tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post537360430513193334..comments2023-12-15T21:49:46.651+01:00Comments on Pluralist Speaks: Ranting in DurhamPluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-31382444044597858962008-03-27T04:08:00.000+01:002008-03-27T04:08:00.000+01:00Well Spong started out as an evangelical. Most lat...Well Spong started out as an evangelical. Most lately he links the whole crucifixion-resurrection to Jewish festivals, and the palm leaves are only available at the festival of tabernacles and yet the narrative goes on to Pesach.<BR/><BR/>One reason why I did bother with the Anglican "heavy" - 'I'm a friend of the Archbishop' - is to put him alongside Williams and Jensen. My point is none of these work. Jensen is crass, Williams leaves you nowhere and Wright makes assumptions. None of them will employ metaphor for what it is.Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)https://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-58649168082765264602008-03-27T03:25:00.000+01:002008-03-27T03:25:00.000+01:00I do not understand the obsession with the hobgobl...I do not understand the obsession with the hobgoblin of secularism among church leaders in the U.K. As far as N.T. Wright is concerned, the only logical explanation for any kind of widespread opposition to his personal political and ethical views is that there must be a "militantly atheist and secularist lobby" out to defeat him (and the one behind the curtain, The One True God, for whom the bishop speaks). How bizarre for a man who is supposed to be brilliant, at least after a fashion.<BR/><BR/>Your essay is brilliant, Adrian. I need to spend more time with it, but just in passing, I'm struck with how odd it seems that Bishops Wright and Spong, both popular writers and scholars (Wright much more of a scholar, at least when he's not ranting), both spend an exorbitant amount of time and energy on the notion of the bodily Resurrection, fussing and fretting about whether it "really" happened, as a matter of historical, empirical, physical fact or whether it was merely a powerful imagining -- as if nothing else truly mattered -- flip side fundamentalists, both of them. I don't mind Spong, for various reasons, but Wright seems to me to be making rather a fool of himself, jousting at the non-believers (or as someone put it, the "God-free") when his kind of thinking seems to be causing much greater harm to Christianity than that of his supposed mighty opponents. <BR/><BR/>But would do I know? Just gazing across the pond here when not looking at our own mess.kladyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09526715552795733402noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-29218172704086766012008-03-27T01:29:00.000+01:002008-03-27T01:29:00.000+01:00I don't agree with you either. You seem to mistake...I don't agree with you either. You seem to mistake a process of New Testament writers mining the Hebrew Bible for content and support for some sort of reportage. It is not reportage at all. Wright knows this, that it goes from the New Testament to the Old, but what he tries to do is the old "authenticity at the scene of an accident" approach where the police get slightly different accounts from witnesses, and that doubts thrown at some accounts are left in by the writers as a mark of authenticity. They are left in, or made, because they underline a point: an important point, for example, is that in the stories the disciples must never be seen as the equivalent of Jesus whatever the gifts they are supposed to have. Wright also suggests difference means accounts of events means history, but it doesn't: primary documents mean history and there aren't any.Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)https://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-23389864604122144852008-03-26T13:30:00.000+01:002008-03-26T13:30:00.000+01:00'the continued puzzlement of the disciples is a ma...'the continued puzzlement of the disciples is a mark of the story's authenticity.'<BR/><BR/>Really?<BR/><BR/>These people had allegedly been given the secret of the Kingdom of God.<BR/><BR/>They had allegedly been personally given the power to raise the dead (Matthew 10)<BR/><BR/>They had seen Moses (!) return from the grave.<BR/><BR/>One of them had even walked on water.<BR/><BR/>And Jesus had prophesied exactly what would happen.<BR/><BR/>Even the opposition to Jesus allegedly knew that he had prophesied that he would rise from the dead.<BR/><BR/>And Wright claims that the disciples doubts prove the story's authenticity.<BR/><BR/>What on earth is he on?Steven Carrhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11983601793874190779noreply@blogger.com