[asa] Fwd: Is NT Wright a YEC?

I love NT Wright and have read lots of his stuff. I just picked up his new
book "Evil and the Justice of God." I only skimmed it really briefly, but
since it's a theodicy, I was curious to see what he'd say about death. He
notes that death and the curse on the ground are the result of the fall, but
says *"Death, which we may rightly see as a natural and harmless feature of
the original landscape, now assumes the unwelcome guies of the executioner,
coming grimly to prevnt the poison [of sin] from spreading too far. God's
anxiety that Adam might now take the fruit from the tree of life, and eat,
and live forever in his fallne state (Gen. 3:22) leads to God's equal
anxiety that arrogant humankind would be able to plot ever greater folly
(Gen. 11:6). Judgment in the present time is a matter of stopoing evil in
its tracks before it gets too far." * (p. 52)

Later, when discussing the new creation, Wright says *"Death -- the
corruption and decay of the good creation and of humans who bear God's image
- is the ultimate blasphemy, the great intruder, the final satanic weapon,
and it will itself be defeated. . . . the truly remarkable thing Paul is
talking about here is an incorruptible, unkillable physical world. New
creation is what matters, a new kind of world with a new kind of
physicality, which will not need to decay and die, which will not be subject
to seasons and the apparently (to us) endless sequence of deaths and births
within the natural order. . . . Creation, writes Paul, has been subjected to
futility (Romans 8:20). Don't we know it: the tree reaches its full
fruitfulness and then becomes bleak and bare. Summer reaches its height and
at once the days start to shorten. Human lives, full of promise and beauty,
laughter and love, are cut short by illness and death. Creation bears
witness to God's power and glory (Romans 1:19-20) but also to the present
state of futility to which it has been enslaved." *
**
This discusion seems curious to me coming from Wright. In a way, I expect
something more nuanced from Wright. The idea that something like the
seasons and the hibernation cycles of trees somehow reflects creation's
futility seems strange. Maybe it is that I haven't really read the book
yet, or maybe it's that this is a short popular book and not a scholarly
one. Anyway, I'm curious to hear from anyone who knows Wright or his work
better than I do if he's written or spoken in some deeper way about how this
question of death and the new creation relate to the doctrine of creation
and to natural history.

Also, a semi-related question: I like Alister McGrath alot too. A thing
for Brits I guess. Has McGrath written a theodicy?

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Received on Thu Apr 12 09:12:23 2007