Nicholas Thomas Wright, History and Eschatology: Jesus and the Promise of Natural Theology (The 2018 Gifford Lectures). Waco TX, Baylor University Press, 2019, 16 × 23,5 cm, xxi-343 p., ISBN 978-1-4813-0962-2

The author, N.T. Wright (from now on: NTW) argues against the background of the modern period and opts for the inclusion of the Bible and the story of Jesus in natural theology. He points out that the Bible, after all, was written and edited within the world of space and time by individuals within human and natural communities. In addition, the Bible does not only talk about spiritual and theological teachings but also about natural and human events. And Jesus was a human being who lived within the natural world with history. He further notes that the last three centuries through political, cultural and social contexts of western thought had damaged several crucial theological enquiries, including early Christian eschatology, through the use of modern variations of ancient Epicureanism. NTW opines that the discussions surrounding natural theology were distorted in certain ways by the cultural and political trends of the 18th and 19th centuries. These distortions led to many flaws. He then proposes that there is a need to go back to the historical study of Jesus in his 1st century context for new insights. The aim of this book is therefore simply “to relocate Jesus and the New Testament within the real first-century world without sacrificing their ‘theological’ relevance” (p. xvi), noting that the questions of natural theology and of who was Jesus have been held separately in most theological enterprises.

The book is divided into four sections with two chapters each. The first two chapters deal with the historical context and background to the discussion on natural theology. Here, NTW explores different studies in history and history of ideas while exposing different schools of thought influenced by the events in time, culture, sociology and political struggles. A particular emphasis is the influence of Epicureanism on modernity which brought about an intellectual and social environment of a world without reference to God or gods. Other schools of thought include Stoicism, Augustinianism, Deism, Platonism, etc. The influential events within which the questions of the world, history and God are addressed are the American and French Revolutions, the Age of Enlightenment, Pre-Darwinian evolutionism, the radical economic theory of Adam Smith and the Quest for the Historical Jesus. All these movements portray politics, science, economics, history and Jesus without God.

NTW argues in chapter two that it is a modern myth to believe that the notion of a literal and imminent end of the world is a central belief of the first century Jews including Jesus and his early followers. This belief has aided the removal of Jesus from the argument in theological constructions. By myth he means “not only the popular sense of ‘an untrue tale’ but the more technical sense of a story told by a community to sustain a particular view of its common life and purpose” (p. 47). He then submits that scholars who follow this notion make a naive literalistic mistake in their reading of Jewish (apocalyptic) texts.

Chapters three and four investigate some key concepts such as history, eschatology and apocalyptic and their applications to the questions surrounding natural theology. The exploration of the 1st century Jewish world is the subject of chapters five and six. Here, NTW concludes that God and the world are conceived and seen together and the resurrection of Jesus is located within this same worldview. The final two chapters are devoted to the reflection on human experience and its relationship to the story of Jesus’ crucifixion and the broader themes of eschatology and mission which give a new approach to the questions of natural theology.

An interesting and important concept in the overall discussions is ‘love’, which according to NTW has been missing in the various modernist epistemologies in the understanding of ordinary knowledge of the ordinary world. History (especially the task of history) is necessary for natural theology. This, NTW notes, has been absent in bringing Jesus into the picture. To achieve this requires humility, patience, penitence and above all love. NTW defines history in a number of ways: as events (knowable past), as the written account of past events, as task (of researching and writing about things that actually happened), as a meaningful sequence of events. Epistemology of love and historical task become vital in addressing the questions of natural theology where the story of Jesus would become understandable. The former helps to think into other people’s minds who think differently in order to avoid dragging them out of their own world and imposing one’s thinking on them. The latter discerns and displays some kind of connection, pattern or principle within what actually happened so that history can produce ‘real knowledge’. NTW notes that historical task “is not to substitute a new construct for the texts we possess but to understand better what those texts were saying all along” (p. 119), and in this way, historical task could challenge received interpretations. Hence history can do three things, namely: defeat the defeaters, dismantle the distortions (“challenging ordinary Christian misconceptions”) and direct the discussion.

Historians must recognize that all human knowledge is self-involving and so learn to discipline the involved self so that the human mind could be open to diverse ways of thinking made possible through ‘love’. Theologians therefore must embrace the epistemology of love to humbly investigate Christian history and events. These will further produce coherent narratives about the past with better insight into what actually happened and what it meant to those involved at the time.

NTW mentions different understandings of eschatology: traditional meaning (the last things – death, judgment, heaven and hell), predictive historicism (in which history is going toward some goal), consistent eschatology (imminent end of the world), realized eschatology and eschatology in the process of being realized. He holds strongly that Jesus and his first followers were not expecting the imminent end of the space-time world.

He distinguishes the different views of the term apocalyptic. It has been viewed as divine disclosure and victory without visible antecedent. But NTW notes that this view does not recognize any 1st century conceptions. Other views include: apocalyptic as actual and imminent end of the world, as second coming (parousia), as existential experience, and as a genre or literary form (this is the view that NTW supports). This last view is understood when the writers wish to denote this-worldly realities and to connote theological meaning.

The Jews and the early Christians believed in the world that is reflected in the Temple and the Sabbath, viewing heaven and earth, future and present designed together, overlapped and interlocked. They did not see these features as separated without any link. The contrary view of separation of these features was a modern invention without proper investigation of the worldview of the ancient world. NTW writes: “Second Temple Jews in general, and the early Christians amongst them, assumed an integrated cosmology of heaven and earth, within which there was always the possibility and hope of new creation, not as abolition and replacement but as redemptive transformation” (p. 159). He points out that the Temple and the Sabbath are the two core Jewish symbols through which this worldview is demonstrated. Hence there is a need to bring back these two in exploring and interpreting the questions on natural theology. The Jewish views of the Temple do not fit into the Epicurean split of the cosmos; likewise, the Jewish views of the Sabbath do not fit into the sharp break of the Enlightenment of the past, present and future. “The Temple spoke of the life of heaven present in the midst of ‘earth’; the Sabbath, of the Age to Come inserting itself into the rhythms and sequences of present time. In both cases what counts is the divine presence” (p. 166-167). The Temple and the Sabbath are linked together as they bring about the idea of the divine kingdom (the former [Temple-cosmology] is the place where God was enthroned while the latter [Sabbath-eschatology] is the time when it happened.

In addition to this understanding is the idea of humans as image-bearers which has to do with the task or vocation humans are called to do. As image-bearers, humans have a vocation within the cosmos-as-Temple. What they are called to includes justice, beauty, freedom, truth, power, spirituality and relationship. These, NTW calls seven human vocational signposts. They are controversial and paradoxical terms for humans which God (in Jesus) suffered from. They are signposts that are broken but in the process of being repaired they still lead to the God of creation and new creation.

The idea of the day of the Lord viewed from the perspective of the end or collapse of the space-time universe is refuted. NTW argues that even some of the scriptural passages that speak of actual cosmic catastrophe and specific time-limit such as Mark 9:1; 13:30 should not be taken literally. They do not really mean the imminent end of the cosmos but refer to transformative events within the ongoing space-time world. Furthermore, the early Christians had the idea of a ‘now-and-not-yet’ understanding of the cosmos believing that something had happened to bring about the birth of the expected kingdom and something was yet to happen that would lead to the ultimate goal of the already inaugurated kingdom (a kind of two-stage eschatology).

The resurrection is an event that came with its ontology and epistemology, but also regenerated and redirected the ancient Jewish cosmology, eschatology and anthropology. It makes sense within the world of a Temple-cosmology, a Sabbath-eschatology and image-bearing anthropology in which resurrection becomes a new microcosmos through which the new Sabbath is launched. In other words, it shows the new world being born in the midst of the old, a demonstration of supreme love which was revealed on the cross showing Creator’s love for the old creation, validated retrospectively and transformatively by the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Natural theology must not be detached from the experiences and communal life of the people who tell and live the story. It cannot rely solely on reason to discuss questions about God’s actions in the world, arguments for God within the world and the problem of evil. As regards the question of the problem of evil, NTW’s suggestion that natural theology should return to and be reshaped by the cross is not sufficiently explored. It is not clear how the cross answers generally the question of the problem of evil.

NTW concludes his project by linking natural theology with the mission of God. The Missio Dei is part of the task of natural theology which is driven by the church to fill the world with God’s glory despite the world’s tragedy.

In conclusion, this is an interesting book, it states that: in doing natural theology one must begin with Jesus, in fact, the human Jesus whose resurrection compels us to a re-evaluation of the past history and all past observations of the world, to the reality of a self-giving God on the cross which would then lead to the understanding of Creator God. To do this effectively, love must be the guiding approach. This approach (epistemology of love) would grasp the ontology of love which would generate into missiology of love to produce genuine and compelling signs of the new creation that were previously invisible in the world.

This book is very interesting and educative, however, not an easy read. It requires some knowledge of philosophical thoughts and political historical events to comprehend many issues discussed therein. The question that may come up as a challenge to the argument for the thesis of this book is: how to further convince those who do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus despite the witnesses of the early church, since NTW places this event at the foundation on which the questions of natural theology should be approached? In addition, the connection he makes with the problem of evil and the cross in his argument does not seem sufficient. However, this is a resource book that one will be glad to read and re-read many times.