Etcetera
February 19th 2005, 10:49 PM
TWeb preterists:
The more I read of Wright, the more I like the guy. I highly recommend the N. T. Wright Page (http://www.ntwrightpage.com) for its collection of Wright articles. Here is just one little selection from Jerusalem in the New Testament (http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Jerusalem_New_Testament.pdf), all emphasis mine:
First (as an equivalent to Romans 9:6-10:21) it must be stated clearly beyond any shadow of doubt that there can be no basis in the New Testament for a vestigial remainder of ‘holy-city-ness’ lingering on from the period before Jesus. The New Testament is unequivocal in its interpretation of the fall of Jerusalem as being inextricably linked to the vindication of Jesus and his people. Jesus’ whole claim is to do and be what the city and the temple were and did. As a result, both claims, the claim of Jesus and the claim of ‘holy land’, can never be sustained simultaneously. Any attempt to claim that they can (on the basis of a supposed ‘literal’ meaning of the many Old Testament promises of restoration, as yet supposedly unfulfilled) has failed to reckon with the total New Testament reading of those promises, according to which, as Paul says, they have all come true in the Messiah (2 Cor. 1:20). This is no simple ‘spiritualisation’. Rather, these promises, seen now through the lens of cross and resurrection, have been in one sense narrowed down to a point and in another sense widened to include the whole created order.
Modern attempts to revive such a geographical nationalism, and to give it a ‘Christian’ colouring, provokes the following, most important, theological reflection: the attempt to ‘carry over’ some Old Testament promises about Jerusalem, the Land or the Temple for fulfilment in our own day has the same theological shape as the attempt in pre-Reformation Catholicism to think of Christ as being recrucified in every Mass. If, as suggested above, Jesus was claiming to be, in effect, the new or true temple, and if his death is to be seen as the drawing together into one of the history of Israel in her desolation, dying her death outside the walls of the city, and rising again as the beginning of the real ‘restoration’, the real return from exile, then the attempt to say that there are some parts of the Old Testament (relating to Jerusalem, Land or Temple) which have not yet been ‘fulfilled’ and so need a historical and literal ‘fulfilment’ now, or at some other time, is an explicit attempt to take something away from the achievement of Christ in his death and resurrection, and to reserve it for the work of human beings in a different time and place. The work of Christ is once again ‘incomplete’. The analogue for this in Paul’s writings is perhaps best summed up in Galatians 2:21: ‘if justification came by Torah, Christ died to no purpose’. Only when would-be ‘Christian Zionists’, or near equivalents, can show that they have taken Galatians fully into account (and for that matter Rom. 1-4 and 9-10,2 Cor. 3, Phil. 3 and Hebrews) can their claim to be acting in accordance with scripture be taken seriously.
Moreover, if we grasp the nettle of the significance of AD 70 in this way, it is not only ‘Christian Zionism’ which is cut off at the root; it is also, most significantly, ‘Christian anti-semitism’. If the wrath of God spoken of by Jesus and Paul was truly finished with the awful events of AD 70, then the only appropriate attitude in subsequent generations towards Jews, the Temple, the Land or Jerusalem must be one of sorrow or pity. Naturally, this has not stopped Christians from thinking and acting in ways totally at variance with the New Testament; nevertheless, to grasp the significance of the fall of Jerusalem in this way is to cut off all the spurious legitimation that can be offered for would-be ‘Christian’ anti-semitism.
There is platinum of this purity in virtually every article.
And if you have not yet read the "big three" (so far): NTPG, JVG, RSG, what are you waiting for? The great tribulation? :smile:
In the name.
Etcetera.
The more I read of Wright, the more I like the guy. I highly recommend the N. T. Wright Page (http://www.ntwrightpage.com) for its collection of Wright articles. Here is just one little selection from Jerusalem in the New Testament (http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Jerusalem_New_Testament.pdf), all emphasis mine:
First (as an equivalent to Romans 9:6-10:21) it must be stated clearly beyond any shadow of doubt that there can be no basis in the New Testament for a vestigial remainder of ‘holy-city-ness’ lingering on from the period before Jesus. The New Testament is unequivocal in its interpretation of the fall of Jerusalem as being inextricably linked to the vindication of Jesus and his people. Jesus’ whole claim is to do and be what the city and the temple were and did. As a result, both claims, the claim of Jesus and the claim of ‘holy land’, can never be sustained simultaneously. Any attempt to claim that they can (on the basis of a supposed ‘literal’ meaning of the many Old Testament promises of restoration, as yet supposedly unfulfilled) has failed to reckon with the total New Testament reading of those promises, according to which, as Paul says, they have all come true in the Messiah (2 Cor. 1:20). This is no simple ‘spiritualisation’. Rather, these promises, seen now through the lens of cross and resurrection, have been in one sense narrowed down to a point and in another sense widened to include the whole created order.
Modern attempts to revive such a geographical nationalism, and to give it a ‘Christian’ colouring, provokes the following, most important, theological reflection: the attempt to ‘carry over’ some Old Testament promises about Jerusalem, the Land or the Temple for fulfilment in our own day has the same theological shape as the attempt in pre-Reformation Catholicism to think of Christ as being recrucified in every Mass. If, as suggested above, Jesus was claiming to be, in effect, the new or true temple, and if his death is to be seen as the drawing together into one of the history of Israel in her desolation, dying her death outside the walls of the city, and rising again as the beginning of the real ‘restoration’, the real return from exile, then the attempt to say that there are some parts of the Old Testament (relating to Jerusalem, Land or Temple) which have not yet been ‘fulfilled’ and so need a historical and literal ‘fulfilment’ now, or at some other time, is an explicit attempt to take something away from the achievement of Christ in his death and resurrection, and to reserve it for the work of human beings in a different time and place. The work of Christ is once again ‘incomplete’. The analogue for this in Paul’s writings is perhaps best summed up in Galatians 2:21: ‘if justification came by Torah, Christ died to no purpose’. Only when would-be ‘Christian Zionists’, or near equivalents, can show that they have taken Galatians fully into account (and for that matter Rom. 1-4 and 9-10,2 Cor. 3, Phil. 3 and Hebrews) can their claim to be acting in accordance with scripture be taken seriously.
Moreover, if we grasp the nettle of the significance of AD 70 in this way, it is not only ‘Christian Zionism’ which is cut off at the root; it is also, most significantly, ‘Christian anti-semitism’. If the wrath of God spoken of by Jesus and Paul was truly finished with the awful events of AD 70, then the only appropriate attitude in subsequent generations towards Jews, the Temple, the Land or Jerusalem must be one of sorrow or pity. Naturally, this has not stopped Christians from thinking and acting in ways totally at variance with the New Testament; nevertheless, to grasp the significance of the fall of Jerusalem in this way is to cut off all the spurious legitimation that can be offered for would-be ‘Christian’ anti-semitism.
There is platinum of this purity in virtually every article.
And if you have not yet read the "big three" (so far): NTPG, JVG, RSG, what are you waiting for? The great tribulation? :smile:
In the name.
Etcetera.