Before Bishop Wright’s lecture Tuesday evening, Trevin Wax sat down with him for an interview that he has just posted on his blog. It’s quite long, but very good. You can read it here.
After answering a question about what he believed about the future, he made a statement that he repeated during the lecture later that evening, that “I try to insist in the book and in my lecture on this that all our language about the future is like a signpost pointing into a fog. We don’t have an actual photographic description of what we’re going to find when we get to where the signpost is pointing. But we do have assurance that if we follow down this track, we’re going in the right direction.”
I think that one of the crucial roles theology plays is in the asking of better questions, in the digging for answers to the issues that confront us every day. A key point here is that we are not to be afraid of questions. If we disagree with the answers someone else comes up with, the study of theology dictates that we do the hard work of trying to answer the same questions, not just dismiss them. Bishop Wright addressed a criticism that Doug Wilson and other have leveled against him on the subject of debt forgiveness in the interview:
“This injustice is actually the sort of thing about which the Old Testament prophets had a great deal to say. Some have said to me, “Go read the works of F.A. Hayek because he will show you that actually giving handouts to the poor just encourages a dependency culture and that’s not the way to go.”
Very well. Imagine the parable of the Good Samaritan. Here comes an economist and he looks at the poor man, but he realizes that if he helps him, he is actually going to increase a dependency culture, so he passes by on the other side. Sorry. That’s just not good enough.
I’m making a plea for mercy. It’s not rocket science. It’s not macro economics and Ph.D-level complicated. It’s just asking, “What’s wrong with this picture of the way the world is working at the moment?” And I hear Doug Wilson and others as saying, “We don’t want to listen to that question.” You might not like my answer to the question, but please listen to the question.”
A couple weeks ago, on Easter Sunday, I heard a sermon in which the speaker talked about a time he was in a class and was able to set everyone else straight by quoting the C.S. Lewis Lord, Liar, or Lunatic argument (although he didn’t credit it to Lewis). After he corrected everyone, “no one could respond.” I mentioned to a friend that I don’t like, or agree, with that argument any longer, and he asked why. This quote from Bishop Wright helps put into words at least my reservations about C.S. Lewis’ argument:
“His summary that Jesus must have been either mad or bad or God fails to take into account the subtleties and the nuances of first-century Judaism. Lewis’ views on the historical Jesus are odd because Lewis in his own professional work spent a great deal of time telling people (famously) in his studies on words that when you’re reading an old book, and you come to a word you don’t understand, you look it up in the dictionary. But the real danger is when you come a word you do understand in modern use, but it means something slightly different or completely different, and you don’t look it up, which will cause you to misread the passage. I wish he had taken that same lesson back into the first century and said, Hmm. Let’s actually find out what’s going on there. There’s nothing to be afraid of in doing that.”