One In Jesus

N. T. “Tom” Wright has just released another paradigm-shifting book suggesting a new, more scriptural way of understanding the atonement, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion. Wright delves deeply into how the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus accomplishes our salvation.

Covenant and Temple

Adam and Eve worshiped God in the temple of the Cosmos — Creation.

Abraham had no physical temple. He built altars as he felt the need to worship God.

Moses built the tabernacle as the place for God to be worshiped and for sacrifice to be made. After the tabernacle was built, we no longer read of sacrifices being made to God apart from the tabernacle or Temple. God insisted that he be worshiped in this one, special location. Continue reading →

N. T. “Tom” Wright has just released another paradigm-shifting book suggesting a new, more scriptural way of understanding the atonement, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion. Wright delves deeply into how the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus accomplishes our salvation.

Image of God

A theme that appears several times in the NT is the idea that Jesus is the “image” of God the Father, and that Christians are being transformed by the Spirit into the “image” of Jesus.

(Rom. 8:29 ESV)  29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 

(2 Cor. 3:17-18 ESV)  17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.  18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

(Col. 1:15 ESV)  15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

In Gen 1:26-28, God declares that he’ll create man (male and female) in his own image and likeness, and he gives mankind dominion over the Creation. In an ANE temple, the god to worshipped is represented in the temple by a statue or “image” — which is installed as the next to last step. The final step is for the god to “rest” in the temple (Psa 132:8, 14). Continue reading →

N. T. “Tom” Wright has just released another paradigm-shifting book suggesting a new, more scriptural way of understanding the atonement, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion. Wright delves deeply into how the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus accomplish our salvation.

The land becomes the entire earth

Over time, the OT Prophets interpreted God’s promise to Abraham to bless the nations as expanding the inheritance to include the entire planet. After all, if all the nations would be blessed through Abraham, and if this inheritance included land, that inheritance would have to be the entire earth.

Thus, by the time of Jesus, Jesus could say, “The meek shall inherit the earth,” and be entirely consistent with the Second Temple understanding of Torah and inheritance. His audience knew exactly what he was talking about. Continue reading →

N. T. “Tom” Wright has just released another paradigm-shifting book suggesting a new, more scriptural way of understanding the atonement, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion. Wright delves deeply into how the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus accomplishes our salvation.

Inheritance

The Torah often speaks of the “inheritance” that the Israelites would receive, being the Promised Land. In English, “inheritance” is what you inherit from someone who dies. In this case, “inheritance” refers to a gift from God to the Israelites. When the Promised Land was conquered, the land was divided among tribes, clans, and families, so that each family received its own plot of land to cultivate and become self-sufficient.

More especially, for a people who were once enslaved, they now would own a piece of real estate that their children could inherit. They could be self-sufficient financially and improve their holdings to benefit their children — at last!

The land/inheritance was so important that the Torah required land that was sold or foreclosed to be returned to the original family every 50th year (the Jubilee) — guaranteeing all Israelites an inheritance so long as they lived in the Promised Land. Continue reading →

N. T. “Tom” Wright has just released another paradigm-shifting book suggesting a new, more scriptural way of understanding the atonement, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion. Wright delves deeply into how the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus accomplishes our salvation.

Heaven

The Bible uses “heaven” to refer to the sky as well as to where God lives — but these weren’t considered the same thing.

The point of the Temple—this is where I want to develop considerably further what was said in the earlier volumes—is that it was where heaven and earth met. It was the place where Israel’s God, YHWH, had long ago promised to put his name, to make his glory present. The Temple, and before it the wilderness tabernacle, were thus heirs, within the biblical narrative, to moments like Jacob’s vision, the discovery that a particular spot on earth could intersect with, and be the gateway into, heaven itself. In the later period, even synagogues could sometimes be thought of as meeting places between heaven and earth; how much more the actual Temple.

The Temple was not simply a convenient place to meet for worship. It was not even just the ‘single sanctuary’, the one and only place where sacrifice was to be offered in worship to the one God. It was the place above all where the twin halves of the good creation intersected. Continue reading →

N. T. “Tom” Wright has just released another paradigm-shifting book suggesting a new, more scriptural way of understanding the atonement, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion. Wright delves deeply into how the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus accomplishes our salvation.

One of the challenges Wright had to confront in writing the book, and one of the challenges of blogging through the book, is that the book builds on conclusions taught more thoroughly in earlier books. For those of us who’ve been reading Wright for years and who are familiar with the earlier materials, this is no problem, but for a novice student of Wright, it’s asking a lot to catch up in a single reading.

Rather than interrupting the argument to explain materials taught in earlier works, I thought it might be helpful to explain several key concepts at the beginning.

So consider this as something of an introduction to Wright’s theology — although I’m not going to attempt to cover it all. I’m going to stick to concepts and teachings that come up in the book

The Second Temple period

Scholars often speak of this or that happening during the “Second Temple period.” The first Temple, of course, is the one built by Solomon, which was destroyed by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar. The Second Temple is the Temple built by Nehemiah when many Jews returned to Jerusalem under Persian rule. This Temple was later rebuilt by Herod the Great under Roman rule. Hence, the Second Temple period is from about 515 BC to 70 AD, when the Second Temple was destroyed by the Roman army under Titus. Continue reading →

N. T. “Tom” Wright has just released another paradigm-shifting book suggesting a new, more scriptural way of understanding the atonement, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion. Wright delves deeply into how the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus accomplishes our salvation.

Wright’s book is densely filled with insights about how to understand countless scriptures — so much so that I find it it a bit overwhelming, although I read the book while ill, largely in the waiting rooms of doctors’ offices — and so maybe my view is a bit skewed.

This series of posts is partly review, partly summary, and mainly my own ruminations as I try to fit Wright’s theories into what I already know on the subject.

Moreover, Wright’s book assumes that the reader is at least somewhat familiar with previous books by Wright — which is not necessarily the case. Therefore, these posts also serve as something of an introduction, providing background material not necessarily in The Day the Revolution Began but from earlier Wright books or other sources. Continue reading →