Some Edifying Gossip

N.T. Wright has recently responded here to a new book, Pierced for Our Transgressions, and gives it a few whacks. Among other things, he says that it is “hopelessly sub-biblical” (largely on the basis of omissions and what he sees as failures of contextualization). HT: Mark Horne and Justin Taylor.

What happened was this. A few years ago, Wright did a blurb for a book by Steve Chalke. Chalke is kind of a Brian McLaren type in the UK, and in the book he appeared to call the doctrine of penal substitution a form of “cosmic child abuse.” That became controversial over there, and in this new book (Pierced for Our Transgressions), the authors take Chalke to task for it, and wonder how Wright could hold to penal substitution and commend the book. Still with me? I am basing this on Wright’s account, and have not yet read PFOT because the US version is not out yet. Now in this review Wright makes it plain as day that he (Wright) holds that penal substitution is biblical. He also asserts, after checking, that Chalke does too.

I read Chalke’s book a couple years ago, and reviewed it briefly on this blog. This is what I said at the time.

Just finished a book called The Lost Message of Jesus, by Steve Chalke and Alan Mann. The book was a mix — a small handful of good insights, a few places where I was glad they didn’t give that part of the store away, a few sections of thundering naivete, and overall that general bleh feeling that you get when squishy moderates and squashed liberals are so busy apologizing for themselves (and the rest of us) that they forget to take their own side in the argument. Give me a cranky Lutheran or hardshell Baptist any day of the week, someone who wakes up in the morning knowing what he believes. Such gentlemen have, as the parlance goes, their own issues — but at least we all know what they are.

A universal symptom of the apologetic disposition in this book is found in the numerous examples Chalke and Mann cite. Whenever there is misunderstanding or conflict between some non-believer and the Church, or between non-believers and believers, and so on, it is blithely assumed by these authors that the problem had to have been on the Christian side. But in the breaking news department, sometimes non-Christians complain about all the hypocrites in church, not because they have a great zeal for Reformation, but rather because it is a tried and true method for getting inexperienced evangelists to jump the rails. That, and where Cain got his wife.

Lots of responses. If there is a hypocrite between you and God, then he must be closer to God than you are. If there is a hypocrite between you and God, then you must be too far away. If hypocrites are on Satan’s side (and they are), then what kind of sense does it make to stay on Satan’s side yourself because you are disgusted by what people on your own team are doing? In other words, sometimes an excuse is just an excuse.

Now here is the problem. In this article, “The Cross and the Caricatures,” Wright interacts with three positions — the Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson, the Anglican Dean of St. Albans, Dr. Jeffrey John, and the three evangelical writers who produced Pierced for our Transgressions. All three of these men — Steve Jeffrey, Mike Ovey, and Andrew Sach — are associated with Oak Hill College in London.

Wright’s interaction with Jenson is brief and respectful. His interaction with Jeffrey John is challenging; Wright charges Dr. John with rejecting a caricature of penal substitution, and admonishes him for doing so. For those who have forgotten, Jeffrey John was the homosexual who was nominated for a bishopic in the Church of England in 2003, and whose nomination was withdrawn because of the ensuing controversy. In the course of this challenge, Wright makes many solid points and I agree with his criticisms of Dr. John’s caricature. But, as I have already noted, Wright is distressed with the omissions in Pierced for our Transgressions, and so it seems reasonable to note a striking omission here. Wright says:

“Let me put it like this. If Dr John were to turn on the radio and hear someone arguing the foolish and unwarranted case, on the basis of two or three anecdotal examples and a revulsion which they had had since the age of ten, that all gay men are promiscuous paedophiles and that therefore no such thing as permanent, faithful and stable gay partnerships were possible, he would rightly object that a gross caricature was being allowed to stand as the premise of the argument, and that the conclusion therefore did not follow. That is the kind of situation I find myself in when faced with his caricature of substitutionary atonement” (p. 6, emphasis mine).

This is a debate over penal substitution. It is a debate over the wrath of God, and whether that wrath is a reality or not, and whether propitiation is a necessity if sinful men are to be saved. That is what this debate is over, and Bishop Wright is in this debate with a man who solemnized a civil union with his partner in 2006. But in this context, Wright contents himself with arguing a point of doctrine with Dr John, and does not raise the screamingly obvious point of lifestyle. I know that St. Paul is dear to Wright, but, according to Paul, what is the result when the wrath of God is visited from heaven against ungodly men? Men burn with lust for other men, and even the women are affected. This is how Paul describes wrath. One of the prime exhibits of this wrath is the kind of behavior exhibited and defended by Dr. John. But to the extent that Wright even brings the homosexual issue up, he does so in a way that is beyond mild — as yet another thing, like penal substitution, which is subject to bigotry and caricature.

The really strong language from Wright is reserved for the men from Oak Hill, and this is where things get really weird — “almost funny,” “Go and read the book,” “hopelessly sub-biblical,” “it becomes embarrassing,” and so on. This is because (as I take it from this distance) they offered a case for penal substitution in the language of systematic theology and not biblical theology. I don’t know (not having seen the book) if I would even agree with Wright’s point. But what I can say, from this distance, is that Wright has a wildly skewed view of who needs to be praised, who placated, and who challenged.

Because, in the meantime, someone like Chalke — a regular zeitgeist-meister if ever there was one — can say that the problem with the Pharisees was their “disempowering and alienating rhetoric” (p. 43), that Yahweh was “implicated in the excessive acts of war that we see in some of the books of the Old Testament” (p. 49), that God hid His face from Moses because no-one “could bear to see a face wrung with such infinite pain and live” (p. 59), that Jesus came to offer an “inclusive Kingdom” (p. 98), that Jesus did not require change in those who came to Him (p. 99), that Ghandi is our exemplar (p. 124), and plenty more examples if you want ’em. This is the kind of book that Wright did not dismiss as “hopelessly sub-biblical,” but which somebody ought to have done.

Now the edifying gossip, which I think might help contextualize some things. The folks at Oak Hill are doing some of the finest work in ministerial training in the U.K. They are doing top-flight work. I was just there a few months ago, and had an opportunity to speak to a number of their students. David Field is a friend of mine, and is on the faculty there. He is going to be speaking for us at this next year’s Trinity Fest, and he is also serving as adjunct faculty for New Saint Andrew’s new graduate program. These are people who have been more than prepared to learn from Wright’s scholarship, and at the same time take issue where they believe it is necessary to do so. In short, these are fine conservative men who are not reactionary fundamentalists.

As I have written in this place before, Wright’s central problems are not doctrinal, but rather practical. He is a bishop, which means he has to make decisions about what to do in discipline cases. He needs to say something when reporters call him up. As a friend of mine recently noted, the difference between a pastor and a theologian is that a pastor has to make up his mind. The same thing applies to bishops. You have to make up your mind. You have to decide who to support, and who should not be supported. You have to take sides.

In watching this, we have to remember the law of diminishing fantods. I really enjoy reading Wright, even where I strongly differ with him. He can read some people the same way, but if I read those people (like Chalke), I get a case of the creeps. Presumably Chalke can read others who are even further out there. If each generation gets us a little further off, at some point we will all be in serious trouble. I don’t know what accounts for this, but I know it involves the peculiar placement of blind spots. Another example (also involving Wright) is his view of Middleton and Walsh. In Wright’s book, The New Testament and the People of God, he demolishes postmodernism (in his gentlemanly way). But I also noticed, somewhere in the notes, that he had a personal friendship (I think) with Walsh. Now my view of Middleton and Walsh’s book, Truth is Stranger Than it Used to Be, can be found in Contours of Post Maturity. If postmodernism were a leprosy that could infect Christians, most of these gentlemen’s fingers would have fallen off by now. And so a couple years ago I asked Wright about it — at a lunch a group of us had in Monroe (more gossip). He was aghast that I would think of Middleton and Walsh as postmodernists, and I was aghast that he didn’t think so. Particularly since Wright knows what postmodernism is, and had sent little pieces of it flying all over the room in his book. So go figure.