Tag Archives: Holistic worldview

God and Nature in Belize

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It’s the beginning of the school year at Northeastern Seminary, and I’m way behind in posting anything. A new school year is always characterized by a buzz of activity—getting syllabi ready, making sure course websites are up and running, attending faculty meetings, and getting to know new students. This year I’m also teaching three new courses, which makes for extra busyness. The result is that I’ve been too focused on school matters to do any blogging the last few weeks.

One of the new courses I’m teaching is in Belize, Central America. It is a week-long course called “God and Nature” and it starts tomorrow (I’m posting this Sunday evening Belize time, which is two hours earlier by the clock than Rochester, where I usually post from).

The course is part of the Creation Care Study Program (CCSP), and I will be teaching one of two weeks on the topic of “God and Nature” for Christian students in a semester abroad program in tropical ecology. The other week will be taught later in the semester by Steven Bouma-Prediger of Hope College. Both “God and Nature” courses provide a biblical and theological foundation for the more practical courses students take in forest, stream, and field ecology, plus internships where they get to apply what they are learning.

The students have so far had an orientation week, followed by a week of stream ecology. Here’s a crazy video montage of this year’s orientation, which shows something of what Belize is like. Starting tomorrow (Monday) the students begin digging into Scripture and reflecting on the implications of the biblical worldview for their studies.

I’ve been in Belize now for two days. I flew into Belize City yesterday and we drove two hours to the town of Santa Elena, where the program is located. It is a beautiful environment (though very humid; so I have to get used to changing my shirts often). I’ve already seen one iguana by the side of the driveway and one snake across my path.

I’ve been told I have to watch out for what the locals call the Tommy Goff (Fer-de-Lance) and Coral Snakes (both poisonous) when I’m walking in the forest. Belize has the largest population of wild jaguars in Central America, but I doubt I will see any, given I’d have to go far afield and most of my time will be taken up with teaching.

I never did get to see any jaguars or Fer-de-Lance, but I have posted a fuller report on my Belize trip.

What’s Dualism Got to Do with It? The Tom Wright Connection, Part 4

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This is part 4 of a four-part post on my connections to N. T. Wright, the prolific New Testament scholar. For part 1, click here. For part 2, click here. For part 3, click here.

What’s Dualism Got to Do with It?

Although I’ve mentioned various two-way influences between Wright and Walsh-Middleton, the connection goes even deeper, and it begins back in 1983. This was when Wright was working on his first book, a commentary on Colossians and Philemon for the Tyndale series (published in 1988).

Wright was writing the Colossians material when Brian Walsh first got to know him at McGill. Based on their friendship, the two would meet regularly to discuss what Wright had written, and Brian would give feedback and critique.

As Brian tells it, he kept challenging the sacred/secular dualism with which Wright was reading Colossians. Wright kept separating salvation in Christ from life in the mundane realm (including the political realm). But according to Colossians 1:15-20, the same Christ through whom all things were created, and in whom all things hang together, is the one whom all things are reconciled. The creator and redeemer are one.

So Walsh and Wright did regular Bible study in Colossians together during the time when Walsh and I were completing our work on The Transforming Vision. And our critique of otherworldly dualism and our framing of salvation as God’s redemption of earthly life managed to impact Wright’s reading of Colossians.

Wright’s own account of how he came to shift from a dualistic worldview to a holistic vision is recounted in his autobiographical essay “My Pilgrimage in Theology,” Themelios, 18/2 (January 1993): 35. There Wright states:

In 1983 I started work on my Colossians commentary. By the time I finished it in 1985 I had undergone probably the most significant change of my theological life. Until then I had been basically, a dualist. The gospel belonged in one sphere, the world of creation and politics in another. Wrestling with Colossians 1:15-20 put paid to that. I am still working through the implications (and the resultant hostility in some quarters): my book New Tasks for a Renewed Church is a recent marker on this route.

Although this article doesn’t mention Brian’s role in the shift, Wright thanks Brian for his contribution at the start of the Tyndale commentary (p. 11).

Now, I’m not going to claim that Tom Wright got his emphasis on the redemption of creation from Walsh and Middleton in any simple or direct sense. But it looks like our early work on worldviews, dualism, and holistic salvation served as a catalyst for Wright at a formative phase of his theological development. At the very least, our work enabled Wright to see what was staring him in the face all along in the text of Colossians.

I started this four-part post with a comment about the similarity between Tom Wright and myself on the eschatological redemption of creation, a point that many have noted. I’ve tried to explain how that similarity may have come about. It is gratifying to think that the early work Brian Walsh and I did on holistic salvation may have made some small contribution to the development of Tom Wright’s powerful and illuminating eschatological vision.

In another post I explore ways in which I’m not quite on board with all of Tom Wright’s eschatology.

You can read about my 2017 visit with Tom Wright at St. Andrews in Scotland here.

My Introduction to Tom Wright: The Tom Wright Connection, Part 2

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This is part 2 of a four-part post on my connections to N. T. Wright, the prolific New Testament scholar. For part 1, click here.

My Introduction to Tom Wright

I first encountered Tom Wright when he was teaching New Testament at McGill University in Montreal (1981-1986) and I sat under his teaching soon after he moved to Oxford.

I was introduced to Wright by Brian Walsh, my friend and co-author. Brian was a Ph.D. student in philosophy of religion at McGill when Wright taught there, and they became fast friends. Brian later married one of Wright’s doctoral students at Oxford, Sylvia Keesmaat, who is today an accomplished New Testament scholar.

It was through Brian’s friendship with Wright that the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto (where Brian was teaching and where I later did my Ph.D.) invited Wright to give a series of lectures in 1988 and again in 1989. The first was a five-part series on the Gospel of Mark (July 7-8, 1988), and the second was a three-part series entitled “The Quest for the Historical Kingdom” (January 31-February 1, 1989).

These lectures (which predated the 1992 publication of The New Testament and the People of God) were my first exposure to Wright’s innovative thinking on the gospels. These lectures stimulated my excitement about Jesus’ mission and message, especially their connection to the Old Testament and Judaism. I still have audio tapes of the lectures, as well as my copious notes. Wright’s narrative analysis of the Bible during these lectures greatly influenced my own exposition of the plot structure of the biblical story, which first shows up in chap. 6 of Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be (1995), then in my essay “A New Heaven and a New Earth” (2006), and as a separate chapter in my eschatology book (2014).

I followed Wright’s publications and career as he later moved from Oxford (1986-1993) to become Dean of Lichfield Cathedral (1994-1999), then Canon Theologian of Westminster Abbey (2000-2003), then Bishop of Durham (2003-2010), then Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at St. Mary’s College, University of St. Andrews (2010-2019) and finally Senior Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, University of Oxford (since 2019).

Wright is now a figure of international importance, both as one of the leading New Testament scholars today and as popular theologian and teacher of the worldwide church. A recent issue of Christianity Today, which has Wright’s picture on the cover, suggests that he is comparable only to C. S. Lewis in the extent of his influence.

In part 3 of this post I’ll comment on a few ways in which Wright has used and acknowledged of the work of Walsh and Middleton.