Anglican Mainstream

Bishop Tom Wright has commented on the Easter debate on Penal Substitution sparked by Dean Jeffrey John and the publication of Pierced for Our Transgressions by Dr Mike Ovey and others. Rev John Richardson comments.

Bishop Tom Wright: On Jeffrey John: To throw away the reality because you don’t like the caricature is like cutting out the patient’s heart to stop a nosebleed.

On Pierced for our Transgressions: I have this unhappy sense that a large swathe of contemporary evangelicalism has (accidentally and unintentionally, of course) stopped its ears to the Bible, and hence to the God of the Bible, and is determinedly pursuing a course dictated by evangelical tradition rather than by scripture itself. And then they are surprised that those who do not fall within that tradition cannot hear what they are saying – and sometimes denounce them as unbelievers.

[Read Tom Wright here->http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/news/2007/20070423wright.cfm?doc=205]

Rev John Richardson: Wright must understand that you cannot launch a swingeing attack on Conservative Evangelicals (calling their work, amongst other things, “sub-biblical”, and taking a swipe also at international figures like Peter Adam and Don Carson) without sending a powerful political message about Conservative Evangelicalism itself.

I have no doubt that Wright’s critique will be welcomed with great enthusiasm by some, not because it leads us any closer to a true understanding of the cross (which it does, in part, endeavour to), but because it will be seen to be giving a ‘bloody nose’ to those aligned with Reform, Oak Hill theological college, Richard Coekin, and all things worthy of making wax models into which pins can be stuck (check here for opinions).

In short, I believe Tom Wright to be positioning himself politically as much as theologically, and that perhaps his political enthusiasm is beginning to cloud his theological judgement.

May it not be so.

[Read John Richardson here->http://www.chelmsford-anglican-mainstream.org.uk/]

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