N T Wright and Israel

June 15, 2014
by James Jacob Prasch

I recently listened to Nigel Wrights Address on Israel in Pauline Theology delivered to Houston Baptist University. Unfortunately but  predictably, Some of his assertions were eisegetical and presuppositionally predicated on the standard Reformed replacementist narrative even though his eloquence allowed him to construct his case as if it weren’t.

His treatment of Romans 9-11 was selective, not comprehensive ignoring such essentials as Romans 9:4 re Jeremiah 31:31 (New Covenant made with Israel & Jews) and avoiding the illustration of in-grafting.

His mishandling of Romans 2 however was a pseudo exegetical hatchet job juxtaposing Christians against unbelieving Jews while the context juxtaposes believing Jews specifically in contrast to Jewish rejecters of Christ.

The license he issued himself to automatically define “The Israel of God’ from Galatians as the church without contextual and real exegetical support was just bad scholarship. He also ignored the eschatological material of Paul concerning Israel in 2 Thessalonians because it doesn’t fit his narrative.

Among his techniques are the conventional strategy to assert truisms all conservative Evangelicals would agree on such as Paul contending for the supremacy of Christ etc. as if taking into account any further prophetic meaning of the texts he cites concerning Israel are nullified by it where he misrepresents two simultaneous truths as mutually exclusive. He is good at rhetoric but not at exegesis.

I am therefore grateful to Leeds Messianic Fellowship for the following responsive article to N.T. Wright concerning his erroneous position on Israel.

http://lmf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/NT-Wright-and-the-Jewish-People.pdf