NT Wright at ATS

I had the priveledge of seeing New Testament scholar and Anglican bishop NT Wright at Asbury Seminary last week. Each chapel was packed out and many came from colleges and churches in the area to see the bishop. I was impressed with the number of college students who have taken an interest in biblical scholarship. I know that when I was in college, I wouldn't have made the trip out to Middle of Nowhere, KY to hear an egghead biblical scholar with or without the British accent. The guy next to me travelled 6 hours from Ohio for the day just hear Professor Wright.

I know for myself that his book, The Challenge of Jesus radically changed the way I read the Bible. He actually proposed that we look at the cultural, social, historical and yea, political context of the Ancient Near East to interpret the Bible. Radical. It actually does change our reading. I realized that I had been looking at the Bible through North American 20th century eyes my whole life and that I had been missing a lot.

He started off on Tuesday and Wednesday morning with a lecture on politics and the Bible and how the right and left love to use it to meet their needs. He discussed liberation theology and the theology of the current religious right. Both have good points and negative ones. But they both fall way short of the message of the Bible. The central question we need to ask ourselves and those that govern, he said is "If God were in charge right now, what would things look like?" If we challenge ourselves to answer it, we will find that we have misused and misread the Bible in regards to politics. That was the main point of his lecture.

Wednesday night was your "basic" exegesis of Acts. The whole thing. In an hour. Again, another challenge to the church as to what the church should be doing in relation to "the authorities" and each other. This was followed by a great Q and A time. He challenged a couple of students when they challenged his view of the end times, and specifically, the rapture. Pretty much he said that its going to happen, just not the way that Tim Lahaye thinks it will. Fact is, we don't know and probably never will, so don't worry about the specifics. Just get your heart right with God and you'll be covered, so to speak. He also challenged our reading of Paul and his use of symbols and images. We can't take them literally. If we did, we'd go crazy.

All in all, brilliant stuff and well worth it. You can go to the ATS site here to listen to the sessions. It energized my commitment to the study of the Bible and teaching.