#(the thing he said was about Catholicism being idolatrous which. looking back I THINK I know what he was getting at

[fortes-fortuna-iogurtum]

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#ugh I have got to work on my attitude WHY is it rearing up right now??? #I just cannot control my face lately #people say things that I disagree with and I just. react. and then I feel terrible about it. #:((( #I just wanna take a nap so badly #maybe if I finish my lab report first. maybe then I can allow it. *sigh* #(anyway for reference I sit in the front row of one of my classes and the professor today said something that I disagreed with and #I think I accidentally made a noise out loud and if he didn't hear/see it then the girl next to me definitely did. #and I feel extremely lame about it.) #(the thing he said was about Catholicism being idolatrous which. looking back I THINK I know what he was getting at #and it was not the way my brain took it #but I knee-jerk reacted and now I'm feeling bad about that.)

[kabane52]

Howdy, apparently enter sends something to you. Sorry about that. this a post on r/orthodoxchristianity mentioned you and said you know a good deal about NT Wright. His writings pushed me into Orthodoxy. I was wondering if I could spare your thoughts on what Orthodoxy can agree with Wright on and what they disagree with him on (obviously the Theotokos, but what else?)

Hey there. Thanks for the question. I’m going to copy and paste what I said on Reddit about Surprised by Hope and then add a note on Wright’s view of justification:

Wright's book "Surprised by Hope" opened up new vistas for me when I first read it back in 2012. I think in many ways it's quite congruent with Orthodox theology. So here's what I'd say:

1. The resurrection body is absolutely not just an aside in Orthodox theology. It is the heart and soul of our faith, and that's evident in our Paschal Liturgy- Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the Tombs bestowing life. The resurrection of the dead is the resurrection of the body. This is found throughout the Church Fathers: check out St. Athanasius' "On the Incarnation", for example.

2. For Orthodox Christians, the person is a tripartite unity: the spirit, the soul, and the body. Christ assumed the entirety of this tripartite nature and communicated life to every aspect of humanity through sharing in every aspect of humanity. Because suffering and death had been brought into the world through Adam, Christ shared in suffering and death. In sharing in these realities, He undid them. He communicated life to death and thereby turned death back, emerging from the Tomb in a glorified and transfigured body.

3. In our Christian life, the Spirit communicates the life of Christ to our spirits- it flows from the spirit to the soul and from the soul to the body. Some people criticize the Orthodox emphasis on the ascetic life as anti-body. It is exactly the opposite. The human person is ordered so that the soul is animated by the spirit and the body is animated by the soul. In living an ascetic life, one does not destroy the body but puts it in proper relation to the soul, which leads to its salvation. The glory of God which passes to us through the Holy Spirit animates the body.

4. This is precisely what St. Paul teaches us in the Letter to the Romans. In Romans 1:23, he tells us that humanity has "exchanged the glory of the immortal God for [idolatrous images]." Note the connection of glory and immortality. He tells us in Romans 2:6-8 that the righteous receive "glory, honor, and immortality" at the resurrection of the dead. In Romans 3:23, he tells us that "all have sinned and lack the glory of God" which is innertextually connected with Romans 5:12, where we are told that all die because all sin like Adam. Sin, which is fundamentally idolatry, means the forfeiture of the glory of God and the gradual disintegration of the human person. In Romans 6:7, Paul tells us that Christ was "raised by the glory of the Father", and all of this explains why in Romans 8, it is glory that is revealed "in us" at the resurrection of the dead.

It's interesting that the only two uses of the word "Image" in Romans are in Romans 1:23 and Romans 8:29. The former are idolatrous images, but the latter refers to the conformance of man to the "Image of [God's] Son"- a process which concludes with man being "glorified" in Romans 8:30. The incarnation and the communication of divine glory to those in Christ through the Spirit is the undoing of idolatry.

5. I think Wright's reaction against the implicit Gnosticism in some Western Christianity leads him to somewhat underemphasize the intermediate state. A good way to understand this is to look at Revelation 20. We are told in this passage of the millennium, which is the Church Age. At the beginning of the millennium, the Saints are seated around Christ in the heavenly council (this has a lot of relevance to the intercession of Saints in Scripture, as I explain here: http://kabane52.tumblr.com/post/129918380450/a-biblical-theology-of-the-invocation-of-saints ), and this is called the "first resurrection." The way to understand this is evident by contrasting it by what is called the "second death." The second death refers to the resurrection of the unrighteous- by implication, the "first resurrection" is the death of the righteous. As he often does, St. John explains in Revelation what Jesus meant in the Gospel of John- those who "live and believe in me shall never die." Why? Because the death of the Christian is itself the first resurrection!

6. Moses makes a distinction between two kinds of prophets in Numbers 11-12. I have explained elsewhere how a prophet in Scripture means someone who has the gift of the Spirit, so we are all prophets in this sense in the new covenant. The distinction is between those who have the Spirit but must discern his workings and those who have the Spirit and thereby behold God directly. This is the experience of those in Heaven (and a few on Earth, whom we call the Saints), and this is why a soul who goes to Heaven is exalted, and why it is considered very important in Orthodoxy.

7. Obviously, I think Wright is dead wrong in his critique of the intercession of Saints, and even of purgatory. Orthodox theology holds to an intermediate state of purification for some souls which is functionally equivalent to what contemporary Catholicism teaches about purgatory- though it is not equivalent with what some medieval Catholics taught about it.

Sorry for the length. I hope this is helpful.

Now, as for Wright’s view on justification. Wright’s view is that Jesus’ life was marked out by faith- pistis Christou is to be understood as the “faithfulness of the Messiah.” Thus, when one has faith, one is identified as “in Christ” and God imputes the death and resurrection of Jesus to one’s account, thereby accounting one as righteous. He bases this on Romans 6 where Paul’s audience is told to reckon themselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ. But this doesn’t say what Wright wants it to: it’s not God reckoning these things to believers, but believers reckoning these things to themselves precisely because God has wrought an ontological change in them through sharing in the death and resurrection of Christ. That’s important. Wright, while arguing for a Pauline doctrine of theosis, dismisses the idea that it is to be understood as the content of justification, arguing that the dikao word group is inherently forensic. While he is correct that justification is forensic, he misses the point. When God raised Jesus from the dead, He was justified- He had been declared guilty by the Jews and Romans, but God undid that verdict by glorifying His body. This is why Jesus is described as “justified by the Spirit” in 2 Timothy 3:16. In other words, Jesus was justified precisely in and through the transfiguration of His body by divine glory. Thus, for us to share in the faithfulness of the Messiah means to live by the pattern of His life and death, by the Holy Spirit- our justification takes place precisely as we are transfigured by the life of God, in Christ, by the Spirit.