Peter Carrell responds to Paul Holloway on N. T. Wright

3. The phrase ‘trusts his work’ implies some body of sound research which one may trust without further examination. But that kind of research is not Wright’s mode of scholarship. That kind of research is (say) about here are some ancient papyri and here is my translation of them, or here are the results of my archaeological dig in the middle of the desert and from the kinds of pottery shards and coins present I propose the following conclusions. What Wright (mostly) does is take an overview of the scholarship of the NT, as well as digging deeply as an exegete into the detail of the text, and make proposals about some feature or another. Neither a papyrist nor a shardist is he. Thus his books argue for this about the resurrection and that about justification. He does not ask anyone to trust his work but to examine (critically!) his arguments. Actually, plenty of critics do examine his arguments. Some find them wanting, some find them mostly persuasive, few (in my experience) completely agree with him which is, er, what happens in, er, critical scholarship. The previous sentence applies to other giants of biblical scholarship such as Bultmann, Brueggeman, Childs and Dunn.

4. It is very surprising that Holloway misses the point of Wright’s role in NT scholarship which is to generate fresh discussion of familiar texts. Wright’s singular achievement is to make us think again – critically! – about what we read in the NT. Looking at Holloway’s professional career I don’t think that is going to be said about him! His output is of a different kind, and that is fine. But fifty year’s from now students will still be examining Wright’s writings for their doctoral theses and Holloway’s works – like most NT scholars that ever lived – will be in a dusty corner of the library.

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