Illusory Freedom

The Religion Report: 17 November 2004 - Anglican Bishop N.T Wright: Full Transcript :

Stephen Crittenden:A lot of the freedom we’ve won for ourselves may be an illusion.

Tom Wright: Yes, and that is the thing which Postmodernity names, that the freedom is simply turning over in your sleep within your prison cell and in fact you’re still pretty stuck. But I have always, in my scholarly work, taken very serious the Enlightenment's historical question, because it seems to me that before the Enlightenment, the church was getting away with murder, sometimes literally, alas, by simply saying “We’ll tell you how it is, we’ll tell you what the Bible means, here it is, boom-boom. No questions to be asked. And then along comes the Enlightenment and says “Wait a minute. We think that there's some history under there, and it might just disprove what you’re saying”. And I and a lot of people have taken that on board and said “Yes, OK, we will answer that, we will go to those historical sources and we’ll show that we can actually do this a lot better than you guys can”. And, I see this, because I know some people who are listening to this will have a further question, I see the model for that as Jesus’ dialogue with doubting Thomas. That Thomas comes and says “Here, I want some hard evidence , I want to be able touch and I want to be able to see”. And Jesus doesn’t say to him “Oh you silly boy, you know, you shouldn’t ask for touching and seeing, you know , go out of the room until you’re prepared to come back with a better question”.

Stephen Crittenden: He gives him touching and seeing.

Tom Wright: He says “be my guest. Bring your finger here and touch my hands”, and then when Thomas has done that and said “My Lord and my God”, Jesus says, “Actually it would have been better if you had done this without your silly questions”. So I want to take the Enlightenment on like Jesus took Thomas on. I think then the trouble with the Enlightenment’s rhetoric of freedom and human rights and so on, is it’s now over-reached itself. And part of the postmodern critique, which I endorse, is to say “Don’t believe all the rhetoric of the Enlightenment”. Because in fact there’s much more and a rather dark side to that. And people are using this language to crowbar particular agendas through and because we all signed up to the Enlightenment, we daren’t stand up against it. It’s happening in the European Union at the moment, but that’s another story which no doubt people in Australia are happily well off without."