I’m very happy that Dr. Wright accepted the invitation to come to OC. He was certainly busy while he was here. On Monday, he spoke to our student body in our chapel service. Then he went immediately to a luncheon where, after a quick bite, he spoke to a group of honors and graduate students and faculty. Then, that evening, he gave a lecture to a crowd of about 2700 people. As if that was not enough, he followed up the lecture with another special Q & A session with honors and graduate students.

This morning (Tuesday) there was an academic review of his *Paul and the Faithfulness of God*. The panel of reviewers included Jerry Sumney (Lexington Theological Seminary), James Thompson (Abilene Christian University), and Richard Hays (Duke Divinity School). To be honest, I was a bit surprised Richard Hays was on the panel; after all, he and Wright are good friends, and the book is dedicated to Hays. Of the reviewers, I’d say Sumney asked the most challenging questions (followed by Thompson). I especially thought his questioning of Wright’s (and, incidentally, Hays’s) *assumptions* about how Paul read and used Scripture was good. Wright didn’t offer much of a riposte, if you ask me. Hays tried to offer his own counterpoint by showing how Wright had "alluded to" (or "echoed") language—even using the same words—from Jane Austin’s *Pride and Prejudice* and a poem, "Prayer," by George Herbert. When Hays pointed these out as a counterpoint to Sumney, he licked his finger, wrote in the air, and (rather hubristically) said, "Point made." However, I think Dr. Hays missed the point of Sumney’s challenge. You see, Sumney, in the vein of Christopher Stanley (cf. e.g., *Arguing with Scripture*), was pointing out that alluding to or echoing (whatever those terms mean [cf. Porter, "The Use of the Old Testament in the New: A Brief Comment on Method and Terminology" in *Early Christian Interpretation of the Scriptures of Israel*]) or even quoting others’ words does not import all the meaning from the context in which they were uttered. The words are *recontextualized* by the "alluder"/"quoter" to support a new/different meaning the alluder/quoter wants to make. That’s why, even if we recognize, as Hays pointed out, that Wright "echoed" Jane Austin’s or Herbert's words, *those words are appropriated by Wright to make (or support) a new meaning in a new/different context*, and, thus, become *Wright's* words for *his* meaning. This is the case, too, when Paul (or any NT writer) alludes to or even directly quotes the Hebrew Scriptures. So, in my estimation, Hays didn’t give as strong a response as he thought he did.

But I digress . . .

I can’t deny that Wright is an exceptional (and quick!) thinker and an extraordinary theologian. But the more I listened to him, the more I wondered if the text of the New Testament was informing his theology or if his theology was constraining his reading of the text.

In the end, the event was fun and informative and good for OC.