The New Testament and the People of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God Book 1)

by N.T. Wright

This all leads to a final word of warning. I frequently tell my students that quite a high proportion of what I say is probably wrong, or at least flawed or skewed in some way which I do not at the moment realize. The only problem is that I do not know which bits are wrong; if I did I might do something about it. The analogy with other areas of life is salutary: I make many mistakes in moral and practical matters, so why should I imagine my thinking to be mysteriously exempt? But, whereas if I hurt someone, or take a wrong turn in the road, I am usually confronted quite soon with my error, if I expound erratic views within the world of academic theology I am less likely to be convinced by contradiction. (The first person here, as sometimes in Paul, includes the generic.) We all have ways of coping with adverse comment without changing our minds; but, since I am aware of the virtual certainty of error in some of what I write, I hope I shall pay proper attention to the comments of those—and no doubt there will be many—who wish to draw my attention to the places where they find my statement of the evidence inadequate, my arguments weak, or my conclusions unwarranted. Serious debate and confrontation is the stuff of academic life, and I look forward, not of course without some trepidation, to more of it as a result of this project. Three small technical

Some still regard the New Testament as a sort of magic book, whose ‘meaning’ has little to do with what the first-century authors intended, and a lot to do with how some particular contemporary group has been accustomed to hear in it a call to a particular sort of spirituality or lifestyle.