Some on Planetpreterist have argued for the value of empiricism in understanding scriptures and God’s good creation; others have argued the opposite. Some on Planetpreterist hold to an Eastern Orthodox view of our faith, which I do not fully understand; others are less comfortable with mystery and strive for a systemization of our faith. I am predisposed to the position that empiricism has some value, but agree with others that there is a mystery to our faith that transcends empiricism and induction. (1 Timothy 3.9 indicates a qualified deacon must hold to the mystery of faith with a good conscience, thus validating the concept of mystery in my mind.) N.T. Wright in his book, Surprised by Hope, spends a portion of chapter 4 discussing knowing. I offer up portions of this chapter for your review and discussion. I once again point out that my formal training is not in Philosophy. I would ask that those who comment respond in ways that would be easily understood by me, a non-philosopher.

In the first part of Chapter 4, The Strange Story of Easter, Tom Wright offers several arguments to explain historically how all the early Christians came to a belief that Jesus had been raised from the dead. He then transitions with the paragraph:

All this brings us face-to-face with the ultimate question. The empty tomb and the meetings with Jesus are as well established …as any historical data could expect to be. They are…the only possible explanation for the stories and beliefs that grew up so quickly among Jesus’ followers. How, in turn, do we explain them?


Tom Wright points out that the obvious answer is “well, it actually happened.” Yet, Wright points out that it would be just as easy for the skeptic to say, “I don’t have a good explanation for what happened to cause the empty tomb and the appearances, but I choose to maintain my belief that dead people don’t rise and therefore conclude that something else must have happened, even though we can’t tell what it was.” Wright goes on to point out that is a matter of choice. As I (MD) understand it our Calvinist friends here at PP would say that points to election not choice. I would prefer not to spend a lot of time debating Calvinism unless it helps directly with the discussion at hand which is epistemology.

Wright then points out there are different types of knowing.

Science studies the repeatable; history the unrepeatable…Historians don’t of course see this (the fact that historical events don’t occur again) and are not shy about declaring that these events certainly took place, even though we can’t repeat them in the laboratory.

But when people say, “But that can’t happen because we know that that sort of thing doesn’t actually happen,” they are appealing to a would-be scientific principle of history, namely the principle of analogy. History is full of unlikely things that happen once and only once…if someone declares that certain types of events “don’t normally happen,” that merely invites the retort, “Who says?”


Wright then goes on to discuss how worldview influences that evidence that a historian is will to consider particularly when evidence points to events happening which we do not expect. He also points out that the scientist when faced with the massive evidence against resurrection finds it impossible to believe in resurrection without ceasing to be a scientist altogether. Then Wright explores what sorts of things a person wedded to scientific knowing excludes from scientific inquiry such as listening to music, and falling in love.

Then Wright says:
But as this point we meet a third element of knowing, a puzzling area beyond science…and the kind of history that claims to “know” what makes sense by analogy with our own experience. Sometimes human beings—individuals or communities—are confronted with something that they must reject outright or that, if they accept it, will demand remaking of their worldview.

The challenge is in fact the challenge of a new creation…the resurrection of Jesus offers itself…not as an odd event within the world as it is but the utterly characteristic, prototypical, and foundational event within the world s it has begun to be.


Then Wright asks:

If a new creation is really on the loose, the historian wouldn’t have any analogies for it, and the scientist wouldn’t be able to consider its characteristic events in the light of other events that might otherwise have been open to inspection. What are we to do?


He in part answers:

The most important decisions we make in life are not made by post-Enlightenment left-brain rationality alone. I do not suggest that one can argue right up to the central truth of Christian faith by pure human reason building on simple observations of the world…I would not suggest that historical investigation of this sort has therefore no part to play and that all that is required is a blind leap of faith. God has given us minds to think…


Wright spends that next several paragraphs pointing out that the world cannot cope a Jesus who comes out of the tomb and inaugurates a new creation in the middle of history or the worldview that allows for a God of creation and justice bursting into history. I believe this is where Covenant Eschatology, preterism, steps in and successfully explains this to the world. Wright then says:

What I am suggesting is that faith in Jesus risen from the dead transcends but includes what we call history and what we call science. Nor is it simply…a belief that inhabits a totally different sphere, discontinuous from either, in a separate watertight compartment. Rather this kind of faith, which like all modes of knowledge is defined by the nature of it object, faith in the creator God, the God who promised to put all things to rights at the last, the God who…raised Jesus from the dead within history, leaving evidence that demands an explanation from the scientist as well as anybody else.


Finally Wright an epistemology of faith represented by Thomas, an epistemology of hope represented by Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 8 and an epistemology of love represented by Peter. He summarizes by saying:

Peter is called to a live in a new and different world where Thomas is called to a new kind of faith and Paul to a radically renewed hope, Peter is called to a new kind of love.


Wright answers his skeptics of this type knowing which is based upon faith, hope and love by saying:

Just because it takes agapç to believe the resurrection, that doesn’t mean that all that happened was that Peter and the others felt their hearts strangely warmed. Precisely because it is love we are talking about, it must have correlative reality outside the lover. Love is the deepest mode of knowing because…it affirms and celebrates that other-than-self reality. This is the point at which much modernist epistemology breaks down. The sterile antithesis of “objective” and “subjective”…is overcome by the epistemology of love which is called into being as the necessary mode of knowing for those who will live in the new public world…the world where Jesus is Lord and Caesar isn’t.


Wright in the concluding paragraphs of the chapter describes what he imagines this new creation is like. While I reject his descriptions of a new physical body and a new physical universe, what he says I believe has power for our lives today. Consider these words of Tom Wright in the context of resurrection and Covenant Eschatology:

Who, after all, was it who didn’t wasn’t the dead to be raised? Not simply the intellectually timid and the rationalists. It was and is those in power, the social and intellectual tyrants and bullies; the Caesars who would be threatened by a Lord of the world who had defeated the tyrant’s last weapon, death itself; the Herods who would be horrified at the postmortem validation of the true King of the Jews…Hope is what you get when you suddenly realize that a different worldview is possible, a worldview in which the rich, the powerful, and the unscrupulous do not after all have the last word. The same worldview shift that is demanded by the resurrection of Jesus is the shift that will enable us to transform the world…

There is the bluster of the tyrant who knows his power is threatened, and I hear the same tone of voice not just in politicians who want to carve up the world to their advantage but also in the intellectual traditions that have gone along for the ride.


Imagine a community of God’s people who discern truth through the filters of faith, hope and love, not just a perceived superior argument or philosophical position. That community comes together striving to understand how to be God’s people; sometimes agreeing other times disagreeing, but leaving as co-journeyman each having learned something from the other. Each being brought closer to the other and closer to God.