Theologian N.T. Wright in Dallas on Romans: 'All Israel Will Be Saved' Refers to the Church of Jewish and Gentile Believers
The Christian Post reported on Nov. 6 that British theologian N.T. Wright, 77, expounded the Book of Romans this week at "The Fresh Challenge of Romans," a four-day conference held Nov. 1-4 at Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas, Dallas County, Texas, offering his reading of one of the New Testament's most debated verses — Romans 11:26, "all Israel will be saved."
Wright argued that the promise refers not to ethnic Israel alone, but to the whole Church made up of Jewish and Gentile believers together. "There is no sign at any point in Romans 9 to 11 that Paul envisages a large-scale, last-minute salvation of all ethnic Judeans," he said. "Nor is there a sign that Paul imagines God gathering great numbers of Judeans back into the Middle East, so that some great event may happen that would sweep them all into favor." He called such teaching "just a modern-day fantasy."
On translation, he pointed to the updated New Revised Standard Version's rendering of the verse's opening as "in this way," rather than "and so" or "and then": "The point is, this is how God is saving all Israel."
At the same time, Wright repeatedly rejected any attempt to sever Christianity from its Jewish roots, warning against a tendency to claim that "the God of the Old Testament had nothing to do with the God of the New" and that the faith could cut its ties to the people of Israel and their scriptures. "The God of Israel is the one God over the world," he insisted. If Judeans were to return to the Messiah, he said, it would be "not just a creation out of nothing, but like life from the dead" — "the real return from exile."
He closed with Paul's warning in Romans 11 against arrogance: the status of the Messiah's people rests simply on the grace and kindness of the one God, and anyone who falls back on ethnic or social status is "cutting off the very branch on which they claim to be sitting." A former Bishop of Durham and a scholar at the University of St Andrews and Oxford, Wright is among the most influential New Testament scholars of his generation. (Source: The Christian Post)
Source: The Christian Post
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Photo: 图片来源：神学家 N.T. Wright 讲课资料照片（Gareth Saunders 摄，CC BY-SA 2.0，经 Wikimedia Commons） / Image: Theologian N.T. Wright lecturing (Gareth Saunders, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
