www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall TIME interview with Bishop of Durham

Wright: There is Luke 23, where Jesus says to the good thief on the cross, "Today you will be with me in Paradise." But in Luke, we know first of all that Christ himself will not be resurrected for three days, so "paradise" cannot be a resurrection. It has to be an intermediate state....

The prediction of resurrection [in Daniel 12:13] is not an isolated piece of speculation about the ultimate fate of humans, or even Judeans, in general, but a specific promise addressed to a specific situation. Israel's god will reverse the actions of the wicked pagans, and raise the martyrs, and the teachers who kept Israel on course, to a glorious life. Simultaneously, he will raise their persecutors to a new existence: instead of remaining in the decent obscurity of Sheol or 'the dust', they will face perpetual public obloquy. The whole scene, in fact, carries with it elements of the lawcourt, in which YHWH as the righteous judge puts wrongs to right, punishing the wicked and vindicating the righteous. Michael, the angel or 'prince' who is Israel's specific protector, will be YHWH's agent in bringing this judgment to pass (pp. 113-114).

As we have seen, the early Christians usually referred to the resurrection of Jesus as the work of this god [the one true god]. 'He has been raised,' they say; 'God raised Jesus from the dead.' The work of this god was, from very early on, part of the interpretation, the tried of meaning through which they viewed this event. And from the very early on (it is already taken for granted by Paul), the fact that this Jesus had been raised by this god, when mulled over and reflected on in the light of all that Jesus had done and said, and all that Israel's scriptures had said about the redeeming and reconciling action of this god, drew from the early Christians the breathtaking belief that Jesus was 'son of god', the unique 'Son' of this God as opposed to any other. They meant by this not simply that he was Israel's Messiah, though that remained foundational; nor simply that he was the reality of which Caesar and all other such tyrants were the parodies, through that remained a vital implication. They meant it in the sense that he was the personal embodiment and revelation of the one true god. Paul's Christology, and perhaps also that which was expressed in creedal formulae before he was writing the extant letters, indicates that from very early on in the Christian movement this god and this Jesus were being referred to as 'father' and 'son' within contexts that clearly put them together on the 'divine' side of the equation.

The truly remarkable thing about this is that, where we see this happening, the arguments that are being mounted at the time, and even the Old Testament scriptures that are being quoted and expounded, are all of a strongly monotheistic tone (p. 731).

He tends to write so as to unravel traditional narratives of interpretation so a reader can approach a contextual understanding of scripture.