Author Archives: J Richard Middleton

Living with Unanswered Questions, Part 1

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I have a lot of unanswered questions.

As a person who loves to study and teach the Bible, it’s probably inevitable that some of my questions come from trying to makes sense of what the Bible teaches.

Questions about the Bible and Human Experience

Sometimes I wonder about how what the Bible teaches relates to our human experience.

For example, how does the goodness and love of God (which the Bible proclaims) relate to the fact of evil and suffering in the world?

Why would a loving God allow such massive suffering—some of it related to human evil (such as the trafficking in sex slaves—many of whom are young girls—in countries around the world today)?

And then there is the so-called “natural evil” God allows (like terminal diseases and horrendous earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, and tsunamis in Asia, which take a massive toll in human suffering).

Questions about the Bible and Modern Science

Some of my questions are about how what the Bible teaches relates to the findings of modern science.

For example, how does the evolution of life on earth—prior to human beings—relate to the biblical idea that evil arose with human beings? Doesn’t the pervasiveness of death that evolution assumes contradict the biblical idea of the human origin of evil?

Or maybe biological death isn’t itself evil; after all, the Old Testament notes that certain saints lived a long full life and were gathered to their ancestors in peace. Maybe Paul is right that the sting of death is sin (1 Cor 15:56), which suggests that without sin death might not be regarded as an evil.

I am actually coming to the position that biological death, animal predation, and natural disasters are not technically “evil”; they are simply part of the wildness of the glorious cosmos that God made. I plan to post on that another time.

Questions about the Bible’s Internal Consistency

Some of my questions have to do with seemingly blatant contradictions between things the Bible teaches and other things the Bible teaches, that is, internal contradictions, within the Bible.

For example, how does the command—supposedly from God—to his people (Israel) to utterly exterminate the Canaanites relate to the purpose for which these very people were called—that is, to bring blessing to the nations? Isn’t extermination the opposite of blessing?

In my next post I’ll comment on questions I have about the church’s mishandling of the gospel.

Does Tom Wright Believe in the Second Coming?

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Tom Wright (a.k.a N. T. Wright) is a brilliant theologian and biblical scholar, who has shaken up many people’s assumptions about what the Bible actually teaches. He is especially well known for arguing that the Bible teaches a renewed earth, instead of our “going to heaven.” And he has attempted to redefine our interpretation of “justification” in Paul’s writings, by paying attention to first-century Judaism instead of reading later ideas back into Paul.

What makes Wright so interesting is that he affirms (and models) that it is possible to come up with new ideas and fresh interpretations of Scripture while standing firmly in the non-negotiable tradition of classic, orthodox Christianity.

This is not the place to comment on his view of justification (it’s not my expertise). And I have already indicated (in an earlier post) my basic agreement with his ideas of a renewed earth. Here I want just to clarify one point of his eschatology that is often misunderstood.

The need to clarify this point arose when I was writing my book on eschatology (A New Heaven and a New Earth), especially as I read those who were misinterpreting Wright.

Wright’s Preterism

Like most biblical scholars today (including myself), Wright affirms what is sometimes called a “preterist” position in relation to much biblical prophecy. Preterism is related to the grammatical term “preterite,” which refers to the past tense. So a preterite understanding of prophecy would say that the prophet was speaking about events in his own context (which is now past to us) and not referring explicitly to some distant future (the way prophecy is typically taken in dispensationalism).

For example, Isaiah’s Immanuel prophecy in Isaiah 7:14 was originally addressed to the court of faithless King Ahaz, and “the young woman” who would bear a son was either the prophet’s wife (mentioned in 8:3) or a member of the royal court (I lean towards the latter; note that “the young woman” suggests he is pointing at someone). In the original context, the royal son is probably Hezekiah, who is a sign of hope for besieged Judah.

Later, Matthew applies this prophecy typologically to Jesus (Matthew 1:23), in the context of another faithless Judahite ruler, King Herod, thus drawing a significant parallel between the crisis of the eighth century and his own day, where the birth of Jesus is the new and decisive sign of Immanuel (God-with-us).

Now, Wright is famous for being a preterist when it comes to interpreting the Olivet discourse, the dire predictions of the “end” of the world that Jesus gave on the Mount of Olives (in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21). So he interprets the signs in the heavens, including the sun and moon being darkened, the stars falling from heaven, and the powers of heaven being shaken (Matthew 24:29; Mark 13:24-25; Luke 21:25-26) as a picturesque way of referring to momentous historical events (the Roman-Jewish war and the fall of Jerusalem).

Wright often cites the Jewish historian Josephus, who used similar language to describe these events.

But Wright also has good Old Testament precedent. As chap. 6 (“The Coming of God in Judgment and Salvation”) of my new eschatology book tries to show, OT judgment theophanies use extreme language of cosmic shaking to refer to what are clearly historical/political events of the time.

In the case of the Olivet discourse, most biblical scholars also think that a preterist interpretation works for much of what Jesus says there. But Wright thinks it applies to everything Jesus says there; according to Wright, Jesus isn’t referring at all to what we usually mean by the Parousia or the Second Coming.

What About the Second Coming?

This doesn’t mean Wright thinks the Bible never refers to the climactic return of Jesus to judge the world and usher in the kingdom of God in all its fullness. Otherwise, how could he be famous for teaching a doctrine of cosmic redemption, that God’s plan is to bring about “a new heaven and a new earth”?

Well, one way would be if language about “a new heaven and a new earth” was just a picturesque way to speak about momentous historical events (as it arguably is in Isaiah 65:17-25; but not, I think, in 2 Peter 3:13 and Revelation 21:1).

And there is, indeed, one stream of preterist interpretation in contemporary evangelical theology known as full or consistent preterism that assumes that no biblical prophecies refer to the distant future; all has already been fulfilled. Thus we are already living in the new heaven and new earth (and the resurrection has already happened).

This form of preterism is an outgrowth of post-millennialism, the idea that God is at work through the church to gradually bring the world to full submission to his will—except that there is no climactic second coming here (the post in post-millennialism referred to Christ’s return after the world had reached it millennial state).

Based on his interpretation of the Olivet discourse, Wright has often been read as if he supports consistent preterism. Sometimes this reading comes from adherents of this view who want him as an ally. In other cases, he is critiqued for holding this view.

A recent critique comes from Edward Adams, who frames his important book, The Stars Will Fall from Heaven: “Cosmic Catastrophe” in the New Testament and Its World (Library of New Testament Studies 347; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2007), in terms of a disagreement with Wright on this point (pp. 12-13). Adams takes issue with Wright’s claim that language of cosmic destruction does not refer to “the end of the space-time universe” (The New Testament and the People of God [Christian Origins and the Question of God 1; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992], p. 300), but rather speaks of historical events (such as the fall of Jerusalem).

Setting the Interpretation of Wright to Rights

The problem is that Adams conflates two claims Wright makes, which are actually quite distinct.

On the one hand, when it comes to the Olivet discourse and Jesus’ parables about the returning master/king, Wright indeed thinks that the referents are historical events in the near future (the fall of Jerusalem). We can certainly quibble about that (I actually think that Jesus’ teaching here could have double referents, as I explain in my forthcoming eschatology book, chap. 9: “Cosmic Destruction at Christ’s Return?”).

On the other hand, Wright’s claim that language of cosmic destruction does not intend the ending of the space-time cosmos makes an entirely different point, namely that God intends to redeem and renew the cosmos instead of destroying it and taking us to “heaven.” (I’m fully on board here.)

Wright actually made a concerted attempt to clarify his eschatological position as far back as 1999.

In The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1999), Wright explained that he was not denying a future cosmic coming of Christ: “Let me say this as clearly as I can (since I have often been misunderstood on this point)” (p. 117).

Although Wright indeed thinks that Jesus’ teaching in the Olivet discourse addresses immediate future judgment, and not the literal end of the world, he acknowledges that Jesus also anticipated a final cosmic redemption (for example, his mention in Matthew 19:28 of the coming “regeneration” or renewal of the world). Thus Wright states: “The belief that the creator God will at the last recreate the whole cosmos and that Jesus will be at the center of that new world is firmly and deeply rooted in the New Testament” (The Challenge of Jesus, p. 117).

This explains why Adams is confused by Wright’s interpretation of passages like Hebrews 12:26-27 and 2 Peter 3:5-13. Adams thinks that Wright is inconsistent to see these texts as referring to genuinely “cosmic change,” given his take on Wright’s “general claim” about New Testament eschatology (pp. 15-16). Adam’s perplexity surfaces especially in reference to Hebrews 12, when he twice mentions the interpretation “we might have expected” Wright to have (pp. 192–93).

The long and short of it is that Wright’s view of the local referents of the Olivet discourse should not be generalized into his overall eschatological position. Whether or not he himself would call it the “Second Coming,” Tom Wright clearly does believe in a future cosmic renewal of all things.

I’d call that the Second Coming.

Was Abraham’s Attempt to Sacrifice Isaac a Faithful Response to God?

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In my last post I mentioned that I had just attended the 2014 Congress of Humanities and Social Sciences, at Brock University, in St. Catharines, ON, Canada.

One of the academic societies I participated in was the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies, where I presented a paper on Genesis 22, known in Jewish tradition as the Aqedah or “binding” of Isaac (Abraham “bound” [‘aqad] Isaac and placed him on the altar; Gen 22:9). I titled my paper (somewhat ironically): “Unbinding the Aqedah from the Straightjacket of Tradition.”

The gist of my paper was that contrary to traditional readings in both Judaism and Christianity, we should not understand Abraham’s response as a paradigm of virtue. Rather, I argued that Abraham’s response of blind obedience to the command to sacrifice his son was sub-par. It was better than outright disobedience. But a truly faithful response would have been to follow the example of the lament psalms (and Job) by questioning God, even protesting that this command wasn’t right.

Central to my argument was the fact that Abraham had previously (in Gen 18) protested the possibility that God might destroy Sodom, despite the fact that there were righteous/innocent people living there (the Hebrew word tsadîq can mean either). Whereas Abraham’s motive for that protest was the fact that his nephew Lot and his family were living in Sodom, it is strange that when God tells him to offer up his own son as a burnt offering, Abraham’s silence is deafening. He says nothing whatsoever (he certainly does not protest the death of this innocent victim), but blindly moves to obey—and has to be stopped in the act by an angel calling from heaven: “Abraham, Abraham! . . . don’t do anything to the boy!”

It is also significant that the text reports that Abraham returned to his servants and that they went off together, but that Isaac is not mentioned at the end of the story (Gen 22:19). Also significant is that Isaac is then reported as living in a different geographical location from Abraham (and Sarah is living elsewhere, by the way), and father and son never again see each other. This is why the subtitle of my paper was: “How Abraham Lost His Son.”

In the end, I argue that the test (“God tested Abraham”; Gen 22:1) was not whether Abraham would obey. Rather, what was being tested was Abraham’s discernment of the character of God. Was this a God of mercy or a deity just like one of the other ancient Near Eastern gods who required child sacrifice?

Well, there’s a lot more to be said (and the paper says more, and even recognizes the arguments against this interpretation). But this should give you the gist of what I presented. I am presently expanding the paper and preparing it for publication.

What’s your response to this interpretation of Genesis 22? Do you find it jarring? Or does it resonate with you? Why?