I was thinking today about the recent exchanges between NT Wright and Richard Hays. The first round of the debate was when Wright at SBL Boston gave an unexpectedly negative review of the collection of essays that Hays edited on Jesus: Seeking the Identity of Jesus: A Pilgrimage. Hays’ rejoinder to this came at the Wheaton Theology Conference back in April. Both have argued for the importance of story and narrative, so I think there was an expectation previously that they were in basic agreement about its role. In simple terms, Wright is arguing for ‘story’, but he is particularly concerned with history. On the other hand, Hays is concerned that this creates almost a 5th gospel, so he is thus more concerned with the narrative of each of the 4 Gospels, reading them through the lens provided by the narrators, which generally accords with later church perspectives on the text. Mike Gorman puts it up to the age-old question of the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith debate.
I was considering this issue this afternoon and the question struck me: is this a debate of competing mindsets, post-conservative (Wright) vs post-liberal (Hays)?
I suppose this is speculative, but I wonder if it has legs. I’m not sure Wright would identify himself as ‘post-conservative’, but he is a member of Fulcrum, which self-identifies as ‘open evangelical’. Based upon Peter Broadbent’s Towards a definition of “Open Evangelical” (search down in the comments), the English Anglican term ‘Open Evangelical’ seems to roughly line up with ‘post-conservative’ in the US. There seems to be a more calvinist stream of post-conservatives represented by Kevin Vanhoozer and a more arminian stream represented by Roger Olsen, but many of the core values are similar if debates about particular aspects remain. I assume that Wright would be more on the Vanhoozer side. Hays, on the other hand, with his emphasis on narrative theology is clearly influenced by the Yale-school and ‘postliberalism’, although with his own emphases.
While there seems to be a real rapport between post-conservatives and post-liberals, is there still an epistemological divide between Wright’s critical-realism and Hays’ narrative theology, which is representative of their respective traditions? Based on the recent exchange between Wright and Hays, this divide does exist, but is it representative of larger schools of thought? Clearly this larger question depends on whether post-conservatives would mostly hold to an epistemology like Wright’s. Is this the case?
Friday, 11 June 2010 at 6:37 pm
I loved Hays’ critique of Wright’s work at the Wheaton conference. Especially the introduction! The dialogue at that conference really impressed me in general. Hey Ben, what do you think of Wright’s idea he espoused during his closing message of the conference: wherein he said that there needs to be more people who pursue PhD work that have a big picture perspective on theology? My Myers-Briges type is ENTP and Wright really encouraged me with his statements. It seems as if many people who enter into PhD work are very detail orientated, to the point that they miss the big picture of what is going on in in the theological narrative surrounding scripture (specifically Paul’s worldview context). Any thoughts?
Josh Carroll
http://www.submissionalliving.wordpress.com
Friday, 11 June 2010 at 11:48 pm
I am really drawn to big picture questions. In a lot of ways my thesis was a soteriological comparison between three thinkers, but when I did that I also had to be aware of competing soteriological structures competing for attention. Based on my experience and others, particularly those doing stuff that is more interdisciplinary, I think it can be difficult to do a big picture PhD. In some ways I feel like I bit off more than I could chew because the larger the scope of the project, the more issues need to be addressed and the secondary literature seems to grow exponentially. For junior scholars it can be difficult to climb this mountain and get a good feel for the lay of the land regarding the problem we’re addressing. The task of honing the skills of specific attention to one area is essential to the PhD process, and larger projects can lead to a minimization of details to build a larger structure.
Don’t take this as just the boo-birds coming out. I’m really glad I did a bigger picture project, but I think it is helpful to understand the types of problems you would be facing. I have friends who did much more focused and specific studies. Their projects had their own troubles, but at least one confessed that he thought it was easier because it was more manageable. But in the end, taking a smaller question that has been rehashed before just seems like slicing the bologna too thin. Let’s move on to new pastures and think about broader issues.
Saturday, 12 June 2010 at 12:26 am
Ben,
This is an interesting distinction to me. For some time I thought that these two camps were moving towards a similar ‘common ground’ but from different traditions or perspectives. However, when you described these two scholars, it seems like they have two different starting points.
I wonder if you could say more about what you see as their points of difference? Right now, I can’t see much fruit in trying to distinguish one camp from the other.
Any help would be appreciated!
Josh
Friday, 25 June 2010 at 10:09 am
[…] Ben under Conferences Leave a Comment Thinking about the epistemological differences between post-conservatives and post-liberals, the current stir caused by Ron Hendel (with the response by SBL) seems to me to be the clash […]