In chapter one of his book, The Challenge of Jesus:  Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is, written for a lay audience, N.T. Wright enumerates four reasons for the need to continue to wrestle with the historical question of Jesus.  His second reason for engaging in historical study of Jesus is, as he says, “out of loyalty to Scripture” (p. 17).  Wright then notes that ironically to some (theological) liberals as well as conservatives, such a reason seems out of place.  For some, whom I would call “extreme” liberal scholars, Scripture has no authoritative role, and in no way presents us with a Jesus who performed miracles and called individuals to die to self and live for God.  Thus, for these scholars, Wright’s desire to be loyal to Scripture seems archaic and even absurd.  However, Wright also points out that the conservative response to the extreme liberal position on these issues is equally misguided, and I would add arrogant and short-sighted.  As Wright explains,

The proper answer to that [extreme liberal] approach is not simply to reassert that because we believe in the Bible we do not need to ask fresh questions about Jesus.  As with God so with the Bible; just because our tradition tells us that the Bible says and means one thing or another, that does not excuse us from the challenging task of studying it afresh in the light of the best knowledge we have about its world and context, to see whether these things are indeed so.  For me the dynamic of a commitment to Scripture is not “we believe the Bible, so there is nothing more to be learned” [hence, the arrogance mentioned above], but rather “we believe the Bible, so we had better discover all the things in it to which our traditions … , which have supposed themselves to be “biblical” but are sometimes demonstrably not, have made us blind (p. 17).

Personally, I find Wright’s balanced approach quite refreshing.  He is one of the few cutting-edge biblical scholars who is able to stand firmly for and articulate well an orthodox Christian position all the while genuinely appreciating the scholarly contributions of those with whom he disagrees (whether extreme liberal or ultra conservative scholars).  Moreover, Wright is willing and able to criticize those within his own camp for their complacency, arrogance and reactionary posture.  Though it was of course necessary for orthodox Christians to speak out against the modernist, reductionist portrayal of Jesus as just one of many “failed Jewish revolutionaries” and a man really no different from other radical religious types, we must also be aware of tendencies in the opposite direction, tendencies which in effect negate Jesus’s genuine humanity and which portray Him as a kind of “demigod, not really human at all, striding through the world as a divine, heroic figure, untroubled by human questions … aware of himself as someone outside the whole system, telling people how they might escape the wicked world and live forever in a different realm altogether” (p. 24).  Wright continues by pointing out that large segments falling within the orthodox camp (evangelicals and conservatives across denominational boundaries) have embraced this demigod, superhero version of Jesus, have undervalued and given little attention to the created order (which is seen as a kind of a sinking ship that must be abandoned anyway so why care for it now), and have paid little attention to the humanity of the Scriptures (a clear reactionary stance to the errors of extreme liberalism).  Paradoxically, both liberal and conservative extremes continue to instantiate Enlightenment-inspired dualisms, refusing to allow the tensions of human-and-divine (not human or divine) to coexist.  At the risk of employing a somewhat hackneyed and over-applied phrase, I find Wright’s closing words “prophetic” and hope that God will give us ears to hear.  “Woe betide us if, in our commitment to winning yesterday’s battles against reductionist versions of Christianity, we fail to engage in tomorrow’s, which might be quite different” (p. 25).  If Christianity hopes to make an impact, for example, on the universities to which we are sending our children, we’d better follow Wright’s example and support those within the Church who are called to the hard, rigorous, spiritually challenging work of academic study. Otherwise, we have no right to complain about those “liberal” ideas being taught to our young people.  Likewise, perhaps we ought to expect to learn a thing or two from those with whom we vehemently disagree and be prepared to modify and expand our own position given that the “subject matter,” viz., Jesus, cannot be exhausted.