The renowned scholar on why “Dominion Theology” misses the subversive method of Jesus.
Interview by Stefani McDade
In our present era of deep political division, the American church is caught between two eschatological extremes: a “rapture” theology seeking to escape the world, and a “dominion” theology seeking to conquer it. But what if both miss the posture of Jesus and his kingdom?
Discussing his newly released book, God’s Homecoming, N.T. Wright challenges the “modern nonsense” of imposing Christianity by force. Pointing to the Sermon on the Mount, Wright argues that God’s Kingdom doesn’t arrive via tanks or political takeovers, but through the “meek and the hungry-for-justice” who quietly care for the vulnerable left in the shadow of the empire. From Jesus and John Wayne to the pitfalls of Christian Nationalism, Wright offers a pastoral and political corrective centering on the cross rather than pulling the levers of worldly power.
Stefani McDade: So, you know, some people hear things like “Jesus is the King of the world now”, and they can think of political takeovers. How is your homecoming argument different from things like the Seven Mountains Dominion theology?
Tom Wright: Yeah, I don’t know much about that dominion theology, because it’s very much an American phenomenon. If there are pockets of it here in the UK, I’m not aware of it. We have lots of other problems, but not that one. And part of the answer there is—what does it mean to be human, and what does it mean for God to become King and to recruit humans within that purpose? And the answer to that is the Sermon on the Mount. And I’ve said many times, you may have heard me say before, people think that if God is becoming king, then he needs to send in the tanks. And if God doesn’t seem to be doing it, we need to go and build a tank, and we’ll get on with the job, and we’ll sort the world out and put those wicked people to shame, etc.
The Sermon on the Mount says, “No, when God wants to come and be king and sort the world out. He doesn’t send in the tanks. He sends in the poor in spirit, and the humble, and the meek, and the hungry-for-justice people, and the people who are mourning over the world’s wickedness.” And by the time that the bullies and the bad guys wake up and realize what’s going on, the meek and the hungry-for-justice people have built hospitals and schools and helping the poor and are proclaiming that there is good news, particularly for the downtrodden and the outcast, etc. Which is not what the power brokers want to hear, because we want to keep those people well aware, because they’re an embarrassment to us.
I know your country is going through a certain amount on this front, as we speak. I’m coming to America next week, God willing, to do some lectures on the West Coast. And I know I’m going to be asked this question again and again. But I mean the idea that a Christian nation—which is an odd idea anyway, by the way—but that a Christian nation should then try to impose, by force, a certain type of brand of Christianity, without reference to the Sermon on the Mount or to Luke 4, which is Jesus’ own kingdom agenda—let alone to all the other passages about humility and service and caring for the poor, etc.—this is just a bit of modern nonsense.
Do you know I just finished reading a book a friend of mine told me I had to read by Kristen du Metz called Jesus and John Wayne. You know that book that was a real eye opener, because if that’s what American evangelicalism is. It just shows that that word means something totally different when you cross the Atlantic. Because I have been in the Anglican evangelical world most of my adult life, and none of that has any resonance in England at all. In fact, most evangelicals in England are probably politically center left, or what some people would call center left, without any trace of all that other stuff.
And so, we’re living in a very misleading and worrying time when somehow the churches need to hold their nerve. Because sometimes when I’ve said the sort of things that I say about God’s welcome to the outcast and so on. People have said, “Oh, Tom, that’s you’re just following the woke agenda, aren’t you?” And I said, “Absolutely not, you won’t see anyone less woke than me.” But if the church has been forgetting its true calling, don’t be surprised if other people with other motives, eg, Marxism, come in to fill the gap that we have left. And that doesn’t mean that all their agenda is now validated—far from it. It just means, shame on us that we weren’t doing the stuff we were supposed to be doing.
SM: Right. Because some Christians think we need to be in positions of power to prepare for the millennial reign. There’s an over-realized eschatology—overestimating how much of the kingdom can come now before Jesus returns—which can lead to a kind of Christian nationalism.
TW: Now that’s that’s interesting, because the other thing that’s, of course, dominated a lot of American Christianity is dispensational premillennialism, which is, “The world is getting worse and worse and worse, and it’s we few, we happy few, and we’re going to be raptured.” But what you’re describing there is a recurrence of the old post-millennialism, which is, “We’re making the world better and better and better until it becomes Christian, and then Jesus can come back.” And so we’re wrestling there, really, with 17th Century post-millennialism, versus late 18th and 19th century pre-millennialism. And again, I want to say this is an American problem—most of the world, most of the Christian world, doesn’t work on those axes. But both of those ways of telling the story misconstrue how the Bible talks about the inauguration and work of the Kingdom.
I mean, I remember when I was studying in the gospels at undergraduate level, we did essays on why did Jesus tell parables and that sort of thing, and we maybe did an essay on Mark’s view of the cross or something like that. But nobody ever was talking about that Jesus was launching the kingdom of God, going around saying, “Kingdom, yes, but not like you imagine it. It looks like this—healing this blind man. It looks like that—the poor old widow who’s being helped. And it’s like a father who had two sons. And this happened, and that happened. Jesus is redefining what it means for God to be king on earth as in heaven, and then, the redefinition climaxes with the cross and resurrection and ascension. Because that’s how the whole thing comes together and means what it means.
And so when people talk about either making the world a better and better place,”Well, are you doing it in the Jesus way? And if not, why not?” Or if they talk about, “Oh, well, you know, one day there’ll be a rapture and we’ll be snatched away.” Well, bad luck on the meek, who are told they will inherit the earth.
So, we have told the story in radically unbiblical ways. I’d still rather people were telling the story of Jesus as the story of that there is a God who loves us. Because if they believe that, they may at least find some other stuff. But when you get these distorted versions of the story—which are baked into certain churches, life, teaching, statutes, etc.—watch out. I’m very old fashioned about this; I tend to think that the Bible is the Bible and the traditions are later.
SM: And I think that a lot of people have walked away from the church because of the sort of fear-based End Times teaching, right? So, what would be your pastoral vision or heart for that?
TW: Yeah. I mean, it’s a funny thing. When I started out many, many years ago, because I was a good young Anglican Evangelical, my vision was to do biblical exegesis as well as I could—to show the Liberals that their wishy-washy, half-baked stuff really wasn’t up to the mark, and that the Bible was much more important than they’d given me credit for. As I did that, and was going around different places, doing lectures, I realized that I was having an equal and opposite effect, as it were, on people who’d grown up with fundamentalism—whether Protestant fundamentalism or Catholic fundamentalism—in a world where heaven and hell were these big, extraordinary, worrying things.
And, well, you know, all the shtick about either saying a prayer said you’ll go to heaven or waiting for the rapture or whatever. And so, particularly when I would lecture in America, I had these people coming up to me and saying, “You’re remaking my worldview.” And I thought, “I’m just pointing out what’s in the Bible, actually.” And so I realized that, yes, there is an argument to be taken too. I mean, when I grew up, most theologians didn’t believe in the bodily resurrection. That may still be the case, but I think the work that I and many others have done has actually changed the shape of public theology on that one. But likewise, so many fundamentalists simply believe in that dualistic world from which Jesus will rescue us—and with all the misreadings of the Son of Man coming on the clouds and so on, that go with that.
And so, quite accidentally, in doing the one task, I seem to have been doing the other one as well, helping people out of that. Which then I’ve, of course, I’ve had stick for because people don’t like the New Perspective on Paul, so-called. And so we’re all in this mix of trying to understand the Bible better and make it real for people.