But I’m especially in agreement with Wright on “He is right to see that Paul’s gospel is steeped in “single-plan-through-Israel-for-the-world” theology.”

But not in the terms of Dispensational Premillennialism.

Glad you found the page, and thanks for commenting!

I think you’re right–evangelicals have previously tended to divorce Paul’s epistolary work from the Gospels in such a way that it damages the unity and metanarrative of God’s work in reconciling all things to himself. This is unfortunate because the most explicit statement of this comes from Paul (Col 1:19-20). At the same time, this doesn’t detract from the occasionalness of the letters either. Both must be understood, and worked out in tension.

Part of the problem, I wonder, is the rejection of any metanarrative at all by evangelicals in the past. The Bible was treated often as a “plan A” then “plan B,” instead of seeing both covenants as “the one plan.” Of course, this became their metanarrative, the two plans of God in reconciling the world.

I stumbled upon your blog through the SBC voices page. I thought it might be of some use to bring up a driving factor in Wright’s theology, that of metanarrative. Wright approaches every text with a metanarrative in mind, which fact isn’t unique to him alone seeing that everyone approaches the Bible with a governing storyline; but Wright’s metanarrative and the way he applies it in exegesis is different from what evangelicals are accustomed to. I wonder if the main point of contention that people have with Wright stems primarily from both his different (novel?) metanarrative and the rigorous manner with which he applies it. For example, Wright’s metanarrative consists of a mixture of two things: his understanding of first century Judaism (via Sanders) and his concern to bring in the story of Israel (his understanding of the Old Testament). It is ironic that Wright has received much acclaim from evangelicals about his first three volumes in Christian Origins and the Question of God, where he applies this rigorous metanarrative to the gospels (all narrative), but he has been criticized rather sternly for applying it to Paul’s epistles. Could it be that it is more difficult for people to see a metanarrative at work in epistulary literature than in narratives? I for one have problems with Wright’s treatment of ‘righteousness’–that he nowhere gives a full dress word study (he merely refers the reader to his other works, which also lack a full word study). Yet his metanarrative, to me, seems right on. These are just thoughts that I think are worth exploring.