The primary reason I am pursuing my PhD in New Testament here at the University of St Andrews is because of the supervisor assigned to me. Depending on who you ask within evangelicalism, he is considered to be anything from the single greatest New Testament scholar in the world today to a heretical academic with the capacity to lead the Church theologically astray. Whatever one thinks about him, no one denies his brilliance, his capacity to communicate to the masses on all levels, or his mastery of the New Testament and it’s first-century world. Personally, I highly recommend anything ever written by the man, if for no other reason than to experience the cadence of his writing style and the sheer enjoyment that comes with reading the work of a truly gifted scholarly writer.
In coming days I hope to get more recommendations of his work up here for you to utilize. For now though, I want to share a link to his recent Inaugural Address as Research Professor of New Testament at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. It was a fabulous lecture delivered to a crowd of people in an auditorium packed so full there was little room even for standing. And for good reason.
The lecture is titled: “Imagining the Kingdom: Mission and Theology in Early Christianity.” I won’t summarize it for you here, but will simply admonish you to spend a few minutes of your day reading it. If you are at all interested in the Bible, how the church historically has approached the Bible or how our culture affects how we interpret the Bible today, particularly the Gospels and the teachings of Jesus, in this case the kingdom of God, then I recommend this lecture to you.
Click here for the lecture.
Thanks very much for sharing Prof. Wright's address. I've been sharing Wright things with my group ...G(rumpy) E(lderly) M(en). We've been thinking about Both/And Theology, and the Inaugural lecture fits right in. It was very interesting to read his using the right/left brain science so helpfully. Tell him thanks from GEMS! I wish that the Blog that I created for the group looked half as wonderful as yours ... but I suppose that if it serves its conversational/discussion purpose, that is the most important purpose.
ReplyDeleteThanks again. It sounds like you've really moved back in to the scholar's life>