The Golden Ass

The above post generated a lot of discussion and questions on Facebook in the last two or three days [LINK HERE]. It led to a need for me to spell it out a bit. That may not have been appropriate for Facebook, but, for anyone who is interested, here you go....

By 16th century questions, Wright is referring to attempts to address problems with corruption and misuse of common practices, particularly regarding indulgences. This led the Reformers to assume the problem was doctrinal and to interpret indulgences and other similar passages as the kinds of "works" being referred to in the scriptures when Paul sets works against faith.

Then, in the 19th century, textual criticism - "high" and "low" to interpret the scriptures in ways that were presumably more "scientific" and "historical" than the previous analogical or typological readings. So now Christians commonly keep the previous 16th century framework that address questions of "works" vs "faith", but we add on top of that another layer or interpretive lens that presumes we need science to uncover the meaning of texts written long before modern, scientific presuppositions were built into the intentions or meaning of the text.

For example, both the flood and Creation stories were written around the time of Babylonian captivity and in response to very similar Babylonian stories of Creation and flood. They were intended, then, to reveal the character of the God of Israel - as a God of peace and human justice and flourishing, of love - as compared to the Babylonian gods who found the world on violence and seek to keep humans perpetually enslaved (as their flood story illustrates). This means that the "scientific explanation" of the material origins of the universe and a historical flood event becomes at least superfluous.

Comparatively, a first century lens obviously doesn't relate questions about faith vs works to questions about how to deal with practices like indulgences, which came along long after the 1st century. Per Wright's scholarship, Paul's audience read "works" to be specifically about following Torah in ways that identify the Jewish people as such - circumcision, dietary laws, etc. Because Jews in the church were basically demanding that Gentiles basically become Jewish to become part of the church. Paul was deeply offended by that for many reasons, but it basically boiled down to the fact that Paul believed that Jesus had broken down such walls and made a way for people of all nation's to be one people together without "becoming Jewish" through circumcision, following dietary laws, etc.

So 16th century questions were about indulgences.

1st century questions were about relationships between Jews and Gentiles in the church.

2 completely separate sets of questions and circumstances inform the discourses of Paul in the 1st century compared to Luther and Calvin in the 16th. Both in reference to "works."

But, in the 19th century and beyond, Christians tend to forget all that and falsely project the 16th century back onto the 1st. It obviously then leads to a lot of weird confusions about how to read / interpret scripture.

So, with that in mind, when I say "knowing the time with our eyes," I mean seeing the world "with resurrection eyes," so to speak, when the promise to Abraham of being a "blessing to all nations" has been fulfilled. From there, we can begin to ask questions of how broken relationships between people and people groups can be addressed through and in Jesus. Rather than getting sidetracked with 16th century questions about "works" that distract us from the central point and direction of the gospel.

Postscript:

Interestingly, an atheist friend's response to Wright's quote was this:

"Science has made that impossible. We no longer suffer from that deficit in factual knowledge. Religion has been described as an ever shrinking pool of ignorance. I think this is illustrated on his blackboard. [she was then asked what she meant and explained as follows] I was actually referring to his mixing apples and oranges. Reading with 19th century eyes to answer 16th century questions..then, noting that we should regress to 1st century eyes to interpret 21st century questions? How do you subtract factual knowledge? Factually and sociologically, you cannot subtract this knowledge to make scripture make factual sense."

For her and friends like her, I would add that this change in the meaning of the text in regards to the term "works" (as a central example, btw) is dependent upon particular Christian discourses and doesn't require Christian belief to track the meaning of.