The irony is that there is one oasis in the desert...and he's an Anglican!
I refer to NT Wright. As a person passionately in love with history, I've always found an obstacle to faith in the impression that any close historical scrutiny will "of course" reveal that the teachings of the Church are built on sand.
But Wright is as good a historian as any I've encountered, and his Jesus is quite compatable with orthodoxy (though sometimes provocatively different than what we usually imagine). I recommend his book Jesus and the Victory of God especially. (And it's also good for his scrutiny and criticism of many other biblical scholars. He is always respectful and courteous, but he makes them look a lot smaller and less convincing.
I second that! Wright is wonderful. But he is a full-brain aerobic workout. I could only read about 20 pages of The Resurrection of the Son of God before I had to stop from mental fatigue. This is not milk to sip on the subway, but meat to chew while sitting at a table with a notebook a pen handy nearby.
Naomi,
You are sure right about the difficulty of reading Resurrection. But the long journey seems worth while when you see Campostella rising on the horizon...
(And if you are faltering, you might skip ahead to page 713.)
I just finally bought Resurrection of the Son of God.
IT IS SO COOOOOOOOL!
The foreword is fun enough, with all the criticism of criticism. (Bring a pen to write down all the quoteable quotes.)
But then we get onto all the fun stuff: what the Romans and Greeks thought about the dead (with some "misleading" scholars disposed of along the way); what the Jews thought and why, and when those thoughts changed -- and it just gets more and more interesting!!!
So don't be afraid. Past the foreword, it's not hard going at all.
BTW, why isn't anybody writing historical romance between Paul and Gamaliel II's daughter? Sounds like a fun place for plausible but totally made up speculation!
Maureen, who probably needs to calm down now....
Maureen, you make me happy...
I am so glad that I have all these skollers, with theyre book-learnin' to explain to me these diffacult konsepts, and all this time I wuz thinking that cumunion was the body and blood of Jesus when the that guy up on the alter sez those magic words. Now I see i wuz wrong and meybbe I should do the kubula that i see on tv.
In all seriousness, we need catachesis, starting in the parochial schools and the CCD's, so that a new generation can rise up to fill the void that will be left when these self-serving pseudointellectuals take their last breath and meet with God for a rigorous remedial theology course in Purgatory.
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