"The Meanings of History: Event and Interpretation in the Bible and Theology" (N.T. Wright)

N.T. Wright, Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of St Andrews School of Divinity AAR & SBL Annual Meetings in Boston, Massachusetts November 19, 2017 Abstract: The word ‘history’, notoriously, has several significantly different meanings, not always tracked in relevant discussions. The word ‘meaning’ itself will vary according to which meaning of ‘history’ we choose. Discussion here has been hindered by several interlocking but systematically confusing debates: (1) the over-bright either/or of ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ in modern thought, with its tendency to reductionism on one side and Docetism on the other; (2) the sterile (and itself historically conditioned!) antithesis of pantheistic ‘progress’ and an irruptive ‘apocalyptic’, with its various spin-offs in biblical interpretation; (3) the multivalence of the term ‘historical-critical’, sometimes used to indicate the employment of history to undermine traditional Christian claims and sometimes in a supposedly more ‘neutral’ sense; (4) the question of biblical ‘authority’. A fresh appraisal of ‘history’ is required, seeing the term as (at least) a shorthand for various narratives concerning events, tasks, storytelling and symbol-making both within the biblical traditions themselves and within their reappropriation not only as faith-narratives in the church but also as proclamation, explanation and apologia in the wider world.