A New Vocabulary Word For Christians
In which I complain about Kate Bowler's podcast with NT Wright
At great personal cost, I have, over the course of three hours, listened to this 56-minute podcast of Kate Bowler breathlessly interviewing NT Wright about Romans 8:28, the verse usually translated (without me going to look it up), ‘God works all things together for the good of those he loves and who are called according to his purpose.’ It’s a pretty great verse, and an enormous comfort to a lot of people who are in emotional, physical, and psychic pain. It might be exactly the sort of line you would grasp for, as a flotation device, when you are, as Bowler says, at the end of yourself. But, according to Wright and Bowler, it is never used in the right way and you probably don’t understand it in the way you ought.
Just to interrupt myself, I have studiously avoided reading or listening to anything by Kate Bowler because there’s something about her content that makes me think I will find my teeth set on edge. And, being generally full up to the brim of that sort of content, I have steered clear, trying to imagine that I am sloshing around with the milk of human kindness and not criticizing everybody’s theological feelings all the time. Perhaps I should quit lying to myself and just embrace my peculiar call without fussing myself.
Anyway, back to the subject of the podcast and this post, Bowler and Wright don’t say anything that is particularly objectionable about the nature of God or why we suffer or anything. Wright, in fact, has some things to say about Jesus and the cross that are prescient and helpful. No, it’s not that they are wrong, or that they are maligning the Bible (as far as I can see—I was interrupted a thousand three hundred and forty-two times and had to keep going back to catch the thread up again and so if I missed something I don’t see how I can possibly be blamed), it’s that, as usual, they don’t know what time it is.
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