"I believe, to the contrary, that each generation has to wrestle afresh with the question of Jesus, not least its biblical roots if it is to be truly the church at all--not that we should engage in abstract dogmatics to the detriment of our engagement with the world, but that we should discover more and more of who Jesus was and is, precisely in order to be equipped to engage with the world that he came to save. And this is a task for the whole church, especially those appointed to leadership and teaching roles within it." (Italics are in the original text)
This is a statement from Wright's book The Challenge of Jesus, in which he challenges the so called Jesus Seminar scholars and those who cling to the mantra that all we need to know about Jesus we already know. Wright places himself in between those two camps not because of theological differences but methodological differences of how we study the life and ministry of Jesus. Wright's desire is for each generation in the church to wrestle with the gospel accounts and through continual study of the life and teachings of Jesus to know him, and thus God, more. He argues that if we truly want to know someone we never stop learning about them, for instance in a marriage relationship. So why would we as finite humans think that we have arrived at a fixed definition of Jesus and his life? To better understand our faith and the one whom we confess to be the Messiah, shouldn't we be diligent in our pursuit of the Jesus of faith and of history?
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