The Saving Righteousness of God in Christ

Abstract

"It is understandable that Tom Wright provokes strong reactions, for he is a groundbreaking and innovative thinker and one of the premier NT scholars of our generation. Two dangers exist in considering his scholarship. Some incline to an uncritical adulation of his scholarship, others to an uncritical denigration. I, for one, am very thankful for his work and stand in debt to his scholarship. Certainly he is a friend of the Evangelical Theological Society. His work on the historical Jesus is creative yet faithful, provocative yet conservative. 1 In my opinion, his book The Resurrection of the Son of God is the best and most compelling book on the topic. 2 Wright has also taught us that we should look at the big picture. How common it is to look at the individual exegetical trees and not to see the forest. Wright has reminded us of the larger story, of the narrative that is told in the scriptural account. Obviously there is a danger of imposing one’s own story onto the biblical text, but there is also the danger of focusing on so many details that we end up with sound and fury signifying nothing. Scholars may end up adjusting Wright’s narrative account of Scripture here and there, or perhaps even radically, but we as evangelicals rejoice that there is a voice out there proclaiming the unity of the biblical story. Those of us who know the history of critical study of the Bible appreciate how radical and refreshing it is to conceive of the Bible as a uni.ed message"