N. T. Wright has laid three critiques against modern evangelical theology. I heard them and pondered them, and I think he’s right. They are “Moralizing our Anthropology”, “Paganizing our Soteriology” and “Platonizing our Eschatology”. I want to talk here about “moralizing our anthropology”, what it means to me, and why and how far I see it to be a valid critique.
Anthropology in its broadest sense is simply our understanding of people, from ἄνθρωπος (man, as in mankind) and λόγος (word, -ology is a common “study-of” suffix in English). The anthropology conceived of here is not one of the branches of anthropology listed in the Wikipedia article but the theological conception of what a human is.
Ever since I was a child I remember hearing sermons that implied, not even subtly, that the most important detail about any human being was whether they were a good person or not (and none of us are good in ourselves). And in the face of universal fallenness, the next important question was whether we were in a “saved” or “damnable” state. From this flowed all kinds of concern over predestination or not, “perseverance” or not (back-sliding? irreversible back-sliding?), “security” or not and how to relate one to another based on that state. Mix into it the importance of doctrinal distinctives and I don’t think it’s hard to see what kind of problems, in simple human relationships, never mind in Christian to Christian fellowship this could lead to.
Add in the rise of not just Christian pluralism but religious (and irreligious) pluralism, getting so caught up in such a Most Important Question Facing Anyone could distort the ability to relate human-to-human in normal, productive ways.
Even more, if what matters most is one’s moral standing in a “salvation sense”, then it’s possible that the subtler “character” issues might go by the board. They shouldn’t but if preaching is so focused on altar calls that it seldom deals with virtue (much less with civic virtue), that’s another problem. (And civic virtue, the softer skills that it takes to perform well at loving and living with those in the closest parts of one’s community is crucial.) Those are the resonances I hear in “moralizing our anthropology.”
Beyond that, and I think this is where Wright’s emphasis lands harder, on the second touch: what has God saved us for? The stereotype of sitting on clouds and playing harps has never appealed to me, falling far below the vision cast in I Corinthians 2.9 – which feels to me like a divine game of “you’ll never guess” or “top that one”. A better answer is right there waiting for us to see in Genesis 1 and 2.
This world, all of it – not just Earth, not just the Solar System, not just the Milky Way, nor the Observable Universe, but all of it – was built to be a temple to God’s glory. We were placed here as images of God’s person and our calling is to reflect God’s wise rule into creation and to reflect creation’s glory back to God. How big a calling that is, what it will take in its entirety to fulfill it, is not yet known but the possibilities extend far, far beyond what “eye has not seen nor has ear heard nor has it entered into the heart of any man” can possibly mean for us yet. Our moral choices, agency, alignment, repentance are important but are ultimately only one sliver (I want to attenuate not nullify its importance) of all that God means us to fulfill. I am daily staggered by these thoughts and how good the news we have to share is in terms of destiny, how far beyond a simplistic “moral standing”.
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