Thanks for stirring up the discussion. I’ve been enjoying your thoughts.

I wholeheartedly agree that the greatest strength of Wright’s model is that it takes Scripture seriously in the form in which it is given to us. God in his wisdom has given us this story. It seems that we often find this deeply incovenient, so we try to tidy it up and extrapolate timeless truths from it – we de-story it, essentially. But of course we then have to re-story it to apply those timeless truths to our lives. It seems wiser and simpler to immerse ourselves in the story and then seek to live in continuity with it.

I also agree about the priority of humility in all of our engagement with and discussion about Scripture. However, I do think Wright’s model is more likely to encourage humility by making us more aware of the interpretive process and of the possibility of diversity of response. The danger with the “timeless truths” approach is that it’s too easy to think we can simply lift a command off the pages of the Bible and apply it directly to whatever situation we are facing. We simply “look up what the Bible says we should do.” There are lots of humble and godly people who operate with that approach, but I think it does open the door for a certain kind of arrogance and abuse.

An example (a real story). A couple are respected members of a conservative church. The husband has been emotionally and physically abusive throughout their marriage. The wife has tried every avenue she can think of to challenge her husband’s behaviour, to help him to get help, to bring about repentance and change. The church leaders are aware of the situation but out of embarrassment or cowardice they largely look the other way. Eventually this woman finds the courage to leave her husband, and what happens? She is condemned by her church, while her husband is pitied. Why? Because this is a simple moral issue on which we can look up the answer, and Jesus said the only grounds for breaking up a marriage is infidelity. It’s black and white.

But of course Jesus’words on divorce are part of a story. We need to pay attention to the flow of that story, starting with the radical ethics of the OT, which gave great dignity to women and protected them from abuse within a male-dominated culture (especially vulnerable women such as widows). Jesus was speaking into a culture in which some of the Pharisaical schools were arguing that a man could divorce his wife for burning the dinner or losing her looks. In the context of that story, he speaks powerfully to protect women from abuse by powerful men, insisting that divorce is only allowable in very extreme cases.

Immersing ourselves in the story allows us to see the ugliness of using Jesus’words in order to load further pain and guilt on a woman who has already suffered far too much. Those church leaders were mathematically, technically, logically right in their quotation of Jesus’words, and operating within their model of timeless truths it is difficult to challenge them. But they are horribly, totally, brutally out of step with the whole spirit of the story of God and his interactions with humanity.

It’s one example, but I throw it out there for what it’s worth. I’m still thinking through the implications of Wright’s paradigm, and I’m glad to have someone asking provocative questions.

Peace.