then studied Systematic Theology at the University of Notre Dame.  I came to appreciate Aquinas from the perspective of the neo-Thomists, especially Bernard Lonergan and Karl Rahner (who was hardly a conservative, as you describe him).  My mentor was Phil Devenish whom Schubert Ogden has chosen to edit and publish  his papers..  All of this education and formation was during my time as a Roman Catholic who takes the term “catholic” very seriously.

I describe myself as a post-Bultmanian progressive person who loves theology and philosophy and am blessed to work in the Episcopal/Anglican Church and to minister within that community as well.

Again,  I apologize for the harsh words in the review.

Jerry Pare’

This was the end of the short exchange.

The next event that occurred in this context was Brian and I having a couple of discussions on Wright’s work.  Brian kept a middle course:  both Wright and I may be correct and, in the end, it doesn’t really matter who is correct.  [It is enlightenment that matters.]   His other relevant point is that, in focusing on the sarx/soma issue, I seem as much a literalist as Wright.  Both may be correct but the issue does matter and can affect “enlightenment.”  How?  If one defines Jesus’ significance on the belief that he was physically raised, this is a single event that happened 2,000 years ago.  It is hard to see what that event has to do with me today.

On the other hand, if resurrection and new life is a matter of my resurrection into new life in and through Christ, we have a whole different matter that has everything to do with me.

(to be continued)

I decided to go to both of Wright’s lectures.  The guy is very intelligent and has had numerous debates with Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan on the issue at hand.  He has also written a considerable amount of biblical theology and is hard to dismiss.

During Brian Baker’s sabbatical he had spent time reading some of Wright’s works.  I asked him, if he had time to read only one of Wright’s books in preparation for Wright’s time in Sacramento, what would he recommend.  He recommended Surprised by Hope.  I read it during our vacation time in early September.  The first part drove me nuts because of Wright’s continued insistence on a physical resurrection and his lack of a valid argument for that.  I could not and cannot believe that, given his thoroughness in biblical exegesis as well as his discussions with Borg and Crossan, he could continue to play games with what he actually meant.  About half way through the book he did make it clear that he was talking about a physical resurrection.  (He used the word “physicality”!)  But he still did not address the sarx/soma distinction.  His justification of his position was weak.

I wrote a review:

Life After Life After Death and the Demise of Halloween

                    A Review of N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope

The combination of scripture, reason and tradition has long guided the efforts of Anglican theologians.  Unfortunately N. T. Wright throws out the combination of the first two and ignores the development of the third in his work.  And yet he remains the current hottest thing in Anglican theology.  It’s not difficult to understand; Anglican theologians are few and far between.

Wright has made his mark by falsely insisting on the evangelical scriptural interpretation of the Easter miracle as being about Jesus’ physical resurrection from a tomb.  Opponents of the Westar Institute’s work (their most infamous project is “The Jesus Seminar”) cheer him on.  Unfortunately his scripture work is obtuse and his reasoning leads to confusion.  This is clear in almost all of his work, including Surprised by Hope; Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection and the Mission of the Church.

It all starts with Paul’s letters, as is meet and right.  Paul gives us the first words in the New Testament.    Wright argues that the Easter event is about a physical resurrection of Jesus.  A reasonable argument to cast doubt on this claim of physical resuscitation (Mark Borg distinguishes “resuscitation” from “resurrection” in The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, as well as elsewhere) is that Paul does not mention this supposed phenomenon.   He is silent about a physical resurrection and/or an empty tomb when he relates the tradition passed on to him (I Cor 15: 3-8).  That Paul just forgot to mention this claimed singular historical event of Jesus being raised from the tomb in all of his “physicality” (yes, sports fans, Wright actually uses this term [p. 154]) is very, very strange.

This argument is similar to that which, among numerous other things, supports the contention that Jesus’ virgin birth is a myth rather than a historical reality.  If, in that case, again, we have such a singular, physical unique event, why doesn’t the earliest gospel, The Gospel of Mark, begin with it or mention it?  Hmm.  Maybe there is something else going on in both cases.

Let us continue to focus on what Wright thinks we celebrate at Easter (and every Sunday, as he correctly notes [p. 261]).  Wright tries to distinguish his stance from that of the evangelicals (pp. 225; 271) but cannot.  However, he certainly is not a literalist.  But he glosses over some very important distinctions in his argument for a physical raising of Jesus’ body.  (Wright consistently and correctly uses the passive in talking about Jesus’ resurrection, i.e. Jesus was raised [by the Divine].  Many translations gloss over this important point about the Easter event).

Wright fails to mention that Paul makes a clear distinction between the flesh (sarx) and the essence (soma) of a person.  The references are too numerous to cite in this brief paper (see Sarx and Soma in the New Testament by Daniel Yordy for a clear start on this matter  [www.dyordy.com/PDFVersion/SarxandSomaintheNewTestament.pdf]).  Neither Paul nor the Gospel writers use the ward sarx in the resurrection narratives about the Christ Jesus.  In his discussion of Jesus’ physical resuscitation on Easter morning, Wright glosses over this difference.  Nowhere in Surprised by Hope does he deal with this New Testament contrast of the two types of “body.”

However Wright does mention that Paul and the Gospel writers do distinguish between sarx and pneuma (Spirit; Divine breath) (e.g. p. 135).  The latter, as referring to God’s spirit, is familiar to many scripturally literate Christians, including Wright.  But that’s a different matter.  That has more to do with the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of Christians and the Church than what happened to Jesus after his physical body was laid in a tomb.

I do not want to belabor this point even though it is critical to understanding Wright’s misunderstanding.  Others have dealt with it more expertly and more extensively (see works by Willi Marxson, Marcus Borg; Dominic Crossan, to name a few).

So what do we do with this physical Jesus who is now up and walking around with his disciples?  There are other REASONABLE explanations for the post-resurrection stories (see James M. Robinson, ‘Jesus from Easter to Valentinus (or to the Apostles’ Creed)’, JBL 101 (1982), pp. 5-37).  What Wright wants to do with this Jesus (as opposed to the “Christ Jesus” that St. Paul proclaims) is have him physically resurrected into heaven to be the first of many who will be part of the real physical heaven after life after death (pp. 109-186).  Wright’s arguments for the fleshly resuscitation of Jesus from the tomb are tried and false.  But, as far as I know, this post-Ascension “vision” is new stuff.  Wright realizes that he needs to develop the “So….what happens after that?”  In doing so he creates the double talk of “life after life after death.”

Wright’s response to this question of “What happens after that?” is that Jesus will come back for those of us who have been “good,” that is, those of us who have continued to work for the realization of the Kingdom of God.  If we don’t have this second worldly time, says Wright, we are likely to fall into despair, thinking that God has left us on our own to save the world.  Despite the witness of the saints, Wright claims that overwhelming despair is the likely outcome of the Gospel that proclaims a “love that is stronger than death” (I credit Rev. Brian Baker, Dean of Trinity Cathedral, Sacramento, CA for this version of the Christian proclamation).

Part III of Surprised by Hope, focuses on the post-Ascension task of building the Kingdom or, in Wright’s context “Building for the Kingdom (italics added).  Wright makes this distinction because of his previous assertion that Christians cannot be motivated by living in the knowledge that Christ is alive in each of us!  The Good News is this proclamation.  “The Kingdom of Heaven is here!  Rejoice and be glad!”  This is the meaning of Easter.  This is what Christ’s disciples who have gone before us as well as current disciples mean when they proclaim, “I have seen the Lord!” or, more formulaic, “The Lord is risen!  He is risen indeed!”  Non-believers from the first century onward have not understood these faith proclamations and, unfortunately, N.T. Wright does not seem to understand them either.

I suggest that Wright read and reflect upon the famous conversion stories of Saul of Tarsus, Augustine of Hippo, and Thomas Merton.  These and others struggle with the language to explain the miracle of new life in Christ.  Expression in action is not necessarily easier but rather clearer to the hearer/observer.  I can see faith in action and it does not include overwhelming despair.  I may not always understand the verbal proclamation but the active one is hard to miss.  “Why do you do what you do?” “Not because I am building for the Kingdom to come but rather because I see the Reign of God before me NOW!”

I invite Wright to minister to those adults who are preparing for baptism through the catechumenate.  Witnessing conversion through this ministry is witnessing miracle.  I recommend that Wright step out of the realm of academia and the institutional church to take part in an emerging church where the ministers do not fall into despair, because there is no despair in life with Christ.  I challenge Wright to leave his double talk of “life after life after death” in the university and proclaim the gospel in action and story as Jesus did in forming his disciples.

We need the correct understanding and use of scripture; we need a sound knowledge of the tradition and we need to be reasonable in our theology and, more importantly, in our efforts to evangelize.  Unfortunately, Surprised by Hope fails in all three guidelines for decent Anglican/Christian theology.

O yes, why the demise of Halloween?  Well, it is just wrong, wrong, wrong in Wright’s post physical resuscitation Easter world (p.23).  Do lament.  All Soul’s Day also needs to jettisoned (p. 168).

October, 2011

I wrote the review for several reasons:

• Reading the book drove me crazy.  (My poor brother Etienne & his wife Kelly had to endure my rantings about idiotic theology.)
• Making the “seeing of the Lord” (i.e. the Easter event) about something that happened to Jesus 2,000 years ago gives this entire, very significant part of Christian faith an aspect of “O well, that happened then; what does it have to do with me now.”
• I knew I wouldn’t get much of an opportunity, if any at all, to ask my questions at the talks.  This way, I might be able to get the review to Wright and get his response.

I first encountered N T(Tom) Wright about 10 years ago when Dan Williamson, the rector of St. John’s, Roseville, where we worshiped urged me to read an article that Wright had written.  The context was an ongoing discussion that Dan and I were having about what really happened at the first Easter.  Specifically, was the Resurrection of Jesus a phenomenon of Jesus being raised physically from a tomb or was it matter of his followers coming to a significant understanding of who he is?

Given my Bultmannian background, I advocate for the latter.  Dan is convinced Easter is all about the former.  He relies on Wright to make the case.

I read the article he gave me and responded with the following:

Dan,

             Thanks for the copy of Tom Wright’s Bible Review article on resurrection.  It is another example that Wright is moving to a position that the Bible texts support.  If that position does indeed express your view of the Resurrection, then you and I are closer than either of us probably thought!  However, I suspect that is not the case.

             In this article, Wright cites Romans 8:11 as a passage that indicates the early Christian significance of resurrection.  This verse is from a pericope in which Paul contrasts flesh (sarxos) and spirit (pneumatos).  “To set the mind on flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” (Verse 6).  Paul then goes on to talk about resurrection of the body (somata).  Part of what is interesting about this pericope (and Wright is well aware of this) is that it shows that Paul does not equate body with flesh.  Soma meant one’s essence, one’s self.  This was so for Paul and generally so in the ancient Hellenistic world.  Thus, Resurrection of the soma does NOT mean what many today assume it means, namely a resurrection of the flesh.  This, by the way coincides with Paul’s citing of the early testimony in I Corinthians 15: 3-8.  In this earliest written witness to the Easter event there is NO mention of an empty tomb!  Rather there is the testimony that Jesus was seen by Peter, by the 12, by 500, etc. (the passive voice of vision here is interesting too).

             What I dislike about Wright is that he refuses to come clean.  Wright expounds on the resurrection of the body but stops short of noting that “body” did not mean the same thing in the ancient world as it does for us Westerners.  Wright sights the various New Testament texts but does not show the development of the descriptions of Christ’s resurrection.  That development moves from mentioning that Christ “was seen” by disciples (i.e., they had visions of Christ) to stories that have him eating with his disciples on the seashore.  However the earliest accounts that we have do not mention an empty tomb or anything physical on the part of Jesus of Nazareth.  My sources are:

 John Alsup, The Post-Resurrection Appearance Stories of the Gospel Tradition

Willi Marxson, The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth

Norman Perrin, The Resurrection according to Matthew, Mark and Luke

H.J. Richards, The First Easter, What Really Happened

 Thus Dan, when we proclaim our belief in the resurrection of the body, I am with you.  When you start proclaiming a physical resurrection of Jesus, I am not with you because you have left the more profound significance of the Scriptures.

 The Easter event, the Resurrection of Jesus as the Christ, means that God raised and continues to raise Christ’s body (soma) in the life of those who become Christians.  That is why, when we celebrate the Easter event with the newly baptized now, it is as new as it has been under similar circumstances for nearly 2000 years.  We are not talking about a one-time event that happened to Jesus of Nazareth.  We are talking about a repeating event that happens to each one who finds new life in Christ.

 Again, thanks for the article.  It gives me continual hope that Marcus Borg is beginning to get through to his friend from Oxford.

 Shalom!

Dan and I agreed to disagree and life went on until Fuller Seminary, Sacramento sent notice that they were hosting Wright this November and he would give two talks. (see part 2)