¹ Wright, N.T., The New Testament and the People of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God, vol. 1 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1992)Google Scholar, hereafter NTPG; idem., Jesus and the Victory of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God, vol. 2 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1996)Google Scholar, hereafter JVG.

² Meier, John P., A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, 3 vols., Anchor Bible Reference Library (New York: Doubleday, 1991, 1994, 2001), hereafter AMJ.Google Scholar

³ N.T. Wright, argues that “theology must not conform to every last hypothetical reconstruction (‘history‐W[ritten]’), an impossible task in any case. Rather, as historians approximate to ‘history‐E[vent]’, that history itself—Jesus himself, in other words, as a figure of ‘history‐E[vent]’ and not simply of the historians’ approximations—confronts, disturbs and beckons us in new way.”(“In Grateful Dialogue,” in Jesus and the Restoration of Israel: A Critical Assessment of N.T. Wright’s‘Jesus and the Victory of God’, ed. Carey Newman [Downers Gove, IL: InterVarsity, 1999], 251).

⁴ Borg, Marcus and Wright, N.T., The Meaning of Jesus(San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1999), 26–27Google Scholar.

⁵ Wright is not alone in this. Alister McGrath (“Reality, Symbol, and History: Theological Reflections on N.T. Wright's Portrayal of Jesus,” in Jesus and the Restoration of Israel, 164) lists several other figures who have embraced critical realism in theology including William Alston (A Realist Conception of Truth[Ithaca, NY: Cornell, 1996]), John Millbank (Theology and Social Theory[Oxford: Blackwell, 1993]), Ian Barbour (Myths, Models, and Paradigms: A Comparative Study in Religion and Science[New York: Harper & Row, 1974]), and Wentzel van Huyssteen (Theology and the Justification of Faith[Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989]). These figures have embraced a form of critical realism close to that articulated by Wright. Critical realism, for these authors, is primarily a way of understanding and mediating truth‐claims in science and theology by asserting that both fields are constantly subject to shifting boundaries and modes of reflection defined by social and historical contexts. B. Lonergan's approach to critical realism, adopted by B. Meyer, emerges from an investigation into the structure of human interiority rather than through a critique of the natural sciences. Critical realism emerges as one becomes attentive to the blunders of empiricism and idealism and discovers the self‐transcendence proper to the human process of knowing. Through a grasp of what Lonergan calls “the virtually unconditioned” we come to know the real. One's judgment is virtually unconditioned when the evidence for its affirmation is sufficient, and there are no further relevant questions because all of its conditions have been fulfilled. For Lonergan, a verified hypothesis is probably true, and being probably true, refers to what in reality probably is so (Method in Theology[Toronto: University of Toronto, 1972], 76, 239)Google Scholar.

⁶ McGrath, 164.

⁷ NTPG, 112.

⁸ Johnson, “A Historiographical Response to Wright's Jesus,” in Jesus and the Restoration of Israel, 206–224, at 210.

⁹ Fredriksen, Paula, “What You See is What You Get: Context and Content in Current Research on the Historical Jesus,”Theology Today 52/1 (1995): 75–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ Crossan, John Dominic, “What Victory? What God? A Review Debate with N.T. Wright on Jesus and the Victory of God,”Scottish Journal of Theology 50 (1997): 358CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ NTPG, 100.

¹² Johnson, “A Historiographical Response,” 216–218.

¹³ E.g., Reviews of Poet and Peasant: Brown, Schuyler, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 39 (1977): 585–586Google Scholar; Neil McEleney, Theological Studies 38 (1977): 565–567. See also Luke Timothy Johnson's review of Through Peasant Eyes, Interpretation 37 (1983): 102–103.

¹⁴ K. Bailey, “Informal Controlled Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels.” Wright also appeals to Henry Wansbrough ed., Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition, Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series, n. 64 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991). It is unclear how Wright intends the reader to understand this reference. The text is a collection of conference papers from two different conferences. The contributors agreed on several points. For our purposes, the most relevant conclusion they made was that the oral tradition was characterized by both fixity and variation, but it was unclear to what extent the tradition may have been controlled and by whom it was controlled (pp. 12–14).

¹⁵ Marsh, “Theological History,” 81. With regard to the question of the synoptic problem and the reliability of the Christian sources Wright states that “[w]e are not in a position to solve one part of the puzzle first and then use it as a fixed point from which to tackle the rest.” Rather, any hypotheses offered must not only settle questions concerning the historical Jesus but also every other relevant issue, including the question of the nature and reliability of sources (The Meaning of Jesus, 23).

¹⁶ Wright's concern for coherence between Jesus and the early church is not new. Morna Hooker's critique of the criterion of dissimilarity (“Christology and Methodology,”New Testament Studies 17 [1970]: 480–487Google Scholar, and “On Using the Wrong Tool,”Theology 75 [1972]: 570–581CrossRefGoogle Scholar) has helped to temper the use of the criterion of dissimilarity in historical Jesus research. While the criterion is still used, it is always prefaced with a cautionary note about separating Jesus either from his Jewish background or from the early Christian church. Additionally, French historians have engaged in a debate regarding the significance of the ‘event’ in history. In the context of this debate, an ‘event’ is an occurrence which gives rise to discernible discontinuity between one state of affairs and another in the flow of history. Wright appears to be operating in this tradition as he emphasizes the impact of Jesus on the early Christian community. An overview of this debate can be found in Burke, Peter, The French Historical Revolution: The Annales School 1929–1989(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

¹⁷ NTPG, 117; JVG, 132.

¹⁸ Clive Marsh has wondered whether Wright's critical realism “has not slipped into a form of the nineteenth century positivism which he goes to such lengths to oppose. However much Wright may claim that he is merely constructing a comprehensive hypothesis (on critical realist lines), one of the driving forces of his undertaking appears clearly to be to maximize the historical data available, in the defense of theological assertions (made in the first century, even if not today) point for point”(“Theological History? N.T. Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God,”Journal for the Study of the New Testament 69 [1998]: 77–94, at 87–89)Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Wright has been accused of setting up a ‘straw person’ in his argument concerning the metaphorical nature of apocalyptic language. His characterization of Schweitzer's position on the nature of apocalyptic language as referring to the end of the “space and time” universe/world has been challenged by Dale Allison (“The Victory of Apocalyptic,” in Jesus and the Restoration of Israel, 128–130, 310 n.12). Schweitzer is Wright's foil in his presentation, but Schweitzer does not even use the expression “space‐time universe”(Schweitzer, Albert, The Kingdom of God and Primitive Christianity[London: A & C Black, 1968]Google Scholar and The Quest of the Historical Jesus, 408–411, 432–437), and Allison's criticism of Wright for mischaracterizing Schweitzer is appropriate.

²⁰ Johnson, “Historiographical Response,” 208.

²¹ JVG, 204–206.

²² JVG, 218.

²³ Johnson, “Historiographical Response,” 211; Johnson cites the fallacies enumerated by Fischer, David Hackett, Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought(New York: Harper, 1970)Google Scholar.

²⁴ Meier, “Jesus,” 1317.

²⁵ AMJ I, 198.

²⁶ AMJ I, 10. This approach to history is pejoratively labeled “scissors and paste history” byCollingwood, R.G., The Idea of History(Oxford: Clarendon, 1946), 257–263Google Scholar, 269 f., 274–82 as quoted in Lonergan, Bernard, Method in Theology(Toronto: University of Toronto, 1994), 205Google Scholar.

²⁷ Meier, John P., “The Present State of the ‘Third Quest’ for the Historical Jesus: Loss and Gain,”Biblica 80 (1999): 463Google Scholar.

²⁸ This point has formed the nucleus of Luke Timothy Johnson's negative assessment of Meier's project (see The Real Jesus[San Francisco: Harper, 1995]Google Scholar; see also his reviews of A Marginal Jew in Commonweal April 24, 1992, pp. 24–26; Nov., 18, 1994, pp. 33–35; Nov., 9, 2001, pp. 21–23).

²⁹ AMJ I, 207–208.

³⁰ AMJ II, 241, 252.

³¹ AMJ II, 308.