Theo Todman's Web Page - Paper Abstracts

Author's Introduction

• N.T. Wright is a luminary of the biblical studies world, having authored numerous large and well-received academic volumes on Christ, Paul, and the early church. He has also written a remarkable number of books for popular audiences, which evidences his pastoral concern as an Anglican bishop. Eschatology and History: Jesus and the Promise of Natural Theology places Wright in the world of academic philosophy vis-à-vis the Gifford Lectures (in an otherwise well-documented academic work, the book sadly lacks a general index). These lectures, which commenced in 1888, were established by Adam Lord Gifford (1820–1887). Their purpose is to sponsor lectures to “promote and diffuse the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term — in other words, the knowledge of God.” Since 1888, the lectureship has sponsored eminent thinkers, such as William James and Karl Barth, from diverse disciplines. Some lecturers have advocated natural theology, and some have not. Wright attempts to revise the notion of what natural theology is and what it might accomplish.
• But what does a distinguished biblical scholar such as Wright bring to the Gifford Lectures? (He is not the first biblical scholar to give these lectures, having been preceded by Rudolph Bultmann and James Barr.) To answer that, we must first explain what is meant by natural theology — a not uncontested matter. Barth famously considered natural theology treasonous against “God’s self-disclosure in Jesus as witnessed to by scripture,” as Wright paraphrases him (x). For Barth, natural theology was a rival source of authority and one easily co-opted by sinister movements like National Socialism in Germany. Wright does not take Barth to be the end of the story for natural theology, but rather a conversation partner — and one he leaves behind fairly quickly.
• After surveying several accounts of what natural theology is, Wright gives his own rather vague understanding. “I take it for granted that under all of these various ways of understanding ‘natural theology’ there lies the great theological and philosophical challenge of talking about God and the world and the relation between them” (x). As a biblical scholar, Wright wants to see if “a biblical theology might offer some fresh parameters within which the old questions would appear in a different light” (xi).
• Since I am a philosopher and not a biblical scholar, I will focus on Wright’s account of the project of natural theology rather than going into the details of his positive claim that the history of Jesus is part of God’s revelation to the world. Thus, I will concentrate on sections I and IV of the book, which are more overtly about natural theology. The case that Wright makes in sections II and III—“History, Eschatology, and Apocalyptic” and “Jesus and Easter in the Jewish World” — is formidable and impressive, but will not be my primary concern, since it seems more about biblical studies than natural theology per se (although Wright wants to combine them). Before giving Wright’s sense of the biblical scholar’s contribution to natural theology, I need to discuss a bit of the history and logic of natural theology as I understand it.