N.T.Wright is one of the leading theologians of the 21st century. He is also the quintessential English genteleman. You might even say that he is a celebrity as he is in great demand as a speaker worldwide. I myself have huge admiration for him both as a theologian and an historian. He has unlocked Paul for me like no one else and helped me to understand that brilliant, complex and (at times) frustrating (to understand) apostle. I have always wished there was more of Peter, John, James and the other apostles to balance things out as it were, but like it or not, Paul dominates the Messianic Scriptures (New Testament). Before Wright, there was James S. Stewart, who was the first to help me understand the elusive apostle. Then along came Tom Wright and, like a genie in a bottle, suddenly burst forth as I started thumbing through his written works and lights started turning on in the previously darkened spaces.

I respect and admire N.T.Wright as an historian, linguist, theologian, and throroughly nice human being. I might even go to him for pastoral help - possibly. But I wouldn't go to him as an evangelist or to hear the message of salvation because, as you will see in a minute, I don't think he shares the whole Besorah (Gospel).

Like his great hero, Paul, N.T.Wright is a bit of an enigma. He believes in the existence of Elohim (God) which you might think of as obvious but given the rampant atheism and liberalism in the Church of England, in which Wright was once the Bishop of Durham, I really was surprised to actually come across a modern high Anglican cleric with any real belief at all. Then, hearing that he passionately believed in the resurrection and in the Second Coming, I became even more astonished and hopeful. Hearing that he was a voluminous writer and an eminent koine Greek scholar gave me further hope - hope that I might finally get to the heart of Paul of Tarsus. And coming from an Anglican background myself, at least nominally, I looked forward to 'touching base', as the Americans say, with someone who knew my own culture, shared a love for the English language, and could relate to the majestic King James Version like another Anglican I admire, the journalist Peter Hitchens, along with the New English Bible (NEB), another superb piece of literature. Not only that, but Wright was a contributor to the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), the preferred scholars' version, and has produced his own very readable and helpful Kingdom New Testament (KNT) which I have been studying and now know quite well. So I really couldn't believe my 'luck'. And if anyone ever feels generous enough, I would dearly love to get hold of the complete 18 volume set that form His New Testament for Everyone commentary. (Thanks to the generosity of a Swedish and German brother, I now have the set and have been reading it avidly - 2023).

N.T.Wright writes in such detail and depth in his scholarly works (48 volumes at my last counting) that you need to go through them very carefully and slowly. I have been ploughing through his four part work in two large volumes, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (published by SPCK in 2013), for a couple of years, going over the material carefully, making copious notes, re-reading and comparing with other Bible versions and commentaries. At this rate, depending on my health, it'll probably take me five years to get through just those two volumes. But I am happy to do so. I have about 16 of his books and read portions of them when seeking for amplifications of his gargantuan Pauline tome.

He goes under the name 'N.T.Wright' for his scholarly works (it's the way academics do it) but he has also written a number of popular works which, at the insistence of his publisher, he signs by the more informal 'Tom Wright'. I have a number of those. Wanting to know more about the man himself and in partricular seeking to get an overview of what he actually believes, I decided to simultaneously study his popular book, Surprised by Hope [1]. In it, Wright bills himself as positionally being somewhere between a liberal and a conservative, and neither wing seems to like him very much as a result - not the sceptical, atheist or agnostic liberals, and certainly not the conservative evangelicals either. Pointing out the excesses of the latter, particularly those of the 'Once Saved, Always Saved' crowd, I get the very distinct impression that he does not believe in having a personal relationship with Yah'shua (Jesus) as the 'main thing' but views corporate salvation as that which ought to not simply have the pre-eminence and virtual exclusivity. Though he pays lip-service to personal Christianity, he is still very much a proponent of the Social Gospel, though highly repackaged. And while he absolutely believes in the Resurrection and Second Coming, and while he absolutely believes that true Christians will be 'renewed' along with the whole Creation at that Second Coming, and while he certainly believes that 'heaven' and 'hell' exist as an intermediary state in the grand scheme of things, my impression is that he finds 'heaven' and 'hell' a bit inconvenient - the way he goes on and on about heaven not being the 'main thing' I find disturbing, even if I agree that the physically resurrected world is our final destination.

N.T.Wright is a bit of a maverick, being in some major ways unorthodox and independent-minded, which I don't deny is attractive to myself because I share that disposition a bit myself. And whilst I am not against tradition if it is true, tradition has a way of fossilising and going amiss over time. We agree on a number of things, as you will see, but also disagree on almost as many more. But that's OK. I like a healthy, respectful debate, and I particularly like getting as close to source as possible. For whether we like it or not, history is very much a part of Christianity. You not only have to do it but you have to do it well. And N.T.Wright has a knack for doing history unlike any Christian historian I have come across. He is also thorough, another thing I like about him. One thing I dislike is theologians simply quoting other theologians and doing little or no original research themselves, or simply focussing on one narrow field. Wright is a 'big-timer' and looks at the whole spread, as it were. Those who do original research are bound to unearth lots of exciting things, things which traditionalists do not want to see, let alone deal with in a hand-on sort of way. We each have our own 'hot-potatoes'. That said, Wright and I have different overall agendas to be sure though both of us are committed to truth. He wants to reform the existing churches - I want to go further in restoring the ancient ways as well as integrate the new millennial revelation that's arriving.

In the few years I have got to know his work, I have been particularly keen to seek out in his books and in his many lectures some sort of personal testimony of his converstion. He was brought up in a devout Anglican home and about the closest I have heard him speak of a 'new birth' is of him as a boy crying when he learned that 'Jesus had died for him'. Not that I am expecting him to have had a particular kind of experience for we all meet the resurrected Master differently and those who are brought up in a Christian home, as my own children have been, tend to grow gradually in emunah (faith) rather than necessarily experience any dramatic spiritual interventions. Four of my children are definitely firm and convinced believers and grew up that way much, I suspect, as Tom Wright did. What worries me, though, is that there is apparently none of the 'Romans Road' element in his evangelism, or at least none in any of the dozens of hours of lectures and sermons I have heard him preach.

Wright is very much an Anglican and as such is a classical evangelical, rejecting Torah observance. And yet you might be surprised to find how central Israel figures in his theology, but more as a prophetic prop to his own view of the gospel than because he believes in its restoration (as we do). He rightly rejects the rapture doctrine and brilliantly explains why he does so, pointing out that Paul is using an historical military image. He's definitely a cessationist as one would expect of a mildly Calvinistic Anglican. He treads warily when it comes to political correctness, apparently trying not to tread on too many Anglican toes and not wanting to offend his more liberal colleagues and yet affirms traditional monogamous marriage as the biblical way. He is no scientist and like most Anglicans believes in Darwinian evolution which has definitely corrupted some of his theology (particularly his view of the first chapters of Genesis), yet he seems to sometimes believe that Adam and Eve were real. Perhaps, like many liberals, he believes in pre-Adamites in order to accommodate Darwinism, i.e. God took some evolved monkeys and breathed human spirits into them even though that contradicts the creation account.

Though he believes that Yah'shua (Jesus) will intervene at the Second Coming to utterly renew everything (unlike most liberals) he seems to think that something good can come of pursuing a politically-directed social gospel to transform society, even if not completely. I am not totally adverse to his ideas about the social gospel - I just think that the personal gospel (one-to-one salvation) must come first, and be the main activity of witnessing. Being heaven-bound is important even if it is only an intermediary state.

So this is a huge gap in his vision, I believe - I don't think he has fully divested himself of his liberalism in this area. That's why I would be unlikely to ever send anyone to him to receive the message of personal salvation - he's just too anxious to get people on board with his political program for social renewal. I don't think he accepts that Satan is the ruler of this world for the present (Jn.12:31, etc.) and that Kingdom Now-type theology doesn't work, even for liberals. Yes, Christians must be social. Yes, we ought to influence society for the better, but that has to flow out of the traditional conservative evangelical understandiing of what it is to be spiritually transformed first - to be 'heaven-bound'. It seems to me that so much of this is mere intellectual propositionalism - more of a theory than an actuality.

I hope I am misjudging him, which I absolutely don't want to do, so I would like to be corrected - gladly. He is too valuable not to be 'on-team'. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt as behoves Christians to treat one another and to speak well of him. He clearly has so much that I lack in the knowledge sphere but when it comes to my spirit being fed, I have to honestly say that I often go away hungry and thirsty still. He doesn't satisfy my appetite for uplifting, upbuilding salvational truth in the way the Tozers of this world do. He is and he isn't your typical liberal and he is and he isn't your typical conservative either. For all his intellectual brilliance - and he absolutely is - I sense an important gap in his gospel that still needs filling and which he will only get from those conservatives he takes evident pleasure in lightly kicking whenever he can.

Mind you, I can understand him being turned off by so much of conservative evangelical christianity. Much of it turns me off too. But I am not about to throw the conservative evangelical baby out with the bathwater. The last quarter of his book, Surprised by Hope is, frankly, filled with a lot of repetitive (to the point of exasperating me) liberal mumbo-jumbo. It's as though he has found this new theological toy and he's playing it to death. To him it's, of course, the very best toy in the world and he wants everyone to share playing with it. He has his fans and supporters to be sure but somehow I doubt he will jump-start a new movement or reformation in either the Anglican Church or in the traditional Protestant Churches (who are his best hope) who are too busy converting to Catholicism.

The idea that present society is going to be transformed by any social gospel implemented through political activity is, to my mind, pie-in-the-sky. I long ago divested myself of that illusion. Should we try to influence our local communities? Absolutely. Should some believers be involved in national politics sometimes? I believe Yahweh calls certain men and women, yes. But should the whole messianic community or church be involved in the kind of way that Wright envisions? No, they should be preaching like a Dwight Moody, a Leonard Ravenhill, a Paris Reidhead or an A.W.Tozer, saving souls and discipling them before anything else. Have we anything to learn from from Wright as far as his social vision is concerned? Absolutely. And I do believe Yahweh has called the man - He is doing much good for the Kingdom. He has been, and continues to be, a huge blessing to me. But I don't think, were he still a minister and not just an academic, that I'd join his parish. Visit it, yes. Fellowship with his people from time-to-time, yes. But I don't expect to find the fire of the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) there, not the kind I already know and am continuing to seeking after. His tram only takes me along part of the way.

Actually, Yahweh gave me a warning about N.T.Wright's social gospel in the form of a vision a few days' ago, which is why I am writing this. I don't want anyone to think that I am a sold-out disciple of this man. As one passionately interested in theology, linguistics, and history as a means to augment my own ministry, I am definitely a pupil. But as a minister interested in preaching the gospel of salvation and discipleship, only up to a certain point. In the vision one of his books was open - I am guessing from its dimensions, it was Surprised by Hope as it was not fat like his Pauline and other scholarly books like The Resurrection of the Son of God or Jesus and the Victory of God. And sitting between the pages was a spider, a brownish spider with very long spindly legs - not a poisonous spider, mind you, but a spider nonetheless. And whilst spiders are great for ridding houses of flies, it is also a symbol of Lilith, a predatory passive-aggressive spirit that sucks the energy out of its victims.

As I got to Part 3 of Surprised by Hope in which he 'rethinks salvation', 'building for the kingdom', and 'reshaping the church', I became distinctly uneasy. I know that uneasiness well - it's a warning to be 'on guard'. For all his brilliance, which can serve the kingdom, I am honestly not sure that Wright has truly understood what salvation, the kingdom and the messianic community actually are in substance. He has definitely taken a giant leap away from the liberalism of his generation but hasn't gone far enough. He has definitely identified many of the abuses and inadequacies of conservatism but I do think he has thrown a huge chunk of the baby out with the bathwater in his rejection of the more extreme forms of the latter. In my estimation, he's 'on the way' but isn't there yet. That 'spider' is in the way, spoiling the tremendous good he could be doing.

The last third of his book - his agenda and vision - was a bit like drinking cold, tepid and diluted tea. It left a very unsatisfactory taste in my mouth. The thin, spindly spider was indeed a perfect symbol for what I had sensed. Hollywood may have tried to change our pereceptions of spiders in its cartoon movie, Charlotte's Web, and did a pretty good job of it, but I was not convinced, just as I am not convinced by Wright's neo-liberal, semi-conservative 'gospel'. I guarantee it won't work and once the collapse has occurred and society comes apart even more than it already is doing now, I think he may be forced to re-evaluate the legitimacy and benefits of his pet theory. Whilst he has done a marvelous thing in moving many steps away from liberalism himself, and influencing his and other denominations to do the same (maybe that's one of his missions), he is mistaken in trying to so radically redefine salvation and the gospel. Yes, the gospel needs reframing, as he insists, but not at the expense of castrating it.

I hsd a second vision about Wright's theology, again unexpected. I was lying in bed thinking about all sorts of things, as one does when one cannot sleep, and I was thinking about what I had been reading in the last quarter of Surprised by Hope and what was going on there. A vision opened up and I saw a blackish-looking thin tube, like a blood vessel which had been cut, and a medium-sized blob of blood spattered on a surface. Then it clicked as the scripture, "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness" (Heb.9:22, NIV) came to mind. That's what was missing! I have not read his two large works on Yah'shua (Jesus) yet (mentioned above) so I will not hastily prejudge but in checking their subject indices on 'atonement', 'blood' and 'sin' I can find not a single reference to any of these. When I have read those books I will update this article and see whether my suspicions, and the pointing of this vision, were true or not.

I am going to finish Surprised by Hope for the sake of completing it but I really don't want to be immersed in its spirit for longer than I have to. It is already depressing me, if I'm truthful, whereas the first three-quarters was inspirational. I am going to keep digging into his theological works and I still want his New Testament commentaries (hint, hint) but I am not looking to Wright as a source of salvational inspiration. He may think he can change the world through political engagement but I have to say that this is not the way I believe the Messianic Community (Church) has been called. I think he will eventually come to see that that is a dead-end. I already know what my personal calling is and that I am sticking to. I'm staying on targets assigned to me. May Yahweh bless N.T.Wright on his continuing journey! I wish him, and his friends and followers, the very best.

Endnotes

[1] Tom Wright, Surprised by Hope (SPCK, London: 2011)

Further Reading