A new goal of mine is to read a greater volume of theology. I have been dabbling in the books listed on the sidebar of this blog, but have yet to make it all of the way through them. As a result of my new resolution, I think that it will be most helpful to not only read, but to share what strikes me and to interact with the material when necessary.
I would like to begin with a series of quotes and comments from N.T. Wright’s book: The Last Word.
In the first chapter, Wright begins with descriptions of five areas that influence how we view scripture: culture, politics, theology, philosophy, and ethics (6). Though he admits this list is not exhaustive, it is a good place to begin. And so we start with culture.
"Late modernity has tried to tried to squeeze more and more areas of human discourse into the first type of ‘truth,’ making a ‘fact’ out of everything and thereby grying to put everything into the kind of box which can be weighed, measured and verified as if it were an experiment in the hard sciences . . . Now postmodernity has pushed us in the other direction: toward supposing that all ‘truth,’ including the supposed ‘facts’ of scientific experiment, can be reduced to power-claims . . . All statements about ‘the way things are’ turn into variations on ‘the way I see them,’ or even ‘the way it suits me to see them.’" (page 
"For what I hope is a way through this entire mess and muddle and forward into a way of living in and for God’s world, and within the community of God’s people, with Christian and biblical integrity." (page 10)
I find it helpful to know that Wright is aware of the cultural complexities of our day, but will not firmly plant himself in favor of one camp or the other. A third option may be refreshing for the church.
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