This volume is essentially Tom Wright’s Gifford Lectures, given at Aberdeen University, the Gifford Lectures being one of the greatest honours of Scottish academia. Make no mistake this is a very stunning piece of natural theology that makes you sit up and think. The fact it is styled NT Wright says a lot about the book before you even pick it up. It’s very complex and deep but unlike a lot of modern intellectual philosophical theology it is not the slightest bit ‘clever’. The other thing that I really like after recently reading many philosophical books that are swamped in post-modernist incoherence is that this book is both clear and succinct, truly a divine blessing.
Probably the biggest theme of the book is his view that the modern western world is essentially Epicurean, and through various philosophical devices he puts the legacy of the enlightenment and what he calls a modern version of epicureanism to the test. I am astonished by the depth and character of his misgivings about the enlightenment. Misquoting EM Forster I would normally say two cheers for the enlightenment, but after reading this book I am way more critical of its legacy of one-level thinking and the way it can lead to a distortion of philosophical thinking both Christian and non-Christian. Before this book I wasn’t fully aware of how he sees the mid-eighteenth century as a juncture after which there is a kind apocalyptic battle between the legacy of both the Greco-Roman world and the Christian gospel against the modern enlightenment world view. This epicurean split he identifies between heaven and earth is original and profound. He quite rightly says it has clouded Christian judgement as much as secular.
Aside from this the book abounds with a theology of beauty, through all the arts but especially classical music. One example is that he shows how Beethoven knows the sacred but experiences the sublime and Bach demonstrates both these simultaneously by the revelation of scripture through Matthews’s gospel in the Matthew Passion and elsewhere.
The other big theme in the book is a natural theology type reading of the Bible via a deep understanding of Hellenistic Judaism. The book centres round his brilliant critique of how many Christian authors have become obsessed with a banal end-times theology (eschatology) and he really does advocate a contrapuntal understanding of the Bible texts which sees all the strands and doesn’t try and make a single clear line in a simplistic post-enlightenment reading. He strongly suggests that you can have a strong eschatology without an imminent end of the world. He seems to say that Christianity at its intellectual root is a very unique mixture of the classical world, combining Hellenistic Judaism, with perhaps direct influence from the Greek philosophers, and something new and vibrant that is not easy to articulate other than using the term gospel. I was also taken aback by his engagement with the scholarship of Rudolf Bultmann and other biblical scholars who seem so far from him theologically. A lot of commentators surprise me as they underestimate the importance of understanding first century Judaism as a help in contextualising some of the teachings of Jesus and Paul. Even more importantly there is also a huge lack of understanding of the central place of Tom Wright in both formulating the ‘new perspective’ on Paul and explaining its strengths and limitations.
In this book, he returns to his personal quest to advocate a truly bodily resurrection of Jesus; again this is no resuscitation of a corpse but a transformed being, truly resurrected. This all works well in his eschatological realism; I can think of no one who combines rational thought with scriptural allusion like him. The humour and personal asides in this book are very near his popular books, which I really like and didn’t expect at all. At one point he remarks on the way we have a naïve view of the ancients, almost that their vision was a house with three storeys, upstairs is the destination, the middle floor is the present, and there is something nasty in the basement. Is there anyone else who could speak so eloquently in one volume on the history of philosophy with such depth and sophistication and then turn to Second Temple Judaism and the place of the historical Jesus in that context?
I really enjoyed this book and learned a lot from it despite my reservations on his extreme critique of the enlightenment. I am now much more aware of the short-comings. But I still stand by my comment to Tom some years ago when I said that I highly appreciate the enlightenment when I go to the dentist. This is certainly one of his greatest achievements, he has quite literally excelled himself.
History & Eschatology is also available in Hard Cover
Book Review by Alan Mordue, Sales Director of SPCK and a member of the Society of Bible Literature. Previously Alan worked as theological buyer and Deputy Manager of Durham University Bookshop and managed Durham Cathedral Bookshop. Prior to joining SPCK he was Sales & Marketing Director at DLT
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